In mid-June, the Seattle City Council sent a letter to King County executive Dow Constantine pledging $15 million to replace the South Park bridge—a bridge that connected the South Park neighborhood to Georgetown and provided a vital freight route to south Seattle’s industrial area. A bridge so decrepit that its national safety level rating was a four out of 100, the South Park bridge closed permanently on June 30 and the county has been working ever since to secure $130 million to fund its replacement.
Last week, King County received the last of its funding and the people rejoiced.
How is Seattle going to secure the $15 million it promised the county?
Mayor Mike McGinn’s 2011 budget proposal suggests raising the commercial parking tax (CPT) five percent to pay for the city’s share of the bridge replacement, while also maintaining funding for bicycle and pedestrian improvements in the city. The CPT is a tax on private parking garages around Seattle and the approximately $19 million it generates in revenue can only be used for transportation improvements.
But the city council just raised the CPT tax and now they’re unwilling to do it again. “I haven’t heard a willingness from council members to increase the CPT in the near future,” said Tom Rasmussen, chair of the council’s Transportation committee when reached by phone yesterday. Rasmussen says funding the South Park bridge can wait: “The way the county is sequencing the project, the county probably won’t need the funds in the short term. We have time to raise the funds.” Constantine’s office confirms that Seattle’s $15 million won’t be needed for two-to-three years.
Here’s the problem: The City Budget Office predicts that Seattle’s General Fund will grow less than 4 percent annually through 2014. “The anticipated revenue trends over the next four years are likely not sufficient to maintain the current mix of City services and address many of the ‘looming budget issues’… on the horizon,” according to the office’s 2011-2014 financial plan. The city council is simply punting its obligation to come up with bridge funding for a few years when research suggests the financial climate won’t be much different than it is now.
So how does Rasmussen propose eventually raising the money to fund the SP Bridge replacement? “Maybe a transportation benefit district,” he said, which would allow the city to collect $20 vehicle licensing fees to fund street-related improvements. “But first we need to develop an agreement and work to find out when, exactly, they’ll need our funds.” Here’s another problem: The council has committed to other projects that rely on the funding generated from a parking tax increase. “If the council doesn’t support the CPT increase, funding for walking and biking improvements will also be cut by 25 percent,” says Aaron Pickus, spokesman for the mayor.
God, aren’t you just dying for more on the CPT??? Your wish is granted after the jump!
In 2010, the city spent $20.6 million on walking and biking improvement projects. Without a CPT increase, funding for sidewalks, bike lanes, and other street improvements will drop to $15.6 million in 2011. (Walking and biking advocates say that even $20.6 million is woefully inadequate. For instance, sidewalks in Seattle cost between $1 and $2 million per mile to install. It would cost the city roughly $4.5 billion to add sidewalks to all Seattle streets.)
As mentioned earlier, the council voted in late September to raise the CPT from 10 percent to 12.5 percent, which is designated to pay for Seattle’s seawall replacement. At the time, both the mayor and Streets for All Seattle—an advocacy group that aims to raise $30 million annually to fund bike, ped, and transit improvements in the city—argued that replacing the seawall wasn’t a transportation-oriented expenditure. Now, instead of raising $30 million for street improvements with help from city council, funding might be reduced to $15 million. “We’ll be going significantly backwards to fund bike and pedestrian improvements,” said Craig Benjamin, spokesman for Streets for All Seattle. “The next question is, what improvements will be cut?”
It’s a good question. The council can delay funding the South Park bridge for awhile—eventually the city will be forced to pay up. But breaking pledges to Seattle residents is much easier than breaking pledges to King County.
At the Streets for All Seattle launch party in July, City Council President Richard Conlin, among other council members, pledged to find funding for ped, bike, and transit improvements. “These are tough budgetary times,” he said, but “they’re also times of opportunity. Time to think about when people don’t have much money, walking, biking, and transit are the modes the have to use.”
So… where’s the council’s rallying cry now?
Bike lane improvements during this budget = “Let them eat cake.”
@ six shooter, headline says ped not bike
Oh dear. This bodes ill.
And the timing… Coming right on the heels of the announcement of the granting of the Tiger funds…. Hhmmmm….
“Don’t shitcan us next election cycle, private industry employment requires we actually do stuff and is too scary.”
Fuck bikes. The next mayor is taking all your bike lanes away. And until them I block as many as possible at every opportunity. I cut bicyclist off, honk at them, and generally try to run them off the rode. Makes for a fun drive.
