Comments

1
So the entire city is studded with construction cranes; we are what, the 5th fasting growing city in the country and there is no way to tie that increase in tax base and fees to fund the infrastructure we need. That is a fuckup.
2
Have a luxary apartment tax and a cash home purchase tax. Anyone who can pay 600k in cash can afford a 1% tax and anyone who can pay 2.5k+ a month for rent can afford to pay a tax. Screw all these other taxes and start taxing the rich.

Also good piece Ansel.
3
Ansel, it would be helpful if you explained to your readers why the property tax is a zero sum game trade off between transit and education (the Constitution limits total property taxes regardless of whether or not the Legislature is controlled by socialists or fire breathing Tea Party nutcases). I will say it is encouraging that you actually reported what Rep. Carlyle had to say without tarring him as some kind of moron. With some nose to the grindstone research you may become a cub reporter some day.
4
@1: Welcome to Eyman Land. My understanding is that property tax authority as a whole is capped, or strictly limited in growth, regardless of how much property values go up. So everyone continues to pay their proportionate share of a pie that does not grow as quickly as our wealth.
5
@2: Cash home purchase tax? Why not just call it the mortgage banker subsidy? Take out a loan, avoid the tax, pay off the loan. That's your plan for funding transit? No wonder this town is in trouble.
6
@5 you never did federal income tax? You get to deduct your mortage interest, so i dont see how this is a seattle thing. The objective isnt to to give mortage brokers a break, but to tax the rich.
7
@6:

Like @5, I read @2 as suggesting a tax on purchases of homes that are conducted in cash, as in rich person buying without needing financing. But the biggest flaw would be a purchase using financing with no or limited penalty for paying off early. Buy with a mortgage, pay it off tomorrow, avoid the tax. Not sure why the comment ended with a Seattle slam, but it's still not really a feasible idea.
8
You have a story about Carlyle, but everything you've presented about the other members of the Seattle delegation is based on rumor and unnamed sources (and one of them apparently told you straight up that she supports the funding sources requested). In the past I would have said that I expect better from the Stranger, but sadly, of late, I don't.
9
So, in other words, Mr. Carlyle wants more "grease" in order to get his vote.
10
@8 - Why would the rest of those reps want to be quoted at this point in the process? Would you prefer he write an article that says "who knows?"

Stick to newspaper comment sections.
11
I respect the hell out of Carlyle - he's one of the only progressives in Olympia that not only acknowledges the insanity of a state that's as socially liberal as Vermont having a more regressive tax system than Florida, but is actually working to fix it, as Sisyphusian as that effort is in this legislature.

But I'd tend to agree with Ansel's "throwing out the good in search of the perfect" comment. This whole thing brings up an interesting debate: There's popular support for both light rail and adequate education funding in this state, but which one are voters more likely to approve a new tax (aside from property) for? Kids make for better campaign fliers than trains.
12
Everybody in seattle acts like a spoiled rich kid, give me give me give me,and expect someone else to give it to them. You want bike lanes everywhere but don't want to charge them for their part, they expect to get money from the demon cars, they want cheap rent, but expect landlords to eat the rising property taxes, and the parks, oh the parks don't even get me started with that!!!! I don't think most people here have a clue, most live in a dream world!!! Why does everything here have to be so grand?? People want $15 an hour but have the work ethic of piece of shit!! Now all the alternative lifestyle people are crying its to expensive to live on cap hill and hate people for buying homes! Its not your cap hill, it belongs to everyone!!!! Seattle city council should be shot for the mess they created here, but you fools will vote the same idiots in!!!
13
Everybody in seattle acts like a spoiled rich kid, give me give me give me,and expect someone else to give it to them.

Try reading the article before commenting on it. All of the tax money for ST3 comes from within the ST taxing district, which includes a…. We're merely asking for permission to tax ourselves for our own benefit. The problem with that is the three counties of the district, King, Pierce, and Snohomish, provide more tax revenue to Olympia than the other 36 counties in the state combined. As Olympia's "cash cow", our taxing authority is a precious resource for legislators, hence Rep. Carlyle's concerns.

