Tag: waterfront LID

Mayor Durkan, Morning Crank, Parks, Transportation

Morning Crank: If It Isn’t Anybody’s Job It Isn’t Anybody’s Job
Friends of the Waterfront Seattle chair Maggie Walker gives Mayor Jenny Durkan a medal at a press conference announcing an agreement on the waterfront funding plan yesterday.

1. Waterfront property owners have reached a deal with the city in a longstanding dispute over how much they will pay for improvements that are expected to dramatically increase their property values over time. The deal, which Mayor Jenny Durkan announced at the Seattle Aquarium yesterday, is essentially the one I described back in December: Property owners impacted by the one-time assessment, known as a Local Improvement District, will pay about 20 percent less than the city originally proposed—a total of $160 million, rather than $200 million, total—and, in exchange, will agree not to challenge their assessments. A nonprofit established to help fund and operate the waterfront, Friends of the Waterfront, will contribute $110 million to the project ($10 million more than originally planned), while the city will kick in an extra $25 million from commercial parking tax revenues, for a total city contribution of $249 million. The total waterfront budget will be reduced very slightly, from $717 million under the old plan to $712 million under the new one.

At Thursday’s press conference, Durkan said the city would pay for the additional $25 million by issuing additional bonds against the city’s existing commercial parking tax as existing bonds are retired. Besides requiring the Friends to come up with $110 million, the legislation Durkan will transmit to the city council tomorrow commits the city to spending $4.8 million a year (adjusted upward annually for inflation) on park operations and maintenance for the park, a catch-all term that includes the city’s contribution to security. That money would come from the existing parks levy (passed in 2014), the parking tax, and the city’s general fund. The legislation includes an emergency clause that allows the city to spend less on maintenance and security if general fund revenues decline in a future financial downturn.

2. The press conference included an awkward moment, when the mayor introduced Pike Place Market Public Development Authority council chair Rico Quirindongo (pictured, clapping, above), as Brian Surratt, the head of the city’s Office of Economic Development under former mayor Ed Murray, who also happens to be black but does not look like Quirindongo. After Quirindongo introduced himself and said a few words, Durkan returned to the mic and, without missing a beat, spelled his (actual) last name out loud for the press.

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3. Durkan also answered several questions about her decision to hire retired Air Force general Mike Worden, who was a runner-up for the Seattle Department of Transportation director position, as “mobility operations coordinator” during the “period of maximum constraint,” when mobility downtown will be pinched by several major projects around the center city, including the demolition of the Alaskan Way Viaduct, the construction of the Washington State Convention Center expansion, and the closure of the downtown transit tunnel to buses. Worden, whose career spans more than 30 years in the Air Force and six years as a director at defense contractor Lockheed Martin, has little direct experience in transportation planning.

Durkan announced her selection of Sam Zimbabwe, most recently the chief project delivery officer for Washington, D.C.’s transportation department, as SDOT  director last month. By choosing Worden for the newly created $195,000-a-year position, Durkan was effectively able to hire both of the remaining SDOT finalists—one for the position that both men originally sought, and one for a position created specifically for him. (A third finalist, Sound Transit division manager Kamuron Gurol, reportedly dropped out of the running late in the process). A similar scenario played out in Durkan’s selection of a new police chief, a drawn-out process in which she rejected, then reconsidered, then appointed then-deputy chief Carmen Best to the position, while also hiring one of the finalists, former Philadelphia police chief Cameron McLay, as a senior policy advisor.

The mayor said yesterday that she made the decision to hire Worden with Zimbabwe’s full collaboration and support. “He was very much in favor of having a person who would coordinate across all departments, because this isn’t just [about] the Seattle Department of Transportation. It’s much [bigger] than that,” Durkan said. For example, the city might need to redirect fire trucks to go around a traffic jam downtown, or offer flexible hours for people to file permit applications. “If it’s nobody’s job, it’s nobody’s job,” Durkan said. Currently, though, coordinating the city’s response to the so-called “Seattle squeeze” is somebody’s job—SDOT’s own Heather Marx, whose job title is “director of downtown mobility.” Marx did not play a role during yesterday’s press conference, and I didn’t see her in the crowd.

4. Also conspicuously absent: Deputy mayor Shefali Ranganathan, the former Transportation Choices Coalition director who oversees “major transportation-related policy” for the mayor’s office and who would seem to be the natural choice to oversee Worden’s work in the mayor’s office. Instead, that role will go to deputy mayor Mike Fong, who also oversees almost a dozen city departments. Asked why she decided to have Worden report to Fong instead of transportation expert Ranganathan, Durkan said, “Again, this isn’t just about transportation. Senior deputy mayor Fong is the senior deputy mayor so [Worden] actually reports to me [and] coordinates with senior deputy mayor Fong.”

In October, when Ranganathan’s portfolio was reduced in a reorganization of the mayor’s office, she told me the changes would give her time to focus on “major initiatives” like congestion pricing downtown. Yesterday, both she and Fong echoed Durkan’s line that Worden’s job will mostly involve coordinating between departments like police, fire, and utilities—a point everyone at the mayor’s office hammered home so consistently that I started to wonder if traffic coordination had anything to do with transportation at all. SDOT—the agency everyone was so keen to de-emphasize—is, of course, the primary agency that will have to deal with traffic backups, transportation construction, transit access, illegal parking, bikesharing, enforcing new restrictions on Uber and Lyft, and any number of other initiatives related to center-city mobility.

