Meetings of Bellingham’s Immigration Advisory Board have been suspended indefinitely over concerns about tensions within the group and assertions that some members were acting outside the scope of the panel’s mission.

A City Council vote was 6-1 on Jan. 29 to pause the monthly meetings, with Councilman Jace Cotton opposed.

Mayor Kim Lund promised a progress report in about six months as the City Council discussed the issue during a meeting of the council’s Committee of the Whole.

Cotton, who took office Jan. 1 and is the council’s liaison to the Immigration Advisory Board, said that he believes the issues that are troubling his colleagues and the city administration can be addressed without disrupting its monthly meetings.

He called the suspension “unnecessary and untimely.”

But others disagreed, and a trio of city officials, including Janice Keller, who is communications director and acting deputy city administrator, described a committee that has been rife with “conflict and tension.”

None of the original 12 members remain from 2020, and 28 people people have joined and left the board in the past four years. The board currently has four vacancies.

Immigration Advisory Board members began meeting just as the coronavirus pandemic started, and its members lacked scope and direction while city officials were focused on other priorities, according to testimony during the meeting.

A pause in board meetings will allow city officials to address unclear roles, process and purpose of board and “not change the good intentions that led to forming it,” Keller said.

“This lack of clarity has led board members to act independently of the city and possibly counter to state and local law,” Keller said.

Police Chief Rebecca Mertzig described an adversarial attitude among some members of the board. She’s been forced to watch meetings online because board members asked her not attend in person.

“As a department, we have always valued collaborative civil discourse and conversation and to be uninvited to a meeting of a group that is making policy recommendations regarding the work we are doing does not align with the values of the city of Bellingham,” Mertzig told the council. “My job, literally in my job description, is to establish policy for BPD, and yet i don’t have a seat that the table for a group that is formed to make policy recommendations.”

Mertzig said she understands that some members of the community are wary of police scrutiny of their immigration status. But she said that her officers follow Washington state law, which doesn’t allow them to ask about someone’s immigration status, except under certain circumstances.

“With no line of communication to address negative experiences, misconceptions and general distrust of policing by members of the IAB, I’m unable to develop a relationship and build trust. Mayor Lund and I share a collective vision for the city and for the community to be a collective ‘we.’ While I agree with the critical importance of its work, I am unable to agree with the IAB’s current exclusionary model. I don’t believe that’s what the council had in mind when the IAB was created,” Mertzig said.

Bellingham City Council members formed the Immigration Advisory Board in late 2019 at the urging of Councilwoman Hannah Stone — an immigration lawyer — to give residents who are not from the U.S. a voice in city government.

Stone spoke during the Jan. 29 committee meeting, and said she supported the meeting suspension.

“Bringing this forward again is not to discount the importance of this work or to say in any way that we’re not supportive of this work moving forward, it’s actually quite contrary. Again, I just wanted to articulate that I’m bringing this forward because I care deeply about this work and wanting to make sure that it’s moving forward on a solid foundation. Unfortunately, that work wasn’t done in 2019 and so we are revisiting that,” Stone told the council.

Spanish translation was available for the meeting.

In a separate public comment session on Jan. 29, several local residents criticized the decision to suspend board meetings.

Current board member Tara Villalba said it was an “exclusionary” move on the council’s part.

“This is the definition of structural racism,” Villalba said.