Name: Bellingham City Council - Regular Meeting meeting, May 18, 2026
Start: 2026-05-18
End: 2026-05-18
Location: City of Bellingham

City Council - Regular Meeting

Mon, May 18, 2026

Agenda PDF Minutes PDF Watch Video

Agenda items

Vote records

Discussion summary

Transcript

Meeting summaryAI-generated

Bellingham City Council — Regular Meeting, May 18, 2026

Six council members were present for this regular meeting; Council Member Hammel was excused. The session featured a lengthy presentation from a citizen advisory work group, several committee reports, and action on a notable new citywide speed limit ordinance.

Keep Washington Working Act Advisory Work Group — Final Report Presentation

The council received the final report and recommendations from the Keep Washington Working (KWW) Act Advisory Work Group, a limited-term citizen body formed by the council in September 2024. The KWW Act, passed by the Washington State Legislature in 2019, clarifies that immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility and limits how local law enforcement agencies may participate in such activities. The work group was formed partly in response to a 2022 notification that Bellingham and Whatcom County may have been in potential violation of the act.

Eight voting members — including an immigration attorney, an educator with 13 years of experience teaching English to immigrants, a medical interpreter, a higher education professional, and a member with personal lived experience as an undocumented person — presented recommendations organized into four areas:

1. Federal contact data: The work group found that the city's current data collection (which logs contacts between Whatcom 911 dispatch and federal immigration agencies like ICE and CBP) lacks sufficient detail to evaluate KWW compliance. Recommendations include logging more complete information per contact (agency, agent name when possible, location, follow-up actions), publishing data in an analyzable format rather than PDF, establishing internal alerts when a call may involve immigration status, and conducting an annual audit of federal contact data using the state Attorney General's model policy as a guide.

2. Whatcom 911 dispatch: Because the city of Bellingham staffs and operates Whatcom 911 dispatch for the entire county, the work group recommended strengthening the interlocal agreement governing that relationship to explicitly incorporate KWW compliance language and potentially add a civilian seat with lived immigrant experience to the dispatch administrative board. Other recommendations included improving language access through a text-to-911 system with translation capabilities (particularly for languages other than English and Spanish), and launching a "911 Is Safe" public awareness campaign to reduce fear of calling 911 among immigrant community members.

3. Bellingham Police Department policies: The work group identified ambiguities in BPD Policy 417 (the department's immigration enforcement policy) and recommended the city review it alongside related policies 331 and 807, clarifying "shall" versus "should" language, addressing data-sharing limits and warrant requirements, and reviewing approximately eight to ten additional adjacent policies. The group also recommended expanding the BPD's complaint and commendation process to include an anonymous online submission option, noting that the current process is primarily in-person and may deter those who distrust law enforcement.

4. Training: Work group members noted there is currently no statewide KWW-specific training curriculum for either dispatchers or police officers, so both organizations have developed their own in-house content. Recommendations included incorporating scenario-based active learning, auditing training programs with a third-party contractor, following up with the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission about developing a statewide KWW curriculum, and adding content on supporting limited-English-proficiency callers to the dispatcher training manual.

The work group also flagged a recommendation beyond their four formal areas: that the city pursue adherence to the Courts Open to All Act, noting a recent increase in federal agents apprehending individuals leaving Bellingham courthouse after civil proceedings.

Facilitator Paul Knox, participating remotely, praised the group's initiative and noted that productive dialogue between work group members and ex-officio participants (including the police chief and 911 director) led to some action items being pursued even before tonight's presentation.

Deputy City Administrator Janice Keller and Strategic Initiatives Manager Deborah Boneza offered remarks; Mayor Kim Lund thanked the group and reflected on the progress made since early 2024 when the effort had been at an impasse. Several council members praised the specificity of the recommendations and asked about prioritization and timelines. Administration indicated that some actions — particularly around communications and the complaints process — are already underway, and committed to returning to council with a tiered implementation plan.

Council President Stone moved to accept the work group's final report and request the administration schedule a future work session for discussion. Council Member Williams seconded.

Vote: Passed 6–0, with one excused.

Street Vacation — Fir Street (Special Meeting, Closed Record Hearing)

The council considered an ordinance vacating the eastern half (15 feet) of Fir Street abutting the western 110 feet of Block 13, Silver Heights Addition, in Bellingham. A hearing examiner held a public hearing on April 15, 2026, received public testimony, and recommended approval. The petitioner paid the full fair market appraised value of the right-of-way — $44,000 — on March 13, 2026. The property is not within the Lake Whatcom watershed. Council Members Hammel and Lilliquist were excused from this special meeting. Deputy City Attorney James Erb presented. The committee recommended approval unanimously in the afternoon session.

Council President Stone moved; Council Member Huffman seconded.

Vote: Passed 6–0, with one excused.

Budget and Finance Committee — Law Enforcement Grant and Budget Amendment

The Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission awarded the Bellingham Police Department a $3,703,583 grant through the Local Law Enforcement Grant Program (created by Engrossed Substitute House Bill 2015). Funds will support hiring three officers into currently frozen positions, backfilling a funding cut to the ART Co-Response Team (~$688,000), purchasing equipment for safer pursuits and approximately $500,000 in dash cameras, and sustaining $100,000 in domestic violence and sexual assault services.

Two agenda items covered this grant: the interlocal agreement authorizing it (Item 24941) and a 2026 budget amendment to recognize the revenue and expenditures (Item 24937). Council Member Anderson recused herself from both votes due to her membership on the Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Services board.

Council Member Huffman moved both items; Council Member Williams seconded.

Vote on each: Passed 5–0, with one excused and one recused (Anderson).

Budget and Finance Committee — Land Use Application Fee Schedule (Discussion Only)

Staff presented information on the city's land use application fee schedule, which has not been substantively updated since 2007. A comparison with peer cities in Washington showed Bellingham's fees are in the very low percentile. Staff estimated that costs — including wages — are approximately 50% higher today than when the fee schedule was adopted. No action was taken; staff will return with proposed fee adjustments for council consideration.

Public Works and Natural Resources Committee — Citywide Speed Limit Ordinance

The council approved a new chapter of the Bellingham Municipal Code establishing updated speed limits citywide. This action stems from a 2024 Local Road Safety Plan recommendation and a subsequent citywide arterial speed limit study.

Key provisions:

The default residential speed limit drops to 20 mph citywide.

Most arterials will carry posted limits of 25, 30, or 35 mph — lower than current limits in many cases, but still above 20 mph.

Downtown arterial streets (already timed for 20 mph by traffic signals) will be officially posted at 20 mph.

Implementation is phased over three years: Summer 2026 — install 50 gateway signs and launch public awareness campaign; Summer 2027 — replace most arterial speed limit signs; 2028 — replace remaining arterial signs.

The rollout explicitly includes warnings rather than immediate enforcement, with the goal of changing driver norms rather than punitive ticketing.

Council members noted data presented in committee: between 2019 and 2023, there were 135 crashes resulting in fatal or severe injury in Bellingham, 66 of which involved a pedestrian or cyclist. Research cited shows pedestrian survival odds at 20 mph are approximately 90%, dropping to 50% at 30 mph and 10% at 40 mph. Council members Huffman and Anderson both offered lengthy support, noting years of constituent concerns about speeding near parks, schools, and dense neighborhoods.

Council Member Lilliquist moved; Council Member Anderson seconded.

Vote: Passed 6–0, with one excused.

A separate direction was also given to staff to develop language adjusting the speed transition point on Old Fairhaven Parkway (from 30 mph to 25 mph occurring at 18th Street rather than near Donovan/15th), and to consult WSDOT, as Fairhaven Parkway transitions to Chuckanut Drive, a state highway over which the city does not have final authority.

Litigation — Scopeletti v. City of Bellingham

Following an executive session, the council authorized the mayor to retain outside counsel to represent the City of Bellingham as a defendant in the matter of *Scopeletti v. City of Bellingham, et al.*

Council Member Williams moved; Council Member Anderson seconded.

Vote: Passed 6–0, with one excused.

Consent Agenda

The following routine items passed without discussion: minutes from the March 23, April 13, April 20, and April 27, 2026 council meetings, and payroll labor cost payments dated April 1–15, 2026.

Council Member Lilliquist moved; Council Member Williams seconded.

Vote: Passed 6–0, with one excused.

Mayor's Report

Mayor Kim Lund thanked the KWW work group and reflected on the progress made since early 2024. She also reported that she had been invited to partner with Lummi Nation over the past two weeks, attending the First Salmon Ceremony and the openings of the House of Healing Longhouse and a new 16-bed secure withdrawal and recovery facility. She noted she was formally asked to serve as a witness and pledged to share her learnings with the Bellingham community.

Key Takeaways

The Keep Washington Working Act advisory work group's final report was formally accepted, providing a detailed road map for improving Bellingham's compliance with state immigration enforcement limits; administration committed to returning with a tiered implementation plan.

A $3.7 million state law enforcement grant was authorized, funding new police officer hires, the ART Co-Response Team, dash cameras, and domestic violence services.

The council unanimously approved a new citywide speed limit ordinance, dropping the default residential speed limit to 20 mph and reducing arterial limits citywide in a phased three-year rollout beginning summer 2026.

The land use application fee schedule — unchanged since 2007 and well below peer city benchmarks — will be brought back for council action after staff completes a full assessment.

A public hearing on the 6-year Transportation Improvement Plan is scheduled for the next council meeting on June 1, 2026.

AI-generated summary from voice-to-text transcript. Not the official record. Verify important details with the source documents linked above.

What happened at this meeting

Old or new business

The Council discussed a litigation matter, Scopeletti v. City of Bellingham, et al., involving staff-provided information about the case with Phillips. Mayor was authorized to retain outside counsel to represent the City of Bellingham as a defendant in this matter. The motion was made by Council Member Williams and seconded by Council Member Anderson, and passed 6-0 with one excused.

A discussion of the Land Use Application Fee Schedule

City staff presented a discussion of the land use application fee schedule, which has not been notably updated since its adoption in 2007. Planning Director Blake Lion and other staff members explained that the city wanted to bring the fee schedule into alignment with current costs and expenditures, including consideration of application fees, permit fees, impact fees, system development charges, and a potential technology fee. Staff presented a comparison showing that Bellingham's fees are in the very low percentile compared to similar-sized Washington cities, and that costs have risen approximately 50% over the past 20 years due to inflation in wages and other expenses. Staff indicated they would bring back proposals for fee adjustments in the future to ensure costs are not externalized onto residents and other taxpayers.

