SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES

Dori: Jenny Durkan promotes tolling downtown while sitting on 9 figures

Apr 16, 2019, 4:40 PM | Updated: Apr 17, 2019, 5:10 am

congestion, Seattle Traffic, commuting, car tax, construction, tolling downtown...

(MyNorthwest file)

(MyNorthwest file)

Jenny Durkan is taking another step closer to tolling our Seattle streets — even though according to a Seattle Times survey, 70 percent of people say they are opposed to tolling downtown streets.

Again, this is something that we must fight. With all that we have.

This is a continued step in the 20-year plan to toll every road in our region. I’m proud of breaking that story 18 years ago. I’m proud of how precise my timeline was — it has unfolded almost exactly as the moles I had in the state government told me it would.

The goal was to first get everyone comfortable with tolling the 520 bridge, the HOT lanes on 405, Highway 167, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, and soon, the SR 99 downtown tunnel. Through these toll routes, they can get a transponder in everyone’s car. And then once they do, they can start tolling downtown Seattle.

It will expand exponentially from there, until it comes to your neighborhood. No matter where you live in the region, metropolitan or rural, they will want to toll your streets 24 hours a day.

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We must fight this.

Again, this is another example of a politician who is completely out of touch. Yes, I’m talking about Jenny Durkan. She talks about how she cares about the poor, the working class.

She doesn’t.

She and her colleagues are working feverishly to destroy the middle class. If you make $50,000 a year and you end up having to give $20,000 to government, then you go from middle class to the working poor. That is what is desired and intended by the Jenny Durkans of the world. The poor are more likely to vote for socialism — “take the other guy’s money and give it to me” — because they are destitute.

I know how it hurts for these families who are living paycheck-to-paycheck. I understand. I’ve been dirt poor. I know what it’s like to be scared that you won’t be able to pay your bills.

But Jenny Durkan? She lives in a $7.5 million mansion. She’s a proponent of gay marriage who has never married her partner, despite the fact that they’ve been together since the 1990s.

Why not? In public life, you have to disclose your spouse’s finances. The father of Jenny Durkan’s very secretive partner sold a business for over $100 million. Since Durkan’s partner has started her own business, it is believed that she is worth well over $100 million — and so is Jenny Durkan, by extension.

Durkan doesn’t want to let people know that she lives in such a wealthy household. She wants to tax us all so much. Why doesn’t she, instead of living in a $7.5 million house, live in a $3 million house, and give the $3.5 difference to government? That’s what she wants for the rest of us.

It’s all power and money. It’s all hypocrisy. And it’s also an incredible level of contempt for poor people, to not understand how tolling downtown will affect the families and working poor who cannot avoid those tolls.

They can’t afford to live in the middle of the city, so they have to drive to their jobs in Seattle from outside of town. We don’t have a public transit system like other world cities that would allow people from Maple Valley or Auburn to hop a quick train to get downtown Seattle. Tolling downtown Seattle’s streets will destroy the ability of working families to make ends meet.

And yet, Durkan pushes for a plan like that while she sits on nine figures.

But this tolling is not going to happen. I am not going to let it happen because I have you on my side. You and I are not going to let this happen.

Tolling and income tax — the fight is on.

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Dori: Jenny Durkan promotes tolling downtown while sitting on 9 figures