Last Thursday, the Mayor proposed a property tax levy, to be approved by referendum, to fund the replacement of the seawall. His reason:
“The current plan leaves the existing seawall in place for far too long,” said McGinn. “Replacing our deteriorating seawall, before it fails, is one of the basic needs for our city. One of the first briefings I had during the transition was on the seawall. It was alarming. The current plan will not see the completion of a new seawall for at least another six years. Based on what I know now, that’s not good enough.“
The city council has concerns. At the very least, they want to be consulted:
“We want to make certain that the City’s Central Waterfront Partnership Committee has full opportunity to participate on this issue,” councilmembers said. “Legitimate questions have been raised about how to best restore some ecological function to the central waterfront shoreline as part of the seawall replacement…the Committee members’ input is vital to the success of the project.”
Why wouldn’t McGinn get the council’s support before announcing this? What is he thinking? If the seawall is in as bad shape as McGinn claims, surely it would be easy to win the council’s support, no?
Finally, there’s a sense that this is disconnected from the overall viaduct debate. Is that intentional? To be sure, the replacement of the seawall has always been a separate, city-funded project, but it’s still referred to by WSDOT as the “Alaskan Way Viaduct and Seawall Replacement” project. The two have been considered, heretofore, as interdependent projects. McGinn would seem to be attempting to disentangle them.
But again, why blindside the council here?
On one level, the council has sat on the seawall issue for about a decade without doing anything. With a 10% chance of failing every decade, this is irresponsible. If we have to wait for the tunnel debate to really end it could be another decade before we even start on the seawall.
On another level, breaking this off from the viaduct clarifies the actual costs for the tunnel and makes the debate more simple. If this helps the anti-tunnel side, there’s a clear reason and even precedent for not collaborating (remember the council’s letter supporting the tunnel right before the election?).
I think the blind-side was unitentional, but instead demonstrates the struggles of a new Mayor. He is new to the role, and in fact new to the inner-circle of city politics.
This is inexperience is demonstrated in three ways in this case:
1) How concerned he gets about this particular issue. I suspect he will have dozens of other similar “top priority” conversations over the coming months, but won’t have the proper context to understand what truly is top priority until he has spent some time in the role.
2) His failure to have a conversation with key stakeholders (in this case the city council) prior to going public
3) The wresting for power demonstrated by the council.
I suspect we will see several similar snafus over the coming months until he gets his feet under him.
How hard would it have been for McGinn to talk with City Council members, explain his concerns, and ask what they thought about the matter? Not very. They’re in the same building almost every day of the week.
Frankly, this is a case where McGinn is “playing to his base”, because no reasonable person is going to be persuaded or impressed by how he’s handled this so far.
In fact, McGinn’s approach is simply ludicrous. This is a moment that occurs once in a century, involving the shape of the central waterfront. A lot of people have already spent a lot of time working on getting this right. Now McGinn, who a month ago was asking us to tell him what we thought, has made up his own mind, and to heck with everybody else. Absurd.
That’s interesting. Still, it seems like a vote like this is going to be hard to win, especially if he needs 60%. It would be easier if he had more support going into it.