Port hires PR firm to improve public image

The Port of Bellingham unanimously approved spending nearly $100,000 on public relations to improve its public image during its August 13 meeting.

Commissioners authorized port executive director Rob Fix to contract a one-year strategic communications campaign with Conflux Associates, a Bellingham-based company owned by Peter Frazier. The contract is set to end August 31, 2025.

The port’s goals with the communications campaign include increasing public awareness of its vision, clarifying the port’s work, gaining public support, increasing the port’s power and ability to do its work, and improving employee morale and retention, according to a port memo.

The port already employs a public affairs administrator, Mike Hogan.

The contract comes on the heels of public scrutiny toward the port, most recently after the port let go of Bellingham International Airport’s aviation director in mid-July. Deputy aviation director Emily Phillipe resigned August 12, according to an August 14 Cascadia Daily News article.

The port commissioners approved the contract in their consent agenda, a section of the meeting where items are voted in a single motion typically without discussion. The contract was one of 14 consent agenda items, and four items were listed as action items.

Conflux Associates LLC did not appear to have a website and the business address provided on the contract agreement was for a home on Chuckanut Point Drive in Bellingham. The Washington State Secretary of State website shows the company registered in June 2017.

Frazier, who also helped found Hotel Leo and Heliotrope Hotel, wrote in the proposal to the port that it “pains me to see Port of Bellingham take such a reputational beating. The problem has been growing for some time but has reached a critical nadir.” He added the port’s reputation would impact hiring, job satisfaction and team building.

In his strategic communications campaign plan, Frazier wrote that the public’s opinion of the port is low and that “a nuanced discussion about the work of the port is beyond most voters and taxpayers.”

“We will create a soaring and plausible vision of what Whatcom county will look like in the near future when the Port has fulfilled its mission, its partnerships have succeeded, and community economic development opportunities have been realized,” Frazier wrote in the proposal. “Goals help us get to where we want to go, but inspiring people is difficult without a clear, tangible, and attractive vision. This vision is not intended to be public-facing in this form.”