Biggest Donor Gives $175K More to Anti-Move Seattle Effort

[marmar]

Oct. 29--Faye Garneau has dropped an additional $175,000 into the campaign against the $930 million Move Seattle transportation levy.

That brings total contributions by Garneau, head of the Aurora Avenue Merchants Association, to $325,755, or 96 percent of all donations against the largest property-tax levy in city history.

Garneau has said she believes the levy's taxes are burdensome and its priorities misguided.

She almost single-handedly bankrolled the 2013 campaign for district elections that changed the way Seattle voters elect City Council members. ................(more)

http://www.masstransitmag.com/news/12132087/biggest-donor-gives-175k-more-to-anti-move-seattle-effort

[HassleCat]

1. Aurora is a strip slum

I like some of the ethnic restaurants, but Aurora is mostly miles and miles of a random, disorganized assortment of various small businesses. Of course they don't want to pay taxes for anything except putting more cars on Aurora. It's a living monument to the uncontrolled, unplanned development-by-automobile. God help you if you're on foot there. You may have to detour half a mile to cross Aurora at a stop light. Oh, you think you're going to cross Aurora between stoplights? I'll alert your family to start planning your memorial service.

[Crystalite]

2. This is pretty shitty. I'm seeing similar resistance to a sales tax hike.

There are local groups who want all of a 1/2¢ sales tax for transportation measure to go to highway widening while others among us want to bring passenger rail to the county.

I'm looking for best case scenarios to cite, projects that came in at budget and exceeded ridership projections, and that have high farebox recovery ratios. Amtrak and BART are pretty high but some examples in smaller communities would be terrific to have.

People hate rail, I guess they see it as "socialization", but very few realize how heavily subsidized roads and highways are.