This coming Monday, the Mayoral candidates and City Council candidates will gather for a community forum at Ballard High School. Some of the issues expected to be raised at the forum include: access and cost for the SR-99 corridor and tunnel, crime and other public safety concerns, the future of industrial lands and the maritime industry, as well as controls on the rate of growth and development. Seattle Channel’s C. R. Douglas will moderate the forum on Monday, October 5, which is co-sponsored by the Ballard and Magnolia/Queen Anne District Councils. Doors will open at 6:00 pm with the Forum beginning at 6:30 pm in the high school auditorium.
Along with several neighborhood sites that are partners with the Seattle Times, we have been asked to participate in the King5 televised mayoral debate. The producer of the debate has requested that we ask the candidates questions important to our neighborhood. What would you like us to ask? Please post in comments below.
When our neighborhood plan was approved some years ago, it contained a RR station in the Golden Gardens-Shilshole area. Approved, but never funded. With the loss of the monorail, and the threat to 99 access, this would be a great facility to finally build.
If we cancel the tunnel and lose the gift monies allocated to us, how do we plan to pay for the street option?
Given the fact that traffic is already bad ithrough the city, if removing state highway 99 through the city and not replacing its capacity is such a great idea, why don't we do the same thing to I-5?
How do you plan to address the growing problem of gangs and gang violence in Seattle?
The Seattle Schools are planning to draw boundaries for the high schools that will shut out people living in north Ballard from Ballard High School (even though they could walk, ride a bike or take a 5 minute bus to the school). The city of Seattle Transportation department, who made “safe walking zones” for elementary schools, refuses to do the same for middle and high school students. This means those students are deemed mature enough to walk “anywhere” (across water, Hwy99, streets with no sidewalks in the dark). Would you have the city draw up safe walking zones for the schools, so students could attend the school they could walk or ride their bikes to?
For Mallahan: what experience do you have working in government specifically and dealing with that particular form of bureaucracy as opposed to trying to compare it to you business experience?
for any & all of them: how do you intend to protect the most vulnerable citizens of our city at a time when budget cuts for groups without political clout seem to be the order of the day?
FIX THE VIADUCT, YOU MORONS
Took us 20 minutes to get to Safeco Field for an afternoon game this summer. Took us AN HOUR AND A HALF to get home at rush hour on surface streets. Traffic on the viaduct was at capacity and creeping along.
Commerce in Seattle will come to a painful and grinding halt with no Viaduct. Businesses will be strangled.
What in hell are they thinking?
McGinn thinks commerce is bad and if you ride your bike, all will be solved, so it's easy to tear apart the viaduct as only evil car using forces utilize it.
Question: Will you support the addition of more police officers so as to allow for additional patrols on our streets and faster response times? Specifically in our neighborhoods where theft and drug-dealing is on the rise as well as in Market Street?
We have patrols? That's news to me.
It is a good question about adding police and one that both candidates have been ducking.
They don't WANT to fix the gridlock. They WANT there to be gridlock. They don't care if commerce to grinds to a halt. They're fine with businesses being strangled.
This is their plan: If you plan to use the roads for anything other than bicycles and buses, their goal is actually to try to make you as miserable as possible.
That's McGinn's plan for Seattle. He just won't say so in so many words.
I overheard a McGinn supporter at Piccolinos a few nights say “I don't understand why people keep talking about trucks needing to use the viaduct. I never buy anything that is delivered by truck.”
I felt like asking him “Does the PCC you patronize have some sort of farm along Aurora that I don't know about? Nice sweatshirt, is it hard to grow the cotton, loom it, then fashion it into a garmet everytime you get dressed?”
Has either of you had any experience in planning for a natural disaster or even a snowstorm?
We will have another snowstorm and we will eventually have an earthquake.
True.
I'm not too worried about surviving the next snowstorm (I mean, really, there were a thousand reasons why Nickels was a terrible mayor, the snowstorm didn't even register).
Yes, there will be an earthquake some day. I'm guessing that the viaduct will be the only thing west of 1st Avenue that will still be standing afterwards. Until the loonies tear it down.
What do you believe is the root cause of the violence happening between youth in our community? What specific actions would you take, if elected, to end youth violence and increase opportunities for youth facing poverty and racism in Seattle?
McGinn has IdeasForSeattle.org to brainstorm and get public input on ways to improve this city, both small and large.
How is McGinn using that to shape his campaign positions and how does he plan to continue using it after the election?
In comparison, what does Mallahan use to decide what drives his campaign positions?
While McGinn is getting campaign contributions from people involved in bicycle advocacy, Mallahan is getting contributions from people who have in the past stalled implementation of the Bicycle Master Plan and attempted to block the Burke Gillman Trail for a year. How much of their governing would be influenced by those contributions?
A few questions:
1. What is your vision/mission in life, personally? And, for the city?
2. What are your top 5 values that you live by, that guide your leadership?
3. What would be your 100 Day plan, to have the most impact out of the gate?
When I sit and watch the viaduct, I see at least 10 or 20 cars for every truck and at least 10% of those trucks are carrying cargo that can't be taken through a tunnel because it is explosive.
The viaduct and tunnel aren't essential for trucks. They are so non-essential that the freight community has already forced WSDOT to promise to make the waterfront a 35 mph traffic light timing optimized freight corridor as part of the deep bore tunnel project.
Really, the biggest reason for the viaduct or tunnel is for a commuter by-pass of downtown. If we improve our bus system, each bus at capacity removes 20-40 cars from the road and removes a lot of congestion that is caused by single-occupancy commuter vehicles. A better bus system is a lot cheaper than another lane of freeway or additional tunnel or viaduct capacity.
Even though the tunnel would be the world's largest diameter traffic tunnel, with the Seattle tax payers on the hook for any cost overruns, it won't even provide as many lanes as the viaduct does today.
Fantasy-land and fairy dust, as usual, from the War on Cars set.
Do you deny that if the tunnel is constructed on schedule that it will be the largest diameter traffic tunnel in the world, that the Seattle tax payers are on the hook for any cost over runs, that it is one lane narrower each way than the viaduct, and that the freight folks have been guaranteed a 35 mph optimized waterfront freight corridor?
All of that came from WSDOT presentations. I guess WSDOT is anti-car now.
Do you have some facts to share that I am missing? If I am in fantasy-land, I'd love to see some hard numbers to correct me. I've sat through at least 5 WSDOT presentations on this thing now and watched the stakeholder work that was completely ignored by the mayor and governor when they agreed to do the deep bore tunnel.
I really don't want to see my property & sales taxes wasted and neither should you. Cars or not, this is a lot of money that should be spent more wisely and there is a lot of bad data flying around claiming that we need this to prevent gridlock.
http://www.tunnelfacts.com/tunnelfacts-vs-tunne…
You're guessing about as wrong as possible. The viaduct almost came down in the last earthquake. It was leaning to one side before the quake, now it's leaning to the other. Not good.
Do you want to be on it during the next quake? Under it? Think of what would happen if we get a quake at rush hour or before a Mariner's game and that thing falls down.
It's built on top of a crumbling seawall on top of mud a double whammy of bad foundation and the worst thing you can build on top of from a seismic perspective.