Cascadia Report

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  • Vancouver wants room for more whales

    A recent poll found that 85 percent of Vancouver-area residents support expansion of the city’s aquarium in Stanley Park, a project that would boost a major tourist magnet in time for the 2010 Olympics.

    The poll, which was sponsored by the aquarium, paints a sharp contrast with Seattle, where activists are hamstringing the Woodland Park Zoo’s plans to build a 700-car parking garage to accommodate current visitors. A planned expansion of Seattle’s aquarium — also a tourist attraction — is years away, pending rebuilding of the waterfront viaduct freeway.

    Vancouver Aquarium plans a 50 percent expansion that would include adding more whales or dolphins. Construction is supposed to start next spring and would cost 32 trees.

  • A call for long-range transit planning

    Here’s the first article in a daily paper explaining why the rail line running through Seattle’s Eastside suburbs needs to be preserved instead of turned into a bike trail.

    The critical point: elected representatives need to plan for the long-term needs of this region — an area likely to double in population — rather than dote on interest groups. This means using the rail corridor to supplement I-405, which is currently the key priority of the highway-loving Department of Transportation. It also means preserving the rail corridor for mass transit even if the current owner wants to sell it.

  • Concerns about trade policy under Democrats

    The new Democratic majority in Congress is bad news for trade between the U.S. and Canada, according to some analysts cited by Canada’s National Post.

    Conventional wisdom says Republicans are more supportive of free trade. But the Bush Administration’s signature policies include a package of trade-distorting subsidies to U.S. farmers and tariffs on steel and lumber, each intended to protect a segment of U.S. industry at the expense of others, not to mention costing consumers. Democrats tend to be sensitive to organized labor and some decry trade as bad for U.S. workers. The key is to remind politicians of all stripes that there’s nothing inherently wrong with trade — just poor trade policy.

  • Democrats face challenges after big wins

    Sure, Democrats padded their majority in the Washington legislature and Senator Maria Cantwell won a surprisingly easy reelection. But there were hints of challenges to come.

    Cantwell dispatched Republican Mike McGavick by about 17 percentage points, as of early today. McGavick had run a strong campaign until the final months, when it veered into wedge issues like promoting drug testing for welfare mothers and clamping down on the Mexican border. Challengers from third parties had a negligible impact. At her victory rally at the Seattle Sheraton, the most cheritable thing Cantwell could say was “thank you to my opponent for putting his name on the ballot.”

    Now it’s clear that the Democratic majority needs to translate its gains — especially on the state level — into visible improvements on issues like transportation and education financing, while still improving the climate for job-creating businesses. State party chair Dwight Pelz noted that the reelection campaign begins today for Gov. Chris Gregoire, who faces another challenge from Republican Dino Rossi.

    There were a few other signs of obstacles ahead. Congressman Dave Reichert held a narrow lead over Democratic challenger Darcy Burner, suggesting that voters want to vote for opposition candidates rather than against incumbents. Meanwhile the Democratic base isn’t entirely united. Cantwell’s victory speech was interrupted by a group of supporters who loudly chanted “Stop the war!” until the dozens of supporters on stage drowned them out with a rehearsed “Six more years!”

    Before the polls had even closed, disgraced former U.S. House leader Tom Delay told TV interviewers that the Democrats will likely face a “lame-duck majority” when they take office. National Republican strategy may be to obstruct any policies by Democrats. But without substantial accomplishments Democrats won’t be celebrating in 2008.

  • B.C. ruling party plans lower taxes

    British Columbia’s ruling party announced plans to cut income taxes in order to retain talent in the province. The announcement didn’t provide details on the timing or say how to pay for the cuts.

    B.C. reportedly has Canada’s lowest provincial tax rates for people earning up to $67,500. But taxes on income between $67,500 and $150,000 rise to a high of 14.7 percent. Neighboring Alberta taxes that income level at a 10 percent rate — and has both the country’s lowest jobless rate and highest wages.

