It is amazing given the amount of money spent to convince voters to vote against the elevated transportation solution for Seattle, that well over 40 percent voted to rebuild the elevated. If the retrofit folk had also voted for the rebuild, that would have raised it over 50 percent and we could have looked at retrofit as compromise rather than to the unworkable surface street/transit inanity. Given the hourglass shape of the city, there is no room for a wider street grid for dispersing traffic as there is in Chicago. Commercial and delivery trucks and those who need cars to go to their next jobs promptly cannot be shunted onto a Metro bus or Sound Transit. The elevated viaduct should not be demolished for the sake of downtown dwellers or rapacious developers.

Those downtown denizens who want to crash down the elevated viaduct, remove the existing waterfront businesses (and the ferry terminal and aquarium too???) in order to replace with condominiums and a waterfront promenade/park are not just misguided but greedy, unsharing, and possibly even psychopathic in their hate for the viaduct.

Seattle already has two salt-water beaches, Alki and Golden Gardens and now a third, Waterfront Park. Let the downtown denizens who want to go to a beach park use transit to get to and frolic at one of them as the rest of us do. It only seems fair given that they demand attache case commuters and their support staff switch from private vehicles to public transit.

If the advisory vote results in elevated viaduct being demolished, the entire cost should be borne by downtown property owners. If I want the utilities on my street removed from utility poles and placed under ground in order to remove poles and wires, I and my neighbors must pay for it, not the downtown folks. Downtowners don't lose anything if my utilities are buried; we all lose the benefits of an elevated viaduct if it no longer exists.

If we no longer have elevated transportation corridor to get into and through downtown efficiently and enjoyably, then those of us affected most adversely (property owners in West Seattle, Ballard, Magnolia, Phinney Ridge, Queen Anne; and businesses throughout the region who use SR99 thru downtown) as partial recompense for stealing our views, disrupting transportation, and making working people's life in Seattle more difficult should have for the next 20 years, 1) all Port of Seattle taxes on our property removed, 2) no increases in utility rates, 3) other general property taxes reduced to 50 percent. Taxes is taken to mean all taxes, fees, assessments. These reductions would not apply to new construction in the affected areas only to existing.

Even with the possible reduction in taxes, I'd rather have elevated transportation corridor to reinforce reasons why Seattle is such a great place to live.

F.N. Harvey

Ballard