The City, the Port and the People

Everett James is a 10-year Bellingham resident and Fairhaven College graduate business major.

This column is the result of my personal attempts to answer nagging questions regarding the “New Whatcom Redevelopment” project planned for Bellingham’s central waterfront property. I conducted considerable research and gathered input via email, telephone and in-person interviews. The interviews included top players and people with substantial knowledge of the issue.

The primary operatives and stakeholders in the affair are, in order of influence, the Port of Bellingham, the city of Bellingham and the people of Whatcom County. The various ideas for this project differ in detail as much as in human perception, but one vision is unanimous: This development must be sustainable.

The people want to see something that in 50 years their children and grandchildren can be proud of, not another exercise in environmental and societal degeneration. As similarities between the third world and our own country become uncomfortably clear, the people here now know — “We need to change our M.O!” (Method of Operations). And in order to make the New Whatcom Redevelopment (and all development) sustainable, the city and the port must adjust as well, because this project is a serious test of societal durability that the current M.O. can’t pass.

Details concerning the deficiencies and nonsustainability of the current (soon to be “old”) method. are covered in innumerable depressing studies, so I will spare language on it. The myriad and ever-changing details of the new method are covered exhaustively in other, much longer discussions.

However: In order to succeed and achieve any kind of balance the new, sustainable method requires genuine outreach and sincere communication between all parties involved; it requires a true concern for community, a sense of belonging and a connection to home. It requires a broader, longer-term and more inclusive view rather than a narrower short-term one that the individual-profit mindset sees. And the new method asks an indispensable question: Where will this course lead us? If we continue on this path, where will our children and grandchildren stand?

The new method of operations cannot be achieved overnight; it’s an incremental work in progress, but it must be achieved if our communities (human and otherwise) are to retain anything close to the quality of life we maintain now.

This article cannot go further without a primer on the Port of Bellingham, because it is the most influential player in the project and the vast majority of its benefactors (the residents of Whatcom County) know next to nothing about it.

The Port of Bellingham is what’s referred to as a municipal corporation, which essentially means it was created and sanctioned under state law and is in fact a government agency. The original reason for the establishment of the port was to prevent railroad, shipping and other transport corporations from monopolizing shipping and freight hubs on Bellingham Bay and charging local producers to use them.

The natural progression from there was the promotion and stimulation of general economic development, basically in the form of revenues from various waterfront property leases, fees and taxes. The Bellingham/Whatcom Chamber of Commerce created the Port District of Bellingham in 1920. The chamber mobilized a committee to obtain signatures to place the port initiative on the ballot and voters passed it by a 77 percent margin.

But the new port district lacked sufficient start-up capital, so it requested a tax levy from county residents, the amount of the tax depending on the assessed valuation of the owner’s property (most commonly a home or business).

Even the term “tax (often referred to as ‘bond’) levy” requires some explanation: The port procures bonds (basically loans) from various parties through a bond brokerage firm and then pays them back over time using public tax receipts, the guaranteed tax receipts being the collateral for the bonds (loans). The levy passed and the port began operations on borrowed public money.

In fact, records show that the Port of Bellingham operated at a loss, except for a few years in the late 1920s and 1960s, for the first 50 years of its existence. In more recent years the port has fared better financially. Example: According to the port’s financial statements (available on its Web site), in 2007 it generated $6,521,364 from its operations while receiving $9,750,233 in government grants and property taxes. This is not operating at a loss, but it is important to note that the majority of the port’s income is in the form of public receipts.

Although mandated to stimulate general economic development, nowhere in state law (RCW 53.04) does it specify that the port is mandated to operate in the best interests of the majority of the residents of its jurisdiction, which is all of Whatcom County.

The port purchased the Central Waterfront property from Georgia-Pacific corporation by agreeing to pay for extensive toxic chemical cleanup on the shore, in Whatcom Waterway and in the former G-P “retention pond.” The port agreed to pay up to $40 million for the cleanup, the first half to be paid in three annual installments and the second $20 million as costs accrue. Part of the deal was that G-P would pay the $5 million premium for an insurance policy to cover excessive costs and unforeseen expenses should they climb above the $40 million level.

