News
Heated Words at Bellevue Light Rail Town Hall
[Moved up from Fizz, where this was posted earlier this morning.]
While President Obama was giving his State of the Union speech last night, I was at Bellevue City Hall, where consultants were presenting the results of a $600,000 city-funded study of the so-called B7 light-rail route supported by the majority of the city council. (To Sound Transit’s chagrin, the route, as we’ve reported, would bypass most homes and businesses and necessitate the construction of a new park-and-ride to supplement the South Bellevue Park and Ride, which it would also bypass).
Residents seemed equally divided between B7 supporters and backers of the alternative B2 route preferred by Sound Transit, which would stop at the park and ride and go up Bellevue Way instead of I-405. (It also wouldn’t pass through a federally protected wetland, the Mercer Slough, as the B7 route does.)
One heated conversation ensued between a man on the B7 side and a woman whose house would be demolished by that route; the man yelled that the woman was being “selfish” and proposing to “destroy Bellevue to protect your view,” to which she responded, “You don’t know me. … I’ll take you on.”
On hand for the meeting: Former Seattle deputy mayor-turned-public-affairs-consultant Tim Ceis. Ceis’ firm is working to counter a pro-B7 group backed by Bellevue megadeveloper Kemper Freeman, Build a Better Bellevue, and told PubliCola about a grassroots group competing with the B7 proponents called Moving Bellevue Forward. Noting that federal law requires transit agencies to avoid crossing through wetlands if there's any reasonable alternative, Ceis predicted, "There's no way the feds are going to allow that route." B7 is also far more expensive than B2.
Ceis dropped in briefly on the action—”I’m going to head in to scare some people,” he told PubliCola—before heading back to Seattle.
While President Obama was giving his State of the Union speech last night, I was at Bellevue City Hall, where consultants were presenting the results of a $600,000 city-funded study of the so-called B7 light-rail route supported by the majority of the city council. (To Sound Transit’s chagrin, the route, as we’ve reported, would bypass most homes and businesses and necessitate the construction of a new park-and-ride to supplement the South Bellevue Park and Ride, which it would also bypass).
Residents seemed equally divided between B7 supporters and backers of the alternative B2 route preferred by Sound Transit, which would stop at the park and ride and go up Bellevue Way instead of I-405. (It also wouldn’t pass through a federally protected wetland, the Mercer Slough, as the B7 route does.)
One heated conversation ensued between a man on the B7 side and a woman whose house would be demolished by that route; the man yelled that the woman was being “selfish” and proposing to “destroy Bellevue to protect your view,” to which she responded, “You don’t know me. … I’ll take you on.”
On hand for the meeting: Former Seattle deputy mayor-turned-public-affairs-consultant Tim Ceis. Ceis’ firm is working to counter a pro-B7 group backed by Bellevue megadeveloper Kemper Freeman, Build a Better Bellevue, and told PubliCola about a grassroots group competing with the B7 proponents called Moving Bellevue Forward. Noting that federal law requires transit agencies to avoid crossing through wetlands if there's any reasonable alternative, Ceis predicted, "There's no way the feds are going to allow that route." B7 is also far more expensive than B2.
Ceis dropped in briefly on the action—”I’m going to head in to scare some people,” he told PubliCola—before heading back to Seattle.
