Clearly... I Made the Wrong Assumption.

When I first saw that Proposition 1 was actually going to pass, I'll admit my immediate reaction wasn't particularly sophisticated.

“Are you FU**ING kidding me, Tacoma?!  Did anybody actually READ this thing?!”

Okay, that's probably unfair.  Strike that from the record.  Although I suppose it's a little late for that now.  But if I'm being truthful, it was my first thought.

I've had some time since then to think about why the result surprised me as much as it did, and I finally figured it out.  It wasn't because I expected everyone in Tacoma to vote the way I did.  I didn't.  I expected everyone to do the homework.  There's a big difference.

I read Proposition 1.  I read what the City was saying about it.  I looked at the numbers, what was being promised and, more importantly, what wasn't being promised.  I looked back at the previous Streets Initiative and what Tacoma has spent the last ten years doing with the money taxpayers already gave them.  And the entire time I kept thinking, “There's no way we're going to approve this without demanding more specifics.”

Clearly, I made the wrong assumption.

What really got me wasn't even the election result.  It was what happened afterward.  I started seeing people celebrating our “new, safe streets.”  Better sidewalks!  Better roads!  Better connections!  And I kept thinking, “Did we all read the same thing?”

Because I went back and looked again.  I genuinely wondered if maybe I had missed something.  Where was the guaranteed project list?  Where was the promise that the street you drive every day is going to be fixed?  Where was the guarantee that the sidewalk in your neighborhood is going to be repaired?  Where was the part that turned all of those wonderful campaign promises into specific things Tacoma taxpayers could count on receiving?

That's when it started bothering me.

Now, maybe you did read the measure.  Maybe you understood what it does and doesn't commit Tacoma to doing.  Maybe you looked at the previous ten years, considered the additional taxes, weighed the arguments and decided, “Yep. I'm comfortable with this.  I'm voting YES.”

Fair enough.  We disagree.  That's democracy, and I'm not talking about you.

I'm talking about the person who heard “Safe Streets and Sidewalks,” thought that sounded pretty damned good and voted for ten years of taxes without ever bothering to ask exactly what those words obligated anyone to deliver.  If that's what you did, I'm going to say something you probably aren't going to enjoy hearing.

That was irresponsible.

There.  I said it.  And I'm comfortable saying it because this isn't 1985.  Twenty or thirty years ago, maybe we could argue that this stuff was hard to find.  Maybe you'd have to call somebody at the City, track down a document, visit the library or actually know where the hell to look.  Hell, maybe you’d even have to drive downtown and talk with somebody in person to get the answers you felt you deserved to make an intelligent decision.

Today?  Information is quite literally sitting in your pocket.  At the tips of your thumbs on your cellphone.

Google it.  Read the ordinance, read the City's materials, read what supporters say, what opponents say.  You can ask questions.  These days, you can open ChatGPT and ask, “What does Proposition 1 actually guarantee?”  Then ask, “What DOESN'T it guarantee?”  Ask it to make the strongest argument FOR Proposition 1.  Then ask it to make the strongest argument AGAINST it.  And while you're at it, don't take Visualize Tacoma's word for any of this, either.  Check my work.

We have access to the whole world in front of us every day, and somehow we still seem perfectly willing to let other people tell us what to think.  The information wasn't inaccessible.  We simply had to want it.

Maybe that's where I made my mistake.  I assumed that because information has never been easier to obtain, people would naturally seek it out before making a decision that affects themselves, their neighbors and everybody else in Tacoma for the next ten years.  Apparently having access to information and actually informing ourselves are two very different things.

And there's another part of this that I can't get past.  This wasn't our first stab at a road improvement initiative.  Tacoma taxpayers have already spent the last decade funding a street-improvement initiative.  The City calls that initiative a success.  Okay, cool.  Let's give them credit for what they accomplished.  Thousands of residential blocks received work.  Thousands of ADA curb ramps were completed and school crossings were improved.  The City leveraged taxpayer dollars into considerably more transportation investment.  I'm not going to pretend none of that happened just because it makes my argument easier.

But here's the problem: the City's own reporting also showed that while residential pavement conditions improved, arterial pavement conditions deteriorated.  So before we signed up for another ten years, wouldn't one of the most obvious questions in the world have been, “How did the last ten years turn out?”  Because there's an irony here that I can't ignore.

The City can point at a lousy Tacoma street and say, “See? This is why we need more money.”  And I can stand on the exact same lousy street and say, “Agreed.  And after ten years of paying for street improvements, this is exactly why I'm asking what happened with the LAST money.”

Those two statements can exist at the same time.

And THAT is why I thought Tacoma had already sent an important message when voters previously rejected another street-funding proposal.  I didn't hear, “We don't want safer streets.”  Of course we want safer streets.  I heard, “This isn't good enough.  Go back to the drawing board.”

Maybe that's the construction guy in me, but there's nothing radical about that idea.

I've spent most of my adult life building things.  Plans get rejected, questions get asked and details get challenged.  Something comes across my desk that isn't ready to build?  REVISE AND RESUBMIT.  That doesn't mean we don't want the building.  It means we’re not approving these plans.  Give us a better scope, answer the unanswered questions, tell us what we’re building.  Tell us what is guaranteed and tell us how we're going to measure what’s being delivered.  Then bring it back and earn the approval.

That's what I thought Tacoma was doing when we said no the last time.  Instead, this time we approved the proposition.  And whether we intended to or not, I think we just sent City Hall a very different message.  Apparently, this was good enough.

Well, it wasn't good enough for me and I sincerely didn’t believe it was good enough for any of us.  And I’m not just being a contrarian for the hell of it.

Before somebody says, “Steve just doesn't want to pay taxes,” let me save you the trouble.  Taxes are a necessary evil.  I like having firefighters, I like having police officers, parks, roads, sidewalks and all the other basic infrastructure that allows a city of more than 200,000 people to function.  If we need something, tell us.

In fact, that's one of the reasons I thought Tacoma's firefighters made such a compelling case when they asked voters for help.  They identified the problem, talked about aging facilities and equipment and explained what needed replacing and why they needed it.  THAT is an ask we can evaluate.

Here's the problem, here's what we need, here's why we need it and here's what your money is intended to buy.  Now we're having a conversation.

Because if you're going to take more of our money, I don't think it's unreasonable for taxpayers to expect you to make every penny count.

Maybe all of this really does come down to the construction guy in me.  You learn pretty quickly in construction that you never confuse the sales presentation with the contract.  Renderings are beautiful, presentations are exciting.  Everybody loves talking about what a project could become.  Eventually, though, somebody has to open the plans, read the specifications and understand the scope.  And before you put your signature at the bottom of that page, you'd better know what the hell you're buying.

That's what I thought Tacoma would do.  I didn't expect everyone to vote the way I was hoping they’d vote, I didn't expect anyone to agree with me and I certainly didn't expect anyone to accept my interpretation simply because I wrote it on Visualize Tacoma.

I expected you to ask questions.

Challenge the Mayor, challenge the City Council, challenge the City’s campaign, challenge the opposition and challenge the media.  Challenge me.  Seriously.  Don't believe something because I or anyone else wrote it.  Pull out that little computer you carry around in your pocket all day and check my work and check their work, too.

Read it yourself, ask your own questions and come to your own conclusion.  If you do all of that and we still disagree?  Hell, I'll buy the first drink.

Because I don't claim to have all the answers.  But at least I asked the questions.

And after everything I've read, everything I've watched and everything I've seen people celebrating since the election, I finally understand why the result caught me so completely off guard.

I made an assumption I probably shouldn't have made.

I thought we had all read the contract.

Clearly... I made the wrong assumption.