Bellingham is super liberal but benefits from being over an hour from Seattle. It's a smallish town so the leaders are still accountable to the people and there's a lot of rural living in the vicinity. The unmentioned part is that the town is highly dependent on the state college in the city and I'm sure they were worried about the effect this would have on enrollment. At the end of the day, don't care why, I'm just glad they're fixing it.