An ordinance adding a new Chapter 11.05 to the Bellingham Municipal

# Summary: Ordinance Adding Chapter 11.05 to Bellingham Municipal Code (Speed Limits)

Councilmember Lilliquist presented an ordinance adding Chapter 11.05 to the Bellingham Municipal Code to establish citywide speed limits based on a 2024 arterial speed limit study recommending 20 mph residential limits citywide. The three-phase implementation beginning summer 2026 includes an awareness campaign, 50 gateway signs, and sign replacement across three years, with 20 mph limits on downtown arterials and higher limits on other arterials. Councilmember Huthman cited compelling crash data showing 135 fatal or severe injuries (66 involving pedestrians/bicyclists) from 2019-2023, emphasizing that pedestrian survival rates are 90% at 20 mph versus 10% at 40 mph. Councilmember Anderson strongly supported the ordinance, noting it would finally address high-impact areas near parks and schools she had advocated for over a decade, and referenced similar successful implementations in Portland and Seattle that reduced fatalities and serious injuries. The Council approved the motion 6-0 with one excused absence.

An ordinance amending the 2026 budget to recognize revenues and expenditures associated with the Public Safety Funding Program award -

Staff presented an ordinance amending the 2026 budget to recognize revenues and expenditures associated with a public safety funding program award. The Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission awarded the Bellingham Police Department a $3,703,583 grant through the local law enforcement grant program created by Engrossed Substitute Bill 2015. The grant revenue will fund hiring officers, employee retention, training, and other public safety efforts. A council member moved to approve the ordinance, which was seconded, and the motion passed with five votes in favor, one absent, and one recused.

A closed record hearing to consider an ordinance relating to the vacation of the eastern one-half (15-feet) of Fir Street abutting the western 110- feet of block 13, Silver Heights add to Whatcom, in Bellingham, Whatcom

This was a closed record hearing to consider an ordinance relating to the vacation of the eastern 1/2 (15 ft) of First Street abutting the western 110 ft of block 13, Silver Heights in Whatcom, Bellingham. The hearing examiner held a hybrid public hearing on April 15th, 2026 and recommended approval. Deputy City Attorney James Erb presented the information, and the committee unanimously recommended approval with a motion by the chair and second by Councilmember Huffman. The motion passed 6-0 with one excused.

Agenda items (21)

Council Business

1Council BusinessOld or new business

Council members may raise any old or new business items not covered elsewhere on the agenda.

What happened

24932Council BusinessA discussion of the Land Use Application Fee Schedule

The Council will discuss and potentially update the fees charged to residents and developers who submit land use applications to the city.

What happened

24933Council BusinessAn ordinance adding a new Chapter 11.05 to the Bellingham Municipal

The Council will consider adopting a new chapter of city code (Chapter 11.05 of the Bellingham Municipal Code).

What happened

24937Council BusinessAn ordinance amending the 2026 budget to recognize revenues and expenditures associated with the Public Safety Funding Program award -

The Council will approve changes to the 2026 budget to account for revenue and costs related to a Public Safety Funding Program award.

What happened

24941Council BusinessAn interlocal agreement with Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission for a Local Law Enforcement Grant award

The Council will approve an agreement with the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission to receive a Local Law Enforcement Grant award.

What happened

This was an interlocal agreement with Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission for a law enforcement grant award of $3,703,583 to the Bellingham Police Department. Deputy Chief Ty Elmendorf presented that the funding would support hiring three new law enforcement officers (frozen positions), $688,000 for the ART Co-Response Team backfill, approximately $500,000 for dash cams, equipment and training for safer pursuits, and $100,000 to sustain domestic violence and sexual assault services. Councilmember Anderson recused herself from voting due to her role on the DV/SAS board and asked another committee member to move the item forward. The committee recommended approval and the motion passed.

Procedural (13)

2ProceduralOnline: Join the Zoom meeting at cob.org/cczoom, then select the interpretation channel at the bottom of the screen. Those wishing to offer public comment in Spanish will be able to do so and their comments will be interpreted into English. Meeting records: Video recordings of each meeting are available online at cob.org/meetings within five business days following each meeting.

Online participants can join via Zoom and access Spanish interpretation, and video recordings of all meetings will be available online within five business days.

3ProceduralOnline: A sign-up form is available at cob.org/ccsignup on the day of the meeting.

Residents can sign up to speak during the meeting using an online form available at cob.org/ccsignup on meeting day.

4ProceduralIn person: Sign-up sheets are available outside the Council Chambers doors starting at 6:30 p.m. the evening of the meeting.

Sign-up sheets for public comment will be available outside the Council Chambers starting at 6:30 p.m. on meeting night.

5ProceduralSign up, both online and in person, closes at 7 p.m. Once signed up, speakers may participate via the following options:

Both online and in-person sign-ups to speak close at 7 p.m., after which registered speakers can participate in person, online, or by phone.

6ProceduralIn person: Meetings are held in Council Chambers on the second floor of City Hall.

City Council meetings take place in Council Chambers on the second floor of City Hall.

7ProceduralOnline: Join the Zoom meeting at cob.org/cczoom and follow staff instructions at time of the hearing or public comment period.

Online participants can join the Zoom meeting at cob.org/cczoom and will receive instructions from staff when it's time to speak or participate.

8ProceduralOver the phone: Call 253-215-8782, enter Meeting ID 871 5188 5205, and Password 9. Follow staff instructions at the time of the hearing or public comment period. Before or after a meeting: The City of Bellingham meets the Open Public Meetings Act by accepting written public comment in advance of City Council meetings. Send written input before or after a meeting.

Residents can call 253-215-8782 to join the meeting by phone using the provided meeting ID and password, and can also submit written comments before or after meetings by mail.

9ProceduralBy mail addressed to: City Council, 210 Lottie Street, Bellingham, WA 98225.

Written public comments can be mailed to the City Council at 210 Lottie Street, Bellingham, WA 98225 before or after meetings.

10ProceduralOnline: o For a public hearing: cob.org/publichearing. o For general public comment: E-mail all Council Members at ccmail@cob.org.

Residents can submit written comments for public hearings through cob.org/publichearing or send general comments by email to all Council Members at ccmail@cob.org.

24934ProceduralApproval of the March 23, 2026 City Council committee and regular meeting minutes

The Council will approve the official minutes from the March 23, 2026 committee and regular meeting.

24935ProceduralApproval of the April 13, 2026 City Council committee and regular meeting minutes

The Council will approve the official minutes from the April 13, 2026 committee and regular meeting.

24938ProceduralApproval of the April 27, 2026 City Council committee and regular meeting minutes

The Council will approve the official minutes from the April 27, 2026 committee and regular meeting.

24939ProceduralApproval of the April 20, 2026 special City Council meeting minutes

The Council will approve the official minutes from the April 20, 2026 special meeting.

Consent Calendar

24936Consent CalendarAuthorization of payroll labor cost payments dated April 1, 2026 to April 15, 2026

The Council will authorize payment of employee payroll costs for the period of April 1 through April 15, 2026.

General Business

24940General BusinessA closed record hearing to consider an ordinance relating to the vacation of the eastern one-half (15-feet) of Fir Street abutting the western 110- feet of block 13, Silver Heights add to Whatcom, in Bellingham, Whatcom

The Council will hold a hearing to consider permanently closing the eastern half of Fir Street (a 15-foot section) in the Silver Heights neighborhood.

What happened

24942General BusinessA presentation of Keep Washington Working Act advisory work group recommendations and final report

The Council will hear a presentation of recommendations and findings from a work group that studied the Keep Washington Working Act.

What happened

# Summary: Keep Washington Working Act Advisory Work Group Presentation and Final Report

Deputy City Administrator Janice Keller introduced the Keep Washington Working Act Advisory Work Group's final recommendations, which were developed over a year by eight work group members with diverse expertise in immigration law, education, and lived undocumented immigrant experience, along with facilitator Paul Knox and extensive ex-officio participation from police, fire, dispatch, and city leadership. The work group identified that despite Washington State's Keep Washington Working Act limiting local law enforcement's role in immigration enforcement, the city and county received potential violation notices in 2022, prompting comprehensive recommendations organized across four areas: improving federal contact data processes, enhancing Whatcom 911 dispatch compliance, updating Bellingham Police Department policies, and strengthening training for dispatchers and police. Key recommendations included establishing better data collection procedures (noting that past records showed only 3% of entries involved immigration matters with over 25% lacking sufficient detail), developing clear policies for federal immigration contacts, launching a "911 is safe" public campaign to reduce fear among non-citizens, implementing scenario-based training for emergency responders, and establishing annual independent audits of compliance. Council members Williams, Lilquist, Huffman, and Anderson praised the specificity and comprehensiveness of the recommendations as a roadmap for protective policies, and administration committed to synthesizing the full report, prioritizing recommendations by implementation feasibility, and scheduling a work session for further discussion. The Council voted 6-0 to accept the final report, with Mayor Lund expressing gratitude for the work group's commitment to protecting the rights and safety of immigrant community members.

Additional votes recorded in minutes

Accept Keep Washington Working Act Work Group final report and request administration schedule work session

absent 1 · aye 1

Dan Hammillabsent

voice voteaye

Approve ordinance vacating eastern half of First Street abutting western 110 ft of block 13, Silver Heights

absent 1 · aye 1

Dan Hammillabsent

voice voteaye

Approve interlocal agreement with Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission for law enforcement grant award (Agenda Bill 24941)

absent 1 · recused 1 · aye 1

Dan Hammillabsent

Lisa Andersonrecused

voice voteaye

Approve ordinance amending 2026 budget for public safety funding program award (Agenda Bill 24937)

absent 1 · recused 1 · aye 1

Dan Hammillabsent

Lisa Andersonrecused

voice voteaye

Approve ordinance adding new chapter 11.05 to Bellingham Municipal Code regarding speed limits

absent 1 · aye 1

Dan Hammillabsent

voice voteaye

Authorize mayor to retain outside counsel in Scopelitti vs. City of Bellingham

absent 1 · aye 1

Dan Hammillabsent

voice voteaye

Approve consent agenda

absent 1 · aye 1

Dan Hammillabsent

voice voteaye

Verbatim transcript available

300 transcript segments indexed

City of Bellingham City Council Regular Meeting minutes May 18, 2026, 7 p.m. Chair: Hannah Stone Phone: 360-778-8200 Members: Hollie Huthman, Daniel Hammill, Email: ccmail@cob.org Edwin H. "Skip" Williams, Lisa Anderson, Web: cob.org/council Michael Lilliquist, Jace Cotton Regular meeting The following items are heard in the Regular Meeting only.

Good evening and welcome to the Bellingham City Council regular meeting. Today is Monday, May 18th, 2026. So we're going to call the meeting to order and begin with roll call. Ali Huffman Here. Skip Williams Here.

