The Top 100 privately-owned companies in Whatcom County!
For close to 50 years, editors and writers at Business Pulse magazine have been covering the entrepreneurial spirit and economic influence of business talents here in Whatcom County. This annual list of the top 100 private companies, ranked by 2023 gross sales, is a snapshot of the businesses that make Whatcom County a compelling place to work and live.
Within the results are inspiring stories of leaders and their teams who create living-wage family jobs, meaningful careers and generational success. Locally-owned Financial Plan Inc. provides customized financial planning and asset management. For integrated medical and personalized care, many clients depend on locally and independently owned Hoagland Pharmacy. Farmers Equipment Co. is a known source for servicing this county’s massive agricultural load with berry-harvesting and irrigation equipment. Perennial top performer Exxel Pacific builds up Whatcom’s newest structures, residences and businesses.
This list also displays the breadth of industries — agriculture, banking, construction, hospitality and service, information technology, marine and retail — that bolster our growing economy.
The power of a list is formative, setting up industry expectations and influencing consumer perceptions. A ranking frames the field, categorizes the competition and distinguishes the leaders.
In this list are the thinkers and innovators, leaders and doers, who launch the new products, expand the teams and make the deadlines. Every company in this list is an intricate ecosystem, putting together people and systems, capital and capacity, to make its own entity prosperous, and in so doing, our local economy, too. Importantly, this year, an overwhelming majority of organizations plan to hire new employees. Planning for hiring is great news for these businesses, potential employees and Whatcom County.
Just like last year, there are many new businesses showing the engagement of private enterprise. We welcome the newest Top 100 members who made the ranking and congratulate them on their achievements.
Take inspiration from this issue of Business Pulse, read the stories of who’s who in the Top 100, join us at events hosted by the Whatcom Business Alliance (publisher of this magazine) and make plans to achieve a ranking on this list next year.
Framed by the beauty of the Salish Sea and the North Cascade mountains, imbued with industry and talent, Whatcom County is an exceptional place to work and live. Here are the top performers in local business — the top 100 private companies in Whatcom County!
[Editor’s Note: the Top 100 list is available in our online magazine. Click here and flip to pages 30-41 to see who made the list this year!]
Largest family-owned recycler in the state
Lautenbach brothers helm largest family-owned recycler in state
Matt Benoit
Every week in cul-de-sacs and driveways across Whatcom County, recycling bins and garbage containers sit waiting to be picked up.
But do you know what happens once a curbside recycling company takes that reusable refuse off your hands? In many cases, it winds up with Lautenbach Recycling.
Since its humble beginnings in 1991, the family-owned recycling business has provided sustainable solutions for commercial and industrial clients both public and private, from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Oregon and across western Washington.
Running lean
The company now boasts about 110 employees and multiple transfer stations throughout Whatcom, Skagit and San Juan counties, but its making a wide footprint in Pacific Northwest recycling was by no means easy.
Founder Troy Lautenbach started the company at age 24, fresh out of college and unable to find a good job. He went into the recycling business for himself partly at the suggestion of his uncles, longtime Whatcom County dairy farmers Darryl and Ed Vander Haak.
Lautenbach had worked for the two — who were also involved with industrial waste recycling and sustainable practices — during college, gaining initial industry knowledge and experience.
“They’re definitely our mentors,” said Troy of his uncles.
The two were also responsible for installing the state’s first anaerobic digester, which uses bacteria to decompose manure and its byproduct methane.
When Troy first hung out his recycling shingle in 1991 with a truck and trailer borrowed from his uncles, it was the leanest of enterprises.
“I had nothing,” he said. “I had a college loan and an ’82 Ford Courier.”
Those early years stayed lean mostly out of necessity, and Lautenbach Recycling focused almost entirely on construction-based recycling — taking drywall and similar items and eventually turning it into bedding for dairy cattle.
Diversified service
By 1999, the business was expanding, and Troy hired his brother Torrey
— younger by 4 1/2 years — to join him. While there have been periods of tough budgeting, such as during the 2008 recession, both brothers are proud of the large company they’ve built today.
