Well, I dutifully wrote the Council about this, and got a prompt email back from Rhenda Strub. She says she's for it, and in fact she testified in favor of the bill at the Legislature. But she says it needs a funding mechanism to go anywhere as far as she's concerned; the City's looking at budget cuts, not a surplus for new programs.

She said she, Ottavelli, and Kingsbury had recently met with people from the group working to get this on the ballot, and told them they needed a funding proposal, so apparently the group doesn't have a tax proposal yet?

Here's some ballpark numbers, if you want to think about this - or improve the numbers, since they're just what she mentioned as an illustration. Four Council races next year, four people in the primary for each seat, 10K for each primary race = $160,000. Plus 10K for each of the eight candidates in the general election. Grand total = $240,000.

My next step, also really ballpark, goes - 45,000 people in Olympia, at least half of them adults, so $240,000/22,000 people = roughly $11 an election, or $6.50 a year.