Each year since 1996, I’ve published a list of the year’s most overhyped and underreported local stories. Here are some stories we didn’t hear enough about in 2015 and are likely to want to know more about in the new year.
What to do with Bertha?
For a couple of years now, local and state politicians have resolutely refused to consider a backup plan in the increasingly likely effect that Seattle’s downtown tunnel project proves either technically or financially impossible.
It’s only in the last month — as another “Bertha restart” deadline loomed and both seem nearly undeniable — that a Plan B has begun to be quietly floated...wait for it...asking local voters for the money to build another tunnel to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct. There could hardly be a clearer expression of Seattle’s addiction to real estate prospects masquerading as transportation initiatives.
The downtown tunnel fiasco has eclipsed another project in trouble: the Capitol Hill streetcar line, already a year late for its original opening date. Meanwhile, the Mercer Mess continues to stew in gridlock. Those two projects have dominated local discretionary transportation money for the last decade.
What do these projects all have in common? They’re insanely expensive, actually make our local transportation worse and, yet, make developers wealthier. That last bit trumps everything in Seattle politics. Will it change in 2016?
Breaking the alliance?
Will the new City Council stand up to the developer/urbanist alliance? That alliance has dominated Seattle politics since the days of Mayor Greg Nickels; the city’s current proliferation of construction cranes is the direct result.
But with district City Council elections this year dominated by our housing affordability crisis, and especially the razor-thin election of longtime Nick Licata aide Lisa Herbold, the days of Seattle shoveling money to wealthy developers and begging them to build more expensive, new housing may be over.
At minimum, there’s a strong push to require developers in Seattle to do what they do in every other city in our region: pay toward the infrastructure improvements all those new housing units will require. Also, paying to help replace the affordable housing they’re tearing down in the process would be a nice bonus.
With several new council members who campaigned on housing affordability, the acid test of whether the Seattle City Council will be more progressive won’t be more resolutions opposing discrimination in some other part of the world — it’ll be whether big money doesn’t always gets its way when its goals conflict with public needs.
New transportation projects?
Existing transportation infrastructure is a mess: Voters who passed Mayor Ed Murray’s record $930 million transportation levy this year likely didn’t read the fine print: that the city is under no obligation to actually fund the awesome wish list of desperately needed, long-deferred repair projects the levy advertised.
The money for all those previous transportation follies (streetcar, Mercer Mess, etc.) came from somewhere — it was transferred from previous such promises. Seattleites will need to keep up the pressure in 2016 if the promises are to be kept this time.
Exploding homeless population
Another side effect of tearing down existing affordable housing stock is that the number of people sleeping on friends’ couches, in cars, in tent cities, in shelters and on the streets has gone up dramatically — more than 10,000 a night in King County this winter. With the increased visibility has come both pressure to do something and a backlash to make the problem just go away. Welcome to the New Gilded Age.
Sabotaging pot legalization
Colorado, which passed a legalization initiative on the same day as Washington state, had its retail weed system up and running in early 2014.
Meanwhile, our state’s drug warrior-dominated Liquor Control and Cannabis Board issued just 21 retail permits for the entire state, vastly less than demand, and has repeatedly delayed even those permits.
Local governments tried at every turn to block implementation, as well. And to think that without Costco’s liquor privatization initiative, the state would have a ready-made network of retail stores instead.
Helping Seattle Public Schools
Progressives swept into power on the Seattle School Board in November. In the past, such expressions of voter anger haven’t helped, as superintendents and insular senior staff have continued their insistence on poor facilities and teaching to meaningless tests and defunding programs and alternative schools that don’t conform to standardization.
And there’s more…
Did I mention that SPD is still a problem?
And on that cheerful note, get out and make your own news in 2016. If this compilation suggests anything, it’s that we can’t rely on what’s left of local newsrooms to cover issues adequately, investigate abuses, push for change or even to tell us when change is desperately needed. We’ll need to do all that ourselves.
GEOV PARRISH is cofounder of Eat the State! He also reviews news of the week on “Mind Over Matters” on KEXP 90.3 FM. To comment on this column, write to MPTimes@nwlink.com.