Comment by jroseattle | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jroseattle | Hacker News Reader

McGinn frustrates me. Issues like this are highly popular and resonate with everyone, but I haven't been a fan of several of his policies.

He raised public parking rates to pay for street maintenance upgrades, safety at schools, etc. But, a lot of city streets have yet to be repaired, and safety at our particular local school has slowly been getting worse. He has had to deal with a police force in transition after a DoJ investigation, which he's handled rather gracefully, so he's done some things well. I'd say it's largely been a very mixed bag.

But the biggest frustration for me is that it always seems like he will say whatever is popular based on who is in the room. It's not that he is acting like a politician, but rather someone who doesn't really stand for anything. This issue, while he's raising it now, hasn't been a hallmark of his current tenure, so it seems more opportunistic than anything else.

If it weren't an election cycle, I'm not sure we'd be hearing so much about this right now.

The city is massively behind on road maintenance due to decades of deferred maintenance. Raising some parking rates doesn't come anywhere near paying for repaving even the worst road segments in the city.

You can't make a statement like that in a vacuum and when compared to his opponent he's more than forthcoming and opinionated. Murray doesn't have a single issue other than being the guy who will be even more of a friend to big business than McGinn is.

Most people voting for Murray are war on cars mouth breathers who have no idea just how little was spent on bike lanes compared to roads.

Huh?

Just to be clear, I was talking about McGinn. Are you making an assumption that critique of candidate A implies support of candidate B?

FWIW, I don't know much about Murray, either. But McGinn is the mayor, not Murray, so I have more familiarity with him than the challenger.

McGinn isn't a professional politician, which is good because the professional politicians and the "Seattle process" have fucked this city for decades, but it leads to the occasional misstep. The city gigabit fiber initiative was his, though. That and some controversial transportation reforms are parts of his vision that convinced me to vote for him. Too many Seattle politicians are willing to sell themselves out to build consensus. I like having a mayor who stands for something I can believe in.

I've only been here since 99, so I don't yet have the full history. On top of that, my track record is poor -- I have yet to vote for the mayoral winner.

But still, while I know he has his initiatives, I couldn't articulate what McGinn believes in. It just isn't clear to me.

> He raised public parking rates to pay for street maintenance upgrades, safety at schools, etc. But, a lot of city streets have yet to be repaired

And of course, Mercer in Lower Queen Anne is getting every single street corner re-done for...no apparent reason.

That's happened in Green Lake and Wallingford as well. And it's really strange, because it doesn't appear to serve any functional purpose. A couple of them now serve to slow down neighborhood traffic (a good thing), but mostly they look like replacements for something that didn't need replaced.

I've been flummoxed by this too, but I think they're installing those textured yellow panels in the crossing ramps. I gather they're a standardized marker to help blind or sight-impaired people navigate the street environment.

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