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Not all lawn care advice is created equal—especially when it's coming from social media “experts.” In this episode, John Pajak breaks down the dangers of following unqualified influencers when it comes to herbicides, turf types, and pricing strategies. Learn why getting real education as a lawn care applicator is non-negotiable if you want to stay legal, ethical, and profitable. Comments and Questions are welcome. Send to ProfitswithPajak@gmail.com Episode Links: Apple Podcast Listeners- Copy and paste the links below into your browser. Upcoming Events: Help us make Louisville's Waterfront Park #1 on USA Today's Best Riverwalk List. Click below and vote every day! Voting closes April 7, 2025. https://10best.usatoday.com/awards/waterfront-park-louisville-kentucky/ Get your Equip Expo 2025 tickets NOW with promo code PAJAK for only $12.50 https://plus.mcievents.com/equipexpo2025?RefId=PAJAK Show Partners: Yardbook Simplify your business and be more profitable. Please visit www.Yardbook.com Get 30 days of Premium Business level of Yardbook for FREE with promo code PAJAK Relay Relay is small business banking that puts you in complete control of what you're earning, spending and saving. Click here to sign up for Relay and get $50.00 cash bonus!http://join.relayfi.com/promo/get-50-ulumkswykjzwi4dqsm?referralcode=profitswithpajak&utm_source=influencer&utm_medium=podcast Mr. Producer Click the link to connect with Thee Best Podcast Producer in the biz! https://www.instagram.com/mrproducerusa/ Green Frog Web Design Get your first month for only $1 when you use code, PAJAK , and have your website LIVE in 3 weeks from projected start date or it's FREE for a year. https://www.greenfrogwebdesign.com/johnpajak My Service Area “Qualify Leads Based on Your Profitable Service Area.” Click on this link for an exclusive offer for being a “Profits with Pajak” listener. https://myservicearea.com/pajak Training and Courses Budgets, Breakevens, and Bottom Lines™ Workshop John Pajak's exclusive system is designed to help you avoid common failures and achieve your business' financial goals to be profitable and scale your business. https://www.johnpajak.com/offers/qvgvV8m3/checkout Yardbook Training Workshops Learn one-on-one with John Pajak to use Yardbook like a pro to streamline your business and make more money! https://www.johnpajak.com/offers/aJ9YX7aB/checkout
In this heartfelt episode of Profits with Pajak, John responds to a listener named Maggie, who says her husband is already running on empty and it's only the beginning of the season. John shares his own struggles with exhaustion, even as a veteran in the green industry, and delivers three powerful ways to manage burnout before it snowballs. If you're feeling overwhelmed already, this episode will remind you that you're not alone and that you can bounce back stronger with a few smart changes. Comments and Questions are welcome. Send to ProfitswithPajak@gmail.com Yardbook Training Workshops Learn one-on-one with John Pajak to use Yardbook like a pro to streamline your business and make more money! https://www.johnpajak.com/offers/aJ9YX7aB/checkout Episode Links: Apple Podcast Listeners- Copy and paste the links below into your browser. Upcoming Events: Help us make Louisville's Waterfront Park #1 on USA Today's Best Riverwalk List. Click below and vote every day! Voting closes April 7, 2025. https://10best.usatoday.com/awards/waterfront-park-louisville-kentucky/ Get your Equip Expo 2025 tickets NOW with promo code PAJAK for only $12.50 https://plus.mcievents.com/equipexpo2025?RefId=PAJAK Show Partners: Yardbook Simplify your business and be more profitable. Please visit www.Yardbook.com Get 30 days of Premium Business level of Yardbook for FREE with promo code PAJAK Relay Relay is small business banking that puts you in complete control of what you're earning, spending and saving. Click here to sign up for Relay and get $50.00 cash bonus!http://join.relayfi.com/promo/get-50-ulumkswykjzwi4dqsm?referralcode=profitswithpajak&utm_source=influencer&utm_medium=podcast Mr. Producer Click the link to connect with Thee Best Podcast Producer in the biz! https://www.instagram.com/mrproducerusa/ Green Frog Web Design Get your first month for only $1 when you use code, PAJAK , and have your website LIVE in 3 weeks from projected start date or it's FREE for a year. https://www.greenfrogwebdesign.com/johnpajak My Service Area “Qualify Leads Based on Your Profitable Service Area.” Click on this link for an exclusive offer for being a “Profits with Pajak” listener. https://myservicearea.com/pajak Training and Courses Budgets, Breakevens, and Bottom Lines™ Workshop John Pajak's exclusive system is designed to help you avoid common failures and achieve your business' financial goals to be profitable and scale your business. https://www.johnpajak.com/offers/qvgvV8m3/checkout
Parmalee have a new album out today and they are celebrating this weekend at Boots in the Park at Waterfront Park! We talked to the guys this morning about new music and how excited they are to be back in San Diego.
In this episode of Profits with Pajak, John sits down with Todd Colter from MitoGrow to explore how this unique biostimulant is helping lawn care and landscape professionals reduce costs, boost plant health, and improve client satisfaction. Learn how MitoGrow's powder-based formula unlocks root development, reduces fertilizer and water usage, and extends bloom time—without the need for complex application methods or licenses. If you're ready to increase profits while delivering better results for your customers, this is an episode you don't want to miss. MitoGrow.com – Use promo code: FIRST20 and get 20% off your first order. Comments and Questions are welcome. Send to ProfitswithPajak@gmail.com Episode Links: Apple Podcast Listeners- Copy and paste the links below into your browser. Upcoming Events: Help us make Louisville's Waterfront Park #1 on USA Today's Best Riverwalk List. Click below and vote every day! Voting closes April 7, 2025. https://10best.usatoday.com/awards/waterfront-park-louisville-kentucky/ Get your Equip Expo 2025 tickets NOW with promo code PAJAK for only $12.50 https://plus.mcievents.com/equipexpo2025?RefId=PAJAK Learn more about the amazing Turfmutt Foundation https://www.turfmutt.com/ More info on Outdoor Power Equipment Institute https://www.opei.org/ September 6, 2025 Beat the Guiness World Record and watch a movie in the park with your dogs! Show Partners: Yardbook Simplify your business and be more profitable. Please visit www.Yardbook.com Get 30 days of Premium Business level of Yardbook for FREE with promo code PAJAK Relay Relay is small business banking that puts you in complete control of what you're earning, spending and saving. Click here to sign up for Relay and get $50.00 cash bonus!http://join.relayfi.com/promo/get-50-ulumkswykjzwi4dqsm?referralcode=profitswithpajak&utm_source=influencer&utm_medium=podcast Mr. Producer Click the link to connect with Thee Best Podcast Producer in the biz! https://www.instagram.com/mrproducerusa/ Green Frog Web Design Get your first month for only $1 when you use code, PAJAK , and have your website LIVE in 3 weeks from projected start date or it's FREE for a year. https://www.greenfrogwebdesign.com/johnpajak My Service Area “Qualify Leads Based on Your Profitable Service Area.” Click on this link for an exclusive offer for being a “Profits with Pajak” listener. https://myservicearea.com/pajak Training and Courses Budgets, Breakevens, and Bottom Lines™ Workshop John Pajak's exclusive system is designed to help you avoid common failures and achieve your business' financial goals to be profitable and scale your business. https://www.johnpajak.com/offers/qvgvV8m3/checkout Yardbook Training Workshops Learn one-on-one with John Pajak to use Yardbook like a pro to streamline your business and make more money! https://www.johnpajak.com/offers/aJ9YX7aB/checkout
Join host John Pajak in this insightful episode of 'Profits with Pajak' as he converses with Kris Kiser, President and CEO of the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute and the TurfMutt Foundation. They discuss the importance of managed landscapes, spotlight Louisville's Waterfront Park and its nomination for USA Today's Best Riverwalk, and share how you can support this initiative. Tune in to learn how green spaces can transform communities and bolster local economies. Comments and Questions are welcome. Send to ProfitswithPajak@gmail.com Episode Links: Apple Podcast Listeners- Copy and paste the links below into your browser. Upcoming Events: Help us make Louisville's Waterfront Park #1 on USA Today's Best Riverwalk List. Click below and vote every day! Voting closes April 7, 2025. https://10best.usatoday.com/awards/waterfront-park-louisville-kentucky/ Get your Equip Expo 2025 tickets NOW with promo code PAJAK for only $12.50 https://plus.mcievents.com/equipexpo2025?RefId=PAJAK Learn more about the amazing Turfmutt Foundation https://www.turfmutt.com/ More info on Outdoor Power Equipment Institute https://www.opei.org/ September 6, 2025 Beat the Guiness World Record and watch a movie in the park with your dogs! Show Partners: Yardbook Simplify your business and be more profitable. Please visit www.Yardbook.com Get 30 days of Premium Business level of Yardbook for FREE with promo code PAJAK Relay Relay is small business banking that puts you in complete control of what you're earning, spending and saving. Click here to sign up for Relay and get $50.00 cash bonus! http://join.relayfi.com/promo/get-50-ulumkswykjzwi4dqsm?referralcode=profitswithpajak&utm_source=influencer&utm_medium=podcast Mr. Producer Click the link to connect with Thee Best Podcast Producer in the biz! https://www.instagram.com/mrproducerusa/ Green Frog Web Design Get your first month for only $1 when you use code, PAJAK , and have your website LIVE in 3 weeks from projected start date or it's FREE for a year. https://www.greenfrogwebdesign.com/johnpajak My Service Area “Qualify Leads Based on Your Profitable Service Area.” Click on this link for an exclusive offer for being a “Profits with Pajak” listener. https://myservicearea.com/pajak Training and Courses Budgets, Breakevens, and Bottom Lines™ Workshop John Pajak's exclusive system is designed to help you avoid common failures and achieve your business' financial goals to be profitable and scale your business. https://www.johnpajak.com/offers/qvgvV8m3/checkout Yardbook Training Workshops Learn one-on-one with John Pajak to use Yardbook like a pro to streamline your business and make more money! https://www.johnpajak.com/offers/aJ9YX7aB/checkout
Mayor Wilson is considering the new tax to fund our crumbling streets. The federal government is opening an investigation into an Oregon student athlete. And Portland's "Boom Loop" is imminent, thanks to a possible new waterfront park. Oregonian City Hall reporter Shane Dixon Kavanaugh and senior producer Giulia Fiaoni join host Claudia Meza for the Friday news roundup. Discussed in Today's Episode: Portland Mayor Keith Wilson Eyes New Tax To Aid Cash-strapped Transportation System [Oregonian
An update on tonight’s developing storm. The family of a triple murderer is breathing a sigh of relief after Governor Ferguson canceled his release. Seattle’s Waterfront Park is adding a gender neutral bathroom. // LongForm: GUEST: Michael Stanzel, an Edgewood resident, has launched a campaign against the use of school zone cameras, speed cameras, and red light cameras in Washington, arguing they do not enhance safety but instead generate significant revenue for cities. // Quick Hit: Is Jasmine Crockett now the face of the Democrat Party?
Terry discusses local officials touting the expansion of Waterfront Park into WEST LOU-UH-VUL, a name we stole from a town in western Kentucky. (If you say WAH-FAH instead of WiFi, then Loo-uh-vul fits right into your Jethro laden elocution skeelz!).In Washington, members of Congress went on the attack against left-leaning NPR. Jim Jordan and Jamie Comer tried to derail NPR CEO Katherine Maher. She's like, "who me? I drive down the center lane on the highway."Opinion is part of the media universe, albeit separate from general news gathering. That's what the AP stylebook would have us all believe.But news consumers like to hear their own biases reflected back toward them. MSNBC viewers are convinced that they're hearing unbiased news reporting and sensible commentary. The exact opposite sentiment is embraced by conservatives consuming Fox News.Today's issue: the Republicans in charge of the House of Representatives don't want to fund liberal NPR and PBS opinions but are fine with conservative views on various media platforms.Conservatives control all three branches of government right now so expect this battle over funding public media to remain active for now.
Decoy Deloy is back with a hot dose of Music News, brought to you by Hello Merch. Whether you're looking to source, print, sell, or buy merch, HELLO has you covered. And this week at Hello it's all about HEAVY METAL. That's Heavy Metal, the debut solo album from Cameron Winter, frontman of Geese. Full of groovers, folkie ballads, and strange story songs, Cameron's label Partisan records says the album, “draws on both the chaos of the road and Winter's greater sense of existential dread.” Chaos and existential dread? Why does that sound so familiar? In other news, Portland's Project Pabst goes down July 26 and 27 at Waterfront Park. Who's playing? Decoy fills you in. And to close, on Tuesday, February 25th, Tim Heidecker and The Very Good Band came to Phoenix, Arizona to play The Crescent Ballroom with special guest Fred Armisen. Decoy shares his thoughts about the gig and explains why Heidecker's music is so surprising. Shop Cameron Winter at Hello MerchShop Portlandia at Hello MerchShop for Heidecker and Wood's Starting From Nowhere at Hello Merch Call us anytime at 1-877-WASTOIDS. More podcasts and videos at WASTOIDS.com | Follow us on Instagram and YouTube.
On the Today in San Diego Podcast, we have a high wind warning in effect for parts of the county which means fire danger, NBC 7's Brooke Martell has your First Alert Forecast. And, hundreds gathered around the Waterfront Park for the People's March over the weekend. Plus, how one local family is giving back to the LA fire victims.
Explore Ridgefield's Waterfront Park Master Plan, a vision for recreation, nature, and community. Learn how public input shaped this transformative project. Read the full story at https://www.clarkcountytoday.com/news/city-of-ridgefield-and-port-of-ridgefield-adopt-vision-for-community-focused-waterfront-park/ on www.ClarkCountyToday.com #WaterfrontPark #Ridgefield #CommunityEvents #EconomicVitality #NatureViewing #InclusivePlayArea #ClarkCountyWa #localnews
A crowdfunding campaign is on to gather the last bit of money for a waterfront park on Saginaw Bay in Linwood. A conceptual vision is out for the site of the old Consumers Energy Karn power plant. For more, visit https://mrgreatlakes.com/
Bill Sumio Naito, who died at age 70 in 1996, was a Portland-born son of Japanese immigrants who became one of the city's most significant business and civic leaders. Erica Naito-Campbell, his granddaughter, grew up next door to him and has written a new biography of the man who lends his name to the road thousands of people drive and bike on every day. The book, “Portland's Audacious Champion,” details Naito’s life from growing up in East Portland, through military service in World War II, to his role in much of Portland’s iconic geography: from the Portland sign near the Burnside Bridge to Waterfront Park. Natio-Campbell joins us to share more.
Good journalism can have an effect on our cities' quality of life. In this episode, we speak to a media company in the Philippines aiming to make Manila livable. We also visit a new waterfront park near the Port of Los Angeles and flick through the pages of Monocle's mobility special issue. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Boots in the Park is coming back to Waterfront Park on September 14th and this time Jason Aldean is headlining! He called us this morning to talk about coming back to San Diego and what fans can expect at the show. Plus, how he intimidates his daughter's dates!
According to weather experts, Saturday is just the middle of this heatwave, and the next three days are calling for even hotter temperatures, so Clark County residents are finding places to cool off, including the water feature at Vancouver's Waterfront Park. https://www.clarkcountytoday.com/news/water-feature-at-waterfront-park-the-place-to-be-during-heatwave #Heatwave #Weather #Forecast #VancouverWaterfrontPark #WaterFeature #StayingCool #VancouverWa #Ridgefield #ClarkCountyWa #ClarkCountyNews #ClarkCountyToday
Ok, so things are not looking good for the home team. Powers stripped away, bad guy gloating, racist bad guys with questionable fashion sense...what are we to do? I have an idea, let's talk about something fun like the Portland Rose Festival! Looking at the pictures we chose for this book, you may think that I am crazy. Or you may have met me and know that I am. But that is beside the point. I can do anything I put my mind to, including but not limited to kneeing a giant in the head with my knee. I always forget Rose Festival until it kicks in my door like an aggressive repo man just before summer. It is an annual civic festival held during the month of June in Portland, Oregon. It is organized by the volunteer non-profit Portland Rose Festival Foundation with the purpose of promoting the Portland region. It includes three separate parades, along with a number of other activities, including plant-based crimes. You may be tempted after seeing the beautiful floats covered in flowers and seeds to take a trip up to the Portland International Test Rose Gardens. I highly recommend that you do, as it is a very lovely area and one of my favorite spots in the city. What you should not do is take any cutting implement up to take the roses. It is frowned upon. One of the highlights of the Rose Festival is the choosing of the Royal Court. Each local high school has a contest to determine their princess for the Rose Court, and then a queen is chosen from those young women. It is a pretty neat tradition...but I just remember who was chosen from my school my senior year, and it was a horrible choice.....but I digress. Waterfront Park becomes a giant fun center with carnival games, rides, and stages. It is loud, full of an interesting cross section of the city, and full of the smells of food that will clog your arteries. I do not make it down there enough, but when I do go, I still find it very fun. The prices are insane, but that is what you get. My favorite part of the entire festival is the fireworks. This is usually what kicks everything off. They are held in the Willamette River, which runs through the center of the city. Crowds gather on both sides of the river to watch the show in the air above them. And they rarely, if ever, cause people to become radioactive. Well, I hope you learned something about our wonderful city and it's namesake festival. Come to town to check it out sometime. You can see the art we discussed at our website: https://jeffandrickpresent.wordpress.com/2024/06/01/avengers-academy-35-final-exam-part-2/ We also have some merchandise over at Redbubble. We have a couple of nifty shirts for sale. https://www.redbubble.com/people/jeffrickpresent/?asc=u You can also subscribe and listen to us on YouTube! Our show supports the Hero Initiative, Helping Comic Creators in Need. http://www.heroinitiative.org/ Eighties Action by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3703-eighties-action License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Rise Of Legends by Sascha Ende Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/12192-rise-of-legends License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Op 18 Julie 2022 het Lawrence Sampofu, die goewerneur van die Zambezi-streek, die Ombudsman versoek om voorlopige ondersoeke te doen na bewerings van misbruik van openbare gelde tydens die bou van die Zambezi Waterfront Toerismepark. Die Ombudsman het onderneem om uit te vind of iets verkeerd geloop het en indien wel, wat veronderstel was om te gebeur, en sou waarskynlik moontlike remedies voorstel. Kosmos 94.1 Nuus het met Ombudsman Basilius Dyakugha gepraat, wat 'n uiteensetting gee van die ondersoek.
Dyakugha het ook 'n oplossing voorgestel vir die ongebruikte toerismepark.
This episode takes listeners on an adventure through Burlington, Vermont, highlighting its picturesque sights, vibrant arts and culture scene, thriving food and brewery scenes, and a unique viewing experience of the great American eclipse of 2024.Traveler Johnny Mac's journey from New Jersey to Burlington, including a ferry ride across Lake Champlain, serves as the narrative thread. The episode covers Burlington's Waterfront Park, bike rentals for exploring the Burlington Greenway, a scenic lake cruise aboard the Spirit of Ethan Allen, and a visit to the Church Street Marketplace for local shopping and dining. The script also spotlights the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts and provides a detailed account of the eclipse viewing experience. Johnny Mack's Unexpected Ferry AdventureExploring Burlington's Waterfront Park and BeyondA Tour Through Church Street MarketplaceThe Eclipse Experience in Burlington Burlington's Rich Arts and Outdoor Adventures
This week's Access Louisville podcast has a bit of everything.We talk about Shaquille O'Neal's departure from the board of Papa John's International Inc. as well as Mitch McConnell's plans to step down as Senate Republican Leader.After that we get into some real estate news: A piece of property in the Highlands between Baxter Avenue and Bardstown Road, that was for a long-time home of KFC, is up for sale. We've also got news on a new development in NuLu, which will be called NuLu Marketplace North.After that we talk with Reporter Stephen P. Schmidt, who tell us about a mystery-infused experience being offered by Bardstown Bourbon Co. that he recently attended. And we talk about Jack Harlow's upcoming festival at Waterfront Park. Access Louisville is a weekly podcast from Louisville Business First. It's available on popular podcast services, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify and more. Access Louisville Live! Join us for a live recording of the Access Louisville podcast on March 26 in Downtown Louisville. Guest will include former Mayor Jerry Abramson and philanthropist Christina Lee Brown in a discussion on Louisville's biggest milestones. You can register for the event here.
