Checking Out More Fire District Rumors

Rumors are flying around Birch Bay about the fire district’s litigation with developers and its capital facilities plan.

Two of our primary objectives in producing this blog are to:
1) encourage voters to participate by attending meetings to get informed about important issues, and
2) replace rumors with facts.

The fire commissioners – see last post – have not yet answered our previous question, so here are a few more rumor-based ones they may want to answer:

1) Is it true that some developers, including those who eventually sued you, offered to pay you mitigation fees that you refused? If so, how much did they offer? How does that amount compare with the mitigation fees in your draft capital facilities plan, dated June 20 ($2,078.45 per single family residence and $2,983.70 for multi-family housing)? The plan states that amounts as much as 50% lower might be sufficient due to a variety of factors. That could mean as little as $1,039.23 for a single-family home. Is that more or less than the developers offered?

2) Is it true that you want to charge mitigation fees only to developers and not single home builders –- thus if an individual family buys a lot in the middle of a developer's project and builds it's own house there, you would not charge the individual home but would charge the developer of adjacent houses?

3) Is it true that, because Blaine contracts for fire district services, you are dependent on the Blaine city council to impose mitigation fees, and so far they xhave not?

4) Is it true that Jon Sitkin, the fire district legal counsel, is also city attorney for Blaine? Does Mr. Sitkin have a conflict of interest.

By way of background, John Stark reported in the Bellingham Herald after the Washington Court of Appeals ruled against the fire district:
“The issue flared in the fall of 2006 when the Whatcom County Council approved a 200-home development in the Birch Bay urban growth area, Horizon Village at Semiahmoo, over the fire district's objections.

“Fire district commissioners wanted county officials to allow to collect “voluntary” impact fees to cover the district's costs to provide the added services they said the new development would need. While fire districts have no legal authority to demand impact fees, they do have the power to grant or deny the concurrency letters.

The county's concurrency ordinance states that such a letter is required before a new subdivision can be approved, but developers and county officials contended that the levels of emergency service were deemed adequate when land use plans for the Birch Bay area were updated effective in 2005. In their view, Horizons Village and other developments could be approved on that basis, without further view by the district.”

With Blaine opting out and the fire district not charging mitigation fees in rural areas, it appears that Birch Bay alone, with about a third of the district’s assessed value, is being asked to pay for the district's new development.

Because the capital facilities plan must be approved by the Whatcom County Pllanning Commission and the County Council in the process of updating the county's growth plan, the fire district commissioners – normally not forthcoming – find themselves required to schedule discussions with the community. A series of public workshops are scheduled for next month including:

Developer Specific
Monday, August 10 3 p.m Lynden Fire Station
307 19th St., Lynden

Blaine City Officials
Tuesday, August 11, 3 PM, Blaine Fire Station
9408 Odell St., Blaine

West Side Communities including Birch Bay
August 11, 7 PM, Blaine Fire Station
9408 Odell St., Blaine

Some people with whom we've discussed these issues say they are reluctant to challenge the fire commissioners because they will be branded as “pro development.” Our first response is that practically everyone in the Birch Bay community is affected by development stalled by litigation since 2006; Birch Bay has abundent opportunity for growth before the community would be overbuilt. Our second response is the overriding issue from the standpoint of voters and taxpayers: Quality management is essential from elected officials. With their opaque nature, the fire commissioners are not revealing their decision-making process. Taxpayer questions and oversight can change that. There will be elections.

ak

(Comments are not only welcome, they are eagerly sought.)

Stiffed by the Commissioners

From: Al Krause [mailto:birchbayblog@hotmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 8:04 PM
To: car301@aol.com
Cc: info@nwfrs.net
Subject: Question about Facilities Plan
Dear Commissioner Dean Whitney - Here is the question I raised at your meeting Thursday evening. Your plan states that the district needs two stations. Are these replacements or additions? For example, the Lynden station is within the city limits and you do not cover the city; I have been told the Semiahmoo station is inefficient and should be replaced by a station near Birch Bay Village. Are any of the rural stations redundant?

As mentioned, we will not report on this question in our blog (birchbayblog.blogspot.com) until we have your response.

