Let the People’s Representatives Decide
As I reported in this week’s paper, the City Council seems increasingly unlikely to put any viaduct replacement options on the November ballot. Instead, the council would choose its own preferred replacement option (likely the mayor’s $4.5 billion tunnel, but with a possible nod toward building the surface/transit option) and elimimate any direct citizen participation in the process.
Unlike the Seattle Times editorial board (which is all for citizen participation except when they’re against it), I think it’s time for the city council to stop paying lip service to direct democracy (the ballot would just be advisory, not directive) and start making some decisions. That is, after all, why we elect them.
Polls show that of the two leading candidates for viaduct replacement (the tunnel and the rebuild), voters like the rebuild—an ugly, boxy structure 25 feet wider than the current viaduct—because it’s cheaper (and drivers like those views.) This is the Nick Licata school of public planning: moneysaving, but hardly visionary.
To put it bluntly: Citizens don’t always vote in their own best interest. Consider the monorail. Or the 2003 state initiative overturning ergonomics requirements. Or any number of tax-slashing Tim Eyman initiatives, which we now blame for our crumbling public infrastructure. In San Francisco, citizens voted to keep the Embarcadero, an elevated highway that was an eyesore on that city’s waterfront. It took an earthquake for the city’s leaders to do the right thing and tear it down.
We’ve already had an earthquake—the Nisqually quake of 2001, which damaged the viaduct and forced city and state leaders to start talking about a post-viaduct future. Five years have passed, and we’re scarcely any closer than we were then to making a decision about how to replace the viaduct—much less taking any action. Another earthquake could shut the viaduct down completely, or worse. It’s time for the council get moving on the viaduct before it’s out of our—and their—hands.
I could hardly agree more, Erica. The council should not need an advisory vote or even a poll to determine the right course forward here. Given the first opportunity in decades to reunite Seattle's downtown with its waterfront, shame on us if we build an even more massive concrete barrier instead. As you've pointed out, many voters (or in this case, poll respondents) sometimes don't have either the information or the long-term perspective necessary to make a valid judgment on an issue, and when it's an issue of significant import, electeds need to step in and do the right thing.