Join us for a conversation with landscape and urban designer Andrew tenBrink of NYC-based Field Operations as he reveals Seattle's new downtown Waterfront Park project, which he has managed since 2010. From the cobblestones of Pioneer Square to Belltown's crowded skyline, Andrew's block-by-block tour through the 20-acre park demonstrates how this new landscape reflects community priorities. Along the way, he spotlights contributions of local partners. These include architects and artists, tribes and Urban Natives, the City of Seattle and the Office of the Waterfront and Capitol Projects, as well as cultural consultants and garden designers. Indigenous food sovereignty advocate Valerie Segrest (Muckleshoot) drops by to share thoughts on placemaking and history. Valerie explains how the interpretive horticultural exhibit she designed for the new Overlook Walk invites visitors to gaze across the Salish Sea while learning about Native cultural ecosystems. These walkways, stairs and plazas connect the Seattle Aquarium's new Ocean Pavilion at the shoreline with Pike Place Market. Andrew's inspiring stories reveal how a brilliant framework can express the civic dreams of multitudes. They demonstrate how city dwellers are most grounded when connected with nature, with themselves and with one another. Listen and learn how these new public spaces reflect the varied histories and cultures that define a great city and that will shape its future. "Outdoor space has always been at its best when people use it as a part of their daily lives: You take a stroll in the park, you unwind, you de-stress, you take your kids to the playground. These are the indelible things that exist across the world across time.” ~Andrew tenBrink
Please enjoy this re-air of our listeners' favorite topical show of 2023! On this topical show re-air, Crystal chats with former Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn and his former Senior Communications Advisor Robert Cruickshank about the missed opportunity for generational impact through how decisions were made about Seattle's waterfront and the SR99 tunnel. Mike and Robert review how the vision of the scrappy People's Waterfront Coalition, centered around making a prized public space accessible for all while taking the climate crisis on by transforming our transportation system, nearly won the fight against those who prioritized maintaining highway capacity and those who prioritized increasing Downtown property values. The conversation then highlights how those with power and money used their outsized influence to make backroom decisions - despite flawed arguments and little public enthusiasm for their proposal - leaving Seattle with an underutilized deep bore tunnel and a car-centric waterfront. Some of the decision makers are still active in local politics - including current Mayor Bruce Harrell and his current advisor Tim Burgess. With important elections ahead, Crystal, Mike and Robert discuss how political decisions tend to conflict with campaign promises rather than donor rolls, how proven action is a better indicator than value statements, and how today's dense ecosystem of progressive leaders and organizations can take inspiration and win the next fight. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii, Mike McGinn at @mayormcginn, and Robert Cruickshank at @cruickshank. Mike McGinn Mike is the Executive Director of national nonprofit America Walks. He got his start in local politics as a neighborhood activist pushing for walkability. From there he founded a non-profit focused on sustainable and equitable growth, and then became mayor of Seattle. Just before joining America Walks, Mike worked to help Feet First, Washington State's walking advocacy organization, expand their sphere of influence across Washington state. He has worked on numerous public education, legislative, ballot measure and election campaigns – which has given him an abiding faith in the power of organizing and volunteers to create change. Robert Cruickshank Robert is the Director of Digital Strategy at California YIMBY and Chair of Sierra Club Seattle. A long time communications and political strategist, he was Senior Communications Advisor to Mike McGinn from 2011-2013. Resources “Seattle Waterfront History Interviews: Cary Moon, Waterfront Coalition” by Dominic Black from HistoryLink “State Route 99 tunnel - Options and political debate" from Wikipedia “Remembering broken promises about Bertha” by Josh Cohen from Curbed Seattle “Fewer drivers in Seattle's Highway 99 tunnel could create need for bailout” by Mike Lindblom from The Seattle Times “Surface Highway Undermines Seattle's Waterfront Park” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist “Seattle Prepares to Open Brand New Elliott Way Highway Connector” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, I am very excited to be welcoming Robert Cruickshank and former Mayor Mike McGinn to the show to talk about something that a lot of people have been thinking about, talking about recently - and that is Seattle's new waterfront. We feel like we've spent a decade under construction - from a deep bore tunnel to the tunnel machine getting stuck - that's not even covering all the debate before that, but all of the kind of follies and foibles and challenges that have beset the process of arriving at the waterfront that we have now. And now that we are getting the big reveal, a lot of people have feelings about it. So I thought we would talk about it with one of the people who was at the forefront of criticisms of the tunnel and calling out some red flags that turned out to be a very wise warning - several wise warnings that have come to pass, unfortunately - for not listening to them. But I want to start early on in the beginning, both of you - and I had a short stint in the mayor's office - worked on this, talked about this on the campaign, really got it. But when did you first hear that we needed to replace the viaduct and there were some different opinions about how to make that happen? [00:02:06] Mike McGinn: Okay, so I'm sure I can't pin down a date, but the really important date was, of course, the Nisqually earthquake in 2001. And so it gave the Alaska Way Viaduct a good shake - the decks weren't tied into the columns, the columns were on fill, which could liquefy - and everybody understood that if that quake had been a little stronger and harder, the elevated would come down. Now you might think that that would call for immediately closing the roadway for safety reasons, but what it did call for was for reconstructing it. And you have to remember that highway was really one of the very first limited access highways - it was built long ago and it was just at the end of its useful life anyway. Certainly not built to modern seismic standards or modern engineering standards. So the conversation immediately started and I don't know when everything started to settle into different roles, but the Mayor of Seattle Greg Nickels, was immediately a proponent for a tunnel - and a much larger and more expensive tunnel than what was ultimately built. And it would have been a cut-and-cover tunnel along the waterfront that included a new seawall. So they thought they were solving two things at one time - because the seawall too was rotting away, very old, very unstable. But it would have gone all the way under South Lake Union and emerged onto Aurora Avenue further north, it would have had entrances and exits to Western and Elliott. And I seem to remember the quoted price was like $11 billion. And the state - governor at the time was Christine Gregoire - they were - No, we're replacing the highway. We don't have $11 billion for Seattle. And of course had the support of a lot of lawmakers for obvious reasons - we're not going to give Seattle all that money, we want all that highway money for our districts. And those were immediately presented as the alternatives. And so much of the credit has to go to Cary Moon, who lived on the waterfront and started something called the People's Waterfront Coalition. I think Grant Cogswell, a former City Council candidate - now runs a bookstore down in Mexico City, but wrote a book about the Monorail, worked on the different Monorail campaigns before that - they launched something called the People's Waterfront Coalition. And the basic proposition was - We don't need a highway. This is a great opportunity to get rid of the highway and have a surface street, but if you amp up the transit service - if we invest in transit instead - we can accommodate everyone. And so that was really - as it started - and actually I remember being outside City Hall one day, going to some stakeholder meeting - I went to so many different stakeholder meetings. And I remember Tim Ceis saying to me - he was the Deputy Mayor at the time - You're not supporting that Cary Moon idea - I mean, that's just crazy. I was - Well, actually, Tim. So the Sierra Club was - I was a volunteer leader in the Sierra Club - and the Sierra Club was one of the first organizations - I'm sure there were others, I shouldn't overstate it - but the Sierra Club was persuaded by the wisdom of Cary's idea and supported it in that day. And so that was really how the three different options got launched - no public process, no analysis, no description of what our needs were. The mayor went to a solution, the governor went to a solution - and it was up to members of the public to try to ask them to slow down, stop, and look at something different. [00:05:42] Crystal Fincher: And Robert, how did you first engage with this issue? [00:05:47] Robert Cruickshank: For me, I had just moved to Seattle the first time in the fall of 2001 - so it was about six months after the Nisqually quake - and I came from the Bay Area. And that was where another earthquake had damaged another waterfront highway, the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco. And that was where San Francisco had voted - after that quake had damaged their viaduct beyond repair - they voted to tear it down and replace it with the Embarcadero Waterfront, which is a six-lane arterial but they built a lot more transit there. So they did the - what we might call the surface transit option - and it worked really well. It was beautiful. It still is. And so when I came up here and started to learn a little bit about the place I was living and the legacy of the Nisqually quake, I thought - Oh, why don't you just do the same thing here? It worked so well in San Francisco. Let's just tear down this unsightly monstrosity on the waterfront and replace it with a surface boulevard and put in a bunch of transit - San Francisco's made it work successfully. And the more I learned about Seattle, I realized there's a legacy of that here, too. This is a city where we had a freeway revolt, where activists came together and killed the RH Thomson freeway, which would have destroyed the Arboretum. They killed the Bay Freeway, which would have destroyed Pike Place Market. And so I naturally assumed - as being a relatively new resident - that Seattle would stay in that tradition and welcome the opportunity to tear this down and build a great waterfront for people, not cars. But as we'll talk about in a moment, we have a lot of business interests and freight interests and others who had a different vision - who didn't share that community-rooted vision. And I think at numerous points along the way, though, you see people of Seattle saying - No, this is not what we want for our waterfront. We have an opportunity now with the fact that this viaduct nearly collapsed, as Mike mentioned, in the Nisqually quake - we have an opportunity for something really wonderful here. And so I think Cary Moon and then Mike McGinn and others tapped into that - tapped into a really strong community desire to have a better waterfront. I wasn't that politically engaged at the time in the 2000s - I was just a grad student at UW - but just talking to folks who I knew, anytime this came up - God, wouldn't it be wonderful down there if this was oriented towards people and not cars, and we took that thing down? So I think one of the things you're going to see is this contest between the vision that many of us in Seattle had and still have - this beautiful location, beautiful vista on Elliott Bay, that should be for the people of the city - and those in power who have a very different vision and don't really want to share power or ultimately the right-of-way with We the People. [00:08:05] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. And I was involved in some things at the time - some curious coalitions - but definitely I was around a lot of people who favored either rebuilding the viaduct or the tunnel. Definitely not this roads and transit option - there's no way that's workable. That's pie-in-the-sky talk from those loony greenies over there. What are you talking about? But as this went on - I think no matter what camp people were in - there was always a clear vision articulated and people really focused on the opportunity that this represented, and I think correctly characterized it as - this is one of these generational decisions that we get to make that is going to impact the next generation or two and beyond. And there's an opportunity - the waterfront felt very disconnected with the way things were constructed - it was not easy just to go from downtown to the waterfront. It wasn't friendly for pedestrians. It wasn't friendly for tourists. It just did not feel like a world-class waterfront in a world-class city, and how we see that in so many other cities. You talk about the decision with the Embarcadero, Robert, and looking at - that definitely seemed like a definitive step forward. This was sold as - yeah, we can absolutely take a step forward and finally fix this waterfront and make it what it should have been the whole time. As you thought about the opportunity that this represented, what was the opportunity to you and what did you hear other people saying that they wanted this to be? [00:09:38] Mike McGinn: Yeah, so I think there are - I think that's really important, because I don't think there was a real discussion of what the vision was. People will say there was, but there really wasn't. Because what was baked in and what you're referring to is - well, of course you have to build automobile capacity to replace the existing automobile capacity, right? In fact, this state is still building more highways across the state in the misguided belief that more highway capacity will somehow or another do some good. So this idea that you have to replace and expand highway capacity is extremely powerful in Washington state and across the country. And there were very few examples of highway removal, so that was just a real challenge in the first place - that somehow or other the first priority has to be moving automobiles. For me, at that time I had become - the issue of climate had really penetrated me at that point. And in fact, when Greg Nickels took office and the Sierra Club endorsed him over Paul Schell - I was a local leader in the Sierra Club and a state leader in the Sierra Club - and my goal was that Mayor Nickels would do more than Paul Schell. And Paul Schell, the prior mayor, had done some good things. He had made Seattle City Light climate neutral - we'd gotten out of coal plants and we didn't purchase power from coal plants. He was really progressive on a number of environmental issues and we wanted Mayor Nickels to do more - and Mayor Nickels had stepped up. So we put on a campaign to urge him to do more. And he had stepped up to start something called the Mayors' Climate Protection Initiative - which was the City of Seattle was going to meet the standards of the Kyoto Protocol, which was like the Paris Agreement of its day. And that was - it set an emissions reduction target by a date in the future. And that was really great - in fact, over a thousand cities around the country signed up to the Mayors' Climate Protection Initiative. And I was appointed to a stakeholder group with other leaders - Denis Hayes from the Bullitt Foundation and others - to develop the first climate action plan for a city. Al Gore showed up at the press conference for it - it was a big - it was a BFD and a lot of excitement. And one of the things that was abundantly clear through that process of cataloging the emissions in the City of Seattle and coming up with a plan to reduce them was that our single largest source of emissions at that time was the transportation sector. We'd already gotten off of coal power under Mayor Schell - we received almost all of our electricity from hydroelectric dams. We had good conservation programs. Unlike other parts of the country, transportation was the biggest. Now what's fascinating is now - I don't know if I want to do the math - almost 20 years later, now what we see is that the whole country is in the same place. We're replacing coal and natural gas power plants. And now nationally, the single largest source of emissions is transportation. So how do you fix that? If we're serious about climate - and I thought we should be - because the scientists were telling us about heat waves. They were telling us about forest fires that would blanket the region in smoke. They were telling us about storms that would be bigger than we'd ever seen before. And flooding like we'd never seen and declining snowpack. And it was all going to happen in our futures. Honestly, I remember those predictions from the scientists because they're in the headlines today, every day. So what do we do to stop that? So I was - I had little kids, man - I had little kids, I had three kids. How are we going to stop this? Well, it's Seattle needs to lead - that's what has to happen. We're the progressive city. We're the first one out with a plan. We're going to show how we're going to do it. And if our biggest source is transportation, we should fix that. Well, it should seem obvious that the first thing you should do is stop building and expanding highways, and maybe even change some of the real estate used for cars and make it real estate for walking, biking, and transit. That's pretty straightforward. You also have to work on more housing. And this all led me to starting a nonprofit around all of these things and led to the Sierra Club - I think at a national level - our chapter was much further forward than any other chapter on upzones and backyard cottages and making the transition. So to me, this was the big - that was the vision. That was the opportunity. We're going to tear this down. We're going to make a massive investment in changing the system, and this in fact could be a really transformative piece. That's what motivated me. That climate argument wasn't landing with a whole bunch of other interests. There was certainly a vision from the Downtown and Downtown property owners and residents that - boy, wouldn't it be great to get rid of that elevated highway because that's terrible. There was also a vision from the people who still believed in highway capacity and that includes some of our major employers at the time and today - Boeing and Microsoft, they have facilities in the suburbs around Seattle - they think we need highway capacity. As well as all of the Port businesses, as well as all the maritime unions - thought that this highway connection here was somehow critical to their survival, the industrial areas. And then they wanted the capacity. So there were very strong competing visions. And I think it's fair to say that highway capacity is a vision - we've seen that one is now fulfilled. The second priority was an enhanced physical environment to enhance the property values of Downtown property owners. And they cut the deal with the highway capacity people - okay, we're here for your highway capacity, but we have to get some amenities. And the climate folks, I'm not seeing it - never a priority of any of the leaders - just wasn't a priority. [00:15:44] Crystal Fincher: How did you see those factions come into play and break down, Robert? [00:15:48] Robert Cruickshank: It was interesting. This all comes to a head in the late 2000s. And remembering back to that time, this is where Seattle is leading the fight to take on the climate and the fight against George W. Bush, who was seen as this avatar of and deeply connected to the oil industry. Someone who - one of his first things when he took office - he did was withdraw the U.S. from the Kyoto Protocol, which is the earlier version of what's now known as the Paris Agreement - global agreement to try to lower emissions. And so Seattle, in resisting Bush - that's where Greg Nickels became a national figure by leading the Mayors' Climate Action Group - not just say we're going to take on climate, we're going to do something about really de facto fighting back against Bush. And then Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Al Gore comes out with An Inconvenient Truth. And by 2007, people in Seattle are talking a lot about climate and how we need to do something about climate. But then what you see happening is the limits of that - what are people really actually willing to do and willing to support? The other piece that comes together, I think - in the 2000s - is a revival of the City itself. Seattle spends the late 20th century after the Boeing bust - since the 70s "Will the last person out of Seattle turn out the lights," recovering in the 80s somewhat, recovering in the 90s, and then the tech boom. And by the 2000s, Seattle is a destination city for young people coming to live here and living in apartments and working in the tech industry. I think that unsettles a lot of people. One thing that really stood out to me about the discussion about what to do on the waterfront was this vision from old school folks - like Joel Connelly and others - we've got to preserve that working waterfront. And it's very much the sense that blue collar working class labor is under threat - not from corporate power, but from a 20-something millennial with a laptop working at Amazon who comes to Seattle and thinks - Gosh, why is this ugly viaduct here? It's unsafe. Why don't we just tear it down and have a wonderful waterfront view? And those who are offended by this idea - who are so wedded to the 20th century model that we're going to drive everywhere, cars, freedom - this is where you see the limits of willingness to actually do something on climate. People don't actually want to give up their cars. They're afraid they're going to sacrifice their way of life. And you start to see this weird but powerful constellation come together where rather than having a discussion about transportation planning or even a discussion about climate action, we're having this weird discussion about culture. And it becomes a culture war. And the thing about a culture war is people pushing change are never actually trying to fight a war. They're just - This is a good idea. Why don't we do this? We all say these - we care about these values. And the people who don't want it just dig in and get really nasty and fight back. And so you start to see Cary Moon, People's Waterfront Coalition, Mike McGinn, and others get attacked as not wanting working class jobs, not wanting a working waterfront, not caring about how people are going to get to work, not caring about how the freight trucks are going to get around even though you're proposing a tunnel from the Port to Wallingford where - it's not exactly an industrial hub - there are some businesses there. But dumping all these cars out or in South Lake Union, it's like, what is going on here? It doesn't add up. But it became this powerful moment where a competing vision of the City - which those of us who saw a better future for Seattle didn't see any competition as necessary at all - those who are wedded to that model where we're going to drive everywhere, we're going to have trucks everywhere, really saw that under threat for other reasons. And they decided this is where they're going to make their stand. This is where they're going to make that fight. And that turned out to be pretty useful for the Port, the freight groups, the establishment democratic leaders who had already decided for their own reasons this is what they wanted too. [00:19:11] Mike McGinn: It's important to recognize too, in this, is to follow the money. And I think that this is true for highway construction generally. You have a big section of the economy - there's a section of the economy that believes in it, as Robert was saying, right? And I do think the culture war stuff is fully there - that somehow or another a bike lane in an industrial area will cause the failure of business. Although if you went to the bike - outside the industrial building - you'll find a bunch of the workers' bike there, right? Because it's affordable and efficient. So there's this weird belief that just isn't true - that you can't accommodate industry and transit and walking and biking. Of course you can. And in fact, adding all the cars is bad for freight movement because of all the traffic jams. So there's that belief, but there's also a whole bunch of people - I mentioned Downtown property owners - that gets you to your Downtown Seattle Association. The value of their property is going to be dramatically enhanced by burying, by eliminating the waterfront highway. But then you also have all of the people who build highways and all of the people who support the people who build highways. Who's going to float $4 billion in bonds? It's going to be a Downtown law firm. And by the way, the person who worked for that Downtown law firm and did the bond work was the head of the greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce at that time. So you have the engineering firms, you have the material providers, and then you have the union jobs that go with it. So really at this point - and this isn't just about the waterfront highway, this could be any highway expansion - you've captured the business community because a big chunk of the business community will get direct dollars from the government to them. And you've actually captured a significant chunk of the labor community as well, because labor fights for labor jobs. In the big picture, service workers are taking transit, service workers need housing in town, and you can start to see a split - like in my ultimate run for mayor, I won some service worker unions, never won any construction trades. In fact, they held a rally my first year in office to denounce me, right? Because I was standing in the way of jobs. So that's a really powerful coalition. And I think what you see today in the country as a whole - as you know, I'm the ED of America Walks, so I get to see a lot more - this is a pattern. Highways aren't really supported by the public. They don't go to the public for public votes on highways anymore - the public wouldn't support it. And in fact, the data suggests the public gets that building more highway lanes won't solve everything. But you've got a big, big chunk of the economy that's gotten extremely used to billions and billions of dollars flowing into their pockets. And they need to protect that in every year. So you get that level of intensity around - Look, we're talking about $4 billion on the waterfront and a bunch of that money's coming to us. Better believe it's a good idea, and what are you talking about, climate? [00:22:03] Robert Cruickshank: You talk about public votes, and I think there are three crucial public votes we got to talk about. One is 2007, when these advisory votes are on the ballot - and they're not binding, but they're advisory. Do you want to rebuild the viaduct or build a tunnel? They both get rejected. And then the next big vote is 2009, the mayoral election, where Mike McGinn becomes mayor - in part by channeling public frustration at this giant boondoggle. And then ultimately, the last public vote on this, 2011 - in June, I believe it was, it was in August - about whether we go forward or not and the public by this point, fatigued and beaten down by The Seattle Times, decides let's just move on from this. [00:22:43] Mike McGinn: There's no other alternative. And it is worth returning to that early vote, because it was such a fascinating moment, because - I think the mayor's office didn't want to put his expansive tunnel option in a direct vote against the new elevated, fearing it would lose. So they engineered an agreement with the governor that each one would get a separate up or down vote. And by the way, Tim Ceis, the Deputy Mayor at the time, called in the Sierra Club, briefed us on it, and one of our members said - What would happen if they both got voted down? And Deputy Mayor Ceis said - by the way, Tim Ceis has got a big contract right now from Mayor Harrell, longtime tunnel supporter. Tim Ceis is the consultant for most of the business side candidates. Tim Burgess, another big supporter of the tunnel, now works for Mayor Harrell. Oh, and Christine Gregoire has been hired by the biggest corporations in the region to do their work for them as well. So there's a pretty good payoff if you stick around and support the right side of this stuff. But anyway, Mayor Ceis, Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis, when said, What happens if they're both voted down? He goes - Well, that would be chaos. You don't want that, do you? And I remember all of us just kind of looked at each other - and we all went out on the sidewalk, there were like six of us. And we went - We want that, right? And so we joined in and supported the No and No campaign. And The Stranger came in really hard. And I think Erica Barnett wrote the articles. And Cary Moon was in on it. And the defeat of that, for the first time, opened up the possibility - Well, let's think about something else. And so a stakeholder group was formed. Cary Moon was appointed. Mike O'Brien was appointed. The waterfront guys were appointed. And the Downtown folks were appointed. And the labor folks were appointed. And I think a really important