That company now includes a diversified array of services, including demolition, metal and commercial recycling, as well as food depackaging, storage containers, composting and more.
“We are in a good space,” said Torrey of the company’s current status. “There’s a lot of energy around sustainability,
climate change, ways to keep things out of landfills, and finding ways to do things more efficiently, and [to] save the environment while we’re doing it.”
Lautenbach Recycling is headquartered in Mount Vernon, directly next to Skagit County’s recycling and transfer station. Its organic waste and composting service, Skagit Soils Inc, is also located in Mount Vernon.
The company also has facilities in Ferndale — including a yard with about 50 trucks — Bellingham and San Juan Island. About two years ago, the company bought NW Recycling and moved it out of Bellingham’s Old Town neighborhood, where extensive redevelopment is currently taking place.
Lautenbach Recycling has contracts with the major residential recycling pickup companies in Whatcom County, including Sanitary Service Company and Nooksack Valley Disposal. For SSC, Lautenbach Recycling processes only some recyclables, helping transport the remainder to a larger processor.
Recently, the company purchased a waste depackaging machine to complement the composting operation. The state-of-the-art machine — the first to be used north of California — can separate large amounts of food waste from packaging, eliminating the need to do so by hand.
“This machine methodically separates the organics from the packaging, so we recycle as much packaging as we can,” Torrey said.
Recycling is real
Running a recycling business in 2024 carries with it, like any business,
many challenges.
That includes keeping up with automation options, of which there are substantially more than 10 or 20 years ago. Robotic and optical sorting stations in curbside recycling operations have greatly increased efficiency and reduced labor costs in some markets, Torrey said.
An optical sorter, he adds, can extract much smaller pieces of recyclable wood from an object, in a timelier fashion, than a human being. However, Lautenbach Recycling currently has neither feature and continues to rely on finding quality people who fit the company’s culture and mission of responsible sustainability.
Staying competitive in the recycling marketplace, Torrey said, is mainly based on keeping prices close to
whatever landfills are charging.
Although recycling can sometimes cost more than simply throwing debris in a landfill, Troy said that living in a more socially and environmentally conscious age has been a big boost to the industry as a whole.
Another challenge is public perception.
Often, the brothers hear people say that recycling either isn’t actually occurring once refuse leaves their house or that it helps less than people think. The Lautenbachs see things differently.
“That’s not true for us,” Troy said. “Our cardboard and our paper, our plastics and aluminum and tin — we know exactly where all of that’s going. And we’re not just shipping it overseas, we’re keeping it domestically.”
Torrey reiterates this.
“We’re not just taking things in and sending them to the landfill,” he said. “We’re very proud of the fact that we go the extra mile to ensure that we’re doing the right thing.”
Not only is recycling real, but for Troy, it also led to true love. Lautenbach met his wife, Erika, at an industry conference when she was public relations manager for a large garbage and recycling company. They went on their first date just over a month later and have now been married for seven years.
Erika serves as the Whatcom County Health and Community Services director.
Trust and trash
Much of the company’s success, the brothers say, can also be traced to the transparency and trustworthiness the company has established with both customers and employees.
That’s especially important in an industry like recycling, which is
heavily regulated.
“Our business has grown through our partnerships,” Torrey said. “As they grow, we grow, because we’re very transparent and we’re proud in the fact that we take care of people. We like to think that when our customers deal with us, they’re going to get taken care of, and in a transparent and sustainable way.”
The brothers also believe their company is a great place to work.
“We enjoy each other,” Troy said. “We call each other a family. We live by that. We help each other out.”
The local recycling community is quite small, Torrey adds, and the success of those partnerships has allowed each entity to stay in its own lane, for the most part. But it also allows for collaboration and conversation — something that occurred with SSC’s recent phase-in of one-bin residential recycling.
There were multiple reasons for the switch, the brothers said. With a three-bin system, recycling trucks actually make a larger carbon footprint due to the limit of sorted refuse they can haul. The labor element of having handlers sort material is also a concern.
While single-stream recycling is obviously easier for consumers, since they don’t have to sort recycling, Torrey said the downside is the potential increase of contaminated recycle materials.
