Hullwork - May, 2025

Hullwork - May, 2025

Hullwork is a monthly digest from the Coalition's Executive Director on the work that goes on 'beneath the waterline'  of our programming to maintain it, and keep it all afloat.

Hullwork – May



The month of April saw our final preparations for our annual Tide to Table, and on the 26^th we hosted the celebration at the Hotel Bellwether’s Ballroom with the theme of Kentucky Derby helping to bring our fundraiser to the finish line with aplomb.
 
This month’s highlights included:

• I began to set up our next print newsletter edition for On the Waterfront. Our summer edition will issue in mid-May. Initial story solicitations, and gathering information for the articles went out early April to have time for them to simmer while Tide to Table preparations ramped into their final weeks.

• Government Relations committee members and I met to discuss current legislation in the WA state houses that will impact our maritime trades. One of the key issues – a luxury-vessel sales tax – was a concern in the recreational and boat manufacturing sectors. Alongside many other organizations in the region, we lobbied our representatives, senators, local leaders and others to highlight the damage the tax could impose on the industry. As of this writing – the tax has been struck from the docket of tax packages and seems to be defeated. We also tracked bills relating to goods-movement and stevedoring that could impact maritime commerce, a mosquito-fleet act to encourage more foot-ferry operations, and a maritime-workforce taskforce bill. All of these involved communications with local and state leadership, stakeholders and community members to advocate for and against the various measures that impact our marine trades.

• We had a productive meeting with Mayor Kim Lund. These meetings occur every 6 months, and serve as a check in for the Mayor on the health and wellbeing of the maritime trades economy here in Whatcom and Bellingham. The Mayor had some specific requests for us to review policy and comprehensive plan changes, as well as invited us to visit with Senator Murray’s staff on her behalf, regarding some of the concerns the maritime community has regarding the changing trade policies on a federal level. That meeting was set up for May 15th.

• The planning for the Blue Tech by the Bay Career Exploration event with the Port of Bellingham continued, and our staff worked with Port staff and other volunteer participants to solicit activities for students attending the event to get hands on with. We coordinated communications to connect interested businesses and the Port, helped some of the organizations brainstorm and plan activities, and helped procure swag bags for the students with the help of Seattle Marine Bellingham. The event will happen today, May 7^th, for around 200-300 students from Whatcom and surrounding counties to come and get hands-on experience with marine trades careers.

• The Maritime Workforce Forum, which we have been involved in planning with the Maritime Center for Excellence, has been moved from May to August, due to the impacts of trade policy changes creating uncertainty for stakeholders that made their participation more difficult. August was selected to hopefully have those parties able to participate once the initial changes have settled and discussions can reflect the new information and environment for maritime businesses.

• Our membership committee and outreach and fundraising committee both had meetings this month to discuss member outreach, including ideas around how to engage members with special members-only events (such as our upcoming Deep Blue Drinks on May 28^th!) and other membership incentives.

• We finalized plans for our upcoming events, both the aforementioned Deep Blue Drinks Members-Only event on May 28^th, just after our Q2 Board Meeting, and our upcoming Q2 Blue Drinks that will be happening on June 18^th at Zeeks Pizza & Fountain Brewing, who have designated that evening a Pint Night for the Coalition – portions of the proceeds from that evening will be donated to the Coalition. We hope you’re able to join us, and look for information and ads for it coming soon!

• We hosted our annual Tide to Table Celebration – this included all the many event-planning tasks and the last week of April was spent doing post-analysis and close out of the event, including getting our thank you letters sent out, getting the final accounting for the event completed, closing out and connecting auction winners with their packages, and making sure that all the data we need is pulled from the event pages.

• We also made progress on one of our DERA Grant projects, with quotes being submitted and a final quote selected for work to move forward. This included having several meetings with the recipient and discussing the logistics of the project, and then communicating relevant data and information to the Port.

This coming month, we’ll be diving deeper into longer-term projects, and we’ll continue to monitor the evolving landscape of federal policy changes with several key stakeholders in the region.

Our Marine Trades Tariff Impacts Survey is still active – we encourage any of our members who are feeling or expect to feel impacts from the change in tariffs, federal funding, federal workforce staffing, or changes in regulation to complete the survey and lend your voice to the reports and citations that we bring to our local, state, and regional leadership.

Finally, I’d like to take a moment to wish all of our members who set out for the summer a safe and bountiful season in your fishing, recreation, or transportation on the water. We’ll see you all upon your return in the fall!

Thank you, 

Dan Tucker
Executive Director
Whatcom Working Waterfront Coalition