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Rebecca Mertzig will become Bellingham’s police chief June 1, according to a city news release Tuesday evening, April 19.

Mertzig, a Ferndale resident, is chief of the Stanwood Police Department and a lieutenant in the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office, where she is using her birth surname, Lewis, because that is how she is professionally known, she told The Bellingham Herald for an earlier story.

Her salary will be $196,884 a year, according to the city, for leading the department that is funded for 193 full-time equivalent employees. The police chief reports to the mayor. An 18-year law-enforcement veteran, Mertzig was a member of the Snohomish County Equity and Inclusion Task Force and was Deputy of the Year in 2010. She also earned the FBI-LEEDA Trilogy Award for completing an FBI supervisory training course. She has a bachelor‘s degree in criminal justice from Eastern Washington University, she told The Herald for an earlier story.