‘Why would you stay here?’: Seattle contractor leaving after 30+ years cites taxes, homelessness, break-ins

A major player in Seattle’s construction industry is leaving after more than three decades.

Bob, a 35-year Seattle contractor who has overseen projects worth $100 million, is leaving the city, fed up after years of dealing with homelessness, taxes, break-ins, and immigration issues.

“Why would you keep your money in this state when you can go make the same money somewhere else, reinvest it, and not pay the amount of taxes, not deal with the crap, not deal with the homeless issues and breaking into our places, and starting fires at our job sites, and all on and on and on. Why would you stay here?” Bob asked on “The John Curley Show” on KIRO Newsradio.

Bob said he plans to sell his assets and move to a more landlord-friendly state, such as South Carolina or Ohio.

“We just sort of made the hardcore decision that we’re going to sell all of our assets and go to a state that’s more friendly to landlords and not so heavily taxed, and just have to deal with all the stuff on our job sites that we have to deal with,” he explained.

Bob said Project Labor Agreements (PLA), which used to apply only to large state projects, are now being attached to jobs worth as little as $1 million, forcing contractors to pay union wages and dues.

“I have to put my guys into a union shop. I have to pay the union wages. I have to pay the unions their dues that a union guy would get. I have to pay my guys at journeyman scale wages, even if they’re apprentices, because they’re not enrolled in state-recognized apprenticeship programs,” he said. “It just makes it really, really lopsided for a non-union shop.”

Bob said that while he considered joining a union, his company handles so many different types of work that he would have to join multiple unions.

“The problem for us is that we don’t just do carpentry,” he explained. “So if I join the union, my guys, they paint sometimes, they glaze sometimes, they do a lot of other things. And so I’d have to join like five different unions, and I would have to pull labor from those five different unions.”

While Bob has been frustrated with Washington’s policies, he’s not giving up, just rerouting. He said he tried to hand the company to his kids, but they declined because they don’t want to deal with the state’s challenges.

“I’m just making a new plan,” he said. “I tried to give my kids, and even tried to sell the company. We have a really, really desirable company, but my kids look at me like I’ve got three eyes when I say, ‘Hey, why don’t you just take over the company?’ We do about $5 million a year, and we don’t go out and solicit jobs at all. I mean, we’ve been around a long time, but my kids don’t want to go through what we go through in the state of Washington.”

Instead, Bob is leaving Washington for a more prosperous state for his business.

“We’re selling our properties, we’re doing our research right now, and we’re just going to pull our money out of the state of Washington, all of our assets, get it all sold, and we’re going to move to somewhere that’s less obnoxious,” he said.

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

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