The Happy Valley neighborhood is home to 7,059 residents living within 633 acres making it the most densely populated neighborhood in Bellingham, according to the 2010 United States census. The majority of the other 25 neighborhood populations range from about 2,000 to 5,000 people living in similar or larger sized neighborhood boundaries.
Only about 3.1 percent of all reported crimes including theft, traffic offenses, domestic violence and malicious mischief committed in Bellingham since 2007 have occurred in Happy Valley, according to the Bellingham Police crime statistics.
Although the crime rate is low and many residents view Happy Valley as a safe neighborhood, other residents such as Sonja Duncan said the neighborhood has excessive noise and nuisance problems involving large parties.
Duncan was taking a leisurely bath at her home late one evening in May when she heard noise coming from downstairs. Assuming it was her cat knocking things over or her son sleep walking she threw on a T-shirt and underwear and opened the bathroom door to find an unfamiliar young man standing in front of her.
"He swayed backwards and I realized he was blind drunk," she said.
She ran past him, purposefully knocking him over. She grabbed her phone and ran into her sons' room to call the police.
Police found the man on the side of the road and arrested him on suspicion of criminal trespassing, according to the Bellingham daily police report.
Duncan said this incident is a reflection of the problem of "party crimes" in Happy Valley. She said most often the problem is loud noise but occasionally there are nights when "people get mean" and bash in mailboxes or damage property.
"Many of us [in the neighborhood] have a lot of tolerance for behavior, we understand these are college kids," she said. "But this is not okay."
Wendy Borgesen, who has lived in Happy Valley for about 20 years, is also concerned with crimes that take place on the weekends when some students party.
She said there is yelling and screaming Friday and Saturday nights on a regular basis.
"But my biggest concern is when people drive drunk," she said.
Some students have told her to call them if they are too loud and she said she appreciates that.
"It's not that we don't like students," she said. "We just want them to be respectful. I would like for people to be more aware of each other and have peaceful co-existance."
Borgesen said the only other incident of crime she has experienced was in 2002 when her house was broken into and bonds and money were stolen. Although a victim of burglary, Borgesen said she thinks it was an isolated incident and she is more concerned with "party crimes."
Mark Young, Bellingham Police Public Information Officer, said historically the three most reported crimes in Happy Valley are traffic offenses, nuisance and noise complaints.
For general crime prevention, including party nuisance and noise, Young suggests reporting any suspicious persons or situations, keeping porch lights on, doors locked and not keeping valuables in unattended vehicles.
He said, "These are very general tips but very helpful in reducing the risk of being victim of crime."
Monday, June 27, 2011
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Padden Creek Daylighting Project in Final Design Phase: City hopes to start construction in 2013
Since 1978 Richard Sullivan has lived in the Happy Valley neighborhood on the corner of 22nd Street about 100 feet from the Padden Creek tunnel. During heavy storms Sullivan said the tunnel gets clogged with debris causing the water to overflow into his property.
“We live in a hole,” he said. “The street level is a couple feet higher than our car port. When it rains we call [our place] Sullivan lake.”
He said he and his neighbors are forced to purchase government flood insurance because the area they live in is considered a flood plain due to the creek running through the tunnel rather than in a natural water flow pattern.
The tunnel, built in the 1890s, created an unnatural flood plain, said Bill Reilly, Storm and Surface Utility manager for the city of Bellingham. He said the city works hard to keep the tunnel free of debris when it storms.
“It’s become a maintenance issue,” he said.
Another problem with the tunnel is that it prevents salmon from swimming up the creek to spawn, Sullivan said.
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| The beginning of the tunnel on 22nd Street and Old Fairhaven Parkway. Photo by Erin Nash |
Another problem with the tunnel is that it prevents salmon from swimming up the creek to spawn, Sullivan said.
Padden Creek runs through about 2,300 feet of tunnel from 20th to 22nd Street. In the past, fish have been stacked at the end of the tunnel downstream trying to get up it, Reilly said.
Rachel Vasak, Executive Director of the Nooksak Salmon Enhancement Association, said for years they have helped transport fish from below the tunnel to above the tunnel to help them migrate.
According to NSEA, a decline in the ability of a stream to support the rearing of young salmon indicates a decline in the overall health of the ecosystem. The salmon in Whatcom County have become an endangered resource as the salmon population has declined and several species have been listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, according to NSEA.
