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Gregoire contributes lottery proceeds to ‘Save the Russell’ fund

Pardon my cynicism, but it’s an election year.

Don’t get me wrong, I really want Russell to stay in Tacoma provided it’s good for them and good for us. They’ll take care of themselves. We, on the other hand, have to watch what’s going on so that we don’t get sold down the river by a bunch of bureaucrats and politicians.

If we have to sweeten the deal to keep them here then we should, as long as it’s still to our benefit to have them here when the cost of keeping them here is factored in. I’ll be really ticked off if we spend millions to keep them here then all we hear about from then on is how much benefit they give the city annually. I want to know that the cost of keeping them here is weighed against the financial benefit we get from their presence in downtown Tacoma.
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Wednesday’s Business Examiner Daily had an entry saying that 2007 was a banner year for tourism in Washington. New numbers were out from the Washington Tourism Office and the Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development (Washington State Travel Impacts & Visitor Volume 1991 – 2007p - PDF).

I’ve been interested to see how the city’s efforts to increase tourism have worked out, so I called around to find the report and downloaded it. The numbers looked pretty good but I didn’t see the comparisons that I was wondering about. So I copied the data to a spreadsheet and set it up to calculate the data that would tell me what I wanted to know, or at least give me a close approximation. Since I was most interested in Tacoma I looked for that. Nothing there so I went with the counties data, focusing on Pierce (of course).
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News out today that the Murray Morgan Bridge in Tacoma can be rehabilitated for just $80 million dollars. The city will likely have to come up with at least half of that amount. And that’s assuming that the state extends funding from $26.5 million to $40 million. It also assumes that the cost of materials won’t go up too much and that the $80 million price tag is complete and accurate. Those are big questions in my book, but those aren’t the only questions that I have.

We’ve been without that bridge for a short time. We have that cool new bridge on the new SR 509 just a mile or so away (Murray Morgan was SR 509 until 1997). There’s the on-ramp to I-705 just two blocks from the old bridge and the next exit is the new bridge that leads to the Port. The first exit after crossing the bridge is Portland Ave. which leads right to 11th on the other side of the Thea Foss waterway. This route really only adds a few minutes to a commute for people who live on the North End (or the North part of downtown). Most anyone else (which is the majority of people) probably wouldn’t use the 11th St. bridge anyway since they can go at highway speeds on I-705 and SR-509.
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The old Johnny’s Ocean Fish, Co. location on the Ruston Way waterfront will be reopening in Spring (some say around April 1st) under the Northern Fish Products banner.

They’ve put up their ‘coming soon’ sign and have begun remodeling. It seems that that they’re going to attempt the same thing Johnny’s did with a slightly different emphasis. From in article in the News Tribune (January 3rd):

The store will broaden its line of ready-to-eat seafood dishes for Ruston Way walkers and nearby office workers.

Additionally, it will stock specialty seafood items, such as winter troll-caught Alaska salmon, that aren’t available in supermarkets.

Sounds like a plan.
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The HOV lanes that we’ve paid for but seldom use are just another reminder of junk science gone mad. But for the sake of argument, let’s pretend they actually do what they’re supposed to do, which is to get people out of single-occupancy vehicles. If we then allow single-occupancy drivers into those lanes, at a premium of course, that will completely undermine the supposed value of the HOV lanes.

So anyone who advocates for HOV lanes and is in favor of HOT lanes is admitting that their stated goal really wasn’t the stated goal after all. So what was the goal? What’s the purpose of HOV lanes if they’re opened to anyone who is willing to pay for it (again)?
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Tacoma City Council Prepares to Spend Big

The city council will be voting on a resolution tomorrow (Summary of Items for the Agenda for February 26, 2008 - PDF) that would designate an area in downtown Tacoma as an ‘International Financial Services Area’. I have no idea what that is, but the Business Examiner Daily describes its effect this way:

The designation would allow the city access to a deeper pool of resources and incentives to keep the company in town since it is not only one of the largest employers in the city, but provides a base of higher-wage jobs and serves as a base of the city’s downtown revitalization efforts.

Translation: the city is preparing to spend big money to keep Russell in Tacoma.
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As I said in an earlier post, Tacoma does not have a significant customer base of consumers of technology. Two small computer stores and a handful of consultants and software developers seem to meet the demand rather well.

There are some local companies with significant technology needs. Most of those have learned to manage either with their own staff or with outside resources. Many of those resources come from either a small pool that are often dedicated to serving them, or from outside the area.

However, I have seen a significant number of businesses that struggle with their technology needs. I believe that by focusing some resources on (free) education and advice it would be possible to help those businesses meet their technology demands and to open the local market to more computer technology businesses.
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It’s socialized medicine at it worst. Introduced by Senators Karen Keiser and Jeanne Kohl-Welles, it will cost taxpayers $145 Billion over the first 10 years.

And the sick part? In all of their ‘findings’, which are the reason they give for introducing this legislation, they never once mentioned trial lawyers or litigation as a contributing factor to health care costs.

Whatever the government touches will decay. If you want to know about governments history with health care just look at the VA Hospital system. If you can’t find enough information on that, I can pass along a few stories from my mom, who worked in one for about 20 years. It’s interesting to note that even veterans who work for the VA hospital system generally won’t go there for health care (anecdotal). If these senators are really concerned about health care costs, maybe tort reform is the place to start.

As I listen to the rhetoric, marketing pitches and advertising programs that try to attract businesses to Tacoma, I realize that there’s more to making that happen than just saying that we want to (and paying marketing firms for their advice).

On the surface Tacoma seems welcoming with boards of this and committees of that all trying to convince business people that this is the place to be. But in the end their efforts are undone by others who, knowingly or not, are working against them, and in some cases the committees and boards are actually working against themselves.

A recent example of this that I mentioned in another post was a spokesperson for one of those board/committees who talked rather emotionally about the type of businesses that ‘we’ want here. I don’t know who that ‘we’ is, but she definitely wasn’t speaking for me.
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I just got the license renewal notice for my car. It’s going to cost me $95 plus the cost of the emissions test. What happened to those $30 tabs we voted for in 1999?

Then, after opening that little bombshell I find out that there’s a survey up at Sound Transit. It’s obviously a precursor poll to crafting a ballot measure for the fall elections. It is a very badly written survey for several reasons.

The bottom line of the survey is ‘how much should we expand’. Nowhere did they ask the question ’should we expand’ or ’should we just go away and stop wasting taxpayer’s money’ (Think: monorail). They also lumped potentially good solutions in with bad ones and then forced a choice (example: lumping buses and commuter rail in with light rail). Almost every question offered selections that forced me to pick the least objectionable answer, while only a few offered options that I favored.

Since their survey was so narrow-minded I thought I would help them with the questions they should have asked.
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