This is where the consumer — and the Lautenbachs’ professional recycling advice — comes in.
“Don’t be a hopeful recycler,” Torrey said. “Be a knowledgeable recycler.”
Troy said the hopeful recycler engages in what industry insiders like to call “wish cycling,” which is when a consumer is unsure whether a particular item should be recycled and chooses to recycle it anyway. When that consumer is wrong, it creates more problems for companies like theirs.
SSC, the brothers say, have done a good job educating people on what can and cannot be recycled. Just the same, they offer helpful reminders: Tin, aluminum and glass cans are all fine, as are cardboard and dry paper.
Paper bags and certain plastic containers are okay, but plastic bags are a no go, as they will often become wrapped in screens, gumming up sorting equipment. These include large garbage bags —
especially the black, nontransparent ones.
Removing food and liquid waste from recycled materials is also essential, the brothers say. Troy said that liquids can contaminate materials and make it more difficult to recycle the fibers of a given recyclable material.
Whenever someone recycles something that is contaminated or actually unrecyclable, it goes where it ultimately would have gone if thrown away: the landfill.
Regardless of whether you’re putting out your weekly household refuse or cleaning up a construction site,
Torrey said the main takeaway is ultimately the same:
“Do what you can. Be educated to ensure that we’re doing the absolute best we can to have a good recycle stream.”
Could the Government pay you?
Flip the script with a government contract
Cheryl Stritzel McCarthy
Need another revenue stream? Maybe a government contract would be right for your business.
True, you need to learn to speak government contracting, but the payoff can be worth it. Help and instruction are available, most of it free.
Cara Buckingham’s job is to help businesses in Whatcom County understand and compete for government contracts from federal, state and local governments. Cara, an APEX Accelerator Advisor based out of Economic Alliance Snohomish County, also serves businesses in Skagit, Snohomish, Island and San Juan counties alongside another adviser.
With more federal contracting work coming for our border crossings, the timing is apropos.
Quick background
You may know Washington APEX Accelerator from its former name, Procurement Technical Assistance Centers, or PTAC. The name changed in 2023. The outfit was created by Congress in 1985 to expand the number of businesses capable of participating in government contracts. APEX Accelerators exist in almost every state. The Washington APEX Accelerator is statewide, with 17 people on the team.
What’s on offer?
APEX offers one-to-one bid advising, bid reviews, workshops on topics such as steps leading to a state contract, networking and registration help. As its website (washingtonapex.org) says, APEX helps businesses position themselves to win contracts at any level of government.
Though APEX helps any size of business, most of its clients are small firms. APEX advises all types of business, from environmental consulting to landscape design, catering and more, Cara said. The top three Whatcom County industries participating in government contracting are construction, manufacturing and professional, scientific and
technical services.
“Government contracting is a language unto itself, and business owners and their teams need to dedicate the time needed to learn,” Cara said.
To show the scale of opportunity, Washington clients win an average of $400 million annually, with $36.2 million of that going to Whatcom County businesses.
By working with clients, APEX also helps government agencies, which need a diverse supplier base, Cara said.
How to win
Businesses need to be bid ready, Cara said. That means researching which agencies are buying what they’re selling and then registering with those agencies. Businesses find opportunities, assess whether their capabilities match the work and submit a responsible and responsive bid.
What does that mean exactly?
“Responding with the basics the agency requires,” Cara said.
That could be as simple as using the typeface specified and not leaving out any requested documents.
“If it’s specified in the bid proposal, and if you don’t meet that, it’s a reason to throw out your bid,” Cara said.
An example is a business that was the low bidder, but in the government’s bid packet, there was a page intentionally left blank, and the business removed that page from its proposal.
“It was supposed to stay in,” Cara said. “The bid was thrown out. Especially with newer contractors, we will walk through their proposal. We offer training on that.”
New businesses and those that are successful in the private sector but inexperienced with government contracting must learn how government contracting operates, Cara said.
“There are so many agencies! Education, including K through 12 and higher ed, it’s all government contracting. Where to find the information? It’s not centralized. If you just Google where to start, you could end up down a rabbit hole.”
