Its the funding stupid! This seems so obvious that until we as a community can come together and agree on priorities for where we want our state to be going and how we can fund that direction, we are going to forever be in this muddle of scraping bare boned policies and plans through with bargaining and compromise all the way and no adequate funds to back up anything.

As I see it, we vote for plans and ideas that we can’t then fund to the extent we thought would be possible at the moment of voting so what is the point of it all? Either we vote and then follow the logic of this process to then agreeing on how best to raise the necessary funds for what we vote for, or we deny ourselves the power to decide on everything but instead delegate our visions and ideals to candidates we feel best represent them and who we then campaign for and hope to see voted into office. This would be the British way where party affiliation becomes a platform of intent and direction. OK, they lose their way sometimes, but it is a form of accountability based loosely on misguided trust that stumbles on the right path periodically. By way of contrast, it seems like democracy in the United States is one big cake that we the ordinary voter want to help prepare, bake, serve to others but in the end take back to then eat entirely ourselves. At some point, we are going to have to ask ourselves if we ought to be in the game of doing all of these things, but instead to simplify our lives by just voting in the ingredients (candidates for office) and leaving it to our surrogates to not just prepare the cake but to serve it too and to trust them not to eat it along the way. OK, so the trust part frequently goes astray, but surely our representatives can be entrusted to come up with plans and be allowed to prepare and bake the cake without all of us wanting to chip in all the time and interfering.

You see if we don’t thereby delegate our visions, we will always be disappointed because if we try and do everything involved with the cake, we’ll sooner rather than later realize that there will always be a gap – even a wall – between our ideals and jarring political reality. I feel this every day, especially as I am still without a job, but my frustration with Sound Transit and all of their projects would be a whole lot less if I knew that it wasn’t our fault. We vote and approve all of this stuff only to find that most of it won’t be possible for years and some of it not at all, and what does this voting achieve? It leaves us angry, betrayed and disappointed and it feeds into the media’s paranoia about how bad Sound Transit is and always has been.

Don’t get me wrong – I like voting for Sound Transit projects but I still think that whenver we do vote, we should know that we are potentially voting on two plans – a displayed plan for what can be achieved if all of the chips fall into place correctly and a shadow one where they don’t. This way, realistically, if we like the minimum, how much happier wouldn’t we be if by the end of a project’s term we would have not the best of alternatives, but not the worst either because the reality of a ten or more years project term is that both extreme pessimism and optimism would be hung on hooks at the door. As things stand now, we vote entirely on the most optimistic scenario and, as we have seen with ST1, that is the one scenario that next to the worst is one of two least likely to happen.

In conclusion, funding for ST2 is going to get hammered over the next few years because of this recession so what needs to happen is that Sound Transit should come forward with an alternate plan based on a lower sales revenue projection forecast. No one needs to vote their approval or disapproval and the 0.5 sales tax should remain to get better or not as it will, but we do need to be aware that ST2 is just not going to pan out as we hope it will in the alloted time frame. This is not a lack of confidence in Sound Transit, but just reality and right now reality sucks and is not going to get better anytime soon as far as I can tell.

Am I making sense here? Yes, I am disappointed and yes, I am angry that projects will be scaled back, delayed or removed from the mix, but then I feel these things because I deceive myself into thinking optimistically when deep down, I know there is little point. Until we get more stable funding sources or can get the federal government to divert funds from meaningless foreign escapades to more important domestic priorities, optimism will be the loser. However, I also think that the worst case scenario isn’t going to happen either and this keeps me going, if not vaguely optimistic that most of what we need will happen eventually.

Tim

The key is, you’ll get two options – delay light rail projects that lead to more cost effective transit, or delay bus projects that will only grow in cost.