City Council members are scheduled to hear from the public about the proposed $187.8 million 2010 budget proposal Monday, Nov. 23.

The proposal is basically unchanged so far from what was offered up by Mayor Dan Pike and his administration, though council members still have chances to make changes in the weeks ahead.

Council members for weeks have been getting the details of each individual city department’s budget during public meetings. Now is the time for residents to have their say.

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From Dick Conoboy, aka the “Zonemaven” over at the Twilight Zoning blog:

Perhaps it is time for a Rental Housing Commission in Bellingham which can be created in conjunction with a licensing program for rental housing. Recently, I received information that the city of Durham New Hampshire has created such a commission (click here to read the establishing code). The charge of this commission is “addressing and resolving on a continuing basis public policy issues associated with rental housing.”

Read his full post, right here.

Q: What do you think about creating such a governing body in Bellingham?

Yesterday, you saw in the newspaper (and I blogged the story Friday) my story about tonight’s Bellingham City Council meeting where they’re scheduled to vote on a 1 percent property tax increase.

State law allows for a maximum increase of 1 percent, plus banked capacity. That capacity is previous levying authority that a taxing jurisdiction decided not to take. Instead, they pass a resolution “banking” that capacity.

The city of Bellingham currently has about $234,000 in banked capacity the council can opt to take.

City Councilman Stan Snapp made a motion in committee just now to take that money. The motion didn’t have a second, but it sounds like it’ll come back up for discussion tonight and based on the discussion I just heard, there is a possibility there could be support for that.

City Council members were being asked to increase the property tax levy by 1 percent. It amounts to $180,639 in new taxes spread out amongst all city taxpayers. Your take would be about $6.18 if you owned a $300,000 home. A $250,000 homeowner would pay about $5.15 based on preliminary information from the Whatcom County Assessor’s Office.

It was unclear how much Snapp wanted to tap of the banked capacity, but if they took all $243,000 it would add about another $8 to the increase.

That means an increase of about $15 for a $300,000 home per year.

Like I said, it received no second in committee, but Finance Committee Chairman Gene Knutson (who, along with Councilwoman Louise Bjornson, also backed at least the 1 percent increase … strong signals the council will at least take the 1 percent tonight) said it’ll likely be brought up again at the night meeting.

City Council members are scheduled Monday, Nov. 9, to vote on a 1 percent property tax increase being proposed by Mayor Dan Pike.

The increase was proposed as part of Pike’s 2010 budget plan, which also includes tapping $1.8 million in general fund reserves to help close a gap between next year’s expenditures and revenues.

The 1 percent increase amounts to $180,639 in new taxes that would be spread among all city taxpayers.

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Spinnwolf was kind enough to send me a link to the video from today’s health care reform bill protest outside of U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen’s Bellingham office. The Everett Democrat recently announced his support for the House’s version of the bill, which includes a government-run public option.

Here’s the video:

Oh, yes, and in response to the person asking “Where is The Bellingham Herald when you need it (and the man who responded “forget that”),” the answer would be working on several stories about Bellingham’s property tax increase meeting on Monday, the county’s tax levy shift/fund transfer meeting and schedule vote on Tuesday and more for this weekend’s paper, on deadline. Covering local issues that local readers deserve to have information about, and all that jazz.

Thanks again to Spinnwolf.

Lilliquist

But Lilliquist did leave me a voice mail.

Said the newly-elected council person:

I want to congratulate Catherine on a well-run campaign. She was gracious to the end. I want to thank all my supporters. Now the work begins and I’m ready to hit the ground running.

Fleetwood

Smith

The County Councilman has 83 percent of the vote to Smith’s 17 percent so far, according to second-day vote returns. Wednesday, Nov. 4 was the first day that Smith’s write-in votes were counted.

Chambers

Lilliquist

Lilliquist expanded his vote lead over Chambers from 1,562 to 1,710 from yesterday, according to the most recent returns. He has 56.5 percent of the vote to to her 43.5 percent lead. It’s a 13 point different and is insurmountable.

*UPDATE* - Here is Chambers’ statement:

First of all, I want to congratulate Michael Lilliquist, he ran a fine campaign and I look forward to seeing his sharp insight as a city councilman. I want to thank all my supporters. We ran a hard campaign, and since June when we started, this race has been a great opportunity to talk about what voices need to be heard in the city council chambers. Though this race is done, this conversation is not going away, and I urge everyone to stay involved in local politics

Check out Herald photographer Andy Bronson’s photo gallery, right here.

Some quotes and thoughts from various County Council candidates that I was able to reach.

Kathy Kershner, trailing very small behind Dan McShane:

“I’m excited. These look good,” she said. Asked if she thinks more conservative votes will come in later she said she thought so. “We’re going to have to wait and see how the ballots that came in today haven’t been counted. It’s very exciting.”

McShane on the race: “They’re pretty hard to figure out. There’s no way of knowing,” about the vote trend, he said.

He did say that a potential conservative vote push later concerns him. “That’s often the trend. I certainlydon’t feel that tonight means whole lot. I’m inherently a pessimistic person.”

Asked how his campaign went, he said it went fine overall.

“I was pretty comfortable with things. My only disappointment is the lack of real dialogue about economic development that seems to take place in this community. It’s like if you care about the environment you’re somehow anti-business. Business leaders, I really wish they’d step up a bit and think about how they’d approach economic development. We didn’t see much of that.”

