The Dueling Ballot Measures of 2007

In the face of competing interests and conflicted public opinion, Mayor Nickels and the City Council began to settle on the tunnel option as a way to maintain vehicle capacity while reconnecting the city with the waterfront. The tunnel had some significant problems, however. First, the cut-and-cover method of construction would have closed SR 99 for up to seven years leading people to ask the question “If we can live without it for seven years, do we really need it at all?” Other negatives included the cost, which was at least $1 Billion more than any of the alternatives.

"No and Hell No"

Against this backdrop, Cary Moon and her organization, the People’s Waterfront Coalition, began to lobby for a solution that favored increased transit service along the waterfront as well as improvements to surface streets. This, they argued, would re-connect Downtown with the waterfront, handle all of the traffic currently using SR 99, and do it for substantially less money than the tunnel was slated to cost. It would have the added benefit of reducing tailpipe emissions, Seattle’s largest source of greenhouse gas pollution.

In December 2006, with City and State leaders unable to come to a compromise, the Governor stepped in, saying that the current structure was unsafe, and the State would be taking down the viaduct in 2012 with or without any alternative in place (a promise she has quietly reneged on, since the viaduct will have to remain in place until at least 2015 under the deep bore tunnel plan). State leaders also resisted a tunnel as too expensive, and the Governor refused to consider a tunnel option without an advisory vote from Seattle’s citizens.

Remember that quirky two-part vote in March of 2007, where voters of Seattle said “No” (to an elevated, by 57 percent) and “Hell No” (to a tunnel, by 70 percent)? Splitting it into two was a Drago idea — and it made all the difference. “Had it been a single vote, tunnel vs. elevated,” she now says, “we [tunnel supporters] would have been dead on arrival.”

The Governor mandated that Seattle vote over the options (something City leaders didn’t want to do), but failed to imagine just how clever ballot drafters could be. Drago knew voters were opposed to the more expensive tunnel (polls showed that), but she also knew they were opposed (though not as heavily) to the elevated option. A split vote would send them both down. “I presented the idea to [Deputy Mayor Tim] Ceis and it took him about two seconds before he said perfect,” remembers Drago. And perfect it was for the script she was writing. “We lived to see another day,” she says proudly.

Put another way, the ballot measures were drafted in such a way that City politicians would be able to ignore the clearly expressed will of the voters. That bears repeating: City leaders drafted a ballot measure with the specific intent of ignoring its result.

Now some might just call this savvy politics.  Some might say that Nickels and other city leaders simply felt that the message of the voters was unclear.  The problem with this view is that just days after the vote, Nickels said the following:

“The voters have again told us loud and clear that a new freeway through the heart and soul of the city is not the answer. I couldn’t agree more. They’ve sent a very clear message – whether it is above ground or below, they don’t want to build another freeway on our waterfront. The three of us heard the voters. This is the 21st Century and what the people of Seattle have said is we must put aside the 1950s mind-set about transportation and find new and better alternatives…. We don’t know what that solution looks like, but we do know it will include transit, light rail, street cars, buses, biking, walking.” [David Ammons, March 15^th 2007, Associated Press, Seattle Leaders Look For New Ideas After Viaduct Vote]

Thus, it is clear that Nickels felt that he understood the will of the voters.  And yet, a year later, he pushed for the tunnel anyway.

Continue to Part Three:  Consensus Achieved