part of the story here is that it was advisory - they weren't making the decisions, it was advisory. But they got to a point at which the head of the State DOT, the head of the Seattle DOT, and the head of the King County DOT all expressed to their respective executives that surface transit worked and was worth it. And this was extremely distressing to the business community. So they mounted a big lobbying push and went straight to Gregoire. And Gregoire, for the first time, became a tunnel supporter. And they were promised that this new tunneling technology - the deep bore tunnel - would solve the cost issues of the deep bore tunnel. And not only that, the state's commitment, which to date was $2.4 billion - they had committed $2.4 billion to a rebuild - the state wouldn't have to pay anymore, because the Port would put in $300 million and they would raise $400 million from tolling. And coincidentally, the amount they thought they could raise from tolling was the exact amount needed to meet the projected cost of using the deep bore tunnel boring machine. So the deal was cut and announced. And the whole stakeholder group and the recommendations from the DOT heads were abandoned. And that occurred, basically, late 2008, early 2009 - the deal was made. And that was about the time that I was contemplating - well, I think I'd already decided to run, but I had not yet announced. [00:26:14] Crystal Fincher: And this was an interesting time, especially during that vote. Because at that time, I had an eye into what the business community was doing and thinking, and it was clear that their numbers didn't add up. [00:26:26] Mike McGinn: Oh my God - no. [00:26:28] Crystal Fincher: But they just did not want to face that. And what they knew is they had enough money and resources to throw at this issue and to throw at a marketing effort to obfuscate that, that they wouldn't have to worry about it. And there was this sense of offense, of indignation that - Who are these people trying to come up and tell us that we don't need freight capacity, that we don't need - that this extra highway capacity, don't they understand how important these freeways are? Who are these people who just don't understand how our economy works? [00:27:02] Mike McGinn: They were the grownups who really understood how things worked. And we were the upstarts who didn't understand anything. But there's a great line from Willie Brown talking about - I think the Transbay Bridge, and Robert can correct the name, in California, which was way over budget. And people were lamenting that the early estimates had been made up. And he goes - Look, this is how it works. You just need to dig a hole in the ground so deep that the only way to fill it up is with money. I think that's pretty much the quote. So that's the strategy. You get it started. Of course you have rosy estimates. And then you just have that commitment, and it's the job of legislators to come up with the cost overruns, dollars later. [00:27:43] Robert Cruickshank: And I think it's so key to understand this moment here in the late 2000s, where the public had already weighed in. I remember voting - it was the last thing I voted on before I moved to California for four years. I'm like no - I was No and No. And that's where the Seattle voters were. They rejected both options. And then you start to hear, coming out of the stakeholder group - Okay, we can make the surface transit option work. And I left town thinking - Alright, that's what's going to happen, just like the Embarcadero in San Francisco and done. And the next thing I hear in late 2008, early 2009, there's this deal that's been cut and all of a sudden a deep bore tunnel is on the table. And this is Seattle politics in a nutshell. I think people look back and think that because we are this smart, progressive technocratic city - those people who live here are - we think that our government works the same way. And it doesn't. This is - time and time again, the public will make its expression felt. They'll weigh in with opinion poll or protest or vote. And the powers that be will say - Well, actually, we want to do this thing instead. We'll cook it up in a backroom. We're going to jam it on all of you, and you're going to like it. And if you don't like it, then we're going to start marshaling resources. We're gonna throw a bunch of money at it. We'll get The Seattle Times to weigh in and pound away at the enemy. And that's how politics works here - that's how so much of our transportation system is built and managed. And so people today, in 2023, looking at this monstrosity on the waterfront that we have now think - How did we get here? Who planned this? It was planned in a backroom without public involvement. And I think that's a thing that has to be understood because that, as we just heard, was baked in from the very start. [00:29:11] Mike McGinn: Well, Robert, the idea of a deep bore tunnel was brought forward by a representative of the Discovery Institute, who you may know as the folks that believe in creationism. [00:29:21] Robert Cruickshank: Well, and not only that, the Discovery Institute is responsible for turning Christopher Rufo from a failed Seattle City Council candidate in 2019 into a national figure. [00:29:31] Mike McGinn: The Discovery Institute, with money from local donors - major, very wealthy local folks - they actually had a long-term plan to turn all of 99 into a limited access freeway. It's like - we need to get rid of that First Avenue South and Highway 99 and Aurora Avenue stuff - all of that should be a freeway. So they were the architects of the idea of - Hey, this deep bore tunnel is the solution. But Robert's point is just right on - transportation policy was driven by power and money, not by transportation needs, or climate needs, or equity needs, or even local economy needs really. When you get right down to it, our city runs on transit - that's what really matters. Our city runs on the fact that it's a city where people can walk from place to place. The idea that our economic future was tied to a highway that would skip Downtown - the most valuable place in the Pacific Northwest, Downtown Seattle. No, that's not really what powers our economy. But it certainly worked for the people that were going to get the dollars that flowed from folks and for the people who own Downtown property. [00:30:42] Crystal Fincher: And I want to talk about money and power with this. Who were the people in power? What was the Council at that time? Who made these decisions? [00:30:50] Mike McGinn: The Council at the time was elected citywide. And I think some people have concerns about district representation, but one of the things that citywide elections meant at the time was that you had to run a citywide campaign, and that's expensive. There's no way to knock on enough doors citywide. I did not have a lot of money when I ran for mayor, but at least I had the media attention that would go to a mayoral candidate. A City Council candidate would kind of flow under the radar. So you had people come from different places, right? They might come from the business side, they might come from the labor side. But ultimately, they would tend to make peace with the other major players - because only business and only labor could finance a campaign. They were the only ones with the resources to do that. So the other interests - the environmentalists, the social service folks, neighborhood advocates of whatever stripe - we chose from amongst the candidates that were elevated by, they would unify - in some cases, the business and labor folks would unify around a candidate. In fact, that's what we saw in the last two mayoral elections as well, where they pick a candidate. And so this doesn't leave much room. So when I was mayor, almost the entire council was aligned with the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce at that time, either endorsed by them or had made their peace with them so the challenger was not being financed. So Robert said something about those outsiders - I went under the radar screen as a candidate at the beginning of my campaign. When I entered the race, nobody was running because everybody thought that Greg Nickels had the institutional support locked down. [00:32:33] Crystal Fincher: But then a snowstorm happened. [00:32:35] Mike McGinn: Well, it was even before that - honestly, everybody thought that he could win. And long before the snowstorm, I was like - We're getting a new mayor. And I was actually looking around to try to figure out who it was going to be - because I wanted a mayor who actually believed in climate, who had my values. But nobody - I was looking through who the people were that might run, and it dawned on me - Well, nobody's going to run. But we're going to get a new mayor and I have my values - and I've actually run ballot measure campaigns and had a very modest base of support. So I was really the first one in the race that got any attention. So I got some great media attention off that. Then my opponent in the general, Joe Mallahan - whatever else you may think about Joe Mallahan - he actually saw it too. He saw that there was an opening. And then we were joined by a long-time City Councilmember, Jan Drago. And I remember the headline from The Seattle Times or the comments at the time was - Okay, now it's a real race. But it just really wasn't. So I was really under the radar screen in that race because they were disregarding me. But there was in fact a lot of anger about the tunnel. There was a lot of just - Greg, for whatever his positives or negatives that history will deal with - and by the way, I actually think Greg did a lot of good. I just was disappointed in his highway policies and his climate policies at the end of the day - I have a lot of respect for Greg Nickels, but he wasn't going to win that race. And I came out of the primary against Joe Mallahan. And all of a sudden we had these two outsiders and the business community's freaking out. All of it - I remember watching it - all of the support, the business support shifted to Joe. It took about a month, it took a few weeks. But all of a sudden - there was actually one week where I think I raised more money than he did, that was pretty unusual - and then all of a sudden all the money was pouring in. And boy, did Joe believe in that tunnel. And did Joe believe in what the Chamber of Commerce wanted to do. In fact, he believed in it so much that he believed that Seattle should pay cost overruns if there were cost overruns on the tunnel - an admission I got from him during the televised debate, I was shocked he admitted to it. [00:34:41] Crystal Fincher: I remember that debate. [00:34:43] Mike McGinn: Yeah. So you were kind of asking about how politics worked. It was really something. Yeah - here's another memory. About two weeks before the election, the City Council took - three weeks before the, two, three weeks, four weeks - they took a vote to say that the tunnel was their choice. Even though there's a mayoral election in which the tunnel is on the ballot, so to speak - in terms of the issues of the candidates - they took a vote for no reason to say it was a done deal. And then WSDOT released a video of the elevated collapsing in a highway, which is the first time a public disclosure request from a third party was ever given straight to a TV station, I think, in my experience in Seattle. I had Gregoire and the DOT folks down there working on that campaign too - their tunnel was threatened. So it really was something how - I indeed was kind of shocked at - it was such a learning experience for me - how much the ranks closed around this. I didn't appreciate it. I had my own nonprofit, I had been on stakeholder committees, I'd worked with a lot of people that weren't just Sierra Club members and neighborhood types. I'd worked with a lot of business people, many of whom had supported my nonprofit because they liked its vision. But they were very clear with me that as long as I supported the surface transit option, there was no way they could be associated with my run for mayor in any way, shape, or form - even if they liked me. It was a complete lockdown - right after the primary where Greg lost the primary and it was me and Joe, I was - Okay, open field running. I can now reach out to these people. There's no incumbent - maybe some of them can support me now. And they were abundantly clear on all of those phone calls that - Nope, can't do it. Until you change your position on the tunnel, we just can't do it. We have business in this town, Mike. We have relationships in this town. We cannot do that. So it was a real lockdown - politically. [00:36:38] Crystal Fincher: That was also a big learning experience for me - watching that consolidation, watching how not only were they fighting for the tunnel against you and making the fight against you a fight about the tunnel, but the enforcement to those third parties that you were talking about that - Hey, if you play ball with him, you're cut off. And those kinds of threats and that kind of dealing - watching that happen was very formative for me. I'm like - Okay, I see how this works, and this is kind of insidious. And if you are branded as an outsider, if you don't play ball, if you don't kiss the ring of the adults in the room - which is definitely what they considered themselves - then you're on the outs and they're at war. And it was really a war footing against you and the campaign. Who was on the Council at that time? [00:37:30] Mike McGinn: Oh my God. Let me see if I can go through the list. No, and it really, it was - your point about it was a war footing was not something that I fully, that I did not appreciate until actually going through that experience - how unified that would be. Excuse me. The City Council chair was Tim Burgess at the time. Bruce Harrell was on the Council. Sally Clark, Richard Conlin, Nick Licata. Mike O'Brien was running on the same platform as me with regard to the tunnel and he'd just been elected. Jean Godden, Sally Bagshaw. I hope I'm not leaving anything out - because - [00:38:04] Robert Cruickshank: Tom Rasmussen will forgive you. [00:38:06] Mike McGinn: Tom Rasmussen. Yeah - because City Councilmembers would get really offended if you didn't thank them publicly - that was another thing I had to learn. You have to publicly thank any other politician on stage with you or they held a grudge. Yeah. So I had - I didn't know all the politicians' rules when I started. [00:38:25] Crystal Fincher: There are so many rules. [00:38:27] Mike McGinn: There are so many, there's so many rules. But really what you saw then was that the Council tended to move in lockstep on many issues - because if they all voted together and they all worked citywide, there was protection. None of them could be singled out. So it was very - and it's not to say that some of them didn't take principled votes and would find themselves on an 8-1 position sometimes, but for the most part, it was much, much safer to be - it was much, much safer to vote as a group. And they tended to do that. And they had coalesced around the tunnel, except for O'Brien. And that could not be shaken by anything we brought to bear. [00:39:04] Robert Cruickshank: And this is wrapped up in not just the electoral politics, but the power politics. Because Mike McGinn comes in - mayor leading the 7th floor of City Hall, the head of City government - and smart guy, nice guy, willing to talk to anybody. But is not from their crew, is not from that group. And as Crystal and Mike said, the ranks were closed from the start. This is - again, 2009, 2010 - when nationally Mitch McConnell is quoted as saying, It's his ambition to make Obama a one-term president. I don't know if he's ever caught on record, but I would be quite certain that Tim Burgess would have said the exact same thing - that his ambition was to make Mike McGinn a one-term mayor. As it turned out in 2013, Tim Burgess wanted his job - one of the candidates running for it. So these are all people who have a reason to close ranks against Mike McGinn and to use a tunnel as a bludgeon against him to do so. [00:39:58] Mike McGinn: There were other bludgeons. After I won the general election and before I took office, they passed their annual budget - they cut the mayor's office budget by a third before I even took office. Just boom - I know - they were determined, they were determined. And so that was when the planning - that council then and with WSDOT - that was when basically the contours of the waterfront were locked into place, including what we now see as that very wide surface road. That was that Council. So if you're wondering, if you're looking at that going - Okay, wow, who decided that and where did it come from? Again, our current mayor and his current advisor and others - they've always been for that. Building that big surface road has always been the plan to go along with the tunnel, because highway capacity was their highest priority. And the park on the waterfront, along with a lot of money into the aquarium and into these new structures - that's their signature thing for so many other people. But the idea that you should, that there was an opportunity to transform our transportation system and transform our city to make it more equitable and climate friendly was never a priority in this process. Just wasn't. [00:41:20] Crystal Fincher: It was never a priority. It was never seriously considered. And to me, through this process - lots of people know, have talked about it on the show before - I actually didn't start off Team McGinn. I wound up Team McGinn - didn't start off that way. But through that - and you won me over with logic - it was you being proven right on several things. You pointed out that their projections, their traffic projections were just so far out of left field that there was no way that they were going to come close. And they even had to come down on their projections before we even saw the traffic - the actual traffic turned out to be lower. You were right on that one - the laughable - [00:41:59] Mike McGinn: They're under 40,000 cars a day - for a highway that was carrying 110,000 cars a day beforehand. So even as a traffic solution - to put that into context, 40,000 cars a day is like the Ballard Bridge. And I can guarantee you the replacement costs of the Ballard Bridge is not $4 billion or $3.1 billion. The E Line, I think, carries 15,000 people a day. Metro carries 220,000 people a day. What you could do with that $3.1 billion or $4 billion in terms of bus lanes, bike lanes, rolling stock for Metro, maybe pay raises for bus drivers so that we could actually have service - you could do so much with those billions of dollars. And we put it all into moving 40,000 cars a day? It's just pathetic. That's three Rapid Ride lines we could have had for a 10th of the cost, or even less. I think the investments in Rapid Ride lines are about $50-100 million a line to make the capital investments to make it work. So the waste - even if you don't care about climate, the waste of dollars - and who's paying those taxes? To a great degree, we have the most regressive state and local tax system in the nation. And we'll have a ballot measure soon, and I know a lot of environmentalists will be out there if the package spends for the right thing saying - Hey, we need money for local streets. Imagine if we'd taken that gas tax money and the Legislature had allowed cities and towns to use it to improve their streets - which they can do. I know that the constitution says highway purposes, but when you read highway purposes, it says roads and bridges. It includes everything. You can use gas taxes for anything that improves the road. And they do. WSDOT has used gas taxes to pay for bike lanes and sidewalks. It's legal. That's a choice. So we're driving around potholed streets. We have - we're putting up little plastic dividers because we care more about the car getting hurt than the bicyclist on the other side of that plastic divider. We're watching our transit service melt away because we can't pay bus drivers enough. But hey, man, somebody's got a really rapid - 3,000 people a day get to skip Downtown in their private vehicles. Where are our priorities for equity? Where are the priorities for economy, or even just plain old-fashioned fiscal prudence? None of that was there - because all of those dollars were going to fund the needs of the most powerful people in the City. And they captured those dollars - and all of us will pay the taxes, all of us will breathe the smoky air, and all of us will watch our streets deteriorate and our transit service evaporate. [00:44:52] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And to me, it was such a foundational lesson that the people that we have making decisions really matter - and that we have to really explore their records, their donors, their histories - because over and over again, we look at the decisions that wind up being made that frequently conflict with campaign promises, but that very, very rarely conflict with their donor rolls. [00:45:16] Mike McGinn: And yes - and every one of them knows how to make the value statements. So if I had any advice for people in this year's election - everyone is going to say they care about housing, everyone's going to say they think biking safe. I don't - one of the things that I came away with - I don't care about the goals you put into some policy anymore. Show me the hard physical action you will take that might piss somebody off, but you're willing to do it because it's right. And if you can't do that, then your value statements are meaningless. So take a look - who actually, and that's the question I always ask candidates for office - Tell me about a time you did something hard that might've caused you criticism, but you did it because it was right. Or that you made somebody who was an ally or friend upset, but you did it because it was right. Tell me about that time. [00:46:04] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's a challenge. And to your point and learning through just watching how people operated through that and some other processes - but that certainly was a big learning for me - is the role of coalitions, the role of accountability, and understanding. You have always had your finger on the pulse of Seattle, really - you're extraordinarily good at that. You're actually - both of you - are great strategists. But our political class is so detached from that sometimes - certainly I'm feeling frustration at some recent actions by our Legislature - we just had our special session day where they increased criminalization of substances, personal possession of substances - just reflecting on legislation to provide school, kids with free meals at school, things that seem like really basic and foundational that we should be able to land this. If we can call a special session to hand Boeing billions of dollars, we should be able to feed kids, right? [00:47:00] Mike McGinn: At the time we were cutting school budgets - when we found money for that. But I don't want to be too gloomy. And then I want to turn it over to Robert to get a last word in here, 'cause I just loved - his analysis is so awesome. I don't want to be too gloomy because - I look at what happened in the Legislature this year on housing, that we're finally going to allow housing, people to build more housing in places so people can actually live closer to their jobs and live more affordably. 10 years ago, we would have thought that was impossible. There's a lot of hard organizing that did it. At America Walks, we're the host of the Freeway Fighters Networks - there are people in 40 cities or more around the country that are organizing to remove highways. And while it's just a small amount of money compared to the amount going to highway expansion, there's actually federal funds to study and remove highways. So it's a long, hard slog. What felt for us - for Robert and me and Cary Moon and others fighting this - which felt like an impossible fight at the time is a fight that is now winning in places. Not winning enough - we're not winning fast enough - but it can change. And so that's - I don't want to be too negative. They got money, but organizing and people - and we actually have the public with us on this, just like we have the public with us on housing. So we just have to do more. We just got to keep at it, folks - got to keep at it. We can win this one. Don't allow this story of how hard it was to deal with the unified political class in the City of Seattle for their climate arson - should not deter you. It should inspire you, 'cause I actually won the mayor's office and we actually did do a lot of good. And the next fight is right in front of us again today, so get in it people. We need you. [00:48:46] Robert Cruickshank: I think that's spot on. And I remember coming to work in your office at the very beginning of 2011, when it seemed like the tunnel was just dominating discussion, but not in the mayor's office, right? When I joined, I fully expected to be like - roll my sleeves up to take on that tunnel. Instead, I'm working on the mayor's jobs plan, the Families and Education Levy, on transit. That's the stuff that was really getting done, and I think McGinn left a really great legacy on that. But we didn't win the tunnel fight. And I think we've diagnosed many of the reasons why, but one thing that really stands out to me as I look back from 12, 13 years distance is we didn't have the same density of genuinely progressive and social democratic organizations and people and leaders in Seattle that we have now. I think that matters because Mike's been talking about what's the next fight. I think one of the big fights coming up next year - when it comes time to renew that Move Seattle Levy - that's nearly a billion dollars that's going to be on the table. And we keep getting promised - when we are asked to approve these massive levies - that a lot of that money is going to go to safe streets, it's going to go to protect vulnerable users, we're going to do something to finally get towards Vision Zero. And instead it all gets taken away to build more car infrastructure. At what point do we finally stand - literally in the road - and say, No more. Do we look at the broken promises on the waterfront where we were promised a beautiful pedestrian-friendly waterfront and got another car sewer? We're going to have to organize and come together. We have many more groups now and many more leaders who are willing to stand up and say - We're not passing this levy unless it actually focuses on safe streets, unless it focuses on pedestrians and cyclists and transit users, and gives iron-clad promises to make sure stuff gets built so that some future mayor can't just walk in and start canceling projects left and right that we were promised. That's the lesson I take from this is - we're better organized now, we have more resources now, but it's still going to be a slog, and we're going to have to stand our ground - otherwise we get rolled. [00:50:34] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I thank you both for this conversation today - reflections on the tunnel fight, how it came to be, what it was like in the middle of it, and the lessons that we take moving forward in these elections that we have coming up this year, next year, and beyond. Thanks so much for the conversation. [00:50:50] Mike McGinn: Thank you, Crystal. [00:50:51] Robert Cruickshank: Thank you - it's been wonderful. [00:50:52] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
The third season of our Seattle City Makers Podcast begins with a conversation about one of Seattle's many shining assets – its parks and public spaces. Who better to talk about Seattle parks with than the superintendent of Seattle Parks & Recreation, AP Diaz? Jon and AP talk about what drew him to this city; how his upbringing shaped his views on parks; the new Waterfront Park's impending impact; his favorite parks to visit and more.
This episode of Seattle City Makers takes us on location to Seattle's central waterfront to speak with Friends of Waterfront Seattle President & CEO Joy Shigaki. A fourth-generation Seattleite, Joy is overseeing the fundraising and programming for what will be a 20-acre jewel on Elliott Bay – downtown's new Waterfront Park. Jon and Joy discuss the status of this transformative project, the Elliott Bay Connections public-private partnership, her previous jobs in New York and San Francisco and a lot more. Join us for Seattle City Makers with Jon Scholes and guest Joy Shigaki.
Devon is joined by Therese Paulette and Alice Liu of Hawaii Mothers Against Drunk Driving, also known as Hawaii MADD. Together, they discuss the upcoming Hawaii Walk like MADD event! Hawaii Walk like MADD is MADD's annual fundraiser being held on September 16, 2023, at Kaka'ako Waterfront Park. It's a morning 5K walk/jog/run that welcomes families, kids and co-workers to raise monies for grief counseling, education programs, and more ways to remind people not to drive while impaired. Theresa Paulette is a mom whose teenage son was killed by a driver who had six DUI arrests prior to that summer evening over 30 years ago. Alice Liu's mother was struck by a driver under the influence of alcohol. The message: When you drink, don't drive.
In the "Today in San Diego" podcast, a dog park and pickleball court will be part of the new additions at Waterfront Park, a rally is set to demand more government help for the sewage spilling over into San Diego County from Tijuana and how you can add California's DMV Mobile Driver License to your device.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Worker coalitions are pushing state lawmakers to increase the number of minimum paid sick days from three to seven per year. In other news, Tropical Storm Hilary forced more than two billion gallons of polluted storm water into the United States this past weekend. Plus, artwork at Waterfront Park represents inclusion.
