Meet Your New Mayor

If ever Seattle needed a strong leader, it’s now. The great
recession, the crumbling viaduct, the toxic Duwamish River, the leaky
520 floating bridge, density and its discontents—all of these
challenges cry out for a steady hand on the civic tiller.

Fortunately, we now have such a hand: a veteran of grinding
bureaucratic battles, a visionary, a man who can make law and attend a
Sound Transit board meeting and threaten certain growth-
management
goons, all before lunch. People of Seattle, meet your new mayor.

Meet Richard Conlin.

Yes, very true, we’re in the midst of electing a new guy (too close to call, but McGinn’s in the lead) who will actually hold the title of mayor. Sure, McGinn and Mallahan have potential. But at the moment, that’s all they’ve got; they’ve never run anything like a large port city full of complicated problems before. So while whoever it is tries to figure out where the mayoral scepter is, Conlin’s actually got all the power.

Elected to
the city council in 1997, Conlin honed his skills in combat with the
adversarial mayoral administration of Greg Nickels over the last eight
years and has developed a particularly tough posture as a result. At
the end of 2007, his fellow city council members, recognizing this
quality in him, elected Conlin council president. This December,
they’re expected to do so again, making Conlin one of only a few
Seattle council members in history who have served multiple consecutive
terms. (The last was Paul Kraabel, some 20 years ago.)

“The fact that Richard is being reelected, which is very likely, is
testament to his leadership,” said city council member Tim Burgess.
With an untested and relatively inexperienced new mayor, Burgess
continued, “the council’s role will be more noticeable and more
dominant.” In other words: While the new guy tries on his new raiment,
the nine-member council, led by Conlin, will be pursuing an agenda that
will shape the city’s bridges, waterfront, and transit network for
years to come.

True, Conlin’s not exactly a head-knocker
in the mold of Robert
Moses (the fabled development-financing tycoon who reshaped New York
City after the Great Depression). In fact, he’s kind of a
hippie—inordinately proud, for example, of having written an
ordinance to legalize pygmy goats within city limits. (Hey, they’re a
good source of milk, he points out, and a truly local food source if
there ever was one.) He’s kayaked down the toxic Duwamish River and
describes the experience as “fun.” He’s walked through the bowels of
the 46-year-old 520 floating bridge. (“Yeah, it is going to sink,” he
said. “I have been in the pontoons and seen the water leaking in.”) But
his goofiness belies his efficacy in pushing city-shaping policy, and
it can distract from the fundamental fact: He’s running the show at
City Hall.

The year he took the council presidency, Conlin reversed the
building’s politics,
asserting himself as the top dog by proposing
a $146 million parks levy—over then-mayor Nickels’s
objections—that would raise property taxes to pay for 40
projects, including parks construction and improvements. It was a
reminder of the council’s ability to go over the mayor’s head, and it
passed with 59 percent of the vote.

“The council was not intimidated by the mayor in the parks levy,”
said city council member Tom Rasmussen. He added that Conlin “butted
heads with the mayor quite successfully.”

Conlin himself put it this way: “The mayor administers, but he can’t
do anything with legislative authority. That is where the council is
strong. The mayor has the power to propose things. The council has the
power to assert.”

And with the council behind him and the new mayor just moving in,
Conlin is poised to do a lot of asserting in 2010.

So what will the Conlin administration do?

Here’s what he’s planning:

• Building Light Rail to West Seattle and a Streetcar to
Ballard

“I would like to see us extend the South Lake Union Streetcar over
to Fremont and over to Ballard,” Conlin said. He envisions using the
same sort of traffic-signal preemption light rail uses on Martin Luther
King Jr. Way South to allow a streetcar to move quickly through
traffic. But that’s only a stopgap until we can afford to build a
Ballard-bound light-rail line, he said. In the meantime, Conlin thinks
the city can build a light-rail line to West Seattle within a few
years. “I think that that one is relatively easy from a logistic
standpoint,” he said. “We have to come up with the money, but I don’t
think it’s terribly expensive.” A member of the finance committee of
Sound Transit, Conlin thinks the voters would approve “a financing plan
that makes sense” to pay for the project. He proposes a small utility
hike, buy-in from businesses closest to the line, and other tax
increases.

• Rebuilding the 520 Bridge

The concrete slab that crosses Lake Washington between Seattle and
Medina is literally a death trap. “I have been a voice crying in the
wilderness on this for years,” said Conlin. It carries 115,000 vehicles
daily, according to the Washington State
Department of
Transportation, which says that it is “vulnerable to windstorms and
earthquakes and [is] at risk of collapse” and “could cause serious
injury or loss of life.” But the project has taken a backseat to the
viaduct replacement. “We want a project that is going to promote
transit connectivity and that is going to work for neighborhoods, and
that is going to take some money,” Conlin said. “If we do it on the
cheap, we will regret it for 50 years, just as we are regretting
current configuration.” The current bridge—which has interchanges
shoehorned into the Montlake neighborhood—hosts daily traffic
jams, doesn’t serve transit riders, and snarls neighborhood traffic.
“It’s worth it to spend that money,” he said.

