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Decisions, decisions ... as PFD mulls options, deadline for action draws ever nearer. (The PFD Project).

Article Excerpt
If nothing else, Mayor Mark Asmundson is adamant about one thing: even though the BellinghamWhatcom Public Facilities District has been embracing the idea of a comprehensive $60 million cultural district downtown, nothing is set in stone.

"They haven't made all their decisions," Asmundson said. "What the PFD is considering right now is not decided at all. At the same time, I don't want to create the notion that the Centennial Project is something in doubt. I don't know to what extent the PFD or the city will play there or what the private contributions will be - it's a concept and exactly what, where and when is not known - but there is no abandonment of the idea"

The fact that the Public Facilities District board is considering - and appears to be moving forward with - an expansive downtown cultural district plan is at the heart of a controversy that has been growing in strength over the past several months. The PFD board, the mayor and the City Council have being feeling the heat as critics have raised concerns about how the--district board is choosing where to spend the $13 million in tax rebates it is receiving from the state. The district is obligated to spend the money on one or more projects, one of which must be at least $10 million in scope, and construction must start by Jan. 1, 2004.

The state created public facilities districts originally to fund the Seattle baseball stadium, and after the Legislature approved the creation of such districts, Bellingham and Whatcom County took advantage of the opportunity to create something similar for this community. Since whatever project they chose must be large in scope, only a few could qualify, and the board chose early on to concentrate its efforts on the recommendations of the Capital Improvements Advisory Committee, which had studied such issues for two years and had concluded that a cultural district downtown should be at the top of the community's to-do list.

* All the major partners in the Centennial Project...