On this re-air, Crystal chats with former Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn and his former Senior Communications Advisor Robert Cruickshank about the missed opportunity for generational impact through how decisions were made about Seattle's waterfront and the SR99 tunnel. Mike and Robert review how the vision of the scrappy People's Waterfront Coalition, centered around making a prized public space accessible for all while taking the climate crisis on by transforming our transportation system, nearly won the fight against those who prioritized maintaining highway capacity and those who prioritized increasing Downtown property values. The conversation then highlights how those with power and money used their outsized influence to make backroom decisions - despite flawed arguments and little public enthusiasm for their proposal - leaving Seattle with an underutilized deep bore tunnel and a car-centric waterfront. Some of the decision makers are still active in local politics - including current Mayor Bruce Harrell and his current advisor Tim Burgess. With important elections ahead, Crystal, Mike and Robert discuss how political decisions tend to conflict with campaign promises rather than donor rolls, how proven action is a better indicator than value statements, and how today's dense ecosystem of progressive leaders and organizations can take inspiration and win the next fight. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii, Mike McGinn at @mayormcginn, and Robert Cruickshank at @cruickshank. Mike McGinn Mike is the Executive Director of national nonprofit America Walks. He got his start in local politics as a neighborhood activist pushing for walkability. From there he founded a non-profit focused on sustainable and equitable growth, and then became mayor of Seattle. Just before joining America Walks, Mike worked to help Feet First, Washington State's walking advocacy organization, expand their sphere of influence across Washington state. He has worked on numerous public education, legislative, ballot measure and election campaigns – which has given him an abiding faith in the power of organizing and volunteers to create change. Robert Cruickshank Robert is the Director of Digital Strategy at California YIMBY and Chair of Sierra Club Seattle. A long time communications and political strategist, he was Senior Communications Advisor to Mike McGinn from 2011-2013. Resources “Seattle Waterfront History Interviews: Cary Moon, Waterfront Coalition” by Dominic Black from HistoryLink “State Route 99 tunnel - Options and political debate" from Wikipedia “Remembering broken promises about Bertha” by Josh Cohen from Curbed Seattle “Fewer drivers in Seattle's Highway 99 tunnel could create need for bailout” by Mike Lindblom from The Seattle Times “Surface Highway Undermines Seattle's Waterfront Park” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist “Seattle Prepares to Open Brand New Elliott Way Highway Connector” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, I am very excited to be welcoming Robert Cruickshank and former Mayor Mike McGinn to the show to talk about something that a lot of people have been thinking about, talking about recently - and that is Seattle's new waterfront. We feel like we've spent a decade under construction - from a deep bore tunnel to the tunnel machine getting stuck - that's not even covering all the debate before that, but all of the kind of follies and foibles and challenges that have beset the process of arriving at the waterfront that we have now. And now that we are getting the big reveal, a lot of people have feelings about it. So I thought we would talk about it with one of the people who was at the forefront of criticisms of the tunnel and calling out some red flags that turned out to be a very wise warning - several wise warnings that have come to pass, unfortunately - for not listening to them. But I want to start early on in the beginning, both of you - and I had a short stint in the mayor's office - worked on this, talked about this on the campaign, really got it. But when did you first hear that we needed to replace the viaduct and there were some different opinions about how to make that happen? [00:02:06] Mike McGinn: Okay, so I'm sure I can't pin down a date, but the really important date was, of course, the Nisqually earthquake in 2001. And so it gave the Alaska Way Viaduct a good shake - the decks weren't tied into the columns, the columns were on fill, which could liquefy - and everybody understood that if that quake had been a little stronger and harder, the elevated would come down. Now you might think that that would call for immediately closing the roadway for safety reasons, but what it did call for was for reconstructing it. And you have to remember that highway was really one of the very first limited access highways - it was built long ago and it was just at the end of its useful life anyway. Certainly not built to modern seismic standards or modern engineering standards. So the conversation immediately started and I don't know when everything started to settle into different roles, but the Mayor of Seattle Greg Nickels, was immediately a proponent for a tunnel - and a much larger and more expensive tunnel than what was ultimately built. And it would have been a cut-and-cover tunnel along the waterfront that included a new seawall. So they thought they were solving two things at one time - because the seawall too was rotting away, very old, very unstable. But it would have gone all the way under South Lake Union and emerged onto Aurora Avenue further north, it would have had entrances and exits to Western and Elliott. And I seem to remember the quoted price was like $11 billion. And the state - governor at the time was Christine Gregoire - they were - No, we're replacing the highway. We don't have $11 billion for Seattle. And of course had the support of a lot of lawmakers for obvious reasons - we're not going to give Seattle all that money, we want all that highway money for our districts. And those were immediately presented as the alternatives. And so much of the credit has to go to Cary Moon, who lived on the waterfront and started something called the People's Waterfront Coalition. I think Grant Cogswell, a former City Council candidate - now runs a bookstore down in Mexico City, but wrote a book about the Monorail, worked on the different Monorail campaigns before that - they launched something called the People's Waterfront Coalition. And the basic proposition was - We don't need a highway. This is a great opportunity to get rid of the highway and have a surface street, but if you amp up the transit service - if we invest in transit instead - we can accommodate everyone. And so that was really - as it started - and actually I remember being outside City Hall one day, going to some stakeholder meeting - I went to so many different stakeholder meetings. And I remember Tim Ceis saying to me - he was the Deputy Mayor at the time - You're not supporting that Cary Moon idea - I mean, that's just crazy. I was - Well, actually, Tim. So the Sierra Club was - I was a volunteer leader in the Sierra Club - and the Sierra Club was one of the first organizations - I'm sure there were others, I shouldn't overstate it - but the Sierra Club was persuaded by the wisdom of Cary's idea and supported it in that day. And so that was really how the three different options got launched - no public process, no analysis, no description of what our needs were. The mayor went to a solution, the governor went to a solution - and it was up to members of the public to try to ask them to slow down, stop, and look at something different. [00:05:42] Crystal Fincher: And Robert, how did you first engage with this issue? [00:05:47] Robert Cruickshank: For me, I had just moved to Seattle the first time in the fall of 2001 - so it was about six months after the Nisqually quake - and I came from the Bay Area. And that was where another earthquake had damaged another waterfront highway, the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco. And that was where San Francisco had voted - after that quake had damaged their viaduct beyond repair - they voted to tear it down and replace it with the Embarcadero Waterfront, which is a six-lane arterial but they built a lot more transit there. So they did the - what we might call the surface transit option - and it worked really well. It was beautiful. It still is. And so when I came up here and started to learn a little bit about the place I was living and the legacy of the Nisqually quake, I thought - Oh, why don't you just do the same thing here? It worked so well in San Francisco. Let's just tear down this unsightly monstrosity on the waterfront and replace it with a surface boulevard and put in a bunch of transit - San Francisco's made it work successfully. And the more I learned about Seattle, I realized there's a legacy of that here, too. This is a city where we had a freeway revolt, where activists came together and killed the RH Thomson freeway, which would have destroyed the Arboretum. They killed the Bay Freeway, which would have destroyed Pike Place Market. And so I naturally assumed - as being a relatively new resident - that Seattle would stay in that tradition and welcome the opportunity to tear this down and build a great waterfront for people, not cars. But as we'll talk about in a moment, we have a lot of business interests and freight interests and others who had a different vision - who didn't share that community-rooted vision. And I think at numerous points along the way, though, you see people of Seattle saying - No, this is not what we want for our waterfront. We have an opportunity now with the fact that this viaduct nearly collapsed, as Mike mentioned, in the Nisqually quake - we have an opportunity for something really wonderful here. And so I think Cary Moon and then Mike McGinn and others tapped into that - tapped into a really strong community desire to have a better waterfront. I wasn't that politically engaged at the time in the 2000s - I was just a grad student at UW - but just talking to folks who I knew, anytime this came up - God, wouldn't it be wonderful down there if this was oriented towards people and not cars, and we took that thing down? So I think one of the things you're going to see is this contest between the vision that many of us in Seattle had and still have - this beautiful location, beautiful vista on Elliott Bay, that should be for the people of the city - and those in power who have a very different vision and don't really want to share power or ultimately the right-of-way with We the People. [00:08:05] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. And I was involved in some things at the time - some curious coalitions - but definitely I was around a lot of people who favored either rebuilding the viaduct or the tunnel. Definitely not this roads and transit option - there's no way that's workable. That's pie-in-the-sky talk from those loony greenies over there. What are you talking about? But as this went on - I think no matter what camp people were in - there was always a clear vision articulated and people really focused on the opportunity that this represented, and I think correctly characterized it as - this is one of these generational decisions that we get to make that is going to impact the next generation or two and beyond. And there's an opportunity - the waterfront felt very disconnected with the way things were constructed - it was not easy just to go from downtown to the waterfront. It wasn't friendly for pedestrians. It wasn't friendly for tourists. It just did not feel like a world-class waterfront in a world-class city, and how we see that in so many other cities. You talk about the decision with the Embarcadero, Robert, and looking at - that definitely seemed like a definitive step forward. This was sold as - yeah, we can absolutely take a step forward and finally fix this waterfront and make it what it should have been the whole time. As you thought about the opportunity that this represented, what was the opportunity to you and what did you hear other people saying that they wanted this to be? [00:09:38] Mike McGinn: Yeah, so I think there are - I think that's really important, because I don't think there was a real discussion of what the vision was. People will say there was, but there really wasn't. Because what was baked in and what you're referring to is - well, of course you have to build automobile capacity to replace the existing automobile capacity, right? In fact, this state is still building more highways across the state in the misguided belief that more highway capacity will somehow or another do some good. So this idea that you have to replace and expand highway capacity is extremely powerful in Washington state and across the country. And there were very few examples of highway removal, so that was just a real challenge in the first place - that somehow or other the first priority has to be moving automobiles. For me, at that time I had become - the issue of climate had really penetrated me at that point. And in fact, when Greg Nickels took office and the Sierra Club endorsed him over Paul Schell - I was a local leader in the Sierra Club and a state leader in the Sierra Club - and my goal was that Mayor Nickels would do more than Paul Schell. And Paul Schell, the prior mayor, had done some good things. He had made Seattle City Light climate neutral - we'd gotten out of coal plants and we didn't purchase power from coal plants. He was really progressive on a number of environmental issues and we wanted Mayor Nickels to do more - and Mayor Nickels had stepped up. So we put on a campaign to urge him to do more. And he had stepped up to start something called the Mayors' Climate Protection Initiative - which was the City of Seattle was going to meet the standards of the Kyoto Protocol, which was like the Paris Agreement of its day. And that was - it set an emissions reduction target by a date in the future. And that was really great - in fact, over a thousand cities around the country signed up to the Mayors' Climate Protection Initiative. And I was appointed to a stakeholder group with other leaders - Denis Hayes from the Bullitt Foundation and others - to develop the first climate action plan for a city. Al Gore showed up at the press conference for it - it was a big - it was a BFD and a lot of excitement. And one of the things that was abundantly clear through that process of cataloging the emissions in the City of Seattle and coming up with a plan to reduce them was that our single largest source of emissions at that time was the transportation sector. We'd already gotten off of coal power under Mayor Schell - we received almost all of our electricity from hydroelectric dams. We had good conservation programs. Unlike other parts of the country, transportation was the biggest. Now what's fascinating is now - I don't know if I want to do the math - almost 20 years later, now what we see is that the whole country is in the same place. We're replacing coal and natural gas power plants. And now nationally, the single largest source of emissions is transportation. So how do you fix that? If we're serious about climate - and I thought we should be - because the scientists were telling us about heat waves. They were telling us about forest fires that would blanket the region in smoke. They were telling us about storms that would be bigger than we'd ever seen before. And flooding like we'd never seen and declining snowpack. And it was all going to happen in our futures. Honestly, I remember those predictions from the scientists because they're in the headlines today, every day. So what do we do to stop that? So I was - I had little kids, man - I had little kids, I had three kids. How are we going to stop this? Well, it's Seattle needs to lead - that's what has to happen. We're the progressive city. We're the first one out with a plan. We're going to show how we're going to do it. And if our biggest source is transportation, we should fix that. Well, it should seem obvious that the first thing you should do is stop building and expanding highways, and maybe even change some of the real estate used for cars and make it real estate for walking, biking, and transit. That's pretty straightforward. You also have to work on more housing. And this all led me to starting a nonprofit around all of these things and led to the Sierra Club - I think at a national level - our chapter was much further forward than any other chapter on upzones and backyard cottages and making the transition. So to me, this was the big - that was the vision. That was the opportunity. We're going to tear this down. We're going to make a massive investment in changing the system, and this in fact could be a really transformative piece. That's what motivated me. That climate argument wasn't landing with a whole bunch of other interests. There was certainly a vision from the Downtown and Downtown property owners and residents that - boy, wouldn't it be great to get rid of that elevated highway because that's terrible. There was also a vision from the people who still believed in highway capacity and that includes some of our major employers at the time and today - Boeing and Microsoft, they have facilities in the suburbs around Seattle - they think we need highway capacity. As well as all of the Port businesses, as well as all the maritime unions - thought that this highway connection here was somehow critical to their survival, the industrial areas. And then they wanted the capacity. So there were very strong competing visions. And I think it's fair to say that highway capacity is a vision - we've seen that one is now fulfilled. The second priority was an enhanced physical environment to enhance the property values of Downtown property owners. And they cut the deal with the highway capacity people - okay, we're here for your highway capacity, but we have to get some amenities. And the climate folks, I'm not seeing it - never a priority of any of the leaders - just wasn't a priority. [00:15:44] Crystal Fincher: How did you see those factions come into play and break down, Robert? [00:15:48] Robert Cruickshank: It was interesting. This all comes to a head in the late 2000s. And remembering back to that time, this is where Seattle is leading the fight to take on the climate and the fight against George W. Bush, who was seen as this avatar of and deeply connected to the oil industry. Someone who - one of his first things when he took office - he did was withdraw the U.S. from the Kyoto Protocol, which is the earlier version of what's now known as the Paris Agreement - global agreement to try to lower emissions. And so Seattle, in resisting Bush - that's where Greg Nickels became a national figure by leading the Mayors' Climate Action Group - not just say we're going to take on climate, we're going to do something about really de facto fighting back against Bush. And then Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Al Gore comes out with An Inconvenient Truth. And by 2007, people in Seattle are talking a lot about climate and how we need to do something about climate. But then what you see happening is the limits of that - what are people really actually willing to do and willing to support? The other piece that comes together, I think - in the 2000s - is a revival of the City itself. Seattle spends the late 20th century after the Boeing bust - since the 70s "Will the last person out of Seattle turn out the lights," recovering in the 80s somewhat, recovering in the 90s, and then the tech boom. And by the 2000s, Seattle is a destination city for young people coming to live here and living in apartments and working in the tech industry. I think that unsettles a lot of people. One thing that really stood out to me about the discussion about what to do on the waterfront was this vision from old school folks - like Joel Connelly and others - we've got to preserve that working waterfront. And it's very much the sense that blue collar working class labor is under threat - not from corporate power, but from a 20-something millennial with a laptop working at Amazon who comes to Seattle and thinks - Gosh, why is this ugly viaduct here? It's unsafe. Why don't we just tear it down and have a wonderful waterfront view? And those who are offended by this idea - who are so wedded to the 20th century model that we're going to drive everywhere, cars, freedom - this is where you see the limits of willingness to actually do something on climate. People don't actually want to give up their cars. They're afraid they're going to sacrifice their way of life. And you start to see this weird but powerful constellation come together where rather than having a discussion about transportation planning or even a discussion about climate action, we're having this weird discussion about culture. And it becomes a culture war. And the thing about a culture war is people pushing change are never actually trying to fight a war. They're just - This is a good idea. Why don't we do this? We all say these - we care about these values. And the people who don't want it just dig in and get really nasty and fight back. And so you start to see Cary Moon, People's Waterfront Coalition, Mike McGinn, and others get attacked as not wanting working class jobs, not wanting a working waterfront, not caring about how people are going to get to work, not caring about how the freight trucks are going to get around even though you're proposing a tunnel from the Port to Wallingford where - it's not exactly an industrial hub - there are some businesses there. But dumping all these cars out or in South Lake Union, it's like, what is going on here? It doesn't add up. But it became this powerful moment where a competing vision of the City - which those of us who saw a better future for Seattle didn't see any competition as necessary at all - those who are wedded to that model where we're going to drive everywhere, we're going to have trucks everywhere, really saw that under threat for other reasons. And they decided this is where they're going to make their stand. This is where they're going to make that fight. And that turned out to be pretty useful for the Port, the freight groups, the establishment democratic leaders who had already decided for their own reasons this is what they wanted too. [00:19:11] Mike McGinn: It's important to recognize too, in this, is to follow the money. And I think that this is true for highway construction generally. You have a big section of the economy - there's a section of the economy that believes in it, as Robert was saying, right? And I do think the culture war stuff is fully there - that somehow or another a bike lane in an industrial area will cause the failure of business. Although if you went to the bike - outside the industrial building - you'll find a bunch of the workers' bike there, right? Because it's affordable and efficient. So there's this weird belief that just isn't true - that you can't accommodate industry and transit and walking and biking. Of course you can. And in fact, adding all the cars is bad for freight movement because of all the traffic jams. So there's that belief, but there's also a whole bunch of people - I mentioned Downtown property owners - that gets you to your Downtown Seattle Association. The value of their property is going to be dramatically enhanced by burying, by eliminating the waterfront highway. But then you also have all of the people who build highways and all of the people who support the people who build highways. Who's going to float $4 billion in bonds? It's going to be a Downtown law firm. And by the way, the person who worked for that Downtown law firm and did the bond work was the head of the greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce at that time. So you have the engineering firms, you have the material providers, and then you have the union jobs that go with it. So really at this point - and this isn't just about the waterfront highway, this could be any highway expansion - you've captured the business community because a big chunk of the business community will get direct dollars from the government to them. And you've actually captured a significant chunk of the labor community as well, because labor fights for labor jobs. In the big picture, service workers are taking transit, service workers need housing in town, and you can start to see a split - like in my ultimate run for mayor, I won some service worker unions, never won any construction trades. In fact, they held a rally my first year in office to denounce me, right? Because I was standing in the way of jobs. So that's a really powerful coalition. And I think what you see today in the country as a whole - as you know, I'm the ED of America Walks, so I get to see a lot more - this is a pattern. Highways aren't really supported by the public. They don't go to the public for public votes on highways anymore - the public wouldn't support it. And in fact, the data suggests the public gets that building more highway lanes won't solve everything. But you've got a big, big chunk of the economy that's gotten extremely used to billions and billions of dollars flowing into their pockets. And they need to protect that in every year. So you get that level of intensity around - Look, we're talking about $4 billion on the waterfront and a bunch of that money's coming to us. Better believe it's a good idea, and what are you talking about, climate? [00:22:03] Robert Cruickshank: You talk about public votes, and I think there are three crucial public votes we got to talk about. One is 2007, when these advisory votes are on the ballot - and they're not binding, but they're advisory. Do you want to rebuild the viaduct or build a tunnel? They both get rejected. And then the next big vote is 2009, the mayoral election, where Mike McGinn becomes mayor - in part by channeling public frustration at this giant boondoggle. And then ultimately, the last public vote on this, 2011 - in June, I believe it was, it was in August - about whether we go forward or not and the public by this point, fatigued and beaten down by The Seattle Times, decides let's just move on from this. [00:22:43] Mike McGinn: There's no other alternative. And it is worth returning to that early vote, because it was such a fascinating moment, because - I think the mayor's office didn't want to put his expansive tunnel option in a direct vote against the new elevated, fearing it would lose. So they engineered an agreement with the governor that each one would get a separate up or down vote. And by the way, Tim Ceis, the Deputy Mayor at the time, called in the Sierra Club, briefed us on it, and one of our members said - What would happen if they both got voted down? And Deputy Mayor Ceis said - by the way, Tim Ceis has got a big contract right now from Mayor Harrell, longtime tunnel supporter. Tim Ceis is the consultant for most of the business side candidates. Tim Burgess, another big supporter of the tunnel, now works for Mayor Harrell. Oh, and Christine Gregoire has been hired by the biggest corporations in the region to do their work for them as well. So there's a pretty good payoff if you stick around and support the right side of this stuff. But anyway, Mayor Ceis, Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis, when said, What happens if they're both voted down? He goes - Well, that would be chaos. You don't want that, do you? And I remember all of us just kind of looked at each other - and we all went out on the sidewalk, there were like six of us. And we went - We want that, right? And so we joined in and supported the No and No campaign. And The Stranger came in really hard. And I think Erica Barnett wrote the articles. And Cary Moon was in on it. And the defeat of that, for the first time, opened up the possibility - Well, let's think about something else. And so a stakeholder group was formed. Cary Moon was appointed. Mike O'Brien was appointed. The waterfront guys were appointed. And the Downtown folks were appointed. And the labor folks were appointed. And I think a really important part of the story here is that it was advisory - they weren't making the decisions, it was advisory. But they got to a point at which the head of the State DOT, the head of the Seattle DOT, and the head of the King County DOT all expressed to their respective executives that surface transit worked and was worth it. And this was extremely distressing to the business community. So they mounted a big lobbying push and went straight to Gregoire. And Gregoire, for the first time, became a tunnel supporter. And they were promised that this new tunneling technology - the deep bore tunnel - would solve the cost issues of the deep bore tunnel. And not only that, the state's commitment, which to date was $2.4 billion - they had committed $2.4 billion to a rebuild - the state wouldn't have to pay anymore, because the Port would put in $300 million and they would raise $400 million from tolling. And coincidentally, the amount they thought they could raise from tolling was the exact amount needed to meet the projected cost of using the deep bore tunnel boring machine. So the deal was cut and announced. And the whole stakeholder group and the recommendations from the DOT heads were abandoned. And that occurred, basically, late 2008, early 2009 - the deal was made. And that was about the time that I was contemplating - well, I think I'd already decided to run, but I had not yet announced. [00:26:14] Crystal Fincher: And this was an interesting time, especially during that vote. Because at that time, I had an eye into what the business community was doing and thinking, and it was clear that their numbers didn't add up. [00:26:26] Mike McGinn: Oh my God - no. [00:26:28] Crystal Fincher: But they just did not want to face that. And what they knew is they had enough money and resources to throw at this issue and to throw at a marketing effort to obfuscate that, that they wouldn't have to worry about it. And there was this sense of offense, of indignation that - Who are these people trying to come up and tell us that we don't need freight capacity, that we don't need - that this extra highway capacity, don't they understand how important these freeways are? Who are these people who just don't understand how our economy works? [00:27:02] Mike McGinn: They were the grownups who really understood how things worked. And we were the upstarts who didn't understand anything. But there's a great line from Willie Brown talking about - I think the Transbay Bridge, and Robert can correct the name, in California, which was way over budget. And people were lamenting that the early estimates had been made up. And he goes - Look, this is how it works. You just need to dig a hole in the ground so deep that the only way to fill it up is with money. I think that's pretty much the quote. So that's the strategy. You get it started. Of course you have rosy estimates. And then you just have that commitment, and it's the job of legislators to come up with the cost overruns, dollars later. [00:27:43] Robert Cruickshank: And I think it's so key to understand this moment here in the late 2000s, where the public had already weighed in. I remember voting - it was the last thing I voted on before I moved to California for four years. I'm like no - I was No and No. And that's where the Seattle voters were. They rejected both options. And then you start to hear, coming out of the stakeholder group - Okay, we can make the surface transit option work. And I left town thinking - Alright, that's what's going to happen, just like the Embarcadero in San Francisco and done. And the next thing I hear in late 2008, early 2009, there's this deal that's been cut and all of a sudden a deep bore tunnel is on the table. And this is Seattle politics in a nutshell. I think people look back and think that because we are this smart, progressive technocratic city - those people who live here are - we think that our government works the same way. And it doesn't. This is - time and time again, the public will make its expression felt. They'll weigh in with opinion poll or protest or vote. And the powers that be will say - Well, actually, we want to do this thing instead. We'll cook it up in a backroom. We're going to jam it on all of you, and you're going to like it. And if you don't like it, then we're going to start marshaling resources. We're gonna throw a bunch of money at it. We'll get The Seattle Times to weigh in and pound away at the enemy. And that's how politics works here - that's how so much of our transportation system is built and managed. And so people today, in 2023, looking at this monstrosity on the waterfront that we have now think - How did we get here? Who planned this? It was planned in a backroom without public involvement. And I think that's a thing that has to be understood because that, as we just heard, was baked in from the very start. [00:29:11] Mike McGinn: Well, Robert, the idea of a deep bore tunnel was brought forward by a representative of the Discovery Institute, who you may know as the folks that believe in creationism. [00:29:21] Robert Cruickshank: Well, and not only that, the Discovery Institute is responsible for turning Christopher Rufo from a failed Seattle City Council candidate in 2019 into a national figure. [00:29:31] Mike McGinn: The Discovery Institute, with money from local donors - major, very wealthy local folks - they actually had a long-term plan to turn all of 99 into a limited access freeway. It's like - we need to get rid of that First Avenue South and Highway 99 and Aurora Avenue stuff - all of that should be a freeway. So they were the architects of the idea of - Hey, this deep bore tunnel is the solution. But Robert's point is just right on - transportation policy was driven by power and money, not by transportation needs, or climate needs, or equity needs, or even local economy needs really. When you get right down to it, our city runs on transit - that's what really matters. Our city runs on the fact that it's a city where people can walk from place to place. The idea that our economic future was tied to a highway that would skip Downtown - the most valuable place in the Pacific Northwest, Downtown Seattle. No, that's not really what powers our economy. But it certainly worked for the people that were going to get the dollars that flowed from folks and for the people who own Downtown property. [00:30:42] Crystal Fincher: And I want to talk about money and power with this. Who were the people in power? What was the Council at that time? Who made these decisions? [00:30:50] Mike McGinn: The Council at the time was elected citywide. And I think some people have concerns about district representation, but one of the things that citywide elections meant at the time was that you had to run a citywide campaign, and that's expensive. There's no way to knock on enough doors citywide. I did not have a lot of money when I ran for mayor, but at least I had the media attention that would go to a mayoral candidate. A City Council candidate would kind of flow under the radar. So you had people come from different places, right? They might come from the business side, they might come from the labor side. But ultimately, they would tend to make peace with the other major players - because only business and only labor could finance a campaign. They were the only ones with the resources to do that. So the other interests - the environmentalists, the social service folks, neighborhood advocates of whatever stripe - we chose from amongst the candidates that were elevated by, they would unify - in some cases, the business and labor folks would unify around a candidate. In fact, that's what we saw in the last two mayoral elections as well, where they pick a candidate. And so this doesn't leave much room. So when I was mayor, almost the entire council was aligned with the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce at that time, either endorsed by them or had made their peace with them so the challenger was not being financed. So Robert said something about those outsiders - I went under the radar screen as a candidate at the beginning of my campaign. When I entered the race, nobody was running because everybody thought that Greg Nickels had the institutional support locked down. [00:32:33] Crystal Fincher: But then a snowstorm happened. [00:32:35] Mike McGinn: Well, it was even before that - honestly, everybody thought that he could win. And long before the snowstorm, I was like - We're getting a new mayor. And I was actually looking around to try to figure out who it was going to be - because I wanted a mayor who actually believed in climate, who had my values. But nobody - I was looking through who the people were that might run, and it dawned on me - Well, nobody's going to run. But we're going to get a new mayor and I have my values - and I've actually run ballot measure campaigns and had a very modest base of support. So I was really the first one in the race that got any attention. So I got some great media attention off that. Then my opponent in the general, Joe Mallahan - whatever else you may think about Joe Mallahan - he actually saw it too. He saw that there was an opening. And then we were joined by a long-time City Councilmember, Jan Drago. And I remember the headline from The Seattle Times or the comments at the time was - Okay, now it's a real race. But it just really wasn't. So I was really under the radar screen in that race because they were disregarding me. But there was in fact a lot of anger about the tunnel. There was a lot of just - Greg, for whatever his positives or negatives that history will deal with - and by the way, I actually think