Monorail tax forecast is revised; car tabs expected to be enough

By Mike Lindblom
Seattle Times staff reporter

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Monorail officials said yesterday that the Green Line can rise above its financial turmoil and be built with the available car-tab taxes in Seattle.

New forecasts indicate that tax collections should grow fast enough to fund a $1.4 billion to $1.6 billion monorail, a reduction from its original $1.75 billion budget, said Joel Horn, executive director of the Seattle Monorail Project.

"Can we get the project done? We're definitely closing in on it," Horn said.

Yesterday's report, by consulting firm ECONorthwest, said car-tax income should grow an average 6.1 percent per year in Seattle. Currently the car-tab taxes are coming in one-third less than monorail backers had planned. But a 6.1 percent growth rate would eventually plug most of the hole in monorail revenues.

The figure is higher than what Sound Transit forecasts to help fund its light-rail project. And it's also more optimistic than the monorail's own prognostications last year. The new report assumes car values will rise faster than inflation and, as the population grows, more people will own cars.

The report was reviewed by four of the state's best-known economists, who suggested a more cautious figure of 4.8 percent. However, the panel said ECONorthwest's findings were reasonable.

"I think they were very independent. I had no impression at all they were trying to please or produce what the monorail people wanted to hear," said Chang Mook Sohn, the state's chief economist, who reviewed the report.

Downtown resident Henry Aronson questioned the independence of the report because Daniel Malarkey, the monorail agency's finance director, is a former managing director of ECONorthwest, which a monorail spokesman said received $30,000 for the study.

Aronson, a leader in the anti-monorail campaign last year, said he's no longer trying to kill the project. However, he wants the Seattle City Council to require an outside financial review to ensure the line can be completed, before it grants any permits for the Green Line to be built on city streets.

The true costs won't be known until next year, when two teams place bids to construct and operate a monorail system connecting downtown to Ballard and West Seattle. The monorail agency has already proposed reducing four miles of the 14-mile line to a single track shared by northbound and southbound trains. Horn also said he would resist funding anything not directly related to the monorail, such as any neighborhood requests to pay for parks, community-development improvements or moving utility wires underground.

The monorail also needs help from the state government to reduce tax evasion by people who live in Seattle but register their vehicles in other places. Next month, the Department of Licensing will propose a rule change forcing drivers to register cars to home addresses.

Another question is how many years residents must pay the tax of $140 per $10,000 of car value. If the latest predictions turn out wrong, the tax would go on longer than the roughly 25 years mentioned in last year's pro-monorail campaign.

Mike Lindblom: 206-515-5631 or mlindblom@seattletimes.com

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