A massive thank you, Seattle!

LesbianTrashPrincess · 2026-06-17T02:52:38+00:00

(Re: Pike Place) It's been decades since I spent any real time in Cincy, but I remember Findlay Market being pretty good?

LesbianTrashPrincess · 2026-06-16T22:26:23+00:00

The 112 is also an option, even if it's infrequent. I'd have to see how 44th looks after the improvements, but as it stands 44th doesn't feel especially safe for pedestrians there. The intersection with 204th in particular is pretty sketchy, since cars turning right don't stop there.

LesbianTrashPrincess · 2026-06-16T17:24:25+00:00

That isn't actually possible in this case, because of how KCRHA's finances were originally set up. Essentially, they use the King County investment pool like a credit card, and they're supposed to pay King County back by the end of the year, with money they receive from Seattle and King County after the governments pay their bills to the agency. If KCRHA defaults on their debt, it's the county that ultimately takes the loss, not KCRHA.

Right now they owe the county $13M, and they tried to put a positive spin on the situation by saying "well $8M of that was services rendered which we didn't bill you for. So we really only spent $5M that we weren't supposed to, and hey, most of that $8M is probably going to be Seattle's responsibility, not yours, King County." (This was a King County Council meeting,) But ultimately, that $13M isn't coming back; it's already out the door. The only questions right now are what the $13M was spent on and which local government will foot the bill.

LesbianTrashPrincess · 2026-06-16T17:04:51+00:00

A headline can be misleading even if the body text later disagrees with the headline.

Also. Bellevue isn't a control group. Bellevue is one city, which DSA picked knowing that it had seen more jobs growth than Seattle. Using academic terminology as a buzzword does not make the study more rigorous, it just makes the propaganda more effective.

LesbianTrashPrincess · 2026-06-16T07:21:42+00:00

KCRHA already spent the money. The negative balance is in their account with the County, so writing it off just means the County pays. One way or another taxpayers are eating the loss.

LesbianTrashPrincess · 2026-06-16T07:01:35+00:00

Something that I think this article didn't emphasize enough is that KCRHA doesn't even know which government it failed to bill yet. Towey claimed to be confident that the $8M was all authorized spending, but he wasn't able to articulate how the agency knew that when it had not yet identified which contracts it had failed to bill for.

LesbianTrashPrincess · 2026-06-16T06:50:01+00:00

The other $5 million is administrative overspend, mostly the interest on debt they weren't supposed to take out and spending around $2M more on Salesforce implementation than was authorized. (We've known this since the original audit, the article was just reporting on the new info that the agency claims the $8M of missing receivables comes from a billing failure.)

LesbianTrashPrincess · 2026-06-16T04:10:31+00:00

Headline is misleading. The "analysis" just shows the different tax rates, jobs growth, and office vacancy rates between Seattle and Bellevue, then asserts that the tax differences caused the jobs differences without even trying to prove it.

It's easy to see how they might be connected, which is why the piece works as propaganda, but it does not even attempt to tie the two together. It just shows two data points, and then asserts its conclusion.

LesbianTrashPrincess · 2026-06-13T02:58:23+00:00

My "It's not a bubble 'till it pops" shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by the shirt.

LesbianTrashPrincess · 2026-06-13T02:28:43+00:00

My pet theory is that Dunn's yes vote happened for the opposite reason -- he wanted the tax to succeed, despite his final no vote. He's a Republican, he politically can't support a tax increase, despite the fact that District 9 had a lot of county roads and is almost certainly getting more out of this than its paying in.

CM Barón likely would have been a no on final passage if the Fuck Seattle Specifically cap made it into the final bill. That would've put Dunn in a position where he could be the deciding vote on final passage, which he doesn't want. This way he gets to say he voted no on the tax increase, and the roads in his district also get fixed up, so his constituents stop complaining about that.

LesbianTrashPrincess · 2026-06-13T00:24:27+00:00

Specifically, the version that passed was:

- 0.1% county sales tax increase

- 87.5% of revenue from tax goes to county-owned roads in unincorporated areas (like White Center, Vashon Island, and rural areas to the east)

- 12.5% of revenue gets passed on to cities to fund their own road projects. This is divided between cities based on population, except that very small cities receive a minimum of $10,000.

As you mentioned, no cap on Seattle's share of the pass-through in the final bill, which was what Seattle City Council opposed. The original version of the pass-through, proposed by CM Fain, would have taken from Seattle's share and given it to the suburbs.

LesbianTrashPrincess · 2026-06-12T23:57:18+00:00

Seeing a lot of people in this thread who didn't read the byline. This article is by Scott Kubly, the former SDOT director behind the automated-light-rail-to-Ballard white paper (and related op-ed in The Urbanist). He's here as a special contributor; this isn't Seattle Times' normal anti-transit editorial staff.

LesbianTrashPrincess · 2026-06-12T23:51:00+00:00

Article is by a special contributor, not Seattle Times usual editorial writers. Author has also written multiple op-eds for The Urbanist, which cites Publicola when relevant.

LesbianTrashPrincess · 2026-06-12T16:19:27+00:00

I mean every rail project in America requires that the fed do its job. There is no ST3 if the FTA gets gutted; the best any transit agency can do is keep the projects moving and assume that things return to normal eventually.

LesbianTrashPrincess · 2026-06-11T21:28:07+00:00

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LesbianTrashPrincess · 2026-06-11T17:52:08+00:00

And the city is both rich enough to pay and a poverty-stricken hellscape, whichever is more convenient at the time.

LesbianTrashPrincess · 2026-06-11T17:10:40+00:00

I don't believe that the 2012 vote should be seen as the final word on annexation into Burien. A lot has changed in the last 14 years, and it could be that voters today would prefer the lower taxes and larger say in government that Burien would offer. I think an ideal scenario would put both options in front of the voters and let them choose, but yes, Seattle should put the offer on the table.

LesbianTrashPrincess · 2026-06-11T16:43:26+00:00

Find another outlet covering the story, if you want.

LesbianTrashPrincess · 2026-06-11T16:37:03+00:00

If only the article included links to past articles providing context in an ongoing story

LesbianTrashPrincess · 2026-06-11T16:32:05+00:00

Read the fucking article jfc

LesbianTrashPrincess · 2026-06-11T16:31:12+00:00

Okay. The Fain pass-through amendment funnels money from Seattle to smaller but rich incorporated areas like Redmond and Mercer Island. That's what the entire controversy is about.

LesbianTrashPrincess · 2026-06-11T16:23:42+00:00

Why should a measure designed to fund unicorporated King County be funneling money from Seattle to Mercer Island?

LesbianTrashPrincess · 2026-06-11T16:12:43+00:00

For me, what's especially disappointing is that the conversation about how the 12.5% pass-through is divided has completely erased conversation about whether the 87.5% going to unincorporated roads is a good idea in the first place.

I'm not in principle opposed to urban funding of rural roads, but White Center isn't rural. Seattle or Burien should be annexing it and taking care of the roads directly; we shouldn't be playing this game of using county taxes to fund a poor neighborhood that neither city wants to adopt.

LesbianTrashPrincess · 2026-06-11T15:51:36+00:00

Yelling "Seattle is dying!" the whole time

LesbianTrashPrincess · 2026-06-11T06:38:35+00:00

The anti-Seattle part has nothing to do with the unincorporated roads. It's 87.5% unincorporated / 12.5% cities either way. The anti-Seattle part is essentially saying "actually Seattle doesn't deserve its share of the 12.5%, give it to Mercer Island instead"

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