City Hall
Council Prepares to Sign "Legally Binding" Tunnel Agreements
Public testimony is still going on in the city council's viaduct replacement committee, where council members will discuss three "legally binding" agreements this morning between Department of Transportation, Seattle Public Utilities and Seattle City Light and the state. So far, the testimony (from folks like Chamber of Commerce head Tayloe Washburn and Seattle Port Commissioner Bill Bryant) has been overwhelmingly in favor of the tunnel.
Council members have said the agreements will override a proposed initiative that calls for the city to do everything in its power to protect Seattle taxpayers from covering any tunnel costs.
Sweeping aside concerns about the provision in state law saying that "Seattle-area property owners" must pay for any overruns, tunnel committee chair Sally Bagshaw said the council was "moving beyond what is frequently known as the Seattle process--that we worry things to death, that we study them to death, and we don't do them. ... The state is providing all project costs and will be responsible for them."
If the state didn't build the tunnel, Bagshaw continued, "the downtown congestion would be two times as bad with the surface option… That is unacceptable. We are not going to bring the city to its knees" with traffic.
Surface/transit proponents like council member Mike O'Brien have pointed out, however, that the "surface alternative" the state considered did not include all the improvements to transit and I-5 proposed by surface/transit/I-5 supporters.
I'll have an update after the meeting.
Council members have said the agreements will override a proposed initiative that calls for the city to do everything in its power to protect Seattle taxpayers from covering any tunnel costs.
Sweeping aside concerns about the provision in state law saying that "Seattle-area property owners" must pay for any overruns, tunnel committee chair Sally Bagshaw said the council was "moving beyond what is frequently known as the Seattle process--that we worry things to death, that we study them to death, and we don't do them. ... The state is providing all project costs and will be responsible for them."
If the state didn't build the tunnel, Bagshaw continued, "the downtown congestion would be two times as bad with the surface option… That is unacceptable. We are not going to bring the city to its knees" with traffic.
Surface/transit proponents like council member Mike O'Brien have pointed out, however, that the "surface alternative" the state considered did not include all the improvements to transit and I-5 proposed by surface/transit/I-5 supporters.
I'll have an update after the meeting.
