Candidate Statement: Katherine Orlowski for County Council District 4

Whatcom County Council District 4 position is voted for only by those living in the 4th District, the center of the county including Lynden.

Whatcom County Council District 4 position is voted for only by those living in the 4th District, the center of the county including Lynden.

By
• Topics: Whatcom County, Elections,

Would you send a leader with no understanding onto the battlefield? No, we all want wise leaders. We are at the forefront of new challenges. We need leaders who are experts, who have personal lived experience, and who have the foresight and a thorough understanding of the complexity of our crises in order to devise and implement solutions rapidly and get ahead of, or close to, the curve. 

Elect me to Whatcom County Council District 4, and we’ll finally get to the root cause and go beyond being fiscally responsible. Experts with lived experience are a rare find, and our government is trying to find these individuals because it is clear how valuable they are. 

Having to relocate due to environmental migration and a family member’s medical condition, our lives inevitably changed as we tried to stay afloat with one income. My family’s lives were capsized into the abyss with no lifesaving tugboat; there were simply too few resources to give us a hand up. Gaining rare insight through my personal lived experience and my work with grassroots organizations like HomesNow, I've climbed the civic ladder because I’m compelled to bring my foresight as the middle class shrinks. I realized that if this could happen to me, it could happen to anyone. 
 
As a regular person with lived experience, a mother, and a locally recognized peace-builder who stands on integrity and the Constitution, I have a deep understanding of the approach and sustainable solutions we need going forward. While empathy is an important aspect of understanding and relating to others, it cannot fully replace the depth of understanding gained from personal lived experience. It is important to be aware of this distinction when voting locally to ensure the leaders you place in office are well suited to create the solutions we need now and avoid offering well-meaning but often misguided solutions. Similar to the expert’s historical wildfire suppression practices that have contributed to mismanaged forests, significantly making our wildfire crisis worse and more expensive.
 
I’m requesting that you vote for me, a pioneering leader and expert with this rare lived experience knowledge, and we’ll go forward transforming our community's well-being to keep pace with these changing times and create a legacy for our future generations of prosperity and justice for all. Our founding father, George Washington, made it known that the two-party system would create the divide we are living with. I am and will always be of an independent nature who goes beyond being fiscally responsible by having the foresight to solve these multifaceted challenges now.
 
Our biggest challenges fall under the umbrella of public safety (jail, housing, drug use, agriculture, environmental impacts and natural disasters, growth management, water challenges, and more). As we grow and balance our needs together, we must address these challenges as a whole, as they all tie into a much larger picture of public safety. We need bold leaders who have the foresight and understanding to realize we need a comprehensive, multifaceted approach now, one that addresses all aspects of our public safety, or we will continue implementing solutions that, while well-intended, do more harm to the people they are trying to help and our precious tax dollars.

Find out more about me and my valuable experience at VoteKatherineOrlowski.org for Whatcom County Council District 4, and share with me what you love about our county and your concerns.

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Editor note:  Each candidate for elective public office in Whatcom County is invited to submit a statement for posting on NW Citizen. For specifics, click here.

About Candidate

Citizen Journalist • Member since Oct 19, 2023

Each candidate for elective public office in Whatcom County is invited to submit a statement for posting on NW Citizen.

Comments by Readers

Jon Humphrey

Jul 30, 2023
Thank you for your candidate statement. However, I have never received a detailed response from you on broadband infrastructure. I am the IT expert that started this petition.
https://www.change.org/p/mayorsoffice-cob-org-bellingham-whatcom-county-public-fiber-optic-network?source_location=search

It is unacceptable to me that the City Council not only sat on an existing public fiber network during an emergency but continues to do so. The county fails us by refusing to even establish a Dig Once Policy. The BAG (created by pro-big telecom public works director Johnston) was filled with big telecom reps. Johnston didn’t even want to broadcast or record meetings at first and personally filtered all public commentary that came to the committee. This was after years of yelling at advocates behind closed doors to protect Comcast and WAVE. Ultimately the final BAG report was presented by a WAVE executive and full of inaccuracies.

Proper fiber infrastructure would help us address virtually all of our social and economic concerns. Mount Venron, Anacortes, and thousands of other places already have public fiber networks that all work better than our private choices. But the reason you don’t know this is that no one yet holds the big telecoms accountable in any real way, just like the gun companies, and previously the cigarette companies. 
For example, Ziply is NOT really fiber, btw. They simply lie about it. How do we know? High accuracy testing called RRUL testing. (Real-time Response Under Load).
Satpal killed an $11,000 proposal for this high resolution testing to protect his now failed Nooksack Starlink project. He instead funded a project for much less accurate testing that literally cost 10 times more. Just like big telecom wanted him to. In fact, his study used old data from other sources and didn’t include much actual testing at all.
This Starlink project was not just a waste of millions on infrastructure we all knew was not viable. It used the Nooksack tribe to advertise services that were ultimately not affordable or viable. We warned him about it, but both he and Christine Grant were too arrogant to look at the numbers and facts surrounding connection types like highlighted in this article. https://nwcitizen.com/entry/

fiber-vs-cable-vs-wireless They just wanted the photo op. Not real solutions. Think about it, the PUD has 3 pretend progressive commissioners but somehow hired a new anti-public broadband GM who also has his head up his ass about public power. 
In classic Washington State Governmental Tradition they took advantage of our Native American population again to make money for special interests. Even though the Tulalip tribe has run their own public fiber system for decades. In fact they run the Casino, Quel Ceda Village, and tribal connections with it. I guess according to our government officlas what’s good enough and working with other nearby tribes just isn’t worth it when it comes to our local tribes. Because, let’s be honest, they don’t really care about them.
But don’t just blame him, the State Broadband Office does this all of the time. Being full of crap is just par for the course, but I think it’s obvious now that we as a species can’t afford that kind of political system anymore or we’re literally going to start starving to death as climate change gets worse.
We need leaders that don’t play the political game and stand up for what’s right. So what kind of politician are you? A Shewmake corporate-democrat phony (see most of our politicians or a Sanders/Warren social-justice crusader (AKA actual progressive) or an out of touch pretend “conservative”? 
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