Sound Transit built a regional rail promise on a property-tax formula that made sense when home values were normal. Now the bill is coming due, and nobody wants to say that part out loud. Welcome to Seattle Politics and Urbanism Daily. Today we're in the ST3 reckoning — the committee meeting that could change how this region pays for transit, and whether Sound Transit can keep the coalition together. So, short version: the agency wants more money, homeowners are mad, and the trains still aren't running on time. Pick your villain. And Seattle just hit year twenty of its global climate pledge. We'll get into how that's going — and yes, it's messy. From Mike Orr at Seattle Transit Blog:
Sound Transit’s Executive Committee will have an unusual second meeting this month to further debate the resolution to downscale ST3 to shrink its budget gap. The meeting is today at 1:30-4:00pm. The meeting page has links to the agenda, the resolution, two reports evaluating the Enterprise Initiative, and how to attend the meeting in person or virtually and to give public testimony.
Quick ST3 update: Sound Transit's executive committee is back for a second hearing before next week's downscaling vote. Seattle Transit Blog has the meeting links if you want to testify or just watch the budget reckoning in real time. They scheduled a whole second meeting because too many people showed up to testify the first time. That's not a healthy process — that's the board buying time and hoping the anger cools off before May 28th. No vote today. The full board's supposed to take this up next Thursday — unless they punt again. And the blog already had to fix the date once, so, you know, stay tuned. Jake Skorheim, writing in MyNorthwest:
In 2016, voters approved the ST3 expansion with a price tag somewhere around $54 billion. The current projection to deliver that same plan? Closer to $185 billion. Ask yourself honestly — would voters have approved $185 billion in 2016? Not a chance.
Sound Transit's ST3 gap is now estimated at $34 billion. The board is floating cuts and, according to MyNorthwest's Jake, some revenue moves that wouldn't need voter approval. For context, the 2016 price tag was $54 billion; the current projection is closer to $185 billion. Look, I want light rail. I really do. But tripling the cost and then trying to fill the gap without going back to voters? That's how you blow up public trust in transit for a generation. You don't get to miss by that much and just skip the ballot. To be fair, this is an opinion column from a guy who says up top he's "deeply cynical" about the whole project — so treat the 93% poll as the vibe check it is, not a scientific verdict. The cost numbers themselves, though, aren't really in dispute. Doesn't matter who's writing it — Sound Transit earned that cynicism. Same pattern every time: promise big, miss badly, and ask working people to keep covering the gap. At some point the agency has to deal with that, not just the critics. From Syris Valentine at The Urbanist:
Within four months, Seattle’s City Council responded by unanimously affirming the city’s support for the protocol, and four years later, then-Mayor Greg Nickels rallied together more than 100 cities to commit to carrying out the Kyoto Protocol themselves, even if the nation no longer would — a critical commitment given the world’s metropolises contribute some 70% of global emissions.
The Urbanist's Syris Valentine took a deep look at Seattle's 20-year climate commitment. And the takeaway is pretty familiar: lots of signing ceremonies, but those 2030 targets are still out of reach. Twenty years. Two decades of unanimous council votes and press conferences, and we're still off track. At some point the commitment becomes the product, right? The announcement starts replacing the action. To be fair, this pattern goes back to 2001. Bush pulls out of Kyoto, Seattle symbolically reaffirms it within four months. Then it's Trump and Paris, same script. The city has reacted to federal abandonment more than it's built proactively toward the targets. Reactive is generous. What's the actual material change for a bus driver in Rainier Beach? Buildings are still leaking heat, transit's still underfunded, and we're on year twenty of 'Seattle leads by example.' Got thoughts on today's stories, a tip we should chase, or a correction we need to make? Send us a note anytime at seattledailyfix at lantern podcasts dot com.
You'll find links to every story we covered today in the show notes. If something stuck with you, that's the place to dig a little deeper.
That's Seattle Politics and Urbanism Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.