2001 Mayoral Forum

The wait is over, we now know that Greg Nickels will be the next mayor of Seattle. The following transcript includes both Nickels' and Sidran's comments for continuity.

The Soul of Seattle

Now more than ever, place matters. What are the places and spaces that connect us with our civic identity? The Space Needle, Pike Place Market, and Pioneer Square are only a few. What is the role of government in guaranteeing the recognition and protection of these special places? What is the role of the past in planning for the future?

Gentrification, ethnic heritage, neighborhood development, and sustainability concerns are all tied to the preservation of our built and social history, but relatively little funding is available for historic preservation and heritage projects. What is the relative value of historic preservation within the spectrum of public needs? What do Greg Nickels and Mark Sidran think?

We asked them on October 2nd at the Northwest Asian American Theater (409 7th Avenue South), during our 2001 Mayoral Forum on Historic Preservation. Walt Crowley, author of the National Trust Guide to Seattle and executive director of HistoryLink, an online encyclopedia of Seattle and King County history moderated this event. The following is the transcipt of the evening in its entirety.

Transcript

Walt Crowley: Good evening, welcome to this forum for our mayoral candidates, our finalists, sponsored by Historic Seattle and the AIA. My name is Walt Crowley, I'm director of HistoryLink.org and have a checkered career in public affairs and journalism which is why I'm here, apparently. We have with us Mark Sidran and Greg Nickels who are the survivors of the primary election, and we're going to be talking about their visions for the urban fabric of Seattle, its future, and I think a lot about its past, and how best to preserve and interpret and educate on the basis of that past.

We have a great deal to celebrate, in terms of heritage and historic preservation in this community, but there's still a lot more that needs to be done that we hope the next mayor of Seattle will be a leader in helping get those things done.

What we're going to do here, is I'm going to ask each candidate to speak for a few minutes to articulate his vision of the urban fabric of Seattle, its future, and his perception and priority for the role of historic preservation and heritage in that vision.

Greg Nickels: Well thank you, and good evening everyone, I want to thank the sponsors for putting on this forum tonight and giving us a little opportunity to talk about our heritage, something we all have in common, and where we go in the future in preserving and celebrating that heritage.

I've been very pleased as a member of the King County Council for the last 14 years to have had a chance to lead that Council in a number of different areas related to preserving our heritage, and celebrating the heritage of our communities. I was a Council member during the Washington Centennial, and had the opportunity that day to ring the bell at the historic Star Lake School which was in my district at that time. (I ) Visit(ed) small former towns such as Thomas, which also was in my district at one point, and learn(ed) the history of many of the communities of this great County of ours.

I've had a chance to provide for funding for heritage programs. In the year 1999 as we prepared the 2000 budget for King County we were facing a real challenge because of something called Initiative 695. But I thought it was important given that we were approaching our county's centennial -- sesquicentennial -- and our city's sesquicentennial -- it took me three years to pronounce it, but now I can actually spell it. I thought it was important to set aside a small amount of sustained funding for heritage organizations. What I've found is that there are a lot of organizations, nonprofit organizations in our community, that celebrate and understand the roots of this community and a very small amount of funding is leveraged a long way. And so we created that and in this past year we had to fight to maintain it.

And I enjoy bringing together heritage organizations into a coalition and actually having that coalition work hand in hand with arts organizations, so that even in the face of 695, we had an opportunity to make an advance it that area. It's not big dollars. It's leadership. It's bringing people together to solve problems. It's what I refer to as the Seattle Way, and I think its something that the city needs to return to.

Mark Sidran: Thank you Historic Seattle for sponsoring this event and giving us the opportunity to talk about these issues. I would like to start at first with a little broader perspective about the future of our city, and of course the future is in part a reflection of the past. I think we are in a different world and a different city after September 11th than we were before. In many ways that tragedy has united our country and our community. All the typical divisions that divide us such as race, and class and political party were overcome by the unity that we see in the underlying values we feel as Americans and I think (it) is the underlying source of diversity that we share in this community and in America.

In a prior generation of Americans, when my parents came to Seattle in World War II, they met the challenges of Pearl Harbor not only by winning that war but by coming home and making Seattle a better place for people to live. So they cleaned up Lake Washington, brought us the Worlds Fair and left us the legacy of Seattle Center, passed Forward Thrust, left us the legacy of capitol improvements throughout the County. And they began the process of historic preservation of Pioneer Square, and the fights over the preservation of the public market.

We have challenges too, and those challenges include not only the uncertainty of our personal security, but, great uncertainty about our economic security and I noticed that many of the questions that we'll be talking about tonight, in terms of public policy and the mayors role and historic preservation have as part of their theme, money.

One of the challenges that our next mayor will face (is) that they have to cut the city budget. That is more true after September 11th than any of us could have imagined. And so we will be facing difficult choices. In terms of my own values, I think that historic preservation, having been born and raised in Seattle, is something that matters to our sense of community, and what defines us, whether it the Market or Pioneer Square or here in Chinatown International District, or the historic theaters and buildings throughout the city that have been preserved thanks to the efforts of Historic Seattle and other preservationists throughout the city.

But it's also an important part of our economy and we need to keep that in mind, as we face these hard times, when we think about cultural tourism and the assets that are reflected in these historic entities help generate resources, jobs, and ultimately tax revenue is something that we have to bear in mind, at least in next years budget, and in years to come. I welcome your thoughts in balancing these competing priorities.

WC: Thank you. Let me toss out a follow up question. There is, as you may be aware, no dedicated funding for preservation in Seattle, in fact, no heritage program per se, certainly nothing comparable to what the County does with Hotel/Motel tax revenues. What are your visions, particularly in funding in such a tough budget year? What are your ideas about the funding of both the city landmarks preservation program and a potential expansion to do heritage programming with neighborhoods, for example, possibly with Neighborhood Matching Funds that can open up that fund in a more purposeful way than they have been available.