APEX helps businesses find relevant market research and register as a vendor.
Be prepared for government regulations
“There’s a lot of paperwork at times,” Cara said. “But if a business is
willing to learn and keep at it, they can be successful.”
What advice would Cara give Whatcom County businesses about interacting with APEX Accelerators?
“They can just sign up.”
That part, it seems, is simple.
[Editor’s Note: this story has several sidebars that are available in our online magazine! Click here and flip to pages 17-21 to read the rest of Cheryl’s article!]
2024 legislative session recap
What passed, what didn’t, and how did our legislators vote?
The 60-day 2024 legislative session adjourned on March 7. Legislators debated several important bills this year, even during this “short session” that lacked the biennial state budget present in odd-numbered years.
Some of the key bills are listed below, along with the votes cast by our legislators in the 40th and 42nd districts.
HB = House Bill SB = Senate Bill
Click here to download PDF.
Preserving the Walton Beverage legacy
Walton family dedicated to the business their grandfather cherished
For those working and/or living in Whatcom County, Walton Beverage trucks traversing our roads and freeways is a common sight. The company has served the region’s business community longer than most of us have lived, as a fourth generation of Waltons now manages the family-owned company — a generation that is dedicated to preserving a legacy handed down from one generation to the next for the past 93 years.
What started as a simple purveyor of fresh fruits and vegetables is today the second largest independent Pepsi, Dr Pepper and 7UP bottler/distributor in
Washington state.
The journey from produce to soda
In 1931, Harry Walton and two sons, Charlie and Harold, formed Bellingham-based Walton Fruit Company. Fresh fruits and vegetables were picked up in Seattle and trucked to Bellingham. Of the three, Harold was the most passionate, and the driving force behind the company. Not long after it was founded, Charlie dropped out of the business.
At the suggestion of a franchisee, in 1940 Harold added 7UP to the company’s offering. At the time, 7UP was the largest soda brand, though primarily considered a mixer. Eventually, other soda brands were added. Finding his niche as a beverage distributor, Harold renamed the company Walton Beverage and quit selling produce.
In 1941, Walton Beverage became an independent bottler/distributor of Pepsi, Dr Pepper, 7UP and other sodas. The company purchased the concentrates, made the soda to the required specifications, and bottled and distributed the finished product.
In the early days, flavored pops such as strawberry, grapefruit and root beer were the most popular.
“In about the late 1960s, early ’70s, colas became the beverage of choice, and the flavored pops went by the wayside,” explained John Walton, current president and grandson of founder Harry Walton. “7UP transitioned from a mixer to a soft drink. Then the historic advertising campaigns started, and sales of pop took off.”
In 1971, the soda industry introduced aluminum cans, which many independent bottlers, including Walton Beverage, were not set up to fill. Canned beverages became prevalent, so in 1980, Walton Beverage joined a co-op of independent bottlers in Washington.
“Many of us independents were too small to put in our own can line,” John Walton said. “It was too expensive. In the past, Pepsi bottled in the bigger cities, and for the smaller, more urban areas, bottling was franchised to independent facilities. Over the years, Pepsi has been buying the smaller independent bottlers. There are now only six of us in Washington.”
Creating a family legacy
In 1955, Harry passed ownership of the business to his son Harold, who dedicated his life to ensuring his family namesake flourished. He continued to run the company until his death in 1989. Ownership then passed to Harold’s two sons, the third-generation Waltons: Jerry, who managed a distribution center in Burlington until his passing in 2011, and John, who became president in 1998.
Today, the company is managed by an all-female team of Waltons. Though John still serves as president, operational responsibility is the purview of his three daughters, Angela, Joanie and Patti Walton, who have an ownership stake in the company. The sisters also lead the Walton Beverage Board of Directors.
According to multiple published studies, just 3-4% of family-owned businesses survive into the fourth generation and beyond. Walton Beverage is bucking that trend. Under the sisters’ management, business doubled over the past five years. They attribute their success in part to the strong work ethic modeled by both their grandfather and father and to the strict upbringing and workplace policies John set for his daughters.
