A deep-bore tunnel Town Hall meeting downtown on Dec. 1 drew nearly 200 and a panel of four. However, the meeting's agenda was not just about the tunnel, but about the meeting itself, as only opponents and skeptics of the tunnel project showed.

The panel included Mayor Mike McGinn, City Councilmember Mike O'Brien, Sightline Institute senior researcher Eric de Place, and Move Seattle Smarter's Drew Paxton. Sightline Insititute equips Northwest citizens and decision-makers with policy research to advance long-term solutions to regional challenges. Move Seattle Smarter is trying to put forth two initiatives to a vote to protect Seattle from cost overruns.

Over a dozen members of SCAT, or Seattle Citizens Against the Tunnel, attended. They have so far collected 15,000 signatures for their Initiative 101 to stop the tunnel, just 5,000 shy of the requirement. They plan to cushion that number and have until the end of February. Judging from audience applause to statements by McGinn and O'Brien dissing the project, and Olympia, the panel seemed to be preaching to the choir.

The Stranger's news editor, Dominic Holden, hosted. He said the absence of the other City Councilmembers and WSDOT, particularly its Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement Program Administrator, Ron Paananen, sent a loud message that pro-tunnel advocates were avoiding public scrutiny.

"These are the people who are experts on the deep-bore tunnel," began Holden. "They know the issue and should be able to cut through the 285 pages of technical writing and explain the virtues of this project."

He was referring to the "Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement Project 2010 Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement Executive Summary", or DEIS, which includes an additional 1,000 or more appendix pages. Holden said State representatives told him they couldn't participate during the public comment period now in place which he believed was ironic. The comment period for the DEIS is from Oct. 29 to Dec. 13.

"The City Council basically refused because they didn't want to talk about the tunnel in public to those who disagrees with them, mainly Mayor Mike McGinn."

Not true, Seattle City Councilmember Tom Rasmussen told the West Seattle Herald two days after the meeting. Rasmussen, a West Seattle resident, is Transportation Committee Chair of the City Council. He said there was no organized cabal among his colleagues that he knew about.

"I told Dominic (Holden) when he was planning the meeting that the timing wasn't working for me. We had this huge task force meeting on saving Metro Transit at the same time. For me it was a matter of timing, not disinterest. I wished I could have attended."

At the meeting Holden chided Rasmussen for "only reading the first page of the DEIS."

"I had not read much when he asked me about it, but I have now delved in much more deeply and have read what is of concerned to many," said Rasmussen. "I will use the information in the DEIS to be sure concerns I have with the project are addressed. This includes traffic conjestion, impacts on Pioneer Square, risks of settlement, issues the City Council identified over the course fo the last year. The Council has had 12 to 15 meetings, two to three hours each, going through the whole tunnel project, from insurance, to settlement of buildings, to tolling. I'm very familiar with the issues."

The central issue for the Mayor has been cost, cost overruns, and who will pay if and when they arise.

"You may have noticed that the State, County, and City are out of money because the public is out of money," the Mayor said at the opening of the discussion. "The first place we put money is a 54-foot diameter tunnel-boring machine beneath the City of Seattle and if it becomes stuck like it did somewhere else, the Brightwater tunnel, and if it uses up the reserve money, how do you finish the project? What's the strategy to pay for the surface traffic if the money is used up underground? Where is the analysis if we run out of money? This was not at all studied in the DEIS."

When later asked about the friction between the Governor, WSDOT, and himself, the Mayor said, "I dont think we can trust Olympia from protecting us against cost overruns. It's not me they should be responding to, but to the facts, and to the public."

And his tunnel-altrnative plan?

"To say what's the alternative when you have an alternative in front of you that is totally unsatisfactory, unaffordable, doesn't serve transportations needs, and is bad for the environment and fails on so many measures... if we cant afford it, we have to put something on the table that we can afford," he said. Hinting that the project should be left to a public vote he said, "I trust the public. They said no, but due to a backroom deal it was cut with heavy lobbying. Our elected officials didn't listen."

