A majority of Seattleites wish to be taxed extra for a greater transportation system.
That’s saying loads in a metropolis with an extremely excessive value of dwelling. Ballot after ballot exhibits voters won’t solely approve one other transportation levy however are prepared to pay extra to handle the largest transportation points dealing with Seattle. A ballot performed by Change Analysis discovered that twice as many respondents most well-liked a bigger, $1.9 billion levy that invested in additional sidewalks, security, and transit tasks over a smaller, $1.7 billion choice. In response to the Metropolis’s personal polling by EMC analysis, the one argument in opposition to renewing the levy that triggered a major drop in assist (at a whopping 23%) was that it didn’t go far sufficient in investing in strolling, biking, transit, and the local weather.
Voters perceive what’s at stake. Our visitors fatalities are on the rise. Transportation in single-occupancy autos is the biggest contributor to our greenhouse fuel emissions. Lacking and inaccessible sidewalks and unsafe crossings imply that individuals with disabilities, kids, and senior residents are disproportionately in danger once we use our streets to get the place we have to go.
Subsequent Tuesday, July 2, the Seattle Metropolis Council will vote on last amendments to our subsequent transportation levy. It would fund 30% of Seattle’s transportation price range for the subsequent eight years and have an outsize affect on the route of our transportation system.
As chaotic as this council’s levy course of has been the previous two months, I daresay that each one six of the council members who submitted amendments final week added at the very least one proposal that will make Seattle safer, extra accessible, and extra sustainable.
Council Member Rob Saka doubled the Mayor’s funding for brand new sidewalk development. Council President Sara Nelson and Council Member Pleasure Hollingsworth added tens of millions for repairing current sidewalks. Council Member Cathy Moore elevated funding for Imaginative and prescient Zero. Council Member Tammy Morales added cash for community-based anti-displacement planning on the Graham and CID gentle rail stations, and Council Member Dan Strauss proposed lastly ending the lacking hyperlink of the Burke-Gilman path.
In different phrases, the council is proposing to fund packages Seattle desperately wants and that voters need and by all indications are prepared to pay for. This must be an enormous, simple political win for a council nonetheless brief on coverage wins.
However as an alternative of including to the levy, council members are pitting important packages in opposition to one another; funding sidewalk restore with cuts to new sidewalk development, and slicing equity-based neighborhood tasks for protected routes for youths to get to high school. I’ve heard the council’s method described as “peanut butter across the cash,” however that’s too cute of an outline as a result of on the different finish of the price range line are actual individuals experiencing real-world impacts. We shouldn’t have to decide on between these very important wants when polling exhibits that voters will approve a levy that funds all of them. Proper now, the council is buying and selling sidewalks, protected bike lanes, and avenue crossings, merely shifting the places of inaccessible routes and future fatalities.
Council Member Morales has proposed an modification that will enhance the dimensions of the levy to accommodate her colleagues’ proposed additions with out slicing very important packages. Now’s the time to indicate vocal assist for a bigger levy of $1.7 billion that invests within the security and neighborhood tasks we desperately want.
Hardly ever does a metropolis’s funding wants align so intently with public opinion. The council must observe Morales’s lead and capitalize on this second the place voters are asking for an even bigger levy to assist strolling, biking, and local weather. Seattle is ready.
Cecelia Black is a wheelchair person, neighborhood organizer for Incapacity Mobility Initiative at Incapacity Rights Washington, and serves as board president for Be:Seattle.
