Though the Climate Action Fund has been pulled from the Bellingham City Council’s agenda, it’s not off the table yet, Mayor Seth Fleetwood told council members Monday.
“It’s not an ending. It will continue,” he said during Monday’s council meeting, calling his decision to hold the plan for a 10-year, $60 million levy a “strategic pause.”
The “strategic pause” is necessary, he said, to build support for the measure and to avoid competition with other levies slated for November’s election, including the county’s child-care fund and an EMS levy.
Fleetwood conceded that while the initial resolution considered by the council in early June “stands on its own,” it needs more work before it’s ready for a council vote.
The Climate Action Fund proposed a property tax of 37 cents per $1,000 of assessed value, or around $185 annually on a $500,000 home, but provided few specifics on how those funds would be spent. Council members, including Dan Hammill, Kristina Michele Martens and Lisa Anderson, were critical of the lack of detail in the proposed fund.
Constituents are “tired of writing blank checks,” Anderson said during a June 6 council meeting. “They want to know how the money is going to be spent, not platitudes and open-ended possibilities.”
Despite criticisms of the initial product, council members are enthusiastic about a climate-specific fund, and are open to a special election to make it happen in the future.
“If we’re going to do this, and we should do this, we need to do it right,” Hammill said in a mid-June interview. “I think having a special campaign or special election early next year, whether it’s February or April, might be a better option for us at this point.
“It would give us a little time for people to get a campaign together, for stakeholders to come to an agreement on what a resolution could look like and just create a better opportunity for voters to solidly vote yes for climate.”
Martens also voiced support for a special election at a later date, “when the community has more time to really digest it and we’re able to polish it a bit further, getting more specificity on the paper about how we’re going to use this money,” she said June 10.
At this point in time, no concrete plans have been made for a special election, though Fleetwood said the council “has every right to consider one,” prior to pulling the resolution last week.
Plans for a city climate action office, proposed as part of the Climate Action Fund, will move ahead despite Fleetwood’s decision to pause the potential levy. Funds for the office will come from the 2023-24 city budget, currently in development.
“We have a budget team that’s analyzing the state of things, the revenues, the needs, all of the essential public services that are delivered in Bellingham,” Fleetwood said. “Staff department heads are looking at the budget needs of their departments, and we’ll be looking at including in all of those needs and resources as it relates to climate work.”
The department, Fleetwood said, will take on the work of the existing climate issue team with more resources.
“We have a really good, dedicated group of people working on climate issues, and we have a climate manager, Seth Vidana,” he said. “I see the office of climate action continuing, albeit with greater emphasis and greater resources, the work of implementing our Climate Action Plan.”
The next step in developing the office, as well as updating the Climate Action Fund draft, is continued council discussions, Fleetwood said.
“I look forward to continued conversation on this topic, and hope to have an inclusive conversation in the months ahead,” Fleetwood told council members during Monday’s meeting.
