Well, am I beginning to, anyway.
At last night's meeting of the City Neighborhood Council, Susan Crowley and David Foster (the Director of Seattle's Office of Intergovernmental Relations and Seattle's head lobbyist in Olympia, respectively) reported on the Mayor's draft priorities for the 2005 legislative session. Second on the list of transportation priorities was "we support providing legislation to dissolve the Seattle Popular Monorail Authority and identification of a trustee with the authority to administer the collection and distribution of revenue and assets to pay off existing debts."
So far, so good. It leaves a number of open questions, such as how to dispose of surplus property and what to do with the excise tax after the monorail's debt is paid off. Crowley and Foster gave encouraging answers to both. The current thinking in the executive department is to sell the fifty-plus properties the monorial owns to the highest bidder, and to end the excise tax as soon as the debt is paid. That would be the best possible outcome from my perspective.
Three caveats. First, this is only a draft proposal from the mayor, written before the anti-monorail vote four weeks ago. It could change. Second, the council is the approving body, can amend however they like, and they have already gone on record as wanting to transfer ownership of property from the monorail to the city for future, unspecified use. Third, one motivating factor for killing the excise tax is to free up taxing authority for other projects. That would just be a renaming, not an actual tax reduction.
Still, last night was the first time I felt Seattle might actually return to the status quo ante on the monorail, and it made me want to cheer.
Posted by Andy MacDonald at November 29, 2005 06:27 PM | Email Thishttp://www.katu.com/news/story.asp?ID=67314
Posted by: Andy on November 29, 2005 11:01 PMUnder no circumstances should the Monorail, the City of Seattle, or any other governmental body be allowed to keep ANY of the properties that were taken for the monorail.
The case of the "Sinking Ship" property is especially outrageous. The property had been owned by the same family for several decades, and they were adamantly opposed to selling it. Faced with the loss of the property under eminent domain, they offered to sell the small portion of the property needed for the station, provided they that they could keep the rest.
The corrupt monorail officials refused, and took all of it, so that they could later sell the rest of the property for a profit (likely a huge one, given the prime downtown location), and use it to disguise the size of bloated cost overruns.
This sort of behavior absolutely must not be rewarded, else it will be repeated.
All of the properties must be returned to the original owners, or, at the original owners' disgression, sold, and any profits returned to the original owner.
Posted by: ewaggin on November 30, 2005 12:29 PMIf the government attempts to keep any of the properties that were taken under (or taken under threat of) eminent domain, a lawsuit should be filed to force them to disgorge the illegal gains.
Posted by: ewaggin on November 30, 2005 12:33 PMMy thought was that, considering what Sims did with the CAO, just imagine what he might do if he thought he could get away with a Monorail-like land grab, because nobody challenged the current proposal (to sell the taken properties to the highest bidder).
To answer your question, IMO, the CAO is a taking from the affected property owners, and the owners should be compensated. Unfortunately, I don't believe the WSSC shares this opinion. Some state court made a ruling that the CAO was not a taking. I don't recall the details, and I don't know if the ruling will be appealed.
Posted by: ewaggin on December 1, 2005 06:01 PM