Jori Burnett views himself as very lucky. As the City Administrator for the City of Ferndale, assisting Mayor Greg Hansen and the City Council, he gets to see his hometown grow and evolve. 

“In many ways, it’s more important to me to be working in Ferndale than it would be to be the city administrator somewhere else,” Burnett said. 

Hansen and the City Council come up with big picture ideas, and Burnett’s job is executing those ideas and handle day-to-day operations. And in rare circumstances, he’s the person who will tell elected officials if their vision isn’t feasible and help them come up with an achievable alternative plan. 

“If the mayor said, ‘Let’s annex British Columbia into Ferndale,’ I’d say, ‘I totally understand, but we can’t do that. Maybe we should look at how we can make Ferndale better known to the Lower Mainland.’” Burnett joked. 

One of the benefits of working for Ferndale is that it has a ton of potential, Burnett said. 

“One of the things I love about Ferndale is that the pride in the community has always been there, but there’s also a hunger to get better,” he said. “We look at growth as an opportunity.” 

Burnett was raised in Sandy Point and attended Ferndale schools starting in first grade, graduating from Ferndale High School in 1993. Two of his teachers are the parents of Mayor Hansen: Bertella Hansen was his first-grade teacher, and Mel Hansen was his band teacher. 

Two more teachers that left an impact on Burnett in Ferndale were journalism teacher Mary Seilo and social studies teacher Spencer Welch. Their high expectations helped him improve academically during the second half of high school. 

“Those teachers, pretty consistently, were like, ‘What are you doing? You’re smarter than this,’” Burnett said. “That’s the thing that kicked me into gear.” 

After earning a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Western Washington University, and a short stint working for Whatcom County, Burnett was hired by the City of Ferndale in 2007. For 12 years, he was a planner and later a Community Development Director for the city. 

There are a lot of projects Burnett said he’s proud of during this time in his career. One major one is the development of Star Park, which the community helped design and build. 

“Just seeing the embodiment of Ferndale’s pride and passion – we had hundreds of volunteers working thousands of hours over the course of a couple days – that’s a life highlight,” he said. 

Burnett is also proud of helping Ferndale update their city-wide zoning, allowing for more dense housing structures to be built in the city. Within a few years, Ferndale went from being sued for its sprawl to being a state leader in building “missing middle” housing. Burnett even won the 2016 Citizen of the Year Award from the Whatcom County Realtor’s Association for making this zoning change a reality. 

During his first few years as City Administrator, Burnett helped guide Ferndale out of the COVID-19 pandemic by not pausing major city projects like the Thornton Overpass and a new sewer treatment plant. Because many other cities stopped their plans, Ferndale was able to pick up grants that were left behind, which saved local taxpayers money. 

“When COVID hit, we did not put on the brakes, and I think a lot of agencies kind of did,” he said. “We were able to accelerate, and as a result, we find ourselves in a better financial position and we’ve been able to make 2-3 years of progress on some of our long-range goals.” 

Burnett’s two kids, Lorelei and Eli, are the second generation of the family to attend Ferndale High School.  

“It is so great being able to see Ferndale through my kids’ eyes as well,” Burnett said. “Seeing how they experienced it, what their challenges are, what’s changed and what’s the same.” 

Burnett plans to keep serving the city of Ferndale for a long time. Eventually, he hopes that it will become one of the region’s marquee destinations. 

“Maybe, at some point, when people say they’re from Bellingham, the other person will ask, ‘Where’s that?’ And they’ll say, ‘Oh, it’s south of Ferndale,’” Burnett said, laughing. “That would be awesome.”