per angusta ad augusta [translation]

Last night I attended a meeting in Ballard ostensibly organized to discuss the pending Monorail, though it looked like it was intended to devolve into a Monorail lynching. I attended in the hopes of stumblingly responding to some poorly-supported accusations; fortunately the SMP folks who showed up know the game backwards and forwards, and were able to whup the detractors pretty well (the SMP people were the only Monorail supporters given ten minutes to speak; apparently no one from Friends of the Monorail was able to attend, though I think they likely weren't invited). I tried to show up with as open a mind as possible, willing to be swayed by well-thought-out arguments supported by solid facts and projections, but the histrionics put on display by the anti-monorail groups were difficult to follow at best, and utterly tangential at their worst (at one point when the security cameras on the trains were mentioned, the guy heading up the meeting took the floor to comment how often one's face is photographed in public in London, a non-sequitor that solicited a smattering of giggles from the audience).

There were some heated exchanges during the meeting, perhaps best represented by the verbal altercation between a kind lady and the tattooed Kenickie wannabe guarding the AV equipment at the front of the room. During the question session, each individual was given a chance to ask only one question, during which Kenickie stormed through two questions and was on his way to a third when a woman sitting near me stood up to rightly protest that he should be limited. Kenickie responded to the sweet lady by telling her to "sit down and shut up"; the gentleman in me fortunately was utterly overwhelmed with shock at his inappropriate remark, else I might have tried my best to beat the crap out of him.

Overall, the anti-monorail groups were sorely disorganized (a good sign, I think), had a few talking points they tried to hit repeatedly without any real supporting material for their cause (and they were all points well-hashed out in the media already; just by reading the Stranger, I was aware of all their reasonable arguments, so the SMP folks had no problem gracefully refuting every anti-remark), and some of the anti-arguments were downright funny; examples below, though a good example of their poor choices of words are represented by one woman's comment how they have nothing to suggest as an alternative to the Monorail--they're just trying to stop the Monorail via a political maneuver (getting City Council to refuse to allocate land for the project). I think that one hurt them hard--ultimately their job is going to be to convince any fencesitters that they're right, but without acknowledging the generally-recognized problems and suggesting alternatives (no matter how lame), I can't see them making much headway except by some underhanded political stonewalling (which admittedly seems somewhat doable if they're able to get their acts together at all).

The order of speakers was:

1. Brief intro by guy whose name I didn't catch, but appeared to be a member of some "Block Watch" group from the businesses on 15th Ave NW. (A friend commented how the Block Watch program has been scaled back, which makes me wonder if it's a government program, which might mean these people's use of the group as a springboard into a political entity might be useable to undermine their efforts--if they're using a government-based program to organize under, maybe they could be charged with some inappropriate use of funds or something?) The guy introduced the various city officials who'd shown up (Tom Rasmussen and Peter Steinbrueck, as well as Hugh Ewart from Jim Compton's office, none of whom spoke during the meeting), then the SMP group and the scattered anti-monorail folks (they were sitting all in different places in the room, which is nicely emblematic of their inability to present a coherent argument against the monorail; I hope this disorganization continues).
2. SMP's Joel Horn speaks. The dude's got great stage presence, especially compared to the stumbling efforts of all the anti's. He quickly addressed issues about parking and switches, which seemed to be the main issues on most people's minds later during the meeting. Given only ten minutes, he was able to adeptly anticipate the bulk of the questions that would be asked throughout the meeting, though most of the questions demonstrated that people were being hardheaded, weren't listening to what was being said, and asked questions that had already been answered (or maybe they showed up after Joel spoke?).
3. The first of the anti's gets up, apparently from Monorailrecall.com, and the beginning of my lack of knowledge how to spell their names: Tim Wulf speaks, demonstrating poor attendance at Toastmaster gatherings. He stumbles through his ideas, fails to present a clear argument, and at one point has a nice exchange with the audience--his comments regarding the supposed mismanagement of the project elicits a call-and-response of "criminal!" from the audience, which is happily greeted with giggles from others who forgot to drink the Kool-Aid.

