There was a weird moment in Team Nickels’s Fire Levy briefing to council earlier this week when Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis began on a supposedly contrite note. (Obviously, there’s something to be contrite about here because the fire levy that voters approved in 2003 is 40% over budget—or $67 million over. And now, the mayor’s office is asking council to cover the overrun.)

But Ceis’s “apology” (“yes, there are significant overruns”) was coupled with an accusation. Basically, Ceis’s acknowledgment that the levy got fucked up was couched in a statement of pseudo collegiality that actually laid the blame on council. He said the lesson here is that the Mayor and the Council should work better together at the outset of major capitol projects to set a realistic budgets. The underhanded message: This was all the council’s fault for low-balling the fire levy.

As Ceis had it: The Mayor’s original fire levy proposal had been more expensive (that is: more realistic) and in trimming it down for voters back in 2003, the council had created an untenable situation where costs were obviously going to balloon…and well, here we are facing sticker shock.

This is obviously ridiculous. To lower the costs back in 2003, the Council wisely cut out specific items—like a gym. So, the fire levy that voters approved included that trimmed down, fixed set of items. It’s those items—items that were also part of the mayor’s original proposal—that have ballooned. It was the mayor’s office that low-balled those items, miscalculating inflation and, DUH!—budgeting for suburban rather than urban fire houses. (Um, somebody on the mayor’s team is not ready for prime time.) Insinuating that the Council set the levy up for failure because they cut stuff out—stuff that now has nothing to do with the cost increase—is just plain weird.

The blame here lies squarely with Team Nickels. Ceis’s attempt to blame the Council was super arrogant and perhaps a sign of things to come when he blames the council for the coming Viaduct tunnel overruns.