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July 29, 2012
King County council to vote Monday on Seattle arena
It looks like the King County council will really truly be voting on Chris Hansen's Seattle arena proposal tomorrow, with councilmembers Joe McDermott and Larry Gossett going so far as to write an op-ed in the Seattle Times saying they will. Also that the vetting process "has led us to believe that Hansen's proposal is reasonable," though they don't precisely say whether they're speaking for the council as a whole or not.
In any event, the county council will hold another public hearing tomorrow, starting at 1:30 pm, though presumably since McDermott and Gossett have made up their minds already, they'll be putting their fingers in their ears. (Okay, McDermott has also proposed some amendments to the MOU, so he'll probably be listening about those.) You should be able to watch it here.
Just reading that editorial, I want to laud these forces in Seattle on one other issue: Openness. To best illustrate this point, I'll contrast it with Sacramento -- again. We'd get meeting notices about some ridiculous aspect of Think Big's proposal on the same day as "public meetings" were being held. At least one of these meetings was held on private property, and the only way to get in was to be an employee at that property -- which is a big TV sponsor for the Kings.
This happened repeatedly. Not that many members of the public can make meetings held on Tuesdays at 10 a.m., in fairly obscure locations.
This kind of thing does not appear to be happening in Seattle. I hope Seattle residents can appreciate this difference. When two politicians admit they were skeptics at the beginning, but have now changed their minds, I honestly do not expect much opposition to this today. The hearing will be long, I'd think, but once all the questions are answered, they could even be looking at a unanimous vote. It wouldn't surprise me.
Good luck to them in whatever they decide. The most important thing is to follow the will of their constituents.
Have any polls been done for this proposal?
Posted by MikeM on July 30, 2012 11:38 AM
Yes, polls have been done on the theory of a publicly supported arena.
Elway Poll from May -
content.clearchannel.com/cc-common/mlib/645/05/645_1337797786.pdf
The only polls on this specific proposal seem to have been online ones that get re-tweeted and suddenly one arena option gets 90% of the vote. So either it's the most publicly supported project ever conceived or they're questionable poll results.
The City Council seems to have dropped a big rework request into Hansen's lap.
www.seattle.gov/council/attachments/20120730ltr_hansen.pdf
That's an interesting list of counterdemands - basically, less kicked-back tax revenue, more guarantees of bond repayment, and something to account for Key Arena possibly becoming a white elephant. Nothing huge, but they're definitely a request for concessions. Will be very interesting to see how Hansen responds.
Posted by Neil deMause on July 30, 2012 04:01 PM
Wow, did not realize how that was a more recent Elway poll than the one I was thinking of. It pretty much walked the respondents through Hansens proposal exactly.
It's still a political hot-potato though.
Those most likely to oppose - Perfect voters (vote in every election) 41%