Future Agendas is the closest thing the City currently has to a calendar of upcoming City Council topics. It’s not dynamic, ie. you have to click it every time you want to see a new version. And it’s not always accurate. But until we develop a genuine calendar, this can be very useful if there is a particular issue you don’t want to miss.
Most of you are familiar with the South King Media news sites, Waterland Blog, Seatac Blog, B-Town Blog. However, if you are interested in Highline Schools, the place to go is Burien.News. They provide the only regular coverage of Highline Schools, with deep dive articles on academic performance, budgets, and all the things parents (and taxpayers) should care about.
Highline School Board, April 2025: Stephanie Tidholm, Angelica Alvarez, Joe Van, Damarys Espinoza, Blaine Holien (c) Burien.News
This is not an endorsement. Every local news source has pluses and minuses – including some serious biases. And you can’t expect any micro-blog to cover everything.
The Governor’s proposed budget cuts the $1 million in funding that was secured last for fixing failed port packages, which were meant to insulate homes from airport noise but have deteriorated over time. Please mail key these legislators and let them know how important this funding is for our communities.
The City Manager’s Report April 18, 2025 is back. It features a lasagna cupcake recipe and an update on construction projects at the Fieldhouse and 24th Ave.
The City is now offering an e-mail sign up for City Manager Reports – which I strongly encourage.
It’s also giving the Mayor her own separate e-mail sign up – which I do not support. That is no reflection on any mayor. There should be only one communication channel for the City and it should be the City Manager’s Weekly Updates — which continue to be great. Anything else is just politics and should not be supported by the City.
Regardless, you should run. The worst outcome would be, as has often be the case, that any seat does not have a vigorous campaign. Why? Because, whether you like the candidate or not, running a campaign is how candidates gain experience. That’s the dirty little secret of City Council. Regardless of how much time they’ve spent in other aspects of civic life, new electeds usually have no idea what they’re doing for the first few years.
But first, you should find out what yer getting yerself into. Start by going to King County Elections and look at the Candidate Manual. Above all? Do. Not. Be. Intimidated. But please do study. 🙂 And let me know if you have questions.
216th/Barnes Creek Staging Area
There’s been this container sitting at the back of the 216th/Barnes Creek Trail parking lot for over a year. And then suddenly, other trucks and equipment began showing up. Given the concerns over Des Moines Creek West and the recent sale of the adjoining WSDOT surplus property, this causes concerns. Allay your concerns. 😀
The spot is currently being used as a staging area for several current projects this summer, including the Des Moines Memorial Drive storm water replacement and SR-509. Nothing you don’t know about. The silt fence is actually a good thing – part of making sure it meets environmental code. 🙂
Do I wish we had put up a sign explaining this? Yes. Yes, I do. Because I get asked a lot. Like – a lot, a lot. 😀 If you have questions, please contact Public Works Director Mike Slevin.
As I’ve written before, the State is moving ahead with several proposals to raise taxes – including property taxes. The one most likely to pass will allow city councils to raise the property tax cap from 1% to 3% – every year, not just one year – without you getting a vote. Unfortunately, as usual, all the appetite people seem to have for politics at the moment is at the Federal level. I get it.
Port of Seattle Meeting (Agenda) The Port will receive it’s Q4 Financial Reports. They are showing slight amounts of red ink. Don’t believe it. This is due entirely to an almost $1B legal settlement over the International Arrivals Facility, which they are budgeting in time payments (must be nice 😀 ). Short explanation: they made the gates too small to accommodate newer (larger) aircraft and tried to blame the mistake on the contractor. Oopsies.
Wednesday
StART Meeting: As I said, this is the first meeting that is closed to the public. And that should not make you happy if you care about all the noise, pollution, etc., etc., etc…
Annual State of the Court Address, covers court operations, performance metrics, and key initiatives undertaken over the past year.
The Public Works department will provide an overview of current projects, maintenance activities, and service delivery updates.
And, there will be not one, not two, but three proclamations: South Sound Boating Season Opening Day Proclamation, Sexual Assault Awareness Month Proclamation, Laborers LiUNA Local 242 Day Proclamation
The zero dollar logo I’d hoped we’d choose. 🙂
Whenever we have a ‘light load’ like this, some of my colleagues consider it a breather. I do not. We’ve just gone through a flurry of meetings with ultra-packed agenda. It begs the question: do you prefer having a series of meetings with gale force winds, punctuated by the occasional dead air, or would you prefer to have important issues spread evenly across each meeting, like a calm, steady 6-8 knots of wind?Kinda like this little guy – Sailin’ with pride, baby. 😀 That’s what I mean by ‘load balancing’. People make better decisions with more balanced work loads.