    A group created by Premier Gordon Campbell, the B.C. Competition Council, has urged lowering taxes to 10.9 percent for those earning between $77,500 and $150,000. Others point out that the soaring cost of housing takes more bite of personal income than taxes and is calling on the ruling party to act.

  • Shrinking newspapers are still good business

    Cascadia’s newspapers are reporting sharp drops in circulation and the Seattle papers claim they can’t survive unless one disappears. But maybe the newspaper business isn’t so bad after all.

    The circulation of Vancouver’s two dailies fell to below the level they had in 1957, when they began a profit-sharing partnership, despite at least tripling of the area’s population, according to The Tyee. But the company that owns both papers — and TV stations and newspapers in Victoria and across the Canadian west — generates profit margins of more than 30 percent on some of its papers.

    Meanwhile circulation at The Seattle Times and Post-Intelligencer is dropping, partly by choice. The idea is to put the papers in front of readers who advertisers want to reach; once statewide papers are now mostly found in three counties. Still, each claims it can’t go on with the competition. On Monday an independent group asked a court to let it in on negotiations that would probably close one of the papers.

  • Canada limits Vancouver’s airport

    Vancouver’s airport, which aims to be a larger hub of traffic from around North America to Asia, is being held back by Canada’s restrictive air agreements.

    For example, Singapore Airlines wants to add direct daily service between Vancouver and Singapore (in addition to its current service via Seoul), but can’t because of government rules, according to the Vancouver Sun. Instead it may have to add service to Seattle, which is covered by a U.S. treaty that allows unlimited flights to Singapore.

    “We don’t want to do that, but that’s just the business reality,” an airline vice president told the paper. “We want to be here another 20 years, but if we’re still restricted to three times a week, where do we go to grow?”

    One victim of looser rules would be Air Canada, which benefits from restrictions on premium foreign carriers. The article points out that Vancouver’s long-term advantages include room to expand and lack of visa hassles that hinder travelers going from Asia to Latin America through a U.S. airport.

  • Plan to fix Seattle freeway threatens … birds

    Add a new wrinkle to the saga of how to replace Seattle’s 520 floating bridge freeway: naturalists from overseas object to the leading design option.

    The new bridge would cover more of the University of Washington’s arboretum and encroach on habitat for great blue herons, according to an article in The Seattle Times. Naturalists from overseas have written to object, the director of the gardens told the paper. “This is not a local issue.”

    The article also mentions that the design would include dedicated lanes for transit for the first time and coordinate with light rail in Seattle, a critical step to managing growth in the region. The city council is expected to consider approving the design next week and the governor is supposed to sign off on how to pay for the $5 billion project this month.

  • Biodiesel coming to timber town’s rescue

    Aberdeen, the depressed timber town most notable recently as the home of Kurt Cobain, is hoping for economic revival based on renewable energy.

    After shriveling with the timber and fishing industries, the town recently broke ground on the country’s largest biodiesel plant, which is supposed to make 100 million gallons of fuel a year from farm crops. Seattle-based Imperium Renewables says its plant will employ 300 during construction and 65 full-time when it opens next year, according a Tim Egan article in the New York Times.

    The hope is that the plant will attract related renewable-energy technology. The town previously pinned its hopes on logging more of the remaining stands of nearby old-growth forest, expanding exports to Asia through the harbor and on the now-mothballed nuclear power plant nearby. Meanwhile Weyerhaeuser recently closed two mills in the area, costing a few hundred more jobs.

  • Maybe Seattle should ban junk food

    Seattle voters will decide Tuesday whether to effectively ban strip clubs from the city. Following a nanny-state trend that’s already curbed cigarettes, voters might as well adopt a ban on junk food in the workplace, columnist Bruce Ramsey suggests in a column.

    It turns out that moralistic arguments against the vice du jour echo Washington’s past. After all, it wasn’t long ago that the state arrested people who drank alcohol.