MS: Well I think the only realistic prospect in the foreseeable future, and of course much depends upon what's happening in the economy, is to focus on effective programs, incentive programs that rely on the private sector, property owners, nonprofits, to carry this load. As much as I would like to sit here and tell you that there's a realistic prospect for increased city funding for heritage programs, I find that to be a daunting challenge given the current environment.

To give you some perspective of where the city budget is going, we have seen up until this year 3% or 4% real growth after inflation in the city's sales tax and tax revenues which is 50% of our general fund which would be the source of funding for these kinds of programs and for many other city programs. Our property tax is another 25% to our general fund and the rest comes from miscellaneous sources. So we've only had 3% to 4% real growth for a number of years, 5 or 6 years, all that money in the bank has been spent, for good purposes or not. It has been spent,and created a wave of unsustainable spending growing forward for a variety of programs, instead of 4% real growth. Instead, the city up until September 11th actually had zero growth in its revenue. We weren't even growing at the rate of inflation. Now we're flat, that is, and now its turning negative, so to be perfectly honest it seems to me that as much as I value heritage and historic preservation, we will have to hope that our assets and heritage can weather this, and be with us, because we're going to be facing cuts in basic services making it extraordinarily difficult, yet depending on how long this downturn runs, for us to do much, again this is dependent upon the economy.

But when the rebound comes, we should take that opportunity to increase city spending, we need to look at investing in historic preservation and heritage, that is serves an important purpose in the community and I would support that.

GN: The difference between my friend Mark and I is that I actually have experience balancing a large budget. I was the Chair of King County Council's budget committee during a very tough time, when expenses at the County for jails and courts and police were going up rapidly and the revenue from property tax was going down. Even with a Republican majority on our Council, I chaired that committee and put together a bipartisan coalition that did balance the needs for public safety and jails with the opportunity to invest in people's lives through human services programs and invest in arts and heritage and cultural life.

I think that's an important budget to maintain. In a city budget that is now 650 million dollars in general funds, I think you can squeeze out a drop or two to preserve the heritage of this community. I think that its important because if we respect the past, if we preserve the best from the past and teach our children to respect what came before them, they might very well treat us with respect when we are historic artifacts. I think that's an important value for our society to have. So when I've had the opportunity when I was a leader on our budget, I've made sure we've taken care of those things. The city doesn't have the kind of heritage program like we started, (like) they have at the county, and I think they should. I don't know if it will happen right away. But I will, at some point, start a sustained heritage program. A very small amount of money goes a long way for community-based organizations.

Secondly, I think the Neighborhood Matching Grant should be used to preserve the heritage of our neighborhoods. I'm from West Seattle. I think it's the greatest neighborhood anywhere. I think one of the strengths of the city is that someone has challenged me and said that this is the best neighborhood anywhere. The things that make our neighborhoods special, we need to hold onto. The Neighborhood Matching Fund is a place to do that.

Finally, the County has done a good job in heritage and arts with the Hotel/Motel Tax. That's going to go away, as a result of the deal on the football stadium. We should begin working today to replace that revenue. We should make sure that we have the opportunity, not only at King County, but also our cities to participate. I made sure when I sponsored legislation at the county level, for us to provide low interest loans to heritage organizations to preserve some of our historic sites, that we provide help to our small cities that wouldn't have help otherwise. I think that's an important aspect as well.

WC: Let me follow up on that just to zero in on a couple of the current projects and ideas floating around. I don't think any of us are looking for gold plated promises and pledges, just to get your response to some of these ongoing projects. First, the city is currently engaged in an extended multiyear survey of historic properties. This is the first survey to be conducted since 1975, literally since Folke Nyberg and Victor Steinbrueck driving around in a VW bug looking through their windows. This is very important, particularly identifying properties since 1900. These are structures that are unrecognized. There are costs associated with that and a need for a willingness to act, to further investigate these properties, to move them through the landmarks process, and potentially provide some kind of assistance to property owners if its required to preserve these structures. This is wide open. Any ideas for how to sustain that kind of effort and provide a financial foundation for it?

GN: Well, let me first recognize that it is an important effort. It's gotten off to a huge start. We aren't talking about huge dollars, and I think that it's something that's started and that we should now continue to finish the work. That gives you good information upon which to base some judgments as to how to fund heritage programs in the future. What is the challenge that we face? What are some of the structures around our city that aren't being maintained well? What are some of the techniques we can use to preserve them? I think that finishing the survey is a good first tool. That gives us ammunition for understanding what the other tools may be to take action.

MS: Well, I basically agree with that. I just want to go back to an earlier comment about his experience managing budgets. I was actually trying to point out, unlike my friend, I have actually managed something in my career, including my office, the law department. In my office, over the last 12 years, (we've) actually had the same number of staff since 1992, even though the city's budget has increased 40% over that time, and that is a result of managing and making hard decisions about how we do business.

I think the survey is an important tool not only for historic preservation purposes. (It is) also important for property owners. It gives some a greater predictability and certainty about what's likely to be on the register but not yet designated. It gives people more confidence in terms of their own development investments about what they can expect from the city. I think in general it's a very useful tool. Understanding the current budget situation, we will either maintain funding for it or either expand the capability to use volunteers or find funding from other sources to bring this about.

WC: In your role as city attorney has been at the front line in terms of the legal process, with some of these properties. We just saw the tragic loss of the Twin Teepees, a pre-emptive demolition if you will, with very little, or no notice to the community. And very little internal notice. Are you open to changes in landmark law that would protect, at least temporarily, properties of potential interest against speculative demolition? We've already banned speculative demolition of landmarks, but is there a defined transition that could be established to extend protection, at least temporarily, to properties of interest until they're evaluated.

