Monorail convert Peter Steinbrueck turned downright snarly in defense of the monorail last week when I asked him about the latest hump in the roller-coaster negotiations between the council and the Seattle Monorail Project on the monorail's transit way agreement with the city. The mayor's office kicked off the negotiations last month with a proposal that would have drowned the project in costly provisions. Even now, many involved in the negotiations say, the agreement is just this side of ruinous. "We've moved from unacceptable to marginally doable," monorail board chair Tom Weeks sums up.

Enter Steinbreuck. "I'm concerned that we've saddled this project with so many requirements that it can't be built," he says. For example? How about a 700-to-900-foot skybridge to Westlake Center; sidewalks a quarter-mile from stations; and provisions requiring sign-off from department heads who answer to--you guessed it--Mayor Nickels? "The executive has put a chokehold on the project.," Steinbrueck growls. Steinbrueck also has some bad news for monorail backers: Because the council is behind schedule for approving the agreement and the monorail alignment, the odds aren't looking too rosy for a June 15 deadline for wannabe monorail contractors to place their bids. And without the bids, SMP staffers say, it'll be tough for the agency to keep to its current schedule and break ground this fall. "You don't," Steinbrueck says, "throw a $1.7 billion project together in two weeks. My intuition tells me it's going to be delayed." Not helping matters, the council's main negotiator, Nick Licata, is out of the country until mid-June.

Licata also missed out on the biggest victory of his career: The repeal of the loathsome impound ordinance, which allowed cops to impound cars for minor violations like unpaid traffic tickets. The council's surprisingly lopsided 6-2 vote was an anticlimactic denouement to a frenzied press-release war between Licata and City Attorney Tom Carr, impound's loudest defender. Licata's opening volley, sent at 11:00 last Friday night, accused the city attorney of "clinging to a policy that has divided our city"; Carr blasted back on Sunday, saying he was "disappointed" that Licata had "chosen to address this important public safety issue through a press release." Carr's chosen forum? What else: A press release.

The council's chief gatekeeper (absent, needless to say, when Licata fired off his Friday-night release) is Martin Munguia--who, in an apparent act of insanity, is leaving the city to take a job with Everett's Community Transit. (The real act of insanity, of course, is that Munguia apparently lives in Everett.) Let's hope the council finds an equally capable replacement for this even-keeled spokesman.

By bailing now, Munguia will escape one of the council's bloodiest annual rituals: massive ($25 million) budget cuts. Non-public safety departments have been asked to bear the brunt of the cuts (neighborhood matching fund, this means you) by slashing their 2005 budgets more than eight percent.

barnett@thestranger.com