If you want to get angry at freeloaders, take it to Sen. Baumgarter of Spokane, who is crowing about spending $821,000,000 of o….
14
@13 tensor: BINGO! Everybody get mad as hell at Senator Baumgarter of R-Spokane, and his freeloading cohort, Senator Doug "Free Lunch" Ericksen of R-Ferndale, who both agree that record profits for Big Coal and Big Oil are more important than fixing Washington State's failing infrastructure, keeping health, housing, and education costs sustainable, and fixing our fucked up state tax system.
15
Why take the property tax when you can take a bus?
16
Hutch @10 & @11 is making sense to me. Money quote: There's popular support for both light rail and adequate education funding in this state, but which one are voters more likely to approve a new tax (aside from property) for? Kids make for better campaign fliers than trains.

It's obvious our state's tax structure is an accidental mess, but any time you get a chance to so fundamentally change the way our economy and our lives work the way a major light rail expansion would do, well, you don't look that gift horse in the mouth. The "hold your nose and vote yes" factor on this is a lot less than it was on Obamacare, and there's no serious progressive out there saying Obamacare wasn't worth the tradeoffs.

And while I'm hearing nothing more than a calculated hissy-fit here from Reuven Carlyle (the full $15 billion with the property tax did make its way out of the House), seems to me he's on the hook now for his share of the blame if the ST3 bill dies now.
17
Light Rail, as designed and built in Seattle, is just an over priced bus.

Despite all the right of ways and billions in tunneling, it just isn't fast enough.

We have but one rapid transit system, that can move quickly between popular destinations over long distances and that is Sounder.

The plan to build Regional Centers and de-Seattlize this state is promising, but only if we build the highway and fast rail capacity so you can Live Anywhere, Work Anywhere.
18
@17 -- Seattle has a one-seat ride from downtown to Sea-Tac airport, on Link Light Rail. It takes a rider ~45 minutes from entering a downtown station to walking up to the airline counter. How many other American cities offer this option?

Also, "the plan to build regional centers and de-Seattlize this state" by building highways failed a long time ago, and nobody now is going to pay megabucks to reinforce that failure. Sorry to break it to ya.
19
@18

The importance of a name; Regional Growth Centers and why Ballard isn’t one

http://seattletransitblog.com/2015/04/15…
20
I dislike many aspects of this proposal.
First, the PR campaign. Taxpayer-paid ads on TVW, crowing about their recent successes, forgetting about/never owning up to the boondoggles of the past (ST1, which didn't deliver what was promised and had to be scaled back, nobody was ever held accountable, and which reportedly has a 30% delay rate due to train/vehicle/pedestrian issues in its "at grade" segment, the normal time for the trip the same as the bus it replaced). If you don't think a project could go over budget, look no further than Alaskan Way.
Then there are their board members writing editorials promising to "get us moving," when ST3 won't be built for decades, and what has been built hasn't moved the needle on congestion.
Yet another is everybody - Carlisle being the first I've seen not doing so - blindly following the statement that "ST needs $15 billion" rather than bother to check to see if that's true, akin to being told one has a serious medical condition and not getting a second opinion. Hint: According to (http://seattletransitblog.com/2015/02/14…), Everett to Tacoma, Redmond, Ballard to UW can be built for $11.2 billion - the Senate's proposal - but it involves taking the direct way to and from Everett (I-5) rather than the excursion to appease Boeing (that also duplicates planned bus service, while existing service to Boeing has been scaled back and not restored due to low ridership).
Then there are misleading and varying financing costs that don't say what it will cost the average person or household per year nor for how long, instead using meaningless 50¢ per $100 purchase (sales tax) or $300,000 assessed valuation (the average in this area is $500,000) to gain votes.
Lastly, once Sound Transit has the money, who holds this unelected and hand-picked board accountable? The answer, nobody, as, for instance, why are they allowed to keep running Sounder/North, which has colossal subsidies?
21
checkNbalance, it must really tan your hide to know that the portion of the population that responds to all your tired, old, ham-handed, disingenuous appeals is becoming smaller with each passing year. If tropes like "what has been built hasn't moved the needle on congestion" didn't work in 2008, how are they going to work in 2016, especially when the downtown-to-UW segment will have already opened by the time the vote takes place?

Believe it or not, providing a reliable mass transit system is a necessary function of government in a major metropolitan area, just like policing or the military. I'd love to see you apply your righteous scrutiny of Sound Transit to any other government body in this state and region... Maybe you wouldn't even have to resort to such stretches of credulity to make your point.

Oh, and it might help your cause too if you could actually correctly spell the name of the guy whose name you just read. Little bit of advice for the future there.

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