Taxing Situation

Well here we are again right up against the due date for tax. April 15 is the time you get to figure out what percentage of expenses you get to deduct from 12 lines above based on your level of indigenous presumptions against the coefficient of unearned income from Tijuana turtle farmers. And then double it. Wait, I may have the tax booklet mixed up with something else. Let me look…

Nope, I had it right. And don’t forget to double it.

One reason we need to pay our taxes is to make sure the feds have money for the Sound Transit Light Rail East Link over the I-90 Bridge. Cause, that’s the plan. They want to run the tracks over the express lanes between Seattle and Bellevue. That takes the two reversible HOV lanes away from cars.

And that brings up a question I’m confused about. Some of the stuff I read about this issue claims that there has to be a cost associated with eliminating two freeway lanes that we’ve come to enjoy so much. And I-90 belongs to the feds and the turtle farmers, if I read it right. So who pays whom and how much? Maybe the state of Washington owns the part of I-90 that runs thru our state. If so does the state get paid by the Sound Transit people or is it the other way around? Or do we pay the feds? Who’s dumb idea was this anyway?

One thing we have is HOT Lanes. HOT stands for High Occupancy Toll. They take the standard diamond lanes and make them into HOT lanes. If you’re a qualifying car pool, bus, cattle truck, or turtle truck it’s the same old HOV lane. But if you’re rich and have one of my fancy fake transponders you can drive in the HOT lane all by yourself. If you have a real “Good-To-Go” transponder you have to pay to drive in that lane so my fakes should sell like hotcakes (or turtle steaks maybe). I can’t report the income from my fake transponders so don’t rat me out, please.

The point here is the WSDOT, washdot, was going to make the I-90 express HOV lanes into HOT lanes. Both the state and I would make a bundle. Well, if they put light rail on those lanes we all lose out.

Now the feds will have to stimulate Washington in several ways. Showing pictures of Eleanore Roosevelt may not do it. It takes money. Don’t get me wrong, she was a lovely human being, but not too good in front of a camera. As I was saying, in order to get our highways moving again we need to put about 120% of commuters into transit. This will take a huge effort.

In a few months the current project to link downtown Seattle with SeaTac Airport will open for business. It’s apparently going to run from Westlake to Tukwila this summer and then finally to SeaTac in December: http://www.soundtransit.org/Documents/pdf/projects/link/LinkQrtlyNews_2007-10.pdf
I’m going to ride that. You’ll get a first hand report of how well it went. I’m especially looking forward to the view high above SR 518 to Burien.

One thing Sound Transit has managed to avoid is Renton. The current link to SeaTac only makes it to Tukwila. The East Link and UW Link won’t get near Renton. I wonder if that’s on purpose. I know I try to avoid Renton but not as much as I’d like. For one thing Billie McHale’s is in Renton and you can’t miss that. Some of the best burgers in the Greater Newcastle area. Also there’s great food at the Gaslamp in Issaquah, so we have choices.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, money for these projects.

In the not too distant future we’ll have tolls on the SR 520 Bridge. We call it the Evergreen Point Bridge because we can’t remember the real name. It may be the Bill Gates Bridge, I don’t know. WSDOT thinks it’ll sink like a stone in a bad earthquake. That makes it an emergency replacement project because we don’t know how soon the earth will quake. WSDOT wants to postpone the quake until they get around to replacing the bridge.

To do that they need money, which means toll booths. We might get booths on both bridges. We also might get HOT lanes everywhere that require payment. We might even get other tolls on “heavy use” roadways to help pay for damage caused by studded tires. All this will bring in money to pay for new bridges and roads.

But it’ll all go to replacing the Alaska Way Viaduct. That’s our most visible disaster waiting to happen. If that comes down during a big shake we’ll have a death toll and nobody wants that. Since everyone who uses the SR 520 Bridge carries life jackets we don’t expect so much loss of life. You carry a life jacket, don’t you? I do.