“We’re who we are today because working here wasn’t a free ride,” Angela Walton said. “We had managers we learned from. We weren’t allowed to get away with anything. We followed the same rules as other employees.”
When younger, the sisters didn’t plan to have lifelong careers in the family business; their roles in the company happened intrinsically.
“It’s just something we were involved in at an early age,” Angela explained. “We grew up going to Dr Pepper and 7UP conventions. Dad would bring us in on Saturdays when he worked, and we’d run around pretending to be secretaries. I’d walk there after school and help until Dad took us home for the day. It was a second home.”
To teach them the value of work, during their high school years, John required that the girls have jobs. Angela and Joanie worked part time at the company. Their first job was hand-counting bills and rolling coins from the vending machines.
“I was grateful for the skills I learned with our employees who mentored us when we were younger,” Joanie Walton said, “but I thought I’d go out into the ‘real’ world and find my identity outside of the company. But an invisible force pulled me here. I’m in it for the long run.”
Patti Walton joined the company when she was 19. She was active in basketball, which gave her a reprieve from working during high school.
Working in the multi-generational business gave the Walton sisters an even better understanding of who their grandfather was and the many ways he influenced their lives, both in and out of the workplace. Joanie described him as humble. He came to work in the same clothes and drove the same car. She notes the family doesn’t do “flashy” and is down to earth because of his influence.
“He was very generous,” Angela said. “He would pick a table at a restaurant and quietly pay their bill but didn’t want recognition for it. He did that everywhere we went.”
Patti added: “He could teach without even talking. When he did talk, his words were especially impactful.”
Currently, both Angela and Joanie work in accounts payable. They don’t hold executive titles, and they share an office. Their grandfather didn’t value titles, nor is it important to them. Patti isn’t a full-time employee but does project work as needed.
For John, his daughters managing the company is a dream come true.
“This is the most fun period of my life,” he said. “The girls contend with the daily challenges. They can
certainly operate without me. We’re really blessed.”
Overcoming challenges through the generations
While Walton Beverage is a highly successful business today, the company faced some potentially disastrous challenges over the decades.
Not long after the company started bottling soda, sugar rationing was implemented during World War II. Lacking the sugar needed to create syrup meant the company would not be able to produce soda. Harold decided to distill potatoes and use the resulting syrup as a sweetener. Eventually, 7UP discovered that Walton Beverage was not following their recipe and showed up to try to forcibly shut down production.
More recently, it was the labor shortage caused by the COVID-19
pandemic. Between the shutdowns and pandemic money payouts, there was a lack of laborers willing to work in the warehouse. Luckily, the administrative staff and the sales team jumped in to help.
“We advertised at Western, on the radio and had big banners affixed to the sides of the trucks,” Joanne said. “Not many applied. If we can’t pick and load products onto trucks, orders don’t get delivered. We all worked as a team. People worked late hours, doing work outside of their roles. If it weren’t for our efforts, the product wouldn’t have gone out.”
Angela agreed.
“We’re so grateful the whole team came together to keep the business going,” she said.
Though they pay competitive wages, filling positions in the warehouse, merchandising, vending and driving remains difficult since the COVID-19 pandemic.
The ever-changing marketplace has been and will continue to be a challenge going forward, John Walton said.
“When my brother and I ran the company, we had three wholesale suppliers we purchased from – Pepsi, Dr Pepper and 7UP,” he said. “As the marketplace and our product mix changed over the years, we now have over 100 suppliers my daughters manage.”
Planning for the fifth generation
Today, Walton Beverage is headquartered in Ferndale, employs 130 people, has 50 delivery trucks and services 1,400-plus customers throughout Whatcom, Skagit, Island and San Juan counties. The Walton sisters are preparing for projected growth, including a 50,000-square-foot addition that will nearly double the size of the current facility.
Though they’ve been approached, the sisters have no plans to sell the business. However, Angela said that succession planning will be important for the fifth generation, because there are seven children among the three sisters.
Harold never had a succession plan and repeatedly said they should sell the company after he passed, but it’s important to the sisters to continue the legacy their great-grandfather started and their grandfather made prosper.
