Board votes for new plan to fund monorail

SEATTLE – A heavily criticized $11.4 billion financing plan for a new monorail line has been dropped, and a key official says voters may be asked to authorize additional tax revenue.

The nine-member Seattle Monorail Project board voted unanimously Thursday evening to seek other alternatives for raising money to build a $2.1 billion elevated line that would link Ballard, the Seattle Center, the downtown area and West Seattle.

Project management also was in question as the board met behind closed doors to discuss the performance of Executive Director Joel Horn, who got an $8,789 merit raise six months ago for an annual salary of about $187,000. No action was announced.

“What we have agreed to is to put everything on the table, including personnel,” said Sue Secker, head of the project board’s finance committee.

Substantial delays could endanger a construction contract with Cascadia Monorail Co., a consortium led by Fluor Enterprises and train supplier Hitachi of Japan. The consortium’s offer expires in mid-December.

Under the timetable scrapped by the board, a contract was supposed to be signed and then a notice to proceed issued to Cascadia by Aug. 15 with a completion date of Dec. 1, 2010. Under the deal with Cascadia, each day of delay in issuing the notice past Aug. 15 means an equal delay in the completion date.

The monorail board set no new timelines Thursday evening.

Citizen support for the 14-mile Green Line was strongly affirmed in an election last fall, the fourth time in seven years that city residents have voted in favor of a monorail. The line would not use the track or technology of a mile-long monorail between the Seattle Center and the downtown retail core, a relic of the 1962 world’s fair.

A ballot measure asking for approval of more money is “one possibility that could come out of this,” Secker said.

Grappling with a 30 percent shortfall in revenue from a car license tab tax and a 20 percent increase in costs, the board and consultants that included Citigroup came up with a combination of 40-year bonds and high-interest “junk bonds” to supplement the tax revenue, boosting the total cost, including interest, to $11.4 billion.

Last week, state Treasurer Mike Murphy said that showed the project should be terminated as unaffordable, and on Thursday state Sen. Ken Jacobsen, D-Seattle, asked Gov. Christine Gregoire to call a special legislative session to kill the project.

“The ballooning cost of the monorail is ridiculous,” Jacobsen said in a written statement. “There’s no end in sight. Taxpayers deserve better.”

Marty Brown, Gregoire’s legislative liaison, said the governor was not inclined to call a special session, which can also be convened by legislators themselves.