The City that brought the world Baghdad Jim McDermott with yet another Boondoggle.
Monorail Board Chair, Executive Director Step Down
July 4, 2005
By KOMO Staff & News Services
SEATTLE - The board chairman and executive director of the Seattle Monorail Project resigned Monday after heavy criticism of a rejected financing package for building the transit system.
In a letter to the monorail board, Chairman Tom Weeks and Director Joel Horn said outcry over the $11.4 billion funding plan had overshadowed the importance of an agreement to build the system.
"We take full responsibility for the current situation and feel that it is in the best interest of the Project to step down," the letter said.
The nine-member Seattle Monorail Project board will decide the project's future at meetings scheduled this week in Ballard and Seattle, spokeswoman Natasha Jones said. She declined to speculate on the future of the monorail.
"The board will make some decision as to the direction of the agency, but that is their choice to make," she said.
The elevated line that would link Ballard, the Seattle Center, the downtown area and West Seattle had been expected to cost about $2.1 billion, but officials have grappled with a 30 percent revenue shortfall from a car license tab tax and a 20 percent increase in costs.
The board and consultants eventually came up with a combination of 40-year bonds and high-interest "junk bonds" to supplement the tax revenue, boosting the total cost, including interest, to $11.4 billion.
That plan was panned by critics, including State Treasurer Mike Murphy, who said the inflated cost showed the project should be terminated as unaffordable.
The board later voted unanimously to reject the financing package and to seek other alternatives for raising money. Sue Secker, head of the project board's finance committee, has said a ballot measure asking for more money was a possibility.
The rejected timetable called for a completion date of Dec. 1, 2010. Substantial delays could endanger a construction contract with Cascadia Monorail Co., a consortium led by Fluor Enterprises and train supplier Hitachi of Japan. The consortium's offer expires in mid-December.
In their letter to the board, Weeks and Horn called the agreement that had been negotiated "a good value for the city."
"Given the complexity of negotiations and ever-increasing prices, we do not believe that it is possible to negotiate a better deal with a qualified contractor," they wrote.
Voter support for the 14-mile Green Line was strongly affirmed in an election last fall, the fourth time in seven years that city residents have voted in favor of a monorail.
The line would not use the track or technology of a mile-long monorail between the Seattle Center and the downtown retail core, a relic of the 1962 world's fair.
komotv.com
$11.4 billion to link Ballard with downtown?
Sheesh. Shut up and pass the Lutefisk! |
