April 27, 2009
FR: Queen Anne Community Council
Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board
700 5th Avenue, Suite 1700
P. O. Box 94649
Seattle, Washington 98124-4649
MISGUIDED FUNDING FOR SUICIDE PREVENTION on the Aurora Bridge
We are opposed to WSDOT plans to build a fence on the Aurora Bridge. The most important reasons for our opposition follow:
1. The fence is unlikely to prevent a significant number of suicides,
The Aurora Bridge is the site of few suicides in King County. The Medical Examiner’s Office reviewed records of 2,115 people who took their own lives from 1998 to 2007. In 142 instances, persons committed suicide by jumping from high places, with 36 (1.7% of the total) choosing the Aurora Bridge. One reason for a fence is that witnesses and others affected by any suicide attempt could be seriously traumatized by the event. We do not mean to minimize the importance of this consideration.
However, our purpose is to encourage our legislators to redirect funding from a project that adds very little in terms of social, mental health or community value to agencies and groups that recognize and treat mental illnesses. Increased access to mental health services for vulnerable populations who do not have, or who lose, health insurance is another critical need. The public visibility of the suicides from the Aurora Bridge should be used to raise awareness of mental health issues in our society, not focus on a fence built to keep them out of view.
2. Spending over seven million dollars of public funds for this purpose seems wasteful.
The most effective way to prevent suicide is to focus on identifying and treating mental illnesses – severe depression and bipolar disorder are associated with most suicide attempts. Since the majority of suicide victims are not receiving mental health treatment at the time of their deaths, we need to enable doctors, other health care providers, and gatekeepers to be more aware of suicide-risk evaluation. For persons who jump from the Aurora Bridge, a fence might prevent suicides at that site, but not those choosing other locations or other means to take their own lives.
Our priority as a community shouldn’t be to build fences. The proposed state transportation budget for 2009-2011 included $6,087,000 for the Aurora Bridge fence, with total cost projected to be $7,458,000. Facing a severe budget shortfall, this expenditure seems misguided.
3. Any kind of fence would greatly destroy the appearance of the bridge, an “Historic Place” and a cherished “City Landmark.”
The Secretary of the Interior Standards guide the decisions regarding dealing with historic structures. The following three standards among others support the position of denying any additions to the Aurora Bridge. (The numbered paragraphs relate to those outlined within the Standards)
2. The historic character of a property will be retained and preserved. The removal of distinctive materials or alteration of features, spaces, and spatial relationships that characterize a property will be avoided.
3. Each property will be recognized as a physical record of its time, place, and use. Changes that create a false sense of historical development, such as adding conjectural features or elements from other historic properties, will not be undertaken.
9. New additions, exterior alterations, or related new construction will not destroy historic materials, features, and spatial relationships that characterize the property. The new work shall be differentiated from the old and will be compatible with the historic materials, features, size, scale and proportion, and massing to protect the integrity of the property and its environment.
The addition of the proposed fence violates the Secretary of the Interior Standards and the intent of any historical preservation advocacy. While we clearly understand and sincerely sympathize with the intent behind the fence proposal, we feel that the resultant affect upon the bridge as a historical structure is in no way justified. It is a mis-directed approach to a serious mental health problem.
In conclusion, our beloved George Washington Memorial Bridge (Aurora Bridge), built in the early 1930’s, is listed on the state and national historic registers. As an object of monumental beauty and a fine example of period engineering prowess, any additions to its structural façade would be tragic and unwarranted. Like other historic structures, it simply deserves historical recognition and protection from any modification. It reads as its own structure, free from any added ornamental devices and has been preserved in its original state for over 75 years, and should remain so.
George W. Counts, MD
Robert Vets
Peter Lawrence
Martin H. Kaplan, AIA
Members, Queen Anne Community Council
