WSDOT requests proposals for SR 520 floating bridge

Three teams compete for $600 million to $750 million contract

SEATTLE – The clock starts today for three prequalified teams who want to design and build the new SR 520 floating bridge, estimated to cost $600 million to $750 million. The new bridge will replace the existing vulnerable floating bridge with a six-lane facility that will help improve travel between Seattle and Redmond.

The teams have until spring 2011 to submit their bids and proposals for the new floating bridge. The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) will review the proposals and select the winning design-build team in mid-2011. Construction will begin in 2012, and the new bridge will open by the end of 2014.

The prequalified teams are Flatiron-Skanska-Traylor Joint Venture, SR 520 Corridor Constructors (Walsh Construction Company, PCL Construction Services and Weeks Marine) and Kiewit-General-Manson Joint Venture. WSDOT selected teams based on statements of qualification submitted in October.

“Seeking proposals is an important step toward our goal – replacing this vulnerable bridge so we can continue to serve commuters and commerce every day,” state Transportation Secretary Paula Hammond said. “We expect these world-class teams to show how they will design and build a new floating bridge that meets our schedule and budget.”

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Unemployment trends re-emphasize need for education

Ugly Trends in Unemployment Data

This graphic from an article on the Brookings website is a clear exposition of why a larger and larger fraction of our workforce should engage in higher education. Not everyone is going to get a BA or a BS, but a larger fraction of our students need more education past high school, and we must ensure that our education system prepares young people for success in college or post-high school vocational training.

I’m Back!

I’m pleased to report that I won this year, and will be back serving the residents of the 48th district for another 2 years. I expect these to be difficult years as we work through the tail (we hope) of the worst economic downturn since WW II. Our budget work this year will be difficult. I’ll continue to post detailed policy thoughts on this website over entire term, and will attempt to release monthly email newsletters. Signup info will be availble soon.

King County 48th District Election Results

520 Groundbreaking

On Monday we dug a ceremonial set of shovels into the ground for the eastside portion of the 520 project. A contractor has been selected, the bid has been accepted (saved $116 million, about 25% under estimates) and the project will get under way.

The reality here is that they’ll start real construction in the spring, when we normally start big digging projects, but we have removed all the impediments to the project at this point.

We still have work to do to both close down the design and cement the funding for the west landing, from Foster Island to I-5. We are very close here, having approved Option A+ in the original set of options. We’re exploring details with King County and the City of Seattle at this point – arboretum exits, bus stops, etc.

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Jobs Strategy

Our nation is in its worst economic crisis since World War II, 75 years ago. Washington is not immune to the national economy. Like almost every state we face crippling unemployment and many people have lost significant portions of their asset base – their home, their retirement portfolio, and the money they were saving to send their kids to college. Total peak to trough job losses in Washington were over 210,000. 5.5% of the labor force lost their job, almost twice as bad as the next worst post-war recession.

We are starting to come out of the recession, but very slowly. Boeing is ramping up their 737 and 777 production significantly and is bringing some work back to the state. Microsoft is hiring again and the software sector is growing. Our state economist predicts that we will perform better than the national economy, but this is faint praise.

Task number one is to do everything we can to restore our job base. We should approach this task with humility – our state government can help job creation, but private businesses will do most of the heavy lifting. We must focus our strategy on those areas of the economy that are growing rapidly, offer competitive wages and take advantage of the unique elements of Washington State.

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520 Construction Bid Awarded!

The contract for the Eastside portion of the 520 project has been approved! We are expecting to start moving dirt “real soon now,” with significant construciton starting in the Spring.

Eastside Corridor Constructors tops list for SR 520 Eastside project

$306.3 million to design and rebuild SR 520 corridor from Medina to Bellevue

 SEATTLE – The bids are open and the scores tallied for the SR 520 Eastside Transit and HOV Project, and the Eastside Corridor Constructors joint venture team has emerged with the apparent best value proposal.

 Eastside Corridor Constructors (ECC) bid price of $306.3 million is nearly $116 million less than the state’s $422 million estimate for the project. The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) plans to award the contract to ECC within a few weeks.