Providing access to spawning grounds by opening up Padden Creek would create a healthier population of salmon, Vasak said.
Sullivan said the city wants to daylight the part of the creek that runs underground through the tunnel, which means opening it up by rerouting it above ground to a more natural flow.
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| Matthew Bautista holds his daughter, Evangelina, as she plays in the water near the mouth of the Padden Creek tunnel. Jade (left) and Orion Bautista observe. The tunnel ends near Fairhaven Park where the Bautista family enjoyed an afternoon walk. Photo by Erin Nash |
In January 2011 the city of Bellingham won a combination of about $2 million in grants and loans from the Department of Ecology for the daylighting project. The city also came up with $1.2 million itself, which so far has been used to conduct a project report and purchase property for project use. The city currently has $700,000 remaining in allocated funds, Reilly said.
The city lobbied the State to participate in the project because Old Fairhaven Parkway, a state highway, is using the existing tunnel for water conveyance under its road.
In 2009, the Washington Department of Transportation informed the city it had $1 million from the state to improve the fish passageway along Old Fairhaven Parkway. This money stimulated the daylighting project into the final design phase after which the city will have more fixed costs for the project, Reilly said.
Reilly said the state plans to start construction in 2013.
“We hope to be with them and have the total [daylighting] project ready to go by the time they are done,” he said. “But we have a long way to go for the designing and permitting process.”
The state plans to re-build the bridge west of 20th Street big enough for water to flow underneath, said Craig Mueller Project Manager Engineer. When that is finished Padden Creek will be routed underneath it after the daylighting project. The bridge will provide animal passage and improve the salmon habitat, he said.
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| The end of the tunnel runs under a bridge near Fairhaven Park. Photo by Erin Nash |
“Restoration of salmon to a stream provides a powerful message that we as a community care about the environment” Reilly said.
He said if that were the only thing being achieved with the daylighting project it would be sufficient. But he said he believes the reduction of flood risk to about 130 homes and the potential of saving more than $100,000 per year in federal flood insurance is also important.
The daylighting project was first suggested in 1981 but didn’t get attraction until the early ‘90s when the Padden Creek Alliance formed to advocate for restoration of the creek, he said.
“Throughout the ‘90s everyone was flushing out what the project should look like,” Reilly said. “In 2002 the city had money to conduct the first up-to-date study of the creek and what it would take to make it a viable stream.”
Since then the city has been applying for grants and loans and allocating money toward the project on an annual basis to finance the estimated $4 million project, he said.
Reilly said he would love for the community to be involved when it comes to planting trees along the banks of the creek.
Mueller said he thinks this is an exciting project and that once all is restored, probably in the next two years, the creek is going to look really nice and be great for the neighborhood.
In the next year the city will be working to obtain more grants to ensure there is sufficient money to finish the project and hopefully reduce the need to use the full loan amount, Reilly said. “We are very close to getting started with the program.”
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Apartment Residents Want Composting Option
Sarah McCarthy and Yoshi Nakazato said they would love to have a place to compost their compostable material such as non-meat food scraps and plant waste. They live in an apartment building in the Happy Valley neighborhood that offers recycling options but no composting.
According to the most recent report released by the Environmental Protection Agency, Americans produced about 243 million tons of garbage in one year. That is about 4.3 pounds of trash per person per day. Twenty-six percent of that can be composted, according to the EPA 2009 report.
“There are so many apartments that could use a food composting program,” Nakazato said. He said there seems to be many environmentally conscious students living in the Happy Valley apartments who might use the program.
A recent Western Washington University graduate, Tali Cook lives in an apartment on 21st Street. She said if her apartment had a composting program she would use it.
Cook said when she lived with her family in Issaquah they had a worm bin for food scraps but she hasn’t heard of anything like that available to her in Bellingham.
“I would love to have compost [in the apartments],” she said.
She said she doesn’t know if she has any individual composting options available to her as an apartment resident.
Sanitary Service Company Inc., which provides recycling and waste collection to most of Whatcom County, hasn’t had many Happy Valley apartments sign up for compost collection, said Rodd Pemble, Recycling Manager for SSC. He said, like most recycling programs, FoodPlus! is harder to implement in larger apartments with 20 to 30 tenants because it requires the cooperation of more people to make the program successful.
