The Insider

Newsletter of the Guide Meridian/Cordata Neighborhood Association

 

 

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March 4, 2010

February 6, 2010

 

 

 

March 04, 2010

Vol. 5, #54

 

A most unusual presentation is on deck for our March meeting.  Speaker Mathew Velguth will soon have The Bike Shop up and running in the Sterling Neighborhood where at-risk kids are taught responsibility through the ownership of bicycles.  It’s an exciting concept that has worked in Labrador and Portland, Maine under Velguth’s direction.  The Bike Shop is an open-door preventative project whose goal is integrating children (ages 8 to 15) from low-income homes into the greater community. The bottom line of Velguth’s work is that he instills in kids the habits of good physical health while providing the internal tools that enable them to move out of a subsidized existence.

 

 Also scheduled to speak is our Ward One Councilman Jack Weiss who will address our most pressing problem: the Big Box Ban and the distinct possibility of mega stores leaving Bellingham for Ferndale.  His comments follow a City Council working session in which a bewildering array of “solutions” were put on the table in what threatens to enlarge the Big Box Controversy.  The possibilities include: a demand for a “living wage” (whatever that means); a highly complex green transportation plan that would require a percentage of employees use alternative means (as in bicycles and buses) to and from work; and a reduction from a 90,000 sq. ft. limit to 60,000.  The latter, if adopted, would make even more difficult the development of The Waterfront Project.       

 

 Come experience an exciting program Tuesday, March 9, at 7 p.m., at Birchwood Presbyterian Church, 400 Meadowbrook Ct.

 

 Your Board of Directors has completed five/sevenths of a series of meetings with members of the Bellingham City Council.  The sessions are believed to be the first of its kind with Neighborhood Associations normally concentrating contact on the council member responsible for the Neighborhood.  While most Bellingham Neighborhoods are well-established with few problems, Guide Meridian/Cordata is unique.  Growing at a rapid rate (our population will top 6,000 when current building plans are completed), the Neighborhood continues to encounter problems that need to come to the Council’s attention.  Attendant to those problems is the inclination of Council members, highly  aware of commonly-shared responsibilities, to know considerably less about smaller matters in other bailiwicks.  Having written that, it is worth mentioning that by far the largest chunk of total meeting time with the Councilmen has dealt with the Big Box situation.  It is our contention that the Big Boxes, principally WalMart and Costco, will leave Meridian if the City continues to threaten them with unrealistic demands of compliance.   At this writing, there are a lot of complex possibilities on the table, the kind that, if adopted, would likely produce paroxysms of laughter among the Big Boxes, then send them scurrying to Ferndale where the door is open.  Should that happen, our forlorn hope would be that WalMart, the target of a pronounced postcard-writing campaign by unions, keeps the Bellingham store open as a “service” operation.  With the approach of this publication’s deadline, we have learned that WalMart will spend nearly $1 million on interior re-vamping.  Bear in mind that that $1 million expenditure can be regarded in a number of ways including this corner’s suggestion that the money is chump change to WalMart. 

 

 Deadline Dash….Ten acres across from Fred Meyer stands a decent chance of becoming a mixed-use urban village.  By a 6-1 vote, the City Council will re-consider a re-zone of the area from industrial to commercial and industrial after rejecting the proposal two years ago.  City planners will now work with landowners and our Association before the project returns to the Planning Commission and Council….That wicked left hand turn off heavily-trafficked Telegraph Rd. to get to Key Bank and Rite Aid will soon be eliminated after two straight years as Bellingham’s worst spot for traffic accidents.  Polite drivers headed west are the odd problem who by stopping encourage the turns as the outside lane rolls on….It’s good to see a third tenant announced for Whatcom Plaza at the entrance to Whatcom Community College.  Westside Pizza will move in shortly….We already owe such great thanks to the Birchwood Presbyterian Church and now even more with the news that a playground project will start as early as October.  The project, whose estimated price of $50,000 was met with contributions, is now challenged by a new price tag: $95,000.  Further contributions will be regarded as answered prayers.  Next month’s Insider will include details of what will be built on west church grounds close to what will be Cordata’s first trail….Those Phase One Trail bids, by the way, came in at well under anticipated costs.  The winner: Razz Construction with a bid of $565,270. Unfortunately, Parks & Recreation has decided that any “found” money will go to “unforseen budget demands” rather than, say, a trail extension to the church project….An elementary school on Aldrich Rd. took another step toward reality the other day when the Bellingham School Board gave district officials the green light to call for bids.  The project was made possible by passage of a $67 million bond issue in 2006….And, for your considered opinion, how about the complexities of a possible demand by the City Council that a to-be-determined percentage of Big Box employees take either the bus or bicycle to and from work.  One wonders how the bureaucratic mind might grapple with accreditation for the bicycle built-for-two?

 

 More later,

 

 Bob Sanders with a low bow to Micah 

 

           

February 06, 2010

Vol. 5, #53

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We’re most fortunate to have as our next general meeting speaker Eric Hirst, active in local government and environmental issues since arriving here late in 2002.  The meeting, to be held Tuesday, February 9, at 7 p.m., at the Birchwood Presbyterian Church, will center on land use.  Hirst has served on: the Bellingham Budget Advisory Committee (2004-06); Bellingham Herald Voices (2004-06); Bellingham Greenway Advisory Committee (2006-present); Futurewise Whatcom Steering Committee; and Bellingham Capital Facilities Task Force (2010-present.  The essence of his attitide toward life here is that “Whatcom County is a wonderful place to live, but I worry that the pressures of population growth will slowly erode our terrific quality of life.” 

