Bellingham City Council Public Health, Safety, Justice, and Equity Committee

## Meeting Overview The Bellingham City Council's Public Health, Safety, Justice and Equity Committee convened for a brief but substantive session on November 17, 2025, at 3:25 PM in the Council Chambers. Committee Chair Daniel Hammill led the meeting, joined by members Edwin H. "Skip" Williams and Michael Lilliquist for what would prove to be a focused 16-minute session covering two important public safety matters. The committee had two items on its agenda: an interlocal agreement to fund paramedic training for 2026, and the adoption of the city's updated comprehensive emergency management plan. Both items involved partnerships beyond city boundaries — the paramedic training with Whatcom County, and the emergency management plan coordinated with state authorities. Despite the routine nature of the agenda, both items represented significant investments in the city's emergency response capabilities and long-term preparedness infrastructure. ## Paramedic Training Partnership with Whatcom County The first item brought Assistant Fire Chief Pathick and Fire Chief Hewitt before the committee to discuss the annual renewal of their paramedic training program funding agreement. The Fire Department operates what Chief Hewitt described as "an apprenticeship program like any other trade apprenticeship program," teaching current firefighters and EMTs to advance to Firefighter-Paramedic status. The program operates under a multi-year contract with Whatcom County (contract number C2301522), but requires annual interlocal agreements to cover specific per-student costs. This year's agreement would fund four Bellingham students in the 2026 cohort, plus supplies and precepting costs for several out-of-county students joining the class. Council Member Lilliquist raised questions about the financial scope of the program, noting that "the numbers are rather large for student wages and benefits." He wanted clarification on whether this constituted the students' full-time work for the 14-month program duration, and whether they performed other fire or EMS duties. Assistant Chief Pathick explained the intensive nature of the training: "This is their full-time job. They go work on, they do class time. And then there's a combination of writing on the medic unit and that time of writing on the medic unit transitions to more and more and as there's less and less class time throughout the year." The program structure emerged as genuinely comprehensive. Students complete anatomy and physiology coursework in August prior to the main program year. Starting in January, they ride full-time on ambulances while averaging about three days of classroom instruction per week for the first five months. Throughout the program, they work as a third person alongside two paramedic partners, receiving hands-on mentoring. "We don't count them towards minimum staffing, but they're working and learning the skills," Pathick clarified, addressing the question of whether the city was getting value from the student wages. When Chair Hammill asked for clarification of the term "preceptors" for public understanding, Chief Pathick provided a detailed explanation: "When we talk about preceptors, we're talking about mentorship throughout the program. So each student is assigned a preceptor who is, there's a preceptin application process. So interested paramedics, we've been a paramedic for a certain amount of time and apply, interview, and then get supporting training and adult education and mentorship and how to guide these young EMTs to become paramedics." The preceptor relationship proved central to the program's effectiveness. As Pathick described it: "The preceptor is someone that's with them throughout the entirety of the program from day one and they evaluate them on every call they go on, giving them pros or identifying their gaps and showing them where they can grow and just meeting up with them to help them get through the class." Chief Hewitt reinforced the apprenticeship model, explaining how students progress from shadowing their preceptor to being shadowed by the preceptor as they gain competency. "That's why they don't count towards the minimum staffing throughout the year," he noted. "It really is that student and the preceptor really equate to one paramedic on the rig." With no further questions, Council Member Williams moved to approve the interlocal agreement. The motion carried unanimously, sending the item forward to the evening's regular council meeting. ## 2025 Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan The committee's second item involved adopting the city's updated comprehensive emergency management plan, a document required by Washington Administrative Code 118-30. Jonah Stinson, Emergency Management Plans Coordinator for the Bellingham Fire Department's Office of Emergency Management, presented the plan that had been in development throughout 2025. Stinson explained that comprehensive emergency management plans (CEMPs) are mandatory for all Washington jurisdictions and serve as the framework for coordinating emergency functions "to mitigate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from any scenario emergency or disaster that exceeds our daily capacities." The plans help jurisdictions identify vulnerabilities and plan for resource allocation under "all hazards" scenarios. The 2025 plan replaced the city's 2018 version and incorporated significant updates. "This new plan incorporates updated guidance from both Washington State and federal planning frameworks, resources, new legal requirements, and new census data," Stinson reported. The census data proved particularly important for communication and translation needs in the diverse community. The plan's structure reflects the complexity of modern emergency management. Stinson outlined three