When Seattle started along with their hare-brained idea to stretch a Monorail system around town, they tacked on a fee to the cost of automobile license tabs to help pay for it.
Now that the Monorail idea is resting firmly in the round-file, everyone who had paid said fee was supposed to get a refund from the left over funding. While it wouldn’t have been the full about, getting some of my money back from when I lived in Seattle sounded like a fine idea to me.
Unspent cash collected for Seattle’s abandoned transit monorail project will likely be spent helping fix up the old one.
In a divided vote, board members of the Seattle Monorail Project decided Thursday night not to refund any of the unspent cash to city car owners who paid the monorail car-tab tax one extra time in June.
While voting not do to so, most board members agreed that surplus money could be given to the city to help defray the $4.5 million cost of refurbishing the 44-year-old Seattle Center Monorail. The agency’s chief operating officer, Jonathan Buchter, said that transfer is legal and consistent with the project’s original mission of funding a public monorail system.
And I was goind to buy myself something off the McDonald’s Value Menu with my refund. Now I’ll have to go hungry.
Here’s what I would do, were I a taxed citizen of Seattle: I would file a claim in Small Claims Court for the money. If the judge was honest, he would order it returned. If he/she was on the payroll of the transit agency, which would likely be the case, and nexed the judgment, I would elevate to District/Superior court, whatever the next step is.
I would have at least a thousand of my like-mined taxed friends do the same thing.
The Courts would be forced to issue a “blanket” ruling, most of which don’t sit favorably with the Supremes.
In the end, the transit agency would probably strike it’s colors and refund the money.