“We were very close to our grandpa,” Angela said. “At the end, he came to work with catheters, in pain, with swollen feet barely able to walk. We are trying to keep this business going because it meant everything
to him.”
The wheels on the bus
WTA’s doing more than just going ’round and ’round
It’s early days, but here’s what’s happening so far: Whatcom Transportation Authority has issued a request for qualifications, seeking a partner to build and maintain affordable rental apartments at Lynden Station, the park-and-ride lot that’s also WTA’s main Lynden transit stop. A study recently completed by RMC Architects shows the site can support 110 to 120 housing units, said Les Reardanz, the WTA general manager.
“So, we anticipate apartments for 200 to 300 people, over two phases of construction,” Reardanz said. “Unlike most people, who have to walk to a bus stop or even transfer from another bus, Lynden Station residents will have bus service at their doorstep. Because youth 18 and under ride free on WTA, the bus will be especially convenient for families with children.”
How did this come up?
In 2021, WTA’s board of directors was looking for ways that public transport could help solve public problems. In other words, step back from just driving the bus and see a bigger picture: How might the resource that is WTA address concerns such as affordable housing, lack of child care, or rising greenhouse gas emissions?
Those problems are bigger than any single agency.
“The thinking was, how can jurisdictions, organizations, businesses and others come together to create solutions?” Reardanz said. “In the meantime, we had this underperforming asset in Lynden, our Lynden Station Park & Ride, and we kept hearing about the need for workforce housing in northern Whatcom County.”
Over the course of 2023, WTA met with farmworkers, social and health services, the city of Lynden and others, all of which reiterated the need for more workforce housing.
What’s meant by workforce housing? Affordable housing near places of employment.
“It’s designed for workers who can’t afford housing at market rates,” Reardanz said. “We see that frequently in Whatcom County — even families making good wages find housing prices too high. We’re specifically looking for a developer experienced in affordable and workforce housing. The developer we select will do additional community outreach to learn what concerns neighbors and other Lynden residents may have.”
About that affordability
WTA will keep ownership of the Lynden Station site while leasing it at a nominal rate, with exact terms to be determined.
“The term of the lease will be a minimum of 30 years but could be as long as 90 years,” Reardanz said.
As Lynden Mayor Scott Korthuis pointed out, start with a lower land cost so you can offer lower rent when it’s done.
“Get people near transit so they’ll use transit and not their cars,” Korthuis said.
Reardanz expanded on walkability: “Lynden Station is a six-minute walk to the Food Pavilion and the shops and restaurants near that. It’s a 13-minute walk to Ace Hardware and the Fairway Center. It’s a 14-minute walk to the Grocery Outlet, Safeway, and shops and restaurants there. There are pharmacies nearby, too. Even Fisher Elementary is a walkable distance (of 28 minutes), and Lynden Door, a major employer, is a 19-minute walk away. All over the world, transit works best in neighborhoods where many errands can also be accomplished on foot.”
Stakeholders realize that at least some residents of the future Lynden Station will still need cars to get to work, Korthuis said. Some will be farmworkers, which is morphing into a year-round occupation; as automation performs more harvest work — work that cannot be automated spreads out through all seasons.
“This location would serve our community well,” Korthuis said. “It’s much better than putting it on the perimeter of town.”
Public transport agencies have access to federal money to help with housing that’s associated with transit, which paves the way for affordable housing close to business and services.
Korthuis mentioned a variety of folks to whom Lynden Station could appeal, such as those employed by Lynden Door, a family-owned and -operated company with about 500 employees, or the under-construction 220,000 square foot Canature Kitchen Lynden, maker of freeze-dried pet food.
“Some (employees) live all over,” Korthuis said, “but if they had an affordable option closer to employment, what a great option!”
Where did all the bus riders go?
A lot more of us used to take the bus: Between 2007 and 2008, WTA’s annual boardings rose from 3.5 million to 4.7 million.
“This was one of the highest ridership increases in the United States,” Reardanz said.
It was due to a universal bus pass at Western Washington University and increasing the frequency of buses on WTA’s most productive corridors.
WTA ridership peaked at 4.9 million in 2009. Then, in Whatcom County and across the nation, it seemed everybody stepped off. Except in a few major cities, ridership started declining.
