Crosscut’s David Brewster punks Seattle, giving 13 reasons for our “slug’s pace” at making tough decisions like building light rail. And you know what? I can’t really disagree with him. For example:
7. Complacency. Seattle really is (was?) a favored city, so it’s not easy to feel a compelling need to make tough decisions, even if we feel some embarrassment about our procrastination. Our politicians reflect this by becoming “garden-tenders,” comforting the constituencies that elect them without having to make hard decisions that might alienate them. And, with only Democrats in office, there’s little fear of losing a job, once elected.
I’ve got a few quibbles here and there, but it’s worth the read.
I think I’d be talking more about the road-builder dominance of the state legislature and the developer dominance of the city’s planning process. Tax-cutting law also hasn’t helped much.
yeah coming from a guy who is anti-light rail…
A neighbor of ours (who happens to be a civil engineer) refers to the issue of “Seattleitis”, referring not just to the city proper but the entire region. Progressive as we like to consider ourselves, we’re collectively extremely anal, and waste absurd amounts of time, energy and money compulsively studying, re-studying and debating to death every minute detail, trying oh, so hard to reach “consensus” on everything and make sure we didn’t leave a stone unturned or the smallest and most marginalized faction unsatisfied. The result, of course, is that our high aspirations devolve into mediocre accomplishments.
Every once in a great long while, someone steps up to lead us to rise above all that. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have had the 1962 World’s Fair, the Goodwill Games (but then we chickened out on bidding for the Olympics), a truly splendid outdoor baseball stadium (albeit occupied by a perenially lackluster team), and so on. The Alaskan Way Viaduct, the UW Medical Center and the Puget Sound ferry system, for their time, were ambitious, even visionary efforts. Even Seafair took a fair amount of guts to get started, though we continue to do it now out of force of habit more than anything else.
“Our politicians reflect this by becoming “garden-tenders,” comforting the constituencies that elect them without having to make hard decisions that might alienate them.”
Yeah, you mean like Gregoire, Locke, McDermott, Chopp, Schell, Rice, etc?
Nickels breaks the trend – tries to DO SOMETHING FOR ONCE – and everybody hates him for it.
There is a certain constituency which opposes all change in this city – but it’s ridiculous to have politicians taking their cues from Luddites….
“…waste absurd amounts of time, energy and money compulsively studying, re-studying and debating to death every minute detail…”
This is an expression of powerlessness, I think. Better to debate & discuss endlessly than admit that there’s no ability to do anything at all.
Ah, a “perennially lackluster team” that holds a share of the MLB record for season wins? That is currently in a pennant race?
Anyway, let’s make a connection here: the Kingdome sucked big hairy rocks because it was built on the cheap by the same skinflinty voters that voted down rail in ’68 and ’70.
My generation and the next are stuck paying for Qwest, Safeco, _and_ Link because of the fools in the past.
Emmett Watson can suck it.
Art @ 3: The creation of the Seattle/King County Metro goverment system, which was driven by pollution in Lake Washington, seems to have been an exception to the rule, where local leadership rose up (some from the legal/business community) to make some significant and needed changes.
I’m not convinced that this is that peculiar of a Seattle disability. The U.S. as a whole seems to suffer from the inability to make any significant changes until faced with a crisis. Like a frog, we will sit contently in water as it is gradually brought to a boil, but will only take action if thrown into already-boiling water. An example: the eclipse of our U.S. education system by just about every other industrialized nation in the world, while we still continue to argue about the same education issues which we were arguing about fifty years ago.
As for Seattle and it’s approach to government and development, I think this is what happens when you get a pretty equal distribution of political power between business leaders, developers, community activists, environmentalists, anti-tax activists, etc. You end up in a stalemate. Multiple plans will be proposed, but everyone will vote AGAINST any plan except the one they prefer – meaning that no plan ever gets adopted.
In other cities, however, you often see a less equal distribution of political power which isn’t always good, either. In such cities developers/business interests usually prevail, resulting in large public infrastructure improvements only when they contribute to the profit of their particular project.
In cities where leadership tends to focus public support behind big projects, it’s usually a desperation tactic birthed from an economic crisis. Thus cities which find their tax base dwindling as old industries close down might try to find some big project in the hopes of drawing new jobs back into the community.
@7 That’s true…at some point many Seattleites became aware of how yukky it was to go to the beach and swim in their own shit.
We really did a pretty good job of cleaning up the air and water around here, and somewhat ahead of being forced to do so by higher authority. I grew up on Magnolia, and I remember as a kid eating breakfast while watching huge clouds of opaque smoke from Harbor Island waft across Elliott Bay to join with the already thick pall of car exhaust over downtown. Meanwhile the plywood and shingle mills near Salmon Bay would similarly blanket Ballard and Phinney Ridge. Then if the wind was right we’d get a nice perfume from the huge Interbay landfill (where the golf course is now). Oh, the good old days…
Ya gets whatcha pays for!
In an era where football coaches and University Presidents make the megabuck and chairs of local charity drives make 300k and up, what is the chance that anyone qualified will put themselves through the trauma of our5 eff’d up electoral process for a job that means mega amounts of work, modest salaries, huge public scrutiny and all the job security of an assembly line worker in Detroit?
The same folks who hurrah at paying football players $100,000 per game wonder why no one of much caliber wants to be
mayor?
Then, of course, we select our officials by their ability to raise campaign funds … as if being court jester for Charles Simonyi or a trombonist with Paul Allen is a qualification for office.
Look at the candidates for Counbty Executive. The leader is a dufus, Would anyone hire this lady to run a business the size of King County?
The there are the superstars we elect to run the Port and the schools.
I am certainly not in favor of mega salaries for these folks but we really need to find some other form of recompense and campaigning that does not mean we are limited to electing the part time mayor of Wasila or some campaign groupie as our next Big Boss.