Central Business District

My letter to the editor of Cascadia Daily News was published this morning:

Editor,
The comments by Blaine Planning Commissioners in The Northern Light show that they are continuing to neglect the foundational matter of the illegality of the public process leading up to their deliberations over Central Business District (CBD) upzoning for condo developers that will displace parking for commerce.

Upholding the law is clearly not a concern to any of them, since they have not responded to a single email of the many that I have sent them about the issue of official corruption by Blaine Community Development Services (CDS). Nor have they discussed the Pentland report from former Downtown Advisory Committee (DAC) member Glen Pentland who revealed the manipulation of DAC by CDS and the self-dealing by DAC members Gurdeep Bains and Scott Meaker.

The Central Business District Project Charter (approved on Aug. 8, 2022) states the City of Blaine will “encourage early and continuous public participation throughout the process of reviewing and updating the CBD Development Standards … and engage in two-way communication with citizens, and create an environment for open decision-making, and responsiveness to citizen input.” That never happened.

As Pentland notes, “The Committee appeared to become a public relations ploy to help ‘sell’ height increases and parking requirement decreases to City Council, the Planning Commission and the Community.” As he observes, “The appearances of conflicts of interest are significant and bring into question the validity of the DAC’s recommendations … No efforts appear to have been made to request members appearing to have conflicts of interests to abstain from voting on June 6, 2023.”

Jay Taber

Blaine 

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