Meddlers exceed bridge’s capacity

When it comes to building a new Columbia River Bridge, the English proverb “too many cooks spoil the broth” is in the spotlight these days — as it should be. Almost everyone who joins the bridge issue seems to think he or she is an engineer.

That includes the Portland woman who shows up at nearly every Vancouver City Council meeting to persuade councilors they have the power to build the span. Someday, someone should tell her she needs to talk to the Columbia River Crossing task force.

But she should be forgiven. There is confusion everywhere, foremost between Vancouver Mayor Tim Leavitt and Portland Mayor Sam Adams.

Leavitt campaigned, and won, on an anti-bridge-tolling issue. Adams is still trying to engineer a bridge that is supposedly a better fit for Portland.

Two facts need to be aired immediately:

1. Neither mayor has the singular authority to approve or deny tolls.
2. The replacement bridge is neither Vancouver’s bridge, nor Portland’s bridge. It is part of the Interstate highway system on the West Coast.

Based on the two-mayor meddling, a warning from Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell ought to be in blazing lights on each shoreline of the Columbia river. Speaking at a Columbian editorial board meeting at least a year ago, she said if there is extreme bickering and controversy about the project, the bridge won’t be built. In my Sept. 9 column, she said she “wants to see a public process that allows all parties to come together and figure out how to best move forward on this critical project.” On Friday, John Diamond, the senator’s communications director, said, “she has not changed her mind.”

Mayors crowd the kitchen

Columbian letter-writer Arvid Kulits of Vancouver used the “too many cooks” proverb Jan. 24, adding, “and the bridge will never be built.”

Yet the admonition doesn’t seem to be slowing the mayors and others from joining the cooks and risking spoiling the “broth.” Leavitt and Adams, with Clark County Commissioner Steve Stuart and Portland Metro Council President David Bragdon, recently signed a letter to the states’ two governors. It outlined concerns the four had for the project, protection for users, taxpayers, businesses and neighborhoods on Hayden Island.

That put Leavitt at odds with members of the city council, who had no prior knowledge of the letter. Council members, who aired their grievances at a meeting Jan. 25 and again Monday night, said they felt blindsided. “If we’re going to enter into new agreements, it has to be with the consensus of the council,” said council member Pat Campbell. Jeanne Stewart, another councilor, said she wanted to make sure the letter was ”written in our best interests on our side of the river.”

Council directed the city manager to set up a workshop discussion for the council, which took place Monday.

Blindsiding continued from the Portland city officials, who have played the role of an 800-pound beaver all along on this project. They asked for information from the Crossing project planners about the possibility of a six-lane Columbia River replacement bridge — essentially the same lane capacity as the existing spans. The first of those was built in 1917 at a cost of $1.75 million. The second came in 1958. Last year, there was tentative agreement on a 10-to-12 lane bridge with light rail. Bridge work must start by 2012, and be completed by 2017; otherwise inflation will add $120 million a year.

Two years ago, Willamette Week, an alternative Portland weekly, ridiculed Pearson Field, the city’s historic airport, as being a limiting factor in the height of the new bridge. It called Pearson a “rinky-dink” airport and referred to Vancouver as “our little-respected neighbor.” That kind of mindset doesn’t belong in this bridge discussion. What is needed are cooperation, collaboration and a will to build the bridge before it becomes too expensive to build. Some 27,000 jobs could be created by building the $3.1 billion to $4.2 billion span, a motivating factor in these recessionary times.

The proper recipe: Thin the cooks and thicken the soup.