February 10, 2024 Dena Jensen

The Bellingham City Council will take its final vote on whether to approve an ordinance to suspend the Immigration Advisory Board at their 7:00 p.m. regular meeting on Monday, February 12, 2024. The vote is scheduled to be the Council’s final item of business that night before open session Public Comment and Adjournment. Here is a link to the agenda: https://meetings.cob.org/Meetings/ViewMeeting?id=3124&doctype=1

Since the vote has not yet been taken, however, we still have a chance to weigh in and take a David-worthy shot at the Goliath of City determination to sideline work on critical immigration issues. The suspension likely will be at least for a period beyond the six month estimate for a first report from the City administration on how post-suspension interactions about the fate of the IAB are going.

Contact information for Council Members and Mayor Lund is at the bottom of this post. You can use the info to call for officials to replace or amend their ordinance with the one proposed by Immigration Advisory Board Members that’s shown in this post. Here is a link to a copy of that ordinance provided on the IAB meeting materials page: https://cob.org/wp-content/uploads/DRAFT-Proposal-to-Improve-IAB-and-CoB-Relationship.pdf

As it stands now, there are no signs City Council Members plan to publicly consider adopting any or all of the ordinance the Immigration Advisory Board has offered in order to improve the IAB and COB relationship.

Information provided on the February 12 Agenda Bill of the City’s IAB suspension ordinance shows a recommendation to simply “pass ordinance.”

There are folks in government and media circles who have been moving forward as if the suspension is a done deal since two weeks ago. For example, Cascadia Daily News ran an article the evening after the City Council took its second vote on January 29 to suspend the IAB. The article announced in its headline, “Bellingham council hits pause on immigration board.”

It took a number of phone calls to the City and the paper from my partner Sandy Robson before the article was “updated” enough that statements, which were inaccurate when it was originally published, were changed to reflect that the IAB was not yet barred from meeting, and the votes which had already been taken were not yet final.

There were community members – who gave public comment at the January 29 Council meeting after 6 out of 7 Council Members had voted for the suspension – whose comments reflected the perception that the IAB had already been suspended. The recording of public comment for that evening doesn’t show Council Members noting to such community members that the vote that night was not final.

Why is it important that the vote is not yet final? Well, for one thing, right now, while the board is still not suspended, people can actually write to IAB members to ask them questions, such as whether any of them were told that their board wasn’t officially suspended back at the end of January: immigrationboard@cob.org

The failures in communication apparent in all these scenarios are symbolic of past ones which have contributed to the ongoing stress which has been present between the IAB and City officials and staff regarding certain issues over the past four years.

We can be a force to help improve communication in this matter. Let’s make sure the voices of immigrants in our community are meaningfully considered.

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Mayor Kim Lund – mayorsoffice@cob.org, (360) 778-8100

1st HANNAH STONE
210 Lottie Street Bellingham, WA 98225 360-778-8211
hestone@cob.org
2nd HOLLIE HUTHMAN
210 Lottie Street Bellingham, WA 98225 360-778-8216
hahuthman@cob.org
3rd DANIEL HAMMILL
210 Lottie Street Bellingham, WA 98225 360-778-8213
dchammill@cob.org
4th EDWIN H. “SKIP” WILLIAMS III
210 Lottie Street Bellingham, WA 98225 360-778-8215
ehwilliams@cob.org
5th LISA ANDERSON
210 Lottie Street Bellingham, WA 98225 360-778-8217
laanderson@cob.org
6th MICHAEL LILLIQUIST
210 Lottie Street Bellingham, WA 98225 360-778-8212
mlilliquist@cob.org
At Large JACE COTTON 210 Lottie Street
Bellingham, WA 98225 360-778-8214
jacotton@cob.org