SEATTLE — Seattle’s citizen proposal to build a $1.75 billion line connecting Ballard, downtown and West Seattle remained ahead with 52 percent of the vote after counts late yesterday afternoon, the Seattle Times reported. Election officials are still tabulating an unexpectedly high number of absentee ballots.
The number of uncounted Seattle ballots is unknown, but based on projections by elections officials, the measure can win if about 47 percent of the remaining uncounted ballots are in favor.
The monorail would be paid for with a car-tab tax inside the city of $140 annually for each $10,000 of vehicle value.
Tom Weeks, chairman of the Elevated Transportation Co., which put together the monorail plan, says ETC’s attorneys have examined Initiative 776 and believe it does not apply to the monorail’s car-tab tax.
Jim Pharris, a senior assistant attorney general who wrote the explanations for I-776 in the state voters pamphlets, says he doubts it would have an effect on the monorail, though the question has not been studied in depth.
And Eyman says I-776, the $30 car-tabs measure, would not cancel the tax because the monorail measure creates a new, voter-approved tax.
The text of I-776 does not mention monorail.
“If Seattle wants to tax themselves into oblivion, I don’t have a problem with that,” Eyman said yesterday.