Hirst has a Ph.D. in engineering from Stanford University, taught at Tuskegee Institute, then worked as a policy analyst at Oak Ridge (TN) National Laboratory on energy efficiency and the structure of the electricity industry.  The last eight years of his career prior to retirement in 2004 were spent as a consultant.

 Also appearing at Tuesday’s meeting will be Scott Miles, Social Media Chair of Transit Works, the campaign favoring a sales tax increase of two-tenths of one percent with funds going to the WTA.    

 By the way, dates for coming general meetings, always held the second Tuesdays of the month at 7 p.m., will be: February 9, March 9, April 13, and May 11.  There will be no meetings June, July, and August.

 Having been elected unanimously by the membership at the January general meeting, your board of directors met February 2 and chose the following officers: President, Adrienne Lederer; Vice-President, Bob Sanders; Secretary, Julie Guy; and Treasurer, Bill Dubay.  In addition, the following will head committees: Dee Andrews, Community Garden; Beverly Jacobs, Library; Vinson Latimore, Transportation; and Linda Trentman, Homeowners Associations.   

 Your Association Board continues to improve and expand.  Our newest additions: Bill Dubay and Vinson.B. Latimore.  Bill comes to us by way of a full-time move to Bellingham last August.  Before that, he and his wife of 32 years, Diane, had owned a unit at El Dorado while spending vacations there six weeks of the year.  Home base then was Sacramento where Bill spent 33 years as financial manager for a commercial general building contractor with annual revenues of $30MM.  Possessor of a B.S. in Business Administration (Accounting) from California State University, Sacramento, Bill was born in Detroit, Michigan, graduated from high school in Petoskey, Michigan, then spent 10 years in the U.S. Navy as a nuclear reactor operator on submarines.

 Vinson B. (“Vinny”) Latimore is president of Gibraltar Senior Living which he founded in 2006 to focus upon meeting the needs of seniors with dementia.  It was a natural progression beginning with a discovery early in life that he had an affinity for the elderly.  After earning a B.A. from the University of South Carolina in 1992, Vinny began work as a laboratory assistant with Northwest Laboratories in Anchorage, Alaska.  His next move was to Seattle where he was accepted by the University of Washington’s Master of Health Administration program, ranked number two in the Nation.  It was while working on his Masters thesis at the Sisters of Providence skilled nursing facility in Seattle that Vinny produced an internal study subsequently used by administrators to help improve interaction between staff members and residents. Having earned a Master of Health Administration in 1996, Vinny worked six years within the hospital as both an administrator and consultant.   In addition, he possesses additional certification in Alzheimer’s dementia and has worked for various not-for-profits playing organizational roles in their formation.  

 Author Tobias Wolff, whose list of literary triumphs includes This Boy’s Life, will speak Monday, February 8, at Whatcom Community College’s Syre Center, beginning at 7:30 p.m.  Wolff, a professor at Stanford University, has taught English and Creative Writing there since 1997.  This Boy’s Life was turned into an absorbing 1993 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and Ellen Barkin

This is the day (Thursday, February 4) that Phase One Trail bids will be opened amid high Cordatan interest.  Bellingham’s north side trails will one day number 65 miles with wetland mitigation a major cost factor.  Phase one will start at the end of Horton Rd. and run north through Cordata Park not to connect with Birchwood Presbyterian Church under whose auspices a playground is being built for kids.  Rather, the Phase One Trail (costly because of its eight foot width) will veer east to the dog run at El Dorado.  Parks & Recreation is very hopeful the bids will be many and competitive allowing for any savings to be applied to future work.        

 Deadline Dash….While our Neighborhood Association tends to concentrate on challenges within our boundaries, such subjects as our water supply from Lake Whatcom and Waterfront Development affect all of us.  The latter will be discussed Wednesday, February 10, at 7 p.m. at the Bellingham Cruise Terminal in Fairhaven….Graffiti, sometimes considered art but mostly regarded as vandalism, has moved north into Cordata and there is something you can do about it.  Give Public Works a call (778-7700) and tell them how your eyes have been offended and/or the empathy you feel for the property’s owner.  Often, city property is involved and the owners are us….A man with a mission is Matthew Velguth who is creating The Bike Shop in the Sterling Neighborhood.  Velguth, an educator who learned that working with troubled kids was more emotionally rewarding, teaches responsibility by involving youngsters in the use and care of bicycles.  His wonders have been worked in such places as Portland, Maine and Labrador….Always looking for ways to increase interest in our Association general meetings, the Board of Directors ask if the creation of child care would be of help.  If so, call Vinson Latimore (389-2360)….Note to Home Owner Associations: The Neighborhood Watch program is worth your attention if your involvement does not yet exist.  Katrin Dearborn can be reached at 778-8660… That’s a wild situation up in Ferndale where one of the community’s councilmen signed a contract to buy nearly $1 million worth of land for a new police station.  Neither the mayor nor the guy’s fellow council members had a clue regarding the lone land arranger’s transaction…The world of computer search engines recently came up with the latest in mole reduction, a subject about which ‘hamsters know far too much.  Key in the new elimination process is the connection of mole holes to a running automobile by way of a hose-line.  It certainly begs the question: regular or premium?   

 More later,

 Bob Sanders with mucho thanks to Micah

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