Seattle’s Potholes Drive Taxpayers to an Atypical Act of Civic Charity

SEATTLE — In Seattle, if you envision some high-minded city project and you want to ask the voters if they’d like to raise their taxes to pay for it, don’t even bother printing the ballot. The answer is no.

Twice in the last two years, voters have rejected plans for a spacious urban park to replace a rundown workshop and retail area near Lake Union. A new baseball stadium went down to defeat (only to be resurrected by the state Legislature). A new library? Heck no. Rail transit? Thumbs down, at least the first and second times around. Even a vote to keep the schools operating got turned down last year.

So when the state Supreme Court ruled Seattle’s street utility tax was unconstitutional and had to be refunded, everyone in city government figured they could kiss that $12 million goodbye.

But hating to see it go, someone suggested sending a note with the refund checks, inviting residents to return the money as a donation toward street repair.

“We thought we’d be laughed at,” admitted city transportation spokeswoman Michelle McGovern. “The idea of having taxpayers send government money back is unheard of. Why be the butt of jokes?”

But one morning several weeks ago, a check showed up in the mail. “Enclosed please find our street utility refund endorsed to City of Seattle streets. I wish we could refund for the attorneys as well,” wrote Cynthia Todd. “Please fix a pothole.”

Soon, a trickle of returned checks turned into a stream, and by May 14, a total of 10,745 refund checks had been donated back to the city, totaling more than $450,000.

It’s been enough to add eight extra street repair crews and extend all street crews to seven days a week--all of them filling potholes.

What skeptics failed to take into account was the power of the pothole in the Seattle psyche. In a city where perpetual rain dribbles its way into the asphalt like Chinese water torture, there is perhaps no more enduring municipal issue than the lowly pothole--little puddle pockets, zigzagging cracks, black yawning chasms that can devour an entire car and passengers (the city has had to settle any number of pothole claims, some with damages ranging into the tens of thousands of dollars).

Charlie Chong, the grass-roots activist elected to the City Council last year, ran on a pothole platform--as in, what are those idiots at City Hall doing with our money when they can’t even fix the potholes?

“I’m not surprised at all,” Chong said of the huge response to the tax refund. “Everywhere I have gone when I was campaigning, it was potholes. Whether you live in L.A. or Seattle, as soon as you drive out of your driveway you’re facing streets that you pay taxes for, that you expect to be maintained. You shouldn’t have to constantly dodge potholes, and at that, some very deep potholes.”

Now, whether you mailed in your street utility tax check has become a measure of civic responsibility, with the paids and didn’t-paids listed in the Seattle Times. Most of the City Council paid; Gov. Gary Locke didn’t. Grunge rocker Krist Noveselic of the group Nirvana paid; the Dominican Sisters paid; King County Executive Ron Sims didn’t.

Sims’ spokesman, Frank Abe, said Sims’ wife cashed the check. “It was such a small amount, he figured it wouldn’t do very much anyway,” Abe said apologetically. “Plus, he said he figures he’s paid enough city parking tickets to fix 100 potholes.”

From the notes mailed in with the tax refunds, many residents hoped to fix a few more. Many had maps attached with particular potholes suggested for repair.

“I am returning the check even though I could use it,” wrote Lorie Starr. “I have had the second set of shocks put on a year ago. Please! Let’s fix the pavement! I even had to have an alignment Feb. 4.”

“Although I really could use the check value of $58.70,” wrote a resident identified as B. Smith, “if you see to it that the streets of this city are taken care of, I am glad to return it to you.”

One woman wrote of a gaping sinkhole in front of her house in which an entire city fire truck became stuck the week after Christmas. It took two days to get it out.

Not everyone, of course, was so civically inclined. A few of the solicitations, indeed, came back without a check, just a note.

“If we see any evidence of street maintenance and repair, we might consider returning the check. Under the circumstances, FORGET IT!” wrote one resident.

“It was with much interest I read your enclosed bit of information regarding the utility refund check,” began another, who went on to describe how he had paid taxes in the city for 50 years, but had nonetheless had to buy countless bags of sand and gravel to fix “the muddiest, roughest, unimproved alley imaginable” in front of his house.

“And now, you have the audacity to make the suggestion we send it back, so that some department can use it for repair of streets?” he demanded. “Dream on no more! For now, do not waste another minute with the thought of our sending the check back.”

City transportation department head Daryl Grigsby estimates the city will be able to fix 70,000 potholes this year with the refund money--an imposing number to be sure, although a blip on the screen of the $55 million a year the city needs to fix its streets, for which the mayor is proposing a new bond issue to be voted on by the City Council June 30.

“The potholes are kind of a symbol, I think, for a lack of focus on basic services that the city needs in order to stay workable and livable. People are saying it’s time to get back to basics,” said Councilwoman Jane Noland.

Noland, who has criticized the city’s maintenance programs and voted against the street utility tax, didn’t send back her refund check. She cashed it.

“There are a lot of deserving charities in this city,” she told local reporters, “but I don’t think the Seattle Transportation Department is one of them.”