Greg did a lot of good. I just was disappointed in his highway policies and his climate policies at the end of the day - I have a lot of respect for Greg Nickels, but he wasn't going to win that race. And I came out of the primary against Joe Mallahan. And all of a sudden we had these two outsiders and the business community's freaking out. All of it - I remember watching it - all of the support, the business support shifted to Joe. It took about a month, it took a few weeks. But all of a sudden - there was actually one week where I think I raised more money than he did, that was pretty unusual - and then all of a sudden all the money was pouring in. And boy, did Joe believe in that tunnel. And did Joe believe in what the Chamber of Commerce wanted to do. In fact, he believed in it so much that he believed that Seattle should pay cost overruns if there were cost overruns on the tunnel - an admission I got from him during the televised debate, I was shocked he admitted to it. [00:34:41] Crystal Fincher: I remember that debate. [00:34:43] Mike McGinn: Yeah. So you were kind of asking about how politics worked. It was really something. Yeah - here's another memory. About two weeks before the election, the City Council took - three weeks before the, two, three weeks, four weeks - they took a vote to say that the tunnel was their choice. Even though there's a mayoral election in which the tunnel is on the ballot, so to speak - in terms of the issues of the candidates - they took a vote for no reason to say it was a done deal. And then WSDOT released a video of the elevated collapsing in a highway, which is the first time a public disclosure request from a third party was ever given straight to a TV station, I think, in my experience in Seattle. I had Gregoire and the DOT folks down there working on that campaign too - their tunnel was threatened. So it really was something how - I indeed was kind of shocked at - it was such a learning experience for me - how much the ranks closed around this. I didn't appreciate it. I had my own nonprofit, I had been on stakeholder committees, I'd worked with a lot of people that weren't just Sierra Club members and neighborhood types. I'd worked with a lot of business people, many of whom had supported my nonprofit because they liked its vision. But they were very clear with me that as long as I supported the surface transit option, there was no way they could be associated with my run for mayor in any way, shape, or form - even if they liked me. It was a complete lockdown - right after the primary where Greg lost the primary and it was me and Joe, I was - Okay, open field running. I can now reach out to these people. There's no incumbent - maybe some of them can support me now. And they were abundantly clear on all of those phone calls that - Nope, can't do it. Until you change your position on the tunnel, we just can't do it. We have business in this town, Mike. We have relationships in this town. We cannot do that. So it was a real lockdown - politically. [00:36:38] Crystal Fincher: That was also a big learning experience for me - watching that consolidation, watching how not only were they fighting for the tunnel against you and making the fight against you a fight about the tunnel, but the enforcement to those third parties that you were talking about that - Hey, if you play ball with him, you're cut off. And those kinds of threats and that kind of dealing - watching that happen was very formative for me. I'm like - Okay, I see how this works, and this is kind of insidious. And if you are branded as an outsider, if you don't play ball, if you don't kiss the ring of the adults in the room - which is definitely what they considered themselves - then you're on the outs and they're at war. And it was really a war footing against you and the campaign. Who was on the Council at that time? [00:37:30] Mike McGinn: Oh my God. Let me see if I can go through the list. No, and it really, it was - your point about it was a war footing was not something that I fully, that I did not appreciate until actually going through that experience - how unified that would be. Excuse me. The City Council chair was Tim Burgess at the time. Bruce Harrell was on the Council. Sally Clark, Richard Conlin, Nick Licata. Mike O'Brien was running on the same platform as me with regard to the tunnel and he'd just been elected. Jean Godden, Sally Bagshaw. I hope I'm not leaving anything out - because - [00:38:04] Robert Cruickshank: Tom Rasmussen will forgive you. [00:38:06] Mike McGinn: Tom Rasmussen. Yeah - because City Councilmembers would get really offended if you didn't thank them publicly - that was another thing I had to learn. You have to publicly thank any other politician on stage with you or they held a grudge. Yeah. So I had - I didn't know all the politicians' rules when I started. [00:38:25] Crystal Fincher: There are so many rules. [00:38:27] Mike McGinn: There are so many, there's so many rules. But really what you saw then was that the Council tended to move in lockstep on many issues - because if they all voted together and they all worked citywide, there was protection. None of them could be singled out. So it was very - and it's not to say that some of them didn't take principled votes and would find themselves on an 8-1 position sometimes, but for the most part, it was much, much safer to be - it was much, much safer to vote as a group. And they tended to do that. And they had coalesced around the tunnel, except for O'Brien. And that could not be shaken by anything we brought to bear. [00:39:04] Robert Cruickshank: And this is wrapped up in not just the electoral politics, but the power politics. Because Mike McGinn comes in - mayor leading the 7th floor of City Hall, the head of City government - and smart guy, nice guy, willing to talk to anybody. But is not from their crew, is not from that group. And as Crystal and Mike said, the ranks were closed from the start. This is - again, 2009, 2010 - when nationally Mitch McConnell is quoted as saying, It's his ambition to make Obama a one-term president. I don't know if he's ever caught on record, but I would be quite certain that Tim Burgess would have said the exact same thing - that his ambition was to make Mike McGinn a one-term mayor. As it turned out in 2013, Tim Burgess wanted his job - one of the candidates running for it. So these are all people who have a reason to close ranks against Mike McGinn and to use a tunnel as a bludgeon against him to do so. [00:39:58] Mike McGinn: There were other bludgeons. After I won the general election and before I took office, they passed their annual budget - they cut the mayor's office budget by a third before I even took office. Just boom - I know - they were determined, they were determined. And so that was when the planning - that council then and with WSDOT - that was when basically the contours of the waterfront were locked into place, including what we now see as that very wide surface road. That was that Council. So if you're wondering, if you're looking at that going - Okay, wow, who decided that and where did it come from? Again, our current mayor and his current advisor and others - they've always been for that. Building that big surface road has always been the plan to go along with the tunnel, because highway capacity was their highest priority. And the park on the waterfront, along with a lot of money into the aquarium and into these new structures - that's their signature thing for so many other people. But the idea that you should, that there was an opportunity to transform our transportation system and transform our city to make it more equitable and climate friendly was never a priority in this process. Just wasn't. [00:41:20] Crystal Fincher: It was never a priority. It was never seriously considered. And to me, through this process - lots of people know, have talked about it on the show before - I actually didn't start off Team McGinn. I wound up Team McGinn - didn't start off that way. But through that - and you won me over with logic - it was you being proven right on several things. You pointed out that their projections, their traffic projections were just so far out of left field that there was no way that they were going to come close. And they even had to come down on their projections before we even saw the traffic - the actual traffic turned out to be lower. You were right on that one - the laughable - [00:41:59] Mike McGinn: They're under 40,000 cars a day - for a highway that was carrying 110,000 cars a day beforehand. So even as a traffic solution - to put that into context, 40,000 cars a day is like the Ballard Bridge. And I can guarantee you the replacement costs of the Ballard Bridge is not $4 billion or $3.1 billion. The E Line, I think, carries 15,000 people a day. Metro carries 220,000 people a day. What you could do with that $3.1 billion or $4 billion in terms of bus lanes, bike lanes, rolling stock for Metro, maybe pay raises for bus drivers so that we could actually have service - you could do so much with those billions of dollars. And we put it all into moving 40,000 cars a day? It's just pathetic. That's three Rapid Ride lines we could have had for a 10th of the cost, or even less. I think the investments in Rapid Ride lines are about $50-100 million a line to make the capital investments to make it work. So the waste - even if you don't care about climate, the waste of dollars - and who's paying those taxes? To a great degree, we have the most regressive state and local tax system in the nation. And we'll have a ballot measure soon, and I know a lot of environmentalists will be out there if the package spends for the right thing saying - Hey, we need money for local streets. Imagine if we'd taken that gas tax money and the Legislature had allowed cities and towns to use it to improve their streets - which they can do. I know that the constitution says highway purposes, but when you read highway purposes, it says roads and bridges. It includes everything. You can use gas taxes for anything that improves the road. And they do. WSDOT has used gas taxes to pay for bike lanes and sidewalks. It's legal. That's a choice. So we're driving around potholed streets. We have - we're putting up little plastic dividers because we care more about the car getting hurt than the bicyclist on the other side of that plastic divider. We're watching our transit service melt away because we can't pay bus drivers enough. But hey, man, somebody's got a really rapid - 3,000 people a day get to skip Downtown in their private vehicles. Where are our priorities for equity? Where are the priorities for economy, or even just plain old-fashioned fiscal prudence? None of that was there - because all of those dollars were going to fund the needs of the most powerful people in the City. And they captured those dollars - and all of us will pay the taxes, all of us will breathe the smoky air, and all of us will watch our streets deteriorate and our transit service evaporate. [00:44:52] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And to me, it was such a foundational lesson that the people that we have making decisions really matter - and that we have to really explore their records, their donors, their histories - because over and over again, we look at the decisions that wind up being made that frequently conflict with campaign promises, but that very, very rarely conflict with their donor rolls. [00:45:16] Mike McGinn: And yes - and every one of them knows how to make the value statements. So if I had any advice for people in this year's election - everyone is going to say they care about housing, everyone's going to say they think biking safe. I don't - one of the things that I came away with - I don't care about the goals you put into some policy anymore. Show me the hard physical action you will take that might piss somebody off, but you're willing to do it because it's right. And if you can't do that, then your value statements are meaningless. So take a look - who actually, and that's the question I always ask candidates for office - Tell me about a time you did something hard that might've caused you criticism, but you did it because it was right. Or that you made somebody who was an ally or friend upset, but you did it because it was right. Tell me about that time. [00:46:04] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's a challenge. And to your point and learning through just watching how people operated through that and some other processes - but that certainly was a big learning for me - is the role of coalitions, the role of accountability, and understanding. You have always had your finger on the pulse of Seattle, really - you're extraordinarily good at that. You're actually - both of you - are great strategists. But our political class is so detached from that sometimes - certainly I'm feeling frustration at some recent actions by our Legislature - we just had our special session day where they increased criminalization of substances, personal possession of substances - just reflecting on legislation to provide school, kids with free meals at school, things that seem like really basic and foundational that we should be able to land this. If we can call a special session to hand Boeing billions of dollars, we should be able to feed kids, right? [00:47:00] Mike McGinn: At the time we were cutting school budgets - when we found money for that. But I don't want to be too gloomy. And then I want to turn it over to Robert to get a last word in here, 'cause I just loved - his analysis is so awesome. I don't want to be too gloomy because - I look at what happened in the Legislature this year on housing, that we're finally going to allow housing, people to build more housing in places so people can actually live closer to their jobs and live more affordably. 10 years ago, we would have thought that was impossible. There's a lot of hard organizing that did it. At America Walks, we're the host of the Freeway Fighters Networks - there are people in 40 cities or more around the country that are organizing to remove highways. And while it's just a small amount of money compared to the amount going to highway expansion, there's actually federal funds to study and remove highways. So it's a long, hard slog. What felt for us - for Robert and me and Cary Moon and others fighting this - which felt like an impossible fight at the time is a fight that is now winning in places. Not winning enough - we're not winning fast enough - but it can change. And so that's - I don't want to be too negative. They got money, but organizing and people - and we actually have the public with us on this, just like we have the public with us on housing. So we just have to do more. We just got to keep at it, folks - got to keep at it. We can win this one. Don't allow this story of how hard it was to deal with the unified political class in the City of Seattle for their climate arson - should not deter you. It should inspire you, 'cause I actually won the mayor's office and we actually did do a lot of good. And the next fight is right in front of us again today, so get in it people. We need you. [00:48:46] Robert Cruickshank: I think that's spot on. And I remember coming to work in your office at the very beginning of 2011, when it seemed like the tunnel was just dominating discussion, but not in the mayor's office, right? When I joined, I fully expected to be like - roll my sleeves up to take on that tunnel. Instead, I'm working on the mayor's jobs plan, the Families and Education Levy, on transit. That's the stuff that was really getting done, and I think McGinn left a really great legacy on that. But we didn't win the tunnel fight. And I think we've diagnosed many of the reasons why, but one thing that really stands out to me as I look back from 12, 13 years distance is we didn't have the same density of genuinely progressive and social democratic organizations and people and leaders in Seattle that we have now. I think that matters because Mike's been talking about what's the next fight. I think one of the big fights coming up next year - when it comes time to renew that Move Seattle Levy - that's nearly a billion dollars that's going to be on the table. And we keep getting promised - when we are asked to approve these massive levies - that a lot of that money is going to go to safe streets, it's going to go to protect vulnerable users, we're going to do something to finally get towards Vision Zero. And instead it all gets taken away to build more car infrastructure. At what point do we finally stand - literally in the road - and say, No more. Do we look at the broken promises on the waterfront where we were promised a beautiful pedestrian-friendly waterfront and got another car sewer? We're going to have to organize and come together. We have many more groups now and many more leaders who are willing to stand up and say - We're not passing this levy unless it actually focuses on safe streets, unless it focuses on pedestrians and cyclists and transit users, and gives iron-clad promises to make sure stuff gets built so that some future mayor can't just walk in and start canceling projects left and right that we were promised. That's the lesson I take from this is - we're better organized now, we have more resources now, but it's still going to be a slog, and we're going to have to stand our ground - otherwise we get rolled. [00:50:34] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I thank you both for this conversation today - reflections on the tunnel fight, how it came to be, what it was like in the middle of it, and the lessons that we take moving forward in these elections that we have coming up this year, next year, and beyond. Thanks so much for the conversation. [00:50:50] Mike McGinn: Thank you, Crystal. [00:50:51] Robert Cruickshank: Thank you - it's been wonderful. [00:50:52] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
Headlines: IRS whistleblowers testify. Interviews: Nathan Nelson, Pastor of Mission & Outreach at Bethany Community Church in Seattle, WA, Elise Galis, Program Manager, Together PDX, Palau Team member, Together PDX, night of worship this Sunday at Waterfront Park.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In the "Today in San Diego" podcast, a brush fire spread rapidly through Ramona, the City Council voted on three emergency grants and a free yoga class at Waterfront Park to celebrate International Yoga Day.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
The first annual Family Play Day at Vancouver Waterfront Park, organized by the Columbia Play Project, will feature 26 booths with games and activities for kids of all ages, live performances, refreshments, and sponsor support from local organizations to foster exploratory play and community engagement. https://tinyurl.com/mr3a5jjm #ColumbiaPlayProject #FamilyPlayDay #VancouverWaterfrontPark #Games #Activities #Art #Science #Sports #Puzzles #Reading #LivePerformances #VancouverCommunityBand #MetropolitanPerformingArts #VancouverWa #ClarkCountyWa #ClarkCountyNews #ClarkCountyToday
On this midweek show, Crystal chats with former Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn and his former Senior Communications Advisor Robert Cruickshank about the missed opportunity for generational impact through how decisions were made about Seattle's waterfront and the SR99 tunnel. Mike and Robert review how the vision of the scrappy People's Waterfront Coalition, centered around making a prized public space accessible for all while taking the climate crisis on by transforming our transportation system, nearly won the fight against those who prioritized maintaining highway capacity and those who prioritized increasing Downtown property values. The conversation then highlights how those with power and money used their outsized influence to make backroom decisions - despite flawed arguments and little public enthusiasm for their proposal - leaving Seattle with an underutilized deep bore tunnel and a car-centric waterfront. Some of the decision makers are still active in local politics - including current Mayor Bruce Harrell and his current advisor Tim Burgess. With important elections ahead, Crystal, Mike and Robert discuss how political decisions tend to conflict with campaign promises rather than donor rolls, how proven action is a better indicator than value statements, and how today's dense ecosystem of progressive leaders and organizations can take inspiration and win the next fight. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii, Mike McGinn at @mayormcginn, and Robert Cruickshank at @cruickshank. Mike McGinn Mike is the Executive Director of national nonprofit America Walks. He got his start in local politics as a neighborhood activist pushing for walkability. From there he founded a non-profit focused on sustainable and equitable growth, and then became mayor of Seattle. Just before joining America Walks, Mike worked to help Feet First, Washington State's walking advocacy organization, expand their sphere of influence across Washington state. He has worked on numerous public education, legislative, ballot measure and election campaigns – which has given him an abiding faith in the power of organizing and volunteers to create change. Robert Cruickshank Robert is the Director of Digital Strategy at California YIMBY and Chair of Sierra Club Seattle. A long time communications and political strategist, he was Senior Communications Advisor to Mike McGinn from 2011-2013. Resources “Seattle Waterfront History Interviews: Cary Moon, Waterfront Coalition” by Dominic Black from HistoryLink “State Route 99 tunnel - Options and political debate" from Wikipedia “Remembering broken promises about Bertha” by Josh Cohen from Curbed Seattle “Fewer drivers in Seattle's Highway 99 tunnel could create need for bailout” by Mike Lindblom from The Seattle Times “Surface Highway Undermines Seattle's Waterfront Park” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist “Seattle Prepares to Open Brand New Elliott Way Highway Connector” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, I am very excited to be welcoming Robert Cruickshank and former Mayor Mike McGinn to the show to talk about something that a lot of people have been thinking about, talking about recently - and that is Seattle's new waterfront. We feel like we've spent a decade under construction - from a deep bore tunnel to the tunnel machine getting stuck - that's not even covering all the debate before that, but all of the kind of follies and foibles and challenges that have beset the process of arriving at the waterfront that we have now. And now that we are getting the big reveal, a lot of people have feelings about it. So I thought we would talk about it with one of the people who was at the forefront of criticisms of the tunnel and calling out some red flags that turned out to be a very wise warning - several wise warnings that have come to pass, unfortunately - for not listening to them. But I want to start early on in the beginning, both of you - and I had a short stint in the mayor's office - worked on this, talked about this on the campaign, really got it. But when did you first hear that we needed to replace the viaduct and there were some different opinions about how to make that happen? [00:02:06] Mike McGinn: Okay, so I'm sure I can't pin down a date, but the really important date was, of course, the Nisqually earthquake in 2001. And so it gave the Alaska Way Viaduct a good shake - the decks weren't tied into the columns, the columns were on fill, which could liquefy - and everybody understood that if that quake had been a little stronger and harder, the elevated would come down. Now you might think that that would call for immediately closing the roadway for safety reasons, but what it did call for was for reconstructing it. And you have to remember that highway was really one of the very first limited access highways - it was built long ago and it was just at the end of its useful life anyway. Certainly not built to modern seismic standards or modern engineering standards. So the conversation immediately started and I don't know when everything started to settle into different roles, but the Mayor of Seattle Greg Nickels, was immediately a proponent for a tunnel - and a much larger and more expensive tunnel than what was ultimately built. And it would have been a cut-and-cover tunnel along the waterfront that included a new seawall. So they thought they were solving two things at one time - because the seawall too was rotting away, very old, very unstable. But it would have gone all the way under South Lake Union and emerged onto Aurora Avenue further north, it would have had entrances and exits to Western and Elliott. And I seem to remember the quoted price was like $11 billion. And the state - governor at the time was Christine Gregoire - they were - No, we're replacing the highway. We don't have $11 billion for Seattle. And of course had the support of a lot of lawmakers for obvious reasons - we're not going to give Seattle all that money, we want all that highway money for our districts. And those were immediately presented as the alternatives. And so much of the credit has to go to Cary Moon, who lived on the waterfront and started something called the People's Waterfront Coalition. I think Grant Cogswell, a former City Council candidate - now runs a bookstore down in Mexico City, but wrote a book about the Monorail, worked on the different Monorail campaigns before that - they launched something called the People's Waterfront Coalition. And the basic proposition was - We don't need a highway. This is a great opportunity to get rid of the highway and have a surface street, but if you amp up the transit service - if we invest in transit instead - we can accommodate everyone. And so that was really - as it started - and actually I remember being outside City Hall one day, going to some stakeholder meeting - I went to so many different stakeholder meetings. And I remember Tim Ceis saying to me - he was the Deputy Mayor at the time - You're not supporting that Cary Moon idea - I mean, that's just crazy. I was - Well, actually, Tim. So the Sierra Club was - I was a volunteer leader in the Sierra Club - and the Sierra Club was one of the first organizations - I'm sure there were others, I shouldn't overstate it - but the Sierra Club was persuaded by the wisdom of Cary's idea and supported it in that day. And so that was really how the three different options got launched - no public process, no analysis, no description of what our needs were. The mayor went to a solution, the governor went to a solution - and it was up to members of the public to try to ask them to slow down, stop, and look at something different. [00:05:42] Crystal Fincher: And Robert, how did you first engage with this issue? [00:05:47] Robert Cruickshank: For me, I had just moved to Seattle the first time in the fall of 2001 - so it was about six months after the Nisqually quake - and I came from the Bay Area. And that was where another earthquake had damaged another waterfront highway, the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco. And that was where San Francisco had voted - after that quake had damaged their viaduct beyond repair - they voted to tear it down and replace it with the Embarcadero Waterfront, which is a six-lane arterial but they built a lot more transit there. So they did the - what we might call the surface transit option - and it worked really well. It was beautiful. It still is. And so when I came up here and started to learn a little bit about the place I was living and the legacy of the Nisqually quake, I thought - Oh, why don't you just do the same thing here? It worked so well in San Francisco. Let's just tear down this unsightly monstrosity on the waterfront and replace it with a surface boulevard and put in a bunch of transit - San Francisco's made it work successfully. And the more I learned about Seattle, I realized there's a legacy of that here, too. This is a city where we had a freeway revolt, where activists came together and killed the RH Thomson freeway, which would have destroyed the Arboretum. They killed the Bay Freeway, which would have destroyed Pike Place Market. And so I naturally assumed - as being a relatively new resident - that Seattle would stay in that tradition and welcome the opportunity to tear this down and build a great waterfront for people, not cars. But as we'll talk about in a moment, we have a lot of business interests and freight interests and others who had a different vision - who didn't share that community-rooted vision. And I think at numerous points along the way, though, you see people of Seattle saying - No, this is not what we want for our waterfront. We have an opportunity now with the fact that this viaduct nearly collapsed, as Mike mentioned, in the Nisqually quake - we have an opportunity for something really wonderful here. And so I think Cary Moon and then Mike McGinn and others tapped into that - tapped into a really strong community desire to have a better waterfront. I wasn't that politically engaged at the time in the 2000s - I was just a grad student at UW - but just talking to folks who I knew, anytime this came up - God, wouldn't it be wonderful down there if this was oriented towards people and not cars, and we took that thing down? So I think one of the things you're going to see is this contest between the vision that many of us in Seattle had and still have - this beautiful location, beautiful vista on Elliott Bay, that should be for the people of the city - and those in power who have a very different vision and don't really want to share power or ultimately the right-of-way with We the People. [00:08:05] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. And I was involved in some things at the time - some curious coalitions - but definitely I was around a lot of people who favored either rebuilding the viaduct or the tunnel. Definitely not this roads and transit option - there's no way that's workable. That's pie-in-the-sky talk from those loony greenies over there. What are you talking about? But as this went on - I think no matter what camp people were in - there was always a clear vision articulated and people really focused on the opportunity that this represented, and I think correctly characterized it as - this is one of these generational decisions that we get to make that is going to impact the next generation or two and beyond. And there's an opportunity - the waterfront felt very disconnected with the way things were constructed - it was not easy just to go from downtown to the waterfront. It wasn't friendly for pedestrians. It wasn't friendly for tourists. It just did not feel like a world-class waterfront in a world-class city, and how we see that in so many other cities. You talk about the decision with the Embarcadero, Robert, and looking at - that definitely seemed like a definitive step forward. This was sold as - yeah, we can absolutely take a step forward and finally fix this waterfront and make it what it should have been the whole time. As you thought about the opportunity that this represented, what was the opportunity to you and what did you hear other people saying that they wanted this to be? [00:09:38] Mike McGinn: Yeah, so I think there are - I think that's really important, because I don't think there was a real discussion of what the vision was. People will say there was, but there really wasn't. Because what was baked in and what you're referring to is - well, of course you have to build automobile capacity to replace the existing automobile capacity, right? In fact, this state is still building more highways across the state in the misguided belief that more highway capacity will somehow or another do some good. So this idea that you have to replace and expand highway capacity is extremely powerful in Washington state and across the country. And there were very few examples of highway removal, so that was just a real challenge in the first place - that somehow or other the first priority has to be moving automobiles. For me, at that time I had become - the issue of climate had really penetrated me at that point. And in fact, when Greg Nickels took office and the Sierra Club endorsed him over Paul Schell - I was a local leader in the Sierra Club and a state leader in the Sierra Club - and my goal was that Mayor Nickels would do more than Paul Schell. And Paul Schell, the prior mayor, had done some good things. He had made Seattle City Light climate neutral - we'd gotten out of coal plants and we didn't purchase power from coal plants. He was really progressive on a number of environmental issues and we wanted Mayor Nickels to do more - and Mayor Nickels had stepped up. So we put on a campaign to urge him to do more. And he had stepped up to start something called the Mayors' Climate Protection Initiative - which was the City of Seattle was going to meet the standards of the Kyoto Protocol, which was like the Paris Agreement of its day. And that was - it set an emissions reduction target by a date in the future. And that was really great - in fact, over a thousand cities around the country signed up to the Mayors' Climate Protection Initiative. And I was appointed to a stakeholder group with other leaders - Denis Hayes from the Bullitt Foundation and others - to develop the first climate action plan for a city. Al Gore showed up at the press conference for it - it was a big - it was a BFD and a lot of excitement. And one of the things that was abundantly clear through that process of cataloging the emissions in the City of Seattle and coming up with a plan to reduce them was that our single largest source of emissions at that time was the transportation sector. We'd already gotten off of coal power under Mayor Schell - we received almost all of our electricity from hydroelectric dams. We had good conservation programs. Unlike other parts of the country, transportation was the biggest. Now what's fascinating is now - I don't know if I want to do the math - almost 20 years later, now what we see is that the whole country is in the same place. We're replacing coal and natural gas power plants. And now nationally, the single largest source of emissions is transportation. So how do you fix that? If we're serious about climate - and I thought we should be - because the scientists were telling us about heat waves. They were telling us about forest fires that would blanket the region in smoke. They were telling us about storms that would be bigger than we'd ever seen before. And flooding like we'd never seen and declining snowpack. And it was all going to happen in our futures. Honestly, I remember those predictions from the scientists because they're in the headlines today, every day. So what do we do to stop that? So I was - I had little kids, man - I had little kids, I had three kids. How are we going to stop this? Well, it's Seattle needs to lead - that's what has to happen. We're the progressive city. We're the first one out with a plan. We're going to show how we're going to do it. And if our biggest source is transportation, we should fix that. Well, it should seem obvious that the first thing you should do is stop building and expanding highways, and maybe even change some of the real estate used for cars and make it real estate for walking, biking, and transit. That's pretty straightforward. You also have to work on more housing. And this all led me to starting a nonprofit around all of these things and led to the Sierra Club - I think at a national level - our chapter was much further forward than any other chapter on upzones and backyard cottages and making the transition. So to me, this was the big - that was the vision. That was the opportunity. We're going to tear this down. We're going to make a massive investment in changing the system, and this in fact could be a really transformative piece. That's what motivated me. That climate argument wasn't landing with a whole bunch of other interests. There was certainly a vision from the Downtown and Downtown property owners and residents that - boy, wouldn't it be great to get rid of that elevated highway because that's terrible. There was also a vision from the people who still believed in highway capacity and that includes some of our major employers at the time and today - Boeing and Microsoft, they have facilities in the suburbs around Seattle - they think we need highway capacity. As well as all of the Port businesses, as well as all the maritime unions - thought that this highway connection here was somehow critical to their survival, the industrial areas. And then they wanted the capacity. So there were very strong competing visions. And I think it's fair to say that highway capacity is a vision - we've seen that one is now fulfilled. The second priority was an enhanced physical environment to enhance the property values of Downtown property owners. And they cut the deal with the highway capacity people - okay, we're here for your highway capacity, but we have to get some amenities. And the climate folks, I'm not seeing it - never a priority of any of the leaders - just wasn't a priority. [00:15:44] Crystal Fincher: How did you see those factions come into play and break down, Robert? [00:15:48] Robert Cruickshank: It was interesting. This all comes to a head in the late 2000s. And remembering back to that time, this is where Seattle is leading the fight to take on the climate and the fight against George W. Bush, who was seen as this avatar of and deeply connected to the oil industry. Someone who - one of his first things when he took office - he did was withdraw the U.S. from the Kyoto Protocol, which is the earlier version of what's now known as the Paris Agreement - global agreement to try