Councilman Carl Weimer, Mary Beth Teigrob and Michelle Luke couldn’t be reached for comment in the council races.

In Bellingham:

Catherine Chambers, despite a rather large lead for Michael Lilliquist, is not conceding. I couldn’t reach her, but got in touch with campaign manager Riley Sweeney.

“We’re cautiously optimistic,” he said. “We are not declaring anything at this point because there is still a lot of votes to be counted and we respect the will of the city of Bellingham.”

Lilliquist wouldn’t declare victory, either.

“The trend is looking really good, we’re optimistic that it will hold. A lot of people put a lot of hard work in to this campaign. It looks like that work might pay off.

“These are early returns and we don’t know how representative of the particular precincts are that they sampled. I’d rather be in this position than another position though,” he said.

Asked of his first priorities as a council member if the trend holds:

“I think the first thing I’ll need to do is take it slow. I think it can be a mistake by a new council member in thinking they have some powerful mandate,” he said, saying that when he acts it will be “in the appropriate time and the appropriate way.”

Fleetwood

Fleetwood is the only official candidate for the City Council’s At-Large seat being vacated by longtime Councilwoman Louise Bjornson. He’s being challenged by a write-in candidate, popular conservative accountant Orphalee Smith.

I got in touch with Fleetwood while he was spending time at the Democratic Party’s Nona Rosa’s event.

“I’m feeling sort of, how am I feeling?” he said, speaking to a friend he was with. “Confident.

“I’m feeling it’s just that right before time where you’re sort of in purgatory. I can’t wait for the … results,” Fleetwood said. “I don’t know what being outspent 30 to 1 does. That’s the unknown for me.”

The councilman was talking about Smith’s quick fundraising efforts, which netted her $24,521 in contributions. According to her most recent state Public Disclosure Commission reports, she’s spent $22,555 of that. Clearly it’s not actually 30 to 1, but Fleetwood did mini-reporting, meaning he could raise and spent no more than $5,000. He doesn’t have to report how much, so it’s unclear how much he actually has brought in or spent. Only recently have I noticed a few Fleetwood for City Council signs around town, so he may have had a last-minute push.

PM Bellingham talk show hosts Jacqueline Cartier and Dillon Honcoop spoke with local election candidates this afternoon on KGMI 790 AM.

You can listen to the program, right here.

Those who read this blog regularly are familiar with the presence of Riley Sweeney, Bellingham City Council candidate Catherine Chambers’ campaign manager.

Sweeney more than any other campaign manager so far this campaign season has been pretty vocal both on this blog and in our story comments about his candidate, including defending her recent suspended license citation (story over here).

He disagreed my characterization of the race for Ward 6 and I asked him to elaborate on his comments about the differences between the two candidates. I should note before posting part of his comment that Lilliquist campaign manager Isabel Vanderslice was also invited to share any perspectives on the difference between the candidates but declined to comment.

Says Sweeney:

The main difference is not on policy but there are some policy differences. Landlord Licensing. Michael is for taxing landlords to pay for a program of volunteers to snoop on their neighbors for violations. Catherine supports common sense licensing that allows the city to punish landlords that repeated flaunt the law. But the main difference is not just policy or experience, it is perspective. Catherine brings a voice to the table that has not been heard before. Not of another lawyer, business person or Futurewise wonk, but of someone who has worked for those who are struggling to make it.

Read all the comments from Sweeney and others, right over here.

Another local campaign event:

Supporters of the ‘Approve Referendum 71′ campaign will be at Rumors Cabaret at 1119 Railroad Ave., in Bellingham tonight.

The event is from 8 to 11 p.m. From what I understand it’s cheap-drink night at Rumors and there will be a big-screen TV on-hand with election results on. There will also be laptops there to get updated results info.

According the Facebook page for this group, Bellingham City Councilman Stan Snapp, who has a lesbian daughter he recently chatted with me about for this article, City Council candidate Catherine Chambers, local political wonk Elisabeth Britt (or is nerd more appropriate? Passionate enthusiast for all thinks election?) and County Council candidate Dan McShane’s campaign manager, Frances Badgett, have all confirmed their presence at said event.

Meanwhile, Nate Silver over at FiveThirtyEight.com (the dude who is basically always right about election predictions based on polling info), says that it’s 10-1 in favor of R-71 being approved by Washington voters, over here.

As of 12:10 p.m. today, the Whatcom County Auditor’s Office has tallied 41,984 ballots having been returned to the office.

That’s 36.7 percent of the ballots returned out of 114,292 registered voters. Check out the latest update, over here.

First results tonight are scheduled to be posted on the page about 8:45 p.m.

Meanwhile, Whatcom County Auditor’s Office Elections Supervisor Pete Griffin writes out an explanation for how write-in ballots will work (Bellingham City Council candidate Orphalee Smith and Rebecca Boonstra for Fire District 14):

I’ve created an insert for the Smith write-in campaign that will be inserted into the HTML code that is published to the web. This will allow visitor’s to see Orphalee Smith’s name and totals in the same block as Seth Fleetwood’s numbers. This will have no affect on the paper hard copy that is produced by the programming system since to it she doesn’t exist.

Since her numbers won’t be known immediately because they have to be hand counted starting Wednesday this shouldn’t be a problem.

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