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| The FoodPlus! bins can be picked up weekly or every-other week depending upon how many residents share a bin to collect compost, Pemble said. Photo by Erin Nash |
According to Washington State University’s Whatcom Extension compostable items include grass clippings, leaves, farm manure, hay, weeds, kitchen vegetable and fruit scraps, hedge clippings, straw and sawdust. Items that should not be composted include pig and pet manure, meat scraps, fats and oils, diseased plants, vegetables treated with fungicides and perennial weeds, according to WSU.
Pemble said he knows of several relatively small units of eight to 15 people where the compost program is successful because the tenants know each other and can keep each other accountable. But in a larger complex it is hard to keep everyone accountable, especially since most places don’t have an on-site manager to monitor the compost, he said.
The Happy Valley Neighborhood has the highest total population and highest number of occupied housing units in Bellingham, according to the 2010 census. According to the Happy Valley Neighborhood Plan the number of multifamily units such as apartments or duplexes grew from 1,068 to 1,729 in a 14-year period. Since the late 1960’s, increasing numbers of apartments directed toward student housing have been built among and in replacement of single family housing, according to the Neighborhood Plan.
Pemble said the only large apartment complex he knows of that has been successful in implementing a compost program is the Western owned Birnam Wood Apartments, which has been composting for more than three years. He said each tenant has the option of having an individual bin the apartments that can be filled then emptied into the compost bin outside. They also have an on-site manager and staff who oversee and promote the program, he said.
“With the right mix of support the system can work on a larger scale,” he said.
Shannon Maris, who composts at her home in Happy Valley, said education and diligence would be the key to implementing a successful composting program in apartment complexes. She said people must be told what belongs in the compost and what contaminates it. When mistakes are made measures should be taken to fix it rather than get rid of the program, she said.
Cook said she thinks a composting program would work if an apartment tenant was designated to oversee the program. She said a tenant might step up and take responsibility for the program if there was incentive from the property manager such as a cut in rent or being paid to oversee the program.
If apartments could compost enough to lower their garbage bill that would be good incentive for tenants to compost, said Maris. She said some residents might be motivated to feel like part of the solution instead of part of the problem in wasting an organic resource such as compost. Ultimately they have to decide if it is important to them, easy enough to do and might save them money, she said.
Pemble said individual tenants can get permission from their landlords to get an account and have the bill sent directly to the resident for $21.40 a month for weekly pick-ups for a bin good for 10 to 12 units to share. Or residents can pay $11.70 a month for a bin good for sharing between five to six units and every-other-week pick-up.
He said the small complexes save enough money by not creating as much trash that they all benefit. It’s a case by case basis whether it will work or not, he said.
Generally the landlord of a larger complex is interested in the economic side of the program and not necessarily the environmental aspect, he said. If a landlord adds the composting service he or she will be wondering if there will be enough decrease in trash to drop the Dumpster down a size to save money.
Generally the landlord of a larger complex is interested in the economic side of the program and not necessarily the environmental aspect, he said. If a landlord adds the composting service he or she will be wondering if there will be enough decrease in trash to drop the Dumpster down a size to save money.
A commercial building such as an apartment must produce 25 to 33 percent less waste to drop down a Dumpster size depending on if it has a three or four yard Dumpster, Pemble said.
“To actually save money, a fair number of the building’s tenants must participate so the garbage Dumpster size or pick-up frequency can be reduced,” he said.
If a landlord orders compost service it would cost $8.66 a month for every-other-week pick up with a bin good for five to six units to share. There are also bins good for sharing between 10 to 12 units for $17.32 a month with once a week pick-up. There are also individual bins for each apartment that can be purchased for a one-time fee of $8.75.
“With a larger project there are more hurdles to get something like this started,” he said.
Cook said she would be willing to pay up to $30 a month for compost pick up. Composting and recycling are important, she said, and she understands there are costs to both.
It would be worth paying for the service because there are a lot of things you can compost that end up getting thrown out, she said. “I always feel bad throwing out items you can compost.”
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Happy Valley Traffic
The Happy Valley neighborhood has been a relatively safe and quiet environment for both families and students to live, according to its residents. With the increase of speeding drivers and lack of traffic calming devices this sense of security is deceptive, said Ken Yanik who has lived on McKenzie Avenue for over 17 years.
Yanik said he has witnessed people driving down his suburban street at 50 to 60 mph. He is concerned about the safety of his two young sons, he said. As a pediatric nurse at St. Joseph Hospital he said he has seen the aftermath of children being hit by cars.
“I literally step in front of the speeders on my street to make them aware there are humans around,” he said.
