March 29, 2006
Government will get the job done! (I)
Seattle's City Council continues to display no signs of making a sensible decision on the Viaduct:
The Seattle City Council has a deadline of Sept. 22 to put an advisory vote on the November ballot asking Seattle voters how they want to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct.
But what the ballot will ask is still undecided.
So much for
last year's emergency gas tax.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at March 29, 2006
09:03 AM | Email This
1. Only naive progressive fools like David Goldstein believe in government.
Privatize it and do it for 1/10 the cost and 10 times faster.
It's not about the citizens of Seattle regarding the Viaduct repair. It's about Nickels appeasing his cronies.
2. DAY 141 of the Traffic Congestion Relief Promise and Emergency CRISIS MANAGEMENT Vigil:
1) Traffic suck even worse since I-912 was rejected.
2) The AWV is still standing and miraculously no longer an "emergency" (they give it powerful anti-biotics to heal it!!)
3) Millions & millions of dollars of bureaucratic time and consultant dollars are sucking up valuable GasTax Dollars.
4) They STILL don't even know what question to ask voters.
Laurence Peter 0f the famed Peter Princilple also said this:
"If you don't know where you are going, you will probably wind up somewhere else".
"Competence, like truth, beauty and a contact lens...is in the eye of the beholder."
3. 1 Only in "Silly Seattle" or "Mayberry RFD w/ skyscrapers" (per a KCTS commedian in 1992) can projects get "talked to death"
2 Joel Connelly's column dated Friday Sep-16-2006 is 6+ months old and nothing has changed. "While Seattle has dithered over the viaduct -- and tried to stay afloat in what City Council candidate Robert Rosencrantz calls our 'alphabet soup of transportation agencies' -- the freeway in Kobe has been rebuilt."
3 The options are simple
a do nothing and rebuild if & when it collapses
b retrofit the structure
c build a new structure
d build a tunnel
e rebuild the 6 lanes at ground level along the waterfront
f remove the structure and have traffic go on surface streets
4 Kevin Fullerton is identified as chairman of the Sierra Club political committee in Mar-26-2006 8:16 AM article by Matt Rosenberg, while the Sierra Club's Cascade Chapter (Washington State) identifies a Scott Otterson who says "I'm on the Executive and Legislative committees. I also chair the Political Committee and help out with the web site. While not volunteering for the Sierra Club, I'm finishing my PhD in electrical engineering, with many breaks for biking, backcountry skiing, climbing and kayaking."
http://cascade.sierraclub.org/user/30
5 Either way if Kevin or Scott thinks the State is going to going to allow Seattle to put a major arterial on surface streets w/ stop lights, they need to get into the beverage or recreational pharmeceutical business.
6 This leaves us w/ 5 choices and it presents an opportunity for Gregoire to redeam her self ,after mismanaging the AG's office for 12 years, by making a decision. She is welcome to consult w/ Doug MacDonald (DOT Secretary), Greg Nickels, Ron Sims, and the man in the moon.
7 The Nisqually Quake, 6.8-magnitude, hit the Puget Sound region on Feb. 28, 2001 or 5+ years ago and it's still a BFM in Latte Land
8 Make a decision and get on with it
9 Hire Dick Blum's family of firms HQ in SFO but w/ Seattle offices to manage the project
9 Here's the link about the history of cost overruns on big government projects.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/011/973syeao.asp
4. Seattle's major concern about the AWV is how to get the rest of the state to pick up most of the tab for whatever the decision is. The folks over at HA will always reming you of how important Seattle is, and how Seattle must be taken care of first in matters such as this. The rest of the state is trvial.
5. The sad thing is that Seattle will vote to build the tunnel no matter what the questions are going to be and then start crying for state wide money to pay for it all.
Why retrofit isn't even an option is as silly as the option of doing away with AWV completely.
Having said all this, I think the questions should tie the taxation requirements such as below (and enact the taxation immediately upon choosing one option):
1) Retrofit - no addtional tax from the Seattle residents.
2) Replace - $ figure for each resident/homeowner/etc. based on projected cost beyond $2 billion that the recent gas tax provides.
3) Tunnel - $ figure for each resident/homeowner/etc. based on projected cost beyond $2 billion that the recent gas tax provides.
4) Tear it down and do nothing more - no additona taxes
6. Libertarian,
Good point, but you mispelled "trivial."
7. Skylar - Good catch! Sorry, my mistake. Sometimes I don't check my stuff before I post it.
8. What I find perplexing is the purpose of the vote.
Putting aside one's own preference, what's a vote supposed to prove?
The difference in cost between the State's contribution ($2 billion) and the cost of a tunnel (>$3 billion?) is at least $1 billion dollars.
Unless you ask Seattle voters to tax themselves to pay for that difference, what information do you get?
Asking people to vote for something without asking them to pay for it is weird.
(And, btw, I think that such a $1 billion request would go down to totally massive defeat.)
Anyone have any idea why the politicos are so intent on a vote?
9. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Seattle voters are sheep. They will always pick the most expensive boondoggle on the ballot, vote for it, and hope the city/county/state/Unaccountable, unelected random body of losers/ will magically come through.
Only after hundreds of millions$ are spent do they wise up. Then it's lather, rinse, repeat.
10. I think it was Chico Marx that said..."WHY A DUCK"
11. This is just a way that Nickels can say "See! This tunnel is what everyone wants". But we already know the third act of this play. Seattle will be asked to pay for SOME of the additional cost in the form of additional taxes. The rest of the money, cost overruns and new seawall completion will come from ADDITIONAL taxes in the new "RTID", and all of the Puget Sound Region will be paying for that.