Development, homelessness, Parks, Taxes

Waterfront Tax Stalled Due to Concerns Over Security, Assessments, and Cost
Image via City of Seattle.

A version of this story first appeared at Seattle magazine’s website.

A controversial one-time tax assessment on commercial and residential property near the downtown waterfront, which was supposed to be approved before the end of this year, has been held up by protests from some of those property owners, who say the proposed $200 million tax assessment, known as a Local Improvement District (LID), is too high and should be scaled back. LIDs allow cities to impose a special tax on properties that will gain value because of improvements paid for with the tax; the city has long planned to use a LID of some size to help fund the $688 million Waterfront Seattle project. Property owners have the right to protest the tax; if owners representing more than 60 percent of the value of the land inside the LID write protest letters to the city, the LID can’t go forward.

The Seattle Times reported last week that high-profile land use attorney Jack McCullough is representing some of the large waterfront property owners in negotiations with the city, and that, according to some condo owners, the city had agreed to lower the LID to $160 million. (Condo owners, who would pay a median assessment of $2,400, payable over 20 years, represent just over 12 percent of the properties along the waterfront, where most of the land is owned by big commercial companies.)

Through conversations with property owners, city officials, and other sources familiar with the negotiations, The C Is for Crank has learned more details about the proposed deal, as well as the remaining sticking points.

The proposed total assessment of $160 million would be supplemented by additional contributions from the city of Seattle and the Friends of the Waterfront, a private nonprofit established in 2012 to raise money for and help operate and maintain the new park. The city will reportedly contribute an additional $30 million, and the Friends another $10 million, to get the total back up to $200 million. (Seattle Office of the Waterfront director Marshall Foster would not confirm the additional contribution from city tax dollars, but added, “What I can say is the strategy here is in no way to pursue funds that would otherwise be used for neighborhood parks or other facilities in the city [but] to really look at funds that are associated with the replacement of the viaduct and the parks district,” a reference to funds dedicated to the waterfront park in the citywide parks district created in 2014. That ballot measure established an annual budget of around $4 million to operate and maintain the park.

“The only discussion right now is that we will build the project, with a LID of a size that the city can complete the whole project,” says Friends executive director Heidi Hughes, “because without a significant portion of that funding, we end up with road and a wider sidewalk.” Current plans for the waterfront call for a grand, terraced “Overlook Walk” staircase leading from the new Marketfront development at Pike Place Market down to the waterfront (and onto the roof of a new Seattle Aquarium expansion); a wide new waterfront promenade flanked by protected bike lanes and hundreds of new street trees; and year-round events, including the return of Concerts at the Pier (at Pier 62).

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Another sticking point has been the budget for operations, maintenance, and—especially—security.  Friends of the Waterfront plans to supplement Seattle Police Department patrols and the city’s Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program with its own version of the Downtown Seattle Association’s Downtown Ambassadors—essentially, private staffers who keep an eye on the park, offer information, and help people in crisis—but property owners want more assurances that the city will enforce the city’s anti-camping laws. Former mayor Charles Royer, who co-chaired the waterfront committee and supports the LID,  says that property owners are worried that “the waterfront could open and the first tents could go up the next day.”

Seattle Office of the Waterfront director Marshall Foster says the city plans to keep the new park secure and inviting through a combination of daily maintenance by parks employees, year-round programming in partnership with the Friends, the ambassadors program, and police. “Our focus is primarily on trained ambassadors and outreach staff who will be backed up as needed by SPD,” Foster says.  “This isn’t about prioritizing exclusions” from the park, he adds. However, Foster said he couldn’t confirm any details about the LID negotiations, including whether the city has committed to spending more money on security in the park.

Ivar’s CEO Bob Donegan, who served on the Central Waterfront Committee that came up with the original waterfront plan, says downtown property owners said that they “would not support the creation of this park if there is not enough budget to do four things: Program, landscape, maintain, and secure the park.” Although Donegan says that ultimately, “I think the security is going to be fine,” others involved in the negotiations say the issue remained a sticking point last week.

Former mayor Charles Royer, who co-chaired the waterfront committee and supports the LID,  says that property owners are worried that “the waterfront could open and the first tents could go up the next day.”

Another issue that has come up in the negotiations is what impact the LID assessments, which were conducted by an independent assessor, will have on their property taxes in the future. Although the LID is a one-time assessment, some property owners have expressed concern that the King County Assessor, which determines individual property values, will look at the higher LID assessments and raise their property values (and thus their annual property taxes) accordingly.  “They wanted assurances that [King County assessor] John Arthur Wilson wasn’t going to bump up their county assessments,” Donegan says. Deputy King County Assessor Al Dams says his office bases assessments on the sales prices of nearby properties, not on independent assessments like those done by Zillow or, in the case of the LID properties, Valbridge Property Advisors. However, Dams notes that “if you put a desirable amenity in a neighborhood or by a piece of property, that may drive up the values. Will the waterfront be really nice? If so, that probably will drive the values up.”

Although some condo owners have joined the protest against the LID, others say they’re happy to pay the tax. Cary Moon, the former mayoral candidate, lives in the assessment area. She says she’s “going to happily pay our assessment, because I know our building is benefiting and I know our property values are benefiting” from what she calls a “really big and ambitious and bold” waterfront proposal. Royer, too, says he’s happy to fork over his share of the LID, which he estimates will be around $24,000—or a little over $1,000 a year. “A thousand dollars a year for me to live next to the beach, with a view of the waterfront … is a fair deal,” Royer says. The negotiations are expected to continue through December, with an announcement on a deal likely sometime next month.