MS: I think the answer is yes, You know, our office has been involved in a lot of litigation related to historic preservation issues, related to the lamentable loss of the music hall, to issues about churches and historic preservation. It's a difficult, complicated area, especially in a state which has perhaps one of the most conservative relationships with property rights than any other state in the union. It is hard to regulate this area but I don't think it's impossible. I do think that there are opportunities, and they have risk, to at least impose temporary. Part of the problem I see with the traditional Seattle way (is that it) becomes a substitute for making decisions in many of the city's lines of business. If there were a temporary, not unduly burdensome process that tied up the property in court for some time, I would certainly work to try to accomplish that.

GN: I just wanted to comment. I'm a little surprised that Mark brought up his management record. If you take a look at the budget for the city attorney's office since he became city attorney, it's gone up 129% and that's 58% faster than inflation. If the whole city budget had done that, think that we would have plenty of money available for these things. One of the issues here is how are you going to manage in tough times.

It seems to me that balancing a multi-million dollar budget...the county actually has a pretty good ordinance on the books, I think this has been a little more active and progressive than the city's. (It) provides incentives and assistance, low interest loans, and (for) lower income parts of the county and smaller cities, that can't afford it offers assistance as well. It seems to me that one of the other things we need to have is direction from the mayor that historic preservation, preserving our heritage, is important so that our departments, as they are doing their work, are on the look-out, perhaps. I don't know what happened with the Teepees, but at least some of the anecdotal information is that some people believe that it, think that it, was an oversight, that it might have been prevented. Seems to me that if the mayor has said this was an important thing to be looking out for, that it's important to preserve our heritage, then perhaps our departments would have been able to prevent this.

WC: Just one educational note, that Seattle's landmark designation law differs significantly from the County's to the extent that you can landmark a property without the owners consent and its more restrictive, potentially.

Julie Koler (Historic Preservation Officer, King County): That's not true, Walt. Both ordinances are equal on that.

WC: Then the County just never does it?

GN: No, we've had our share of hearings as well.

WC: I stand corrected, I thought you generally couldn't.

JK: Property owner consent is not required in King County, but I think the difference is we have lots of property owners who do not initially want to designate their properties. But incentives help bring them along, we don't (have to) take these through long court battles. Incentives make a huge difference in bringing many of the property owners along in our process.

WC: These are incentives that are funded out of County resources?

JK: Several different ones, one is the bond measure we've had...

WC: That goes to the next question, that is the issue of capitol assistance and maintenance assistance to owners of these properties that may be designated, and also relates to enforcement of the minimum maintenance ordinance in Pioneer Square, an ordinance that is mostly ignored. Is there an opportunity, and Julie just mentioned at least one mechanism, a future bond issue, that would provide public resources to property owners that are pledged to improve, maintain and preserve landmark properties.

MS: I think it is an option. I think again, all of these things require balancing our options and our choices. We've had an extraordinary run up in property taxes here in Seattle, four years up 40%, it's a chicken and egg issue as far as I'm concerned. You look at historic properties, or you take Pioneer Square as an example, and you think to yourself, what does a property owner need and want in order to make their building successful, and what does a neighborhood need if it's a historic district in order to be successful? Well that's a combination of things, its not just government tax payer subsidies for improvement of the building, it's also,'what's the public safety environment on the street?' What are you doing to make sure that you not only have buildings that are preserved, but economic activity, and vibrant streetscapes so that you don't have a museum, you have a living neighborhood? If its an area like here or Pioneer Square or the Market where you have a lot of issues at play, in terms of what is the economic viability to the property owner, which is part of the economic viability of the district.

I, needless to say, in a lot of ways, am a strong believer in the broken window theory, which includes literally, that if a building is not being maintained, it poses a threat not just to heritage, but to the broader community. The minimum maintenance ordinance poses some challenges in terms of enforcement. I think it has been enforced in extreme situations in which you have had life and safety threats, or when an owner is undertaking a permitted activity to do some remodeling or rehabilitating of a building. There are some challenges to making that ordinance work, and one that we've run into in the process of the housing inspection program, and that is in order to really enforce an ordinance you have to inspect the building, because in some cases you can't tell a whole lot about the building from the outside (to determine the) conditions that might require attention.

You might want to do preventative maintenance and preserve the building. Again the state supreme court has made that extraordinarily difficult, because of their rulings that prevent what are called administrative inspections for a variety of purposes, and we've tried, both in terms of litigation, and...(we) have also tried from my office, in terms of the city's lobbying efforts, to get the legislature to address some of these issues because if you want to use an ordinance like that to maintain a building you have to on some level have a proactive inspection program apart from how you would help the owner pay for it and there are a number of ways you can help the property owner pay for it.

I'm not adverse to some level of public subsidy, but there are also other ways in terms of tax incentives similar to what was done with the special valuation statute that my office also defended, that gives property tax breaks in the form of exclusion of the value of the building for investments made in the remodel of historic buildings. I think there's an opportunity to grow that kind of tax incentive program for minimum maintenance kinds of activities, perhaps in the form of tax relief, (and) in other ways such as in sales tax for example and exemptions. But these things in the end require going to Olympia and getting them through the legislature. And I suppose that one of the things that I would say I am more likely to be able to do is go to Olympia to work on both sides of the aisle to work on both sides of the issue as I've done many times on many issues, to get something done that would benefit historic preservation on the tax side to provide some incentives for property owners.

GN: Au contraire, I actually think that one of the strengths that I will bring to the office is the ability to work both not both sides but across the aisle, with folks on the other side of the political spectrum, and I have proven year after year that I can do that as a member of partisan body King County Council, and earning the respect of my colleagues, both Democrats and Republicans, and earning endorsements, folks from cities outside of Seattle that want to see a leader they can work with to create partnerships so that we can all go to Olympia and be more successful as a region. I think that will be one of the hallmarks of my term as mayor. I believe there are opportunities for public private partnerships, everything from very small opportunities, such as like making sure that you do take care of a maintenance problems that threaten the integrity of the building, we had one of the oldest structures in my district, at Vashon Island, the Harrington Log house that the foundation was eaten away with something, and we went out there and provided a small amount of subsidy so that it could be preserved and the opportunity for a more extensive renovation and restoration to be done, but we did require that some public benefit would come as a result of that. So that you we're not just giving into a private owner, we said that we will have (not more than) just a private benefit. We required that you have it open to the public to enjoy that bit of heritage they have helped paid to preserve.

