Focus on Tourism

My 4/20/2024 letter to Blaine City Council, planning commission and community development:

You have got the comprehensive plan process all wrong. Instead of beginning with a backroom deal between city hall and developers to launch a campaign to build a 72' tall wall of view-blocking condos downtown, the comprehensive plan by law is to begin with a community vision. A community vision is arrived at by holding town halls to discuss in open two-way communication the many aspects of our once-in-a-century major makeover of Blaine. 

This major makeover includes both downtown and civic center, which is where your focus should be for economic recovery. A wall of condos without parking--necessitating construction of a municipal parking garage so shoppers won't be displaced by condo residents on Peace Portal--is detrimental to our economy. 

What would be a boon to our economy is a community art center on the old city hall site, which is consistent with the city economic recovery plan of tourism development. Every successful tourist town in our region has two things: art galleries and museums. Blaine has none, and our city just cut the annual budget by 33%. I have argued for two years now that this is where our focus should be.

Sadly, the 2024 work plan adopted by the city makes no mention of this opportunity for serious economic recovery that benefits the community, not just developers. Instead, your game plan has been backward from the outset, making the Blaine Comprehensive Plan invalid under the Growth Management Act.

You have squandered every opportunity to do this right, intentionally neglecting your duty under the law and to the citizens of Blaine you claim to represent. A day of reckoning is nigh.