Mayor Mike McGinn rolled out a proposal at Magnuson Park this morning to spend money “from a few different existing revenue sources” on parks, community centers, and transportation. The money would re-roof community centers, bring Magnuson Park’s Building 30 (site of the popular biennial library sale, among other events) up to code, improve community centers and playfields around the city, and make improvements to transportation infrastructure, possibly including McGinn’s controversial in-city light rail proposal.
The “new” money includes $6.7 million of the approximately $20 million in anticipated revenues from the sale of the Rubble Yard, a surplus piece of property where the city currently stores dirt and pieces of concrete. Three million dollars of that money has already been spent on fixing potholes and street repair.
According to McGinn’s announcement, the Rubble Yard money will pay for installing ice sensors on seven bridges to help prevent winter traffic backups, street cleaning, bridge painting, traffic control, Mercer West, moving Rubble Yard operations to a new location, and “high-capacity transit planning.”
That last item is the only likely red flag for city council members, who have said they only want the Rubble Yard money to go to one-time projects, not ongoing expenditures. Is “high-capacity transit” code, once again, for light rail to Ballard and West Seattle, which is unpopular among both voters (who support spending the city’s limited transportation dollars maintaining city streets, not building new projects) and most members of the city council (who are cool to the idea of a Seattle-only light rail ballot measure).
McGinn’s spokesman Aaron Pickus wouldn’t say whether “high-capacity transit planning” meant planning for light rail, saying only, “We’ll have more details about the proposal on Monday,” when McGinn makes his budget speech at City Hall.
More details of McGinn’s proposal available here.
