Transportation meeting at Garfield Community Center
Transportation is not exactly transit, as I discovered the other evening at the “Transportation Public Meeting” for the Central District. Learned a lot. Like how our bridges are falling apart. And how our roads are falling apart. And how the number 1 priority of most of the people in attendance appeared to be sidewalks and/or not building a tunnel (depending on who you ask). I had been planning to go anyway, but thanks to Mayor Nickels for the personal message left on my answering machine, reminding me about the meeting. 
Seriously though, I did learn a couple of things I did not know. Like how there have been two major sources of funding for our transportation infrastructure eliminated over the past 10–or–so years: first the street utility fees in 1995, then the vehicle license fee in 2002. So now the only dedicated source of transportation funding in Seattle is the gas tax.
So that means that the city has had to subsidize transportation repair/improvement from the general fund. A general fund which has been restrained to 1% annual growth in property tax assessment (even as assessed value of the properties throughout Seattle have dramatically increased in recent years).
So, short version: we’ve been under-funding our transportation infrastructure by millions of dollars each year. So the backlog keeps growing, and much of the infrastructure gets further and further into disrepair (and therefore more expensive to eventually fix).
Expect a transportation package this year to try to “catch up” some of this backlog and get the city back into a manageable place.
Plus, expect S Jackson St between 12 and 23rd (or maybe all the way to MLK, I forget) to be resurfaced sometime this spring, since it’s bubbled up the list of need.