 “This project provides family wage jobs that are vital to our state’s economic recovery during these tough times,” said Gov. Chris Gregoire. “And this project helps ensure that the absolutely crucial 520 corridor, which provides access to some of our state’s largest job centers, remains safe and reliable for decades to come.”

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Revenue collections, same store sales – good news!

Washington’s revenue collections report out this week was good news. The actual revenue was $2.5 million above the forecast. Being off by $2.5 million (0.3%) means Dr. Raha hit the bullseye – this is within the margin of error. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so excited about a flat collections report, but flat is the new up these days.

Read the collections report here: http://www.erfc.wa.gov/publications/documents/oct10.pdf

The New York Times also reports good news. Theirs is somewhat better – reporting that September sales nationally were better than expected.

Back-to-school sales that were stronger than expected have retailers cautiously hoping consumers are back and gearing up for a robust holiday shopping season. As they emerged from a slow summer, many of the nation’s retailers on Thursday reported unexpectedly good sales in September at stores open at least a year — a crucial indicator known as same-store sales. New York Times Oct. 7 2010 

This is good, and will appear in the November collections report, though we’ll see it somewhat in the daily collection numbers. These aren’t typically published because they make you crazy. If some kid at Costco forgets to push a button some afternoon and does it in the morning instead the numbers are off by an order of magnitude. They only really make sense at the end of the month.

State Budget Options

I’ve posted a document to the site that has a number of proposals on how we should address the budget situation we face this year. Like most other states our revenue has tumbled as a result of the change in spending habits coming from the economic downturn. I believe we face a structural change in how we as a state will operate, and that decisions we make today will have foundational impacts on the structure of the state in the future.

I’d love to receive comments on the ideas in the document. It’s the beginning of a plan, but a detailed plan will have to be built collaboratively with other legislators, including legislators from both sides of the aisle. It is impossible to make lasting structural changes without building broad consensus for them – a project I’ll be working on for the next 2 years.

Budget Strategy – Structural Reset

Tech Jobs in Washington

Last week I met with the Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA) to talk about their agenda for 2011. No surprise, it’s about jobs here in Washington. What surprised me was how they chose to spend their time in the meeting. We had an hour set aside (but took 2). They started with over 45 minutes on improving the K-12 education system in Washington.

Their bigest complaint is that it’s hard to hire competent people from inside the state. They showed me a job description for a technical support manager from a local high tech company that has been open for 6 months. This is 6 months in the middle of the worst economic downturn in the last 70 years, mind you. The job pays $125,000 a year. It’s risky and expensive to hire from out of state – some fraction of the people they hire don’t like the area and move away, and the moving and recruiting costs are excessive.

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Impact of Early Learning

The New York Times had an article this weekend on the impact of Kindergarten teachers on student success later in life. It’s worth reading for lots of reasons, but perhaps the title is good enough: “The Case for $320,000 Kindergarten teachers.”

 The conclusions of the article are pretty useful:

  • Successful early learning matters: “Students who had learned much more in kindergarten were more likely to go to college than students with otherwise similar backgrounds. Students who learned more were also less likely to become single parents. As adults, they were more likely to be saving for retirement. Perhaps most striking, they were earning more.”
  • Class size — which was the impetus of Project Star — evidently played some role. Classes with 13 to 17 students did better than classes with 22 to 25.
  • Quality teaching matters: “Some are highly effective. Some are not. And the differences can affect students for years to come.”

The study goes on to do a present-value analysis of the added income from students witha  good kindergarten teacher and puts the value at $320,000. This is a reach, and there is some normal variance between teachers to be expected, but focusing much of our efforts at improving the craft of teaching, with high-quality evaluations that provide a strong feedback loop about what’s working and what’s not is absolutely critical.

It’s also interesting to note that the article is is in the business section of the paper, and that the author of the study is a respected economist, rather than an education researcher. Making our education system work better is an important part of our economic development strategy, not just a nice thing to have.