Point Roberts Press

A new group in town, the "Point Roberts Independent Business Council", has circulated a letter introducing themselves. Their letter outlines their issues, and at the end, they point out that "the Point Roberts Chamber of Commerce (PRCOC) is no longer recognized by the Washington State Secretary of State as a legal entity in good standing, as the organization was 'administratively dissolved' in 2016.”

Here was the Chamber of Commerce's listing on the Secretary of State web site at the beginning of this week:

By the end of the week, the Chamber had renewed its registration and is now active again.

When their registration lapsed, one of the Chamber of Commerce Governors was Louise Mugar Grubb. She is the wife of Patrick J. Grubb and co-owner of Point Roberts Press, parent company of the All Point Bulletin.

That Louise Mugar Grubb was and continues to be a governor of the Point Roberts Chamber of Commerce is interesting. While she and Pat live in Point Roberts, their business is in Blaine:

(Disclaimer: The Point Roberts Press graphic is not intended to resemble Mickey Mouse.)

One might expect that the Point Roberts Chamber of Commerce would represent, you know, Point Roberts businesses. But the Point Roberts Press is actually a Blaine business. In fact, Louise Mugar Grubb is also listed as a Director for the Blaine Community Chamber of Commerce on that organization's web site:

What’s more, it appears that the only employees of the Point Roberts Press who live in Point Roberts are the Grubbs. In the past, their reporter Meg Olson lived here but she and her family moved away several years ago. She does not attend meetings here. But for some reason she continues to write articles about Point Roberts. From what we have seen, Pat records the meetings and Meg writes the article or at least gets the byline.

The only tie the Point Roberts Press has to Point Roberts aside from the fact that the owners live here is that those owners siphon a considerable amount of advertising money from the local businesses and pump it into their Blaine business.

Coincidentally, like the Point Roberts Chamber of Commerce, the Point Roberts Press also has an issue with their Secretary of State registration. Here's their street address from their web site:

And from their corporation registration from the Secretary of State web site:

One might look to the Point Roberts Press "About Us" page (pointrobertspress.com/about.html) on their web site for clarity about their relationship to Point Roberts. If one did, here's what one would find:

Very informative!

Rather than build their own web site, the Point Roberts Press uses a template-based service, and their web designer never bothered to fill out the About Us page on the template they're using or remove it from the site so it wouldn't be reachable. You can even find it through Google:

(Update Monday February 11 evening: Well, that didn't take long! The Point Roberts Press has updated their About Us page:)

(You're welcome, Point Roberts Press!)

Coincidentally, the Point Roberts Chamber of Commerce web site has a similar problem - try reading the testimonials below:

Sloppy web site work aside, the real question to the Point Roberts Chamber of Commerce is, why is a non-local company represented on it?

The Point Roberts Press is "Point Roberts" in name only. What the Grubbs do in Point Roberts is make a lot of money from local businesses. That does not make them a local business.

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