The Viaduct is collapsible and it’s over dirt so life jackets won’t help. You’ll get squished. We don’t want that. Christine and the local boys promised us a tunnel that can withstand huge forces, such as HOT lane tolls. That kind of thing costs money. My advice is to make sure your turtle farmer calculations are correct and you don’t forget to double it. The result could be a disaster.

Did I get off track? I don’t know. Just don’t forget to file before April 15. And don’t forget to double it.

Al

Rome City, Indiana receives $2 Billion in Stimulus funds. Washington State Governor, Christine, was on hand at the ceremony mumbling something about how she was going to clean up voter fraud if it’s the last thing she ever does. She’s dedicated, that’s for sure.

Right now you’re probably wondering how a place you may never have heard of could get on the list. Don’t you have more important things to wonder about? Sheesh!

Well dig this: Rome City is a small town on Sylvan Lake in the northeast part of Indiana in a county called Noble. It would have to be.

Rome City got its name during the construction of the dam in the 1830s. The name had to do with construction workers and the US Mail. There was a dispute over who got the good work locations. One group got sedan chairs, steak and potatoes, and lived in plush tents next to their work site. The other crew had to walk five miles every day and lived on beans and franks. They had a clash and managers had to settle it.

The settlement consisted of (to make a long boring story into a short boring story) allowing crews to bunk down near their work sites. They were allowed to eat all the crawdads they could catch. Thus different work crews bunked in different locations.

In those days workers were not as privileged as today so they accepted the new arrangement. They shrugged and said, “When in Rome…” They wrote to relatives jokingly that they were now working in “Rome.” So relatives began addressing their cards and letters to “Rome, Indiana.”
The US Mail got involved because there was already a town by that name in Indiana. So it got changed to Rome City. Never mess with the US Mail.

But why were grouchy people building a dam in northeast Indiana? Here’s why and it’s all true.
In the way early 1800s America decided to build a canal across New York State and they called it the Erie Canal. It was used to haul bulk goods and slow passengers between New York City and Lake Erie. Eventually the bulk would have wound up in the Bel-Red area.

Many rich business and political dudes thought the canal should continue from Lake Erie to Lake Michigan. Essentially from Toledo to Chicago. Check the map, its right there. That would connect the East Coast to the Great Midwest. Nothing makes New Yorkers happier than beef from the Chicago Stockyards.

The dam was completed (twice) and work on the ditch part was progressing. They had to use oxen and shovels so it was slow work. They also had to quit in the winter months because everything froze. Finally one winter the workers headed down to Fort Wayne and caught the new train for their trip back east.

Umm, wait a minute. They caught the train? Oops. Well, guess what? Suddenly the “Great Idea” to extend the Erie Canal all the way to Chicago was not so great. Railroads could carry everything and do it a lot faster. They could run all year whether the weather was dry, wet, or frozen. Chicago beef could reach New York before the moo evaporated.

The canal project was canceled. In those days government could figure out how to cancel a project that no longer had a purpose. Rome City got to keep the dam and Sylvan Lake. The railroad even built a station there and ran the line across the dam. Rome City became a lakeside resort town and has been somewhat that way ever since. It has a post office, unlike Newcastle.

Who cares? I do. I went to High School in Rome City. Yes, that’s right, High School in a resort town. Our mascot was the “Romans.” Everyone thought it was a reference to the old Roman legions with Caesar and Clavius. No, it was homage to the gangs that built the Sylvan Lake Dam. Our symbol was the shovel.

History is such fun when you don’t have to worry too much about accuracy. Speaking of history, the High School was closed and demolished a year after my class graduated. It is no more. If you Google “Rome City School” you get hundreds of hits on Rome, Georgia. It’s pathetic.

Rome City got on the stimulus list because of the canceled canal project. Somehow our federal government figured canceling the canal had an economic impact on Rome City and they needed to make up for it. But the good news is I’m still handsome. Accuracy is still optional.

Al