to lower emissions. And so Seattle, in resisting Bush - that's where Greg Nickels became a national figure by leading the Mayors' Climate Action Group - not just say we're going to take on climate, we're going to do something about really de facto fighting back against Bush. And then Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Al Gore comes out with An Inconvenient Truth. And by 2007, people in Seattle are talking a lot about climate and how we need to do something about climate. But then what you see happening is the limits of that - what are people really actually willing to do and willing to support? The other piece that comes together, I think - in the 2000s - is a revival of the City itself. Seattle spends the late 20th century after the Boeing bust - since the 70s "Will the last person out of Seattle turn out the lights," recovering in the 80s somewhat, recovering in the 90s, and then the tech boom. And by the 2000s, Seattle is a destination city for young people coming to live here and living in apartments and working in the tech industry. I think that unsettles a lot of people. One thing that really stood out to me about the discussion about what to do on the waterfront was this vision from old school folks - like Joel Connelly and others - we've got to preserve that working waterfront. And it's very much the sense that blue collar working class labor is under threat - not from corporate power, but from a 20-something millennial with a laptop working at Amazon who comes to Seattle and thinks - Gosh, why is this ugly viaduct here? It's unsafe. Why don't we just tear it down and have a wonderful waterfront view? And those who are offended by this idea - who are so wedded to the 20th century model that we're going to drive everywhere, cars, freedom - this is where you see the limits of willingness to actually do something on climate. People don't actually want to give up their cars. They're afraid they're going to sacrifice their way of life. And you start to see this weird but powerful constellation come together where rather than having a discussion about transportation planning or even a discussion about climate action, we're having this weird discussion about culture. And it becomes a culture war. And the thing about a culture war is people pushing change are never actually trying to fight a war. They're just - This is a good idea. Why don't we do this? We all say these - we care about these values. And the people who don't want it just dig in and get really nasty and fight back. And so you start to see Cary Moon, People's Waterfront Coalition, Mike McGinn, and others get attacked as not wanting working class jobs, not wanting a working waterfront, not caring about how people are going to get to work, not caring about how the freight trucks are going to get around even though you're proposing a tunnel from the Port to Wallingford where - it's not exactly an industrial hub - there are some businesses there. But dumping all these cars out or in South Lake Union, it's like, what is going on here? It doesn't add up. But it became this powerful moment where a competing vision of the City - which those of us who saw a better future for Seattle didn't see any competition as necessary at all - those who are wedded to that model where we're going to drive everywhere, we're going to have trucks everywhere, really saw that under threat for other reasons. And they decided this is where they're going to make their stand. This is where they're going to make that fight. And that turned out to be pretty useful for the Port, the freight groups, the establishment democratic leaders who had already decided for their own reasons this is what they wanted too. [00:19:11] Mike McGinn: It's important to recognize too, in this, is to follow the money. And I think that this is true for highway construction generally. You have a big section of the economy - there's a section of the economy that believes in it, as Robert was saying, right? And I do think the culture war stuff is fully there - that somehow or another a bike lane in an industrial area will cause the failure of business. Although if you went to the bike - outside the industrial building - you'll find a bunch of the workers' bike there, right? Because it's affordable and efficient. So there's this weird belief that just isn't true - that you can't accommodate industry and transit and walking and biking. Of course you can. And in fact, adding all the cars is bad for freight movement because of all the traffic jams. So there's that belief, but there's also a whole bunch of people - I mentioned Downtown property owners - that gets you to your Downtown Seattle Association. The value of their property is going to be dramatically enhanced by burying, by eliminating the waterfront highway. But then you also have all of the people who build highways and all of the people who support the people who build highways. Who's going to float $4 billion in bonds? It's going to be a Downtown law firm. And by the way, the person who worked for that Downtown law firm and did the bond work was the head of the greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce at that time. So you have the engineering firms, you have the material providers, and then you have the union jobs that go with it. So really at this point - and this isn't just about the waterfront highway, this could be any highway expansion - you've captured the business community because a big chunk of the business community will get direct dollars from the government to them. And you've actually captured a significant chunk of the labor community as well, because labor fights for labor jobs. In the big picture, service workers are taking transit, service workers need housing in town, and you can start to see a split - like in my ultimate run for mayor, I won some service worker unions, never won any construction trades. In fact, they held a rally my first year in office to denounce me, right? Because I was standing in the way of jobs. So that's a really powerful coalition. And I think what you see today in the country as a whole - as you know, I'm the ED of America Walks, so I get to see a lot more - this is a pattern. Highways aren't really supported by the public. They don't go to the public for public votes on highways anymore - the public wouldn't support it. And in fact, the data suggests the public gets that building more highway lanes won't solve everything. But you've got a big, big chunk of the economy that's gotten extremely used to billions and billions of dollars flowing into their pockets. And they need to protect that in every year. So you get that level of intensity around - Look, we're talking about $4 billion on the waterfront and a bunch of that money's coming to us. Better believe it's a good idea, and what are you talking about, climate? [00:22:03] Robert Cruickshank: You talk about public votes, and I think there are three crucial public votes we got to talk about. One is 2007, when these advisory votes are on the ballot - and they're not binding, but they're advisory. Do you want to rebuild the viaduct or build a tunnel? They both get rejected. And then the next big vote is 2009, the mayoral election, where Mike McGinn becomes mayor - in part by channeling public frustration at this giant boondoggle. And then ultimately, the last public vote on this, 2011 - in June, I believe it was, it was in August - about whether we go forward or not and the public by this point, fatigued and beaten down by The Seattle Times, decides let's just move on from this. [00:22:43] Mike McGinn: There's no other alternative. And it is worth returning to that early vote, because it was such a fascinating moment, because - I think the mayor's office didn't want to put his expansive tunnel option in a direct vote against the new elevated, fearing it would lose. So they engineered an agreement with the governor that each one would get a separate up or down vote. And by the way, Tim Ceis, the Deputy Mayor at the time, called in the Sierra Club, briefed us on it, and one of our members said - What would happen if they both got voted down? And Deputy Mayor Ceis said - by the way, Tim Ceis has got a big contract right now from Mayor Harrell, longtime tunnel supporter. Tim Ceis is the consultant for most of the business side candidates. Tim Burgess, another big supporter of the tunnel, now works for Mayor Harrell. Oh, and Christine Gregoire has been hired by the biggest corporations in the region to do their work for them as well. So there's a pretty good payoff if you stick around and support the right side of this stuff. But anyway, Mayor Ceis, Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis, when said, What happens if they're both voted down? He goes - Well, that would be chaos. You don't want that, do you? And I remember all of us just kind of looked at each other - and we all went out on the sidewalk, there were like six of us. And we went - We want that, right? And so we joined in and supported the No and No campaign. And The Stranger came in really hard. And I think Erica Barnett wrote the articles. And Cary Moon was in on it. And the defeat of that, for the first time, opened up the possibility - Well, let's think about something else. And so a stakeholder group was formed. Cary Moon was appointed. Mike O'Brien was appointed. The waterfront guys were appointed. And the Downtown folks were appointed. And the labor folks were appointed. And I think a really important part of the story here is that it was advisory - they weren't making the decisions, it was advisory. But they got to a point at which the head of the State DOT, the head of the Seattle DOT, and the head of the King County DOT all expressed to their respective executives that surface transit worked and was worth it. And this was extremely distressing to the business community. So they mounted a big lobbying push and went straight to Gregoire. And Gregoire, for the first time, became a tunnel supporter. And they were promised that this new tunneling technology - the deep bore tunnel - would solve the cost issues of the deep bore tunnel. And not only that, the state's commitment, which to date was $2.4 billion - they had committed $2.4 billion to a rebuild - the state wouldn't have to pay anymore, because the Port would put in $300 million and they would raise $400 million from tolling. And coincidentally, the amount they thought they could raise from tolling was the exact amount needed to meet the projected cost of using the deep bore tunnel boring machine. So the deal was cut and announced. And the whole stakeholder group and the recommendations from the DOT heads were abandoned. And that occurred, basically, late 2008, early 2009 - the deal was made. And that was about the time that I was contemplating - well, I think I'd already decided to run, but I had not yet announced. [00:26:14] Crystal Fincher: And this was an interesting time, especially during that vote. Because at that time, I had an eye into what the business community was doing and thinking, and it was clear that their numbers didn't add up. [00:26:26] Mike McGinn: Oh my God - no. [00:26:28] Crystal Fincher: But they just did not want to face that. And what they knew is they had enough money and resources to throw at this issue and to throw at a marketing effort to obfuscate that, that they wouldn't have to worry about it. And there was this sense of offense, of indignation that - Who are these people trying to come up and tell us that we don't need freight capacity, that we don't need - that this extra highway capacity, don't they understand how important these freeways are? Who are these people who just don't understand how our economy works? [00:27:02] Mike McGinn: They were the grownups who really understood how things worked. And we were the upstarts who didn't understand anything. But there's a great line from Willie Brown talking about - I think the Transbay Bridge, and Robert can correct the name, in California, which was way over budget. And people were lamenting that the early estimates had been made up. And he goes - Look, this is how it works. You just need to dig a hole in the ground so deep that the only way to fill it up is with money. I think that's pretty much the quote. So that's the strategy. You get it started. Of course you have rosy estimates. And then you just have that commitment, and it's the job of legislators to come up with the cost overruns, dollars later. [00:27:43] Robert Cruickshank: And I think it's so key to understand this moment here in the late 2000s, where the public had already weighed in. I remember voting - it was the last thing I voted on before I moved to California for four years. I'm like no - I was No and No. And that's where the Seattle voters were. They rejected both options. And then you start to hear, coming out of the stakeholder group - Okay, we can make the surface transit option work. And I left town thinking - Alright, that's what's going to happen, just like the Embarcadero in San Francisco and done. And the next thing I hear in late 2008, early 2009, there's this deal that's been cut and all of a sudden a deep bore tunnel is on the table. And this is Seattle politics in a nutshell. I think people look back and think that because we are this smart, progressive technocratic city - those people who live here are - we think that our government works the same way. And it doesn't. This is - time and time again, the public will make its expression felt. They'll weigh in with opinion poll or protest or vote. And the powers that be will say - Well, actually, we want to do this thing instead. We'll cook it up in a backroom. We're going to jam it on all of you, and you're going to like it. And if you don't like it, then we're going to start marshaling resources. We're gonna throw a bunch of money at it. We'll get The Seattle Times to weigh in and pound away at the enemy. And that's how politics works here - that's how so much of our transportation system is built and managed. And so people today, in 2023, looking at this monstrosity on the waterfront that we have now think - How did we get here? Who planned this? It was planned in a backroom without public involvement. And I think that's a thing that has to be understood because that, as we just heard, was baked in from the very start. [00:29:11] Mike McGinn: Well, Robert, the idea of a deep bore tunnel was brought forward by a representative of the Discovery Institute, who you may know as the folks that believe in creationism. [00:29:21] Robert Cruickshank: Well, and not only that, the Discovery Institute is responsible for turning Christopher Rufo from a failed Seattle City Council candidate in 2019 into a national figure. [00:29:31] Mike McGinn: The Discovery Institute, with money from local donors - major, very wealthy local folks - they actually had a long-term plan to turn all of 99 into a limited access freeway. It's like - we need to get rid of that First Avenue South and Highway 99 and Aurora Avenue stuff - all of that should be a freeway. So they were the architects of the idea of - Hey, this deep bore tunnel is the solution. But Robert's point is just right on - transportation policy was driven by power and money, not by transportation needs, or climate needs, or equity needs, or even local economy needs really. When you get right down to it, our city runs on transit - that's what really matters. Our city runs on the fact that it's a city where people can walk from place to place. The idea that our economic future was tied to a highway that would skip Downtown - the most valuable place in the Pacific Northwest, Downtown Seattle. No, that's not really what powers our economy. But it certainly worked for the people that were going to get the dollars that flowed from folks and for the people who own Downtown property. [00:30:42] Crystal Fincher: And I want to talk about money and power with this. Who were the people in power? What was the Council at that time? Who made these decisions? [00:30:50] Mike McGinn: The Council at the time was elected citywide. And I think some people have concerns about district representation, but one of the things that citywide elections meant at the time was that you had to run a citywide campaign, and that's expensive. There's no way to knock on enough doors citywide. I did not have a lot of money when I ran for mayor, but at least I had the media attention that would go to a mayoral candidate. A City Council candidate would kind of flow under the radar. So you had people come from different places, right? They might come from the business side, they might come from the labor side. But ultimately, they would tend to make peace with the other major players - because only business and only labor could finance a campaign. They were the only ones with the resources to do that. So the other interests - the environmentalists, the social service folks, neighborhood advocates of whatever stripe - we chose from amongst the candidates that were elevated by, they would unify - in some cases, the business and labor folks would unify around a candidate. In fact, that's what we saw in the last two mayoral elections as well, where they pick a candidate. And so this doesn't leave much room. So when I was mayor, almost the entire council was aligned with the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce at that time, either endorsed by them or had made their peace with them so the challenger was not being financed. So Robert said something about those outsiders - I went under the radar screen as a candidate at the beginning of my campaign. When I entered the race, nobody was running because everybody thought that Greg Nickels had the institutional support locked down. [00:32:33] Crystal Fincher: But then a snowstorm happened. [00:32:35] Mike McGinn: Well, it was even before that - honestly, everybody thought that he could win. And long before the snowstorm, I was like - We're getting a new mayor. And I was actually looking around to try to figure out who it was going to be - because I wanted a mayor who actually believed in climate, who had my values. But nobody - I was looking through who the people were that might run, and it dawned on me - Well, nobody's going to run. But we're going to get a new mayor and I have my values - and I've actually run ballot measure campaigns and had a very modest base of support. So I was really the first one in the race that got any attention. So I got some great media attention off that. Then my opponent in the general, Joe Mallahan - whatever else you may think about Joe Mallahan - he actually saw it too. He saw that there was an opening. And then we were joined by a long-time City Councilmember, Jan Drago. And I remember the headline from The Seattle Times or the comments at the time was - Okay, now it's a real race. But it just really wasn't. So I was really under the radar screen in that race because they were disregarding me. But there was in fact a lot of anger about the tunnel. There was a lot of just - Greg, for whatever his positives or negatives that history will deal with - and by the way, I actually think Greg did a lot of good. I just was disappointed in his highway policies and his climate policies at the end of the day - I have a lot of respect for Greg Nickels, but he wasn't going to win that race. And I came out of the primary against Joe Mallahan. And all of a sudden we had these two outsiders and the business community's freaking out. All of it - I remember watching it - all of the support, the business support shifted to Joe. It took about a month, it took a few weeks. But all of a sudden - there was actually one week where I think I raised more money than he did, that was pretty unusual - and then all of a sudden all the money was pouring in. And boy, did Joe believe in that tunnel. And did Joe believe in what the Chamber of Commerce wanted to do. In fact, he believed in it so much that he believed that Seattle should pay cost overruns if there were cost overruns on the tunnel - an admission I got from him during the televised debate, I was shocked he admitted to it. [00:34:41] Crystal Fincher: I remember that debate. [00:34:43] Mike McGinn: Yeah. So you were kind of asking about how politics worked. It was really something. Yeah - here's another memory. About two weeks before the election, the City Council took - three weeks before the, two, three weeks, four weeks - they took a vote to say that the tunnel was their choice. Even though there's a mayoral election in which the tunnel is on the ballot, so to speak - in terms of the issues of the candidates - they took a vote for no reason to say it was a done deal. And then WSDOT released a video of the elevated collapsing in a highway, which is the first time a public disclosure request from a third party was ever given straight to a TV station, I think, in my experience in Seattle. I had Gregoire and the DOT folks down there working on that campaign too - their tunnel was threatened. So it really was something how - I indeed was kind of shocked at - it was such a learning experience for me - how much the ranks closed around this. I didn't appreciate it. I had my own nonprofit, I had been on stakeholder committees, I'd worked with a lot of people that weren't just Sierra Club members and neighborhood types. I'd worked with a lot of business people, many of whom had supported my nonprofit because they liked its vision. But they were very clear with me that as long as I supported the surface transit option, there was no way they could be associated with my run for mayor in any way, shape, or form - even if they liked me. It was a complete lockdown - right after the primary where Greg lost the primary and it was me and Joe, I was - Okay, open field running. I can now reach out to these people. There's no incumbent - maybe some of them can support me now. And they were abundantly clear on all of those phone calls that - Nope, can't do it. Until you change your position on the tunnel, we just can't do it. We have business in this town, Mike. We have relationships in this town. We cannot do that. So it was a real lockdown - politically. [00:36:38] Crystal Fincher: That was also a big learning experience for me - watching that consolidation, watching how not only were they fighting for the tunnel against you and making the fight against you a fight about the tunnel, but the enforcement to those third parties that you were talking about that - Hey, if you play ball with him, you're cut off. And those kinds of threats and that kind of dealing - watching that happen was very formative for me. I'm like - Okay, I see how this works, and this is kind of insidious. And if you are branded as an outsider, if you don't play ball, if you don't kiss the ring of the adults in the room - which is definitely what they considered themselves - then you're on the outs and they're at war. And it was really a war footing against you and the campaign. Who was on the Council at that time? [00:37:30] Mike McGinn: Oh my God. Let me see if I can go through the list. No, and it really, it was - your point about it was a war footing was not something that I fully, that I did not appreciate until actually going through that experience - how unified that would be. Excuse me. The City Council chair was Tim Burgess at the time. Bruce Harrell was on the Council. Sally Clark, Richard Conlin, Nick Licata. Mike O'Brien was running on the same platform as me with regard to the tunnel and he'd just been elected. Jean Godden, Sally Bagshaw. I hope I'm not leaving anything out - because - [00:38:04] Robert Cruickshank: Tom Rasmussen will forgive you. [00:38:06] Mike McGinn: Tom Rasmussen. Yeah - because City Councilmembers would get really offended if you didn't thank them publicly - that was another thing I had to learn. You have to publicly thank any other politician on stage with you or they held a grudge. Yeah. So I had - I didn't know all the politicians' rules when I started. [00:38:25] Crystal Fincher: There are so many rules. [00:38:27] Mike McGinn: There are so many, there's so many rules. But really what you saw then was that the Council tended to move in lockstep on many issues - because if they all voted together and they all worked citywide, there was protection. None of them could be singled out. So it was very - and it's not to say that some of them didn't take principled votes and would find themselves on an 8-1 position sometimes, but for the most part, it was much, much safer to be - it was much, much safer to vote as a group. And they tended to do that. And they had coalesced around the tunnel, except for O'Brien. And that could not be shaken by anything we brought to bear. [00:39:04] Robert Cruickshank: And this is wrapped up in not just the electoral politics, but the power politics. Because Mike McGinn comes in - mayor leading the 7th floor of City Hall, the head of City government - and smart guy, nice guy, willing to talk to anybody. But is not from their crew, is not from that group. And as Crystal and Mike said, the ranks were closed from the start. This is - again, 2009, 2010 - when nationally Mitch McConnell is quoted as saying, It's his ambition to make Obama a one-term president. I don't know if he's ever caught on record, but I would be quite certain that Tim Burgess would have said the exact same thing - that his ambition was to make Mike McGinn a one-term mayor. As it turned out in 2013, Tim Burgess wanted his job - one of the candidates running for it. So these are all people who have a reason to close ranks against Mike McGinn and to use a tunnel as a bludgeon against him to do so. [00:39:58] Mike McGinn: There were other bludgeons. After I won the general election and before I took office, they passed their annual budget - they cut the mayor's office budget by a third before I even took office. Just boom - I know - they were determined, they were determined. And so that was when the planning - that council then and with WSDOT - that was when basically the contours of the waterfront were locked into place, including what we now see as that very wide surface road. That was that Council. So if you're wondering, if you're looking at that going - Okay, wow, who decided that and where did it come from? Again, our current mayor and his current advisor and others - they've always been for that. Building that big surface road has always been the plan to go along with the tunnel, because highway capacity was their highest priority. And the park on the waterfront, along with a lot of money into the aquarium and into these new structures - that's their signature thing for so many other people. But the idea that you should, that there was an opportunity to transform our transportation system and transform our city to make it more equitable and climate friendly was never a priority in this process. Just wasn't. [00:41:20] Crystal Fincher: It was never a priority. It was never seriously considered. And to me, through this process - lots of people know, have talked about it on the show before - I actually didn't start off Team McGinn. I wound up Team McGinn - didn't start off that way. But through that - and you won me over with logic - it was you being proven right on several things. You pointed out that their projections, their traffic projections were just so far out of left field that there was no way that they were going to come close. And they even had to come down on their projections before we even saw the traffic - the actual traffic turned out to be lower. You were right on that one - the laughable - [00:41:59] Mike McGinn: They're under 40,000 cars a day - for a highway that was carrying 110,000 cars a day beforehand. So even as a traffic solution - to put that into context, 40,000 cars a day is like the Ballard Bridge. And I can guarantee you the replacement costs of the Ballard Bridge is not $4 billion or $3.1 billion. The E Line, I think, carries 15,000 people a day. Metro carries 220,000 people a day. What you could do with that $3.1 billion or $4 billion in terms of bus lanes, bike lanes, rolling stock for Metro, maybe pay raises for bus drivers so that we could actually have service - you could do so much with those billions of dollars. And we put it all into moving 40,000 cars a day? It's just pathetic. That's three Rapid Ride lines we could have had for a 10th of the cost, or even less. I think the investments in Rapid Ride lines are about $50-100 million a line to make the capital investments to make it work. So the waste - even if you don't care about climate, the waste of dollars - and who's paying those taxes? To a great degree, we have the most regressive state and local tax system in the nation. And we'll have a ballot measure soon, and I know a lot of environmentalists will be out there if the package spends for the right thing saying - Hey, we need money for local streets. Imagine if we'd taken that gas tax money and the Legislature had allowed cities and towns to use it to improve their streets - which they can do. I know that the constitution says highway purposes, but when you read highway purposes, it says roads and bridges. It includes everything. You can use gas taxes for anything that improves the road. And they do. WSDOT has used gas taxes to pay for bike lanes and sidewalks. It's legal. That's a choice. So we're driving around potholed streets. We have - we're putting up little plastic dividers because we care more about the car getting hurt than the bicyclist on the other side of that plastic divider. We're watching our transit service melt away because we can't pay bus drivers enough. But hey, man, somebody's got a really rapid - 3,000 people a day get to skip Downtown in their private vehicles. Where are our priorities for equity? Where are the priorities for economy, or even just plain old-fashioned fiscal prudence? None of that was there - because all of those dollars were going to fund the needs of the most powerful people in the City. And they captured those dollars - and all of us will pay the taxes, all of us will breathe the smoky air, and all of us will watch our streets deteriorate and our transit service evaporate. [00:44:52] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And to me, it was such a foundational lesson that the people that we have making decisions really matter - and that we have to really explore their records, their donors, their histories - because over and over again, we look at the decisions that wind up being made that frequently conflict with campaign promises, but that very, very rarely conflict with their donor rolls. [00:45:16] Mike McGinn: And yes - and every one of them knows how to make the value statements. So if I had any advice for people in this year's election - everyone is going to say they care about housing, everyone's going to say they think biking safe. I don't - one of the things that I came away with - I don't care about the goals you put into some policy anymore. Show me the hard physical action you will take that might piss somebody off, but you're willing to do it because it's right. And if you can't do that, then your value statements are meaningless. So take a look - who actually, and that's the question I always ask candidates for office - Tell me about a time you did something hard that might've caused you criticism, but you did it because it was right. Or that you made somebody who was an ally or friend upset, but you did it because it was right. Tell me about that time. [00:46:04] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's a challenge. And to your point and learning through just watching how people operated through that and some other processes - but that certainly was a big learning for me - is the role of coalitions, the role of accountability, and understanding. You have always had your finger on the pulse of Seattle, really - you're extraordinarily good at that. You're actually - both of you - are great strategists. But our political class is so detached from that sometimes - certainly I'm feeling frustration at some recent actions by our Legislature - we just had our special session day where they increased criminalization of substances, personal possession of substances - just reflecting on legislation to provide school, kids with free meals at school, things that seem like really basic and foundational that we should be able to land this. If we can call a special session to hand Boeing billions of dollars, we should be able to feed kids, right? [00:47:00] Mike McGinn: At the time we were cutting school budgets - when we found money for that. But I don't want to be too gloomy. And then I want to turn it over to Robert to get a last word in here, 'cause I just loved - his analysis is so awesome. I don't want to be too gloomy because - I look at what happened in the Legislature this year on housing, that we're finally going to allow housing, people to build more housing in places so people can actually live closer to their jobs and live more affordably. 10 years ago, we would have thought that was impossible. There's a lot of hard organizing that did it. At America Walks, we're the host of the Freeway Fighters Networks - there are people in 40 cities or more around the country that are organizing to remove highways. And while it's just a small amount of money compared to the amount going to highway expansion, there's actually federal funds to study and remove highways. So it's a long, hard slog. What felt for us - for Robert and me and Cary Moon and others fighting this - which felt like an impossible fight at the time is a fight that is now winning in places. Not winning enough - we're not winning fast enough - but it can change. And so that's - I don't want to be too negative. They got money, but organizing and people - and we actually have the public with us on this, just like we have the public with us on housing. So we just have to do more. We just got to keep at it, folks - got to keep at it. We can win this one. Don't allow this story of how hard it was to deal with the unified political class in the City of Seattle for their climate arson - should not deter you. It should inspire you, 'cause I actually won the mayor's office and we actually did do a lot of good. And the next fight is right in front of us again today, so get in it people. We need you. [00:48:46] Robert Cruickshank: I think that's spot on. And I remember coming to work in your office at the very beginning of 2011, when it seemed like the tunnel was just dominating discussion, but not in the mayor's office, right? When I joined, I fully expected to be like - roll my sleeves up to take on that tunnel. Instead, I'm working on the mayor's jobs plan, the Families and Education Levy, on transit. That's the stuff that was really getting done, and I think McGinn left a really great legacy on that. But we didn't win the tunnel fight. And I think we've diagnosed many of the reasons why, but one thing that really stands out to me as I look back from 12, 13 years distance is we didn't have the same density of genuinely progressive and social democratic organizations and people and leaders in Seattle that we have now. I think that matters because Mike's been talking about what's the next fight. I think one of the big fights coming up next year - when it comes time to renew that Move Seattle Levy - that's nearly a billion dollars that's going to be on the table. And we keep getting promised - when we are asked to approve these massive levies - that a lot of that money is going to go to safe streets, it's going to go to protect vulnerable users, we're going to do something to finally get towards Vision Zero. And instead it all gets taken away to build more car infrastructure. At what point do we finally stand - literally in the road - and say, No more. Do we look at the broken promises on the waterfront where we were promised a beautiful pedestrian-friendly waterfront and got another car sewer? We're going to have to organize and come together. We have many more groups now and many more leaders who are willing to stand up and say - We're not passing this levy unless it actually focuses on safe streets, unless it focuses on pedestrians and cyclists and transit users, and gives iron-clad promises to make sure stuff gets built so that some future mayor can't just walk in and start canceling projects left and right that we were promised. That's the lesson I take from this is - we're better organized now, we have more resources now, but it's still going to be a slog, and we're going to have to stand our ground - otherwise we get rolled. [00:50:34] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I thank you both for this conversation today - reflections on the tunnel fight, how it came to be, what it was like in the middle of it, and the lessons that we take moving forward in these elections that we have coming up this year, next year, and beyond. Thanks so much for the conversation. [00:50:50] Mike McGinn: Thank you, Crystal. [00:50:51] Robert Cruickshank: Thank you - it's been wonderful. [00:50:52] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
In this episode, I sit down with Drew, Brendon, and Sam from Grasslands Barbecue in Hood River, Oregon (at Waterfront Park). See all things Grasslands Barbecue here: https://grasslandsbarbecue.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/grasslands_barbecue Location: 403 Portway Ave #300, Hood River, OR 97031 Hours: Saturday/Sunday 11:30 - Sold Out Brisket is Sat only | Sun is Tri-Tip Sample Menu: https://grasslandsbarbecue.com/sample-menu Merch: https://grasslandsbarbecue.com/store
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Carrie Underwood headlined Boots in the Park Saturday night at Waterfront Park and once again it was an AMAZING time! This morning we broke down the show, Jimmie Allen's jorts and why someone called Carrie a "highlighter in more ways than one."