I think that's a nice balance. There are also larger opportunities for those public private partnerships. A little bit later Mark, no doubt will beat me up on Sound Transit, and the debacle he thinks it is, it not only is necessary for the future of our transportation system in this city and region but we've also done some good things, like we've actually restored daily train service between Tacoma and Seattle going through the Kent Valley. And when we were looking for a headquarters, I led an effort to look at the opportunities that were out there and discovered that preservation of historic Union Station would provide us with a fine home for Sound Transit at about the same cost that a vanilla-box office building would and would give something back to the community in terms of preserving that important, historic transportation center, returning it back to a transportation center. So I think with that kind of creative energy, we're able to make public/private partnerships work, and you can do it either for a relatively small amount of money or in a fashion that's less expensive than not looking at those benefits.

WC: One of the concerns with historic preservation over this city's experience, and other city's, is that it has sometimes come at the expense of social and economic diversity. You end up gentrifying in the process of historic preservation, you lose the ethnic and economic variety in the neighborhood and you may actually end up reducing low-income housing stock. Any strategies for minimizing, eliminating, reversing those unintended effects?

GN: Clearly, gentrification is occurring in our city, and I think it is a very serious problem. We have historic communities of people who no longer can afford to live in neighborhoods they have for many, many generations, and I think that is a problem. I don't chock that problem up to historic preservation, in fact I think in some ways by preserving and upgrading and restoring the housing in a neighborhood you can keep the prices more affordable than when new construction comes into a neighborhood. But that's going to be a real challenge to the next mayor to find out how we do encourage continual investment in our neighborhoods, I mean that's a good thing.

We want to see our city as a living, breathing, dynamic organism and we want to see it continually renewing itself, that's good and positive, But we want to make sure that it doesn't come at the expense of people who have historically lived here. So, for instance, when we build the light rail system in the Rainier Valley, I think it is very important that we do so in a way that reinvests in the community, that we are making sure that people who live in Rainier Valley can work on the project. It will create over 4200 jobs, those will be high paid family wage. Perhaps we can link these opportunities to people who live there, and give them a chance to continue to live there as the property values increase because of the public investment in those neighborhoods. Those are the kind of techniques that I'll use.

MS: I think it's a huge challenge because cities are living organisms. They reinvent themselves, they change or they die, and the only thing worse than a city that's changing and improving and growing is a city that's doing the opposite of those things. It gets back to something I mentioned earlier. Historic preservation costs money. In order to do historic preservation, you must generate the money to make it possible to maintain or restore buildings. That requires economic activity that ultimately requires some form of rents and business activity, and you get caught in this cycle of economic growth and development, driving up costs necessary to sustain the improvements and it does result in a change in the affordability of neighborhoods.

I think we have to continue to try to explore ways to mitigate that impact and it's not an easy thing to do. We have found out, throughout the city, when you begin improve properties which is necessary to preserve them, you have to find ways to bear those costs. I would hope that as we look at different neighborhoods in Seattle we can find ways to mitigate that impact so we maintain diversity, racial and ethnic diversity. But it's a huge challenge. I don't think we should delude ourselves. That you can replace (a property owner like) Sam Israel, who, because of his neglect, preserved buildings and kept rents down, and so on. (This activity) had collateral consequences that were negative for some of the neighborhood, and then you have a successor owner landlord, Samus, who is investing a great deal of money in preserving buildings and making things better. But those things have to be paid for. It's a real challenge. The best the city can do, as it has in the past, is to work with other entities to make sure that there are housing and other opportunities for people who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford to live there.

Audience Questions:

Ted Choi, Property Owner, Chinatown-International District: Hi, I'm Ted Choi. I'm part of the possible gentrification of this district. I've been involved around here for some time. I've let it alone for a while...Union Station preservation's fine, but then you have new buildings to the south that are questionable, given the character and scale of Chinatown. What about the scale of those buildings? There is a special review district and often-times those appointments are kind of like throwaways - the question I have is how committed are you to place qualified appointees to all the special review boards?

MS: I'm committed to placing qualified people on all the city's boards and commissions, because there are many fine people to serve, but it is true that patronage appointments do not necessarily take full advantage of the talent in the community, or advantage of representing all the views, on whatever the respective boards duties might be, so I agree with your point.

GN: I've worked very hard with the opportunities that I've had as a County Council member to make appointments to the Harborview Board and other boards, the civil rights commission in King County, to reach out to the community to find very qualified folks. That's really one of the grass roots places were people learn leadership skills, so you want to make sure you get people who are very very capable, perhaps people who haven't had an opportunity to serve their community before in that kind of capacity, to give them a chance to kind of grow, and provide public service in other ways, on into the future, and I'd really want to make sure that my appointees represent the diversity in this city.

Phil Wohlstetter, President, Allied Arts: I used to live out in Wallingford and on Burke on 45th, right down a block from the Tea House Kuan Yen. When I moved out there four storefronts near there were empty, and nothing has happened there for six years. Neither of you would maintain that this is good for a lively, viable city that you would both want. What are the ways that you can, through incentives or disincentives, turn up the heat, so that these sort of thing stops happening so that these places can become part of the life of the community instead of great big voids?

