Whatcom County Executive Satpal Sidhu and Bellingham Mayor Seth Fleetwood used their appearance together at a Bellingham City Club meeting Wednesday as an opportunity to pivot. With the trials of the COVID-19 pandemic mostly in the rearview mirror for the two biggest governments in the county, the executive and the mayor struck an optimistic tone at the online event, even as Fleetwood announced he was ill with COVID-19.
Fleetwood told the City Club audience he tested positive on Monday, in the middle of a full day of virtual City Council meetings. The mayor, who is current on vaccinations and boosters, developed bad cold symptoms but was already recovering by the time Wednesday’s noon City Club session began.
During the 90-minute meeting, he proved up to the task of addressing some of the biggest problems faced by the city and society at large, including homelessness, climate change and rising crime.
A spike in retail thefts and car prowls, among other crimes, has coincided with a staffing shortage at the Bellingham Police Department, Fleetwood said.
“We at the city are actively working on a variety of responses,” he said. “The most important thing is going to be staffing back up.”
Fleetwood mentioned new police chief Rebecca Mertzig, currently working as Stanwood’s top law enforcement officer through the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office. Mertzig starts in Bellingham on June 1. He also nodded to the downtown ambassador program, which launched on Monday, saying he hoped it would “increase morale among businesses.”
“I’m confident that over time it’s going to pay dividends, and things are going to get better” downtown, the mayor said.
Sidhu took center stage when the topic switched to the record-breaking floods of November 2021.
“We cannot stop the floods … but we can make ourselves resilient, and that is exactly what we are trying to do,” Sidhu said.
The executive said Whatcom County’s small cities, the tribes and state agencies are meeting currently to figure out “how we can make changes to the river and the river system, all the way from Deming to Marine Drive.”
A lot of people see the November floods as a preview of the sort of weather that will come more frequently in future decades as a result of climate change. Both Fleetwood and Sidhu said they were committed to responding to this global challenge, with one key difference.
Fleetwood said he expects the City Council to put a tax measure on the November ballot that would pay for programs that fight climate change. One project, he said, would take about 16,000 Bellingham residents off carbon-heavy natural gas.
“Not everyone can afford that,” Fleetwood said. “We’d like to use some of the funds to create a program to help people in that change.”
With no dedicated funding source for climate action, the county must weigh climate programs against other pressing needs, Sidhu said, including affordable housing and child care.
“All of these things are competing for the same dollars,” Sidhu said.
Sidhu touted the county’s investments in low-income housing and child care in particular. He noted that the county dedicated one-fourth of the $44.5 million it received from the American Rescue Plan Act to child-care programs, and another one-fourth to support affordable housing and people who are homeless.
Sidhu and Fleetwood both called for patience from those who want to see faster action on homelessness. Both said local governments weren’t to blame for the root causes of the problem.
“The homelessness problem is not caused by the city’s and the county’s policies,” Sidhu said. “I think this is a fallacy… We cannot have a magic wand and just make this disappear.”
Fleetwood made a similar point, saying that corrections to inequity in America need to happen at the federal level. And Bellingham is only going to grow, he said, “whether you like it or not.” He saw this as an opportunity more than a challenge.
“We get to plan how we’re going to be in the future and ensure that we’re living the right way and building the right systems,” he said. “It can be a really, really exciting next decade in Bellingham.
“And the downtown’s going to get better.”
