Blaine RIP

5/16/25 letter to city and county:

Canadian shoppers have always been unreliable due to currency exchange rates, long before COVID and tariffs kept them away. Blaine public officials know this, and yet, they continued to base our local economy on catering to Canadians. Redoing the sidewalks downtown won't change anything. Who wants to come here when the core of downtown is half boarded up and the other half is comprised of a street-front church, second rate restaurants, and a second hand clothing store. This is not a draw for sophisticated Vancouverites.

Now it turns out there is a toxic waste site under Chevron and Starbuck's, right in the heart of the Central Business District. Cleaning that up will be in the news, news that Canadians read. So much for that plan.

Rather than hold a community meeting on downtown redevelopment where more thoughtful Blaine citizens could offer insight into the dilemma, the City of Blaine developed the downtown plan behind closed doors with crooked downtown developers such as Gurdeep Bains and Councilman Mike Hill. We could have told them, and we did, that their plan was not going to work. Can you imagine what Canadians and other potential visitors thought when Blaine City Council voted on June 10, 2024 to privatize all downtown on-street parking?

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