Saturday, April 26
SR3 Open House. This generally happens only once a year so you should do it. But maybe get there early.
Not Des Moines, but I attended one of the best ‘student’ concerts I can recall at the Key To Change Studios main campus in Renton. Key To Change offers string education for kids and recently opened a branch in Des Moines across from Mt. Rainier High School. The recital featured one of their success stories – a former student now working towards her PhD at the prestigious Peabody Conservatory. I’m not saying your kid will learn how to get to 1Carnegie Hall, but parents always appreciate knowing that the programs they enroll in have a track record of success. I look forward to Key To Change concerts here in the near future. 🙂
Wednesday
King County Regional Transit Committee (Agenda). We received briefings on two big issues: Public safety, and ADA.
Broadly speaking, incidents have increased slightly on the A-Line. However, each main line, including the A-Line, cover a whole lotta territory. Several of us asked for more granular stats.
WRT accessibility, Metro will be conducting a community outreach campaign to find out how to make it easier for people with accessibility issues to use the buses. Residents from Adriana, Wesley, Judson, et. al. will need to weigh in on this given that you represent our largest share of ridership with special needs. As they say, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. 🙂
Thursday – Sunday
The remainder of the week, I also attended several Easter-adjacent events – including playing organ for one Mass. I haven’t done this in a couple of years, and it was good to know that I could still find the on/off switch. What makes this type of performance so unique is not the sacral nature of the event. It’s that, no matter how you do? No walkouts. 😀
Future Agendas is the closest thing the City currently has to a calendar of upcoming City Council topics. It’s not dynamic, ie. you have to click it every time you want to see a new version. And it’s not always accurate. But until we develop a genuine calendar, this can be very useful if there is a particular issue you don’t want to miss.
The Governor’s proposed budget cuts the $1 million in funding that was secured last for fixing failed port packages, which were meant to insulate homes from airport noise but have deteriorated over time. Please mail key these legislators and let them know how important this funding is for our communities.
The City is now offering an e-mail sign up for City Manager Reports – which I strongly encourage.
It’s also giving the Mayor her own separate e-mail sign up – which I do not support. That is no reflection on any mayor. There should be only one communication channel for the City and it should be the City Manager’s Weekly Updates — which continue to be great. Anything else is just politics and should not be supported by the City.
City Manager Caffrey is away on holidays this week. As of press time there is no new recipe… er… City Manager’s Report. 🙂
But first, you should find out what yer getting yerself into. Start by going to King County Elections and look at the Candidate Manual. Above all? Do. Not. Be. Intimidated. But please do study. 🙂 And let me know if you have questions.
Airport Committee
Sign up for the Airport Advisory Committee. We keep putting this off and the clock is ticking on important aspects of airport expansion.
Dueling Taxes
As I wrote, the State is moving ahead with several proposals to raise taxes. As always: I’m not ‘anti-tax’. But there are so many, it becomes a blur. And the ones that affect Des Moines (specifically property and sales tax) are not getting much attention. At the March 31, 2025 state hearing on SB5798 (concerning raising the 1% property tax cap to 3% or more) 43,153 people signed in against – about 95%. This was a record. Watch Senate Ways & Means – TVW SB798
Last week Mayor Buxton, along with many local governments, testified on behalf of the (slightly different) House companion bill HB2049 – which is billed as ‘education funding’ but which is really, the same type of property tax increase.
At our last meeting, my colleagues spent several minutes bemoaning possible King County tax increases. Finger prints! Parks! Waste water! Solid waste! Where will it all end!?!?!? And yet, the Council has had no problem supporting multiple pieces of state legislation to raise your property taxes by a lot more.
Most of these county proposals are not new taxes, but rather renewing worthy existing programs (like the automated fingerprint system you are voting on this week.) The ballots make it clear what they are proposing and they give us all a public vote.
Voters expect to (wait for it) have a vote on issues that affect their property taxes. And more than that, I am concerned that the Council took the wrong lessons from the Prop #1 vote. It is not, Not, NOT that the public has ‘tax fatigue’. It’s that the public did not trust our Council at that moment in time.
I’m homping on this because I have never known Des Moines voters to be anything but generous when it comes to tax votes – so long as they feel they are receiving value for money. Even today, we routinely approve fire levies, school levies, county levies. So long as the public perceives the value, we tend to vote ‘yes’. In my experience a ‘no’ is simply voters telling you to make a better case.
