Molly and I gave up thirty minutes of our Saturday night to hopefully ask the mayor a few questions. Much to our surprise, the fundraiser was actually pretty empty, so it was pretty easy to walk up to the mayor and ask for a picture. Here’s the proof.

We Asked Some Questions

After our complimentary photo op, we managed to ask a few of our questions. Would he be attending the monorail meeting on Monday? He started shaking his head when he heard the word ‘monorail’ and quickly replied with a no.

We mentioned that it was our understanding that he received an invitation from board chair Kristina Hill requesting his presence at the meeting. He said that he was not aware of any letter.

He expressed that he felt the leadership was not adequate to complete the project and we responded by saying that he appoints two of those board members and didn’t he feel between the two he chooses and the coming change to a more democratically elected board, wasn’t that enough to instill confidence in the future of the board. In short, he said no.

We got one last question in: when he pulled his support and left the board with a single week to put something on the ballot, why didn’t he attend a single board meeting to help make sure what was on the ballot was something he would support. He said that he didn’t feel it was appropriate for him to involve himself in that way in another government agency. At that point, a staffer rescued him by pulling him into his next photo op and we thanked him for his time.

Molly’s next question was a good one: if he didn’t feel it was appropriate for the Mayor to get involved at board meetings, why did he feel it was appropriate for him to dictate an artificial deadline? Maybe next time.

We didn’t show up to this thing thinking we were going to change the Mayor’s mind. We knew already that his decision wasn’t a practical one or a respectful one, but a political one. We don’t win this by convincing the Mayor. We do it by convincing the voters in the limited time we have left.

The Mayor Blocks Transit

A little tongue-in-cheek humor: see that car in the picture there? That’s the Mayor’s stylish ride illegally parked, blocking the 54 bus’ right of way. The bus driver wasn’t amused and stopped and honked his horn until the car was moved. We knew the Mayor was blocking transit by pulling his support of the monorail, but he’s really taken blocking transit to a personal level.

Strange Interactions

We’ve had a couple weird interactions in the last few days that are worth mentioning. On Friday, when we went to city hall, Seattle Times reporter Mike Lindblom asked if we were going to “burn the mayor in effigy”. On Saturday, when Molly and I walked into the Mayor’s fundraiser, we were immediately asked if we were going to “be respectful” and “behave”.

Everyone who has pitched in on this effort, whether postering, designing, copywriting, recruiting businesses to help or even taking the time to attend incredibly boring government meetings has always done so with civility. We’ve put a lot of work into getting articulate and intelligent messages out there and when we do criticize, we’ve tried to do it with a good deal of humor. How in the world we have this reputation of somehow being disrespectful or just plain stupid (what would burning a mock mayor accomplish or even say exactly?), I haven’t a clue. I’d say we’ve been a lot more civil than a lot of the older folks in this whole thing, so being treated in this way just seems inappropriate. We’re here to try and get information out there and a ton of people have pitched in enough little ways to make this effort real.

Monorail Board Meeting at 5:30 pm

There’s a monorail board meeting at the usual bat time and bat place (Seattle Monorail Project Community Room at 1913 4th Avenue). Usual bat format as well with an opening comment period, presentations on financing, and a closing comment period. Come by if you’re interested, although your time is probably better spent working your neighborhood with posters and such if you’re not in the area.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 24th, 2005 at 1:31 am and is filed under Monorail. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.