Airport Edition

David Camp is a CPA by trade and a sailor by inclination. This is his second monthly installment of Port Knocker Notes.

Portknocker (noun, slang): artisanal miners typically operating without permits.

Port Knocker Notes are a collection of port-related thoughts, facts, ideas and random complaints from your faithful port of Bellingham reporter. The opinions in this column do not necessarily reflect those of Whatcom Watch.

The port of Bellingham is busy upgrading Bellingham International Airport to allow for larger aircraft to land on the improved runway, and to handle more than double the current level of passengers. Airport capacity is currently limited to regional aircraft such as 737-class (150 passengers and a 2,250 mile range) and smaller; when the upgrade is complete, long-haul D4 class aircraft such as the 757 (up to 279 passengers and a 3,900 mile range) will be able to use the airport.

Presently our airport can only support regional direct flights; with the upgrades it will be feasible for airlines to provide direct service from Bellingham to Hawaii, Cabo, or New York City, for example. And 95 percent of the cost of the expansion ($30 million to expand the terminal and the same amount again to improve the runway and taxiway) will be paid for by user fees: the runway by the FAA user fees and the terminal by local user fees.

Now I am a fan of the airport—my family and friends use it on a regular basis. And I think that it’s probably a good thing that we will have an expanded menu of destinations to choose from locally rather than having to drive to Seattle. But there are people who are spitting mad about this—they live under the flight path to the airport, and are pretty much being ignored. But I would wager that most residents are at worst neutral on the airport expansion—since the cost is being paid for by the federal government, which is free money, right?

Whatcom County has benefited from similar federal government largesse for many beneficial projects: how else would we have a bomb disposal robot, or a paramilitary SWAT team, or a “temporary” Olympic security coordination center which apparently will be in existence as long as there is an Olympic event somewhere in the world? How else could we be made safe from the dangerous items in our own boats thanks to searches from armored Homeland Security speedboats with machine guns? How else could we be protected from the dangerous crops that might be growing on our land by federal government helicopter overflights and flamethrower-wielding federal agents?

I for one am glad that the federal government has an unlimited ability to print money and/or borrow money from China and/or steal money from the Social Security fund.1

Because otherwise we would have to pay for all these projects out of local money and perhaps we local yokels wouldn’t want to pay for being protected from ourselves or to provide convenient cheap flights to Vegas for Canadians. Come to think of it, did anyone ask us whether we wanted all this growth in the first place? How is it a higher priority for our local governments to please future projected residents and non-residents rather than we poor overtaxed Whatcom County residents? §

¹According to G. David Walker, Comptroller General of the USA under Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II, the federal government has deliberately promulgated fraudulent accounts of its activities since the Johnson administration. How? By including the social security surplus in general revenues to hide the real deficit. Social Security should be accounted for as a separate fund according to the federal government’s own rules – which they insist that we all follow upon pain of fines or jail. Do as I say, not as I do—what a great example our fearless leaders set!