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Seattlest Pix 09Nov25
Can't Miss It: Thanksgiving Eve
Picture all the money in the state rounded up and stuffed into an enormous paper mache taxpayer suspended from the Space Needle. Blindfold Governor Gregoire and Mayor Nickels and hand them each a baseball bat.
The mayor proposed a budget yesterday and hopefully the wonks are currently poking at it with those little CSI evidence sticks and ogling it through the magnifying glass helmets popularized by Rick Moranis in Honey I Shrunk the Kids. We'll hear from the wonks soon, no doubt. Nickels, however, didn't shrink the budget. If you haven't gotten the memo from our business leaders yet, we're currently experiencing what is called a strong economy so there's room in this thing for more spending on transportation, environmental action, and homeless services. The general fund is also getting expanded by nearly ten percent and little gnomes swarmed around the mayor's head and chewed on his ears during the press conference. Whoa, you actually read that? Thought you'd be long gone by now. We are talking about the budget after all.
Governor Gregoire made announcements yesterday as well. Specifically, she proposed tolls to pay for the Viaduct replacement instead of an expanded gasoline tax. Oh gasp - tolls! Oh no she didn't! Oh yes she did, and chill out. Maybe it's Seattlest's non-Seattle background talking (we used to have to pay a toll to drive past our neighbor's garbage cans), but tolls are a fact of life. Tolls happen, deal with it.
Picture the paper mache taxpayer busting open and its money/guts fluttering down to the street where Nickels and Gregoire start grabbing fistfuls from the air and stuffing it into their respective coffers.
The weird part is that while it looks like Gregoire is fighting the mayor for the same pool of money, she's fighting to fund his pet project. Mr. Mayor, you are a crafty one.
Over there in the background, though, a bunch of little gnomes are busily working on something. Let's borrow that Moranis hat from the wonks for a second and take a look. Hey, those aren't gnomes - That's the city council, reduced in stature to tiny pip-squeaks by the P-I yesterday, and they're working on the "fall back plan" for the Viaduct.
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I don't know why Seattleites and Washingtonians bitch about tolls. They're the fairest way of paying for road improvements that exist.
520 across the Lake used to be a toll bridge, kids.
"Fair" is a relative term. The idea that users pay for something makes sense at a simple level, but it's generally more complicated than that. For one thing, like any absolute charge, it's more difficult for the poor to afford. For another, it serves as a disincentive for people to use the road in the first place, threatening to overcrowd the already overcrowded I-5 and almost guaranteeing that revenues will come in below forecast, continuing to threaten the replacement project and causing everyone else a huge pain in the ass. In other words, if you don't use the Viaduct, you may not have to pay the toll to use it, but you're sure gonna pay some other way.