"It is no secret I've been a critic of this tunnel for a number of years, and I want to make that very clear," said O'Brien. "In spring and summer we had a long drawn out number of discussions in City Council on how to proceed. There were, and today still are a lot of things we don't know. I had to speculate possible (negative) outcomes, including (...) what do we know about traffic going on other streets when we toll? We still don't know. When the DEIS and its 1,000 pages in supplimentary documents came out, as I go through this, what I realize is that my worst case scenarios are better than what it looks like in the DEIS.

"Traffic diverted downtown looks pretty bad," he continued. "The jobs impact- We care a lot about jobs, but the actual number of jobs created appears to be very thin, and then the potential damage to historic buildings in Pioneer Square.

"Some things in the DEIS are quite disturbing," O'Brien said. "When they do all this traffic modelling they base assumptions on no tolling. At first I thought the traffic impacts were not that bad. Then I got to chapter 9 on tolling, and it acknowledged tolling wasn't part (of the assumptions.) They did some analysis and say that the daily use of the viaduct is now 117,000 and will drop to 81,000 trips through the tunnel without a tolling scenario.

"Then when you toll it, tunnel use drops to about 41,000 trips. People will avoid the tunnel both to save money and because there is no downtown on or off ramp. That raises some serious questions. What do you do with those 76,000 trips. Either they will use downtown streets, go along waterfront, or elsewhere."

"Volunteers and activists came together to launch a municipal initiative designed to impliment elements of transparancy and accountablitiy of funding," said Paxton of "Move Seattle Smarter". The state has chosen the most expensive option on the menu and has decided to stick Seattle with the bill."

"Think about the other big projects, Columbia River Crossing, the, 520 Bridge, and no one knows where the Port of Seattle's $300 million is coming from," said De Place. "We are at a crossroads, not just with respect to transportation funding, but with respect to culture and civilization now. We can't pay for business as usual."

Ed Plute of "Stop the Tunnel Initiative 101" commented during the Q&A, "There are 525 buildings downtown at risk but we have no catastrophic insurance if even one buildling collapses," he warned.

The Mayor agreed about the lack of insurance. "Normally, a contractor has to get a $500 million performance bond," McGinn said. "The State Legislature reduced that cost and WSDOT reduced more. The contractors couldn't find anyone to give them the bond. The risk is too high to get a $2 billion bond. "Their thinking, 'we'll worry about that after the building falls.'"

West Seattle "Stop the Tunnel" advocate Bud Shasteen said, "Our petition, Initiative 101 specifically stops the tunnel. We just want to stop the damn thing. Let's get the thing stopped then talk about alternatives." He added that he was disappointed Holden didn't invite his organization to be one of the speakers.

Rasmussen told the West Seattle Herald that like McGinn and O'Brien, he too sees some red flags with the tunnel project.

"There could be terrible congestion," he acknowledged. "The City Council has drafted three agreements with the State that are pending. We have not approved them yet but they say the State has to work with us on tolling and soil settlement, or 'deformation'. The State has to take all responsibility to assess potential impacts on private and City property.

"If the State does not meet a variety of conditions we're not going to be co-leaders, or partners on this project any more. I think the concerns the Mayor has on cost overruns we share. The difference is he wants to stop the project until there is a guarantee that none of these things will happen. We're saying you can proceed with the project but we want you to keep working with us, because this is a five or six year project.

"People forget that the State promised us a lot of enhanced transit to go along with the tunnel project, $190 million for capital for more buses, $50 million a year for operating expenses. The state has a lot of conditions the City Council has required them to meet before we go forward. I just don't think we have the luxury to say, 'Stop, and let's start all over again and look at other options.

"The project has been going on now for 10 years," Rasmussen said. "I have seen what happens if a project is delayed too long such as the South Park Bridge. Eventually, if it doesn't collapse, the State, or in this case the County, closed it down. I have lived in Seattle long enough to know there is kind of a sentiment in the community that is, 'Why can't Seattle get things done?' This region since 1968 has been voting for a commuter rail system under Metro, now Light Rail. It's taken until now to get under way. Many people wanted a monorail. That didn't get done. We keep looking back at more alternatives, then an opposition builds and people get frustrated and they pull the plug on these things. We keep shooting ourselves in the foot. At some point someone has to decide, 'Let's build it'."