People for Lake Padden

Proposed Change to Zoning Near Lake Padden

We recently received the following letter via the South Neighborhood.  It is from Betsy Gross, Director of People for Lake Padden, and her contact information is at the bottom if you would like more information.  Basically, several years ago the County Council removed an area around Yew Street Road south to Lake Padden from Bellingham’s Urban Growth Area, thereby limiting development.  Water quality studies of the lake have been ongoing.  There is now a proposal to put that area back in the UGA, and People for Lake Padden wants that decision postponed until more data is collected.  They are asking for support from other neighborhoods.  If you would like to hear a presentation regarding this issue at one of our meetings, let the board know via a comment to this post or an email to any of us.   Lylene  

 I am attaching two documents:
1.  Fact sheet providing a brief description of just who People for Lake Padden is, and what we are doing;
2.  Boilerplate letter of support for People for Lake Padden’s request of County Council to defer the decision to reinstate UGA status to the lands falling within the Lake Padden watershed until the scientific studies underway are completed and can inform the discussion, resulting in a knowledge based decision about development scenarios.  When you open it you will see that I have provided County Council members’ email addresses and phone numbers to make it easy for your email recipients to respond to our request.
 
County Council has scheduled this proposal for review/discussion/ vote at their February 28th meeting.  Here is the link which takes the reader to the original County Council bill describing the proposal at hand:  http://www.co.whatcom.wa.us/council/meetings/council/packet/archived/2011/packet1206.pdf   The reader who checks this link out would need to scroll to pp 916-929 to read AB 2011-210, the proposal we are concerned about. 
Letters of support would be greatly appreciated and, obviously, the more the better.  They’ll need to be received by County Council prior to their February 28th meeting.  Of course, it would also be wonderful if interested citizens would also like to attend this meeting and testify on our behalf during the public comments period.
 
I appreciate your support for getting this letter distributed to both the South Neighborhood Assn and the South Side Neighborhood Coalition boards/ membership.  It almost goes without saying that Lake Padden is well worth preserving and that we all have the same goal in mind – namely, smart growth – which includes protecting our natural resources for the enjoyment of current and future citizens.
 
Please let folks with questions know I am happy to provide more information; they just neet to call me at 715-1173 and/ or by checking out our website: www.p4lp.org. We also have a speakers’ bureau and are happy to attend a gathering to provide a briefing on our project.
 
Betsy Gross, Director
People for Lake Padden
www.p4lp.org
715-1173
 

 

This entry was posted in Coalition of South Neighborhoods, Lake Padden and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.