Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 6, Issue 11, November 2002

Copyright 2002 Seattle Sun. Please feel free to use the article and photos below in your research. Be sure to quote the Seattle Sun as your source.

UW: Ivory tower or community member?

By HANS ASCHENBACH

Fact: The University of Washington is one of the most respected institutions of higher learning in the country.

Fact: With a daily population of 55,000, the U.W. is the 12th largest city in the state. It is larger than the City of Renton.

Fact: By state Legislative exemption, the U.W. does not pay property taxes.

Take these facts together and you have a university that annually produces millions of dollars of benefits for the state, the nation, and the world and yet does not raise a penny in taxes to support the surrounding community in which it exists.

Now I am not suggesting that U.W. should pay property taxes. The point is that U.W. does little to help mitigate the environmental stresses produced by its faculty, staff, and students who live in or daily cram themselves into the small space of the University District community. Like Newark, N.J. in the 1960s and '70s, which lost one-third of its tax base to church ownership, the U-District has become blighted and needs all the help it can get.

And that blight explains the recent trouble over the U.W.'s new Master Plan.

The mayor and other powerful individuals want to support the university's plan without question, while community activists want some modifications.

Why the division? If you don't live next door to the university you would rightly see only the benefits that flow from this magnificent institution. But if you lived in the surrounding community you would begin to be overwhelmed by the daily traffic that makes NE 45th Street the busiest arterial in the state and the noise, behavioral, and housing problems that come with unleashing an army of low-income young people on a local community.

The U.W., of course, doesn't cause all of the trouble in the U-District. The U.W. didn't bring the slum lords, the drug dealers, or the homeless but those groups are in the district in large part BECAUSE the U.W. is located here.

In many ways the local community is blessed by having a vibrant university next door to it. The U.W. COULD also be blessed by having a vibrant community next door, but it doesn't. Instead, the university has a troubled and declining neighborhood.

The U.W. could do a lot to help its neighbor, the U-District community. It could start by lobbying the Legislature for funds to mitigate its negative environmental influences on the surrounding community and helping with transportation infrastructure. It could also work with the community on a legislative program of standards for off-campus behavior such as an enforceable noise ordinance.

Every one of the community-requested Master Plan modifications is linked to local environmental degradation resulting from the U.W.'s presence in the U-District. The university received 98 percent of what it wanted in the new Master Plan. Why must U.W. have it ALL at the expense of the neighboring community? Why can't U.W. be an ivory tower AND a good neighbor?

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Hans Aschenbach is Transportation Chair of Roosevelt Neighbors' Alliance and Vice-Chair of Seattle's Northeast District Council.