Community Solutions Workgroups

Purpose

Community Solutions Workgroups are a series of short-term, action-oriented groups convened by the mayor on specific topics of interest in the community. The Mayor, city staff, and community stake-holders meet over the course of several months to produce an action plan around the identified topic.

City-Wide Housing Affordability

In Summer 2013, the City revisited the work done by the Countywide Housing Affordability Task Force (CHAT) in 2008 and recommended possible changes to city code to help encourage and support affordable housing. Bellingham City Council and the Mayor convened a group of community members to revisit the work done by CHAT and to examine where the city has followed through on action strategies and where more actions can be recommended.

This “citywide” affordable housing taskforce met several times and focused on examining the list of six main goals produced by the 2008 CHAT task force:

• Codify housing action plan organizations
•  Create an Affordable Housing Investment Fund
•  Strive to reduce land and building costs
•  Provide incentives for the creation of affordable housing
•  Retain older housing stock
•  Retain and replace mobile and manufactured homes.

The Workgroup concentrated on goals 3 and 4: strive to reduce land and building costs, and provide incentives for the creation of affordable housing. The group provided and refined a list of 16 recommended actions that the City could take to improve affordable housing in our community, including making it easier and affordable to build smaller houses, adjusting impact fees, examining allowing single-family homes to include additional dwelling uses, exploring the idea of wetland mitigation banking, and providing neighborhoods the opportunity to pilot some of these actions.

More Information on the 2008 CHAT report can be found here:
https://www.cob.org/gov/public/bc/chat

• 2013 CHAT Action Items (PDF)

Downtown Health and Safety

Convened in October, 2013 and completed in January, 2014, the Workgroup on Downtown Health and Safety sought to provide public health and safety solutions for various downtown challenges. The group was made up of city staff representing the police department, the parks and recreation department, the mayor’s office and the city attorney’s office, and community stakeholders representing social services, the Downtown Bellingham Partnership, property owners, business owners, residents, the Liquor Control Board and the Whatcom County Health Department. Together, the group identified and prioritized issues, identified solutions and produced a strategy for implementation.

For more information about the workgroup, please see the mayor’s Civic Agenda article “Work group formed to address downtown challenges”.

• Community Solutions Workgroup Report – March 10, 2014 (PDF)

Continuum of Housing

In July of 2017, Mayor Kelli, along with City Council Members Dan Hammill and April Barker, convened a Workgroup on the continuum of housing in Bellingham.  The purpose of the Workgroup is to make recommendations on prioritizing strategies to be adopted as part of the City’s five-year Consolidated Plan and new Housing Levy.  The Workgroup is comprised of community stakeholders to provide input into the prioritization process on housing and homelessness issues.  The Workgroup’s recommendations will inform development of the 2018-2022 Consolidated Plan and identify priorities for the next Housing Levy.  The Workgroup is expected to meet approximately 6 times ending in November 2017.

Meeting Materials:

Meeting #1 – July 27, 2017

• Meeting Agenda #1 (PDF)
• Meeting #1 Presentation (PDF)
• Meeting #1 Notes (PDF)

Meeting #2 – August 10, 2017

• Meeting Agenda #2 (PDF)
• Meeting #2 Presentation (PDF)
• Meeting #2 Notes (PDF)
• Meeting # 2 ACES Program Information (PDF)
• Meeting #2 ACES Stress & Brain Growth (PDF)
• Meeting # 2 CHIP Information (PDF)
• Meeting #2 Whatcom County Healthy Planning (PDF)

Meeting #3 – September 14, 2017

• Meeting Agenda #3 (PDF)
• Meeting # 3 Presentation (PDF)
• Meeting #3 Q&A Responses from the Group (PDF)
• Meeting #3 Handout (PDF)
• Meeting #3 Notes (PDF)
• Meeting #3 Strategy Prioritization Exercise (PDF)

Meeting #4 – October 12, 2017

• Meeting Agenda #4 (PDF) 
• Wrap up and Agency Leads for Top Strategies (PDF)

Recommendations

• Report of Recommendations (PDF)
• Strategy Implementation Matrix (PDF)

Contacts

The staff contact for the Continuum of Housing group is Samya Lutz . She can be reached by e-mail at slklutz@cob.org or by phone at 360-778-8385.