This Week
There is no City Council meeting this week. I am taking a few days off in conjunction with my fave time of the year – Passover (which began on Saturday) and Easter (next Sunday). But – if you wanna share your thoughts on finding the Afikomen, what’s so ‘good’ about Good Friday, or even something to do with ADUs and potholes? I’m there for ya… (206) 878-0578.
Last Week
Tuesday
Port of Seattle Commission (Agenda) The highlight for us was a presentation on the various Economic Development Grants the Port dishes out every year. Those grants are funded through our property taxes and Des Moines only gets about $30k. In the past, three of those grants went for previous versions of Marina Redevelopment that went nowhere. My interest is in understanding how this new grant will be used in the three areas specified.
These economic development grants have been a terrible deal for most airport communities. Our friends at Sea-Tac Noise.Info wrote a really good article on this which is a must-read.
Wednesday
King County Emergency Management Advisory Committee: We did a tabletop exercise where there was a big street protest during a FIFA game.
Look, who doesn’t enjoy major disaster cosplay? 😀 That’s the attitude I have when I walk into some of these. I usually think they will have no applicability for Des Moines. And I am always wrong.
If yer a soccer fan, at an international event, you won’t necessarily see ‘people from all over the world!’ You’re likely to see hundreds of rabid supporters from one place, supporting one team. Wherever you have hundreds of rabid football fans from out of town, ‘stuff’ can happen. And the stadium is right next to Light Rail. So, the consensus seemed to be that it would be a good idea to have flyers at each match in the language of the teams. And also try to have at least a few people in Des Moines available who speaka zeee langweeedge.
Every meeting seems to have a theme and for me this one was “we’re not serious.” Recap below.
Friday
I had the honour of touring the new Puget Sound Clean Air Agency Air Quality Monitoring Site at North Sea-Tac Park. This is a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge deal. Read about it at Sea-Tac Noise.Info.
Fingers crossed, we might have our own version of this in a few months! Having proper air quality monitoring – something we’ve been trying to get to for almost a decade – is a key step towards regulating aviation emissions!
There was a public comment from Christina Blocker of Elevate Black Wellness in Tacoma, who received the Black Wellness Week Proclamation.
My interest in the issue comes from the concept of weathering. A ton of studies have documented the prevalence of any number of chronic health conditions among African Americans – especially women. When people wonder what ‘structural racism’ means in daily life, this is it. My in-laws warned me years ago about a cumulative stress that Black people experience, that I never will. It’s the extra bit of stress in any number of contexts. You slough it off, but as the years go by, it takes a toll.
Consent Agenda
Long Range Financial Planning study. The company we chose, FCS has worked with the City for years. I reviewed their work in doing a rate study for our Surface Water Management fund. Although I have no objection in this case, I always think it’s worth noting that service contracts are not subject to competitive bids. And in the past, not doing so has yielded (cough) ‘mixed results’.
Drone Show. Speaking of competitive bids, even knowing it was a lost cause I pulled this for a separate vote. Why? Because the product has been mediocre. Sorry. You know it. I know it. It may have been OK to use one vendor at first. But there is a lot of competition now.We did not even seek out alternatives. Instead, we accepted a $10k discount in exchange for a further two year commitment. We could also save $40,000 by going back to pyro – which is (sorry) still a superior value.
This goes beyond sloppiness. The Lodging Tax Advisory Committee, which is supposed to provide a plan for spending this money does not bother to record minutes, or even provide documentation of the spending. Which came in handy because in 2024 the Council never approved the contract – as required by law. Because the City never brought it to the dais. Not. Cool. Approved 6-1.
Regardless of where a Fund’s comes from it is all your money and should all be spent well. City funding is kept in separate cookie jars called Funds – usually indicated by where the money comes from. But whenever anyone tells you that each fund is so separate that it cannot be moved around as needed, you should walk away and then spit in their eye. Or maybe it’s the other way round. Your call.
For example, the Sixgill Shark thingee below will be funded from the Storm Water Management Fund – which is a tax you pay for to maintain your drains. The rationale is that it is also appropriate to spend a few bucks every year educating the public on the importance of not polluting the storm water – and 1ultimately harming Sixgill Sharks.
In the case of a drone show, the money does come from our Lodging Tax – a small tax paid for by hotel guests. No, we cannot use that directly for something like ‘Animal Control’ as one of my colleagues scoffed. However, one can also take that same Lodging Tax money and use it to fund any number of other City items we currently pay for out of the General Fund. Which frees up $80,000 for… animal control. Get it?