Call to order and roll call The meeting was called to order by Council President Stone at 7 p.m. Present: Council President Hannah Stone, First Ward Council Member Hollie Huthman, Second Ward Council Member Edwin H.

Lisa Anderson Here. Michael Lilliquist >> Here. Jace Cotton >> Here. Hannah Stone Here. All right, six council members are present with council member Hamel excused. Thank you very much. So we'll begin this evening with announcements and upcoming meetings.

The Bellingham City Council meets all requirements of the state of Washington Open Public Meetings Act. Is there a council member who would like to read the land acknowledgement? I will. Council member Cotton Before we begin, we acknowledge that we are gathered on the traditional and unceded territory of the Lummi, Nooksack, Samish, and Semiahmoo people who have cared for and tended this land since time immemorial.

"Skip" Williams, Fourth Ward Council Member Lisa Anderson, Fifth Ward Council Member Michael Lilliquist, Sixth Ward Council Member Jace Cotton, At-Large Excused: Council Member Daniel Hammill, Third Ward Announcements and upcoming meetings The Bellingham City Council meets all requirements of the State of Washington Open Public Meetings Act.

Truth and acknowledgement are critical to building mutual respect and connection across all barriers of difference and heritage. We begin this effort to acknowledge what has been buried by honoring the truth.

1. Land acknowledgement statement Before we begin, we acknowledge that we are gathered on the traditional and unceded territory of the Lummi, Nooksack, Samish and Semiahmoo People who have cared for and tended this land since time immemorial.

We pay respect to their elders past and present. Please take a moment to consider the many legacies of violence, displacement, migration, and settlement that bring us together here today. And please join us in uncovering such truths at any and all public events.

Truth and acknowledgment are critical to building mutual respect and connection across all barriers of heritage and difference. We begin this effort to acknowledge what has been buried by honoring the truth.

Thank you. The Bellingham City Council provides Spanish interpretation at all regular evening meetings. Interpretation can be accessed by in-person attendees by utilizing the headsets that are located at the front of the room.

2. Language access The Bellingham City Council provides Spanish interpretation at all regular evening meetings. Interpretation can be accessed by in-person attendees by utilizing the Page 1 of 7 headsets located at the front of the room.

Remote viewers can log on to cob.org/cczoom and click on the language icon at the bottom of the screen to listen in Spanish. So we have an upcoming public hearing on June 1st, 2026, the council will hold a public hearing to consider the 6-year transportation improvement plan, also known as the TIP.

Details will be available on meetings.cob.org 7 days prior to the meeting. And that will actually be our next council meeting. So there's a couple weeks break um and the next city council meeting will be held on June 1st, 2026.

Remote viewers can log on to cob.org/cczoom and click on the “Language” icon at the bottom of the screen to listen in Spanish. 3. Upcoming public hearing On June 1, 2026, the Council will hold a public hearing to consider the 6-year Transportation Improvement Plan.

Details will be available on meetings.cob.org seven days prior to the meeting. 4. Next Council meeting The next City Council meeting with be held on June 1, 2026. Presentation 24942 1. A presentation of Keep Washington Working Act advisory work group p.

So this evening we have a special presentation to start the night. In the packet, this is agenda bill 24942, a presentation of Keep Washington Working Act Advisory Work Group Recommendations and Final Report.

Keep Washington Working Act Advisory Work Group members and city staff will summarize the group's work and recommendations, which also are provided in the attached written report. The Keep Washington Working Act was approved by the state legislature in to help ensure Washington remains a place where the rights and dignity of all residents are maintained and protected.

6 recommendations and final report Summary: Janice Keller, Deputy City Administrator, and members of the Keep Washington Working Act Advisory Work Group including Eamon Bollinger, Ian Garconnette, Abigail Senuty, Catalina Hope, Rebecca Agiewich.

and Holly Pai presented the recommendations and final report to Council. Council Members discussed the presentation and report and asked questions Action: Hannah Stone / Edwin H. "Skip" Williams moved to accept the workgroup's final report as presented and request the administration to schedule a work session for future discussion.

The act clarifies that immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility and strictly limits how local law enforcement agencies may participate in those activities. The city council formed this limited term advisory work group to review city policies and practices and to identify steps to support ongoing compliance with the act.

So, we have a number of guests with us this evening, um but I'm first going to turn um presentation over to Deputy City Administrator Janice Keller. Thank you, Council President Stone. We have a great group here tonight.

MOTION CARRIED 6-0. Mayor's report Standing time for briefings, updates, and reports to Council by the Mayor. Summary: Mayor Lund thanked members of the Keep Washington Working Act Advisory Work Group for their presentation and commitment to the rights and safety of everyone in our community and also recognized City staff who participated in the workgroup.

Mayor Lund highlighted recent engagements with the Lummi Nation including the First Salmon Ceremony, opening of the House of Healing Longhouse, and the opening Page 2 of 7 ceremony for Lummi Nation's secure withdrawal and recovery facility.

I just wanted to take a minute to introduce the staff team who supported this work, and then I'm going to turn it over to Eamon Bowlinger um to lead the work group members. So, Jackie Weller and Deborah Boneza were the heart and soul of the staff team who um led this work for over a year, and um Paul Knox from KnoxWorks Consulting was our facilitator, and he's joining us via remote and I think it's going to add a few words after the group makes their presentation.

She recognized the leadership of the Lummi Tribe in healing and serving the community. Council assignment reports Standing time for Council Member reports from assigned committees, boards, and other groups.

So, I'll turn it over to Eamon to introduce his team. Good evening. Thank you for having us speak today. We are all voting members of the City of Bellingham's Keep Washington Working Act Work Group. Uh I am Eamon Bowlinger, and I was inspired to join this group from my experience working in the elementary schools here in Bellingham and working with many immigrant students.

This Hi, my name is Holly Pie. Um I've been a member of the Keep Washington Working Act group from the beginning and before that from the immigration advisory board and I was inspired to do this work because I'm a local immigration attorney and I work closely with the community here in Bellingham.

Summary: Council Member Lilliquist reported that he virtually attended a statewide mini-housing academy with leadership across Whatcom County, which focused on housing affordability and root causes. Council Member Anderson echoed Mayor Lund’s sentiments as she also attended the opening of the Lummi Nation Recovery Center.

My name is Ian Garcenette. Sorry. My name is Ian Garcenette and I was inspired to join this group work group because uh being undocumented is a lived experience for me. It's something that uh early say early early 2000s it was a lived experience so I just thought that my input would be able to help us in in this work group.

She expressed support for tribal partnerships and the Lummi Tribe's work in the community. Committee meeting reports The following committee meetings are held during the day. Committee chairs will present a summary of each agenda item during the evening meeting, and further discussion or action may take place if needed.

Hello everyone, my name is Abby Sanudi. I work in higher education and career services and through that work I've had the opportunity to support immigrant students and also collaborate across campus to think about what that support looks like holistically and that is what drew me to the work group.

Committee meetings are open to the public to attend, however committee agendas do not include public comment sessions. Special Meeting 1 p.m. Hannah Stone, Chair Hollie Huthman, Daniel Hammill, Edwin H.

Hi, I'm Catalina Hope and I'm really honored to be here and share this presentation with everyone. I work at Whatcom Community College and there I've been working in the initially I taught in the business department and then the medical assisting department but the department and and the area that I'm most passionate about is teaching English for immigrants.

"Skip" Williams, Lisa Anderson, Michael Lilliquist, Jace Cotton 24940 1. A closed record hearing to consider an ordinance relating to the vacation p. 159 of the eastern one-half (15-feet) of Fir Street abutting the western 110- feet of block 13, Silver Heights add to Whatcom, in Bellingham, Whatcom County, Washington Summary: James Erb, Deputy City Attorney, and Steven Sundin, Senior Planner, presented the street vacation ordinance relating to the eastern one-half (15-feet) of Fir Street.

The Hearing Examiner held a hybrid public hearing on the street vacation petition on April 15, 2026. Council Members discussed the ordinance and asked questions. Action: Hannah Stone / Hollie Huthman moved for first and second reading.

So I've been teaching these adult learners for about 13 years and it's so important to me and so I live with this on a regular basis working with our immigrants locally. So I'm honored to represent them and be a voice for them.

MOTION CARRIED 6-0. Page 3 of 7 Budget and Finance 1:10 p.m. Lisa Anderson, Chair Daniel Hammill, Michael Lilliquist 24941 1. An interlocal agreement with Washington State Criminal Justice Training p.

Thank you. My name is Rebecca Aguich and I was inspired to join this committee because I work as a medical interpreter and I work with Latino immigrants on a regular basis and I see how vulnerable they are and I wanted to help be a voice for them.

So, after [clears throat] being formed by this council in the September of 2024, we are here to present our recommendations to strengthen the rights and dignities of immigrants in Bellingham. We also want to thank and point out that we work extensively with our ex-officio members who are Katie Potts, the police chief from Western, Rebecca Mertzig, the Bellingham police chief, Bill Hewitt, the Bellingham fire chief, Justin Rasmussen, the deputy director of the director of Whatcom Dispatch 911, Hannah Stone, Bellingham City Council member, Sarah Chaplin, the senior assistant city attorney, and Deborah Benezra, the strategic initiatives manager for equity and belonging.

176 Commission for a Local Law Enforcement Grant award Summary: Ty Elmendorf, Deputy Chief of Police, Andy Asbjornsen, Finance Director, and Mayor Lund presented the interlocal agreement (ILA) with the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission, which awards $3,703,583 as a Public Safety Funding Program Award for operational support through June 2028.

Council Members discussed the ILA and asked questions. Action: Hollie Huthman / Edwin H. "Skip" Williams moved to authorize the Mayor to enter into the interlocal agreement with Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission for a $3,703,583 grant through the Local Law Enforcement Grant Program.

Thank you for your help. All right. In 2019, Washington state passed the Keep Washington Working Act. And this law makes clear that immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility, strictly limiting local law enforcement's role.

MOTION CARRIED 5-0. RECUSED: Lisa Anderson 24937 2. An ordinance amending the 2026 budget to recognize revenues and p. 183 expenditures associated with the Public Safety Funding Program award - Amendment 2 Summary: Andy Asbjornsen, Finance Director, and Ty Elmendorf, Deputy Chief of Police, presented the ordinance, which amends the 2026 budget to recognize revenues and expenditures associated with the Public Safety Funding Program Award.

The state legislature determined that the Keep Washington Working we need to ensure the state remains a place where the rights and dignity of all residents are maintained and protected. We have about 1 million immigrants in Washington, roughly 1 in 7 residents.

