Rep. Farrell wanted to reach out and invite you to a community meeting that she’ll be holding to discuss the recently-signed transportation revenue package. She also hopes that you will let your membership know about this meeting.

As you know it is a $16.1 billion package with $1 billion currently allocated to transit and other multi-modal investments, which also authorizes Sound Transit to move forward with ST3 while placing more affordable housing near Sound Transit stations.

In the 46th district it will pay for projects like the Northgate Ped/Bike Bridge ($10 million), desperately needed improvements to the Burke-Gilman Trail ($16 million), a culvert replacement in Lake Forest Park ($800,000), finishing the SR 522 improvements in Kenmore ($12 million), and replacing the structurally deficient West Sammamish Bridge ($8 million). It will also fully fund the Seattle landing of the 520 floating bridge.

Unfortunately the package contained a “poison pill” provision, which will move all of the multimodal funds (including the Northgate Bike/Ped Bridge and Burke-Gilman improvements) to highway projects if Governor Inslee were to implement a low carbon fuel standard – pitting transit against climate, and we’ve seen what that has looked like this past week as the environmental community was split over the Governor’s proposal to swallow the poison pill.

The meeting will be on Monday 8/17 at 6:30 the Northgate Public Library’s meeting room (10548 5th Ave NE, Seattle, WA 98125). I hope you can attend.

Feel free to circulate this to anyone else that you think would be interested.

All the best,

Nigel G. Herbig
Legislative Aide to Representative Jessyn Farrell
Washington State House of Representatives | 46th Legislative District
370 John L. O’Brien Building | Olympia, WA 98504 | 206.729.3255