Cordially. - al krause 371-5312
~~~



From: car301@aol.com
To: birchbayblog@hotmail.com
CC: bhinchey@comcast.net; hawleyfarms@verizon.net; Psalterspad@aol.com; rich@bostec.com; tfields@nwfrs.net
Subject: RE: Question about Facilities Plan
Date: Thu, 16 Jul 2009 21:32:40 -0700

Al Krause,
Thanks for E-mailing your questions. I will forward them to the other commissioners and Chief Fields. The Board will considered [sic]and answer before the plan is finalized and formally adopted.

Dean Whitney, Vice Chair
~~~

RE: Question about Facilities Plan
From: Al Krause (birchbayblog@hotmail.com)
Sent: Mon 7/20/09 9:45 AM
To: car301@aol.com

Dear Mr. Dean Whitney -- Thank you for your fast response. However, your wording indicates the commissioners will wait until the end of the process to respond. Our intent is to foster voter interest in advance of the August meetings. Accordingly, we will report this question about additional stations tomorrow and follow with other questions this week and next.

Yours truly. - al krause
~~~

“...The press always has to dig and delve for what it can find. Its only purpose is to share that information with the American people. In this democracy of ours, we should be on guard that we are not denied the facts about what the government is doing in our name. That is the basis of a democracy and particularly one that proclaims freedom of speech and press. We can not let a veil of secrecy be pulled around the official government...

From an unpublished interview with Walter Cronkite in 2002
by Reese Erlich, an NPR producer, posted on Truthdig, July 20, 2009.

Read the draft Capital Facilities Plan at http://www.nwfrs.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=230&Itemid=39.

ak

Savoring the View From Their Future Deck

Linda and Andy Maxwell have been planning their future home on Sunset for what seems a long time.

Now they're ready to build. Their lot requires a small footprint, so they're going up three stories with a deck on the roof.

To understand how high that will be, they rented a 'Sky Jack'. Wednesday evening they were savoring the view from what will be the top of their house.

“The mountains and bay are beautiful,” said Linda.



ak

(Comments are not only welcome, they are eagerly sought.)

Are You Glad Birch Bay is Quiet Again?

Independence Day weekend provided a taste of what our community might be like with 5,000 more residents when their cousins from Seattle and friends from California come to visit.

After six years away from San Francisco we were pleased to see all the people. In mid-afternoon on the 4th we walked up to CJ's Beachhouse. There was so much traffic no cars could go faster than the speed limit. And there were only a few problems. We saw a young couple on bikes apparently getting a ticket from a 'cycle deputy sheriff dressed in black. But the other deputies, in their their usual olive drab, were not busy. Deputy Cliff, in his command car with his computer parked by the Blue Fish, agreed it was “controlled chaos.”


Fireworks that started at dusk Saturday evening were filled the sky from north to south. In San Francisco there was always fear that fog would come in to block the action, so we would leave the convenience of our condo roof and go over toward Ghirardelli Square to find a view spot. Now we have a front-row seat on our deck. We are too prudent (tight) to buy fireworks, but we enjoy the show put on by our neighbors and their visitors. These “volunteers” put on a better and longer show than the pros who charge sponsors in big cities tens of thousands of dollars.

In those big cities street cleaners, paid overtime wages, clean up the aftermath mess. In our village volunteers do the cleanup. Organized by Pat Allese, of the C-Shop, and Chair Kathy, of the Steering Committee, some 50 people turned out to pick up 2.17tons of trash on nearby thoroughfares as well as the beaches. When these folks started turning up to sign in, they were surprised to find a note, presumably from condo residents on either side of the Alderson entrance to the beach. They must have been up at dawn to get their beach clean before 9 o'clock.


















ak

(Comments are not only welcome, they are eagerly sought.)

Emergency Services on High Alert

Temperatures are up and conditions are dry. Seven deputy sheriffs are assigned to Birch Bay for the Independence Day weekend, and stations of the the North Whatcom Fire & Rescue Service in Birch Bay, Blaine and Semiahmoo will be fully staffed. So Chief Tom Fields reported at the commissioners meeting Thursday, July 2. The chief will be living in his trailer at the Birch Bay station that is serving as his incident command post.

For the past three years the district was “incident free” over the July 4th holiday. That record will be difficult to maintain with the dry conditions this year. So drive slowly and keep a water supply handy.

But don't let that keep you from enjoying the fireworks!

ak

Iconoclastic Views of Current Events

On Michael Jackson:

“I often thought of a veal calf when I saw him – he had been raised to perform under extreme pressure before he had any idea of what life could be beyond performing for others. Then he spent decades trying to build a life without ever having seen one. He had the best ear in the world but he had no aparent idea of how to experience everyday comfort, or even boredom."

- Sasha Frere Jones – New Yorker.com

On Bernard Madoff:

“Madoff and those he defrauded were co-dependent, the one offering a cover of devine paternalism and the other buying into the act...but to call Madoff a sociopath isn't really to explain our failure to pick up on his scam.”

– Daphne Merkin, New York Times Magazine