Bottom-Up Shorts: How Normal People Can Make a Big Difference
Daniel Bloemker is a Strong Towns member and Local Conversation leader from Bellingham, Washington. He’s been instrumental in advancing local efforts on parking reform, housing, and community spaces. He joins Norm in this Bottom-Up Short to discuss these efforts and the progress the city has made.
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Norm Van Eeden Petersman 0:01
Welcome to bottom up shorts. I'm Norm of strong towns, and after meeting 1000s of strong towns, members often think I've got to tell you about this person, and that's what bottom up shorts is all about. Quick introductions to regular people doing exciting things. They're not superheroes. They once felt like you might unsure if they could make a difference. And today, my guest is Daniel Bloemker in Bellingham, Washington. I have the chance of meeting Daniel, as well as other members of the local conversation group that has started there strong towns Bellingham at an event that I was doing, and it gave me confidence that the work that is underway in Bellingham is in really good hands, and I'm excited to be able to share with you about Bellingham nomination as one of the strongest town contestants, and the processes that are underway to really help the city establish itself with with a deeper well of prosperity and greater opportunity within the community. And so Daniel, when you talk about these local issues in your community, what are some of the major issues that come up, and what is the role that strong towns Bellingham is taking in trying to help address those issues? Well, thank
Daniel Bloemker 1:13
you for having me on norm. One of the biggest issues we have is that Bellingham, Washington is one of the least affordable cities in the United States. It has, we have only so much housing thus far going around, but we have tech salaries coming from Seattle, but we don't have, you know, the housing stock to support it. So it's become a major issue in this the county, Whatcom County of there's just not enough housing, and therefore everyone competes for the same housing, and it becomes less and less affordable over time. What we've been trying to do as strong towns Bellingham is try to put in the common sense reforms that help to create more housing, and thus help keep people that otherwise wouldn't be able to live here if we continue down this path, that they can stay here and continue to live in a beautiful seaside town under the mountains.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 2:12
Yeah, and you've been also campaigning around parking reform. Do you want to share a little bit more about kind of not only the efforts that maybe the city has been undertaking, but also the role that supportive citizenry has really played in this,
Daniel Bloemker 2:24
that has the parking mandates around that has been one of my biggest eye openers for just the whole public process and how decisions get made in a municipality. I went into this just like anyone else of like, Hmm, I see all these problems in my community, but I don't know. I don't have any influence on any of these things, like I am just a person. I can't do these things. But through going getting involved with my local conversation, getting involved with people that had other similar interests, I was able to, we were able to kind of get involved in that discussion around parking mandates. It had been a very slow burning thing that was kind of catching around in the background and wondering whether that was something that was going to happen. And it was very we got to get involved and learn that's kind of that process is unusually citizen motivated. You have a lot of council people and Planning Commission and all these people elected or appointed that are making these decisions, and a lot of them believe the same things you do. They might believe in parking mandates are attacks on those that don't drive and all these other things. But if they go to a meeting and 90% of people there are saying, this is a horrible idea, we should never talk about this. This is not worth our time. They might believe in it. They're going to vote against it. They need the public support, or at least enough support to feel like they can make a decision, and they're not sticking their neck out in a way that's going to get them deposed, voted out, whatever. Politicians have a very simple calculus, and it's who gets the most votes the next cycle, and if they feel the decision they're about to make is going to come back at them way worse than they thought. They're not going to make the courageous decision.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 4:28
And so often have a really clear sense of timing as well. Or, you know, that's the maybe there's just an element of luck or an element of fortuitousness, but just that opportunity to time when issues should should peak. And sometimes this can be the work that I think groups like strong towns Bellingham, really have to play of helping to make the conditions right for that. Now, finally, to be the time for that as you think, I mean not only on parking, but also in housing. There's also transit and transportation within the community that's been an area of focus for you as well. So can you maybe describe a little bit of the focus on those things? And also, how do you manage to sort of keep attention on several major topics all at the same time,
Daniel Bloemker 5:11
keeping top attention on many topics has, in fact, been one of our challenges of trying to correctly distribute our manpower, brain power in ways that we can actually do multiple things. And part of that has been kind of siloing into different into different focuses, like there's walk and roll Bellingham, who are great, and they exist in Bellingham, and did a lot of the preparatory work for the parking mandates, and that they do a lot of stuff around, a lot of stuff around, like walkable transportation, walkable and bikeable kind of stuff. Along those lines, we kind of silo a little more into the housing and greater infrastructure, kind of like storefronts. The mixed use the city right now is trying to get into the more we're doing our whole five year comp plan. And so we show up, we comment at that, trying to get both the Planning Commission and the council to include either like small businesses that allow things. I know a lot of people show up for the Whatcom Transit Authority they're starting to look into exploring bus rapid transit and seeing how where that's going to play out. Gets a little touchy with the federal dollars right now, but trying to figure out how that would work in our community. But it is. It is a challenge right now to kind of manage all these different things and try to it's very been very useful to have other groups like walk and roll that lay a lot of groundwork, and then we can take that and try to accelerate it. And I think
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 6:49
what it also underscores is the importance of good allies within the community. And so the nomination for the strongest town contest has been a community effort. Do you want to share just a little bit about some of the partners that you've either developed relationships with previously to this or begun to really build up relationships with through this process.
