In Olympia, legislators are patting themselves on the back after closing a $9 billion budget gap. But it’s likely that they have only deferred addressing some of the fundamental structural problems with the state’s finances for another 2 years.

Legislators also took a victory lap after “solving” the viaduct problem by creating a mechanism by which Seattle taxpayers would have to pay for cost overruns on what would be a state project—after Seattle voted down the tunnel option. But that’s a different post.

Two big ideas that didn’t make it out of the regular session had to do with the always unpopular and hard to understand subjects of debt and taxes. The state will eventually have to figure out how to make its tax system fairer and less regressive. An income tax of some kind could be part of that, but that ideal didn’t get far this year.

The other really interesting concept was offered by Rep. Hans Dunshee. His proposal would have authorized the state to borrow $3 billion to retrofit public schools. The bill was missing a lot of critical details, but underlying was a great concept that I called Green Increment Financing.

Like Tax Increment Financing, Dunshee’s bill would have allowed the state to make upgrades and improvements to infrastructure that would pay for the financing of the debt. In the case of Green Increment Financing, the money to pay back the debt would come from accumulated savings as previously inefficient buildings began to realize energy savings. The retrofitting would create new jobs, and reductions in energy use would also reduce green house gas emissions.

Like Tax Increment Financing, the hurdle with this kind of idea is two-fold. First, and probably most difficult, is the terminology which includes words like “tax,” “bonds,” “financing,” “public indebtedness,” and “increment.” Even if legislators understand this concept, debt and taxes are political dynamite.

The second problem has to do with math and forecasting. Will energy improvements actually save enough to pay back the bonds? Savings can be estimated and this kind of financing on projected savings is done locally already. So these numbers can be figured out. But getting the numbers will take time

Hopefully, Green Increment Financing will gain ground between now and the next legislative session along with a more fundamental look at how we generate revenue for public benefits.

“As we look at how do you make Center City more family-friendly, and how do you get more families down here, people always say a school,” Sugimura said.

But the school district won’t be able to afford land in those areas, she said.

DPD has been talking to interested neighborhood groups in Belltown for the past year about the school. Recently, Sugimura said, developers from Belltown and South Lake Union have asked DPD about incentives to include a school in a project.

There’s one incentive already on the books: excluding certain square footage from Floor Area Ratio calculations. Excluding school square footage from calculations would let a developer build bigger if they include a school. That tool was used to encourage downtown department store development decades ago.

What about an FAR bonus? Like the ones developers get for including affordable housing in their plans? Sugimura said that’s a possibility, but it would need council and mayoral approval.

Sugimura said the school wouldn’t be a traditional one-story building with playing fields in the back. Maybe it could be perched atop a tall building or housed in the lower floors of a condo complex, with kids taking recess at the Olympic Sculpture Park.

The city wants to work it so kids who don’t live downtown could go there too, traveling to school with their commuter parents and cutting drive times. Moms and dads could help out the school on their lunch breaks, and businesspeople could volunteer for tutoring before work.

“It definitely is going to be a challenge getting it moving, but we have been really pleased with the people who have expressed an interest in working with us,” Sugimura said.

Based on Seattle school district maps, students now living in Belltown would go to T.T. Minor Elementary on Capitol Hill and students living in South Lake Union would go to Stevens Elementary, also on Capitol Hill. TOPS at Seward is an alternative K-8 public school in Eastlake and Lowell Elementary, on Mercer Street, offers special education and advanced placement classes.