Mayor Mike McGinn wants to keep money headed for the Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI) to help cover the $67 million budget shortfall faced by the city—and museum officials and the Seattle City Council are pissed.
“This is not a time for any one community organization to be taking all that it can get, while others go without,” Carl Marquardt, lead attorney for the mayor’s office, wrote in a letter to the museum. MOHAI director Leonard Garfield and board chair Maggie Walker replied: “We thought we had a deal with you.”
The issue began with the state’s expansion of the 520 bridge, which will require widening the freeway through the Montlake neighborhood and demolishing the building where MOHAI, the city’s archive and history museum, has stood for 58 years. In two separate agreements—an agreement last June and an ordinance passed last October—the city gave MOHAI permission to negotiate directly with the state for the price of the building and the land. (Last year’s agreement also allows MOHAI to move into Seattle’s old Armory Building in South Lake Union.)
MOHAI negotiated extremely successfully with the state. The museum pulled in $40 million for the building and it is expected to make another $7 million from the land, but Mayor McGinn says that’s too much. On September 3, he proposed legislation that would take up to $7 million of MOHAI’s money for the land.
Now the Seattle City Council appears poised to override the mayor and give the money to MOHAI anyway. “To renege on an agreement that has been seven years in the making is reprehensible,” says Council Member Sally Bagshaw, chair of the council’s parks committee, which will handle the legislation.
The city owns the building and the parkland where MOHAI currently stands. So why did it authorize the museum to negotiate with the state on its own behalf?
The city would have only been negotiating “for an old empty building,” says Council Member Tom Rasmussen. But the museum could bargain as a cultural institution, insisting that the state pay not just for the building, but to set up a whole new museum. Last fall, the city estimated MOHAI would receive about $15 million for the building, according to McGinn’s office.
Then the news hit city hall: MOHAI was going to get more than double the estimated amount. “The executive was initially agreeable to this proposal, but that was before the $40 million settlement was revealed,” the mayor said in a letter to the city council on September 3. Furthermore, he insisted, MOHAI isn’t legally entitled to keep the potential $7 million for the park property.
“We think council should carefully consider and weigh MOHAI’s funding needs against other priorities,” McGinn wrote, saying the money could be better spent on unfunded city projects such as a new Rainier Valley Community Center and a new South Park Bridge.
“Problem is, the state’s compensation is expressly intended to mitigate MOHAI’s very real loss,” according to MOHAI’s Garfield. “The money can’t be transferred elsewhere, no matter how worthy the cause or great the need.”
The mayor’s crusade looks dead on arrival at the city council, which must approve the final transaction and does not appear ready to join the mayor in penalizing MOHAI for conducting such a successful negotiation on its own behalf. A strong majority of the city council appears ready to preserve that deal.
“I am not convinced that we should seek anything different than what we negotiated,” Rasmussen says.
“We’re moving forward,” Bagshaw says. “What the council is saying is that a deal is a deal.”
The issue is about more than the museum, Bagshaw adds. For example, the city is attempting to negotiate with NASA for a retired space shuttle to go at the Museum of Flight. “If people can’t trust the city to negotiate in good faith,” she says, “where will we be on big items like that?” 
AYFKM? The arts are necessary, but the city has gone above and beyond, time and again, for the arts. A large percentage of anything done in this city is under the purview of a variety of pro-arts ordinances. The city is absolutely bathed in art.
Where we’re at right now is in a severe recession, and every little penny helps. Asking others to tighten their belt while you get a second and third helping is a little bit of a slap to the face.
We can argue about “good faith” in bargaining, but that’s a redirection. What we’re being handed is a whole lot of people rooting for a budget collapse and lacking any will to move forward with any legitimate suggestions. It’s a decidedly GOP move to basically turn the knife and gloat about what you have in the face of what people need when it comes to money, and it seems many have mastered it.
For what reason? Because they aren’t getting what they want right now?
Nobody has anything to fear regarding the city’s commitment to art, least of all actual artists. The city has fostered an environment that strongly favors art, something most cities simply do not have. In terms of actual direct funding to artists, Seattle outstrips most any city in this regard. For example, actual direct contributions to artists in the city of San Antonio, TX (1.3mil citizens) was around $400,000 (Here) versus around $2.2mil in the City of Seattle. Comparing department to department, the City of San Antonio spends on its cultural office around $5.6mil to Seattle’s $6.9mil. More than 2x per capita spending on an arts office, and San Antonio is no slouch when it comes to art.
Simply put, we’re discussing a massive funding gulf in the city budget and the Council and certain gimme-gimmes are fiddling while Rome burns? Can we fucking hang up our wish lists for a year or two and do something? We want a space shuttle! You can’t make us look bad in front of NASA, we totally want a space shuttle! How can we get a space shuttle if you’re complaining about budget deficits? Give me a fucking break.
Again I’ll propose this outright: if you’re going to use the executive’s vocal opposition to a poorly timed outsized monetary contribution as some kind of ammo or justification for your sourpuss, then you had better restrain yourself when vital services and services you rely upon are cut.
I totally don’t understand your rant here.
Here’s the sequence of events as I understand them (correct me if I’m wrong).
1. MOHAI and City Hall both realize that MOHAI’s current area is going to be condemned for the 520 project (no matter what form that project ends up taking).
2. Realizing the condemnation is inevitable, MOHAI and City Hall make a deal (June agreement and October ordinance); under the terms of the deal City Hall will allow MOHAI to negotiate with the state seperately, which both parties agree will be more fruitful than City Hall negotiating directly with the state. City Hall estimates MOHAI will be receiving 23 million (7 for the land, 15 for the buidlings) plus the kicker of the new building in South Lake Union (worth who knows how much).
IMPORTANT QUESTION: What does MOHAI have to give up in return (if anything)? It’s not clear what MOHAI’s obligations were from this article (or anything else I’ve read so far on this issue).
3. The negotiation goes much better than planned. MOHAI is now scheduled to receieve 47 million plus the building.
4. City Hall is pissed and wants to renege on the previous deal with MOHAI. MOHAI defends itself.
If that is an accurate description of the facts, I’d come up with two conclusions:
1. If you decide to view this turn of events as a huge injustice to Seattle in general, CITY HALL is to blame. They should have done a better job estimating how much MOHAI was going to be able to get from the state and either (a) gotten a guarantee of some amount of money from MOHAI for going through with the deal or (b) not thrown in such a fat kicker as the free building in South Lake Union (which I bet could have been flipped and made into a pretty big chunk of the 67 million Seattle is short). Why people think that City Hall should profit either (a) because of MOHAI’s success in negotiating with the state or (b) despite their own gross negligence in working out the earlier deal, is totally beyond me.
2. Realize that this extra 40 million is coming out of the WASHINGTON STATE budget (which last time I checked is drawn from a tax base that includes everyone who lives in Seattle) so really that seven million is coming out of Seattle pockets (to MOHAI, as thing currently stand) or out of Washington state pockets (to Seattle, as McGinn wants). Either way some governmental entity has less money for services; there is no outcome here where someone doesn’t end up getting screwed.
There are very few people that could successfully argue that “neener neener” is a good defense, history mystery.
I give this about a week to finally burn out and for MOHAI and the Mayor’s Office to sit down (if they haven’t already) to hash out better and more mutual stakes.
“you signed a legally binding contract and now you have to suffer the consequences” however, has a much better track record of success.
All this over MOHAI? Really? Do people actually go there? The mayor is right, we have more important things to spend money on right now. Move their collection to other museums and be done with it.