City of Blaine’s lobbyists preview upcoming legislative session in Olympia

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During the next legislative session in Olympia, lobbyists hired by the city of Blaine plan to ask state lawmakers for $650,000 to pay for the next steps of the Bell Road grade separation project.

The Bell Road grade separation project is the city of Blaine’s top legislative priority. The project would construct an overpass above the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) mainline, alleviating the traffic delays caused by trains. Passing trains can cause significant traffic backups, affecting emergency vehicles, as they approach the Department of Homeland Security’s train inspection facility just south of city limits.

In a presentation to Blaine city council on October 28, Briahna Murray of Gordon Thomas Honeywell Governmental Affairs (GTHGA) lowered councilmembers’ expectations, warning them that the city may not be successful in receiving the desired $650,000 during the 2020 legislative session.

“The transportation budget is the budget with the most constrained revenue,” said Murray. “It’s a challenging ask. The reality is, to keep this project moving forward, that ask needs to be the next step. We may not be successful in securing that $650,000 this year, but we need to indicate that that’s the next short-term investment that needs to be made in the project.”

The city has already received $1.55 million in state transportation funds to engineer and design the grade separation project. Of that amount, $550,000 will be used to achieve 30 percent design by mid-2020, and $1 million will be used to acquire right-of-way acquisition.

The desired $650,000 would fully fund right-of-way acquisition, but significantly more money – upwards of $20 million – will eventually be needed in order to construct the overpass.

“The senate proposal that was put forward last year included $24 million as a placeholder for the construction of the project,” Murray told councilmembers. “We don’t know the cost of construction for the project, so we may need to go back in and update that number as we get more refined design information. We’ll want to use at least that $24 million number, if not a higher number, as we advocate with the house as it puts together its transportation package.”

The state legislature runs on a two-year cycle, and the 2020 legislative session will be the second year of a legislative biennium. Scheduled to begin on January 13, the 2020 session will be a short session, expected to last just 60 days.

The main focus of the short session will be to develop supplemental budgets by making amendments to the operating, capital and transportation budgets that were adopted in the previous legislative session.

During her presentation, Murray also addressed the city of Blaine’s other legislative priorities. These include the Marine Drive reconstruction project. For this project, the city and the Port of Bellingham are requesting $3.1 million in transportation funding to reconstruct the Marine Drive roadway to ensure access to the pier and protection of the harbor. Under the proposed project, the roadway would be replaced with a single vehicle lane, a bike/pedestrian path and a bulkhead.

“We are really advancing this one forward, again, not necessarily anticipating that funding would be secured in the 2020 session, but certainly in 2021 or in future years – so getting the ball rolling on this project,” said Murray.

Another priority is a capital budget request of $750,000 for the final phase of the Marine Park shoreline restoration and naturalization project. With the help of a $50,000 grant from the Washington State Department of Ecology’s Coastal Protection Program, the city completed Phase I in 2015 that restored 400 feet of shoreline by installing sand, gravel, cobbles and shoreline plants.

The final phase of the project would allow the city to continue the removal of derelict debris and the installation of a natural beach. This final phase of the project is shovel-ready with permits in hand through grant assistance from the Rose Foundation.

“$750,000 is a large dollar amount for a supplemental year in a capital budget,” said Murray. “However, this project can be phased, meaning that if the legislature is able to allocate $150,000 or $200,000 to the project, that funding could go toward completing a smaller portion, and then we can go back in future years to get the remaining amount of funding.”

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