And then zooming in on Bellingham and our county, in 2022, the city and county were notified of potential KWW violations. Hence the alarm for this group. Furthermore, the KWW Act is broad. So, for the best success, it needs to be adapted to our locality.

Council Members discussed the ordinance and asked questions. Action: Edwin H. "Skip" Williams / Hollie Huthman moved for first and second reading. MOTION CARRIED 5-0. RECUSED: Lisa Anderson Page 4 of 7 24932 3.

A discussion of the Land Use Application Fee Schedule p. 187 Summary: Blake Lyon, Planning and Community Development Director, and Mike Wilson, Public Works Assistant Director of Engineering, presented a draft update to the Land Use Application Fee Schedule for Council's input.

>> [snorts] >> The eight members on this work group were motivated, as we already said in our introduction, but we were motivated to help ensure that Bellingham is a location for all to live safely and with dignity.

Council Members discussed the fee schedule and asked questions. Public Works and Natural Resources 2:15 p.m. Michael Lilliquist, Chair Lisa Anderson, Jace Cotton 24933 1. An ordinance adding a new Chapter 11.05 to the Bellingham Municipal p.

To advocate for those who are able to if we're not able to, and to apply our various lived experiences to understand current practices and identify opportunities to improve clarity, consistency, and accountability.

207 Code regarding speed limits Summary: Tim Hohmann, Public Works Assistant Director of Transportation, and Shane Sullivan, City Transportation Engineer, presented the ordinance, which lowers City speed limits.

Um, before we dive in to our recommendations, there was a bit of crucial background information that we thought the council should know and any public members should know that really directed where we took our research.

Council Members discussed the ordinance, asked questions, and recognized National Public Works Week. Action: Michael Lilliquist / Lisa Anderson moved for first and second reading. MOTION CARRIED 6-0. Committee Of The Whole 2:40 p.m.

The first one is the Whatcom 911 interlocal agreement. So currently Whatcom 911 dispatch dispatches for the entire county including Western Washington University, but it is staffed and the daily operations are conducted by the city of Bellingham.

So this leaves us city a unique opportunity to be a local leader with Keep Washington Working. Secondly, we have the federal contact data. So all contacts with federal agencies agents collected by Whatcom 911 dispatch and thus the city because they conduct those services is collected has been being collected since 2020.

Hannah Stone, Chair Hollie Huthman, Daniel Hammill, Edwin H. "Skip" Williams, Lisa Anderson, Michael Lilliquist, Jace Cotton 1. Old or new business Summary: There were no items for Old/New Business. Executive session 2:50 p.m.

So any contact with Immigration and Customs Enforcement ICE or Customs and Border Protection CBP are recorded by the city. This was sparked by a now repealed 2019 City Council Ordinance 2019-11-033. However, the city made a nice administrative decision to keep collecting this data.

Closed to the public. Report in the Regular Meeting only. Page 5 of 7 1. Litigation: Scopeletti v. City of Bellingham, et. al (Phillips, approx. 10 min.) Summary: Staff provided information on a litigation matter.

Most contacts are via Whatcom 911 dispatch calls and the report is published by the city and is accessible on the KWW work group website. The website is the city of Bellingham Keep Washington Working Work Group Act.

Action: Edwin H. "Skip" Williams / Lisa Anderson moved to authorize the Mayor to retain outside counsel to represent the City of Bellingham as a defendant in this matter. MOTION CARRIED 6-0. Consent agenda Consent Agenda items are considered routine and/or non-controversial and may be approved in a single motion.

A member of the Council may ask that an item be removed from the Consent Agenda and considered separately. 24934 1. Approval of the March 23, 2026 City Council committee and regular p. 276 meeting minutes 24935 2.

And thirdly, our last one is BPD policy 417. So BPD Bellingham Police Department has an extensive policy manual and their policy 417 is their specific policy on immigration enforcement. It is very similar to the KWW law.

Approval of the April 13, 2026 City Council committee and regular meeting p. 294 minutes 24939 3. Approval of the April 20, 2026 special City Council meeting minutes p. 313 24938 4. Approval of the April 27, 2026 City Council committee and regular meeting p.

It is just the police department specific one. We spent a lot a lot of time looking at 417 because it was the most relevant. And so I thought it was important for us all to just keep these in our head.

All right. And before we get into actual recommendations again, we broke our recommendations into four areas. That is how it's done on the report. So we have recommendations for improving the federal contact data process.

316 minutes 24936 5. Authorization of payroll labor cost payments dated April 1, 2026 to April p. 342 15, 2026 Action: Michael Lilliquist / Edwin H. "Skip" Williams moved approval of the Consent Agenda in its entirety.

MOTION CARRIED 6-0. Public comment period City Council heard public comments from 11 individuals. Page 6 of 7 Adjournment There being no further business, the meeting adjourned at 8:59 p.m. Hannah Stone, Council President ATTEST: Kelley Goetz, Deputy City Clerk APPROVED: 6/15/2026 Page 7 of 7

We have recommendations for improving Whatcom 911 dispatch for compliance with KWW. We have recommendations for the Bellingham Police Department policies and practices. And then lastly, we have recommendations for training for Whatcom 911 dispatchers and the police department.

Ian Garsonette is going to present the federal contact data recommendations. Sorry. Thank you, Amon. Uh first, I'll go ahead and establish a background as to why the thought process to this. The Keep Washington Working Law, as as Amon said, limits how law enforcement agencies interact with uh federal immigration officials.

The Washington State Attorney's model policy recommends reviewing practices and identifying gaps for improvement. Additionally, the creation of the Immigration Advisory Board in the now repealed ordinance 2019-11033 required collecting points on all immigration Oh, sorry.

On immigration with Sorry. Collecting data on immigrate with immigration enforcement Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. Bellingham PD began collecting this in 2020 mainly from Whatcom calls.

Because Whatcom County and Whatcom regularly receives calls from federal agencies such as Customs and Border Protection, these contacts are recorded in the city's federal contact data. However, when dispatch has contact with a federal agency, Bellingham Police Sorry.

Bellingham Police Department and Whatcom staff log this interaction. City staff compile this into a monthly report and post it as a PDF on the city's Keep Washington Working Work Group Committee. One example is appendix F.

Um in the in this overall the work group concluded that the system of collection data between federal agencies and the and the city does not provide enough detail to evaluate compliance with Keep Watching Working.

The logs do not follow an extent full extent of contact between city and federal immigration authorities. The data does not include does not uh often includes routine interagency meetings or regular work related regional task force.

However, the data collected records the start of contact but does not state how the outcome or whether or not it led to immigration enforcement. It is difficult to establish a link between federal contact with a local agency and immigration enforcement because KWW limits the limits collecting information on immigration status.

Also, the work group was not aware of any apprehensions or detentions by federal officials. Past attempts to make those public records through Sorry, past attempts to make those public records such as computer-aided dispatch logs were time-consuming and were not effective.

In addition, [snorts] BPD policies and guidance did not did not clearly define how to audit compliance with KWW. One second. So, um one of the appendixes is appendix G and what it shows is five out of 527 entries found at least 3% involved immigration matters and more than 25% lacked enough detail to determine relevance.

10% involved fire or medical emergency medical responses related to immigration enforcement. Some of the nine some 9% of those entries were non-911 [snorts] BPD sources which would benefit from additional information.

With that, no seasonal patterns were found. The recommendation goes as follows. Improving data collection and recording. The worker recommends the city how the city collects, records, reviews federal contact data so it can better track outcomes and support compliance.

Record the Sorry, record the following information in each log when possible. The federal agency and sub-agency involved with each contact, the agent's name when possible, the location of the activity as to the when it applies, 911 dispatch and and BPD response to calls including any follow-up actions and more detailed notes.

Provide the data in a format where one of our additional recommendation is to provide the data in a format which allows for improved tracking and analysis. Included glossary of a list of acronyms and a simple guide for numbering for a numbering system.

Provide guidance to Whatcom and BPD staff with consistent data entry. Our second recommendation which was develop policies and procedures for reoccurring issues. The worker recommends providing clear information to best help and understand when local agencies may interact with federal agencies.

Set up internal alerts with Whatcom to notify the city or city of Bellingham police to call. Sorry. Uh BPD leadership when a call may involve immigration status. These can be automated or set up in another way.

Develop procedures for special situations such as if a vehicle is left behind during an immigration enforcement and or when community members observe and and observing and recording with uh recording federal actions.

Ensure Whatcom staff and leadership follow consistent procedures when responding to 911 calls related to federal immigration. The third recommendation is inform Excuse me. Inform the public about permissible actions with federal immigration authority authorities.

The work group recommends providing clear information to better up better help the public understand when when local law enforcement local law enforcement may interact with federal immigration officials.

Provide information about the existence and purpose of federal task force. This could be a one-time occurrence to inform the city to inform community about various federal task force. Explain the contact may occur in limited situations such as public safety and um where the law requires.

Provide a report rationale for ongoing interagency communication with the Department of Homeland Security. Ensure all federal contact is recorded and reported all federal contact is reported with with the city is recorded and reported to in the federal contact logs.

And our fourth recommendation with for the federal contact data would be we recommend uh establishing an annual annual product process of the city's federal contact data. The work group recommends recommend recommends creating a clear process to review federal contact data each year.

Audit Follow the audit provided by the Washington State agency such as the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission and the state and the sorry, the Attorney General's Office. The state and local partners uh sorry, work with state and local partners to explicit to ex sorry, to set explicit rules including what information can be collected.

This will help set expectations across the board with different jurisdictions. Each year the audit using the federal contact data the Attorney General's uh sorry, using the Attorney General's model as a guide.

Better understand compliance with KWW, bring in independent experts to assess whether contact data can be linked to immigration enforcement, as well as report audits report audits and review findings and adjust how federal agent sorry, how agencies communicate and collect federal data.

Thank you, Ian. Moving [clears throat] over to the Whatcom 911 911 dispatch recommendations. Our first recommendation was to strengthen the Whatcom 911 interlocal agreement to promote KWW compliance. And so we thought because we have the interlocal agreement that is updated and re-signed by the neighbor by the the other localities in our county that we could strengthen what is being put in it through KWW something and have that be part of the new agreement.

And then we could also through the interlocal agreement, there's a possibility to incorporate a civilian position into the Whatcom administrative board. We thought that would be a good recommendation to promote KWW and have someone potentially with lived experience that would know more about being an immigrant in our community.

Uh second, we recommend to improve language access and technology through a text to 911 system that has translation capabilities and improves access for interpretation for languages other than Spanish.

