Dori: Spending $23M on Burke-Gilman bike trail same as burning money

I want you to imagine that you’re holding 250 one-dollar bills between your thumb and forefinger. Now I want you to take those dollar bills and throw them on the ground. And laugh maniacally while you do it because it’s not your money, it’s someone else’s money. Now look down on the ground and move your foot forward just one inch. And throw another $250 to the ground. Laugh hysterically again.

Do this a total of 12 times. That’s a foot — you’ve scattered $3,000. Now do it again for another foot, and another, until you’ve traveled 1.4 miles and created an emerald trail of dollar bills. You’ve now scattered $23 million in other people’s money.

Now get a big can of gasoline and run up and down that trail, spreading it all over the money. Your final task? Get a match and light the bills on fire. Burn all of them while laughing hysterically. After all, it’s not your money.

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That was fun, wasn’t it? To burn 250 bills every inch for 1.4 miles. Well now you know what Seattle City Councilmember Mike O’Brien and Councilmember Rob Johnson feel like. Because they have announced that they’re going to finish what they call the “missing link” of the Burke-Gilman bike trail. The 1.4-mile bike path will cost $23.5 million, or $250 per inch.

The Burke-Gilman bike trail is going to go from near Fred Meyer on Leary to Shilshole. This is a stretch of road that I have ridden literally hundreds of times in my life. And I didn’t need a trail for it, I just rode it — because I’m not some wimpy baby. A decently talented bike rider does not need that bike lane.

This is the insanity when you put zealots who know nothing about being reasonable stewards of money in charge of a city. Let’s face it — the bike clubs own the city council. They got Rob Johnson elected and they’ve got Mike O’Brien in their hip pocket.

Is this Burke-Gilman bike trail expansion going to hurt the businesses around there? They will lose 209 parking spaces around Shilshole and Market Street. But none of the council members care about the small businesses — they just care about who funds their campaigns. And if the bike share companies say, “Jump!,” the council members say, “How high?” You get what you vote for — and we voted for a bunch of bums around here.

These are streets that have been overrun with criminal drug vagrants. We just got an email from a mom whose daughter works near where the trail will run. The woman, who is seven months pregnant, was threatened while walking to work by a druggie vagrant. The man came up to her and told her he would kill her unborn baby.

And what are we doing? Building a bike lane for $250 per inch.

This is a criminal abandonment of the council’s duties.

You’ve got drug vagrants packing the streets of that neighborhood, threatening the lives of pregnant mothers and their unborn children. And the council is spending $23 million on a toy.

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