Click the text graphic to read the full proposed resolution on the Whatcom County website.
PUBLIC HEARING NEXT TUESDAY BEFORE COUNTY COUNCIL ON WHETHER THIS SHOULD GO ON BALLOT.
HASN’T THE THE FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY ENDANGERED PUBLIC HEALTH AND SAFETY ENOUGH ALREADY? TELL COUNCIL WE DO NOT NEED OR WANT CHERRY POINT EXPANSION, MORE PIPELINES, MORE TRAINS AND MORE SHIPS. Continue reading
On Monday, July 10, The Vera Institute presented its preliminary data findings on the Whatcom County justice system at a special meeting of the Incarceration Prevention and Reduction Task Force (IPRTF). It took months for the Vera Institute to obtain the necessary data on the County Jail population in 2016, but the results confirmed stunning racial disparities in the jailed population, as well as a sizable pre-trial population that could be significantly reduced with the use of evidence-based methods of incarceration prevention. Continue reading
Council Member Todd Donovan brings forward concerns of community members regarding immigration policies at the June 27, 2017 Whatcom County Council Meeting
1:08pm July 4, 2017 Dena Jensen
I am posting this link to a portion of last week’s [June 27 2017, Whatcom] County Council meeting where Council Member Donovan says he is trying to figure out how to procedurally approach addressing an ordinance and concerns people have expressed having to do with how our law enforcement agencies might be interacting with people of the immigrant community. He says that a group of people have brought this to the attention of himself and Council Member Weimer. Continue reading
Click the graphic to access the complete 6/20/2017 letter from the Bellingham City Council to the Whatcom County Council
July 1. 2017 Dena Jensen
On June 27, 2017 the Whatcom County Council’s Special Committee of the Whole (made up of all seven council members) met for an afternoon session to discuss the letter they had been sent by the Bellingham City Council regarding the currently proposed Jail Facility Finance and Use Agreement. I listened to the audio of the meeting and wrote up fairly detailed summaries of the comments and discussions during the meeting that I had posted in the comment section to a Facebook post. I thought I would share that material here to give more people access to the information, since it might come in handy over the next few weeks while the JFFUA is under consideration and the potential looms of a .2% tax to finance a new Whatcom County Jail going on the November 2017 ballot. Here is the link to the audio for that meeting: Special Committee of the Whole PM June 27 2017.mp3
Click the graphic to view this full document on the Whatcom County website.
June 10, 2017 Wendy Harris
The county intends to issue a SEPA Determination of Nonsignificance (DNS) for the most significant development on the shorelines of Lake Whatcom that I have seen in the last 10 years. It is being done under the optional DNS procedures of SEPA which does not allow for a public hearing. The public may provide written comment on this project until July 5th.http://www.whatcomcounty.us/DocumentCenter/View/28929. Continue reading
June 8, 2017 Dena Jensen
At the Public Hearing at next week’s County Council Meeting on Tuesday June 13 at 7 p.m. (rally at 6:00 beforehand), it seems our comments on jail bed numbers (the number of people we envision being incarcerated in our county in the future) need to be based on all the best statistical data we have in our private-citizen hands that supports that we now have all the tools at our disposal, and will continue to have more, that will allow a reduction in the number of people we are incarcerating and that we are ready to begin a new age that abandons our failed justice system. Continue reading
Click this graphic to go to the search results page on NorthwestCitizen where you can access any of these reports.
Keep reading this series of reports on NorthwestCitizen to get an in-depth look at the history of the plan for a horizontal mega-jail. The next installment after those shown in this screenshot of search results for “Illusion of Inclusion” on NorthwestCitizen is also available on their website (it has a slightly different title). Continue reading
June 2, 2017 Dena Jensen
As more information does or does not come out about the strong smell that left students and staff at a number of Ferndale schools feeling sick on Thursday June 1, keep this report from the Northwest Clean Air Agency handy. It remains to be seen whether anyone will ever identify that the “upset in the refinery process” that caused a strong sulfur odor on site at the Ferndale Phillips 66 facility while winds were blowing toward the Ferndale schools at the time, is the source for the odor. This odor has only been vaguely described as mysterious or strange or nasty in a the news reports about the occurrence. I wonder why. Continue reading
First page of Stand.earth letter that was linked to on the KGMI Saturday Morning Live show webpage for the May 27, 2017 show, [update 1/12/20: this link is no longer viable, however here is a link to another copy of the Stand.earth letter: https://gallery.mailchimp.com/5a71f88fdb9d4d3551330c913/files/c061068d-e7a3-46fd-b3c1-8cd922f1fba4/Stand.Earth_letter_to_Tradewinds.pdf]
Time to talk to your friendly local businesses who are members of the Whatcom Business Alliance, but are unlikely to want to be part of a strongly pro-fossil-fuel-dependancy organization, and back up Stand.earth’s wise appeal to them. LIberty Road’s Kris Halterman is calling the request send out by Stand as (pretty sure caps are in order) a “THREAT LETTER!” Continue reading
noisy waters northwest 
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