With three days left to vote by mail for Tuesday’s primary, this morning we are wrapping up our close-up looks at candidates in races including the three Seattle City Council contests you’ll find on the primary ballot. Previous stories are in the WSB Politics archive.

By Jack Mayne
Reporting for West Seattle Blog

City Councilmember Nick Licata is running for his fourth term even though he acknowledges he said in 1997 he would not serve more than three terms.

Licata is opposed in the Tuesday primary election by Jessie Israel and Martin Kaplan. The two who get the most votes will move on to the November general election.

The councilmember says he has “found through experience that a formulistic approach to government does not work,” and that “specific time limits on serving the public, is one such formula.”

He rejects criticism that he is “Mr. No” on the Council, too often opposing issues with no positive approach to counter his objections.

Licata says he believes there are benefits to the public by slowing down action on major projects so their costs and benefits can be better understood. Saying no, he says, is a way of making more time to better understand what will be the project’s impact.

“I have been the leader in requiring that such an approach be taken with major public projects to better assess their costs and benefits to the public,” he says. “My leadership is needed now more than ever as we tackle the multi-billion dollar deep-bored tunnel project.”

Licata says his accomplishments speak for themselves. “I have shaped and sponsored legislation that spans a wide range … from increasing police patrols, increasing civilian oversight of the police, increasing financial support for the arts and cultural institutions, protecting civil rights, expanding our open spaces and park lands, to saving our taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars from avoiding costly projects that benefit the few and not the common good,” he says. “Few other elected (officials) could match my record and I would gladly compare it to my opponents.”

He maintains he regularly challenges assumptions in “pursuit of assuring fairness, openness and accountability.”

“That is a sign of a legislator and that is what I have been elected to do and will continue to do while in office,” he says.

Economic growth, along with predicted population increases, provides both benefits and challenges, Licata says. “The benefits are clearly more jobs, greater revenue for both the public and private sector, and more opportunities for cultural activities,” Licata says.

But the challenge of this is how to have growth without losing the city’s affordable quality of life: “I differ from my opponents and, at times, from other members of the Council, by meeting these challenges head on; not fearing to ask the tough question of how the City government can assure that Seattle residents will benefit from this growth and following it up by taking action to see that it happens.”

He would spend more money on the basics and less on high-risk, high-profile public projects that have limited value to the city as a whole. Such projects drain money away from other services, he contends, which in turn makes the city more expensive to live in.

Licata points out that some rules do provide public benefits that often are not known by citizens. As an example, Licata points to a tour of “privately owned public open spaces” he organized in downtown
last week. He says these are spaces provided by developers in exchange for getting waivers from zoning requirements in order to gain a higher building or one that is larger than normal. “I found that most often after the building is completed and the open space is provided, there is no signage informing the public that this space is open to the public,” Licata says. “I had legislation passed in this term which specified how the space had to be used and made available 10 hours a day.”

Then he followed up that legislation by working with the city’s Department of Planning and Development to “design a logo and to request that the appropriate building owners display the logo.” He says he and the city department have found three dozen spaces that should be publicly identified that they are available for public use. The veteran Council member says allowing taller or “bulkier” buildings often results in open space not disappearing from downtown. “I intend to pursue similar issues in my next term,” Licata says.

One of Licata’s longstanding objections is the Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement with a tunnel.
“The deep bore tunnel emerged as a last minute political compromise from the governor, mayor and King County executive, and was signed off by state legislators and local (elected officials),” he says. “It provides some engineering benefits, such as sparing downtown from being a construction zone for over three years.” But again, the matter of where the money was coming from was never addressed in a “clear manner,” in his view: “I have been the only person on the Council who opposed a more expensive tunnel option because I was concerned about cost overruns draining funds away from other transportation strategies that lessen our dependency on single occupant vehicles,” he says. “That is still my position. With less than 5 percent of the design work done that is a strong likelihood.”

Licata wants the city to have all the money before the work begins. “We need a solution; we need a workable one and one that is affordable,” he says. “We cannot afford to redirect tax dollars that should be going to support our entire transportation network to just one project.” He also rejects the current city proposal to redesign Mercer Street.

Instead, he supports an earlier plan that would cost less, provide “pedestrian amenities” and also better traffic flow. That plan, Licata says, would cost less than a third the cost of “(Mayor) Greg Nickels’ $200 million, two-way configured Mercer Project.”

That current city plan is “now $50 million to $60 million short and construction cannot proceed until that gap is closed.” Licata says he has offered legislation repeatedly that would require the city to have money actually available before any construction could start. The time it takes the Council to make a decision is another of the complaints discussed in by candidates, who say the Council does not lead, but rubberstamps the mayor, that it holds too many hearings and takes too long to make a decision.

Licata agrees the Council is sometimes slow, but for a reason.
“The mayor has purposefully stymied the ability of the Council to receive information from the Executive Departments,” he said. The mayor’s policies are often not that different from those of the Council, but his orders that information not be shared slows the decision process.

At times, members of the Council have tried to reach out to the mayor in an attempt to find solutions, but Licata says the problem is the Council is a legislative body that “represents different points of
opinion.” But the real problem is that members of the Council have a “cultural attitude” which shies away from controversy, sacrificing “aggressiveness at the expense of compromising their effectiveness in challenging the mayor.”

But he says his oft-time contrary ways have produced a proven track record of pushing the Council to be more assertive in their authority over the executive branch. “For example, I was the lone Councilmember who insisted that the police chief and the fire chief be subject to periodic Council confirmation, (but) the rest of the Council did not wish to exercise that authority.”

Many neighborhoods are either mystified by or at odds with the process of updating decade-old community plans. “There is a need to revisit and update the neighborhood plans, and this work can best be done by the communities working with consultants that they choose, repeating the same process that was used 10 years ago,” Licata says.

“I think an issue that has not been sufficiently addressed by the candidates (in this election) is the need for open government decision-making,” he says. “You cannot trust a government that hides information from its citizens or how decisions are made. I have been an active proponent for making government more transparent.”

Licata’s website is at nicklicata2009.com. He and Jessie Israel are the two candidates in the Position 4 race endorsed by West Seattle’s biggest political group, the 34th District Democrats. Our candidate reports continue with one last look at the mayoral contenders later this morning; be sure to get your ballot into the mail or a drop box by 8 pm Tuesday. Find our archived coverage of all political races and issues here, newest to oldest.