The Broadway LID, A Primer

To start, here's Erik's summary on what's happened to date.

A long time ago and in a City Hall not so far away, I heard a presentation at the Economic Development meeting for creating a Local Improvement District (LID) in Tacoma. Usually these are when a neighborhood bands together and levies themselves to raise money for repairs, streetscape beautification, better lighting, etc, in their area.

The LID was going to be the St. Helens LID an encompass St. Helens slope and Broadway, including my condo, which meant I was going to be ponying up some money. Shortly after the meeting, the Tribune ran a front page article about Darnell's, the auto mechanic in St. Helens, who felt he didn't need what the city was offering. In addition, he and a few other businesses that owned their own spaces felt that they would be put out of business if the LID passed.

It didn't. So the City narrowed the scope of the LID and made it focus mostly on Broadway and only the piece of St. Helens between 7th & 9th. This reduced the need to fix or create too many raised sidewalks (a problem in a city built on a hill) and also cut out most of the places of business that were strongly opposed to it.

The new LID was circled around, but did not "pass." Now that's a funny word, "Pass." Because the voting for the LID is tricky. It's not a "one owner/one vote" model, it's a "one sq. ft/one vote" model. A vote of a landowner with a lot of square footage within the property would have more sway than one with just a small condo. So an individual with a lot of property within a LID could alone account for 10% or 20% or 30% of a Yea or Nay vote.

So, by saying it didn't pass, I'm saying that the new Broadway LID had owners representing 52% of the property within its boundaries vote against it.

Interestingly, state law says you can pass an LID as long as that number isn't as high as 60%. So in a bold move, the Council voted 6-3 to move forward with the LID.

Things got very close to starting this summer when the City realized it had to update its numbers because the old numbers were 2004 estimates. They did, and the price went up a bunch. So they decided to poll the property owners again. They reported back that the number of owners who now opposed to the LID dropped to 50.48% of the property enclosed. It seemed like a small drop in opposition, although support was still not more than 50%.

All was moving ahead toward creating the LID for real until the surprise vote Tuesday night, where the Council voted against the LID 8-0 (Jake Fey was absent).

I discovered on Tacoma Chickadee's blog that the Council's meetings are available on-line so I tuned in to see what had happened. It makes for some interesting viewing. First, Tom Stenger addresses the camera directly like he's a news anchor. I thought that was kind of funny.

Second, it turns out the 50.48% was wrong, and the actual opposition number was about 52%, a number released at the meeting.

Third, some--especially Mike Lonergan and Tom Stenger--were upset that because a majority weren't in favor, we weren't following "democracy." This is actually not true.

The LID voting procedures were set up to give the richest landowners in the area enormous power over what happens in their district. If we want to talk about "democracy" the real question would be, by the numbers, how many property owners in the district oppose or are in favor of the LID? Yes, some owners will pay more than I will, but that's true in state and national politics, too. Votes affect different kinds of people differently, but it's still one person/one vote, regardless of what you own.

(To be nitpicky, if the LID were really a democracy, then non-owners who live within the LID boundaries should be able to vote too, in the same way that non-owners get to vote on whether property taxes of owners go up. If the voted for it, their rent would likely go up, but it's absurd to say even a non-owner has no stake in the debate).

So I think it's safe to say we can scratch the "will of the people are standing against the LID" argument. From what I understand, owners by the numbers were largely in favor of the project, and one or two large owners opposed it, causing it to fail.

There is still one big question I don't get. Owners of 52% of the property opposed the LID originally, but the Council decided to go forward. Then the City re-polled with much much higher cost numbers, and the number opposed did not change. For awhile, staff thought it had dropped to 50.5% who opposed, but at the meeting that was corrected to 52% again. So why kill it, if the number opposed didn't change?

That tells me one big things: those who oppose it, oppose it no matter how expensive; those in favor see the benefit no matter how expensive. Nothing changed at the meeting Tuesday, but the Council seemed (collectively, at least. Julie Anderson and Rick Talbert were asking very good questions, I thought) to act as if there was a big development. Nothing changed.

I really believe this project has got to go through. It's a major infrastructure upgrade, not even counting the streetscape improvement benefits. It's got to happen. Perhaps the $2 million the City wanted to get from local property owners they can get from the coffers of all Tacoma tax payers: it's certainly a project that will benefit all of Tacoma since we're talking about the Heart of Tacoma (as 9th & Broadway is often identified).

Some more information (and lots of discussion) at Exit133.

A few numbers for this post were pulled from the Tribune.