Daniel Bloemker 7:06
Sure. So a lot of the partners we've talked to, we've had conversations with local developers, the mayor, various members of city council, the planning commission, walk and roll, Bellingham sightline Institute, from down in Portland, they come up here periodically and do talks and discussions, and very thankful to have all those but it's been all aspects of the community have been very interested, and we rely on those people as much as they rely on us to advocate for them in order to try To make fully connected communities that work for everyone, not just certain aspects for certain people? Yeah,
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 7:48
and for those that are listening, you won't be able to see this, but in the video, you'll be able to see that Dan is wearing his a safety vest. And I said, you know, it's not just a prop. This is, you know, well earned and well needed. So Dan, can you share just a little bit like, Who are you that this is something that now is routinely a part of, you know, your week, and what is it that that you hope to accomplish?
Daniel Bloemker 8:09
Sure, so I grew up kind of outside in the exurbs around Philadelphia, and out there, you kind of get a lot of car oriented suburbs and whatnot that kind of bleeds into Appalachia, and you can, kind of, I grew up, kind of always having this second sense of like, Why do some communities seem to have better luck than others? What happened? What is it? And part of it is jobs, but part of it is that they did over designed towards certain types of infrastructure. They over invested in highways. They under invested in their downtowns. It was kind of it slowly became more and more apparent to me that whether you had a vibrant or flailing community, it was not luck. A lot of the times, it was conscious design choices that went into how they built their communities and whether they were going to have success, and so that kind of brought me year to Bellingham. I showed up and I was like, Oh, this is a lovely community. Has a lot of good bones in it that a lot of places on the West Coast are not as fortunate to take advantage of. You still see the street car lines still buried under asphalt, wherever there's a little bit coming up, so they have something to work with. And it became something of a crusade of mine to kind of make sure that we can take the parts that are working and try to expand them and then try to rehabilitate parts that have suffered from misinvestment. And
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 9:46
if you were to put yourself on sort of the sliding scale of like the world's leading expert on all of these topics, to the person that just picked up a newspaper today, can you, can you share just a little bit about who you are? Because one of the things I always want to underscore with the bottom up shorts is that it. Doesn't require that, you know, years long expertise and having written, you know, lengthy tomes on the topic. Instead, it's actually about taking notice, like you said, asking those interesting questions, what is what is it that divides one community from another? Is it just a matter of fate, or are there some other sort of key components? And describing Bellingham and its good bones, I mean, would definitely encourage anyone that is on the west coast to come up to Bellingham and visit the downtown. In particular, there's some great breweries and coffee shops and and you can walk and see the ocean. It's just a magical space. Well, magic is overselling it, but it is a wonderful space. But we're sort of on that spectrum of like world leading expert to the person that just picked up the newspaper, where are you?
Daniel Bloemker 10:43
Yeah, I always encourage people to come visit Bellingham, but I definitely fall into the lower half of like knowledge. I was just kind of like a YouTube urbanist. Like, you go on, you listen to some videos, and you're like, oh, yeah, that does make sense. Like, why? Why do highways get all this money and then have all these negative repercussions and all these different things. And you're like, Huh? But I didn't have any background. I'm I do not work in the public planning sphere. I don't work in construction. I don't work in transportation planning. I I'm an engineer at a local manufacturer like I don't have any specialized training that deals with how, will you build a road, or how you do community input? It was just one of those things, of I just decided the one day I was like, I want to see if I can do something about this. And that's the key, I think, is just to it just takes that first step, and then you find you'd be surprised at how many people there are that are like, I have also felt that way and would like to change something in my community, and that's it just kind of rolls on from there. Well,
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 11:48
your role in strong tense Bellingham is doing some amazing things. I'd love to hear you describe what gives you hope in your
Daniel Bloemker 11:55
community? I think what gives me the most hope is that most people want the same things. The council is very generally supportive of trying to get trying to fix our affordability issues, trying to make more inclusive, connected streets. People that we talk to on the streets whenever we're doing tabling or something, are very like, Oh, I didn't know about this, but this is great. I'm glad it's it always seems to be I was, I always hope someone was doing this work, I just didn't know who. So that that gives me we're moving in the right direction. The State of Washington has been putting out reforms whenever they do their bi annual legislative cycle. We've been the city of Bellingham has been incorporating those things, and it's been slowly steamrolling forward. It's starting to have the feel of inevitability that things will get better, which is so relieving. After many years of you're like, Are things getting better? And I can confidently say that yes, things are getting better.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 12:59
Yes, I have that same hope. And if you want to learn more about Bellingham, and particularly read more about the community, head to strongesttown.com and check out bellingham's entry there, because it definitely showcases many of the key things that are taking place and Dan, I'm so glad that you could jump on to bottom up shorts this morning. I really appreciate the time that we could spend together. And I hope as you're listening to this, folks, that you're encouraged to also, like Dan, take notice of the things that are happening in your community, and then begin to realize, especially with a little bit of support from strong towns, we've got resources and tools to help local leaders. You are that person can that can actually emerge and really begin to help shape and transform the community. And so with that, take care of and take care of your places.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES
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