Fast becoming a landmark is the Whatcom Transit Authority
(WTA) Cordata Station, in business just two months. Your Neighborhood Association is delighted to
have WTA Manager of Community Relations & Marketing Manager Maureen
McCarthy as guest speaker at the Tuesday (April 14) 7 p.m. GM/CNA general
meeting. In her job since 2002, Maureen also
is responsible for the Whatcom Smart Trips Program. A professional advocate for walking, biking
and riding the bus, Maureen is herself a frequent walker, cyclist, and bus
rider. Among the subjects covered by
her will be an update of the new Cordata facility plus an historical perspective
of the WTA. One of the impressive facts
about the WTA is its reputation as the fastest growing of 150 U.S. transportation
systems. The meeting will be at
Birchwood Presbyterian Church, 400 Meadowbrook Ct.
The Cordata Community Gardens
Project, under the
impressive leadership of the Andrews--Ben and Dee plus Bill Smith, has reached another
important stage. It’s the selling of
raffle tickets, 2,000 of them at the rare good price of $1 each. Among the raffle prizes are: $75 in
merchandise from Home Depot, dinner tickets from Billy McHale, Pickford Theater
membership and a wall hanging quilt with many more coming in before the June 6
celebration of the gardens. Check in
with B. J. Sherwood bjsbham@yahoo.com regarding
the buying or selling of tickets. In the
parlance of horse racing, the project is in the far turn and more volunteer
help is needed. One of the home stretch
aspects will be the moving of approximately 1,000 wheelbarrows of compost from
its nearby gardens location. Those of
sturdy mien contact the Andrews at 738-8778.
What a difference a struggling economy makes. Take the proposed Bay View Tower 23-story
presence on what is still a parking lot at 1217 N. State. Although the city had rescinded the building
permit a year ago on the basis of believing the project had been abandoned, the
developers (Bay View Tower LLC) recently had that decision expelled by court
order. The original plans called for a
high-rise of 240 feet making it the tallest building between Vancouver and
Seattle and (sound the trumpets, please!) 28 feet more than the proposed
Bellingham Towers whose future is equally murky if non-existent. Bay View Tower LLC is seeking damages from
the city of $3.675 million plus $7.7 million in lost profits. If memory serves, a breathless press story of
four years ago told of wealthy Hong Kongers grabbing up million dollar Bay View
Tower condos while locals had to be content with lesser digs beginning in the
low $300,000s.
A recent library poll, whose results came on the heels of
establishing a drop off location at the Cordata Community Food Co-op, suggested
B‘hamsters favor giving up Sunday hours as a budgetary measure. Nearly 3,000 respondents, representing 93% of
those contacted, indicated a preference (43%) to give up two morning or
afternoon hours of a weekday as opposed to those (21%) opting for a full
weekday. While the establishment of a
drop-off location adds substance to limited pick-up service at Whatcom
Community College, we were struck by a spokesperson’s summation of the move
emphasizing the WHY of it: “without driving all the way downtown.” We couldn’t put it any better since that’s
one of the major points in our demands for a Cordata branch library. There’s a great deal of difference between
being serviced from afar by a library and having its joys within Bellingham’s
fastest-growing Neighborhood.
A new partnership is that of Whatcom Community College
and Community Food Co-op and it’s aimed at foodies. Having offered cooking classes separately for
a number of years, the two organizations have partnered to offer 21 cooking
classes to be held at the Co-op’s new teaching kitchen at the Cordata store,
and at the downtown store. A list of
classes and registration forms may be reached at: whatcomcommunityed.com. Foodies, those amateurs who love food for
consumption, study, preparation and news, should not be confused with gourmets,
those epicures of refined taste. That’s
the word from Wikipedia, a sometimes incomplete source. Your humble scribbler likes William Safire’s
take on the upper echelon of food consumption: “After eating, an epicure gives a thin smile of
satisfaction; a gastronome, burping
into his napkin, praises the food in a magazine; a gourmet, repressing his burp, criticizes the food in the same
magazine; a gourmand belches happily
and tells everybody where he ate; a glutton
embraces the white porcelain altar, or, more plainly, he barfs.”
Deadline Dash….A sign of the times involves the
decision by the City to assign four cops to work exclusively in what is now 24
Neighborhoods with the addition of nearby King Mountain. Three of the police are being transferred
from duty in the three Bellingham School District high schools. The move reflects budget problems plus the
knowledge that difficult economic times produce crime increases….Incidentally,
the next Neighborhood will be located north of King Mountain. It will be called Van Wyck….Irv Kupcinet, the
late Chicago Sun-Times columnist, used to refer to the city’s downtown main stem,
Michigan Boulevard, as Boul Mich. With
land angel Ted Mischaikov having provided such a huge helping hand in the
creation of the Cordata Community Gardens, perhaps Boul Misch would be a proper
name for the 300 ft. gravel path built by Ted that leads to the garden?....It’s
11 down and 21 to go in terms of new buses for the WTA. The problem of the aging buses (they hit the
road in 1995) got a combined jump start from federal and state
governments--offers that couldn’t be refused by WTA board of directors. In spite of lower gas prices, ridership
continues to increase with January numbers up 21% over 2008’s….Bellingham
business closures for the year are up but not dangerously so. The first quarter saw 25, a pace that would
produce 100 for 2009. Last year’s total
was 85 while the year before had but 35….Memories of those awful General Motors
TV spots announcing the professionalism of its employees (“We’re professional”)
returned recently when Whatcom County announced that a public works employee
had become one having, apparently, advanced from either the amateur or semi-pro
ranks….Congratulations to Rod Dean of Heronwood. Rod is now a member of the Greenway Advisory
Committee. His term ends March 30, 2012…..A
final thought: With City Hall looking at
cutting jobs to meet the realities of a sagging economy, one wonders if the
problem’s best solution is simply the temporary reduction of everyone’s salary
until times get better?
More next
time,
Bob Sanders
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