Work in progress: Bellingham City Council 2023 searchable meeting minutes / Noisy Waters Northwest

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February 18, 2023 Dena Jensen

In this post – which will be a work in progress during the course of this year – you’ll find the content of the City of Bellingham’s City Council regular meeting minutes that have been approved so far for 2023, here in one place. This allows folks to search on things like key words, topics, dates, public hearings, and people’s names. For each meeting date, a link is also provided near the top of that edition of minutes to access the agenda and media associated with that particular meeting.

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February 7 severe weather sheltering update reveals need to prioritize funding / Noisy Waters Northwest

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February 16, 2023 Dena Jensen

Time to call on Whatcom County Council Members to be proactive in making sheltering a priority. Contact info is at the bottom of this post.

With forecasted lows in the 20s starting to show up for next week this time, it’s all the more relevant to consider the on-the-fly severe weather shelter update that Whatcom County Health Department’s Community Health and Services Manager Ann Beck gave to Whatcom County Council’s 2/7/23 Finance and Administrative Services Committee which I’m including in this post.

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Bellingham City Council Committee of the Whole 2022 searchable meeting minutes / Noisy Waters Northwest

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February 10, 2023 Dena Jensen

In this blog post, folks can find the meeting minutes for all of Bellingham City Council’s 2022 Committee of the Whole meetings that can be browsed or searched for information of interest related to that committee’s proceedings. This is the first group of government agency committee meeting minutes I have assembled, having previously put together posts with minutes of a couple years of regular council meetings for Whatcom County and City of Bellingham.

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Whatcom County Council 2021 searchable meeting minutes / Noisy Waters Northwest

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January 26, 2023 Dena Jensen

Two years worth of Whatcom County Council searchable meeting minutes (2021 and 2022) are now available here on Noisy Waters Northwest. This post continues to build on a project of assembling local government meeting minutes into year-long batches that can be searched for material like terms or actions of the members of the body that is meeting.

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Whatcom County Council 2022 searchable meeting minutes / Noisy Waters Northwest

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January 22, 2023 Dena Jensen

This post continues to build on a project of assembling local government meeting minutes into year-long batches that can be searched for material like terms or actions of the members of the body that is meeting.

This election year there are lots of Whatcom County and municipal positions to be filled. So it seems like a good time to make the resources we have to observe existing government officials’ positions and actions more easily accessible and effectively useful, when possible.

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Bellingham City Council searchable 2022 meeting minutes / Noisy Waters Northwest

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Click the screenshot to access the City of Bellingham City Council meetings page on the COB website

January 15, 2023 Dena Jensen

So, let’s say you want to find out what Bellingham City Council Members might have talked about during their meetings last year or how Council Members voted on a particular motion. Whether it’s the electrification of government buildings, providing new homeless services, moving forward with an immigrant resource center, offering open public comment periods again at their regular meetings, etc. – other than looking in each agenda or set of minutes individually, or watching each meeting, you don’t have much of a way to know. So here’s a little bit of help toward an easier way of finding clues about that.

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Request your ballot for the Whatcom Conservation District Board of Supervisor Election / Noisy Waters Northwest

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Click the screen shot above to access the information and a button to request your ballot for the Whatcom Conservation District Board of Supervisor election

January 13, 2023 Dena Jensen

Request your ballot! The low-key Whatcom Conservation District Board of Supervisor election is always a big deal for the well-being of our community.

You can request a mail-in/drop-off ballot for the election to beat the February 7 deadline right now! A ballot must be requested in order to vote and you can either mail it in any time after you receive it, or drop it off on the 3/21/23 Election Day at the WCD office in Lynden. Here is a link to a page to access the “Request Ballot” button to submit your request and review detailed information about the election: https://www.whatcomcd.org/board-elections

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‘Try to bring the numbers down with change’: Whatcom County justice stakeholders highlight need for services / Noisy Waters Northwest

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January 6, 2023 Dena Jensen

The latter portion of this post contains the more detailed remarks, which included the statement in the graphic on this post, that were made at the 12/15/22 Justice Project Stakeholder Advisory Committee meeting by the Director of Whatcom County’s Public Defender’s Office Starck Follis. 

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Whatcom County Council seeks to lighten workload by cutting back on community voices / Letter to Whatcom County Council

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Click the screenshot of a 12/2/2022 memo from Whatcom County Council Member Carol Frazey to access the document on the Whatcom County website

December 5, 2022 Dena Jensen

In this post is an email I sent last night regarding tomorrow’s 12/6/22 Whatcom County Council Committee of the Whole meeting. The COW agenda says Council will be discussing general meeting rules. It is left to community members who have some experience on where to find more details, to learn that apparently this discussion is to be solely focused on limiting our time to speak at their meetings. It would have taken very few extra words to say that on the agenda. Here is the link to the memo for the meeting: https://whatcom.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=11493559&GUID=01A69383-70BC-41D5-A732-01A369E4CD18

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Update on previous email related to information and activation for accessible severe weather sheltering / Letter to Whatcom County officials

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November 27, 2022 Dena Jensen

Sent: Sunday, November 27, 2022, 07:30:34 PM PST

Subject: Update on previous email related to information and activation for accessible severe weather sheltering

Dear Whatcom County Health Department, Whatcom County Council, and Whatcom County Executive Sidhu:

Below my signature line, I am including a copy of the email  I sent you earlier today regarding information on the County website and various social media pages related to severe weather shelters being available. 

I wanted to write again on a related matter having to do with the recording on the night by night shelter hotline, at 360-788-7983.

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