A Forum, Not a Crusade

The “ExploreIncorp-BB” process that Kathy Berg and her cohorts are conducting to work toward making Birch Bay a city held its second meeting last Monday, with emphasis on civility and openness to contrary opinions. Nonetheless, the small group is emphasizing information, particularly the consultants’ report on incorporation feasibility. Many of the participants bring the report in ring binders that they consult during the discussions. In her e-mails inviting participants, Berg emphasizes the availability of information at http://www.birchbayinfo.org/

So it is remarkable that naysayers show up willing to contest on the basis of unsubantiated perceptions. What is remarkable is that the most vocal are coming from Birch Bay Village, the upscale, gated community where astuteness would be expected. One woman, attending for the second time, was adamant that the feasibility study’s information that costs of personnel and services could be provided for the same tax dollars, as now paid to the county, could not be accurate. And she didn’t give up when confronted with facts from the study.

More remarkable is that she wasn’t driven from the meeting with ridicule. Berg is adamant that all voices should be heard. She is encouraging debate and patience with conflicting opinions, apparently recognizing that reaching agreement will be a time-consuming process. As we’ve noted before, she seems to be awaiting unexpected tipping points.

One might be an accident at the cumbersome bend on Birch Point Drive near the entrance to Birch Bay Village that causes so many complaints. Some are calling this “Dead Man’s Curve.” Not wishing to suggest a tragedy, we think a better name is “Pete’s Folly”, personifying anger toward county management.
Many of the ‘pros’ for incorporation discussed at these meetings can be summarized as local control – over development and police protection. Birch Bay Village, with its own security service and a building review process, has control over those issues, but that stupid curve makes clear that the Village isn’t an island with complete control.

A ‘con’ argument is that Birch Bay doesn’t have people who could run a successful government. “It would be like Blaine,” they say. The easy retort is: “Compare water and sewer. Birch Bay’s is free of debt and well operated; Blaine’s is deep in the red and polluting Drayton Harbor.”

It is easy to visualize a future city council discussing issues responsibly. We are especially impressed with Doug Robertson. Having spent 26 years as a fireman, now working in construction, he is well informed on local government issues. And most impressive is his demeanor. Like a St. Bernard, he maintains calm when the terriers start barking.

As for those who say Kathy Berg isn’t executive material, we say come and watch. We’ve been observing her for five years and we’re catching on to her sagacity. While she wouldn’t use a big word like that, this modest soul is up to the challenge.

Come, yourself, and observe – and participate.

The next meeting is Monday, September 8 at 7 o’clock in the Birch Bay Bible Community Church on Jackson Road.

Mystical Interlude

Almost every day we tell each other how happy we are that we decided to live in Birch Bay. How, when we couldn’t get a house on the beach or on the ridge, we settled for a cottage on Terrell Creek where we are happy with a view of the bay and the wildlife that entertains us on the creek.

Once in a while there is something special like the nesting gulls on the roof of the cottage across the creek, whose chicks are now walking about the steep roof and testing their wings – soon they will be flying.

We were watching them from our deck last Sunday evening when a rubber raft appeared in the stream. Unlike kayakers who padded vigorously, the occupant was mostly drifting. The combination of blacks in the pink raft was stunning When the boat turned we saw that she was writing. After watching a while Al got up courage to call out: “Novel or short story?”

Rather than be perturbed, she smiled, and before long she was reading to us. Here is a segment from her journal:

“I had some thoughts about humans and their experience of love while I was driving today. The gift of love is the act of feeling it. This is the only love we experience. It is our own love. So why do we place so much on whether or not we are loved? Where did this confusion come from? It is so simple. And we may take solace in knowing that we may love something or someone whether or not we are with them or they love us back or they want us or don’t or whatever.

“The only love for us is the love we get to experience for another. And that has nothing to do with attachment or reciprocal feelings or anything whatsoever! With this knowledge comes the responsibility to allow others to love us. We may have the ability to offer that – or make it somehow easier for being a genuine person in the world and being able to invite love. This may help others to have an experience of love that they may otherwise not have. The duty comes with this knowledge of love.”

Her name is Shannon Maddox. She has been coming to Birch Bay for 33 years, first to visit her grandparents. "I miss my grandparents very much and the wonderful memories of my Grandma teaching me to gamble with her while we played cards and she drank wine, and my Grandpa’s quiet strength as he took us to the beach to play and build castles. And of course the C-Shop where we were always buying candy with coins that my Grandpa would save for us in a sock drawer. They are some of the best parts of what makes me who I am today."

Shannon now lives in Seattle where she works with people who are homeless and well as in a psychiatric hospital. In September she begins three years of graduate school.

Finally Showing Her Hand

Many who watched the progress of the Birch Bay Steering Committee have wondered why no drive was mounted for incorporation once the consultants’ positive report was completed. Kathy Berg, the chair of the committee, said the time wasn’t right, and maintained public neutrality, although some suspected she was for Birch Bay becoming a city.

As we were writing an article for the January issue of the Cascadia Weekly about the lack of enthusiasm for incorporation, Berg told us, “The tipping point will come when something happens that gets folks pissed off.” (A few days later when we asked if she could live with that quote, her answer was, “That’s what I said.”)

At the Birch Bay Chamber of Commerce breakfast meeting on July 15, Berg and her long-time cohort, Doralee Booth, said they are angry now because the Whatcom County government -- particularly Pete Kremen, the county executive, and his adjutant Dewey Desler -- is reneging on promises to pay for Birch Bay road improvements this year. The reason given is that the county is out of money. But, as one chamber member at the meeting called out, “They can fix a dip on Slater Road that floods twice a year to make sure gamblers can get to the casino!”