GN: It's interesting. In a former life I worked for the Seattle City Council. I worked for Norm Rice, and I was involved in some of the drafting of this minimum maintenance ordinance. That was 15, 16, 17 years ago. We wrestled with just that, how do you not, without infringing on someone's property rights, without taking their property, how do you give them an incentive or encourage them to keep that property productive and in a well maintained state. And it's a very difficult balance to try and achieve. At least one of the comments I've heard about the minimum maintenance ordinance is that it's the enforcement side that hasn't been aggressively pursued. And perhaps that's where we start, and if that doesn't produce results, then perhaps we start looking at the underlying ordinance to see if there's some way to beef that up.

MS: These are tough issues to figure out. I didn't hear you say that the building was terribly dilapidated as opposed to underutilized and left vacant. One of the problems we have faced on the enforcement side with certain property owners...is that every now and then you have property owners who do not behave as rational economic human beings and they appear to lack any interest in the economic utilization of their own properties. And they do let them deteriorate. It is a very difficult thing to know how to regulate. We have made some progress.

There's a property owner who controls substantial residential property, and some commercial property in the Roosevelt neighborhood for years. (He/she) has been a landlord and property owner who in many ways has been neglectful and disrespectful of the neighborhood. We have taken enforcement action there successfully and there are sometimes things we can do, with my friend Rick Krochalis sitting there in the audience, where DCLU could be more assertive in enforcing at least on an inspection level, as a citation, some of the codes. It's very difficult to find a regulatory remedy for an irrational human being who is determined to use their property in ways that basically keep them in an abandoned and underutilized condition.

There we have to sometimes look at creative ways, and we've tried to do this at the Memmer (sp?) Building which is at Second and Pike, which is an area under tremendous stress for a variety of reasons related to how that property is used or not used. To find ways to either get the owner's cooperation, or to find some public entity that might be able to take the property under some condemnation authority, or through some offer that would make sense to the owner. It's hard to do.

PW: So what your saying is that it's important for the next mayor to come up with creative ways on an ad hoc basis to help these properties

MS: What I've tried to do as city attorney dealing with neighborhood problems, which sometimes include these kinds of properties, is that there's somebody from my office, an attorney, who is assigned to each police precinct, to divide the city up, and many times these problems are public safety in origin. There's someone in my office whose job it is to work with other city departments, I see Jordan Royer's here, he's been involved in something called the Neighborhood Action Team Seattle, or NATS, the idea is that you can find particular, creative solutions, to neighborhood problems if you can pull together city departments who don't always work so together closely too often, and get everybody in the same room to focus on real problem solving which sometimes requires thinking outside the box.

GN: Let me just respond. Yes you do have to have that creative, problem solving approach. But I also think certainty of enforcement is important. When I became a member of County Council, one of the reasons I did that was because I wanted to bring the County Council into the 20th century and now we've accomplished that. What I found was a code enforcement system that was very, very ad hoc.

We had code enforcement problems in my district that had gone back 30 years, and people were just clearly at wits end as to how to solve these junk car problems and horrible things that they had to live with in their neighborhoods. What we did was we went to the code enforcement people and said, what are the standards, how long do you let things go before you condemn them? And we now have standards in place. For how long someone can go? We now have standards in place. That message has now gone out to the property owners. They know they can't string it out forever. So yes, it needs problem solving but also some certainty of enforcement.

Vernon Abelson, Chair, AIA Seattle Historic Preservation Committee: I'd like to hear your stand on the Alaska Way Viaduct. There are a variety of options to come to it. What are your thoughts?

GN: The viaduct is dying, and we need to replace it rather than wait for it to fall down and take people with it. There needs to be a quick but thorough look at options. One of the options that has been talked about is a tunnel. I believe the tunnel will prove to be too expensive. If you take a look at the Boston experience, they're at something like 14 billion dollars, and that's a legacy of Tip O'Neill being speaker of the House. And actually the original legislation was sponsored by Warren Magnussen for the Alaska Viaduct, but Tip added a little line to that. We wouldn't have that today, nor would we probably have the guts to seek $14 billion dollars to put it up. So I think it will be another structure, perhaps a trench, maybe a combination trench and an above ground structure next to the current one, because I do not believe we can't tear that one down and take two or three years to rebuild. You will kill many communities if you do that. So I believe we will have another structure, we need the capacity, we need to, as we provide that structure, look at high capacity, maybe monorail being part of that structure, but also freight, and general purpose traffic as well.

MS: We have to preserve the corridor. I have no idea which option will prove to be the best choice. My approach to these issues is a pragmatic one. I'm basically interested in what's going to give us the biggest bang for the buck, in terms of mobility, yes we're going to have to retain and figure out where to route the traffic. If there's nowhere to put the traffic we're going to have to come up with some kind of creative solution, but I think we need to take advantage during the Alaskan Way rebuild, to not only enhance our freight mobility opportunities, but to also look for transit opportunities. It's frankly one of the reasons why I think building the southern segment of light rail is a bad idea.

There are two other issues, including monorail and the Alaskan Way Viaduct, in its potential for some synergies in terms of tunneling or incorporating some transit corridors into the Alaskan Way Viaduct or a monorail technology as an alternative to light rail technology, than to plunge ahead to spend over 2 billion to almost get you to the airport. It doesn't seem to be too prudent an investment. It's all about chasing the $500 million in federal money, but I think it's a fools bargain to make a multibillion-dollar decision based on what will turn out to be only 10 or 20% of the cost to the region. So I think we have to make a good decision about the Alaskan Way Viaduct, and I hope we'll make a better decision than we appear to be headed for in terms of light rail.

GN: I think I just heard Mark endorse the Seattle process, because we've been talking about mass transit for 30 years since we defeated the Forward Thrust proposals in 1968 and 1970, and he's saying lets continue to study it. I think we've got a transportation crisis, the Alaskan Way Viaduct is falling down, I-5 which is not yet a heritage project, but will soon be, needs to have its pavement replaced and that's going to be a huge impact for the next decade, and if we don't have another corridor through the city by the time that hits us, we're going to be in huge trouble. You have to start somewhere, you have to stop the talk and the process somewhere, if you go to the south you still have the opportunity to look at options in the north in the next 18 to 24 months, including the Alaskan Way Viaduct and I think we need to get started now.

