Mayor Tim Douglas

President, The North American Institute

Tim Douglas served as Mayor to more than 800 city employees and over 70,000 residents of Bellingham, Washington. Mayor Tim has lived in Bellingham since 1967. During that time Bellingham has evolved from a traditional, resource-dependent town to one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas of the country.

Mayor Douglas is a graduate of Washington State University and received his Masters Degree from the University of Indiana. His first position in Bellingham was the Dean of Students at Western Washington University. He became involved with the Lettered Streets Neighborhood in the first neighborhood clean-up project. His political career began with an appointment to the Bellingham Planning Commission where he began work on the first Comprehensive Plan update. He was elected to serve on the Bellingham City Council as the At-Large Representative in 1982. He successfully ran for Mayor in 1984 and served until 1995.

Following his time in public office, Tim was appointed by Governor Gardner to the Puget Sound Water Quality Authority and helped draft the first Water Quality Management Plan to protect and restore water quality in Puget Sound and the Georgia Basin. Governor Locke then appointed him as Director of Community, Trade and Economic Development where he worked with other State agencies to devise the Salmon Recovery Plan to meet requirements of Endangered Species Act. President Clinton appointed Tim to work on strengthening NAFTA’s environmental protections through the Fourth American Fund for Environmental Cooperation. He then took the position as Director of the U.S. Peace Corps in Russia for two years. He speaks both Russian and Spanish fluently.

The Douglases returned to Bellingham in 2003. Tim was volunteering on the Bellingham Library Board of Trustees when the City Council called on him to serve as interim Mayor after Mark Asmundson announced his resignation in the fall of 2006. Mayor Tim will serve until the next regular election in the fall of 2007. He and his wife, Joanne, have one daughter and recently became grandparents for the first time.