Nope.

We're pleased that PubliCola managed to pull together both sides to debate the deep-bore tunnel next Thursday. We’ll be there. This is just the sort of discussion that needs to happen before the city approves contracts to build the tunnel—that's why we tried to set up a debate in the first place. We invited both camps to our forum—the state DOT and the council, and the mayor and Cm O’Brien—and made sure a neutral moderator, C.R. Douglas, would be posing the questions and leading the discussion. It was all fairsie-squaresies. I stepped in to moderate only after the state pulled out and the council refused to debate, and then Douglas followed them out the door. (We didn't cancel the event because then the terrorists would have won.) There was some whining after the Stranger's event about it being a one-sided discussion. That was not the fault of the folks who showed up last week at Town Hall. But now both sides have agreed to debate and that's great—a debate is what we wanted all along. We're not hung up on who sponsors it.

Because there's still a lot to talk about. The state will be cracking open the bids from the two contenders to build the tunnel on Thursday, and a city initiative about cost overruns on the tunnel will be filed tomorrow.

See you next Thursday.