Proud of our snowplows: On April 1st, we issued a fictitious announcement about selling our snowplows and building a gondola, all in good fun for April Fool’s Day. Part of the irony of it was that the City did sell old, failing snowplows nearly 30 years ago, in 1995, replacing them with modern equipment in 1997 but not soon enough for a 1996 snow and ice storm, which brought our area to a standstill that no amount of equipment could have prevented. Rest assured, the City has no plans to sell its snow removal equipment, in fact, we are expanding and modernizing it. We’re already planning for next winter by stocking up on salt, sand, spare parts and tire chains, and training additional snowplow drivers. We’re proud of our snowplows and the 50+ staff members who are trained to operate them, many pictured above alongside our stockpile of sand and salt. See our Winter Weather Preparation page for factual information (we’re serious this time!) about our snow removal equipment and procedures.
Speaking of snowplows: Snowplows and other heavy equipment and supplies need a lot of storage space. Plans are now underway to reconstruct our Woburn Street operations site and convert it to a seasonal equipment and park operations facility. This will include storage for our growing fleet of snowplows, de-icing equipment, salt and sand as well as large lawn mowers, landscaping materials, a plant nursery and more. Funding for the project is included in the City’s 2023-2024 budget and will include pedestrian improvements around the site. The Lakeway Community Garden and Gardenview Tiny House Village at the same location will remain and not be impacted by the redevelopment. Construction of the new facility is planned to begin this year and be complete by winter 2024.
Spring/Summer Playbook: The Spring/Summer Playbook is now available, 80 pages of fun and enriching recreation and educational programs, camps and events. Registration for our Parks & Recreation Department spring and summer offerings begins Monday, April 10. See our Playbook page to view the online Playbook, see our Parks Scholarships page for information about financial support for parks programs, and visit cob.org/ezreg to sign up for programs.
Online mapping tool: Do you know about City IQ? City IQ is short for “City Information Query,” our online map viewer that allows anyone, anywhere to search for Bellingham-area land, utility and other information and create custom maps that include property boundaries, aerial photos, location of utility services and much more. Best of all it works on all devices and platforms, so use it on your smart phone, tablet or desktop computer! The application is intuitive and step-by-step instructions are provided to help users access extensive layers of property data stored in City, county, state and other publicly available systems. City IQ was developed and is maintained by our award-winning multi-department geographic information systems (GIS) team. Access this powerful tool on the City IQ page. In addition, a gallery of frequently requested maps and other GIS and map-related tools available on our Maps page.
