Stan and His Vision

Vision

Bellingham is at a cross roads with many challenges and opportunities. Opportunities exist:

to restore our reservoir and preserve our clean water supply for our future generations.
to manage growth in a way that preserves and protects what’s best in our community. The Comprehensive Plan calls for urban villages and control of sprawl. It encourages each neighborhood to create an identity for now and the future, all of this subject to monitor and review as the need arises.
to preserve our unique community character in redeveloping a once primarily industrial waterfront to one that provides citizen access to the water with green spaces we can all enjoy surrounded by sustainable mixed uses that create another village concept for all to enjoy.
to take pride in downtown, Fairhaven, Barkley and other villages as they revitalize themselves into new identities where we can be proud to live, work, shop, walk through and experience in exciting new ways.

These opportunities also create challenges for City Council. The challenges I see are to:

preserve and protect undeveloped land in the watershed
seek the engineering necessary to develop a Restoration Plan
keep up with best practices in keeping storm water contaminants from reaching the reservoir
revise current codes to fit the community we are creating. These new codes need to support the character each neighborhood is seeking
maintain the character of Bellingham and encourage development within current city limits
infill, in a tasteful way consistent with the look, culture and feel of our existing neighborhoods
protect our agricultural lands from conversion to UGA's and the annexation that follows

I’m running for City Council to help change the character of the legislative branch of City government. My challenge is to encourage the transformation of the Council to be more pro-active in bringing needed changes to fruition.

Council needs to:

Consider a separate department to manage our water supply
Seek funding to complete the watershed buy-out program
Begin the next step; to seek out restoration plan alternatives that are base on sound engineering studies in order to restore our water quality to previous levels and to stop current water quality degradation.
Take strong steps to stop the process of marching into the county with one Urban Growth Area after another.
Face the challenge of making our budget more transparent to the Council and the citizens by adding accountability to the budget process utilizing regular reports to Council on goal achievement.
Work with the new Mayor in establishing a citizen survey and report card system to help connect citizens to the public process at City Hall.
and, Consider an Office of Neighborhoods and an Office of the City Council as ways to bridge current communication gaps we are hearing about from citizens.