Q & A courtesy of Mayor McGinn's Transition Team & a Certain Cynic

How do we build the strongest possible team to achieve the policy objectives and values set forth during Mike's campaign?

By carefully avoiding true believers and with equal care selecting phlegmatic pragmatists dedicated to the proposition of a "city that works", and that dreams are best kept as icing. Values and objectives don't feed starving, arrest the criminal, protect the innocent, buy a fire engine, or fill a pothole.

As a city, Seattle is in deep fiscal trouble, and can't *afford* much in the way of dreams or new initiatives. What we need is a strong dose of "back to basics", volunteerism, and task-shedding until the economy improves and the City can again afford the secondary services and luxuries to which our residents have become accustomed.

How do we build public trust in the new administration?

Ending the practice of ignoring the expressed wishes of the electorate - if they vote to build a monorail, man up and build it - even if you don't like it. If the electorate says no to stadiums, grit your teeth and accept the will of the people. End the Nickels legacy of vindictive petty tyranny and governmental dysfunction.

Specifically, pull the hated parking meters from Ballard/Fremont. Restore the 4-lane striping on Fauntleroy, and rather than a long single turning lane...implement smaller selective ones at intersections where left turns are actually frequent, finding the space in either street expansion or minimal reduction of parking spaces...build the Queen Anne firehouse that Nickels spitefully obstructed. Try honesty and listening rather than arrogance and bullying.

What do you view as the incoming administration and the city’s greatest challenge – what should we do first out of the gate?

Roll back the Nickels debacle, and with it, the pretentiousness. Call a spade a spade - SDOT is an over-glorified Street Department - call it a "street department" and be done with it. Let SPD hire cops, not statisticians and administrators. Return the City to it's core missions, which with luck it can actually pay for - fire, police, emergency medicine, and streets - and perhaps, operating City Light, though it could easily be argued that City residents would be better served by City Light as a separate agency with independently elected officials.