Monorail-recall petitions in

By Mike Lindblom
Seattle Times staff reporter

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Most read articles Most e-mailed articles

Initiative organizers yesterday turned in 22,300 petition signatures at Seattle City Hall.

To qualify for the ballot, the measure needs 17,229 valid signatures of Seattle voters. The anti-monorail group will continue collecting more signatures this week for a cushion, since all initiative petitions wind up including invalid names.

Still, there's no guarantee Seattle residents will go to the polls for a fourth monorail vote.

The Seattle Monorail Project, along with pro-monorail environmentalists and landowners, is continuing to fight the initiative with two lawsuits.

One suit contends that city-issued permits to build the proposed monorail are land-use decisions that cannot be overturned by an initiative. In the other case, the agency is trying to void the first 9,600 anti-monorail signatures because they were collected before a judge reworded the petitions for greater clarity on June 18.

"Even if they have their signatures, I think there's a lot of hurdles left to overcome between now and getting on the ballot," monorail board member Cindi Laws said.

If approved, I-83 would block or revoke city permits to construct the planned 14-mile, $1.75 billion Green Line linking Ballard, Seattle Center, downtown and West Seattle.

"If the monorail is still such a popular project, as the monorail authority believes, they shouldn't be afraid of a revote," said Tim Wulf, president of Monorail Recall.

Two years ago, a monorail tax passed by 877 votes, after voters had approved two previous initiatives to write a plan.

The City Council has the power to undermine I-83 by adding a weaker alternative to the ballot, but is unlikely to try that.
 
"We don't have time for nonsense," said Council President Jan Drago. The council already has put other issues on hold for half a year while reviewing the monorail, she said.

The council approved the route alignment by an 8-to-1 vote in June.

It also unanimously passed a permitting agreement for the monorail last week, although it requires that the project pass a financial review later this year. Project revenues from a new car-tab tax are more than one-quarter less than the original estimates.

The anti-monorail group has at least another week to collect signatures for Initiative 83. But it turned in signatures yesterday so King County election officials could get a head start on the counting, Wulf said.

Wulf said about one-third of the names were collected by paid signature-gatherers. He blames the monorail agency for his group's inability to run an all-volunteer drive, saying the effort lost steam when the Seattle Monorail Project filed its legal challenge.

Two teams of companies bidding on the project were dismayed at yesterday's announcement. Both say they still plan to submit their proposals on Aug. 15.

"It's tough to get a transit job in the U.S. done," said Tom Stone, who is organizing a team for Canadian train-maker Bombardier. "You get a strange alliance behind NIMBYs [people who say 'not in my back yard'] and anti-transit people funding them behind the scenes."

Monorail projects were aborted in Honolulu and Houston after Bombardier had spent millions of dollars preparing project designs, he said.

Monorail opponents contend the Seattle project has changed for the worse: Columns could be 6 feet wide instead of the advertised 3 feet, while single-track sections (rather than double-track lines) would slow the trains. They've also revived other controversial issues, including the size of the tax, at $140 per $10,000 of vehicle value.

At a news conference yesterday, I-83 leaders accused the monorail agency of misleading the public about the car-tab tax. The tax rates are based on a long-standing state valuation system that tends to overvalue newer cars.

I-83 campaign treasurer Liv Finne accused the monorail agency of rewriting the valuation rules after the 2002 campaign. But she backed off that statement under questioning. Before the election, monorail officials said they would use the state schedule. Still, the size of the tax caught many auto owners by surprise.

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