Mayor Mike McGinn and his office rallied supporters in the transit and bicycle communities in an eleventh-hour effort to get the Seattle City Council to place an additional $80 vehicle-license fee on the November ballot.

McGinn says his vision for a more connected city relies on more money to address transit needs and to develop a network of rapid-ride streetcars.

The council is considering the recommendations of a citizens advisory group to add a new annual fee of up to $80 onto car tabs and to allocate almost half the money for transit, 30 percent for road maintenance and safety, and 20 percent for pedestrian and bicycle improvements.

Tuesday is the council's deadline to get a measure on the November ballot.

The new fee would be in addition to the $20 car-tab fee Seattleites started paying in May.

While the council has been talking about transit — mostly street improvements that would allow buses to run more efficiently and extensions of the city's existing electric-trolley bus lines, the mayor argues that only a long-term financing plan would allow the city to sell bonds and build what he calls "rapid streetcar" lines, streetcars that typically have fewer stops and travel faster between stops than the city's existing streetcars.

Under the headline "For Rail, Be Bold," the mayor blogged Tuesday that Seattle should use its taxing authority to extend streetcar lines from downtown to Ballard via Fremont, from downtown Seattle to the University District along Eastlake and to link the South Lake Union streetcar to the one planned from the Chinatown International District to Capitol Hill.

"If the VLF (vehicle-license fee) is ongoing, it becomes a steady source of revenue that can be borrowed against to build rail that will serve us for decades," McGinn wrote.

Just hours before Wednesday evening's council hearing on a range of car tab-fee proposals, the mayor's office put out a news release saying the city Planning Commission and the Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee "support long-term funding source to expand rail."

An advisory-committee co-chair said that wasn't true.

"We did not say fund any particular projects," said Ref Lindmark. "We made no recommendations on the amount that should be assessed or whether it should be time-limited or indefinite."

He said the committee recommended funding programs identified as priorities in the Transportation Master Plan, a plan that isn't complete.

Kate Joncas, president of the Downtown Seattle Association and the advisory committee's other co-chair, said the group had "no time to talk about" the right amount of the funding package. Rather she said the committee outlined the types of projects that could be undertaken for a new $80 fee "to give the council the most flexibility" in choosing options for the November ballot.

Supporters of the $80 fee dominated the testimony before the council Wednesday night and said the city needed to address its backlog of transportation needs and transition to a less car-dependent future.

Echoing the mayor's call to "be bold," Nate Cole-Daum of the organization Great City, which was once led by McGinn, told the council it had an opportunity to break away from a "car-oriented lifestyle."

"Give voters a plan for the full state-allowed vehicle-license fee, for a minimum of 20 years so that we can sell the bonds we'll need to make real progress," he said.

The Cascade Bicycle Club also urged support of an $80 license fee and collected more than 800 signatures online.

Some Maple Leaf residents urged the council to spend more on sidewalks so people could get safely to transit and to their local schools and shops.

Only a handful of people said they were concerned about the hit to car owners' pocketbooks.

John Fox, an advocate for low-income people, said the fee proposal comes as the economy is struggling and amid "a veritable truckload of special levies, other tax increases, proposed new tolls, stratospheric parking meter rates ... and one of the highest sales taxes in the country."

He said the $80 proposal could jeopardize the Families and Education Levy on the November ballot, as well as a $20 car-tab fee being considered by King County to preserve bus service.

The council is considering a range of fees, from $40 to $80, as well as different distributions, with one proposal spending more on road repair and less on transit and bike improvements.

An $80 annual car-tab fee would generate about $27 million annually. The city Department of Transportation says it has a $1.8 billion backlog of work.

Lynn Thompson: 206-464-8305