It’s been awhile since we’ve seen significant action from Whatcom County Council toward activating more resources to increase County-managed homeless sheltering capacity. Although some strides had been made by Whatcom County government in activating their own emergency severe weather shelter in 2023/2024, the impact of that critical effort was dwarfed by the increase in people who found themselves living outside when the rain, snow, ice, and winds struck during that time.
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February 23, 2024 Dena Jensen
[This introduction was corrected with information on March 20, 2024. The corrected section is noted below within the relevant section of the introduction to this series. It is placed in brackets, in italics, with the date that the correction was made.]
It took less than one minute at the end of the Bellingham City Council’s February 12, 2024 regular meeting for Council Members’ final consideration of an ordinance to suspend the City’s Immigration Advisory Board. The ordinance was approved 6-1, with recently elected, first-term City Council Member Jace Cotton casting the only dissenting vote.
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January 2, 2024 Dena Jensen
During about 30-35 minutes of January 2, 2024 discussion by Bellingham City Council Members of an ordinance to suspend the City’s Immigration Advisory Board, virtually not one positive thing was said about the current IAB – many of whose members are immigrants – or its volume of work over the last four years. New Council Member Jace Cotton did say he’d like to see the current board continue to meet.
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June 1, 2023 Dena Jensen
Here’s some information relevant to funding for recommended actions related to behavioral health services and facilities, among other things, in the draft Justice Project Implementation Plan. (Link to the draft plan: https://www.whatcomcounty.us/…/Implementation-Plan… ) Whatcom County’s Incarceration Prevention and Reduction Task Force is seeking feedback from community members about the draft implementation plan, now through June 11, 2023.
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December 11, 2021 Dena Jensen
Back in November it was just a statement at a City Council committee meeting and more narrowly focused on homeless sheltering: “We are doing what we can locally. We will not meet the demand. We will never meet the demand.”
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November 15, 2021 Dena Jensen
Bellingham City Council held their November 15, 2021 Special Meeting – Public Comment session tonight. These sessions are not recorded. I have been trying to record each of them, myself, so I have a record of what our community members want their representatives to know. And I keep and submit a written copy of my comments via EngageBellingham, because over half of Council Members do not attend the public comment session each week that they occur, so they apparently never get to hear what has been said.
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July 29, 2019 Dena Jensen
The Whatcom County Business and Commerce Advisory Committee is recommending that Whatcom County declare a housing emergency – not from the perspective of current residents not having affordable and ample shelter – but from the perspective that employers who want to grow their businesses want to potentially import hundreds of workers at a time from outside of our county. The committee gave a presentation to the County Council’s Finance and Administrative Services Committee on July 9, 2019.
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Click on the graphic to access COB Special Committee Of The Whole Meeting Agenda on the COB website.
For those of you who are following the Comprehensive Plan process for the City of Bellingham, there is a revised schedule of work sessions as the city council moves the sessions to the Committee of the Whole which meets in the afternoon. Continue reading
May 18, 2016 Dick Conoboy
At the city council meeting on Monday evening several residents spoke to a number of issues that have arisen as the result of the Comprehensive Plan draft that was briefed earlier in the day to the Committee of the Whole. Continue reading
Sat, May 07, 2016, 10:18 am Dick Conoboy
Consideration of changes to Bellingham’s Comprehensive Plan now migrates to the city council for a series of work sessions, hearings and eventual approval, most likely in September. Continue reading
noisy waters northwest 
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