We have a growing population of people who speak a language that's not English and not Spanish and it's hard to get translation services for these languages. So, it'd be nice to improve that especially with a text program.

And thirdly, we recommend to strengthen public communication to increase trust for in Whatcom 911. Uh nothing against Whatcom 911, they're doing a great job, but people don't know that like they're unsure if they want to call 911 if something happens if they're unsure about their if they know that they're not a citizen especially now and they might not call 911.

So, we recommend increasing messaging on the city's website and social medias to reduce fear from calling 911 and to la- launch a 911 is safe campaign. A lot of this is just knowledge. Like, people don't We need this to spread out to the whole community, and a lot of this stuff people don't know.

All right. And then, the next part we had recommendations for were the Bellingham Police Department policies and practices. Uh we found some uncertainty in the policy 417, the immigration enforcement policy.

So, we recommend the city review policy 417. We also recommend policy 331, so 331, and policy 807, which are also similar to 417 with immigration enforcement. And furthermore, we recommend a process for updating and monitoring policies over time, having a system in place, and clarifying shall and should language in these policies so that things are very clear, and address limits on data sharing and warrant requirements.

We also recommend to review eight additional policies that are adjacent to KWW, and these policies are on, I believe, page 17 of the report. There's about eight to 10 more policies. And then, secondly, we recommend to create a more accessible complaints and commendations process.

Uh when we went through and did research on the current complaints and commendations process for the police department, it had It was like just a PDF that you had to submit, and they recommended that you come in person, which I agree with that philosophy of going in, putting a face, and talking to a person.

But then, looking at like Seattle's, and if you're unsure of if you're not trusting the police, it would be nice to have like a form that you could submit and maybe submit anonymously. And so, we recommend doing that.

And then, in this, we recommend Police Department to extend their complaints and commendations process. So, keep the one Keep the motivation to have people come in and complain or commend, but also expand it to include more people.

All right, and then we're going to I'm going to pass off the Whatcom 911 dispatch training recommendations to Abby Sanuti and Catalina Hope. Thank you, Ammon. As he mentioned, I'm going to be addressing some of our training recommendations.

I'll be focusing on Whatcom 911 dispatch, and then I'll hand it over to Catalina Hope for the Bellingham police component. We chose to focus on training as part of our recommendations because these are organizations that play a central role in our compliance.

And so, it's essential that everyone who is involved feels confident in both knowing what to do and how to proceed effectively. So, for Whatcom 911 dispatch specifically, to learn about the existing training process, we reviewed the training manual that is used for all new hires, the public safety telecommunicators or PSTs, as well as a KWW specific training video that Deputy Director Asmuson created and distributed to all members of the team, and some supplementary training bulletins that were distributed to the team to provide updates and administrative information related to KWW compliance.

And because that was a lot of documentation, we also corresponded with the Deputy Director who was really generous in sharing his time and insights, answering our questions, and really helping us to understand how all of those pieces fit together into a holistic process.

Based on that review, our first recommendation is to incorporate some active learning such as scenario-based training that is specific to Keep Washington Working. This is already an aspect of the dispatch training for other content areas, but it's not yet something that addresses Keep Washington Working Act specifically, likely because there isn't yet statewide curriculum for dispatch that focuses on this topic area.

So, what we do have so far has been created in-house. Um and while there is a lot that is going well, we feel that it's an important next step to include some active learning because we know it's a best practice for learning, comprehension, and retention, especially for adult learners like professionals in a workplace setting.

Secondly, the policies involved in this are complex, and there are some that are very directly related to Keep Watching Working Act. There are others that may be related, but are less clear in how that link occurs currently.

And so, we recommend auditing the training process to ensure that all relevant policies are addressed effectively, and that that is updated as policies change. From a process standpoint as well, we recommend having ongoing training and some types of mechanisms to help the entire team keep current with emergent trends in federal immigration enforcement.

Knowing that this is a landscape that is changing often and can be difficult to keep up with, we feel it's really essential for this team, who is a central hub receiving messages from our community, to know what is happening, what they might be interfacing with, and understand best practices for responding effectively.

And that brings me to our final two recommendations in this area, which focus on content within the training manual. The first is to incorporate information specifically around effectively supporting and interacting with callers who may have limited English language proficiency because while there are a number of specialized populations addressed in the training manual, this is not yet one of them.

And we feel that there's an opportunity to strengthen that. And then lastly, we recommend having some questions or knowledge checks related to specifically identifying for which federal agencies individuals need to report that federal contact data that was addressed earlier.

And with that, I'm going to hand it over to Catalina for the Bellingham Police portion of our training. Some of what I'm going to share at the beginning um for the background, there's some overlap with what Abby discussed.

Um but and I'm going to preface my talk with saying that I'm so tempted just to stand up right now so that I can keep you guys awake while you listen. >> [laughter] >> But anyway, thank you again. And just to give you so with the part that I'm focusing on is um Bellingham Police training recommendations.

Um a little background on this to give you some context is that as Abby mentioned um the AGO does have their they their recommended recommending a statewide training curriculum, but we don't have one specific for KWW.

So, the challenge then is then since it doesn't exist, of course, then the police department created their own. And um their train the way they've been doing their training includes um not surprisingly presentations, and they have training bulletins and directives.

And this is done through a centralized system where officers must confirm they have received and read training content by checking a box in the platform. So, um there's a lot of material there. And so, what we wanted to do is say you know, to follow up on this, what recommendations do we have with that?

You know, of course, the Bellingham Police Department also has I mean, training doesn't end just when they check that box, right? So, they do have um resource flexible resource day trainings, which are great, and daily patrol briefings.

So, that training does continue. Um but our specific recommendations include what I'm going to share right here on those um bullet points. Um the first recommendation, as you can see, it's inquire about statewide KWW training curriculum.

And this one's going to be a mouthful for me, by the way. Um follow up with the Washington Criminal Justice Training Commission about our AGO's recommendation to develop the state-wide KWW training. Um so, when is this curriculum going to come together?

And so, I think we we really want to make sure that that's followed up on because um if this trick curriculum is going to be created, we can learn from that and take away best practices from them as well.

Um the second one recommendation you'll see up there is incorporate active learning, which I'm again I'm reflecting some of what Abby said. Um and this as a teacher, this is my favorite topic right here.

How do we engage people? I It's so important because if you think about your own training, your own educational histories, whether or not it's formal or informal, what engaged you? What helped you remember?

And so, I we just we would love it if um we could make KWW training more effective. And one one aspect of this I want to point out is that um if we really want our training office, our police department, and different people in our city and county in our city specifically here to really understand this and to apply it, um they need to know that what they do matters.

You know, really they're affecting people on a daily basis, and so this really matters um how they approach this. Um and one of our recommendations with um active and experiential learning, um one of um as probably all of you know, it tend it's more effective in terms of training and retention.

Um and so, therefore we're recommending that we keep in mind, you know, what kind of learners do we have? Um these are professionals and um but yes, they're different people and there are different types of learning styles, whether or not that's um solitary or social, kinesthetic, etc., etc., etc.

And so, we would we would really recommend that our police department look into that into training that incorporates different styles of learning. You'll see from the options um in our formal report that um we recommend everything from videos to written responses, from group work, pair work, and solitary work.

And then there in the middle, um learn from other cities. We encourage our um Bellingham Police Department um the training department to connect with other law enforcement agencies uh in other cities.

A great outcome really could be if we could learn from them and they could learn from us, right? And that we could potentially be a really great role model for them as well. Um I believe that from our group work here, we recognize that we think the Bellingham Police Department and our city with um with KWW uh is I think we do a much better job than many other cities.

But of course, you know, we're recommending that we go even further with this. The next bullet point, um audit training process audit training program with a third party. Um briefly, just what we recommend is to hire a non-law enforcement training contractor to audit our KWW training program and provide further objective recommendations for best practices.

We recognize that, you know, with budgets um this is this could be challenging, uh but it doesn't mean it's not important. So, we We wanted to make sure that that that's on our bucket list, too. Uh Uh lastly, provide regular follow-up training.

As I said, you know, training doesn't stop, right? Um learning doesn't stop. And so, you know, even in the future, um we need to follow up with um the AGO's office. Did they develop that curriculum? What's happening?

What are best training practices? Um I really love the For me, one of my favorite quotes in life is um "And quarrel and quarrel, I'm still learning. We're all still learning." So, this is part of our recommendation for you.

Thank you. And with that, I want to pass it off back to um Amen so he can wrap up. Thank you, Amen. Thank you, Catalina and Abby. So, those are the group the those are the recommendations from our work group.

They're spread out throughout the 30-so pages of the recommendation. And we just wanted to point out a couple recommendations for further work. And I'm just going to highlight uh the second one up there, which is to address adherence to the Courts Open to All Act.

Uh sadly, uh in Bellingham recently, there has been like a huge uptick or just an occurrence of uh federal agents taking people that have gotten out of the court just right over there across the street.

And so, we would like to somehow for the city to pursue adherence to the to use the Courts Open to All Act, which the court is using, but to politically use it to to not let this happen in our community, not have people who are going to court in Bellingham for for civil infractions get taken away by federal agents.

>> [snorts] >> And then, lastly, I just want to say that we're extremely thankful to the city council for forming this group, uh for the work and the insight of the ex officio members, and the work from the city employees, especially Deborah Boneza, Janice Keller, and Jackie Weller.

Uh this group's work would not have been possible without them. And then, we also have a few This council has any questions or discussion that they might want to spark at this point, please go ahead. Thank you very much for the presentation.

Um I wanted to open it to council members if there are questions or discussion. First, I also wanted to um just recognize that in addition to the work group members who joined us this evening that Crystal Rodriguez and Scott Powell were also members of the work group um and contributed, you know, equal time and and energy to to this work.

And just to express appreci- appreciation, yeah, for the the time that work group members committed to this. I don't know if you know what you were getting into when you signed up and were compelled to turn in that application, but at the time that this group was forming, um certainly there was a fair amount of um fear and just uncertainty within the immigrant community here in Bellingham.

And so for that reason, I know there were a number of individuals with, you know, lived experience who did not feel comfortable participating in in the group at this time. And so really it's important to have advocates and allies and voices, you know, come forward to help support that work.

So Yes, Janice. Two things really quickly. First, the list of ex officio members um accidentally omitted Mayor Kim Lund. So Mayor Lund was also a an ex officio member. And uh I would recommend before you take questions, we go ahead and and see if the technology will work for Paul to say a couple words if he's still on.

>> [snorts] >> Paul, you should be able to unmute if you'd like and say a few words. >> want to go ahead and keep moving forward. Okay. And certainly, um, yes, if Paul wants to join us or is able to unmute and share his video, um, I'll keep an eye on the screen.

