In our Nickels endorsement last week we wrote that Nickels slated $159 million for over 190 neighborhood projects last year. I should clarify: The $159 million was slated in last year’s 2004-2005 budget, meaning the money was spread over two years. Second, the money comes from a mix of general fund sources and voter-approved levy money.

This information raises legitimate questions about our claim that Nickels “prioritized neighborhood spending.” I could take a stab at addressing those questions, but I’ll leave them hanging instead. I’m not wasting my time defending Mayor Greg “I’ll Build a Baseball Stadium After the Public Votes Against It, but I’ll Pull the Plug on Rapid Mass Transit After the Public Votes For It” Nickels.

Over on the Stranger reader forums, a reader (R.V. Murphy) points out that our municipal endorsements seem schizoid because we endorsed Nickels, but we also endorsed council candidates who oppose Nickels’s policies. It’s a good point. However, we addressed it directly in our Nickels endorsement. Here’s what we wrote:

While we’re fans of Nickels’s big-city vision, we’ve had to call bullshit on Nickels a few times. We busted him on the South Lake Union trolley plan, the Vulcan giveaway at Westlake Avenue Park, his cave to Harbor Properties, the KeyArena plan, and his exaggerated numbers about the wonders of biotech. But his biggest shortcoming is not forcing neighborhoods to accept more density. A whopping 75 percent of Seattle’s residential land is zoned single-family and unless that changes, his urban-center density plan will backfire. Instead of driving housing prices down through increased development, he will drive them up by creating unaffordable yuppie enclaves. Nickels’s agenda needs to be fine-tuned, and that’s why we want a watchdog council that would include dissidents like Richard Conlin and Linda Averill, and not sniveling, Team Nickels butt-boys like Casey Corr.

I should add, however, that we’re not feeling so great about our Nickels endorsement now—not after Nickels’s anti-monorail press conference. Both Dan S. and I posted about that yesterday. Scroll down to read those posts.