With city government looking at a $15 million budget decrease next year, the Seattle City Council was forced Monday morning to approve a series of cuts and program freezes while approving two contentious items: funding for the Mercer Corridor Project and a potential new Seattle jail.
The Mercer Corridor Project, according to Seattle's Department of Transportation, widens Mercer Street from three lanes of traffic traveling one way to a six-lane, two-way boulevard. City planners say the project will improve traffic in a notably congested area, provide easier access to and from I-5, and turn South Lake Union into a more livable area.
The benefits of such a project were called into question, however, by Councilmember Nick Licata, who cited a study claiming that some automobile travel times could actually be increased by the project. He and Sally Clark were the only two councilmembers in favor of holding up project money for 45 days, until the council had sufficient opportunity to evaluate a revised financing plan and final environmental documentation for the Mercer St. project and the rebuilding of the Spokane St. Viaduct.
Licata was later the only councilmember who did not approve a more generous proviso allowing as much as $30 million to be spent on design, environmental documentation, property negotiations, and some property acquisition. Jan Drago was the council's most vocal advocate for this proposal and its stated goal of keeping the Mercer Street project on schedule.
The possibility of a new jail received a heated round of protest from local citizens before the actual vote. "In 2005 the legislature studied alternatives to building more prisons. The conclusion was pretty simple, and that was that investing in social programs would prevent the need for building at least one $250 million prison," one man testified. "I advocate not to build a jail until you go through adequate study comparable to this two-year report."
By a narrow margin, the council created a committee to study ways of reducing the demand for jail beds, but failed to consider a proposal by Licata to limit funding for the jail project -- estimated to cost $198 million to build, until such a study is complete in mid-2009.
The city's long-term contract for jail space with King County expires at the end of 2012, and county officials project they'll need to detain felons in space currently leased to cities for misdemeanor offenders.
The question of what form the jail committee would take sparked the most vigorous debate of the day for the councilmembers. The council agreed that the committee's members should include representatives from the police, the Municipal Court, the City Attorney's Office, the city's contracted public defense services, and an interdepartmental Criminal Justice Committee, but they disagreed on how big a role the community should play.
Licata championed potential contributions from experts of the human services, and drug rehabilitation sectors while Bruce Harrell questioned whether adding people from the community would perhaps harmfully crowd a working committee. Tom Rasmussen noted that all the people originally mentioned as members of the committee worked for the mayor's office and said he felt there wasn't enough balance between government and community. Sally Clark said she thought the council needed to be pushed on the issue and that appointing several community members to the committee could make the difference.
The council's Statement of Legislative Intent creating the committee was passed by a slim 5-4 vote with Harrell, Drago, Tim Burgess and Richard Conlin dissenting. Licata's proposal reining in spending for the jail failed after his motion to vote was not seconded.