Cienna’s got the scoop over at Slog:
This week, the bar was raised for eight projects hoping to move into the Seattle Center’s Fun Forest site—raised so high that all but three proposals may be out of the game.
On July 13, the review panel charged with choosing a project sent a letter (.pdf) to the eight proposers requesting more information about the project. The panel is honing in on where the money’s at: how many visitors each project expects to attract and their “financial readiness and sustainability” moving forward. The letter also points out that the chosen proposal “cannot result in a net negative budget impact to Seattle Center.”
The groups now have two weeks to firm up their financial plans, compared to, say, the year and half the Wright family had to put together its proposal for a for-profit, paid-admission, Chihuly-themed gallery/gift-shop/catering hall. But, you know, there was a public process right? So it’s all kosher.
Cienna’s conclusion? “Goldy is right; we are being humored.”
First rule of blogging, Cienna: Goldy is always right. Even when I’m not. If an opinion is not worth being blogged with absolute confidence, it’s probably not worth being blogged at all.
And that’s why I’m so confident in restating my opinion that the best proposal for the remaining two-acre patch of the Fun Forest is, well, the Fun Forest. Extend their contract another year, and the $250,000 in annual revenue it already brings in. That will give the Seattle Center the time to hold a fair bidding process — instead of the PR sham we’ve been witnessing — while giving competing proposals the time to get their financial plans in order.
Wright. Chihuly. City.
Now everyone practice saying this word out loud:
CORRUPTION
What concrete steps can we take as individuals to work against this?
@1 You are so right Rabbit. There is some seriously stinky rot in Seattle political processes right now and it is really bothering me…
# 1 & 2:
It’s an inevitable consequence of starving the local and state governments. After twenty or so rounds of budget cuts, there simply isn’t enough money to do everything that needs to be done. That provides private enterprises the opportunity to jump in and privatise some public facilities.
They don’t have to pay the true value, they just have to advertise it as having some barely tangible public benefit, and offer to pay a little more than the government entitiy is currently receiving. They get to keep the rest of the profits – and keep their books closed as well, so we never know how bad a deal we made.
You see this in states with privately operated prisons, parks which get leased out to private companies for nominal fees for corporate events which exclude the public, and as in this case, private contracts to control at least a portion of a public park or other facility.
Heck, they’ve even gotten the WSDOT to go along with privatising a portion of the highway system. If you are rich enough to pay an additional fee, you can have semi-exclusive access to use one lane of traffic on highways like 167. Wingnuts love this – they get to wisk along at the speed limit during commutes, while the riff-raff has to crawl along walking speed. They continually push for it on other highways, as well. They justify it by claiming that the “tolls” helped pay for the extra lane, but that’s not true – they pay just a small portion of the cost. The rest of us is paid for by those of us who won’t get to use it (exception: unless we are in a carpool or public transit).
The concrete steps we can take are the ones leading up to city hall. The city council has to vote to approve any recommendation coming out of this farce of a process. And while there’s no political cost for the appointed board members, that’s not true of elected officials.
Richard Conlin pretty much said this at a Town Hall appearance last month.
I expect the board to keep pushing the Chihuly project and the city council to reject it. Of course they’ll need some encouragement to do this.