Bridge may fall, but not taxes

If there's a tax revolt brewing, or even a taxpayer frowny face forming, the news of it obviously hasn't reached King County.

Tuesday the County Council raised a tax at 10 a.m. Then another after lunch. Then a third as the weak autumn sun slid behind the Olympics. Three tax hikes in one day. That's got to be a local record. I can't recall it happening before.

Each of the new taxes is small. Taken together, though, it equals the taxes of the Port of Seattle and the old Seattle Monorail Project. Combined.

That this taxapalooza went down the week after voters said they don't feel especially flush raises a question.

As Michelle Cook asked it: "Are they hearing us? At all?"

Cook is a South Park computer geek who, through her front window, has a commanding view of what ought to command the attention of King County: the South Park Bridge.

It's a drawbridge over the Duwamish. It's 77 years old and feels twice that. With a safety rating of 4 out of 100, it's the most dangerous road around (the Alaskan Way Viaduct is a 9). Twenty thousand cars and trucks cross it daily.

King County owns this bridge. Engineers say they will shut it in a few years if nothing is done. Money to fix it was in the Roads and Transit plan that failed last week. Now the county has no plan for what to do.

"We aren't going to be able to come up with the money for that by ourselves," says Dow Constantine, the councilman who represents South Park.

So it rankles Cook that there the council was Tuesday, approving new taxes for ferries. For flood levees. For mental-health services. Worthy causes all, she said. But what could be more basic, more utilitarian than a neighborhood bridge?

"I don't understand their priorities," she said. "How can they just abandon a bridge?"

I won't quibble with the $32 million-a-year plan to fix flood levees. That's as basic as a bridge. I also back the tax for mental-health treatment. It's basic human repair.

But foot ferries? At a cost of $200 million over a decade?

King County will take over two passenger-ferry lines, the Elliott Bay Water Taxi and Vashon Island. One shuttles 900 riders a day, the other 550.

Then it will spend more than $100 million reincarnating the old Mosquito Fleet routes between Kirkland, Renton and Seattle on Lake Washington. And Shilshole to downtown Seattle on the Sound.

Only one councilman said: What century is this, anyway?

"I can't go back to my constituents with a straight face and say: 'This is what we did with your transportation dollars — put ferries on the lake that will carry a couple of hundred people a day,' " said Reagan Dunn, R-Maple Valley.

Council members say they had little choice about the taxes. The feds and state have canceled money for these services, passing the bill to them.

"You can fold your arms and be stubborn, but then you have to accept that some of this has to go away," Constantine said.

Right. Some of it does. We need to choose. Me, I'd keep the bridge that carries 20,000 and is a backbone of industry.

Oh well. When it falls, I guess we can run a foot ferry across the Duwamish.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.