“Reasons are varied and ever changing,” Reardanz said. “They include shifts in work locations, the pandemic, the rise of companies such as Uber and Lyft, and the shift to an ‘on-demand’ mindset. By ‘on-demand,’ I mean people have grown accustomed to summoning what they want, when they want it. Takeout delivery services such as DoorDash, streaming services for music and movies, and same-day delivery by online retailers are all examples. I think the increase in local home prices also play a part, as do land-use decisions. The farther people live from where they work, shop and recreate, the less convenient it is to ride the bus. One of the things we like best about this project is it helps address
this very issue.”
The COVID-19 pandemic didn’t help, with WTA’s average annual fixed-route rides dropping to 2.2 million during that time. Commuters stopped commuting or commuted less frequently. Social distancing meant “don’t get on the bus, don’t get on the train” or you might get COVID-19.
It’s taking time for that last attitude to change, but in 2023, annual fixed-route rides rose to 3.5 million.
“Ridership continues to recover,” Reardanz said.
Who’s paying?
Passenger fares make up about 3% of WTA revenue, Reardanz said. Most of WTA’s funding comes from a .6% countywide sales tax. Other sources include operating grants from the state of Washington and capital grants from the Federal Transit Administration.
WTA’s 2024 operating expenses are budgeted at just over $53 million, an amount that covers paratransit, vanpool, Zone Service and the Lynden Hop, as well as fixed routes.
(UPDATE: The Lynden Hop was a mobile app ride-hailing service that was wheelchair accessible and open to all at $1 per ride. It operated as a pilot program from June 2022 to June 2024.)
Back to Lynden
The site under consideration, Lynden Station, was originally envisioned as a park-and-ride, Reardanz said.
“The idea was, people from Lynden would park here and catch a bus into Bellingham,” Reardanz said. “Over the years, we’ve found that once people hop into their cars in Lynden, they generally stay in those cars and drive to their final destination. As a result, the parking spots at Lynden Station are underutilized.”
Mayor Korthuis echoes that.
“If you get a person in their car to drive to the park-and-ride, you’ve probably lost the battle,” Korthuis said. “Particularly in Ferndale and Lynden. You’ll probably stay in your car and drive the whole way.”
More like this?
Reardanz is enthusiastic.
“The Lynden Station project is the first of many creative partnerships we’re looking at to help address community challenges in ways that also make it easier for people to ride the bus,” Reardanz said. “Several of these, including transit-oriented development at our downtown Bellingham Station and new service to the waterfront district, are also great drivers of economic development. We’ve got a list of such initiatives currently in the pipeline.”
Not just driving the bus
WTA, by creating affordable workforce housing, will likely raise ridership since that housing will be just steps from public transport. Maybe, in Whatcom County, it’s time to get back on the bus.
A great transition
Business owner trades lectures for labels
Today, Michael Tilley’s career path is night-and-day different than it was a decade ago.
The Bellingham business owner was a tenure track biology professor at Missouri’s Central Methodist University, having previously spent four years as a postdoctoral researcher at Ohio State University.
Having achieved a doctorate in molecular genetics, Tilley spent time researching the complexities of drug addiction and autism and taught numerous college courses. While he was offered tenure in 2014, he declined, having made the decision to move to Bellingham to be closer to his two children.
The move necessitated a new career choice, and Tilley decided to acquire two Bellingham businesses. The first was a Pak Mail shipping location in the Barkley Village neighborhood; the second was a Minuteman Press printing operation downtown.
“This was a very new thing for me,” said Tilley, 54, of the career switch. “I wanted a business that was established and had a reasonably good framework. These were two existing businesses, they were a franchise, and the appeal to that was they had a business model that was working pretty well because there were a few hundred of each of them across the country.”
Adaptation
The differences between being a business owner and a professor presented a real learning curve.
“The nature of the type of work — learning what we did and how to do it — was quite a challenge, especially initially,” Tilley said. “The work environment, the work culture, is quite a bit different between academia and the private sector.”
