What does the Muni League have to say about the port? Seeing as the Port gets a public subsidy IN EXCESS OF $100M PER YEAR and are still asking the city to fund their traffic improvements.
http://www.munileague.org/2009PORTREPORT.pdf
Culture and Governance
It has often been noted that ports in Washington are hybrid entities with characteristics of both government and business. In the case of the Port of Seattle, its hybrid nature as a quasigovernmental and quasi-private entity have led to a culture that has borrowed not the best of each sector but some of the worst: uncompetitive deal-making, poor accountability, cronyism and ethical lapses.
Accountability and Transparency.
The Port justifies nearly all of its decisions on broad claims of “economic impacts.†References to large numbers of jobs created or taxes generated are meaningless without analysis of the related costs that produce such benefits and the forgone opportunities that might have been sought.
How have they used that public subsidy?
Terminal 91 Uplands. The failed development of the 57-acre Terminal 91 uplands north of Seattle’s Magnolia Bridge -- which have remained unutilized, generating virtually no jobs, economic activity or tax revenues for the past eight years -- is a particular disappointment. The Port has invested and written off some $7 million in studies and impact statements pursuing a mixed use development that is not allowed under the current industrial zoning. The Port’s vision for the property as a mix of commercial and industrial uses may be the most practical given the cost of developing the needed infrastructure, but the conflict with the City of Seattle’s zoning has resulted in an extraordinarily expensive slow-motion Port/City badminton match in which the public has been the loser. Both the Port and the City of Seattle should be faulted for failing to work together to create tax-generating economic development and family wage jobs on this prime site in the heart of the City of Seattle