MS: Let me just briefly respond. For the last six years "Greg's Way" has been to produce a 1.8 billion dollar over-budget project that is three years late, spent 230 million plus, and hasn't laid an inch of track. In terms of bring people together, if the light rail project to the south was able to bring people together, I assume it would be supported by the Downtown Seattle Association, the Chamber of Commerce, the Seattle Times and the PI. The fact is that doing something is not necessarily better than doing nothing. In fact sometimes it is stupid to do something, if in the long run, it sets the region back in terms of the ultimate goal of increasing our mobility. The fact that we've spent a generation, and now six years just on Sound Transit, and all this money, is not, in my view, a rationale for just forging ahead at any cost for the sake of appearing to make progress.

GN: One of the differences between Mark and I on this issue is that I actually do have some transportation experience. Not only, at Metro King County, in preserving the best bus system in the United States in the face of Initiative 695, but starting up a very innovative, back-to-the-future approach with the water taxi from West Seattle to downtown across Elliott Bay, to creating as chair of the Washington Transportation Improvement Board, the first pedestrian dedicated ramp program. And I'm very proud of that. This region needs mass transit. It is a missing ingredient. One of the things you'll learn, Mark, if you get more involved in transportation, before you actually lay track you have to design it, and when you design a multibillion-dollar project, it costs hundreds of millions of dollars.

So that's why we're ready to go to work on the south leg of the light rail within my first 6 months as mayor, as we have designed that segment. We know where it's going to go, we know how to build it, and although there's always risk when you're building something that large and complex, we believe that it is a manageable risk. Sound Transit has clearly had problems, growing pains that every other Metropolitan area that has tackled a project of this magnitude has faced. But we discovered that before we started to dig a hole in the ground and we said "time out" let's make sure we fix it. We replaced the executive director. I called for an audit to make sure that the cost estimates we're getting today are accurate and based on the best possible information, and we've got a report back that it looks like they are. We're going to validate that before we sign a single construction contract. But we need to move ahead and we need to have the political courage to say that its time to stop the debate and actually build mass transit.

WC: What became I-5 started as a state toll road on a central toll way. They started designing that in the late '40s, and that highway was not functional until '62. It does take time, any system. The monorail is not going to pop out of the earth. I can tell you that having been on that Board. So all of these things do take time. That is not to in any way negate the debate over technologies.

Steve Arai, President, AIA Seattle, Council of Historic Seattle: (edited) Certainly the key issue in my mind is an area of town that happens to be my neighborhood: Columbia City. I would like each of you to comment on what I think is a tough design issue, a tough planning issue with regard to Sound Transit in Columbia City. The light rail corridor is currently planned for Martin Luther King Way, which is west of Columbia City. With good, transit-oriented development, there's always a thought of increasing the density around the stations. There's great concern in the community, of course, that the historic character and the value of Columbia City will be eroded by another center, or transit-oriented development that might occur in the MLK area, and there's been a lot of wrestling over potential zoning changes. How can each of you address this and look at this from the hat of the city, versus the hat of Sound Transit? (resume unedited)

GN: That's a great question, although in your introduction of yourself, you failed to mention that your daughter is valedictorian of my daughter's graduating class at Franklin last year, a very important thing. It's going to be very important as the Sound Transit project does break ground within my first six months as mayor, for me to be very much in tune for how it affects each of the communities through which that project will pass.

For a number of reasons, having experienced and lived through the tunneling through downtown, and the impact there, one of the most effective things that happened during the building of the downtown Seattle transit project was one individual city council member, George Benson, who walked from one end of that project to the other every Friday morning, and what he did was he just kept in touch with people. He said 'what are the problems this week that we can work on?' And I think its going to be very important that the city be ready to make sure that any problems that arise during that very lengthy, very disruptive construction, are fixed right away, whether its by the city or Sound Transit or whoever the particular partner is.

I think it's very important to understand what each of those neighborhoods feel that light rail can do for them, and what it might possibly do to them. That's one of the reasons why, two years ago, I started walking around the neighborhoods through which Sound Transit was proposing to build the light rail, to talk directly to people. I didn't feel that the staff reports that I was receiving as a Board member were enough. I thought they were one-dimensional, and they weren't complete, so I wanted to talk to the people who were going to be directly impacted. And so my first visit was Columbia City. It was when we thought that light rail would be down Rainier Avenue rather than Martin Luther King Way, and I talked with folks about what they hoped it would accomplish and what they feared it might do to the neighborhood.

I think having that kind of perspective, I can go back to the city and direct the planning department and direct other city departments to work with those neighborhoods to avoid those negative impacts and really provide the greatest possible benefit. One of the reasons I think Martin Luther King Way makes sense is because 1) it is now a dangerous highway through that neighborhood. I think we now have the opportunity to slow that truck traffic down and still provide the same capacity but keep it below 45 or 50, where it is now, to a much more reasonable speed. Second, I think we can make it a much more attractive street and a much safer street than it is today. Third, we can provide economic opportunities in the neighborhood through redevelopment around the station areas. Fourth, we can provide access to inner city residents to the jobs that are being created throughout the region, as the system goes beyond its initial phase and becomes truly a regional mass transit system, reaching up into Snohomish County and those Boeing jobs across the lake to Microsoft and the high tech jobs, and down south to the manufacturing and industrial jobs. Those are the benefits I see and the mayor of Seattle needs to be aware of those, and do everything in his power to capitalize on those.

