Sea wall overkill

SEATTLE Mayor Mike McGinn is fond of town-hall meetings, but listening to others — really listening — is not his strong suit. Consider his decision this week to ask the City Council to proceed with a May vote on a property tax hike to replace the sea wall.

Yes, the same proposal many council members already said was going nowhere.

The mayor sent his now-$243 million bond measure knowing the council has other plans. Staging a May special election is needlessly expensive, $1 million or more, and the council plans to replace the sea wall by 2015. McGinn wants it done a year earlier. The city has been working to extend the life of the sea wall.

Council President Richard Conlin said the council will not put the measure on the May ballot and he told the mayor that before the legislation was transmitted.

The council is proceeding in a manner that accommodates careful deliberation about the longer list of tax requests to the public and other pieces of a broader waterfront redesign, including construction schedules, a park and the plan to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a deep-bore tunnel.

McGinn opposes the tunnel and is pushing the sea-wall replacement first and foremost as a safety issue, but secondarily, perhaps, to block the tunnel project.

That said, there was some good news in the mayor's letter. Several passages reveal greater respect for the council and for opinions other than his own, such as, "I look forward to engaging with the council in the coming months to identify projects that meet these shared objectives,... " and "I am committed to a dialogue about the city's long-term capital needs... "

This is progress in both tone and attitude.

Fixing the sea wall is an important safety project, but a May bond measure comes at the wrong time and is possibly the wrong funding mechanism.

McGinn should work collaboratively with the council on this and other plans or risk being known as a solo player in a region that needs teamwork.