TNL MISLEADING READERS

Geoffrey Baker's February 5 letter to the editor of The Northern Light (see below) corrects the erroneous record by The Northern Light on Water Planning Matters and the Avista SEPA appeal.

The Editor:

I am writing to request corrections to the January 28, 2026 article, “Blaine City Council denies SEPA appeal for Avista at Birch Point development.”

The article describes me as someone “who leads Blaine Water Coalition, the activist group that fought for the SEPA hearing.” While the SEPA appeal was filed under the name Blaine Water Coalition, this is not an organization and BWC in name has not existed since September 2025. Despite my explicit clarification of this detail as documented in the meeting transcript, the reporter got this wrong.

I volunteer for WaterPlanningMatters.org (WPM). WPM is a regional unincorporated organization operating as an affiliate of Bellingham’s non-profit Responsible Development.

Additionally for at least five times now, The Northern Light has misled its readership with repeated, selective statements about my pro se public records lawsuit against the city of Blaine.

Portraying my cost-saving, good faith effort to obtain public records for community-volunteer work as a “potential criminal act,” a phrase selectively drawn from a court reporter’s summary, and not the judges ‘actual words,’ misleads readers and undermines public understanding of both my intentions and the judge’s actual guidance. Due to procedural errors on my part, the judge never even considered the case. The brief PRA complaint was filed August 8 and withdrawn on September 5, 2025 without an expensive attorney, to obtain public records the city had been withholding for our citizen SEPA hearing. We were disadvantaged without 100-plus records that were being withheld. The hearing examiner agreed there was a problem with city record delays and ordered the city to produce the records. This was done and my PRA suit was withdrawn.

Thank you for your attention to these corrections and for your ongoing coverage of water, land use, and development issues in our city and Birch Bay.

Geoffrey Baker

Blaine

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