It is with great confidence that we, the People Holed Up in the Navel of the Salish Sea, submit for entry into the Hall of Fame of the World Council on Truly Monumental Bureaucratic Bumbling … our own humble Port of Bellingham.
Given the local competition (hello, Whatcom County HQ/HR!), we realize this is a big ask; a pithy assessment, such as “it’s a slam-dunk,” likely won’t suffice. Understood. In that vein — and also for the reading horror/education value of explaining this government entity to the legions of newbies swamping our shores — it seems fitting to hawk up a POB primer.
This guide, suitable for laminating and sticking on one’s fridge, next to the handy Seahawks schedule sent by your local realtor, is mostly fact-based. Consider it the POB FAQ long missing from local civic life.
What is the POB and why should I care?
The port is a public agency, dating to pre-sternwheeler days, ruled by a rotating cadre of three extremely wise white males, elected by their fellow citizens to:
- “Promote sustainable economic development” (namely, the stockpiling, shipping and general mishandling of earth-friendly materials such as rusting scrap metal shards and other industrial flotsam).
- “Optimize transportation gateways,” including deftly observing the exits of a long stream of airlines (Southwest Airlines the latest) dipping tentative toes into the waters of Bellingham Intergalactic Airport. Fairness note: According to a port source stowed away inside a luggage scale at BLI, negotiations at all times are strenuously underway with undisclosed, possibly fictional airlines that are almost prepared to start getting ready to consider thinking about looking at the possibility of maybe taking a big risk on expanding service to the City of Increasingly Limited Escape Options.
- “Manage publicly-owned land and facilities to benefit Whatcom County,” and, well, if you doubt this, you haven’t done a 180 recently off the big jumps at the port’s globally known dirt-bike track, nor observed the sprawling waterfront garbage company facility displaying some of the world’s most unique trash-can-derived flower pots.
Where does the POB derive the income to maintain these critical services?
Mostly from your own pocket! (Did you not take time to read the itemized breakdown on your recent real estate tax statement before you burned it in anguish? Whose fault is that?) They also collect lease payments on a broad array of frequently vacant industrial and office space, as well as from greasy-handed folks launching boats in local marinas.
What are the POB’s most notable long-term achievements?
The port has an unparalleled record of maintaining bare-dirt/mothball status for hundreds of acres of prime waterfront real estate, which might otherwise have been hastily developed into useful and pleasurable public/private uses, including businesses, workspaces, parks and, just throwing this out there, waterfront access to … the water.
Historical note: The POB’s proud tradition of artisan-level ineptitude and duplicity has now been passed on to successive generations of POB council members who meet monthly to sneer at public comment under dim lights powered by a local turbine electrical generator fired by hundreds of thousands of metric tons of old studies on how to use port-controlled property for “public benefit” and other overrated canards popular with ex-hippie dreamers.
What is a notable short-term POB achievement?
The port just this week exhibited its world-class head-slapping acumen through its ongoing efforts to memorialize Bellingham’s glorious, heavy-metal-dumping industrial past by working to restore a line of hulking, minion-shaped acid digesters. These large rusting objects loom over the POB’s signature waterfront development — the aforementioned dirt pile/bike track and Jenga-stack shipping boxes modified to dispense beers, ice cream and other goods to the assembled masses, who mostly are happy just to have a place to sit in the grass somewhere near the water.
Short version: The port in its wisdom spent $431,000 to pressure wash old, lead-containing paint from the digesters. Some flakes of the lead paint outsmarted a contractor’s containment system and made their way into local grass areas where kids roll around and eat grass and dirt and now, lead-based paint! The port then deftly moved to clean up the remnants of its monument to earlier cleanup — all of this playing out on the site of its previous, truly massive, $200 million sitewide cleanup to end all cleanups.
Spectacular. You cannot get up early enough in the morning to plan that sort of boneheadedness; this is innate ability to exude inability. It is the four-level original “Star Trek” chessboard game of stupidity; we challenge any other regional government organization to match it.
How much is that going to add to my tax bill?
The three wise men are scheduled to meet soon under a blue-tarp waterfront lean-to; a puff of blue smoke from a Big Chief fish smoker will emerge, at which point the council of the wise will decree the appropriate slush fund from which to draw the cleanup-to-the-cleanup-to-the-cleanup-of-the-original-cleanup funds, with the usual qualifier: the one(s) with the least-transparent paper trail.
How can I ensure that this tradition of ineptitude remains preserved and intact for time and all eternity, like a towering steel digester structure?
You don’t have to do anything! Just keep on keeping on, paying scant attention to activities occurring at Port HQ. (At least one local news org is determined to make that more difficult, but it’s still possible — and understandable — to tune this out.)
Seriously?
Well, no. Word is that another movement is afoot to gather petitions to turn the council of the unwise into a more broad-based (once again, the low bar) public body. This column is all ears.
Ron Judd's column appears weekly; ronjudd@cascadiadaily.com; @roncjudd.
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