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Tunnel Referendum Already Scheduled

My SeattleScape colleague Matt Hays has done a great job of laying out some of the tired arguments in favor of the waterfront tunnel boondoggle in his SeattleScape post below. I won’t bother to refute them because others far more capable than I have addressed the overruns, what could go wrong, (OK I talked about revenue underruns ), climate impacts, and why there are better and more sustainable options.

But here’s the deal, there already is a referendum scheduled on the tunnel: in 2011 there are five members of the current Seattle City Council up for re-election should each of them choose to run. Whether a referendum on the tunnel project specifically gets put on the ballot or not, five pro tunnel Councilmembers will have to face the music next fall in forum after forum about their choice to support the tunnel. And some of us fully intend to exploit the opportunity for accountability. Seattle may yet see another movement like the Choose an Effective City Council (CHECC) movement of the late 60’s that can muster a pro-sustainability majority on the Council.

Next year's City Council elections will certainly feature the tunnel.
Next year's City Council elections will certainly feature the tunnel.

Now let me issue a warning to those who might smugly laugh as they sit upon their massive campaign war chests in the form of a name: Rex Burkholder.  I highlighted Rex Burkholder’s campaign for election to the Presidency of the Metro Council in Oregon in a post called “Bridge Across the Sustainability Gap,” calling out his support for the Columbia River Crossing project, Portland’s own big unsustainable highway project. Burkholder, like Richard Conlin, was Mr. Sustainable for many years, biking to campaign events, supporting carbon neutrality, and being an all around champion of every sustainable idea and concept in the Portland region.

Burkholder got a lot of heat from supporters for his advocacy for the highway project and he ended up losing his election. Now I have no crystal ball app on my I Phone, but I would say that however this all turns out, the current City Council, like Burkholder, will be faced with a lot of people who expect them to lead the sustainability charge in our city and in our region—not flummox it by building more highways. Time will tell whether “the Get it Done Gang” will face a similar political fate as Burkholder did. But there are few better ways to close the Sustainability Gap than at the ballot box next November.

This entry was posted by Roger Valdez on Wednesday, July 14th, 2010 at 2:22 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

  • Matt Hays

    That sounds like a representative democracy. The leaders listen and do their best to make a decison, and then we can vote for them or not. Excellent plan, and very applicable to the 99 debate!

  • Ross Dorn

    Most of the time I’m generally on board with the comments on this blog, but not this time. I’ve always preferred the tunnel. I was happy when the tunnel was chosen over other options. I agree that the ballot box is a great place for a referendum, and everyone has a right to use it, but voting in people ostensibly to derail a tunnel project when it is 90%+ desinged and bid is nothing more than throwing money away, and that is something I have a problem with. You can’t say money is being thrown away when something actually gets built. You can say it is too expensive, and you can argue there are better places for the additional funds to be spent, but you are not throwing the money away. I don’t like cost overruns either, but from what I can gather the right protections and reserves are in place to deal with this as well as possible. I guess what I’m trying to say is “I hear you, and I understand some of what you’re concerned about, but I’m in favor of moving forward, not backward.” Opening up the waterfront would be a huge improvement, and if you go to Boston to look at the linear park above where the Central Expressway used to be, especially if you remember what it was like before, you could make some sense of it. Applying this ‘stop the madness’ logic backwards in time eliminates the downtown transit tunnel, light rail, the original monorail, all the freeways and bridges in the region, the ferries, the stadiums. What kind of city would we have then? Sustainability has a lot more to do with density and living in less space with less stuff than it has to do with building a tunnel that revitalizes an entire downtown. It’s OK with me if you don’t like my opinion. I’m voting too.