If you wish to comment on the controversial 520 bridge replacement over Lake Washington today is the deadline. Here are my comments:
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I am writing to comment on the 520 Bridge Design Process via the Washington Department of Transportation Environmental Review. Though I am no longer a citizen of King County I likely can claim ‘senior’ status as a citizen involved in this process – having originally suggested the general approach in option K/L, the additional crossing of the Montlake Cut, in 1988 . Additionally, during the time the project formally got started I served as Secretary of the Madrona Community Council. I am also a 1990 Honors graduate from the University of Washington, in the field of Economics. My senior’s thesis was a labor approach to economic development and education(1988), and I have also significantly studied Urban Planning and other public fields. Prior to the incidents referenced below I was employed with King County in the field of Geographic Information Systems – where I grunted out the first parcel database for the unincorporated County – and the first growth management boundaries.
My comments today are solely my own, though hopefully I do have some remaining indirect connection with many communities in King County, including the Eastside, where I have worked often in both the public and private sectors. I would also hope to have at least some remaining respect among the members of my former profession, as well as other allied arts and sciences
A. This Supplemental Draft EIS process is invalid, $220 million spent on a process not designed to fully and fairly evaluate well designed alternatives, but instead justify a pre-determined conclusion by corrupt individuals incompetent to handle conceptual design in a long term cost sensitive manner. The real purpose of this process has been to establish control of the project in a post old boy highway network ‘bi-partisan’ politically correct manner which settles a conflict between the public left and the corporate right, at the expense and public safety of the non-involved, and paying, public citizenry, the customer and owner of all branches of government.
1. The analysis of the K/L approach has been padded with additional costs, including mitigation costs from the University of Washington, not added to other alternatives. It may well be the fact that a Montlake tunnel or bridge is too expensive, but that analysis has not been completed satisfactorily in the $220 million dollar spent to date.2. The analysis of preferred option A+ is not complete, most notably in transit enhancements. This is certain to be an area for planned cost overruns.
3. Given the flaws in analysis a cost aware review of these environmental costs is not possible.
B. Public relations efforts have been made to portray the neighborhood approach as stereotypically ‘Nimby’, or “Not In My Back Yard”, and obstructive. The Montlake neighborhood K/L approach is constructive – even if there are a few individuals who would be happy to delay the project forever. The design process is under the control of the State of Washington and they have consciously chosen to implicitly politically attack the legal, constitutional, right of citizens to comment on their government. This is but one example of a broader strategy toward this end, which have also included indirect “Duke LaCrosse Players/Nifong” takeover of the University of Washington via an agent of the Abramoff Lobbying Firm Preston Gates and Ellis, via their agent Professor William Beyers, using this citizen as patsy(1994). Responsibility for any delay is on the hands of those who have controlled the review process.
This review process is in fact a direct public and private 'Corporate' attack against our constitutional system of government with the full collaboration of Governor Christine Gregoire, her appointees, her former staff employees in the Attorney General’s Office, and the environmental review profession, once nobly led by Gregoire as head of the Department of Ecology during the original implementation of the State EIS process. Microsoft Counsel Brad Smith’s recent statements about the effort prove this conclusively, especially given the very recent shilling the firms outside Counsel, the post Abramoff firm of K & L Gates, has engaged in concerning the controversial “Citizens United” Supreme Court decision.
In attacking public involvement via a variety of legal strategies that include falsely accusing responsible citizens, including this commenter, of abusive harassment for insisting on government and corporate accountability these “elite” individuals have themselves engaged in the behavior they claim to condemn. Correctly, the King County Courts, with it’s “officers”, have engaged in an unwritten common law practice of assigning ‘second-class’ citizenship to abusers. This standard needs to be applied to the true abusers, and their assets used to reimburse the public for the abuses to date.
Personally, I believe Mayor McGinn’s calling for immediate transit only usage for the third lane is premature. However the need to plan for the eventual conversion of this bridge to light rail is necessary. McGinn’s negotiating position addresses this need in a completely professional fashion which greatly exceeds the ability of the so-called Downtown Business community. The community of the greater Montlake area, Seattle, King County, the Puget Sound Regional Council, Washington State would be better off served starting from scratch with the leadership of McGinn and the leaders of the Montlake neighborhood. The general approach of option K/L/M is superior to A+ for eventual rail conversion and this is a fatal flaw in the WSDOT led effort.
Given similar abuses on a national level this action is imperative. The real opportunity with this project is to re-invent corporate and governmental America. Jumping onto the soapbox for a moment, I’d like to see a private college of the Harvard/Stanford rank built on the eastern shores of Lake Washington – perhaps a useful place to put the remaining confiscated wealth of the Microsoft Executive ‘gang’. Ironically, these actions would be a ‘just’ inheritance from Bill Gates, Sr, the former family law lawyer with Preston Gates and Ellis, to his son, the CEO of Microsoft, for their abuses at the University of Washington and, subsequently, the remainder of the Region and State.
The law is the law, and as former City Attorney Mark Sidran noted, little things matter, else they turn into big problems – as evidenced in this case. I sincerely hope and trust that all good people, upon being properly informed of these problems by the press, legislature, and Seattle Council, will turn away from this corruption – and stop our significant local contributions to corporate and governmental decay.
-Douglas Tooley
766 Alpine Forest Drive,
Bayfield, CO 81122 (still a Washington/Pierce county resident)
970 672 0052 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 970 672 0052 end_of_the_skype_highlighting
