Blink, and Here We Are.

Where Did the Time Go?

Posted: December 5, 2025

“45.”

No, not that 45. I’m talking about an age. In less than a month, the oldest of the millennials will turn 45. As an elder millennial myself, this is the number staring back at me. Say what you will about the generation—and there are plenty of memes to go around—but we are getting older.

We’re a bridge generation. The oldest among us grew up in an analog world with cassettes and even the occasional 8-track, and by college we were digitally streaming music and carrying cell phones. The Challenger Explosion, the Internet, the Dot-Com Bubble, 9/11, the Great Recession and housing collapse, the pandemic—we have collected more “once-in-a-lifetime” experiences than any generation asked for. We have Gen X, the Baby Boomers, and the Silent Generation before us; and after us we have Gen Z, Gen Alpha, and now Gen Beta. We are the proverbial middle child.

At our recent Annual Awards Dinner, the 2025 Ambassador of the Year, Shannon Day, shared a reflection that echoed words I wrote years ago and hung above my office door—a personal philosophy shaped by many influences:

“To leave this world a bit better than how I found it.
To do so through ethics and integrity.
By listening twice as much as I speak.
To do so by following my passions and to make my home/community a better place.
To learn from those who have come before and accomplished greatness, and to equally pull those younger generations up to become leaders I respect.
To know at least one life has breathed easier.”

As a bridge generation, we get to do exactly that—learn and reach. I’d argue that as a human condition, we all get to do that too.

2025 has been a hard year. I don’t want to rehash the details. We all know them. AND we get to learn and reach. We are here; we are still a community. There is work, business, and opportunity still ahead. At our Annual Awards Dinner a couple of weeks ago, we celebrated businesses, organizations, and people doing great things. We can learn and reach.

But learning and reaching forward also means telling the truth about where we stand—and where we are failing. And nowhere is that failure clearer than in what is happening to our youngest professionals.

Maybe it’s because of our beloved Whatcom Young Professionals program, but my mind is always thinking about the future of this community, and more broadly, the future of work. And the reality is stark: we have made it increasingly difficult for young talent to build a life here.

When I first moved here in 2004, I was introduced to the concept of the “Bellingham tax”—that you’d be paid less and charged more for the privilege of living here. At the time, it felt like a clever idiom—an expression of frustration shared by people in their 20s and 30s.

But it has gotten worse.
Far worse.

That once-cute idiom has become handcuffs.

We are exporting our youth.
Let me give that the space it deserves:

We. Are. Exporting. Our. Youth.

Children can no longer stay here. Talent from WWU, WCC, BTC, NWIC, and even our K-12 graduates must leave to start their professional lives. Most would love to stay. Bluntly—they’re not able to.

And we continue to not solve the problem.

The solution starts with our Comprehensive Plan—our once-every-ten-years opportunity to shape the community for the next twenty. And we are missing the mark again. We are not planning for more housing. We are not preparing for the workforce we claim we want. What we are doing is allowing privilege to masquerade as environmentalism—weaponized to say no over and over again to stop growth, stop opportunity, and stop the next generation from finding a foothold.

Without more housing options—across all types—we cannot address affordability, homelessness, workforce shortages, or economic mobility. We cannot build the future we claim to want.

This is our choice.

And looking ahead to our youth, we need to be honest: we cannot expect them to grow roots when we refuse to prepare the ground.

We can learn and reach—and now is the moment to reach farther than ever, not for ourselves, but for the generations rising behind us.

Guy Occhiogrosso
President/CEO