I think you're unmuted now. Uh, hi. Good evening, Paul. Yeah, I didn't realize I had to do it. I thought you guys controlled it. Yeah, hi everyone. Um, I'm Paul Knox. I was the contracted facilitative chair for the, um, work group.

And, um, it was [clears throat] an amazing learning experience for all of us, and I just want to say a quick few things quickly. I work with, um, communities around the state on a range of issues, a lot of affordable housing issues, especially, but, uh, other issues, uh, affecting low and moderate-income folks.

And I want to just say, I want to congratulate the work group on coming together to make this happen. It It was a complex, um, set of issues that, um, they had to learn about and also, um, work on, and they did a great job of engaging, um, with the ex-officio members, which is one of the beautiful things that happened.

So, talking about incidents in the community with, um, your police chief, um, about and 911, um, directors. And so, that was part of the the wonderful learning of it. But, also the work group had to like push back and say, "Okay, we want to like have more, um, we don't just want to hear presentations." And they they did that, and they really took ownership of this whole thing.

They did a lot of the They did all the substantial work for coming up with the recommendations, so I give them credit. And then the the city, uh, staff team with Janice and Deborah, um, and Jackie were really excellent to work with, and, uh, were very professional, and also we we engaged and pushed hard about making the process better as we went.

So, that's kind of all I wanted to say. It was a great feel to work with this group. Thank you, Paul. Um any other comments from presenters or staff before I open it up to council? Deborah? I will just say it was an honor to work with these eight uh folks here at um including Scott and Rebecca who could not be here today, but um as Paul expressed uh this work was complicated.

When we first formed, we were only a few months into this new administration and a very um frankly scary landscape um as regarding immigration enforcement um and especially the local impacts and uh this group was able to bring that heaviness with them um and still uh work well together to come to these recommendations and um I'm proud of their work and I hope they're proud as well.

So, thank you. Thank you, Deborah. Um and I noted that, you know, on page 42 of our packet 35 of the report, there is a list of the appointed members and the non-voting ex-officio members as well as city staff who supported the work and noting that Deborah Vanezas listed twice under both non-voting ex-officio member and city staff supporting member and I think rightfully so.

Um going forward, if there was an opportunity, I think lots of lessons learned and we'll do some debriefing afterwards um for future work, but um ideally, I think going forward, you would have an opportunity to, you know, fully participate as a as a member and I think that was a heavy lift, but work very well done and I cannot Yeah, there's no way that words would express just gratitude for the the lift and pulling together this report.

I mean, all of the work from the members was extensive, but can't be underestimated how much time and energy it took to pull all of that together in this report. Um, and also wanting to extend appreciation to Jackie, our office manager in the council office, but who helps support this group.

One of the um, intentional, I guess, you know, requests when this group was formed was to for the meetings to not be recorded. They were open to the public and anyone was welcome to attend, but um, wanting to make sure that that was a safe space for dialogue and for um, just learning as a, you know, as a sort of subset of our community here, um, but that made a heavy lift for, you know, tracking the meetings and putting together minutes and all of that.

So, just great appreciation to to Jackie as well for supporting um, supporting this work. So, um, want to open it up to council members. Council member Williams. Thank you. Um, I just want to congratulate you on this uh, a report and all the work that you have put into this.

As I read through this, the the specificity of your recommendations really stood out to me and made me proud that we now have a road map to uh, develop policies that will protect people, that will um, keep us from going from slacking off.

And um, and I'll be looking forward to seeing all of this over time as this is finished to the implementation process. Uh I'm just uh you can't uh you can't do everything overnight, but this is a very good road map that gives us direction for the right policies, and I really appreciate it.

Councilor Lilquist? Yeah, I want to follow exactly what what Skip was just saying. This I I appreciate the specificity, um and it is a road map. I started dog-earing and circling and starring things, but I ended up like dog-earing and circling all of it.

And so, that goes to uh Skip's question. This isn't going to isn't going to take place right away. I'm wondering if the administration already has found a few items in there that say are more closely aligned with current efforts or maybe lighter lifts, or you know, maybe the CJTC does have its curriculum ready now.

Is there any idea about which of these actions might be coming forward sooner or might be prioritized out of it? There's no priority to these. And like I said, I I kept starring too many of them. Um I agree with that assessment, and so I think we'll be synthesizing the full report and working on identifying tiers, and we discussed this approach with the group for um identifying actions both based on impact and the ability to implement.

So, um some things might be simple and low impact. Some things might be high impact and um you know, a more of a process for implementation, but we'll work and identify how um how we can implement that work, and um I'm looking forward to sharing out with council and the committee members.

That's one of their recommendations is that we are following back up and progress towards implementation. So, we will honor that commitment and um yeah, [snorts] look Thank you. >> look forward to that.

Councilmember Huffman Well, Councilmember Liliquist took my question for the administration. Uh so, I will just say um this is a an amazing product for such a short amount of time. Um and that that's relative.

This is government time. Government time is very long. So, this took a very short amount of time relatively speaking. Um and this it's really impressive that that um such a such a group um could put something like this together.

Uh it really speaks to your dedication and your knowledge and your willingness to share and learn um local government. Again, it's a lot of complexity when you jump right into it if you haven't been involved.

And so, there's a lot to learn. So, you did a lot of learning, a lot of um sharing your ideas and thinking and and problem-solving and and quite impressive. Really appreciate the work that you've done.

Thank you. Councilmember Anderson Thank you. Um similar, I was going to ask administration because a lot wonderful work, really appreciated it. Um I didn't dog-ear mine, but I did a lot of circling and X's.

But, a lot of this is policy and this comes down to directing staff to do work. So, it's not legislative necessarily. And you know, it's really easy that oh, the work is done. Now, staff and administration will go forward and do the work.

Um my second part of the question other than excuse me, getting over get my voice back and of course, it's now breaking. Um that it's good to know that there's going to be a kind of a listing of um what can be addressed quickly or soon without major cost or resources.

Some of these are a bigger lift, like if we need to do our own um training videos that are more than checking a box. I work at the community college with Catalina. So we both know all the training we go through that is active involved training so that it's hands-on instead of getting to the end check a box and somehow IT and HR thinks we've done the work and we haven't.

I'm not to say that Bellingham police would be doing that, but I also support engaging where you answer questions or you go through various models so that you know people are actually taking it all in.

So that would be a much bigger lift to develop that type of training. So hopefully the state does, but thank you for the comment that you'll be contacting the work group and you know, coming back to council, but I'm kind of wondering a timeline for that because you know, we're always on this fast train and this you know, the further the distance go the less you know, like did we talk about that coming back?

Has anybody got an update? So not to necessarily say gee is is it going to be in 3 months, but when can we expect that first lens of things coming back? And I'm really specific curious appendix J. You had mentioned the various policies within the police department 320 326 and so forth.

There's a couple of there that look like they could be implemented much sooner than others. So when the time comes, I'll be really interested to know which one of these will be able to be addressed, but kind of wondering when that information might come back to us.

I'm happy to sit down and do that assessment. We haven't had time to go through as an agency alongside Whatcom 911 to really understand that. I can say that some of what has been identified and discussed here tonight.

We are working currently to do implementation, especially around communications, simple recommendations about if there's a complaint or commendations, those are kinds of things that we can begin to to work on implementation strategies.

So, before we come back with a more comprehensive report out on timelines, I just wanted you to be sure that um certain actions that have been identified are being worked on currently, and we are in active conversations with the state around some of the very important topics that have been identified by this group.

So. Yeah, can I speak up real quick on that as an outsider? Um yeah, just I just to emphasize what I saw, a lot of the conversations that happened with the ex officio members um and you know, including the mayor, actually led to action sooner than than this this point in time.

For instance, the police chief talking with the the um regular gathering of um um public safety officers at the county level, including the sheriff, talking about this. So, a lot of good stuff happened out of this um because you all created this committee, and the committee pushed for things.

And so, that that was again one of the most beautiful things that happened that I have I I witnessed. So, I just want to I want to say that. So. Thank you, Paul. Um and I think that was one of the other things I wanted to highlight, just having the opportunity to sit as a ex officio member of this group was um the ability to have that interaction, right?

The work group members and members of the ex officio um who are sitting in that ex officio capacity, and just the right, the shared information if questions came up or if there were incidents that had happened in the community wanting to bring things forward that may or may not be on right someone's radar and the ability to get responses in in real time.

So, recognizing also that that was a you know, a heavy lift for or the ex-officios as well who committed and really that communicated that this was a priority for them and and important and important work.

Yeah, Ian. Um I'm just going to circle back to something that I think Paul mentioned during one of our meetings is that the KWW Act itself and the the OGM policy is a is a foundation in which legislatively we can build upon improve improving that um which is what we're is what which is what this work group is is is just we were given a like a blanks of foundation to work off of and then we went through it and then we built upon those recommendations based off of lived experiences through work our work with the ex-officios and and things like that.

So, it is a foundation but it's something that we'd definitely be built upon. Catalina? I wanted to comment on something that um Lisa Anderson said about um training and making these videos and I know full well all too well how long it takes to create curriculum.

It's it's challenging but at the college and around the world we talk a lot about AI. We have this conversation almost constantly I think and so I didn't get to include this in the report and like duh I should have that AI, you know, it does hallucinate sometimes and it it um the information isn't necessarily accurate and we always have to check what it creates but AI could help what we have micro we have an a Microsoft Office you know, city so therefore we could use co-pilot to create some at least some basic foundational, you know, scenarios and then build from there.

But at least it it would give us some some brainstorming. So, um take advantage of that. I always say that though with AI that AI can be used It's like a knife. You can use it to kill or you can use it to slice for sushi.

So, I say we should use it for good. It's Catalina. Um any other comments from work group members or staff? Okay. Um so there was a thing as far as a a motion in the work that's coming forward and appreciation for the mayor's, you know, response and Councilwoman Henderson following up that there would be, you know, next steps in wanting to make sure that this work continues because part of what we were looking at and you recognized that early on all of those presentations and this deep learning curve is really to make sure that we were doing some pretty important housekeeping, right?

Reviewing our internal policies and procedures and um looking at that fairly closely. And then feeling confident about our compliance with KWW and maybe gaps in places where we can improve um and then potential next steps.

So, proposed motion that I would make is to move to accept the work group's final report as presented and request the administration schedule a work session for future discussion. Second. That motion was made by the chair and seconded by Councilmember Williams.

Um any discussion on the motion? No. Okay. Seeing none, I'll call the question. All in favor will say aye. Aye. Any opposed or abstentions? Okay. Seeing none, that passes 6-0 with one excused. Great. Wonderful.

