The mayor's $1.8 billion, 20-year transportation levy has "very little support from anybody" on the council, according to council transportation chair Jan Drago, who calls the levy, which includes an average $195 property-tax increase, a 10 percent tax on commercial parking, and a $25-per-employee tax on businesses, "too big and too long."

"I think there's a sensitivity to coming up with a proposal that will pass," Drago says. "Ordinarily the council likes to keep the tax on the people under $100 a year and with a time frame of nine years or less." How small is small enough? "About half" ought to do it, Drago says.

The Cascade Bicycle Club, an influential 4,000-member group that lobbies on behalf of bicyclists in Seattle, is withholding its support for the mayor's proposal until Nickels commits to maintaining bike paths and sidewalks as well as roads with the routine maintenance funding in the package. Cascade policy director David Hiller says bike travel in Seattle is doubling every 10 years. "What we're not getting is commensurate growth in funding." The council will start paring down the mayor's proposal this summer, and will likely vote on a package in July.

The mayor is also running into council opposition to a proposed new fire station on Queen Anne, part of his 2003 fire facilities levy. After neighbors of the site protested the proposed demolition of three single-family homes, five city council members, led by Tom Rasmussen, intervened, demanding in a May 15 letter that the city come up with an alternate site for the station. The head of the city's Fleets and Facilities department, Brenda Bauer, was reportedly all set to write a letter responding to the council; but when Nickels got wind of Rasmussen's missive, he decided to address the council directly. In a scathing broadside addressed to the five council members who opposed the site, Nickels says Fleets and Facilities did consider alternate sites, but could only come up with one: the parking lot of a nearby Catholic church, which "serves a cultural need" and would cost more to purchase than the homes. Ultimately, the location of the fire station is in the council's hands, because the mayor needs council approval to condemn the houses.

Low-income-housing advocates reserved judgment when longtime city bureaucrat Rasmussen ran on a social-justice campaign in 2003, but even far-left activists like John Fox of the Seattle Displacement Coalition seem pleased with his proposal to create a database of all the rental housing in four Seattle neighborhoods, including information about rents, condo conversions, demolitions, and apartment sales, which will help the council to "explore and monitor... factors that may place pressures on the city's affordable rental housing."

"He seems to be asserting himself to a greater degree," says Fox, who serves on the committee. However, he adds, "I have some ambivalence because the committee is kind of inordinately weighted" toward developers and real-estate agents, who make up about half its membership.

barnett@thestranger.com