We're no longer perched at the top of those most-livable-city lists. In the national Harris poll of most desirable cities, where we've hovered in the top five every year between '96 and 2002, we squeaked in at 10th place this year--tying with Denver. Among those who bested us: Phoenix and--good God--Portland, Oregon. This bedraggled showing pretty much says it all: Our days as the "It" girl of U.S. cities are numbered. (How many 10-year grunge anniversary retrospectives can there be?)
To embrace Seattle's fall to earth, we've decided to identify local celebs, concepts, and institutions that have hit their own 14th-minute marks in 2003, and are destined to fade out in 2004. While you're sure to hear of and from the 14th-minute crowd one way or the other during the next year, it's guaranteed to be in cringe-worthy moments like Senator Joe Lieberman's presidential campaign kickoff speech.
From fading political consultant Cathy Allen, to fading King County Executive Ron Sims, to, sadly, a fading renters' market--here's our roundup of folks and things whose 15 minutes are just about up. Tick. Tick. Tick. --Josh Feit
SNOW At the beginning of 2003, as Bush's Iraq attack seemed imminent, a group of peace-loving Seattle folks formed SNOW--Sound Nonviolent Opponents of War. ("Each snowflake is gentle and delicate, but together they can shut down a city," the group's website announced early in 2003.) SNOW organized hundreds of people in December 2002 to brainstorm protest tactics on the small-scale local level, creating pockets of war resistance in Green Lake, West Seattle, and even Bellevue. In February, SNOW helped organize an antiwar rally at Seattle Center that drew an impressive 20,000 people.
But by the time the war started in March, SNOW members started flaking out. Only a few hundred people showed up at the downtown Federal Building, where SNOW urged its members to gather on the war's first night.
Monthly meeting attendance soon started dropping off: 51 people in August; 28 in September; just 11 in November.
At the end of 2003--with Bush looking vulnerable thanks to his flailing Iraq policy--SNOW should be in overdrive. Instead, SNOW's core group is discussing holiday-card fundraisers and potluck dinners.
Time remaining for SNOW: 6 seconds.
Cathy Allen On August 1, 2003, prodded by consultant Cathy Allen, Seattle Times columnist Jean Godden threw her famous name into the campaign against Seattle City Council incumbent Judy Nicastro. Godden's splashy, last-minute entry into the seven-way race translated into an easy win against the embattled incumbent.
But Godden's victory wasn't the decisive win for Allen it appeared to be. In fact, the race highlighted Allen's one-trick strategy: Take a media celebrity; add standard endorsements; stir. Sure, Allen's ploy translated into a win for 72-year-old Godden. And it worked for Allen in 1999 as well when she ran another former newsie in a last-minute bid, popular anchor Jim Compton. The problem is, Allen's running out of celebrities. Need evidence? According to Seattle Weekly writer George Howland, Allen has even pestered him to run.
Without the celebrity crutch, Allen has stumbled. Consider her 2003 campaign for Margaret Pageler, a 12-year incumbent assumed to be a shoo-in for reelection. Allen's lazy and increasingly desperate tactics against Pageler-challenger Tom Rasmussen--whom Pageler smeared in a bizarrely negative series of campaign mailers--flopped. And had Allen's other client, Compton, been challenged in 2003 by anyone but John Manning--the former city council member who resigned in 1996 over domestic violence allegations--Compton might have found himself scanning the classifieds along with Pageler on November 5.
While Allen was picking off low-hanging fruit like Nicastro and Manning, two of her rival consultants, Christian Sinderman and Michael Grossman, were orchestrating upset wins for challengers Rasmussen and David Della. Allen better watch out: Sinderman client Darryl Smith, who got lost in the overcrowded Nicastro primary, says he'll be back. If he runs against an Allen candidate, he will win.
Time remaining for Cathy Allen: 45 seconds.
Renters' Market For the last two years, Seattle tenants have reaped the benefits of the so-called "renters' market": Rents hit their peak in early 2001 and have been falling ever since. And vacancy rates are the highest they've been in 20 years, forcing landlords to offer incentives like free rent and parking to woo newly empowered tenants.
Don't get used to it. According to apartment-market analyst Mike Scott, vacancy rates will start falling in 2004. For renters, that means fewer incentives--and higher prices. The combination could be "the equivalent of rents going up by three or four percent," Scott says. For tenants accustomed to having the upper hand, 2004 could be a rude awakening. Oh, and it didn't help renters that tenants' rights council member Judy Nicastro got booted in November's election.
Time remaining for the renters' market: 55 seconds.
Ron Sims It's hard not to feel a little sorry for King County Executive Ron Sims. His political career, so promisingly buoyant not so long ago, is now abruptly arcing downward, as his all-but-doomed bid for the governorship indicates. It's almost time to write the sad epitaph on Sims: so much unrealized potential, so much unrequited ambition, so smart a guy to have become such a craven, self-defeating sellout.