MS: Columbia City is part of the neighborhood that I grew up in. I spent my youth going to the Columbia City branch library so it's a part of Seattle that is near and dear to my heart. I don't know how those impacts could be mitigated. I think it's a real challenge, but I think it's just part of the greater challenge. Frankly, one of the reasons that I opposed this southern segment is that the vision that was just described, of the wonderful way in which all these things are going to be tied together, that they'll be linkages to the north and the east and connections to job centers, I hope will happen in our life time. But I wouldn't bet on it, because it seems to me that traffic will indeed be slowed down on MLK Way, because there'll be 60-foot trains running on the surface that will slow a lot of things down and create a lot of risks.

I just think that the cost, both in terms of the Sound Transit cost to the tax payers, which is now estimated at 2.1 billion to build this line, is not worth it in terms of the transportation enhancements given the other ways you can spend that money on transportation, including what I think is a world class bus service, both on MLK and on Rainier Avenue. But it is also going to cost in that the city of Seattle is expected, now in increasingly difficult times, to put up 50 million dollars of general fund money to mitigate the impact on Rainier Valley in the process of constructing this light rail line, so if I were elected mayor I would be trying to see that Rainier Valley and its residents get real improvements in their transportation, not thirty or forty years from now when or if they build a north line or across the way, but that those dollars are spent in the next few years to give meaningful transportation improvements which might some day include monorail.

But I'll tell you right now if this light rail line is built, in the south, people who can now take the bus through Rainier Valley to the bus tunnel, and go north to Capitol Hill or out to the University District are going to find their alternatives more limited than they are today because they'll be taking a train that will stop either at the entrance of the bus tunnel or at the convention center where they'll have to get out and transfer to a bus and they'll have slower bus times as a result of the competition with the light rail line. So just think that there are a lot of issues with running the light rail through Rainier Valley that would be better addressed if and when we actually can identify whether or not it goes north, and if it does, how we're going to pay for it and we will not be able to build monorail if all of our money is sucked up by the light rail project.

GN: Mark let me ask you if you support monorail. Because at first, when it was passed by the voters as an initiative, Initiative 41, you likened it to the bubblator. I would think that would have been a point of derision.

WC: That goes up and down (the bubblator).

MS: Let me explain that I believe that if you're going to have an elevated system, you need to have a way to get up to it, and I believe that the bubbleator, in terms of preservation and heritage issues, a fabulous way to get people up where they need to go.

GN: You know the makers of the bubblator actually endorse my candidacy.

MS: Well, I'm sure that's true, and you can see the future that the bubblator has had...

WC: Actually, it's a greenhouse in Juanita.

MS:...and see how successful that technology ultimately proved to be. My comment about the bubblator was not meant to be a comment about monorail technology. I've got an open mind about monorail. I'm not wedded to monorail. I've not said, unlike my friend Greg, that I will build light rail no ifs, ands, or buts, and I will build monorail.I will build what makes sense to build based on our ability to afford it and on the fact that it delivers real transportation improvements for the people who live in Seattle and ultimately for the region. I don't know if monorail will be that until we see numbers and identify the route and know how well pay for it. But I've seen enough in my talking to people and reading about the light rail project to believe that building south instead of going north first is not going to enhance our transportation system.

GN: Well if we were only going to build south you might well have a point there, but the fact is, you have to start somewhere. The plan that was approved by voters called for a line out to the airport and it needs to get to the airport. Since September 11, some of the airports plans have changed. And we need to take a little bit of time to understand that and figure out how we're going to get into the airport terminal, whether it's the existing one, or if we're able to finance a new one, which looks pretty iffy right now. Then we need to spend 18 to 24 months to figure out whether there is a cheaper more direct alternative to the north and see how that pencils out compared with a long deep tunnel, and then we need to move north.

The financing plan that we have for the south buys funds to begin that work to the north, to begin that design work to the north. We now have a US Senator for the first time since Warren Magnussen who has a position on the appropriations committee, chairing the transportation subcommittee who is in a position to help us get that federal money. So in addition to getting the $500 million which we have achieved through very hard work, we have, I think, a very good opportunity to get an additional $500 million as we look to the north . With good discipline in building that south line we will have enough left over, not according to me, but to a committee chaired by former mayor Charles Royer. We will have enough money to build the line to the university to the north. And that is my commitment, as mayor, to find a way to build that system that the voters approved in 1996.

MS: I would just like to respond. I've also read the Royer report, and it is filled with enough contingencies and maybes and what ifs, that I wouldn't go to the bank on it. If you're happy with the Sound Transit performance in the last five years, then you'll be happy with my friend Greg as mayor.

GN: And if you're happy with the gridlock that we have today, then you'd be happy with Mr. Sidran as your next mayor.

WC: We're going to let a few potential voters get a word in.

Audience member, Belltown resident: Back to the buildings...I'd like to know what your thoughts are about the appropriateness of having an primate research center where there is testing of animals, where they are testing antidotes to nerve gas, directly across the street from the sculpture park, and within a thousand feet blocks of hundreds of residents. The University of Washington has a primate animal research center, located on Western Avenue. We found out about this one morning. We woke up to find they were building and expanding (this facility). They started the building without a permit. There was no outreach to the community, The building did go on without a permit, and also there was quite a bit of mail sent to the mayor's office. How would you respond to that situation given that the University of Washington is very powerful.

MS: I would apply the same standard to the University of Washington that I would any other entity public or private. I think there's a requirement to comply with the applicable laws that the city has with respect to permitting. I don't know what the risks are associated with the activity in that building. Obviously if those risks are significant and there's not an appropriate plan to try to mitigate those risks, that prevent harm to the public, that would be something that I would certainly take up with people at the University of Washington. But I think the bottom line is I would expect them to comply with the law just like anybody else.

Question: Well what if they didn't comply with the law?

MS: I would ask the Department of Construction and Land Use to do its job. If they're not in compliance with the law, I would ask they seek compliance.

