Will King County Executive Ron Sims hold fast to his vow to pull King County out of the deal to redevelop the Eastside rail corridor as a hiking and biking trail if the Port of Seattle doesn't make up its mind about whether the tracks go or stay by Friday?

Last week, the Seattle P-I reported that Sims demanded the port decide by Dec. 7 if the tracks would stay along the 42-mile corridor. A majority of the port's five-member board of elected commissioners said at the time that the port would buy the corridor whether or not King County was on the hook to turn it into a trail.

They were undecided on whether or not the tracks should be left in – as the Discovery Institute's Cascadia Center and various rail advocacy groups are lobbying to achieve – or taken out, as Sims is demanding. Leaving the tracks in would make it impossible for King County to pay for the trail, which would have to be laid adjacent to the current track path rather than on top of it and would therefore become too expensive, Sims wrote in a five-page letter to the port commission and chief executive.

But the port commission has just announced its intention to wait until its meeting on Tuesday, December 11th, to discuss publicly whether the port will rip up the tracks along the Eastside rail corridor or leave them intact.

Commission President John Creighton said the port's agreement with King County and BNSF Railway gives the port the leeway to wait until then to discuss the issue publicly and announce its intentions.

"We will be scheduled to address this matter at our meeting on December 11th, as agreed upon in the MOU," Creighton said. "We share a common vision of the county for dual use of the corridor. We just don't think it is productive or appropriate to address this matter outside of the explicit terms of the MOU."

The commission will probably have already made up its mind by then; they spent 25 minutes before Thursday's public meeting discussing the matter behind closed doors with port Chief Executive Tay Yoshitani and General Counsel Craig Watson.

Sims and his chief of staff Kurt Triplett could not be reached on Thursday to determine whether the deal is off the table or in a holding pattern.