Seattle City Council: Pro-Tunnel, Anti-Meathead

In the end, four of Council member Mike O'Brien's five amendments to the deep-bore tunnel resolution ended up little grave markers for political transparency. The Port can non-bindingly say it's in for $300 million. The state can stand firmly behind an unfunded transit component. It's late in the game, and it would have been profoundly surprising to find anyone with a change of heart, let alone two or three votes.

"Full speed ahead," trumpets Tim Burgess on his blog, and if you view boldface, assertion, and boldface assertion as successful rhetorical techniques, you can't help but be persuaded. (Winningly, he adds, "The issue of cost overruns has also been resolved.")

The sturm und drang over the prospect of delay on the Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement project--the bad delay, not the good delay--aside, no one really cares what the Council thinks. It's more the principle of giving the appearance of looking after Seattle's interests. Learning that two-thirds of Seattle residents really do care how much the tunnel may finally cost, the Council went back to the drawing board to look into the benefits of punting.

On an issue more their speed, the Council is agreed that there's no downside to ticketing noisy drunks. (Noisy drunks don't pay for embarrassing polling, for one thing.) If the rule passes Department of Ecology review, you'll have to do your threatening, fighting, and creating "unreasonable" noise outside of the hours midnight to 5 a.m. if you want to duck a $100 fine. This is part of the larger nightlife initiative, as CHS explains.