TAX ABATEMENT MEASURE

7/10/25 letter to city and county:

The Washington State Growth Management Act was adopted by the Washington State Legislature in 1991 as a TAX ABATEMENT MEASURE. Unregulated, unplanned growth was causing municipalities to go in the red dealing with the impacts of this chaos on local taxes and critical areas such as drinking water aquifers. Thirty-four years later, the City of Blaine is presently destroying its Critical Aquifer Recharge Area and planning to destroy Birch Bay's, all for luxury homes that will significantly increase utility rates and rents, already unaffordable for a community where one third of the population lives in poverty. 

This is all made possible by the failure of Whatcom County to supervise planning by the cities in its jurisdiction, and by the failure of the State of Washington to enforce Growth Management Act mandates and the federal Clean Water Act. This is not planning for sustainable development; it is a complete abandonment of the rule of law, and it WILL INCREASE OUR TAXES while polluting our environment.


 

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