Monorail officials are feeling their way in the dark as they try to find how to kill the government agency that once planned a monorail line through West Seattle.

Apparently there are no instruction books explaining the procedure for terminating the Seattle Monorail Project. Usually the work done by a doomed agency is merely transferred to another department. But after voters killed the project last fall, no monorails are being planned.

The monorail agency must be put into a condition called repose. It's a procedure so rare the agency is looking to the Washington Legislature and the attorney general to figure it out.

Monorail officials have been meeting with legislators representing Seattle as well as state Attorney General Rob McKenna to put together repose legislation in time for January's reconvening of the Legislature in Olympia. The Monorail Project will continue to exist until then.

"We need one section (in state law) to provide a method for us to go out of business," said Jonathan Buchter, executive director.

Buchter and Jim Nobles, an elected member of the monorail project's board of directors, said there is hardly any institutional memory to explain the proper procedure. So the agency plans to print legal notices in newspapers announcing it is coming to an end and anyone with financial claims to make against the Seattle Monorail Project has 90 days to do so.

"It helps pave the way to repose," Buchter said.

The monorail agency made about $12 million on the sale of its properties. The extra money will help refund car and truck owners who paid their motor vehicle excise tax (the "monorail tax") in June.

The motor vehicle excise tax started in June 2002. People who renew their license tabs in June, and after, had to pay the tax four times while people paying before June paid only three times. Monorail officials want to reimburse people who paid four times.

Some people whose license tabs came due in June didn't pay the tax, perhaps thinking they could avoid paying it at all, said Beth Goldberg, chairwoman of the monorail board. But there are records of who paid and who didn't.

"Historically, only 50 percent of people pay in the month their tabs are due," Buchter said. But about 18 percent of people pay in advance.

Buchter said all but about $1 million will be paid back soon. The rest will be held a few weeks longer in case of unforeseen expenses such as an unexpected bill for moving expenses, he added. But most of it will be paid out by early September.

Meanwhile the monorail staff is down to three part-time employees. Records and documents are being sent to the state archivist, and the project's office space downtown likely will be taken over by the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency, which regulates air quality in the region. The Clean Air Agency also plans to buy much of the agency's furniture.

Tim St. Clair can be contacted at tstclair@robinsonnews.com or 932-0300.