This is not some complex ‘financial instrument’ requiring a 2math degree from MIT to understand. Paying money from one account to free up money in another is called Normal. Corporate. Accounting.
And anyone who uses arguments like 3“It’s impossible” or “Hey, it didn’t come out of your property taxes, so quit yapping!” either don’t know what they are talking about, or they want you to believe it’s OK to make bad purchases.
City Presentations
Since Katherine Caffrey was away, the City was represented by Assistant City Manager (ACM) Adrienne Newton-Johnson. ‘A.J.’ has been ACM for several years. She informed me this was not her first time in the big chair – as I had suggested last week. Mea culpa.
The State of the Court presentation from Judge Leone was postponed without explanation.
There was a 30 second presentation on the as yet unformed Airport Committee. We were not offered a chance to ask questions and if I had it would have been to check that the application on the web site matches what the Council approved. (It has been updated. Apply here.)
We concluded the discussion of ADUs (see below).
Accessory Dwelling Units
All this is driven by one of those danged state laws: HB1337-2023. The state is forcing us make it easier to build ADUs. Bastahds! 😀
But every resident I know with sufficient land, has considered this and often we’ve made it too hard. Many are aging out, so the most obvious use case is a multi-generational ‘compound’ to allow families to age in place. We should encourage this.
I’ve been through both sides of this: converting a house into a duplex, and then a duplex into a house. Oi. It has always been complicated. IÂ thought a big problem would be engineering (water handling, electricity) and connections to utilities. Apparently, not.
But the entire discussion mentioned ‘developers’. As horrifying as it may sound to some, a major use case has to be less experienced people. If the process isn’t made easier, it will be less successful than it should be. Or to put it as a neighbour told me: “If it costs me as much to build an ADU as it does to build a full-size house, no way I’m doing that.” Exactly. The building has to be less expensive and the building process has to be less expensive.
During the discussion I kept using the word ‘geometry’ because as time goes by I’m seeing ‘zoning’ as less relevant than simply providing adequate space ( ‘set backs’) and making it as simple as possible to obtain connectivity. In other words, the plan itself should determine what is appropriate.
Parking also came up. Some of us want to maintain parking requirements (a parking space for each unit.) I don’t. If we’re sincere about ‘getting people out of their cars’ we have to provide those options. But at the same time, we also have to be willing to discuss what that really means. For me, exploring parking permits on certain streets makes sense, but again, I know that horrifies some. Not me. I have personal experience and when it’s well-managed, it generates local revenue and helps reduce crime.
I keep asking dumb questions about manufactured housing. The build quality is often superior, but apparently, there isn’t some ‘seal of approval’ to make it easy for the City to know that a particular vendor’s products will work well here.
Anyhoo, I think the City will be bringing back some draft proposals to offer up to four units, a 1,200 sq ft. max for an ADU, and more flexible parking options.
Sixgill Sharks
A Sixgill Shark proposal passed 6-1. I was the ‘one’. 😀 However the decorative signage – which was the original idea we approved – was removed. That’s fine with me because, as I’ve written before, these signs have not exactly been game changers. That leaves the thing as some vague $10,000 ‘education event’, funded from the SWM Fund, to be held on July 6, 2025.
Why I voted no? At about 3pm the day of the meeting, new DPW Mike Slevin sent an email describing an education program he had worked on in Tacoma. Check this video. Can this guy sell water quality or what? 😀
I made a motion (which went straight to nowheresville) to approve the entire proposal but to postpone it. Why? Because this concept deserves better.
Frankly, the Mayor spoke for the Council saying that the idea was essentially checking a box. We are required to do education events – like Stormfest. These are fine, but they rarely bring in as many people as they should! The Council was being asked to spend up to $10,000 on an event that could (should) be a big deal. This video provides a great model – on a platter. But by scheduling it on the same weekend as two other big events – and not offering nearly enough time for planning – we’re betraying how little we really care about becoming a ‘Destination’. Currently we can afford to do very few events, and, as with the drone show, everything we spend money on should be done well. There are cities in the region, with fewer natural wonders than us, which do draw people throughout the year – and we should start noticing how much more seriously they take this stuff.
1It’s a real stretch, I know. But the State of Washington says it’s perfectly appropriate to spend SWM dollars on education programs. They don’t have to actually make sense. 🙂
2I have a gift card for the person who tells me what’s wrong with this GIF.
