Seattle Monorail Project board Chairman Tom Weeks and Executive Director Joel Horn resigned yesterday after a public uproar over the 50-year finance plan they had championed.

The plan was scrapped last week after even longtime supporters expressed doubts.

For three years, Weeks and Horn have been the dominant personalities in the monorail agency, determined to turn the city's wishes for elevated transit into reality. Their resignations come two weeks after SMP issued documents showing that the project cost of more than $2.1 billion would require total debt payments of $11.4 billion, including interest.

The SMP board rejected the financing plan Thursday night, putting the project in limbo.

"We take full responsibility for the current situation and feel that it is in the best interest of the Project to step down," the two wrote in a letter sent to the monorail board yesterday. They added that controversy about the interest costs had "overshadowed" the tentative deal with Cascadia Monorail — a deal they said was a "good value for the city."

Neither Weeks nor Horn, whose resignations are effective immediately, could be reached for comment.

Public hearings this week were to focus on the project's design. Now, though, a variety of options could be discussed, including the possibility of a voter-approved tax increase, a sale of station properties and a shutdown of the 68-employee agency, or a re-bid with Canadian train-builder Bombardier.

Public hearings on the monorail


Today, 5:30 p.m., Ballard High School Auditorium, 1418 N.W. 65th St.

Tomorrow, 7 p.m., Seattle Monorail Project meeting room, The Securities Building, Fourth Avenue entrance, 1913 Fourth Ave., Seattle. Follows regularly scheduled monorail-agency board meeting but will start no earlier than 7 p.m.

Thursday, 6:30 p.m., West Seattle High School Auditorium, 3000 California Ave. S.W.

Source: Seattle Monorail Project

The 14-mile line, linking downtown to Ballard and West Seattle, was to open by December 2010 under the proposal.

Horn and Weeks had raised public hopes for the project even after income from a car-tab tax fell one-third short of projections and costs grew.

Geof Logan, a longtime critic who has accused the agency of inept management, said yesterday the SMP should be disbanded so it does not add to the $110 million debt that Seattle residents already owe on the project.

"Tom, Joel and the board had absolutely no megaproject experience. Why should anybody be surprised how things turned out?" he said.

City Councilman Nick Licata, a monorail supporter, said that had the pair stayed, "it would be too hard to convince the public to move forward."

"Tom made a very difficult decision, but I think it was the right one," Licata said. "I think he was becoming a point of controversy. I think that he made a hard decision to sacrifice himself, for the project to have a chance of survival."

A week ago the agency was trying to sell the financing deal, with a $120,000 advertising campaign and an insistence that it made sense to spread costs to future generations riding the trains. Car-tab taxes for the monorail currently average $130 a year.

The tide turned in part because of a letter by Licata and City Attorney Tom Carr, who once chaired a monorail-planning board. The letter called for changes in the funding or management.

Dick Falkenbury, the tour-bus driver who started the grassroots monorail movement a decade ago, said yesterday the entire nine-member board should consider resigning. Members, he said, have been too willing to accept whatever the staff told them.

On Sept. 8 of last year, Weeks and Horn said during a public board meeting that the project was affordable within a voter-approved $1.5 billion debt limit in 2002 dollars (worth $1.7 billion as of last month). They did not disclose that the project's sole contract bid was at least $200 million above the agency's target price — a fact the entire board kept from the public for nearly nine months.

Monorail officials said contract talks were under way and financial information was part of the confidential negotiation.

During the blackout period, the board gave Horn a merit raise of $8,789, bringing his annual salary to $187,000. Weeks and the other board members are paid up to $7,500 a year.

It was unclear yesterday whether Horn will receive a financial package.

Weeks' replacement is to be chosen by the monorail board and sent to the City Council for confirmation.

Weeks, a former city councilman, did not have another full-time job, pouring his energy into developing and defending the monorail agency. In 2002, Weeks and Horn often drove around the city together, working their cellphones, during a campaign in which voters barely approved a new car-tab tax for the monorail.

In yesterday's statement, they said they believe the agreement is "within voter-approved funding limits."

The now-rejected finance plan would have required debt payments until 2053 or later, high-interest bonds and deferred interest payments.

Weeks and Horn, in their letter, implied the public didn't understand the deal:

"Though we tried to explain the complex, long-term financing proposal, and called for apples-to-apples comparisons with other major regional transportation projects, the Board and the people of Seattle have made it clear that the proposed financing plan will not work and a better plan must be developed."

Blair Butterworth, a political consultant to a Bombardier group, said Weeks and Horn are friends and he's sad to see them leave "without a clear victory." He said he doesn't think the resignations will affect the odds of a re-bid, which can happen only if the board and the staff "come to the conclusion the problem with the Cascadia bid is not the financing, it's that the bid [price] is too big."

SMP Vice Chairwoman Kristina Hill, a professor of landscape architecture at the University of Washington, said she would be chair until the board takes further action. Its next meeting is tomorrow night.

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