Thieves faking car trouble steal from Portland drivers. 300,000 people could have criminal records sealed under Oregon ‘Clean Slate' bill. 2 favorite St. Patrick's Day traditions merge this year for a huge party in Waterfront Park. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This week marks the 300th edition of Sustainability Now! and, your host, Justin Mog, is thrilled to welcome back into the studio his very first guest from April 2017, Chris Glasser with Streets For People (https://twitter.com/Streets4Peeps , https://www.streetsforpeople.org). S4P's mission is to “transform Louisville's streets and neighborhoods into vibrant, active, inviting places,” and on today's program we will discuss all of the ways the organization is currently pushing for that vision. We discuss: • The need for a Louisville Metro Department of Transportation (DOT) to set priorities and coordinate complex projects so we can actually implement what gets funded (like downtown two-way projects!) • Renewed statewide attention for the need to legalize Automated Traffic Enforcement in Kentucky, with a new automated enforcement bill filed January 4th by Rep. Rachel Roarx (D-38) at the start of the KY General Assembly. • A reformed Speed Hump Policy for Louisville; • An All-Way Stop Policy for urban neighborhood streets; • Why we need to shift the existing SHIFT Scoring for KYTC Projects to new criteria for allocating highway funds; • The potential for an E-Bike Rebate from APCD; • The need for a Roadway Modernization Fund for Louisville to invest in Intelligent Transportation Systems; • The vision for a Waterfront Parkway multiuse path on Campbell St connecting Paristown Pointe to Waterfront Park; and • The stupidity of the state Tourism Board's new proposal for a car tunnel to the Fairgrounds when what we really need is a Summer Transit Network with two high-frequency bus lines that connect the city's primary tourist attractions during a six-month period from April to September; As always, our feature is followed by your community action calendar for the week, so get your calendars out and get ready to take action for sustainability NOW! Sustainability Now! is hosted by Dr. Justin Mog and airs on Forward Radio, 106.5fm, WFMP-LP Louisville, every Monday at 6pm and repeats Tuesdays at 12am and 10am. Find us at http://forwardradio.org The music in this podcast is courtesy of the local band Appalatin and is used by permission. Explore their delightful music at http://appalatin.com
In the "Today in San Diego" podcast, the Padres look to win game four in the National League Division Series tonight against the Dodgers at Petco Park, Police in Pacific Beach work to get another suspect involved in a homicide extradited to San Diego and today in Waterfront Park a festival to celebrate and honor Filipino culture. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Louisville's Waterfront Park is a gem along the Ohio River. But is the foot of the Big Four Bridge in Louisville as good as its counterpart in Jeffersonville? We discuss on this week's Access Louisville podcast — specifically on the news that a new "eatertainment" facility (a new pickleball bar) is planned at the waterfront.As to the answer of which is better — we suppose it depends on what you're looking for. Jeffersonville has restaurants, shops and bars while Louisville has quiet green space and manicured landscapes. Both have their perks. Later in the show we discuss the upcoming Louisville Beer Week as well as favorite Louisville breweries. And we talk about the reopening of Down One Bourbon bar on Main Street.Access Louisville is a weekly podcast from Louisville Business First. It's available on popular podcast services.
Dan Guillou, a graduate, advocate and volunteer for Canine Companions, chats about the life-changing work of service dogs trained to serve adults and children with disabilities. Guillou is joined by Neville Billimoria, SVP of Marketing and Community Relations for Mission Federal Credit Union, to discuss Guillou's harrowing story; the September 17 "Dogfest" at Waterfront Park; and the services provided by Canine Companions.
The Patricks convene briefly to learn a little about the new Envirome Urban Design Studio, a short convo on Marcus Green's story about land uses changes at Waterfront Park, and longer discussion looking at Louisville Business First's new series on transportation in Louisville
The word “transformational” is perhaps overused when it comes to public and private development projects. But there are few undertakings in Seattle's history as transformative as the Waterfront Park redevelopment. As construction kicks into gear on the Overlook Walk and other signature elements of this major makeover, we sit down with the City of Seattle's Office of the Waterfront and Civic Projects Director Marshall Foster. The City's former Planning Director, Foster has led the Office of the Waterfront since 2014. He's had a front row seat to Seattle's biggest project for more than a decade and takes us behind the scenes on a project that is redefining how downtown, and the city, connect with the waterfront to produce what should be an unrivaled urban experience. Join us for Seattle City Makers with Jon Scholes and guest Marshall Foster.
The Burlington Brewers Festival is back at Waterfront Park this weekend, and Kurt and Anthony spoke with two people involved in one of the Champlain Valley's most popular events.
Adam Zolot started his Dogpatch Paddle business after watching the construction of Crane Cove park outside his apartment window. Now he's leading youth camps and a Facebook paddleboard club with 1,200 members. Total SF hosts Heather Knight and Peter Hartlaub take a paddleboat tour of Crane Cove with Zolot, Knight almost crashes into a yacht, and the pair meet a friendly seal whose name is Klay. (Or Chase.) Dogpatch Paddle will move into a Pier 70 space with the YMCA later this year. More information at dogpatchpaddle.com. Produced by Peter Hartlaub. Music is "The Tide Will Rise" by the Sunset Shipwrecks off their album "Community" and cable car bell-ringing by 8-time champion Byron Cobb. Follow Total SF adventures at www.sfchronicle.com/totalsf Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
On this Hacks & Wonks week in review, Crystal talks with activist, community leader, former mayor of Seattle, and Executive Director of America Walks, Mike McGinn about labor news, the downsides of car-centric planning, and alternative 911 responders. They discuss the first worker victory at a Seattle Starbucks, the tulip farm workers strike, King County elected officials getting involved in the concrete worker lockout, and an initiative to raise the minimum wage in Tukwila. Then they dive into the surprise highway in Seattle Waterfront plans and why adding lanes doesn't reduce traffic. Finally, Crystal and Mike discuss pushback on alternate responses to policing and what moving those jobs out of SPD looks like. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Mike McGinn, at @mayormcginn. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com. Resources “Seattle Starbucks employees approve union, the first on the West Coast” by Paige Browning from KOUW: https://www.kuow.org/stories/seattle-starbucks-wins-union-vote-the-first-on-the-west-coast “Tulip farm workers go on strike one week before popular Mount Vernon festival” by Angeli Kakade from King5: https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/farm-worker-strike-skagit-valley-tulip-festival/281-86d05687-6ab7-4d9d-9f94-8c9eb9c924b4 “County Proposes Concrete Co-Op as Private Companies Continue to Throttle Supply and Lock Out Workers” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/03/23/county-proposes-concrete-co-op-as-private-companies-continue-to-throttle-supply-and-lock-out-workers/ “Initiative aimed at Southcenter could raise minimum wage in Tukwila to match SeaTac, Seattle” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/initiative-aimed-at-southcenter-could-raise-minimum-wage-in-tukwila-to-match-seatac-seattle “Surface Highway Undermines Seattle's Waterfront Park” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/03/20/surface-highway-undermines-seattles-waterfront-park/ “Alternate Response in Seattle Meets Another Hurdle” by Amy Sundberg from Notes from the Emerald City: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/amysundberg/issues/alternate-response-in-seattle-meets-another-hurdle-1090894?utm_campaign=Issue&utm_content=view_in_browser&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Notes+from+the+Emerald+City “UW Can Keep Civilians Who Replaced Campus Cops, Choe Show Canceled, Dembowski Bows Out” by Paul Kiefer and Erica C. Barnett from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2022/03/21/uw-can-keep-civilians-who-replaced-campus-cops-choe-show-canceled-dembowski-bows-out/ “Third and Pine bus stop to temporarily close amid downtown Seattle safety concerns” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/third-and-pine-bus-stop-to-temporarily-close-amid-downtown-seattle-safety-concerns/ Downtown Seattle Association: https://downtownseattle.org The State of Downtown from the Downtown Seattle Association: https://downtownseattle.org/events/state-of-downtown/ Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at OfficialHacksAndWonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: activist, community leader, former mayor of Seattle, and Executive Director of America Walks - and someone with a mean jump shot - the excellent Mike McGinn. Welcome back. [00:00:58] Mike McGinn: Thank you - although I don't think I have jumped on my shot for quite a long time. In fact, even - I played JV in college and they called me "Sunday Papers McGinn" - and the reason they called me that was they said that I didn't even jump as high as the Sunday papers. Now mind you - back then the Sunday papers were thicker than they are today, but even then it was still an insult about my jumping ability. [00:01:23] Crystal Fincher: All right - "Sunday Papers McGinn" - "Mayor McSchwinn" and "Sunday Papers McGinn" - there we are. [00:01:29] Mike McGinn: They also called me "Flash" because I lost every sprint, so it really is amazing that I could even hang at all on the court. I had to make it up with savvy and moxie - so there you go. [00:01:44] Crystal Fincher: But it worked. I wanted to start out just talking about some - one, seriously cool thing that happened this week - the Starbucks employees approved the first union on the West Coast here in Seattle, Starbucks's hometown, with the unanimous vote by the employees at the Broadway and Denny store on Capitol Hill to unionize. There is now a unionized Starbucks store on Capitol Hill in Seattle, and this is a really big deal. [00:02:14] Mike McGinn: I think that - I don't know how to put this in the great arc of the union story in America, but it does feel like we're starting to see - as we know, there was a real - unions saw a tremendous decline in post-World War II America. Immediately after the war, unionization was much stronger, there was a lot of shared wealth, the middle class grew stronger, broader, wealthier over that time and it really went together. Then we saw - you got to go back to the Reagan era - breaking the air traffic controller union was a highly visible sign, but there was a lot of other work that was done to weaken unions. And public opinions of unions declined as well. Unions were - oftentimes it was employee unions and public employee unions, excuse me - was really the strength of the union movement. And there were still, of course, craft unions and manufacturing unions and other service worker unions - but they really felt under siege. In the City of Seattle, for example, and it still goes on today - will a new hotel be a union hotel or a non-union hotel? And that's existential for the union workers because they don't want a non-union hotel to drive down wages so that they can't compete for wages, or their hotel that they work for can't compete. Same thing for grocery stores, so something like unionization in a Starbucks - coffee shops and more retail workers unionizing - that's a big deal, considering how many Starbucks there are across the country. It's also behind the push for the $15 an hour minimum wage - or really should be starting to get higher now - behind the push for paid sick leave, behind the push for childcare. Unions helped provide a floor for wages and working conditions, and we've now turned to the government to provide some of that floor - but with all the rising inequality across the country, we're seeing more people turn to unions, and it just feels like a change. So we'll have to see what happens moving forward, but it certainly feels like a change. [00:04:47] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, an absolute change and the link between the weakening of unions and income inequality is substantial. Certainly the pushback is happening - more than 150 other Starbucks locations are working to join the same union, including 6 in the Seattle area. So we're going to continue to see this with Starbucks, certainly with Amazon, another locally-based company that we're seeing a variety of unionization pushes across the country with that. And interesting because - trying to lead within the tech sector and the issue of unionization being important there - lots of times we're used to thinking about not just the lower wage jobs, but even the higher wage jobs is, "Oh, they make a good wage. They have no reason for a union," but my goodness, when you talk about all of the toxic workplace cultures that we've seen there, and actually even though someone may be making six figures and in not the lowest income bracket, the share of profit that is being absorbed by the company and kept from the workers, even in those higher paid jobs, is substantial. So it's just going to be really interesting to continue to follow these movements, and also looking at other local strike actions and labor actions. Another one this week, with the tulip farmers going on strike - tulip farm workers going on strike just before the Mount Vernon Tulip festival, which is really popular, but they have issues with worker conditions. They've been expected to work with lesions on their hands, their employers are not paying for PPE, and in very low wage jobs. The word there is that they continue to have a dialogue and they're working through it and both sides say that they're confident they can, but it is taking this collective action by workers to make this an issue that is pressing enough for employers to deal with. [00:06:53] Mike McGinn: Yeah, and we see an economy in which there's generally higher employment right now, so that's giving a little more bargaining power to workers, because the employment numbers are higher or the unemployment numbers are lower overall. It's a consequence of the inequality we've seen and grown - and in a period of growth - the pendulum swinging back a little bit. Will it be sustained? Probably will be determined by how government behaves ultimately in response to this. Do they support these movements? Or do we kind of go back to a time when the rules and procedures are set up to suppress it, and give more power to the companies in this discussion? [00:07:47] Crystal Fincher: Well, that's an excellent point regarding the response by government leaders and how that impacts the situation for workers. Because we see that with the concrete workers' strike action, which really has turned into a lockout by the concrete companies. The workers offered to go back to work, but the concrete companies have largely declined the workers' ability to do so. And not just that - the few workers who they have allowed to come back to work, they have not allowed them to drive trucks that are part of the company's fleets. They have actually acquired some old beat-down raggedy trucks that they've literally Sharpied the required information on the doors, and it just seems like a petty retaliatory action. And in response, we have seen throughout this process - some local leaders seem to put pressure on the workers by not forcing the companies to come back to the table or to respond in good faith. But Dow Constantine has basically said - hey, "Clearly the local concrete industry is failing the people of King County, and I won't let our region's infrastructure hang in the balance." And in response, he and members of the King County Council have proposed a local co-op, a publicly owned concrete co-op - to prevent situations like this from happening, to provide reliable, low-cost, on-time concrete to ensure that affordable housing projects, critical infrastructure gets completed on time. How do you see the leaders' responses in helping or hindering this whole process? Just how would you negotiate through this? [00:09:39] Mike McGinn: I just want to say I find this really fascinating - and I am an outsider - I have no particular insights on what's going on. But first of all, just the historical analogy - we have a public Port because the people that owned the docks on the Seattle waterfront could control how things worked. That affected - anybody who shipped through the public waterfront docks had to deal with the people who owned the docks - that was the reason we now have a public Port, because we didn't want to allow a few companies to control the flow of goods in and out of the state. And that was during the progressive era, same era in which we ended up with a publicly-owned electric utility and things like that - so to me, just the historical parallel is fascinating. I think the other piece of the parallel here is that - clearly, it's the issue of whether the workers are getting paid well, but this is also the rest of the business community saying we're hurting by the way you companies are acting. So what we see here is a split in the business community - so you have both Girmay Zahilay, a pretty progressive guy on the Council, and Dow Constantine - who's he's a progressive, but he's a more reliable partner to the business interest - let's remember, he came forward and he helped the Convention Center out with some short-term loans so they could keep going. And it's places like the Convention Center and the people who build massive infrastructure who really want to keep that concrete flowing. So it's just the politics of this here are fascinating, in which we're now seeing concrete production as a public good - or as a private good that must be handled by the public to ensure the smooth function of the economy. Now, if you look back at the Port - although it was hired to protect the small merchants using the Port - like any entity owned, run by the government, it can start leaning in on behalf of the big companies. So the Port itself is known for how it treats independent truckers, the Port itself is known for how it treats workers at its facilities. So I don't know - I'm just really struck by this - that we've come to this, where you have labor interests and other business interests saying the concrete companies need to get their act together, or we're going to take the business away from you. That's quite a moment here in Seattle. Let's see if it starts extending to other public goods as well - like maybe municipal broadband - maybe that's another place where only a few providers are managing to treat the rest of the community not so well, and we should look at public ownership. [00:12:37] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, another thing this week that was announced is an exciting initiative to raise the minimum wage in Tukwila, which includes Southcenter Mall - actually a really big employment hub for that city and that entire area, with a ton of retail and service workers - to raise the minimum wage there to $15 an hour. And it's next to SeaTac, it's next to other cities that have increased minimum wages - and so it's sitting there as an outlier and the Transit Riders Union is leading an initiative, a municipal initiative, to make that change. So this is a really interesting and exciting development - a test of worker-focused policy at the local level. And it's going to be really interesting to see how this unfolds. How do you see it? [00:13:35] Mike McGinn: The cities in this area - SeaTac, Tukwila, Burien, Kent, Auburn - are all places which have become much more diverse racially than they were 20, 30, 40 years ago. And it's due in large part towards communities of color and immigrant refugee communities being pushed out by costs in Seattle. These are workers who - we're talking a lot of low wage service workers - who have to commute distances into the City or find local work. I view this as very positive that they're pushing for this. We know that the SeaTac fight was over $15, which occurred before anywhere - led to that SeaTac City Council being in the crosshairs from both sides as to who would get elected, who would hold the majority - of one that was more supportive of these communities, one that was more diverse than in the past, or one that was more business friendly. And I don't know, I'll just say that the trend continues here where we're seeing more and more public demand from the communities in those places to get more respect as to how they're paid and how difficult it is to make a go of it in expensive Pugetopolis. [00:15:11] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely - and so this initiative would set Tukwila's minimum wage to approximately match SeaTac's, which started at $15 an hour with cost-of-living increases. Right now, it is about $17.50 an hour, just around there - and so it's going to be really exciting to see how workers organize, how the community responds to this. There's going to need to be some signature collection and a campaign put forward for this, but it - being led by the Transit Riders Union who has experience and the resources necessary to do this - I am eager to see how it unfolds. Well - [00:15:57] Mike McGinn: This is just fascinating - if you look at the demographics of Tukwila, which I'm doing on the Census - it's 20% Black, it is 26% Asian - that's Black alone or Asian alone, not looking at mixed. 6.6% mixed and 30% white - so it's really extremely diverse place, and a place where - we'll all be better off if the folks who have been pushed to the bottom of the economic ladder have a better wage. We really will all be better off if we can do this. [00:16:37] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and another notable thing about this is - in some of the other pieces of legislation that have raised minimum wages, it was limited to certain types of jobs, or sometimes accepted - there were allowances or exceptions made for certain classifications of jobs to not be included. And this is an across-the-board minimum wage - saying that we're setting a floor for workers, period, that needs to be competitive with the region. And Tukwila's sitting in between Seattle and SeaTac and other areas, and neighboring cities can have as much of a $3 an hour difference in what the minimum wages are. So hopefully this also helps to speak to the competitiveness of the region, and just helping the people who are working and serving us to be able to participate in our economy and enjoy the fruits of it just like everyone else. Also want to talk about - this week, a story that came out that I know you commented on - the Seattle Times Editorial Board was pushing back against people's surprised reactions to see just how car-centric the new Seattle Waterfront Park is. When this was sold - again, lots of conversations and history and context from the period leading up to when you became mayor and while you were, but - lots of talk about opening up the Waterfront, and this can be just a jewel of the City, and this is going to be a wonderful place for families to come and pedestrians and bicyclists, and like other waterfronts and their areas that are great pavilions for people to just enjoy and have fun, and a world-class park basically is how it was sold. And then you see it, and there's a highway that replaced the viaduct. How did a highway become part of this, and why are they trying to say that that is what they set people up to expect? [00:18:50] Mike McGinn: I think there's a few different factors in here. And one of the factors, there's a bunch of different things going on here. Maybe you want to edit this piece out - I have a little bit of background noise, so I'll start my answer again here. When you look at this, that was the debate initially - and the call from people was if we don't build the tunnel, if you try to just have a surface highway, you're going to end up with a big highway on the Waterfront. So that was a big part of the argument that was made by the tunnel advocates. And of course there were still some people that just wanted to rebuild the elevated - but if you had to rebuild it to modern standards, it would've been twice as wide, because wider lanes, full shoulder, et cetera, et cetera. So that was a big part of the argument. And for just - I would say the single largest reason why we ended up with the road we have there - is just a belief system that you actually can't remove roadway capacity. You just can't remove it. So that's why we ended up with the tunnel. People would say - well, if we don't have a tunnel, then all those cars will flood the City streets, or all of those cars will flood I-5, and the economy will ground to a halt. In fact, that wasn't just the public statement - I was lectured privately by Governor Gregoire, at the time, asking me if I wanted to destroy the City economy by snarling I-5. They just can't let go of this idea that we must have highway capacity to accommodate the cars. And that attitude then found its way to the surface, even after the tunnel was built. The fact is that - at its base, there's a four-lane road, two lanes each way, which is a big road - let's be really clear about it. A four-lane road, two lanes each way. Those are roads that we find very uncomfortable in lots of parts of Seattle, whether that's Lake City Way, whether that's Rainier Ave, whether it's MLK - throughout the City, they tend to produce very high speeds on them because you have the two lanes side-by-side. They don't have the attributes of a good downtown City street, which will be more narrow, and just naturally slows down vehicles when you do that. So you start there, then you add the ferry holding areas and then they say, "We need to put in a bus line," and this also was a controversial - actually, it wasn't really a controversial decision - it should have been more controversial, honestly. That was that the buses from West Seattle could have been sent through Pioneer Square - and if you took the streets on either side of the park down there, Occidental, you could have had one street dedicated to buses going in, another street dedicated to buses going out - and you wouldn't need a dedicated bus lane on the Waterfront. In fact, you could have kicked the cars off those streets and made those bus-only corridors at the time. And it would've functioned a lot like Pike and Pine function on the way up to Capitol Hill - would've been about the same amount of traffic, bus traffic, there. And