Here’s the takeaway from last night’s West Seattle Transportation Coalition meeting, thanks to Tom Rasmussen, our City Council Member from West Seattle, and Chair of the Council’s Transportation Committee:
Contact all of your friends, co-workers and relatives who live in Duvall, Cottage Lake, Redmond, Kirkland, Mercer Island, Medina, Bellevue, Sammamish, Newcastle, Auburn, Covington and East Hill.
Urge them to tell their State Senators Litzow, Hill, Fain and Tom and to pass a Transportation budget bill that includes the funding that the House bill includes for bus, bike and pedestrian transportation. We can’t all just drive cars everywhere all the time. If we did, the highways would come to a standstill. We need buses and safe bike and walking routes to work and school.
Time is of the essence.
The Governor may call a 2-day special session of the legislature next week only if the votes are there to pass a transportation bill. The House passed a bill that includes funding we desperately need just to maintain bus service as it is, and to fund safe routes to school, and specific improvements to East Marginal Way, and other critical bike and pedestrian safety improvements in West Seattle that our local representatives worked hard to include.
The fate of the bill in the Senate is in the hands of four east side suburban Senators:
Steve Litzow R-41st (Mercer Island-Bellevue-Newcastle),
Andy Hill R-45th (Finn Hill, Cottage Lake, parts of Redmond, Kirkland, Duvall, Sammamish)
Joe Fain R-47th (Auburn-Covington-East Hill),
Rodney Tom D-48th (Redmond-Kirkland-Bellevue).
If they hear from enough of their own constituents that we need the transit, bike and pedestrian funding that the House passed, they will have the political cover to buck their leadership.
Our Senator Sharon Nelson and Representatives Joe Fitzgibbon and Eileen Cody, are already fully supportive. They and Tom Rasmsusen are our champions on this. It is good to thank them, but we already have their votes. Please contact your friends in those four districts by phone, email, FB or ham radio! Only their own constituents can really influence them.
Don Brubeck and Kathy Dunn attended, representing West Seattle Bike Connections