With cancellation of the borrow- pay-down-borrow-more financing proposal, SMP has now stepped off into thin air. "I had always thought," says Dick Falkenbury, the cab-driving Father of the Monorail, "that SMP would bring in someone like Jim Ellis, a wheeler-dealer who could do million-dollar deals with a handshake. That never happened—that kind of experience wasn't there." He was hoping that an ad hoc committee of experts that board members recently talked about appointing would include Ellis or other legendary public-works geniuses of Seattle—maybe even him, Falkenbury said, modestly offering to get back in the game.But the board ultimately decided to appoint itself as the ad hoc committee, dooming any chance of a dramatic infusion of vision.
Though an attempt last year to stop the project was overwhelmingly turned down at the polls, public support is slipping— 52 percent of respondents to a Seattle Times poll published Sunday, July 10, favored canceling the project. "The monorail promised to shut down the plan if it couldn't do it as promised," says critic Aronson. "And, at this point, they can't." Says monorail supporter Peter Sherwin, who has always advocated more fiscal responsibility by SMP: "It's the revenue, stupid, it's not the monorail." Whatever the final solution, there should be a fully vetted decision rather than just a tempestuous cancellation of Seattle's elevated dream, Sherwin says.
Kym Balthazar
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The Seattle Monorail Project board has essentially two alternatives to aborting the project: asking voters to approve another, higher tax-revenue plan, or carving the project down in length, scale, and design. The latter could require another vote, too.
This week, board members were still reviewing options and sifting through hundreds of comments they heard over three recent nights of community meetings. At the first meeting, in Ballard, an announcement by acting board Chair Kristina Hill that Horn and Weeks had resigned drew the first applause. But it was Jo Moore, a Crown Hill resident, who seemed to have summed it up for everyone. Moore, who said she has two friends on the monorail board, noted she had once supported the project. But over time, too much changed—larger and unsightly elements were proposed, designs were weakened, escalators canceled. And, of course, there was that "poor fiscal management," she said. But "worst of all," there was "the secrecy and the arrogance of the monorail board and staff in response to concerns of the neighborhoods or in response to any group that did not fully agree with them. The time has come: Give us what we voted on and at the advertised price. Or stop the bleeding, pay what we owe, and stop this current folly." Applause, cheers, even a few elderly fists in the air. Someone else, it seemed, was taking control.
randerson@seattleweekly.com
