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Proceeding With this Level of Discord

Morning Fizz   July 12, 2010 at 8:01 am Morning Fizz

1. City Council Member Mike O’Brien’s protest to change the rules on phone books so that Dex and the Yellow Pages stop leaving them on your doorstep  (he’s asking constituents to drop off their unwanted phone books at his office so he can return them to the companies) has created a great wall in his office. He’s now up to about 500 unwanted phone-books.

Lobbyists from Dex and the Yellow Pages and the paper industry are scheduled to come and lobby the council this week. Here’s what they’ll walk into if they stop by O’Brien’s office:

2. On Saturday, Clint Didier’s announced that former state GOP Attorney General and former GOP Party Chair Ken Eikenberry has endorsed his campaign.

3. The city council’s viaduct oversight committee is meeting today to discuss the controversial contracts between the city and state on the $4.2 billion tunnel. The People’s Waterfront Coalition—which opposes the tunnel—is urging its members to go the 2:30 meeting and support three changes to the contract.

First, they want the contracts to include language demanding that the state legislature remove the provision in state law that caps the state contribution at $2.8 billion and assigns responsibility for any cost overruns to Seattle property owners (something Mayor Mike McGinn supports).

(Thanks for that one Seattle Reps. Eileen Cody, Mary Lou Dickerson, Zach Hudgins, Sharon Nelson, Jamie Pedersen, Eric Pettigrew, and House Speaker Frank Chopp.)

Second, they support a proposed amendment by City Council member Nick Licata amendment to lock in the $290 million for viaduct removal and waterfront street replacement, regardless of overruns on the project as a whole.

Finally, the PWC supports council member O’Brien’s amendment that would add an escape clause in the contracts that allows the city to break the contract in two situations: 1) If the draft environmental impact statements find unacceptable impact such as turning Pioneer Square streets into highway on-ramps or putting historic buildings at risk and 2) If too much risk is shifted to the public when the state negotiates a deal with contractors in the fall.

A PWC email blast states:

Proceeding with this level of discord is untenable, especially if you factor in the slimness of the contingency fund (13% on the state’s portion), the State’s temporary dismissal of their normal rules that require full bonding by project contractors, the uncertainty of the Port’s  $300 million contribution, and the alarming fact that  9 out of 10 megaprojects exceed their budget, despite good intentions. Project partners should agree in advance (NOW) on cost responsibilities, not take their chances after conflicts erupt.




  • guest

    what is the “uncertainty” in reference to the Port of Seattle's money? Just curious what the PWC means here.

  • http://peacetreefarm.org N in Seattle

    Maybe Councilmember O'Brien should use those phonebooks to “decorate” the table and chairs of the Dex and YellowPages lobbyists when they come to see the Council.

  • Stacy

    Where they're going to come up with the money. They've committed to contributing $300 million to the project, but have yet to say how exactly how this money will magically appear.

  • Kathryn

    Luckily my neighbors and I were outside working on the yards on July 5 and were able to prevent delivery of new telephone books. Add a virtual 15 to Mike's stacks….

  • Allison Roundtree

    RE Mike O'Brien's grandstanding on phone books: people can control this issue themselves by opting out at the Yellow Pages Environmental page, here: http://www.ypassociation.org/AM/Template.cfm?Se…

  • http://manywordsforrain.blogspot.com/ Mr. Baker

    Re item 3, where have these people been for the past 3 or 4 weeks?
    I listen to the podcasts and I do not think there has been any statements made against the project during the of the agenda where public statements can be made, in fact, I sent the mayor a courtesy email the day before the last meeting.
    I guess he couldn't make it.

    If you are going, please stick around, every meeting somebody goes out of their was to clarify that the state, not the city, signs the tunnel contract, and is responsible for that contract.

  • gloomy gus

    I honestly thought there'd be an awful lot more phone books. Oh, well.

  • Guest

    The agreement between the State and the Port of Seattle for their $300 million is also non-binding — the language is something along the lines of, “so long as funding the tunnel does not interfere with the normal operations of the Port”.

  • Get A Real Job Mike!

    Considering 500,000 or so phone books are delivered in the area every year, O'Brien ought to focus on real issues—like the City budget deficit. Incidently, much of the City budget is paid by and through businesses, small businesses especially, in Seattle—-many of which rely on Yellow page & white page distribution simply to reach their customers. O'Brien is shooting out his own bicycle tire, and that of the city's. Please, Mike, pay attention to what's important…..phone books are printed on paper recycled from phone books. What's the problem, besides a lot of people having honest work in their production, printing and distribution? How much of an elitist, anti-worker greenie are you?

  • Get A Real Job, Mike!

    What I mean to say was, 100 phone books is less than two one hundredths of a percent of all the phone books distributed in a year—-so how much of a problem is this?

  • Kcntoto

    and lawyers (do we need that many?),
    and Chinese restaurants (isn't one or two per community enough)
    and plumbers (isn't a half a dozen enough)
    etc. etc. etc.
    How much is too much?? Won't the market decide when there are too many books around??

    And doesn't the city council have a lot more important things to worry about???

  • gidge

    I can't find it now, but Mike O'Brien wrote somewhere about a conversation he had with phone book delivery people who were in his neighborhood. He asked them how they knew which houses to skip, and they told him they didn't–they just delivered to everyone. That explains why I continue to get them delivered even though I opted out of it.

  • Ken

    I am a senior who uses the Yellow Pages and I want them delivered to me and not have to locate each of the distributors in order to keep receiving these informational books. Yeah, many who are adept at the computer can get the information from Goggle but it doesn't work if you don't remember the name of the restaurant or the name of the yard serivce you used last year. With the Yellow Pages, a person can go to the correct designation and run a finger down the page until it triggers your
    memory and helps you find that restaurant, hotel, yard service, etc. which you remembered but not enough to locate through the computer. It is high time the City Council do the critical work of the people and stop messing with these lesser issues.

  • joshuadf

    Anecdote warning: a while back I was talking with a relative who owns a small business. Last year he decided to drop all yellow pages ads and spend the same amount on Internet ads instead, and saw a surprisingly large increase in sales. So maybe this problem will go away by itself as advertisers continue to move away from dead trees.

  • http://www.filecabinetkey.net/bisley-file-cabinet Bisley File Cabinet

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  • Johns

    That was true when I delivered phone books 20 years ago, too. The phone book companies want to get them to as many people as possible, since broader reach means more advertising revenue. There's no incentive for them to stop delivering them.