GN: I think it comes comes back to what I was saying earlier about having some certainty of enforcement. No one should be starting a project without the permits in place. Now, we should make sure the permit process is one in which you can see the light at the end of the tunnel so that people are not so frustrated as to begin building in anticipation of a long awaited event. But you need to have that enforcement and invest in that enforcement so that people know what the rules are. And they know that if they don't follow the rules, that they're going to get caught, and their going to have to pay a price. I don't know enough about the situation. It sounds like a kind of activity that wouldn't be appropriate in a residential zone.(edited)

Bif Brigman, Community Activist, Pioneer Square: I'd like to get back to historic preservation if we could. That's what I came here for tonight. My name is Bif Brigman, I own a business in Pioneer Square, and I'm an active activist for historic preservation. And I'd like to hear from both of you. Currently we have a new property owner that's come into the historic district that's not dealing with their properties from after the earthquake, and they're impacting hundreds of residents, hundreds of business owners, land owners, people who have stepped forward and done amazing things with their historic properties. We currently have three streets closed, one of them one the most major thoroughfares in our historic district. I believe that advocacy and direction is needed from the mayor's office. How do you plan to deal with this situation considering it might still be there when you get into office?)

GN: It seems to me that a sense of urgency is appropriate. I recently came across a situation in West Seattle where the earthquake caused some sliding and it's a home that's keeping the road from sliding. And no action had been taken by the city to shore that up because they were waiting for reimbursement from FEMA. Well, the fact is, that road need to be shored up whether FEMA reimburses or not. So you might as well take the danger away and then go through your paperwork, rather than the other way around.

I think we've seen that in the past, and frankly I'm surprised that we still have so many of those streets and sidewalks blocked in Pioneer Square. A sense of urgency would keep things moving much more quickly and put the neighborhood back in some semblance of normal operation. I do think incentives are important to have available, not just direct city incentives, but for the city to go out and see what opportunities are there with FEMA or SBA, resources to bring to bear so that if it is a financial problem that particular owner is having in restoring use of the building, and safety of the structure that that can be pieced together, that there can be a partnership put together. And I think that advocacy from the mayor's office can be important in bringing those different partners to the table to solve some of those problems.

MS: I think this is an example that illustrates what I think one of the issues of this campaign is, and that's just a difference in leadership style and decision making process. I think one of the issues that Seattle needs to come to grips with is that big cities with big city challenges ultimately must confront making decisions about issues where we're all aren't going to agree. And the fabled Seattle process, literally can become a prescription for paralysis because people aren't willing to make decisions if they're going to generate controversy and conflict.

I think what I have demonstrated during my 12 years as city attorney is that I'm prepared to take on tough and complicated and admittedly controversial issues, like civility on our streets, . nightclub violence, that ultimately require me to listen to what people had to say, but then look them in the eye and tell them what I think the right thing to do is and do it. It is a disgrace, in my view, that the city has not been able to make the decision about what to do about the particular property that you're describing. It's why it's taken the city seven years to make a decision about public toilets, about whether we should have them and how they would be paid for because frankly nothing has changed during the long course of that debate. So I believe in bringing people together but I also agree with making decisions, even at the risk that some people won't agree with me and I would just make a decision about what to do with that property that would at least allow the street to reopened.

David Brunner, Community Activist, Pioneer Square: To follow up with Bif's question, I'm next to another building that that property owner has that was cited in 1978 with violations of the minimum maintenance ordinance that had a provision for a 50 dollars a day fine . something that might have paid for the debt that I incurred when their parapet fell through my building. Subsequently my tax assessment has gone up 40%, I've been cancelled for my commercial liability insurance, my earthquake insurance has doubled, and I now have a homeless encampment, which (has meant) I've had to reduce rents in order to fill my spaces, and with the street at Washington and the viaduct still closed eight months later businesses are dying down there, I'm dying down there. What will you do to help me? .

MS: Well I think I answered part of that already. I believe the mayor needs to be decisive and the mayor needs to send that message to departments that they need to make decisions, and they need to move on issues, and so, I think it's good to take the point of the 50 dollar fine. One of the real problems has been at the city that we proposed something that the Council ultimately adopted that would enhance enforcement by getting rid of the traditional "give people notices and have a long drawn out process" and so on but go to a citation format, and I think we can broaden that to perhaps include the minimum maintenance ordinance so that you can give people tickets like we do for other violations of the law, and you trigger a much faster process than historically been the case.

But I think the key issue, and its one raised that I spoke to earlier, and I'll close on this note is that the best historic preservation efforts in the world are not going to prove meaningful if you can not keep the economic vitality of the historic district or the particular building alive, no matter how much money, tax payers or the private property owner puts into a building. If you don't maintain the vitality and the safety of the streetscape, and the adjacent buildings, if you don't keep those broken windows fixed so to speak, the ultimate threat to the preservation of the community, and the value of that heritage is really in jeopardy. I understand your frustration, and I would like to think that if I were mayor, people would be making decisions, even at the risk of upsetting some.

GN: I would make sure that we had that sense of urgency. And an earthquake triggers that sense of urgency. Second, that we had certainty of enforcement so that it doesn't go on and on from 1978 to the present. Third, I have been working very hard to try and provide some leadership in making the Pioneer Square community more viable long term.

I supported and was one of the leaders on the transfer of the Tashiro-Kaplan building from the County to have it rehabilitated into artist's live/work space, to help maintain that element of the Pioneer Square community that has been in danger because of some of the rents going up in the neighborhood. Second, I cosponsored a study that was then called the north King Dome lot, the historic application of that piece of property, which is now going to be the north area of the football stadium, to look at mixed use, so that we can bring in hundreds of new units of housing, new customers for the businesses in Pioneer Square, and a new mix of the kind of housing, that we would have in Pioneer Square so that there will be a new vitality to that neighborhood. I think those kind of creative and long term visions of how you support the historic district will be very important for next mayor and I've got experience in showing you that I have that leadership ability.