Tilley had to manage everything himself, no longer being able to rely on teaching assistants. He did, however, have the expertise and experience of existing employees, and it helped greatly. He also had to learn marketing skills — something he’d never had to think about in academia.
In 2020, Tilley acquired a third business — a Print and Copy Factory in Bellingham’s Irongate neighborhood. He then merged Print and Copy with Minuteman, moving from downtown and consolidating in Irongate.
The move from downtown came at a good time, as Tilley said several employees had begun expressing concerns about people camping behind their building and doing shady things.
“I talked to other business owners,” he said. “They felt that downtown had greatly deteriorated as a safe and profitable business area during COVID. I think that it appears to have come back some.”
Tilley said he is happy with his current employees, of which there are three at Pak Mail and four at Minuteman. Having weathered the workforce squeeze of several years ago, when it was hard to get any applicants for posted jobs, Tilley hired two people this past year alone. He is, however, still having trouble getting experienced applicants for positions like graphic design.
“The job market is still pretty tight in that regard,” he said.
Growing together
Minuteman Press creates a wide array of promotional products, ranging from office forms such as non-conformance report documentation to pens, cups, books and apparel.
“Basically, anything you want to name-print your logo on, we can produce,” Tilley said. “Generally speaking, we can print or produce about anything that someone would want done.”
The client base is several hundred businesses deep and includes local entities such as Cisco, Bellingham Cold Storage, Security Solutions, First Fed, Louis Auto Glass and Phillips 66.
Minuteman also has some clients in Skagit County and others even as far away as Missouri and Illinois. Tilley takes pride in helping local employers get the high-quality, good-looking products they want and need to run and promote their business, whether it’s a stack of business cards or a
coffee mug.
“I think that, in that regard, we have a lot of almost-like business partners: they grow, we grow,” he said. “We help support the local economy, so I feel really good about that.”
There also can be personal elements to what Minuteman produces, such as a customer printing a book written by a deceased loved one. The business also produces product packaging materials and direct mail marketing.
At Pak Mail, shipping a variety of variously sized items to far-flung places requires logistical know-how and plenty of packing tape.
Sometimes Tilley’s employees are handling a simple letter or non-fragile material; other times, they’re dealing with heavy, bulky or easily-breakable items. And over time, Tilley has encountered some rather interesting shipping projects for him and his employees.
Several years ago, someone came in seeking to ship $150,000 worth of Tiffany-brand china. Another time, Pak Mail had to ship a dermal laser — commonly used for certain skin condition treatments — that was six feet long and weighed more than 300 pounds.
Larger items require Tilley to construct sizable wooden crates to ship items, such as the time he built an enormous 10-foot-by-7.5-foot crate for an eyeglass grinding machine. One of the most unique items, however, involves the United States presidency.
A while back, Pak Mail helped ship from Bellingham to North Carolina a desk that once belonged to President Woodrow Wilson.
The story is that the grandfather of the person receiving the desk had once worked for a railroad line on the East Coast. Wilson had needed to quickly get from upstate New York to Washington, D.C., and the grandfather had arranged a private and direct train to get him there. As a result, Wilson gifted the man a desk, which eventually wound up in the local home of the man’s son. When that son passed away, the settlement of his estate saw the desk take one more cross-country trip, to the home of the man’s grandson.
Another time, the business shipped three 4-foot-long model ships owned by a man who’d passed away. He had left them to a best friend in California, and the safe transport of the ships was of considerable importance to the man’s family.
“We ship a lot of things that have monetary value, but also a lot of things that have a lot of emotional value sending or receiving them,” he said. “It’s really nice that we can fill that need.”
Looking ahead
Tilley said he hopes to further expand Minuteman’s client base for books, booklets and direct mail marketing, and he hopes to move into digital marketing at some point.
Though his children are now both young adults, Tilley said he doesn’t plan on going anywhere anytime soon. He still talks to former academic colleagues, though, and occasionally reads scientific studies.
Tilley doesn’t miss the research, he said, but he does miss the teaching. If the right opportunity opened up not too far from Bellingham, he said, he might consider a foray back into lecture land.
“I taught quite a few classes,” he said. “I really enjoyed that a lot.”