it would've been delivering people to a place where there's a lot of businesses, a lot of residents, but it was rejected because the Pike/Pine neighborhood advocates and business advocates said, "We don't want the bus lines. Bus lines are bad, they'll hurt us." They said, "It'll be like Third Avenue through us." That's not true - it would've been more like Pike/Pine in terms of the number of vehicles, number of bus trips. So that was part of it too. So by the time you say we have to have room for all the cars, and we have to have room for all the ferries, and we need a dedicated bus lane - next thing you know, you got something that's eight to six lanes wide through big chunks of it, and that's a really big road. [00:22:57] Crystal Fincher: It's a huge road. [00:22:59] Mike McGinn: It's a huge road. [00:23:00] Crystal Fincher: The Urbanist did a great article about this. So just to - again, they tore down the viaduct and put just as many lanes on the ground as they did - and actually more south of Columbia street, where it turns into that queuing area for the ferries - plus the tunnel underneath, and bypass lanes, and the new Elliot Way also adds four more lanes - funneling more cars and trucks into Belltown and the Waterfront, directly adjacent to the new aquarium - that's supposed to be a centerpiece of this Waterfront Park. So there are very few parks that people think of, when you think of a park, that actually include a literal highway going in the middle of it. This is an area where I learned from you, where I was actually wrong. We talk a lot about, "Hey, Mike McGinn turned out to be right. A lot of people were wrong." The kind of roads and transit - surface roads and transit - option where - no, we actually don't need to replace the viaduct. We don't need the big stuff. If we actually add transit capacity and focus on just reasonable roads through here, we can actually do this without spending billions of dollars that are likely to create cost overruns in addition to this. We ended up just building a tunnel and a highway on top of it without sufficiently increasing transit capacity at all. My goodness. [00:24:32] Mike McGinn: It's one of the hardest things for people to really accept - is this idea that the amount of traffic we have is not a fixed amount that's driven by some set of external factors. There are clearly external factors driving the amount of traffic, but there's so much latent demand for driving, and so much of driving that could be replaced by other modes - that actually the amount of traffic you have in successful cities - if you're a city that's fading, the traffic will be driven by your economic activity, right? But in a successful city, the amount of traffic you have is driven by the amount of lanes you have coming in and out. If you reduce the lanes, the traffic reduces, and this is a very hard thing for people to understand. And the opposite is also true - when you expand the lanes, the traffic increases to fill the lanes. And it is because there are tons of alternatives - we do have buses running in and out of town, and some people take the bus because it's a pain in the butt to drive. And people are going to take light rail because it's better than driving, but it probably won't reduce traffic on I-5 that much. That line to Northgate will bring more people into downtown, and it'll bring them in a more pleasant way than if they had to be in stop-and-go traffic on I-5 all the way downtown. But we're still going to have about the same amount of traffic on I-5, because traffic is kind of like a gas - you remember your physics - it expands to fill the room available to it. It's one of the reasons - I'll get this in - it's one of the reason people love bollards. If you don't actually put up a bollard to protect a street or a place from cars going, or a curb stop to protect a place, the cars just expand to fill it. And it's a very hard thing for people to sometimes grasp. And that the opposite is true - that when you reduce the amount of lanes, when you reduce the amount of space available for cars, people will make different choices. And it might be a different choice about when they drive, it might be a choice about where they drive - maybe if you're in West Seattle, Green Lake Park doesn't look so good anymore. I don't know why it ever looked so good, if you're in West Seattle, to go to Green Lake - but there are enough discretionary trips in the system that we can conserve some trips without hurting our quality of life. In fact, there's an argument to be made it might improve your quality of life if people were looking to take shorter trips closer to their home and supporting local businesses and local efforts. Not everyone can do it, I'm not saying everyone can, but enough people can that you don't need that bigger highway on the Waterfront, and you don't need as many lanes coming into town. By the way, I'm going to toss one more thing into this mix - something that nobody talks about, it's been bugging me for a couple of decades now - is the 509 extension as part of the Puget Sound Gateway Program. Now, it's bad enough that we're building a highway that will cut through communities, add more pollution, et cetera, et cetera - but you know how everybody takes the back way to the airport from Seattle? Well, imagine if that road is extended to I-5 - people coming north on I-5 will have a back way into downtown. If you think the backups at the First Avenue South Bridge are bad now, wait 'til you see what it's like when you basically are mainlining cars from I-5 to the west of SeaTac Airport, straight to that First Avenue South Bridge. And who's going to breathe all the pollution of those idling cars? Residents of South Park and Georgetown and the Duwamish Valley. And then they'll cross that and then they'll hit that stretch of road heading into downtown - and where are they going to get off, if they're trying to go downtown? They're going to get off at that interchange just south of downtown. So that'll mean yet more cars in the industrial area, yet more cars in Pioneer Square. So this 509 extension, and it's incredibly against the interests of the Port as well. Port's one of the biggest proponents - they have this vision we'll build this and our trucks will just get on the road - and they'll just fly out to I-5 south by going down the 509 extension. But they're not thinking it through - because what is it going to mean to them to have 30,000-50,000 more cars a day clogging the industrial area because they've got a shortcut to downtown that enables them to skip the I-5 main line into Seattle. To me, this is a known impact of the 509 extension. I guess I'm telling this story, not just because I don't think we should build 509, but because it illustrates the absolute inability of the Port and business and engineering interests to tell the public the real impact of adding lanes. They believe it will reduce congestion - instead, it's going to send many more cars and much more pollution into the exact places where we say people should have cleaner air and should have fewer cars. [00:29:48] Crystal Fincher: Where it's currently creating shorter lifespans - it is literally taking years off of people's lives. [00:29:53] Mike McGinn: Literally killing people. Yes. [00:29:57] Crystal Fincher: And creating chronic illnesses - all of the cost and impacts associated with that. It's really counterintuitive, admittedly. [00:30:07] Mike McGinn: Yes. [00:30:07] Crystal Fincher: Because of our society, it's counterintuitive and people make the assumption - and feel confident in making the assumption - that if you add lanes then, "Hey, it's clear traffic." People think about when they're in a backup and they see a lane open up next to them and they can pull into it and speed up. And that's what they apply - they apply that logic to adding that lane is going to allow everybody to get in that lane and speed up. But that's actually the problem. And this is uncontroversial in planning circles. It's not like there is conflicting data and we don't know if adding lanes actually increases traffic. No, we've known conclusively for decades that adding lanes on highways increases traffic. The demand will always catch up - that's how it works. So there is no traffic congestion and especially on a route like that - people talk about the need to prioritize freight movement and that is absolutely a concern - you're actually making that tougher. You're putting more cars on the roads that right now are being heavily used by companies moving goods throughout our region. It just is so frustrating to continue to watch elected leaders, at all levels, continue to say things that are absolutely false. This is absolute misinformation that adding lanes reduces traffic and - [00:31:41] Mike McGinn: They know it's false. It's an iron law of congestion, it's an iron law of highway expansion. And again, it works in both directions and they know - but there is such a set of industries, and it kind of relates back to this concrete strike. There's a set of industries that - they need their multi-billion dollar cash infusion every few years to keep feeding them - and it's not just the construction companies, it's the companies that do the planning, it's the companies that provide the lawyers, it's the companies that help float the financial bonds to finance it all. Then you add in the trade unions that really want the union jobs associated with major infrastructure projects. And now you've got both sides of the aisle with support for this. So this last Transportation Bill was vastly better than prior ones in terms of the mix of spending, but it's got another multi-billion dollar fix for the companies addicted to the regular supply of money from the Feds and from the state for the work they do - same thing happened at the national level. They all have an interest in just not accepting something all the studies, all the professionals know to be true - because if they accepted it, they would turn off the money supply to people who really just - their entire businesses and their reason for being exists around that. So you can argue correctly that if you built - projects to build more sidewalks, build more transit, build more bike lanes - produce more jobs per dollar - but they wouldn't produce more jobs for the people that are currently getting the dollars. So they're not terribly interested in that - in changing the dollar flows - so that's what really drives this. Then they mislead the public that the new lanes will solve congestion, or they're just building out the system, or they're fixing bottlenecks, or they'll even tell you - this is one of my favorites - it'll reduce the number of cars stuck in traffic, so they won't be idling, contributing to global warming. They'll actually argue it'll reduce pollution, because it'll be more free flowing. And these are just all not truthful statements. And they're all too often made by professionals who know better, but they are in a system where the political leadership demands that they keep delivering the dollars to these companies. And that's just how it is. So we all got to keep doing our work to let people know that the costs of that are actually way too high to just keep some people in business. We need to take a look at a different approach. [00:34:38] Crystal Fincher: Well, this week there was also some very concerning events at the Seattle Police Department's presentation to the Public Safety and Human Services Committee of the Seattle City Council - a number of challenging things - and again, I highly encourage you to read, to subscribe, to Amy Sundberg's Notes from the Emerald City newsletter. She covers this frequently, comprehensively. But one thing I wanted to pull out was just - Brian Maxey, when making an SPD presentation regarding - I don't know if folks recall - the analysis that the City had done regarding SPD officers and how they were spending their time. So an independent analysis determined that 49% of the 911 calls that are currently handled by SPD were not emergencies, crimes - they could be handled by organizations other than SPD. This traditionally has been an uncontroversial thing where - before we saw that the 2020 protests - there are lots of departments around the country, several local ones and SPD also had chiefs who talked about this. They were saying, "Hey, we actually feel ill equipped to respond to calls where no law's being broken, but someone is unhappy that an unhoused person is around there," or "Someone's having a mental health crisis," or "There's just activity that doesn't quite rise to the level of criminal activity," or "Maybe just a car is parked in the wrong spot." And that could be handled just as sufficiently with a civil response and does not require an armed police response. And so the analysis was just about half of all of the calls, that could happen with - this presented an exciting opportunity, because my goodness, SPD has been complaining that they need resources to respond to these 911 calls, and we need to get police on the streets to be able to do this. And wow, you actually just got news that half of those calls are not sufficient enough or at the level where it needs an officer response. So it looks like the staffing crisis you've talked about actually has its own built-in solution - let's intelligently target what we respond to and what we don't, and where we use very expensive police resources that carry a high risk of escalation, and completely reduce that and reformat that. Unfortunately, SPD, instead of recognizing that opportunity immediately pushed back, and said, "Hey, we only identify 12% of the calls that we're confident that can be answered with an alternate response." I also want to note that 12% is not an insignificant number, so that should also be moved around. They basically said, "Well, we need more time to do more assessment and we need to do a study and create different protocols." And mire this in process to try and run out the clock and hope people lose the political will to do anything about this. They were reporting this week saying that - we actually did some revising and we actually don't think anything needs to be moved outside of the department. Anything that needs to be handled - we feel that we can do it within the police department, and maybe it'll look different and we'll try and make it seem like an alternate response, but it's still coming out of the police budget and using police resources - and just a challenge there. So this was one of the first times this issue has been revisited since they said they needed to do additional analysis - and they were light on details, but certainly indicated that they are not willing to offload anything further. And that anything that needs to happen within the City, they plan to use a police budget and armed or officer resources to respond to. What did you think of this? [00:38:56] Mike McGinn: Well, it is a great question, obviously. What do you really need police officers, and what do you not need police officers for? The police department may have a little bias there because they think they're pretty good. It's natural, it's human - I don't want to pick on the police department for doing that. We just need to recognize it - that things that they have historically done, they think it's appropriate for them to have done and for them to be involved in - that's just natural. So my first reaction to this would be that this is something that the police department needs to be having input into the decision, but you shouldn't be asking them to drive the process. It just may be too hard for them to do - to be able to separate those things. And when you add into that - there's an internal dynamic within the police department too, which is chiefs don't want to get sideways with the force, or leadership doesn't want to get sideways with the rank and file. And the rank and file - they're unionized under the Police Officer's Guild - and it's just really instinctive for public employee unions, period, to believe that only the union member can do this job, so if you're taking a scope of work away from us, that's just bad. That's just reducing - it's the other side of whether it's a union hotel or a non-union hotel. If you're a union hotel worker, it's like I don't want to - let's keep these jobs here - and again, it happens across all the unions. What makes this conversation harder is that police are still respected as having a word on safety - well, the police say we'll be unsafe if a police officer doesn't do this - they have a little more pull with the public. I believe I recall the firefighters were insisting that 911 calls for fire be handled by firefighters, because only firefighters themselves had the requisite expertise. And it's a good argument, but it is one that has to be tested and thought through. I think that's the type of thing that really has to be examined closely - is a good argument as to why this one requires a police officer as opposed to that one - but I don't think you can ask the police department to make that call. A mayor would have to set up a system where somebody else is doing the hard analysis and making the ultimate recommendations on how to do this, and it should have more stakeholders at the table as to how to do that. You can't ask an agency or department of government to reorganize itself into a reduced role or out of existence. It's like asking a cat not to be a cat - they just can't say I'm not going to be a cat anymore - they're cats. And it's awfully hard to tell a police department to redefine itself in a way that it isn't what it thinks it is. So that's my takeaway - is that this is a completely natural reaction, and somebody else better be in there digging and actually making the decisions - and ultimately will take hard choices from the mayor who will then face a loss of confidence from the union representing those folks, because you just reduced the potential future number of union jobs. And then there's the leadership, right? What's the potential size of my constituency - you just reduce the potential size of my constituency and the number of jobs I can hand out - therefore, you reduce my bargaining power for wages, and you reduce the promotion opportunities for people in the ranks, and all sorts of things. This is just - you got to separate the institutional imperatives of a union and a department from the actual facts of what does or does not take a police officer to handle - and that's a process that you can't put the police department in charge of. [00:43:20] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely and even in - and collective bargaining is bargaining with all sides at the table and one side not dictating what's going to happen. I also think it's important to highlight through this - the issue of having job security and protections is absolutely fair and legitimate and should be discussed. Moving these positions out of the police department does not mean that we have to move them to non-union positions. It may not be SPOG - it could be a different union, but that respond to the needs that the City actually has, that appropriately manage the resources that the City has, that enable the City to be as safe as it deserves to be. And so allowing responses to be laser focused on improving safety. If we have data that shows that something does increase safety, great. If we have data that shows the opposite, then that should be the signal to reallocate those resources to things that are more effective at doing that. I hope that we see that from the mayor, that there is direction saying it looks like we could more effectively use the people who are there in a role that better serves the public. And that seems like it would be crucial to building the trust that everyone acknowledges is lacking, or certainly not where people would like it to be. So I just hope that the mayor does lead this in the right direction, and doesn't just hand this off to the police department to drive this process. [00:45:09] Mike McGinn: I would add something else too - and a PubliCola article recently about the UW Campus police talked about this issue. There's also protections under labor law that you can't take a union job and give it somewhere else - potentially non-union job - it's called skimming. And so the argument that the police union can make, and it was an argument that was made by the UW Police Department rank and file, was that certain unarmed campus responders being hired by the University were skimming the union jobs of the SPD cops. And there was a ruling in the state - that no, that's not skimming - but that's a legal backdrop that also provides some power to the union, and you understand why that rule is there. If, let's say, a union has managed to unionize a portion of the workforce, you can't just reclassify them, give them a new title to do the same job and say but you're not union now. The skimming rule is there for a real reason, but that can also become an obstacle here towards changing things. I dealt with that some as mayor as well - when we were looking at how to reallocate responsibilities within City government, from one department to another, or from one set of workers to another - the skimming issue would come up. [00:46:47] Crystal Fincher: Just kudos to UW for having the will to set an example in placing safety of the people on the campus first and doing what all of the data showed would increase how safe people are and making that change. To your point, that was actually a really important ruling by Washington's Public Employee Relations Commission - to say, "Actually, this was done okay. Let's continue to prioritize worker safety, worker protections, making sure that we don't just hurt unions by doing this and make it harder for people to unionize - but balance the needs of the population there, the actual core focus of the organization, and aligning how those organizations are structured with protected workers within them." [00:47:45] Mike McGinn: And kudos to UW for taking the case all the way through and not simply saying, "Well, we can't do it because we might have to have a lawsuit, or we don't want to upset that union because of their role in the system." That can be harder for elected officials to do. Honestly, it keeps bringing up for me - the issue of public safety and the treatment of members of the public - the degree to which police officers have union protections, I think really is something that needs to be reevaluated. The idea, and I faced this as mayor - and every mayor faces it, every chief faces it - when they ask to do discipline, it's like, what is more important? The right of that police officer to keep their job, or the right of the public to be free of the conduct of a police officer that doesn't meet the standards that we believe the community's entitled to. And too often, the gist of it is - well, the right of the police officer to hold the job is higher under the law than the right of the people to be protected. Or - now, I shouldn't say under the law - but in practice, that's what happens. I don't think people appreciate - I was often asked, "Well, why don't you just fire the bad cops?" And it's like - we're trying, but it's a lot harder than you think. And quite often, the defense about why you can't fire a cop, and we've seen this since I was mayor too, was, "Well, nobody ever got fired for that before." And that itself is a defense for why you can't let go of someone. And as the force gets smaller, as it is right now, they're still not filling the empty spots. It's a lot harder to hide somebody in some department where they're not going to have to interact with the public in some way or another. This is a challenge. I think that that's a fundamental issue we have to start facing as a society as well - certainly, public employees should have the protections that any public employee has whether unionized or not, but have we gone too far - and for this particular set of workers - on the balance between the protection of someone to hold a job - a job that entails carrying a weapon, having the ability to arrest somebody, having the ability to stop someone for questioning and detain someone - all of these things just go to the fundamental rights, individual rights of members of the community. And on balance, whose rights are more important here? I think that calls for some reexamination of the union, of how we handle this. [00:50:42] Crystal Fincher: I will leave it there because that was well said - completely agree. [00:50:47] Mike McGinn: We'll call it good - thanks for having me, Crystal. [00:50:49] Crystal Fincher: And with that, I thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, March 25th, 2022. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler and assistant producer is Dr. Shannon Cheng, with assistance from Emma Mudd. And our insightful co-host today was activist, community leader, former mayor of Seattle, and Executive Director of America Walks, Mike McGinn. You can find Mike on Twitter @mayormcginn, you can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I, and now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar, be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to resources referenced in the show at OfficialHacksAndWonks.com and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
A one-and-a-half acre parcel of land in downtown San Diego's Waterfront Park will be transformed into a sports park. The County Board of Supervisors just approved a proposal to move forward with construction bids for the park. Meanwhile, a local development firm has purchased property across the street from the recently opened Clairemont Drive trolley station and hopes to build twice as many apartments than previously planned. Plus, a new partnership between Caltrans and San Diego's newest homeless outreach program is working to help unsheltered people living along the state's highways.
This week, we're back in Charleston's Waterfront Park, spilling the beans with Tarry Summers! Tarry is a real estate developer, investor, and entrepreneur based out of Columbus, Ohio and has his hands in a variety of businesses. We get into some great stuff in this episode. You don't want to miss it! //SAY HI TO TARRY Website: https://tarrysummers.com/ Instagram: @tarrysumms Facebook: /tarrysummers Mastermind Group: https://realestatemastermindnetwork.com/
This week on Spilling the Beans, my buddy Jennings Smith and I sat down at Charleston's Waterfront Park to chat about his investment beginnings, how to value to the marketplace by investing in yourself, and what he's got going on in the cryptocurrency space. I first met Jennings a few years ago through my Commercial Empire mastermind, and today, he and his business partner at Live Oak Capital share majority equity in over 900 doors. He's also the co-founder of the Facebook group "My First Million in Multifamily," which has over 21,000 members. You don't want to miss this one! //SAY HI TO JENNINGS Instagram: @jenningsfostersmithjr Facebook: /jennings.smith.50 My First Million in Multifamily: https://www.facebook.com/groups/3624929014238193
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