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Photo by Erin Nash Miles Freelan (left), Gabe Hallett (center), and Sean Yanick (right) help plant carnations in garden boxes on McKenzie Avenue. Ken Yanick says he tells his children to stay away from the road because "you never know what crazy will be speeding down [it]." |
Yvonne Dean, Happy Valley Neighborhood Association Treasurer, said from her observations Mill and Douglas avenues and Lenora Court are the most dangerous areas for pedestrians. She said there is a lack of sidewalks on the narrow streets and children are forced to walk on the side of the road to get to school.
Barbara Perry, who has lived in Happy Valley since 1975, said the area around Knox Avenue and Lenora Court doesn't have sidewalks making it another hazardous area for children walking to school.
“I’ve been trying to protect my own grandchildren,” said Perry. “I’ve started a petition to ask the city to put in stop signs [and other calming devices]. I want to help protect our walkers.”
Perry said the petition is at The Fire House Cafe on Harris Avenue for any community members who want to sign it. She wants to bring the document to a city council meeting in hopes they will put in stop signs or slower speed limits, she said.
Wendy Borgesen has lived on Mill Avenue since 1989. She said she has witnessed an increase in speeders throughout the years. The neighborhood is increasing in urbanization, she said, but the city is treating it like it’s still rural.
“I wish we could have a speed radar or speed bump,” she said. “Other neighborhoods got them when there was money and now there isn’t any money.”
The Neighborhood Traffic Safety Program traditionally helps fund traffic calming programs. Due to budget cuts the program has been suspended since January 2009.
“Unfortunately there are very good programs that are not being funded right now,” City Council Representative Michael Lilliquist said. “It is disappointing we can’t support community programs like the Traffic Safety Program.”
Lilliquist said the economic recession has caused the city to “tighten its belt until they are sure there is an economic turn around.” He said they cut the budget by 15 percent which included cutting programs that weren’t absolutely essential to running the city.
Drivers tend to increase their speed between 21st and 23rd Street on Mill Avenue so this area is especially dangerous for children, Borgesen said. The “slow, school” sign isn’t visible until 23rd Street and the city won’t allow residents to post “slow, children” signs because it gives children a false impression of safety, she said.
She said the new batch of college students that move into the neighborhood every year are a big part of the problem.
“No one wants to hit a kid,” she said. “I think they just aren’t aware of the presence of children.”
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| Photo by Erin Nash People in Happy Valley need to record license plate numbers of speeders and report them to the police, Lilliquist said. The city is powerless to change anything unless they can follow up on individuals and make them responsible for speeding, he said. |
Mark Young, Public Information Officer for the Bellingham Police, said it is possible for the Traffic Division to conduct a traffic study. This would verify times of day traffic patrols are most needed on certain streets. He said traffic calming devises may be the best solution for problematic areas but those are costly. Complaints about specific locations should be left on the Traffic Unit Sergeants voice mail, he said.
Sonja Duncan, who moved to McKenzie Avenue last summer, said she contacted the city to tell them the neighborhood would pay for the purchase and installation of a speed bump on their street. The city told her they would have to conduct a traffic survey first, which would cost a lot more money, she said.
Duncan said she thinks one of the sources of the increased number of speeders on her street was the development of the Varsity Village Apartments. It brought more people and more students to the neighborhood, she said. She’s thought about talking to students in an attempt to make them aware of the presence of children on the street.
“How do you get people to see children?” Yanik said. “At some level I feel a little hopeless about it because students come and go so it is hard to educate them and get them to care about the neighborhood when they will be leaving in a year.”
Western student Jacqueline Braden said she lives on 21st Street. She said she occasionally feels unsafe when riding her bike in Happy Valley because there aren’t many bike lanes and drivers tend to pass quickly around her while she’s biking. She hasn’t noticed a traffic problem when walking to Western because she stays on the sidewalk on 21st Street, she said.
Yanik said it isn’t only students who speed. There are also parents who drive too fast. He said everyone needs to be more aware of the issue.
“It’s not that kids could get hit,” he said. “They do get hit. I often deal with the end result of such accidents. I know what a car does to a child. To me, [fixing this issue] is preventative health care.”
To contact the Traffic Unit Sergeants voice mail with a complaint about speeding concerns in a specific location call: 360-778-8763
The Fire House Cafe is located at 1314 Harris Ave. Perry said the petition she wrote will be there for anyone to sign.
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