Alright. So the last few years in Seattle we've had the tightest, saddest little budgets ever. Every year the Mayor would announce his budget and all the neighborhood people, all the human services people, all the public safety people would get into their little huddles and when the City Council had their hearing on budget priorities, BOOM the whole thing would blow up. If you weren't in Council chambers two hours before the meeting started to get your name on the list of speakers, you were totally screwed.

Well, the Mayor just announced his budget yesterday, and it is a completely different universe. Because there is money in it!! Thanks to people doing things like having jobs and shopping and buying houses and stuff (who are these people who can buy houses in this city? Seriously), the General Fund got some kind of huge windfall and now the Mayor's got money to burn.

Or, well, spend on serious priorities. Priorities like more police officers so that there's someone around the next time crackheads start stabbing each others' guts out half a block from my apartment. Priorities like more sidewalks up north and down south so that kids can walk to school without getting hit by cars. Priorities like youth outreach programs in South Park, so that kids have a chance in the face of drugs, gangs, and poverty.

And. And and!! Mayor Nickels is putting a HUGE priority on fixing the Viaduct and seawall. Listen to the man himself:

Perhaps the biggest challenge we face today is just a few blocks from this City Hall. I’m talking, of course, about the unsafe Alaska Way Viaduct and Seawall. History will measure us largely by the choices we make about replacing these crumbling structures. Our determination can not waiver....

Replacing the Seawall alone would be one of the largest public works projects in Seattle’s history. But if there is one lesson from Hurricane Katrina, it is this: the price you pay for ignoring aging structures is far greater than the cost of replacing it before a disaster.

Everybody loves a windfall.