Berg and Booth are particularly incensed about cancellation of a $400,000 engineering study for development of the berm along Birch Bay Drive that has been waiting since first proposed in the 1970s by Wolf Bauer, whose vision of a more welcoming beach and walking promenade is well remembered.

So Berg has called a meeting, not of the Steering Committee, rather of “some members of the Birch Bay UGA community wishing to explore incorporation.” The meeting is next Monday, August 4, at (where else?) the Birch Bay Community Bible Church on Jackson Road. At 7 o’clock.

Many see incorporation as a giant challenge that Berg & Booth can’t be expected to achieve. Isn’t that what they said about George Washington?

Think Local

Think Local, Buy Local, Be Local
My Customer is My Community

These are the Sustainable Connections headlines on the Cost Cutter/Food Pavilion plastic bags.

Some of the steps are:
1. Support other community businesses and strengthen our local community.
2. Create more jobs. Locally owned businesses create most jobs in a community.
3. Invest in the community. Local businesses are owned by people that live here.
4. Provide more choices. Local businesses select products based on their customers needs.

Friends and neighbors depend on each other. Think Local First!

One blazing example of how we all can BE more local comes from the International Mall at 1733 H Street in Blaine. The new management there, Phillips Edison & Company, recently leased space to The Dollar Tree, a national chain of discount stores. Their location is two doors down from the Dollar Plus store operated by Sukhwant Singh Gill for the past 13 years. The Dollar Tree is bright, shiny and new. It can probably offer a variety of goods at a very good price (we won't be shopping there, so we won't know). Nevertheless, Gill has been steadfastly providing rock-bottom prices on a wide array of goods from gift-wrap to spices, from hand-tools to knick-knacks, from sox and underwear to sponges and tin foil for residents and visitors consistently for those 13 years.

Gill left India in 1993 to seek a better life for his family. He spent four months searching for work. As a practicing Sikh, he kept his beard and turban. That may have been a handicap, but finally, with the help of two Sikh friends, he got a job at a nursing home. He proved to be a very competent nurse’s aide; his wife got work in the nursing home’s laundry. They saved and saved and, with loans from friends and relatives, eventually got the Dollar Plus stores in Blaine and Lynden. “I wanted to have my own business and prove that the turban guy is okay,” says Gill.

Now, all his efforts are threatened by the buying power and glitz of a national chain. The only hope for him is a loyal following of customers who believe in him and in the principles of Think Local First!

Chaos Over Storm Water Management

It has been said that 10 percent of the population is irrational. Wednesday evening, May 21, the proportion was about 87 percent.

This at a public meeting sponsored by Whatcom County Public Works to discuss the draft funding plan for BBWARM, the Birch Bay Watershed Aquatic Resources Management district. The County Council approved formation of the district in 2006, and the funding plan will soon go to the Council for approval. The plan in the first year will generate over seven hundred thousand dollars to combat increased flooding, erosion, declining water quality and loss of aquatic habitat in the bay.

The Council has the power to establish a fee – without citizen vote – that will be collected with property and other taxes beginning in 2009. For most homeowners the monthly charge will range from $5.02 to $8.72 depending on the amount of impervious surface on their property. Fees for commercial enterprises are related to the size of their individual impervious surfaces. Every property owner in the Birch Bay watershed is included. Some whose mailing address is Ferndale didn’t know they are part of the watershed.

John Ghilarducci, the lead consultant at FCS Group in Redmond that created the funding plan, was only halfway through his power point presentation when the eruption started. From the back sanctuary of the Birch Bay Bible Community Church a woman in a red dress called out. “This is just gibberish.” Kraig Olason, the public works manager who is shepherding the plan, decided it was time to take comment.

A man from Latitude 49 described their superior ditch system. Birch Bay Village argued that three developments – one from Blaine – feed water into their Roger's Slough.

A man from Point Whitehorn, site of many recently-built large homes said, “Charge the developers.”

“The thousands of people who come to Birch Bay from throughout the state should pay,” said one woman.

On and on it went.

A woman, who runs a storage business with many low buildings and paved areas, said the fee would be three percent of her revenues. No one suggested her customers should be willing to pay a higher rate.

There was virtually no rebuttal from Olason or Ghilarducci. Both were models of composure. (For more information: www.co.whatcom.wa.us/publicworks/birchbay)

Toward the end of the meeting, Jerry Larson, a vigorous protector of water quality in the bay, passed out a detailed report on the situation first published a year ago.



The picture above is from an orientation on October 1, 2005 by Bill Derry, the lead consultant of CH2M Hill, who researched storm water problems and developed the abatement plan, shown with Roland Middleton, Whatcom County Planning Department.


At several points Mr. Ghilarducci made the case for the greater good – that everyone would benefit from clean water and edible seafood. But an angry woman countered with, “The whole thing sucks.”

Carl Weimer, president of the County Council, did not rise. Long-time members of the Storm Water implementation subcommittee of the Birch Bay Steering Committee, who have been working for this cause for years, were relaxed. They can be confident the measure will pass the County Council.

But what does this say about the irrationals? In this context we define “irrational” as those who disregard civic responsibility. Do they not care if clams are no longer dug on the beach? If crabs are no longer edible? If parents fear allowing their children to go into the water? If visitors stop coming, what will that do for their property values? Do they expect such perils are far off – no cause for their concern? (Two days after the meeting, the Whatcom County Health Department closed Birch Bay to clam digging.)

What does this say about the potential for self-government? Yes, some of the irrationals are from outside the community. But others are within sight and walking distance of the bay. Do they care for nothing but their money?