My, how things have changed. This time, an exasperated Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis could be heard to mutter, "It's about time!" after Drago wrapped up her remarks, which Nickels followed with an upbeat address that glossed over nearly $318,000 in human-services cuts. (Total cuts in the $679 million proposal: $25 million, including 191 city jobs.)
Human-service providers, identifiable by their neon lapel stickers and brightly colored plastic hats, clustered outside in the aftermath of Nickels' speech, grimly detailing the impact of the cuts to anyone who would listen. More than a dozen groups would be slashed under the mayor's proposal, which preserves so-called "direct services" while cutting "advocacy, lobbying, and administrative" costs. Exactly what qualifies as "direct services" will be the subject of heated debate during budget negotiations over the next few weeks.
But that debate will have to wait at least three days, while council members trek northward for the 2004 Leadership Conference, an annual confab in Vancouver, BC sponsored by the Seattle Chamber of Commerce. At least one council member, Peter Steinbrueck, professed annoyance at the truncated schedule. "I don't see why this [conference] takes precedent over the budget," an irritated Steinbrueck snapped. How much will the public pay for council members to attend the annual industry junket? A whopping $800 per council member.
King County Council member Dwight Pelz says he isn't taking a position on the monorail-killing initiative, I-83. But that's not how things looked from the 12th floor of the renovation-ravaged King County Courthouse, where Pelz held a September 27 press conference. Standing in front of a podium bearing an age-scarred King County seal, Pelz claimed the Seattle Monorail Project's ridership projections relied on an "overestimation" of the number of buses Metro could afford to redeploy to feed monorail stations . SMP officials--two of whom perched politely in the back of the tiny conference room like parents observing third- graders responded that their ridership analysis relied on much more conservative assumptions than Metro's analysis.
Who's right? Who knows? The more important question is this: Why is Pelz coming forward with anti-monorail analysis now, just five weeks before Seattle votes on the "Monorail Recall" initiative? Pelz insists his motives are untainted by politics: "I think this is perfectly consistent with what I've been saying for two years." Pelz doesn't mention what got him so interested in the monorail two years ago: the last monorail campaign.