main sections: a basic plan providing high-level overview, appendices covering authorities and references, and detailed annexes with city-specific operational information. The annexes themselves divide into three categories: population protection (covering hazardous materials response, mass care, sheltering, animal care, public health, public information, and evacuation), resource management (logistics, resource support, information planning, and government continuity), and critical infrastructure (transportation, communications, energy, utilities, public works, water, and engineering). Beyond structural updates, the plan incorporated hard-won experience from recent emergencies. "Incorporated pandemic lessons learned, seeing disasters impacting a citywide, regardless of specific geographic areas," Stinson noted, acknowledging COVID-19's unique challenges that affected the entire city simultaneously rather than specific geographic zones. The plan had completed the mandatory state review process with the Washington State Military Department's Emergency Management Division and was ready for local adoption. Once approved, Stinson planned to distribute it to all city departments and post it on the Office of Emergency Management website. Looking ahead, Stinson outlined the plan's integration into broader emergency preparedness efforts: "Looking into January and starting in 2026, remaining staff in the department will need to incorporate this plan into the 2026 Natural Hazardous Mitigation Plan, which needs to be written next calendar year." Additionally, the city would need to exercise plan components, test essential functions, and conduct annual reviews for programmatic updates and legislative changes. Council Member Lilliquist asked probing questions about the plan's practical application. Despite calling the document "impressive" and appreciating the glossary that helped navigate extensive acronyms, he wanted to understand activation frequency and scale: "Aside from what happened during COVID where I think we activated some emergency responses, how often and what scale do we activate things in this level of plan?" Stinson explained that plan elements are used whenever daily emergency capacity is overwhelmed, not just for major disasters. "For instance, if we had severe weather situation that brought in a lot of spontaneous volunteers, donation management, components like that, we'd be able to utilize elements of the planning framework for that." Lilliquist's follow-up question proved more pointed, touching on federal reliability concerns: "What level of emergency or community event and how likely are we to need to rely upon federal aid and authorities because our federal government is becoming somewhat inconsistent and unreliable, and so I'm wondering about how independent we can be for moderate-sized situations." Stinson's response highlighted ongoing federal dependence: "We are still heavily reliant on state and federal resources for large-scale scenarios. I believe in the last decade we have had over 10 federally declared emergencies in Wacom County and especially for individual assistance and public assistance. That money goes directly to our citizens for individual assistance that all rolls from the federal government to the state and then to us locally." Council Member Anderson, drawing on Forest Service emergency experience, praised the plan as essential infrastructure: "A good plan is more than prevention. It's kind of a lifeboat for us to be able to pull out and implement, and I did a fantastic job with this. I really appreciate the work." Chair Hammill noted the nature of emergency events as "low frequency but high impact," referencing recent floods and COVID-19 as examples of the type of scenarios requiring comprehensive planning. Before the vote, Fire Chief Hewitt expanded on the plan's regular application, addressing Lilliquist's earlier questions about activation frequency. He highlighted COVID-19 as the most extensive deployment, with the Emergency Operations Center running "for over a year with lots of people pitching in from lots of different departments across the city and the county." But Hewitt emphasized that plan elements are used regularly in smaller scenarios: "On a regular basis, we're using parts of these plans. I think of our response to Camp 210. There was definitely pieces of that that were we're using different framework from these plans to help organize what our response is. Even something as small as when we stood up the daytime emergency cold weather shelter there's portions of that that we you know we're able to use portions of this plan to help with the logistical support." The Office of Emergency Management's involvement extends across various city responses, providing both planning frameworks and logistical support. While floods represent the most common large-scale emergency in Whatcom County (though less frequently affecting Bellingham proper), the plan's value lies in its modular application to various scales of emergency response. Council Member Williams moved to adopt the 2025 comprehensive emergency management plan, and the motion carried unanimously. ## Closing & What's Ahead With both items approved unanimously and no further business, Chair Hammill adjourned the brief but productive committee session. Both the paramedic training agreement and emergency management plan would move forward to the evening's regular council meeting for final approval. The meeting highlighted the ongoing partnerships essential to public safety in Bellingham — from the regional paramedic training collaboration with Whatcom County to the multi-level coordination required for effective emergency management. Despite the routine procedural nature of both items, they represented significant ongoing investments in the city's emergency response capabilities and preparedness for an uncertain future.