Neww thought on an old wrinkle..

[Waterbuffalo]

I just got a question after thinking about your comments on where they should stick all that construction equipment for Gramor site for the Columbia River Crossing development.

My question now is, if they start building the Columbia River Crossing bridge and Gramor has finished some of their condominiums and people move in, who wants to be or live right cross from an "ACTIVE" bridge building construction site?

[Chief]

Exactly. As I undrstand the way the process will work. the entire project will take 3-5 years to complete, and there are several phases as you cna well imagine. Remember, the Columbia Crossing project BIA( Bridge Influence Area) stretches from where the "Delta Park" stretch leaves off around Lombard, across the River to SR-500. All of that cannot be done at once, and you can see that thy will need a large marshalling yard in several places. I assume that part of the WSDOT property will still be available, even with the massive park and ride they propose, but you still need several acres of constructio yard down by the river, and I don't see getting around that.

I also don't see gramor starting to build anything in the near future. they still have not closed on that property, so all of this is still very much theoretical in nature. With the bridge alignment nailed down, that should allow a number of other features to gel.

[Waterbuffalo]

Don't think any of the City Fore Fathers are currently thinking of such thoughts.. The new taxes base is what they are striving for and the prestige that Columbia River Crossing, Killian Pacific, Gramor, The Reserve at Fort Vancouver, Pearson Airport Redevelopment ( East of there, they are talking about rebuilding with some new businesses.)

Add to that the Police station being taken down, redevelopment of Denny's restaurant with D street and the property just to the east, Light Rail, and on and on. Has any one computed the financial impact all of this impact is bringing in?

[Chief]

That's been my beef from the start WB, is that nobody seems to know what anything costs, and that doesn't seem to matter.

[Waterbuffalo]

From what i have been seeing, I don't think Columbia River Crossing staff is releasing any numbers until this process brings down the choices to 1 transit, 1 road, so that they present a total package. But this flies in the face of what they have been saying for the past year.

Why is it so difficult to release some estimated numbers so that the citizens can have an intelligent conversation about it?

Is the City/County/State of Washington worried that the voters will bring up a Tim Eyman initiative to kill this bridge? From the acts they are doing now, they are just feeding this monster by not releasing data and answers they know.. This is WB saying this, not Chief or any one else..

[Chief]

I agree with most of your analysis there WB. They are trying to sell this as a package deal, Transit, Roads, and Intersections. I think they have set out from the beginning with an inviolate goal of getting Light rail into Vancouver at any cost. Where that comes from is not clear to me.

The City of Vancouver is a relatively minor player in all of this and are not even required to sign any of the Federal funding documents. The main player in all of this on this side of the river, is Washington State Department of Transportation. Doug Ficco is the top dog down there, and his counterpart and Co-Director is with ODOT.

I think we have a multitude of resumes that are being groomed off of this, and the one saving Grace that may work in the taxpayer's favor is that professional engineers make lousy politicians. The two job descriptions are diametrically opposed, the logic that is essential for a good engineer is the bane of a Politician. Whether that is true for sure has yet to be proven, but I didn't just make that up in the last five minutes...

As for an initiative to "kill the bridge" as you say.

I believe we need to replace those bridges, but that is not what the project is about. We don't need to mount an effort to kill anything, becasue nothing offical has yet been proposed, or approved. I do not see how it is possible to go to the Federal funding application process without a firm sense of the will of the entire County to take this project on.

There simply is no way that the Federal Government is going to cover the cost of this bridge all by themselves. Tefen does not believe me, but Patty Murray really did tell the Task Force, via her Chief of Staff, "Expect Millions, not Billions". I believe little that comes out of Patty Murray's mouth, but I do believe that.

What that means is that the Federal Government will cover a piece of the pie, but there is going to have to be a collection of new sources of revenue that have to be considered as a whole, in order to come up with the local share of the pie. The State of Washington isn't going to pay our share either, because Vancouver isn't all that important to Olympia; Columbia Crossing or not Columbia Crossing. the main transportation focus will remain around Pugetopolis. So where would that money come from??

* Tolls on the crossing, as high as the Market can bear.

* Local property tax increase on residential real estate. Will require a formal ballot measure for an increase in the rate per thousand

* Local sales tax increase in the BIA, probably County wide. Proposal in Pugetopolis on the ballot would raise the sales tax in Seattle to 10%

* Imposition of a license tab fee of up to $100 per license plate County wide.

* If additional transit of any kind is added to the crossing, it will require an additional Operating Levy, likely County wide as C-tran should be the operatior.

And we haven't said a word about an additional Streetcar yet, either!

Again, keep in mind that there simply isn't the depth needed in the tax base inside the city limits of Vancouver to pay for the Billions that this is going to cost. Any proposal for that much tax money is going to have to go to the whole County, because the City cannot raise that much cash by themselves. Besides, if there is a $300 Million Dollar + backlog of unfunded street repairs in the City of Vancouver, that they cannot find even 10% of the money in a year to fund, how are they going to raise what will certainly be hundreds of millions of tax dollars for a local contribution to the Columbia River Crossing?

I will support finding a way to build a bridge, but I am not buying into all this transit nonsense that is only going to fatally gum up the works. If you want my estimate, I think that bridge will fall into the River before Vancouver will ever approve a new one, and even then there would be some fool out there opposing it.

You do the math, and figure the odds for me of the chances of any one of those items getting past the voters around here, much less all of them; and you will need ALL of them in order to pay for this fiasco.

20 months

[Waterbuffalo]

Now my question is:

What do others on our board think of this subject than just "You and I" Chief? Reading a lot of both of us spewing text back and forth, but what do our Forum readers think?

[Waterbuffalo]

<bumps subject that is now relevant after last nights TF meeting..>