   I must say, though, Tim's comments were the funniest--he started off with a great analysis of the situation that sounded like he was providing a plot synopsis from the Simpsons Monorail episode. He likened the SMP and their ilk to "slick salesmen" who were selling us an overly-expensive "lemon car". He brought up talking points without providing any information to substantiate them, and some of his points had already been refuted in the media--I was especially unimpressed with his attempt to equate the elevator/escalator issue with cost overruns, when Dan Savage had already covered that in the Stranger: "Putting escalators in monorail stations will require larger, more expensive stations. So it's been decided that the stations won't have escalators." (Since many of the complaints that night were about the size of the stations, it seemed odd to me to complain about elevators and station size.) Tim continued to hit the usual notes--parking, lane closures, building proximity, car depreciation, and two-tier tracks, but failed to show how any were relevant and reason enough to not go through with the project.

   Others from the same group spoke, though didn't really add much to the effort, mostly just parroting Tim's points (according to my notes, at least). Patricia Stambor spoke briefly, as well as Liv Finne, the treasurer of the group. Liv (whose name I'm likely misspelling) did mention that they need volunteers, which has me thinking I should volunteer with them just to help sow chaos throughout the organization, though I suppose they've shown a great capacity for sowing their own internal chaos.

4. Henry Aronson, the "Ramrod" for OnTrack, continued the general theme of unsubstantiated talking points and histrionic invective. He claimed that the Monorail is the biggest Seattle project ever, and is the biggest project in the United States currently up for bid, though he never explained how it's the "biggest", and also failed to explain why Seattle (known to many as a city that wants desperately to be "world-class") should be disgusted with such an ambitious project.

   I think it was Henry who pointed out that the taxpayers would still be footing the construction bill for the monorail for years after it was taken over by a private organization, which prompted me to lean over to my friend and comment, "Kinda like the stadiums we're buying for the sports teams?" Henry chose to not comment on the stadiums, though it might have been due to the proximity of Kenickie's muscle-filled Mariners t-shirt that discouraged him from that line of reasoning.

   Henry (like how I'm on first-name basis with all these folks?) went on to talk about how the project should be completely outlined and specified before any sort of voting should be performed on it, else the public wouldn't be approving what they think they're approving. This was easily disputed by SMP members (who pointed out that bidders for the project use different technologies that require some flexibility on our part if we're going to get the best deal possible), and on top of that the whole argument seems specious to me--isn't this very forum we're engaging in the way that the public comments on the project?

5. Pam James (I think that's her name, at least) from "Block Watch" spoke next. She commented on switches, single tracks ("not what we voted for!"), and made the most ridiculous comment of the evening, as far as I'm concerned, when she remarked that the monorail would make 15th NW unsafe for pedestrians. This is apparently one of the people out driving her car instead of walking along the avenue, else she would know that 15th is already completely pedestrian-unfriendly, and the addition of some rain-blocking switches would actually be a tremendous boon to the area, as far as walkers are concerned.

   This is really the problem I had with the main Block Watch people--if they're business owners, don't they recognize that the addition of the Monorail and the pedestrians it brings will cause an incredible boost in business? They completely failed to acknowledge this problem in their logic, which naturally makes me think they haven't thought it through completely.

   Pam (if that's her real name; I can't read my notes very well) further went on to deride the PR costs associated with the project, which continued to seem stupid to me--the main reason there are PR costs is because they have to assuage concerns brought up by such opposition. If they're so concerned about PR costs, then they should stop opposing it, right? Right.

   Pam finished off by saying that the groups aren't "opposed to progress", though they have no suggestions for how to progress if they stop the monorail from being built, and their poor vision of the future belies any support of progress they might try to dress themselves with.

I stopped taking notes once the Q&A occurred, so I can't really provide many details that I haven't already mentioned. Same thing for the comments, which were poorly-organized and ended up being more like another Q&A session. (I should point out that Kenickie was the final commenter, though at that point everyone in the room started filing out; apparently being rude to kindly ladies doesn't get you far in Ballard.) One comment that sticks out in my mind was mention of the car tabs expense, which totalled to under $100 for an entire year for the individual in question. Is the cost of a single movie ticket per month not worth the value of the Monorail, especially to Ballard homeowners, whose property values will likely rise more than enough to counter that cost?

Overall, I don't think these people are much of a threat to the monorail; I'm especially impressed that SMP is willing to attend such lynchings, which demonstrates their commitment to deliver the best system possible within the constraints of what the public wants, and I think will ultimately ensure the project goes through.

I'm glad I attended the meeting. It definitely convinced me that the monorail's the right thing to do--if so many incoherent and poorly-expressed arguments can be made against it, how could it be wrong? Plus, now that I have an idea of which businesses in Ballard are opposed to the Monorail, I know where not to shop for the next five years.

Last updated by eric Tue Apr 20 16:36 2004 | deed | link