Think of it as a tether on a hot air balloon — the insurance is intended to keep the project costs from ascending into the stratosphere and evaporating all progress. Unfortunately, the insurance corporation covering cost overruns is the infamous, evaporated, reconstituted and now unstable AIG.

It is important to understand that our government agencies are navigating murky and uncharted waters with this project, waters that contain invisible snags. The port and city have never worked together on a project of this magnitude or importance before, and as outlined in the local media, they hit one of those snags, and it temporarily stalled them. Temporarily. The snag related to the S.D.E.I.S. (supplemental draft environmental impact statement) that the port submitted to the city in January of 2008.

This massive document, erroneously assembled without due heed to several years of community advisory group input, essentially amounted to a preliminary master plan for the project. After thorough review, the mayor and city staff rejected much of it on various grounds and the mayor informed the port of the city’s decision in a four-page letter on November 4 (viewable on Port of Bellingham’s Web site). Port management was not pleased, and it responded via letter on November 10 (port’s Web site), basically severing collaboration between the two agencies.

This unacceptable rift couldn’t last long in the light of day, and before too long the city and port were once again collaborating on the project. A couple of fresh developments appear quite encouraging regarding the project.

The port has secured a lease agreement with WWU and awarded a $1 million construction bid to a local company to convert a portion of the former G-P tissue warehouse into a “Technology Development Center.” The center is to be a research and development facility for Western’s engineering technology program, where they will start out by designing a hydrofoil-ferry to be built by Bellingham’s All American Marine.

The port also secured a lease with Bellingham Technical College for technical training at the facility. Construction is scheduled for completion in July. And the city is tentatively working on an arrangement that would locate the new public library on the waterfront property; it’s an expensive proposition, but ingenious and well worth it, because the library is a public institution of learning that caters to all segments of the community. It fits the new method perfectly.

At the beginning of this article I stated that I had interviewed and corresponded with various people involved in the New Whatcom Redevelopment project. These people ranged from the highest levels of city and port management to present and former staff members to advisory group members to concerned waterfront neighbors.

My primary question was this: “After all of the cooperation and collaboration between the city, the port and their jointly appointed advisory groups, why did communication break down so suddenly between the two?” I think the following quotations illuminate some fundamental truth in the matter:

“There are differences in opinion between the city and the port, but, then again, there are differences in our respective mandates, areas of strength and expertise, and internal structures … . The decisions we make today are, for all intents and purposes, permanent. There’s nothing wrong in taking a few more months to get it right — when the project will impact the community for the next hundred years.”

“The intent of the port is to move the waterfront parcels further down the entitlement process and eventually sell property and long-term leases sufficient to pay back the project with a slightly positive net present value.”

“I think that at the end of the day, this is about power. Who has it and how is it wielded? The port has historically been un-noticed but powerful — collecting taxes and using revenues to build marinas and airports — traditional port stuff. None of us noticed that three guys had that much power … . But with their acquisition of the waterfront, the port was suddenly in the spotlight and people started noticing that perhaps the port had too much power given how unrepresentative their decision making seems.”

“Illegalities? I don’t know of any. There were no illegalities, were there?”

“No. Just differences in understanding … ‘failures to communicate.’”

“We need to determine the development regulations first, then set an agreement. We’re very close to consensus.”

Our public agencies obviously need our help — just look around at the snowballing issues. They can’t handle them alone and we’re fantasizing if we expect them to. We haven’t seen real public participation yet. Look what happened with this project. The Waterfront Advisory Group was like a hologram for all the viable effect it had. The enlistment of nine-odd local architects to break the deadlock over street grid layouts was done of necessity — high-level professionals brought in to help solve a high-level dispute; they operate within a rigid grid themselves.

A lack of public influence leads, as we latently observe to our growing dismay (and eventual horror), to acute imbalance and inequity in our communities, human and ecological. Someone should construct a guideline for our public agencies, outlining how they could best solicit and accept the peoples’ assistance and how the people could best render it, always with an eye on the ultimate vision that everyone shares — sustainability. §