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AS WE PATIENTLY AWAIT…
August 20th, 2009 by Clark Humphrey

…the latest mail-in-ballot results from the big mayoral three-way (alas, this is the first election since 11/07 in which I haven’t worked on King County’s tabulation squad), we get the disturbing news that Seattle’s municipal tax base has shrunk to its 1987 level.

I was around here in those pre-townhome, pre-Internet, pre-Stranger, pre-Sub Pop days. Seattle wasn’t necessarily a “sleepier” place back then, but was certainly a less frenetic place. Over-the-top displays of wealth were as frowned upon in that Seattle as, say, unseparated trash is in this Seattle. It was still, in many ways, an industrial/seaport city—even as downtown office towers went up, new fortunes were being made in something called “software,” and Starbucks opened its first out-of-state store.

And there were fewer people living in Seattle then. Between post-integration “white flight” and the lingering effects of two recessions, families with kids had already become scarcer in a city predicated upon “the single family home.”

The economy we need is neither the one we had then (too Boeing-dependent), the one we had last year (too speculation-dependent), nor the one we have now (stuck in multiple ruts).

Update: Today’s tabulation results are in, and Wednesday’s trend continues. Mallahan narrowly leads McGinn, while incumbent Greg Nickels drifts further back. We might not have a definitive count for a couple more days.


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