Mayor Kim Lund and her leadership team will be at Larrabee Lager Co. in Cordata on Wednesday, August 19, from 5:30 to 7 p.m. for the final Ask Us Anything event of the year. The gathering is open to all Bellingham residents and offers a relaxed setting to ask questions about city priorities, ongoing projects, or anything else on your mind about local government. No registration is required, and the format is intentionally casual: come as you are, order a drink if you like, and talk to the people who run your city.
The Cordata location, 4151 Guide Meridian Road, Suite 100, puts this event in North Bellingham, a part of the city that has grown substantially in recent years and carries its own set of questions about infrastructure, parks, transit, and development. The Guide Meridian corridor has seen significant commercial and residential buildout over the past decade, and residents in that part of the city sometimes feel that conversations about Bellingham's future skew toward the downtown and waterfront neighborhoods that tend to attract more media and policy attention. This event is a direct invitation to that part of the community.
A Year of Neighborhood Conversations
The Ask Us Anything format has become one of the more direct ways Mayor Lund's office engages with residents outside of formal council chambers. Earlier in 2026, the city held a session in Downtown Bellingham, allowing the core neighborhood to weigh in on the changes reshaping the city center, from housing development and parking policy to homelessness response and waterfront planning. The North Bellingham stop rounds out this year's series, giving residents from the Guide Meridian corridor, Cordata, Bellis Fair, and surrounding neighborhoods a chance to engage with the mayor and her team directly.
The events are intentionally conversational rather than presentational. There is no slide deck and no formal agenda. Residents can drop questions in the comments of the city's Facebook post ahead of time, and city staff will do their best to address them during the evening. Questions can range from large-scale policy concerns to hyperlocal issues like a specific intersection, a park maintenance need, a bus route gap, or a question about how a new development got approved. The goal is to make city government feel accessible rather than distant, and to give residents a face to put with the policies they read about in the news.
Mayor Lund has made community accessibility a consistent theme of her tenure. The Ask Us Anything series is one visible expression of that approach, but the mayor's office also participates in neighborhood association meetings, attends community events, and responds directly to constituent concerns through the city's 311 service and other channels. For a city of Bellingham's size, that level of direct engagement is not guaranteed, and residents who take advantage of these events tend to come away with a clearer picture of how decisions get made and where they can plug in.
For those who cannot attend in person, the City of Bellingham's website regularly publishes summaries of community engagement events and updates on key projects. The city's Inside Bellingham newsletter, sent weekly, also covers major announcements and policy news from across city departments and is one of the better ways to stay current on what the city is working on between public meetings.
Utility Report and I-5 Work Also in the News
The August 13 Inside Bellingham newsletter from the City of Bellingham included several other updates worth knowing about. The city's Annual Utility Report is arriving in mailboxes soon, offering a detailed look at how Bellingham manages its water, wastewater, stormwater, and Lake Whatcom protection systems. The report explains how utility investments keep services reliable and resilient, a timely topic as the city works through multi-million-dollar infrastructure upgrades including the Post Point Wastewater Treatment Plant improvements. For many residents, utility infrastructure is invisible until something goes wrong, and the annual report is an effort to make that work legible before a problem forces the conversation.
Separately, drivers should be aware that WSDOT crews will be reducing I-5 northbound to one lane between Samish Way and Iowa Street on Saturday, August 15, and Sunday, August 16, from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. each day. The Iowa Street on-ramp to I-5 northbound will also be closed from 6 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday. The work is part of a multi-county project to replace concrete panels along the interstate, a type of maintenance that requires lane closures and is typically scheduled during off-peak hours to minimize impact on commuters and freight traffic. Drivers heading to the Northwest Washington Fair in Lynden or elsewhere north of Bellingham this weekend should plan for potential slowdowns and leave extra time, particularly on Saturday morning when the ramp closure may push additional traffic onto surface streets.
What to Watch For
The August 19 Ask Us Anything at Larrabee Lager Co. is the last opportunity residents will have this year to meet informally with Mayor Lund and her team in a neighborhood setting. For North Bellingham residents who have been watching the continued buildout of the Cordata neighborhood, the expansion of retail and housing along Guide Meridian, or ongoing concerns about traffic congestion, transit connections, and pedestrian infrastructure in a part of the city that was largely designed around the automobile, this is a chance to raise those questions directly with the people responsible for planning and managing that growth.
Larrabee Lager Co. is a neighborhood brewery with a family-friendly atmosphere, making it an accessible venue for a broad range of community members. No registration is required. The event is open to the whole community, and questions submitted in advance through the city's social media channels will be incorporated into the evening's conversation. You can follow the City of Bellingham online for the latest updates on city news between now and the event, and check the city's Facebook page to submit your questions ahead of time.
