Blaine Confidential

Planning commission, cities clash over urban growth -- Salish Current , February 16, 2026   “They have not identified any source of wetlands mitigation, what it’s going to cost, how much is involved, who’s going to pay for it and whether the cost actually makes the land affordable or unaffordable at the end of it,” Browne said. “Blaine has to be held to account for saying how is this economically viable, how is it going to be funded?”  -- Rud Browne,  Whatcom County Planning Commission  “Our land capacity analysis has already accounted for all wetlands and their maximum buffers remove that area from our land capacity analysis so we can accommodate 20 years of industrial and commercial job growth and not impact any wetlands whatsoever,” he said in an interview. “There is zero wetland mitigation required to meet our employment allocations, and it will cost us that same figure, zero.” -- Alex Wenger, Blaine Community Development Services

February 18 letter to Whatcom County: Blaine Community Development Services is the posterchild for Growth Management fraud. (See  Blaine Case Study  in the September 2025 issue of  Whatcom Watch .)  The City of Blaine never held a single Growth Management orientation for the community to participate in setting priorities for civic center redevelopment, Critical Aquifer Recharge Area and wetlands protection, or the proposed expansion of the city at Birch Point. Instead, the city met behind closed doors with developers to come up with their vision, and after they passed ordinances enacting the developers vision, they sold it to the public.  Part of that sales job was by Ocean Farms LLC, the Birch Point developer who pushed for expanding the Blaine city limits at Birch Point so he could develop under the city's environmental standards, which are significantly lower than those of Whatcom County. Ocean Farms LLC paid for the public relations campaign to influence Bla...

February 16 letter to Ferndale City Council: Using the police to attack their political opponents is one thing Mayor Mary Lou Steward and President Donald Trump have in common. They are both pathological liars involved in criminal misconduct, but it is their intolerance for  open government  and the rule of law--as well as their willingness to use police intimidation--that sets them apart from honest politicians. Ferndale Police Department's involvement (see attached) in helping Blaine Chief of Police Rodger Funk  defame , and use  police misconduct  to intimidate, four Blaine open government activists holding Mayor Steward accountable is now being investigated by the WA Criminal Justice Training Commission (CJTC). Blaine Chief of Police Rodger Funk, Ferndale Police Officer Richard Hart, and Blaine Police Officer Zachary Taxdahl apparently cooked the books on the so-called investigation of citizens opposing financial conflicts of interest by Blaine officials (se...

Thursday was the two-year anniversary of Mayor Steward's ambush of Donna Newman (aka McGaffic), who had exposed corrupt dealings between the city council and developer Skip Jansen. One year ago, I wrote Blaine City Council about this corruption perpetrated by the mayor in an email titled   truth and consequences .  The 2/12/24 ambush by Mayor Steward and Councilman Hill--where they started shouting at Ms. Newman, provoking her to shout back--was planned in advance so that the mayor could have the police remove her. The Northern Light then reported that Ms. Newman had misbehaved, ignoring the official corruption.  The preconceived ambush then served as pretext for the mayor to ban oral public comment at city council meetings. The ban continues to this day. 

The takeover of the City of Blaine by the real estate industry, and the destruction it has caused to the rule of law in the Drayton Harbor/Birch Bay watersheds, could not have happened without the active support of The Northern Light. Under new ownership, The Northern Light is now at a crossroads; will it continue to cater to the real estate industry and defame citizens holding city hall accountable, or will the reporters who helped create this civic nightmare be replaced? So far under the new ownership, nothing has changed.

Covering up crimes at city hall and pollution by crooked developers has been the main purpose of The Northern Light staff 2023-26. For that to change under the new owner--Kari Mar-- Northern Light reporters Patrick Grubb, Grace McCarthy, and Nolan Baker must go. Their dishonest reporting has destroyed democracy in Blaine, and enabled environmental destruction of the Drayton Harbor and Birch Bay watersheds.