Dec. 19
Tick Tock: Remember, when it arrives any day now, that residential ‘Hamsters can thank the City of Bellingham (motto: “A Nanny City before Nanny States Were Even Cool!”), a wholly owned subsidiary of the local garbage firm, for getting yet another small-vehicle-sized trash toter dropped in their driveway.
For the Confused: This is a yellow-topped compost/soiled-materials container, which everyone in the city shall be forced to use — or pay for whether they use it or not — under actual penalty of law. Consider it an additional side stream in the river of what amounts to guaranteed profit for Sanitary Service Company.
Please Note: With a roughly $14 additional monthly fee (for a service 60% of city residents currently don’t want) now “embedded” in everyone’s minimum city package, a homeowner cannot refuse the newest refuse service (you can see what Hammer did there), even if they already have their own successful home composting operation. That, in fact, is a proven, truly green solution to landfill reduction — one that city and county governments have been urging all of us to adopt for decades. And many folks have.
Well, Scratch That Idea: Now, you’re being forced, under penalty of law, to pay for additional SSC services you may not need as a price of entry to live in this local garden paradise.
To Be Fair: The city, in announcing all this, says the state is poised to require it, at least of municipalities, anyway. And it does leave the door open a tiny, tiny crack for future home-composter exemptions, noting: “We do not currently have exemptions available for SSC customers who compost at home. The Department of Ecology will be issuing guidelines for a waiver process by the end of 2026 at which time the City will consider the best approach for adopting those guidelines.”
Hammer’s Take: Sure! Once they start auto-debiting your checking account, they’ll get right on that.
Just to Recap: The city passed this legislation to encourage “fewer trucks on the roadway,” which could prove true because of consolidated SSC pickups. But they fail as usual to weigh the downstream metrics.
Unanswered Questions Include: By making this “service” mandatory, is Bellingham, City of Green, Signaler of Virtue, really helping to save the planet by financially discouraging local homeowners from turning food waste and other organic material into useable compost on their own property, with the lowest possible carbon footprint — in favor of a new “green” curbside solution? Especially when that places the same home-compost materials into a fleet of smoke-belching trucks hauling it to a central location for composting, after which it conceivably could be sealed in (plastic!) bags, then made available for purchase by homeowners who drive their own energy-gulping vehicles to go pick it back up for garden use, then dump said plastic bags back into the … SSC waste stream?
Worth Noting: The high cost of living here is mostly, but not all, about housing.
Please Address: Any questions to your least-favored city council member. (But note: This was all approved unanimously last spring; credit council member Lisa Anderson for at least asking about the ability to opt out before she dutifully voted yes along with the rest of the herd.)
This Week’s Logical Fallacy Award: To those who spoke at a public hearing about Port of Bellingham expansion on Tuesday night and suggested that more public reps on the port commission make government bigger, thus leaving the door open for political influence. Logical extension: No public reps at all — no political influence!
Dec. 13
Loose Change Dept.: Does anyone else want to kick in a million or two to the Donald J. Trump Second Time Around Inaugural Gala and Intergalactic Airing of Grievances Festival? The line forms behind Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, two pathetic suckups who got picked last for kickball in fourth grade and have been taking it all out on the entire planet ever since.
Special Obsession-With-Fairness Points To: CDN ace business contributor Frank Catalano, who last week wrote 1,400 words about Allegiant Airlines’s 20-year local business strategies without once using the phrase, “nickel-and-dime.”
Speaking of That: A couple days after Frank’s piece, the Port of Bellingham, widely rumored to “manage” BLI, put out a social post with a nod toward Allegiant’s two decades at Bellingham Intergalactic Airport — an anniversary that actually passed months ago, in August. Was this circling back a down payment on PR guru Peter Frazier’s $100,000 port public-image reclamation project?
By the Way: Hammer has been meaning to ask: Shouldn’t there be some leftover Super Fund money to pay for that?
This Just In: The Canadian Government (motto: “With the Exchange Rate, Our Deep State is 25% Shallower!”) apparently has had enough of the shenanigans of the national postal union. The postal scofflaws have been on strike for weeks, basically ruining Maple Leaf Nation’s Christmas, if you believe Labor Minister Steven MacKinnon, who Friday vowed to force an end to the strike.
They’re Mad As Hell and … MacKinnon said the nation’s 55,000 postal workers should be forced to return to work immediately, because “Canadians are rightly fed up.” We all know what that portends, which is …. well, nothing, beyond a few subtle grimaces. But still, they are ticked in their own adorable Canadian way.
Big Picture: Hammer joins those wondering why the Trudeau government can’t do something more innovative, like … you know, negotiate a deal.
On the Other Hand: The forced return to work might stave off any troublesome plans for an Emergency Pure Maple Syrup airdrop to northern states such as our own. Strategic reserves are running low, people.
Scooch Over, Whatcom County Jail Inmates: In a special emphasis patrol, Bellingham Police Department’s Loss Prevention Officers lurking at the Bakerview Fred Meyer along with store security folks, sent 23 suspects to the hoosegow for shoplifting and/or other related offenses and warrants on Dec. 5 and Dec. 10. Seized in the process were 63 grams of methamphetamine and a “realistic-looking airsoft pistol.”
More on That: Nothing funny, nor remarkable, there. Just passing along the good deeds via Megan Peters, BPD’s public information officer, who notes that it’s “a great example of our community partners working with us hand-in-hand to keep Bellingham safe.”
The Hammer, posted monthly and updated somewhat regularly, is the alter-ego and collective consciousness of CDN’s executive editor and staff, informed and inspired by the feisty, humor-capable readers of Cascadia Daily News. Don’t take him too seriously. Send comments, complaints or ideas for Hammer items to ronjudd@cascadiadaily.com.
Commissioner: Lessons from ABC Recycling inform gravel-shipping proposal