Why not just save the State $330 million in bribes to the Deeply-Boring Tunnel contractors and cancel that?
Then the city has tons of money to pay for the needed South Park Ped Improvements.
Mind you, then they might have to admit how much council got in bribes to build that tunnel monstrosity that the actual voters in our city don’t want …
So is the Council just supposed to cave in to everything the Mayor asks, Cienna? Aren’t they their own separate branch of government, responsible for a final decision on the budget? You seem to be upset that they’re exercising their independence from the Mayor’s office, but that’s what we pay them to do. The executive branch proposes, the legislative branch disposes. It’s the system. Not sure how you arrive at the idea that they’re punting on the South Park Bridge. It’s going to happen — just not the way Hizzoner proposed.
@7, what’s the mayor got to do with it? Maybe the Council doesn’t like his proposal, but it’s not the mayor who promised the bridge people money he didn’t have. Goddamn, these idiots are going to screw up the bridge, I just know it. Completion date: 2099.
Check your math, Cienna. Raising “the CPT from 10 percent to 12.5 percent” is a 25 percent increase in taxes, not five percent.
@8 — you fell right into Cienna’s thinking. The Mayor and the Council agreed to $15 million. The Mayor proposed a funding scheme. The Council didn’t like his scheme. Because Cienna’s a McGinnophile she interprets that to mean the Council isn’t going to fund the bridge. A rather big leap. The Council’s every bit as committed to the South Park Bridge — just expressing its own opinion about how to fund it which means it’s doing its job.
As long as their constituents north of downtown are happy, the City Council could give a shit. South Park can rot, for all they care.
Honestly, what a pathetic, dithering, spineless shit stain this entire process has been. A major bridge just closes. In the richest country in the world. In a major city. Bush League. Just a pathetic commentary on local infrastructure, government, and political will.
Want to know why at least half of the support for the deep-bore tunnel consists of people just moaning “GET IT OOOOVER WITH ALREADY?” Exhibit 1. Seattle will literally let something close and crumble to the ground given half an excuse.
Seattlites will pretend they care, but meanwhile do that now-famous passive-aggressive dance we always do. A mix of NIMBY, “Yes, I want to solve this problem as long as the solution is invisible and free,” and a lot of ineffectual eyebrow furrowing.
Boo, Seattle. Boooooooooooooo.
@10 so you say – there’s been a lot of arm-twisting and public shaming to get them on board with this.
Only Patty manned up on the issue.
The Council is still obsessed with giving our money to the elites and funding stuff the voters don’t actually want or need.
This analysis is really something.
@10: You left out one important factor: where is the money coming from?
It really is a fundamental question that gets glossed over time and again, it gets mocked even. Mainly by the same 6 people, but still, very important.
This is the problem with the Council, they seriously have no idea where money is coming from. They think that everything will magically be funded, and the naivete is really starting to drive home a startling aspect of the sitting Council: if anything costs money, they will mismanage it.
The proposition set before us, time and again, is that McGinn, O’Brien, Sierra Club, liberals, democrats and the unions, they all have these glorious plans that will never come to fruition because they want to charge us too much for it. They want to tax us, they want to spend, but what happens as a result? Tying bricks to small potatoes (funding for bikes is millions and millions less than even just paving) ends up sinking the big ones (South Park Bridge, for example).
Seriously, the anti-progressives would rather just let the bridge fall into the water than actually, you know, fund it. And if questioned they always say WSDOT/The Council/The Governor has a plan.
@14 no, the anti-progressives would rather sell the bridge parts to the Red Chinese and stash the cash from the stolen bridge parts in a Swiss UBS bank account to avoid paying US taxes.
That’s how much they hate America, Baconcat.
Nullbull @11, re your “As long as their constituents north of downtown are happy, the City Council could give a shit. South Park can rot, for all they care.” You are basically correct. The path to election in this city is the precincts north of Mercer Street. Do well there and it essentially doesn’t matter how well or poorly you do in the south end, central seattle, or West Seattle.
Of course this is only possible because all councilmembers in Seattle are elected citywide and by position number. Seattle is one of only 3 large cities in this nation which elects all its city government at large. Some day we will grow up and become a real city with some real political diversity on city council.
I thought the Stranger hated rebuilding stuff. Let’s replace the bridge with a pedestrian walkway and bike lane. Maybe we can pay for it by taxing authentic Mexican food.
Has anyone proposed putting a toll on the bridge? I thought all new car-based transportation infrastructure would include use taxes.