It didn't have to be this way. First elected to King County Council in 1985, the smooth and energetic Sims, wedding strongly liberal social credentials with a bedrock fiscal conservatism, forged alliances across bitter partisan lines. And he proved himself a campaign stud, charming blue-collar grunts and boardroom suits alike with an endless stream of endearingly warm and self-deprecating anecdotes. He made a credible run at Slade Gorton's U.S. Senate seat in 1994; if it hadn't been for that year's Republican landslide, he might have won. When he was appointed county executive in 1996 (replacing narcolepsy-inducing Gary Locke), there was reason to expect big things.
Over the years, though, Sims has become as comfortable a political fixture as an old shoe--and about as politically accountable. His style, once fresh and effective, now seems superficial and smarmy. It used to be possible to believe Sims' heart was in the right place. Not anymore.
Sims has no one to blame but himself. The simple explanation is that he sold his soul for light rail, which he's rammed down the region's throat despite costs spiraling out of control and huge cutbacks to the original plan. But that's just a symptom of the underlying disease: In a one-party state, Sims fell in love with the trappings of his unchallenged power. He convinced himself he was correct in subverting or ignoring the electorate's wishes, not only refusing to put light rail to a revote, but also brazenly attempting to subvert the monorail campaign.
The irony, of course, is that just as Sims is on the verge of seeing his light-rail backroom machinations come to fruition, Our Lady of Bland Campaigning, Attorney General Christine Gregoire, will trounce him in the gubernatorial primary. The voters, it seems, don't much like arrogance in their public servants.
Time remaining for Ron Sims: 25 seconds.
Neighborhood Plans Seattle City Council Members Richard Conlin and Nick Licata took a stand for neighborhoods earlier this year, demanding a review of Mayor Nickels' South Lake Union proposals in light of the area's neighborhood plan (one of 38 plans that are meant to shape growth in Seattle). The council members complained that Nickels' proposals--a streetcar, a new electrical substation, and an expanded Mercer Street, all to help draw biotech jobs to the neighborhood--came as South Lake Union was already experiencing job growth beyond its plan's projections. Shouldn't we take another look at the original plan, NIMBY champs Conlin and Licata asked, and see if the city should work from that guiding document?
Bah, the mayor's office said. "If people want to put blinders on and say, 'No, that's not the idea we had [in the neighborhood plan], you can't do that,' I don't think that's very progressive," Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis says. The mayor's office went on to win a land-use code change that raised heights for biotech buildings in South Lake Union.
Nickels' other bold proposals this past year also bypassed the neighborhood plans--lifting the University of Washington's lease lid, scrapping Northgate's General Development Plan, and his latest ploy, offering tax incentives to pack housing into select neighborhoods like Northgate and South Lake Union. Meanwhile, Nickels cut the three neighborhood development managers from next year's budget. Conlin and Licata haven't mentioned neighborhood plan review in months.
Time remaining for neighborhood plans: 17 seconds.
Sound Transit Critics The year 2003 started out on a telling note for Sound Transit critics. The agency's board chair, Ron Sims, announced in January that the beleaguered light-rail line would make it to Sea-Tac. It was true only because Sims said so--he had no financial plan to back him up--and yet he scored glowing headlines that recast the 14-mile line as a success story. Sims' flawless ruse foreshadowed total defeat for the anti-light-rail crowd: Despite the critics' compelling assault on Sound Transit's Enron-style illusions, light rail, with more magic tricks from Sims in the works (he simply ordained that the October 30 Washington State Supreme Court ruling upholding MVET-zapping I-776 wouldn't impact the project), emerged unscathed by year's end. The agency even scored its long-delayed $500 million federal grant.
So, the ruse continues: The $500 million, while symbolically powerful, only covers 23 percent of the project's cost; the line will serve only a third of the original ridership projections; it covers only two-thirds the original route--never mind the airport, it doesn't even get to downtown; and, maddeningly, the train travels at street level.
Barring a miracle ruling in Sane Transit's lawsuit against Sound Transit, light rail's critics (this paper included) have failed. We're stuck with this lemon. Sims wins. Light rail, coming to block an intersection near you, is a done deal.
Time remaining for Sound Transit critics: 5 seconds.
King County Government King County government is disappearing before our eyes. Over the last two years, more than $90 million was slashed from the budget. Another $40 million is projected to be slashed in the next two years. Services have been cut so far that "now we're just hacking away at the bone," King County Council Member Dow Constantine says. His job may be the next to go: A proposal to shrink the county council from 13 to 9 members will be on the November 2004 ballot, and could well pass.
If this continues too much longer, county government will be gone. Than again, why should anyone care? After all, do you know what King County government actually does? Didn't think so. And ask yourself this: If the size of the county council shrank to zero, how long would it take for you to notice?
