Seattle car tabs get a makeover: icons for monorail tax

By Mike Lindblom
Seattle Times staff reporter

License tabs for vehicles registered in Seattle will have a new look starting next month.

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By the end of next year, most cars owned in Seattle will display monorail stickers on the back. But you'll have to tailgate to see them — they're 1 by 1½ inches.

An estimated 375,000 license tabs sold to city residents will include monorail icons, beginning with February 2006 tabs that go on sale next month. The icons will show that a vehicle owner has paid the citywide car-tab tax for the $1.75 billion Green Line.

"We thought it would be kind of a fun way of celebrating the project and everyone who is contributing to making it a reality," said Natasha Jones, a spokeswoman for the Seattle Monorail Project (SMP).

There is no opt-out provision, said Brad Benfield, spokesman for the state Department of Licensing.

So drivers will get the monorail sticker, regardless of whether they voted for or against the project.

"It sounds like an in-your-face," said Alan Deright, a Capitol Hill resident who voted for the losing "Monorail Recall" Initiative 83 this month. "It's the scarlet letter."

Pro-monorail activist Peter Sherwin first made the suggestion three years ago, thinking the icons would create peer pressure to pay the tax. If a police officer pulls over a car owned by a city resident without the tab, that might raise questions about compliance, Sherwin said.

He suggests "a carrot, as well as a stick" — for example, discounted parking at Woodland Park Zoo, or preferred parking elsewhere, for cars with monorail tabs. There are no proposals yet from the city or SMP.

Jones said the tabs aren't meant to bring in tips on tax evaders. "We're not looking for people to snitch on their neighbors," she said.

That would be tricky anyway, since new cars are exempt from the tax for one year, while newcomers to Seattle might go months before the next renewal date.
 
The SMP estimates 8 to 10 percent of its tax base is lost to evasion when Seattle residents register their cars elsewhere. New state rules and tighter enforcement are expected to cut the loss to a 3-to-5-percent range next year.

Mike Lindblom: 206-515-5631