Mayor McGinn
Yesterday, Mayor McGinn sent the City Council his proposal for a $243-million seawall bond measure on a special May ballot. Said McGinn:
We have a responsibility to address basic public safety risks. I have directed SDOT to accelerate replacement of the seawall. I look forward to working with the Council on the financing for this critical work.
To up the ante, the Mayor’s office also noted that the accelerated schedule would create a “funding gap of nearly $20 million in 2011 for the Seawall Replacement Project.” If work on the seawall is to accelerate in an uninterrupted fashion, the money would need to be scrounged up this year.
Said the Council: “How’s never? Will never work for you?”
Publicola quotes Council president Richard Conlin as saying:
When you come up with these big projects, you can’t just say one day, “Hey, we’re going to do this,” then the next day say, “No, wait, now we’re going to do something else.” Our voters have been very willing to vote for things in the past, but we think that’s been the case because we’ve prepared the groundwork first.
I’m sympathetic to Conlin’s position, but it should in no way be confused with reality. Should that be case, we might well imagine Conlin giving his quote from the voter-approved Monorail, perhaps looking out over an expanse where two voter-unapproved stadiums do not sit.
In any event, the earliest the Council could get around to getting something on the ballot is likely November, adds Conlin.
Now I need to leave off writing this post to read Jordan Royer’s Crosscut article, “City Council: Does process still outrank product?“