Um, so thank you so much again for your service to the city and commitment to this work and hopefully our paths will continue to cross, but we will definitely benefit from from the work that you've done.

Um, so great appreciation. Thank you. Rebecca, thank you so much. Okay, as we rearrange um, and move forward this evening, the next item is mayor's report. So, I'll turn it over to Mayor Lund. Good evening to council, to members of the community that are gathered here tonight, and to staff.

I want to take the opportunity in mayor's report tonight to thank the members of the Keep Washington Working Act Advisory Group for their presentation. I am truly grateful and humbled by their commitment to the rights and safety of everyone in our community, especially for our immigrant neighbors.

I also want to join the group in acknowledging the many city staff who supported this effort as ex officio members and as supportive staff. While the work group was preparing for tonight's presentation, I found myself reflecting on where we were on this topic in the winter of '23 and early in '24.

When I took office, this work was strained and it was at an impasse. Starting fresh took courage, it took accountability, and trust. And we saw the results of that courage here tonight. We have received actionable feedback about ways that we can do better.

Ways we can do better based on deep learning and their input will undoubtedly benefit our immigrant community. I'm looking forward to discussing the report further with council in the months ahead. I also wanted to share tonight about recent events.

I have been honored to be invited to partner with Lummi Nation. Over the last 2 weeks, I was able to break bread at the first salmon ceremony and was honored to be part of celebrating the opening of both the House of Healing Longhouse and Lummi Nation's new secure withdrawal and recovery facility.

Importantly, I was invited to spend a full day at Lummi Nation learning about their sacred spaces and hearing more about the history that is shaping their policies and and approaches to important conversations today.

I was formally asked to be a witness that day and I pledged to come back to Bellingham and report about my learnings. I can say confidently that Lummi is leading Whatcom County in building a continuum of care for their people, for this place, and they are leading this work with love.

The Lummi Nation has so much to be proud of right now. Each event was an opportunity to remind us how much we can learn from one another when we soften ourselves so we can fully engage in honest dialogue and sit with each other in complexity.

And it was a reminder of how much we truly need one another. And that's the end of mayor's report tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Marilyn. Next item on the agenda this evening is committee meeting Well, first council assignment reports.

If anyone has any reports from council assignments, so this would be assigned committees, boards, or other groups that you are participating in outside of your work on council. Councilmember Lilliquist.

I'll be pulling up some notes um if I can find them. Sorry. I This is supposed to make it easier, right, to have your notes? Uh this has to do with uh an event I uh attended um last week. It was uh a mini housing academy.

It was uh an event that was actually um a statewide uh event that was put on in person uh in Seattle, but there were four satellite virtual uh conferences uh in um and so officials from Bellingham, Blaine, Ferndale, Sedro-Woolley, Mount Vernon, and Skagit County all joined together at the office here in Bellingham with the Whatcom Council of Governments and we participated in listening to and asking questions of panelists who were there to discuss the housing affordability crisis.

Um some of the sessions addressed root causes and went over things that I think many councilmembers would be familiar with um such as restrictive land use policies and then charting some of the work that the city of Bellingham and the state has already done to remove the zoning barriers.

And there are also discussions about other kinds of solutions that might help address simply the the cost of construction, such as moving forward with regulations and approvals for modular uh types of building construction practices, where much of the building could be built offsite and then brought in.

But to do that, you'd still need to have a process where they were checked for compliance for building codes, you know, as they were built and as they were designed, and then uh shorter on-site building.

Uh so, I just wanted to report out that that was something that I and other local government officials attended across the state. Thank you very much. Any other items? Councilmember Anderson. Um I just wanted to re- reiterate what um Marilyn said.

There's several of us that went out to um Lummi to uh witness and celebrate um the opening of their uh their recovery center. Um and it's an amazing facility. Um and the fact that they were able to break ground and open this um here shortly and just a little over a year is pretty amazing.

Um it will have it'll start out with 16 beds and eventually move to 32. Um we had a wonderful tour to be able to talk about the process that they'll be employing to um help individuals in their community recover in a way that is very um true and recognizing of being spiritual healing as far as um the the way it's laid out and um the counseling and the services is very uh culturally enriching um for their members and um they really are leading.

I'm very proud um that they're part of the community and, um, that they're able to bring this work forward. There was, uh, a lot of assistance and financial, um, from state and other partners of theirs.

So, it's amazing to be able to see what is possible and I'm hoping we see a lot more of that, not just coming out of our, um, you know, tribal communities, but hopefully at a even a county level. I I think of the work that we'll be doing with, um, the outside of the jail treatment facilities, um, and envisioning what is possible, um, that we as a community can help steward forward.

So, um, it was an amazing day to spend out there. So, um, just wanted to share that. Any other items from council members? Okay. Um, moving forward with report of the day, we actually started this afternoon with a special meeting.

So, this was a special meeting. Um, there were five of us present. Council members Hammel and Lilliquist were excused, um, for this special hearing, but was agenda bill 24940. So, this was a closed record hearing to consider an ordinance relating to the vacation of the eastern 1/2, which is 15 ft of First Street abutting the western 110 ft of block 13, Silver Heights, At to Whatcom in Bellingham, Whatcom County, Washington.

So, the hearing examiner held a hybrid public hearing on the street vacation petition on April 15th of this year, 2026 at 6:00 p.m. here in city council chambers, where she received public testimony on the subject petition and recommended approval.

So, the complete record of the hearing examiner's proceedings can be found online through the city's website. So, this is actually through https://iframe.cob.org /iframes /pages /hearing-examiner-case -decisions.

aspx On March 13th, 2026, the petitioner remitted the full fair market appraised value for the subject right of way, which was $44,000. And the abutting property and right of way, just wanted to note that they are not within the Lake Whatcom watershed.

Um but this afternoon, the presentation was from Deputy City Attorney James Erb, who's with us here this evening as well. And there was a unanimous recommendation from the committee to um approve the ordinance as included, and I so move.

Second. Motion was made by the chair, and a second by Councilmember Huffman. Any discussion? Okay, seeing none, all in favor will say I. I. I. Any opposed or abstentions? Okay, seeing none, that passes 6-0 with one excused.

Great. Then we adjourned the special meeting and resumed with our regularly scheduled committee meetings. The first committee meeting this afternoon was budget and finance, and that committee is chaired by Councilmember Anderson.

So, I'll turn it over to her at this time. Thank you, Council President. We had three items before us today. So, our first one was agenda item 249. Excuse me, let me back up. Um absent today was uh Councilmember Hammel and Councilmember Lilliquist.

So, joining me on committee was Councilmember Huffman and Councilmember Williams. So, the first item before us was agenda item 24941, which was an interlocal agreement with Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission for a law enforcement grant award.

The Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission awarded the Bellingham Police Department $3,703,000 583. Um the grant through the local law enforcement grant program created by engrossed substitute House Bill 2015.

The grant revenue will help fund hiring officers, employee retention, training, and other public safety efforts. Um who had presented the information was our um Deputy Chief uh Ty Elmendorf. And um just to cover a few of the items that um this funding will be going towards, um there will be uh let's see, three um law new law enforcement officers.

These are frozen positions. Um so, the thing about um from hiring to training until they're out on patrol can take several years. So, um it's good to fill these because we have 22 officers who can retire at any given time.

So, the good thing about the funding is we can kind of get ahead before they retire. We can start doing some of that filling and hopefully moving forward. Um we will be spending about $688,000 to help um with the ART Co-Response Team.

Um they did have a funding cut, so we'll be able to backfill that. Um we'll be able to uh work on uh equipment and training and um basically purchasing equipment to help with safer pursuits. Um additional dash cams about a half a million will go to dash cams, which are um very valuable resources to be able to just see what has uh transpired.

And there's also um $100,000 that will help sustain the current um domestic violence and sexual assault services in the community. Um since I am on the DV SAS board, I'm going to ask a committee member to please move this forward because I'll be recusing myself.

I'm going to go ahead and do that. Uh the committee recommended approval uh of the interlocal agreement and I so move. Second. We have a uh first uh moving it forward and a second. Um Are there any questions before I call the Okay.

So um all those in favor say I. I. Um one absent and one recused. Um next item um is related to this. It's how we spend the money with it coming in and how it goes out. Um so the second agenda item is but um item number 24937.

Um an ordinance amending the 2026 budget to recognize revenue and expenditures associated with the public safety funding program award. It is our amendment two for the year. Um the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission awarded the Bellingham police again the 3,703,583 grant through the local law enforcement grant program created by the engrossed substitute bill 2015.

The grant revenue will help fund um hiring officers, employee retention training, and other public efforts Um similar to what I covered earlier. And again, this is just verification of the money coming in and the money that will be spent, which is the second amendment.

And again, I will ask a member of the committee to please move this forward since I'll be recusing myself. I will go I will move to approve the ordinance. Second. Wonderful. Thank you very much, colleagues.

So, we have a move forward and a motion to second. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. So, we have a vote of five with one absent and one recused. Our last item on the budget and finance committee is item number 24932.

It's a It was a discussion of the land use application fee schedule. The city basically has not notably updated the land use application fee schedule since its adoption in 2007. Um the city staff um basically brought forward a fee schedule into alignment or would like to bring the fee schedule into alignment with current costs and expenditures.

City staff discussed the potential updates to the land use application fee schedule. Included in this discussion was contextual purposes. Staff drew a distinction between the application fees, permit fees, impact fees, and system development charges.

Um we had additional consideration given to the implementation of a technology fee and the potential for cost recovery. And the information was provided by our planning director um Blake Lion. Also joining him today was assistant director of engineering for public works, Um, Wilson.

And also on hand was um, Kurt Nabbefeld and also to be able to answer anything through the permit. It was um, very illuminating to see that in the 20 years we have done absolutely very little if any um, cost adjustments um, adjustments to the fee schedule.

So, there was a comparison across um, comparable cities um, of size and nature across Washington and doing a comparison of what they charge for a lot of different development fees compared to what we do and we are in the very low percentile of that.

And so, um, because of cost of living we are probably compared to 20 years ago about 50% higher with cost, staff wages and such. And so, um, we kind of just got educated on where we are and kind of where we need to go.

So, staff will be bringing back in the future um, some work for us to consider those adjustment of fees so that we can actually keep up with the cost of doing business so we're not externalizing those costs um, from development onto our residents and other taxpayers.

So, it's about time we uh, look at bringing this forward so we can bring um, basically the cost a little more true to um, what it costs to do business in our planning and permit center. So, that was for information and discussion only and that ends the committee and I turn it back to Council President Stone.

