Pot, meet kettle! C'mon, Mr. Mayor, for someone who continues to talk about the physical capacity for 20,000 jobs in South Lake Union as the guaranteed creation of 20,000 jobs, you've got a lot of nerve criticizing anybody for politicizing research.
Worse, Nickels has a lot of nerve faulting the council for fighting back. It was Nickels, after all, who stopped city council members from using city departments to formulate policy of their own. Now that council members are tapping their own legislative department to engage in battle, it's bad form for the mayor to cast aspersions on the council's only means of punching back.
Nickels' latest slight to the nerds on the second floor came this week as he lobbied against a council bill that would put them in charge of redesigning Nickels' plan to pay for the $45 million South Lake Union streetcar. According to transportation chair Richard Conlin, who drew the most fire, including visits from Nickels' council lobbyist Sung Yang and Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis--Team Nickels argued that if the council was really intent on establishing a new plan, they should at least let the mayor's people oversee it. After all, the biased legislative staffers couldn't be trusted.
Really? Judging between Nickels' plan and the smart alternative suggested by a legislative staffer who shall remain nameless, I'd say it's Nickels who's politicizing policy.
Nickels wants area property owners, like Allen's Vulcan, to cover about 55 percent of streetcar costs through something called a Local Improvement District (LID). In LIDs, local property owners agree to pay higher property taxes (up to a set amount) in order to partially reimburse the city for fronting the money. The council is cool with the LID concept in general, but the mayor's version is analogous to a flat tax--it doesn't account for the varying level of benefit each property owner will receive. In contrast, the city council wants a progressive property tax, with LID payments based on assessments of how much a given property owner benefits from the streetcar. Even cooler: The council's assessment scheme could generate more money, which means the property owners might be able to fully reimburse taxpayers.
Evidently, the mayor thinks it's biased policy to potentially have small businesses like Lake Union Wholesale Florist kick in less, while Vulcan might kick in more. (Given that the mayor's third biggest contributor is Vulcan, he's got no place talking about bias.)
Meanwhile, the council's bill, biased toward fair play, is veto-proof with seven council sponsors.