• Digging the Deep-Bore Tunnel

Despite an election cycle dominated by tunnel debate, “I think it is
going to be a relatively quiet year [on the tunnel],” Conlin said. The
state will now be busy developing designs for the deep-bore project,
and as that goes on, all the talk about fixing the waterfront mess will
fade. While some see this as the year for a fight in the legislature
over who’s on the hook for potential tunnel-cost overruns, Conlin has
moved on. He describes a state law that puts Seattle on the hook for
overruns as “an unenforceable provision that’s so vague as to be
meaningless,” and he believes 2010 is not the moment to go to the mat
in Olympia in order to make that crystal clear; there will be plenty of
time before the project starts. He joined his council colleagues in
voting to support the tunnel’s eventual construction. In Conlin’s
world, the tunnel is happening, Seattle’s not on the hook for overruns,
and that’s that. Next.

• Working Better with the Legislature

Essential to many of Conlin’s plans—like, oh, building the
tunnel and rebuilding the state-run 520 bridge—is support from
the state legislature. Nickels had a famously poor relationship with
Olympia. He used “a divide and conquer strategy” with the Seattle
legislative delegation, Conlin explained, much like he had with the
city council (before Conlin turned the tables). “Find the people who
support you, and don’t pay attention to the ones who don’t” is how
Conlin characterizes the Nickels approach to the legislators. But
Conlin thinks that divisive strategy is a disaster cookbook,
particularly when legislators from around the state are competing for
the same revenue Seattle needs to advance its economic recovery.
Conlin’s approach for the legislative session, beginning in January, is
more innovative. “The council members will have a buddy system, that we
each build a relationship with two or three legislators who we have
ties to. And then we try to make it a two-way street—when they
need things from us. So we are not always saying, ‘We want this, we
want this, we want this.’ But also, ‘How can we help you?'”

• Cleaning Up the Duwamish River

“We are going to stop making this our Kalakala,” said
Conlin, referring to the dilapidated, decommissioned ferry that’s been
dragged from port to port—always with the goal of being restored
to its art-deco beauty—but remains a rusty wreck. The Duwamish
River, which connects the Green River to the industrial southern gulf
of Elliott Bay, is host to a huge collection of poisons, including
mercury, petroleum, an alphabet of chemical compounds, and feces. But
Conlin—who has proudly kayaked this literal river of
shit—thinks Seattle can “make it into more of the center,
something we treasure as a part of our city.” He believes the city can
get federal approval to clean the river, declare it a Superfund site,
and fund the project with
assistance from Boeing, King County, and
the Port of Seattle.

• Pushing Economic Recovery and an Environmental Agenda
Simultaneously

Conlin sees the city pulling itself out of the gutter by embracing
the most progressive elements of his environmental agenda. For example,
a company called General Biodiesel—which uses primarily waste
fats like cooking grease and tallow—was having a hard time
getting permits, Conlin said, and by removing red tape Seattle was able
to help that company (and, hopefully, laid down a marker that will help
attract other green-job companies). “We should be targeting companies
like that and asking, ‘What can we do to help you?'” he said. Conlin
also envisions Seattle becoming a hub for small businesses that develop
electrical hardware and write the software for wind- and solar-power
companies. And in line with his
backyard-local agenda (goat milk,
y’all?), he will continue working with neighborhood organizations to
push a local-food initiative. “It’s not the exclusion of trade but
saying, ‘Go out and support your neighborhood businesses because those
are the ones that will be helpful in bringing in jobs now.'”

Looking at the big picture, Conlin knows he now has an even
larger leadership opportunity than he had under Nickels. “Any mayor is
going to come in with a steep learning curve,” he said. Already on the
new mayor’s plate: appointing the next police chief, picking new
department heads, scrapping with suburbs to restore bus service in the
city, and, coming up in a few short months, outlining the 2011
budget.

“If the mayor is learning where the bathrooms are and how the phone
works, naturally the council’s influence will be ascending,” said
Burgess.

The council has already set the stage for a positive working
relationship with the mayor. On November 2, the council’s budget
committee approved a $175,000 grant to assist the new mayor’s
transition staff and offices. Is that intended to grease the wheels for
the relationship between the council and new mayor? “That would be my
intention,” said city council member Jean Godden, chair of the
council’s budget committee.

In the past, Conlin has been known for—and criticized
for—tolerating the geologic pace of Seattle politics: meetings,
hearings, design proposals, more meetings, more hearings, etc. But
Conlin seems to have mastered winning the protracted confrontation.
“You sit down and you reason together,” he explained. “You build your
coalition. You operate from an assertive position and try to

figure it out.” Meaning: When you know you’re right, you stay
patient and steadily grind down the opposition. For instance, when
Nickels proposed a third transfer station for trash in 2007, Conlin
refused. He favored reducing waste and encouraging composting instead.
“They kept trying to go around me, but when they couldn’t get five
votes, they capitulated,” he recalled.

When that doesn’t work, there are other ways of doing things.

“If the council feels strongly enough and the mayor feels strongly
enough, we go back to the parks-levy scenario,” he said. Meaning: The
council can always force its agenda after an attempt at cooperation has
failed.

The mayor, Conlin reminded, “can’t change anything without the
council actually making it possible.”

This story has been updated since its original publication.