Thank you very much. Um, the next committee that met today was Public Works and Natural Resources. That committee is chaired by Councilmember Lilliquist so I'll turn it over to him. Thank you President Stone.

The committee had a long session on a single item today. It was an ordinance adding a new chapter 11.05 to the Bellingham Municipal Code regarding speed limits. Um, based on uh, work that was done going back as far as 2024 for the what's called the local road safety plan which recommended the city engage in a citywide arterial speed limit study.

That was done. The study was conducted to develop a citywide speed limit setting policy that takes into account roadway context and safety of multimodal roadway users. The policy produced a tool for determining speed limits that was used to develop recommended updated speed limits for many arterial streets citywide.

Additionally, the policy study recommended lowering all residential speed limits to 20 miles per hour sort of blanket across the city. The proposed ordinance would establish these updated speed limits and recommendations.

So, there's actually a lot more to this that I'd like to mention. As I said, that this was actually based on some work that the city started um just under two years ago and as part of actually national trends trends in other cities to take new approaches to setting speed limits.

The old approach goes back 50 years and really basically assumes that people are driving the right speed already and all we have to do is put up our signs that match what they're doing rather than intentionally looking at what is actually safe to travel and what the road needs to be like to make that a safe speed.

One of the points that was made in the report here is that lowering the speed limits alone doesn't actually bring about safety by itself, but it does provide the sort of the logic for then going back and doing the engineering work to make the street match that speed limit.

So, that speed limit makes sense and actually functions well at that safe at that speed limit to achieve safety. Um Other things to I just mentioned that. Good. Can that. And then the other thing is that um This the speed limits won't won't just going to put up signs and everyone will have to follow the new rules.

This is actually phase approach, three phases beginning this summer. If we adopt this ordinance which staff recommended, the default speed limit does go down to 20 miles an hour citywide and we'll be then installing 50 gateway signs letting everyone know by the way unless otherwise posted 20 miles per hour is now the default speed limits.

In most cases arterials will have a higher speed limit than that, 25, 30, 35. Although in many cases those will be lower than they were but still above 20. There is a case where we are the proposing 20 mile an hour speed limits on arterials and those arterials are basically the downtown street grid.

Even those are officially arterials, they function more like 20 mile an hour streets right now. The traffic lights are already timed at 20 miles an hour and this would make that the legal speed limit in those downtown arterials.

And also starting this summer launching an awareness campaign to let everyone know the speed limits are changing. So this isn't a game of gotcha. We'll let everyone know, hand out warnings. That's what goes on this summer.

It won't be until next summer that we actually start replacing the speed signs for most of the arterials. That's when the arterial speed limits will be changed because that's when they will be posted.

And they'll begin another outreach campaign to shift people to those new norms at lower speeds and then finally phase three coming in 2028 replacing at speed limit signs on the remaining arterials to align with the ordinance.

So this will be something that's rolled out for three years and there will be signs to let everyone know that it is happening. We made a motion following the main motion but let me dispose of the first one.

This afternoon the committee recommended to approve an ordinance adding a new chapter 11.05 to the Bellingham Municipal Code regarding speed limits citywide and I so move. Second. Motion was made by Councilmember Lilliquist and a second by Councilmember Anderson.

Any discussion? Councilmember Huthman. Thank you. Um thanks thanks to staff for this report. I would definitely advise anybody that's interested in the subject um or is curious as maybe as to why uh this is such an easy and unanimous decision if it ends up being like that.

I don't want to predict anything, but um we were given some really compelling and thorough information. Um you know, I think some of the some of the bits and of information that were particularly compelling to me um even a little surprising were that between 2019 and 2023 there were 135 crashes with fatal or severe injury outcomes.

66 of them involved a pedestrian or a bicycle. That's that feels like a lot. Um and and there's also a map that was presented to us that shows hap- it happening all over the city. Um we also uh were given some information that I [sighs] wish I could show you this this little infographic cuz it uh it shows that 20 miles an hour the pedestrian chance of survival is 90%.

At the chance of pedestrian survival is 50% and at 40 that chance goes down to 10%. Um that that convinces me that I should probably drive 20 miles an hour. Um especially in areas where there might be kiddos or dogs.

So um you know, I'm a person that I will admit I really like driving fast. I'm also somebody that is frequently running late and um is frequently running all over town. So some of the folks that wrote in one of the comments that we heard was that um th- this will cause frustration from drivers.

I get it. Um I think that in some instances instances it probably will cause some frustration, but I think that there is quite a bit of evidence to show here that um that we could save lives um and and lead to less severe injuries if we make these moves.

And I as Councilmember Liliquist stated, um this is just one aspect of the toolbox to to try to keep um our community safe uh on the streets and when they're traveling. Um but uh we have I think if we had been able to build our streets and our roads the way we would want them to today um rather than 100 years ago, they would look a lot different.

And so we'll continue modifying um modifying the streets to uh to meet those newer standards um and that newer understanding. So, I will be voting to support the motion. Councilmember Anderson. So, um I'm supporting the motion and I had mentioned earlier not everybody goes back to the day session to hear the conversation.

So, I'll kind of repeat myself. Um spending 15 years on a neighborhood board and then uh almost 7 years on City Council um most of my emails are about um roads and traffic and parking. Um for years as a neighborhood um board member always trying to get public works to change speed limit in particular areas that were unsafe.

Um and it was always like we need a traffic study and before we could do that. And so once we got on council, we kind of got the traffic study going. Um there are very specific areas that um I've always kind of felt were very unsafe.

They generate a lot of emails um that people really wanted the speed limit lowered cuz they're near parks. There's a lot of kids frequently going through these areas, and I was never able to get those speed limits reduced.

And all of them that I've been concerned about for well over a decade are being reduced in those areas, and it will create a lot of safety cuz they're not school zones that automatically we could bring down to 20, but they're they're high impact areas that children are playing or traversing.

You know, think Lake Whatcom. Um and I've had emails from people about this who were like, "Well, just put speed bumps in." And they're talking about arterial roads. So, imagine Samish Way, um you know, driving down from the university to head downtown, you have speed bumps on every block to try to slow traffic down.

Speed bumps don't work in a vast majority of locations. Um neighborhoods have tried to get really creative to slow traffic down. Um in some of our older neighborhoods, and I think of Happy Valley, by painting mosaics and and you know, being very artistic in the intersections to try to, you know, like slow people down in those areas because again, there's a lot of children frequently um in those areas.

The fact that if anybody here has gone to college and took physics, you know the rate of speed and impact, and the higher the speed, the greater impact and likelihood of severe injury or death. And the city is getting more dense.

Um we're getting more populated, and we have a lot more people on sidewalks, and not all neighborhoods have sidewalks. Um people have to walk along the edge of the road. So, um I'm really happy this has come forward.

I know that not everybody will be, but we'll have time to adjust to it. And the the whole reasoning by behind this is creating safer transportation for all, whether you drive, you walk, you roll, you bike.

Um pets, children. Um hopefully safety will increase and some of those statistics we've seen, um hopefully those will come down. So, yes, I'm sure we'll get some emails on this, but I'll be happy to respond to those.

Other comments or items from council members on this topic? No? Okay. If not, we have a motion before us to approve the ordinance brought forward by council member Lillquist and a second by council member Anderson.

There's no further discussion, I'll call the question. All in favor will say aye. Aye. Any opposed or abstentions? Okay, seeing none, that passes 6-0 with one excused. And then following that, uh as part of that discussion, um oh, just to mention safety, other cities like uh Portland and Seattle that have also lowered the default speed limit, they have seen substantial loss drops in fatalities and serious injuries.

So, it it works. Um this has to do with a particular segment of arterial where the Old Fairhaven Parkway in um my ward where I've received uh complaints over the years um about speeding. The drop in the speed limit, not right away, but eventually from 35 to 30 addresses that.

But the issue that I was identifying with the constituents has to do with when the transition occurs from the arterial speed of 30 mph dropping to 25 when you get into Fairhaven. And right now that transition occurs after you're already into Fairhaven, but after the blind curve.

And so, um looking at the new uh methodology for when you would determine what the proper speeds would be, um it seemed clear to me that the speed limit should lower actually more like where 18th Street would cross the Fairhaven Parkway rather than where 15th Street crosses it, which actually where Donovan comes in.

So, we made a motion this afternoon to direct staff to develop language to for that particular thing, change the transition in speed, lowering it from 25 to 30 mph to 25 at a different point in the arterial.

They'll bring back that language, but in addition, the motion also directed staff to reach out to WSDOT. The reason being is that Fairhaven Parkway then goes out Chuckanut Drive is actually a state highway, and we don't actually have complete authority.

We don't have the final say on the speed limits. So, our motion, my motion, is to lower that speed limit for safety, but we need to check with WSDOT to see if that will fly with them as well. And so, that motion was a a direction to staff.

Does that need to be repeated this evening as well? Okay. Then, that's the end of my report. I'd like to mention it's Public Works Week. >> [laughter] >> Happy Public Works Week. I hope you sent everyone a card.

Or at least just greater appreciation when you turn on a faucet or a flush the toilet. >> the engineers in your in your families. Um next this afternoon was Committee of the Whole. There were no specific agenda items before us, but time for old and new business.

Any items this evening for old and new? Okay. Seeing none, we had one executive session item this afternoon. So, this was an item related to litigation, um the Scopelitti versus City of Bellingham et al.

This was with Phillips. Staff provided information on a litigation matter. And at this time, I will entertain a motion authorizing the mayor to retain outside counsel to represent the City of Bellingham as a defendant in this matter.

So moved. Second. Motion is made by Councilmember Williams and a second by Councilmember Anderson. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor will say I. I. I. Any opposed or abstentions? Okay. Seeing none, that passes 6-0 with one excused.

Great. Next, we have consent agenda. >> Move approval. Second. Motion's been made by Councilmember Relilquist and a second by Councilmember Williams. Any discussion or items to be pulled? Seeing none, all in favor will say I.

I. Any opposed or abstentions? Seeing none, that passes 6-0 with one excused. And we do not have any final consideration of ordinances this evening. So, a reminder that our next City Council meeting will be Monday, June 1st, 2026.

Until then, that concludes the regular business of the meeting and we will now move to the public comment period. If you're watching live online or on BTV, the broadcast will now end. However, you can continue watching via Zoom at cob.org/cczoom or listen via phone by dialing 253-215-8782 and entering meeting ID 871-5188-5205 and password nine.

Again, that's cob.org/cczoom or dial 253-215-8782 and enter meeting ID 871-5188-5205 and password nine to continue to watch or listen live. If you're watching a recorded version of this meeting in the future, you can view public comment videos at meetings.cob.org.