While the tax cutters chop away at the public purse, Seattle and many other juristictions are dithering while the infrastructure crumbles and collapses. Some City Council candidates and incumbents are beginning to wake up to the reality that one day we are going to find our streets, bridges, parks and other infrastructure so dear to our citizens have rotted away and are no longer repairable.

An estimate floating around the city is that there is a backlog of a half billion dollars in projects in need of doing now, and that number will only grow with each passing year.

We all know of some of the huge projects under consideration - the viaduct and the "preferred" tunnel, the monorail and Sound Transit. But none of those are on the list the city is talking about.

Whether it is the gold-plated tunnel option or just the stripped down rebuild of the viaduct, it will be money from the state, at least partially. The mayor wants the tunnel, but the price of the viaduct replacements soars to over $4 billion and the Legislature has only managed to find $2 billion and even that is contingent on the voters not rescinding the recently passed gas tax increase.

What Seattle council members and candidates are talking about are the bridges, streets and parks under the ownership of us, the citizens of the city.

On the list is the lidding over two open reservoirs to prevent terrorists from poisoning our water. In that vein, it is still hard to explain to citizens how we can buy more and more park land while letting what we already have go wild from lack of maintenance.

Other transportation projects include the ready to collapse Magnolia Bridge, and still underway Leary Way between North 39th Street and 6th Avenue Northwest for resurfacing and signals upgrades.

All over the city are residential streets without sidewalks for kids to use to be safe.

Then there are arterials straight from a Third World nation, like 35th Avenue, Avalon Way and California Avenue, where the ruts could shake a Hummer into wrecking yard trash.

We hope that the council and candidates mean it this time, that these are not just election promises that will evaporate with the dawn of a new council.

We should not attempt to emulate Mogadishu or Baghdad.