3I hate being ‘that guy’, but we have to stop hiding behind this kind of fol de rol. If the Council wants a drone show? Just say so.
Future Agendas is the closest thing the City currently has to a calendar of upcoming City Council topics. It’s not dynamic, ie. you have to click it every time you want to see a new version. And it’s not always accurate. But until we develop a genuine calendar, this can be very useful if there is a particular issue you don’t want to miss.
King County Metro is re-instating fare inspection on buses. There will be teams of two individuals who will (gently) help people make payments. If you recall, this was put on hold during COVID.
The Governor’s proposed budget cuts the $1 million in funding that was secured last for fixing failed port packages, which were meant to insulate homes from airport noise but have deteriorated over time. Please mail key these legislators and let them know how important this funding is for our communities.
The City is now offering an e-mail sign up for City Manager Reports – which I strongly encourage.
It’s also giving the Mayor her own separate e-mail sign up – which I do not support. That is no reflection on any mayor. There should be only one communication channel for the City and it should be the City Manager’s Weekly Updates — which continue to be great. Anything else is just politics and should not be supported by the City.
City Manager’s Report April 4, 2025 In addition to the usual, excellent information, this week’s report features a highly promising Vegetable Lasagna. I also want you to notice the current city logo, since the Council voted on something new (below.)
Run for City Council
The City Manager’s report also notes that this is election season. These four seats up for election on our Council. You should run. But first, you should find out what yer getting yerself into.
Monday, April 7 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Register for the April 7 session
You should also go to King County Elections and look at the Candidate Manual. Above all? Do. Not. Be. Intimidated. But please do study. 🙂 And let me know if you have questions.
Special Requirements in accordance with RCW 41.12.030:
Must be a U.S. citizen, a resident of the City of Des Moines for at least three (3) years immediately preceding the appointment, and a registered voter. Commission members are appointed by the City Manager and serve for a six (6) year term.
Dueling Taxes
As I wrote, the State is moving ahead with several proposals to raise taxes. As always: I’m not ‘anti-tax’. But there are so many, it becomes a blue, and the ones that affect Des Moines (specifically property and sales tax) are not getting much attention.
At the March 31, 2025 state hearing on SB5798 (concerning raising the 1% property tax cap to 3% or more) 43,153 people signed in against – about 95%. This was a record.
And last Thursday, Mayor Buxton, along with many local governments, testified on behalf of the (slightly different) House companion bill HB2049 – which is billed as ‘education funding’ but which is really, a property tax increase. The blizzard of new taxes is quite something given the record spending of just last year.
This Week
Tuesday
Port of Seattle Commission (Agenda) The highlight for us is a presentation on the various Economic Development Grants the Port dishes out every year. These grants are funded through our property taxes. Des Moines typically gets only about $30k — and there is a 50% match. In the past, three of those grants went for previous versions of Marina Redevelopment that went nowhere. My interest is in understanding how this new grant will be used in the three areas specified.
City Manager Caffrey will be away on holidays. The City will be represented by Assistant City Manager Adrienne Newton-Johnson. ‘A.J.’ has been ACM for several years, but this may be her first time in the big chair? High time. 🙂
Highlights:
There will be a State of the Court presentation from Judge Leone that is always very informative.
There will be a presentation on the as yet unformed Airport Committee.
We will continue the discussion of ADUs (see below).
We’ll vote to approve the Long Range Financial Planning Study thingee (see below).
The Sixgill Shark proposal is formalised. Unfortunately, the price tag is $10,000. At the first meeting we were told something much smaller and I’m not feeling great. (But to be clear: whenever anyone mentions a street sign? Start thinking $10k. It’s amazing how much everything – including a street sign, can cost. See below on traffic calming.)
We will vote to approve a Drone Show. I always vote ‘no’ and why stop now? The drone count is listed as 200 – which has not exactly gotten rave reviews the past two years. And the packet contains no pre-design, so I have no idea if this year’s presentation could be any better. I had hoped to get the City to look at some other area shows before re-upping with this company, but there just hasn’t been enough time.
When residents voted down Prop #1 twice it was more of a trust thing than a tax thing. I do not think the City, or the Council, have internalised that. We did some painful cuts to essential services. But I have yet to see sincere efforts to dial back on the ‘fluff’. Drones are 2x the cost of conventional fireworks. Promoting Sixgill Sharks is a lot easier for me at $2,000 than $10,000. We spent $75k on a communication study in 2023, thousands of dollars revamping our Mission Statement, and now our Logo, only to circle back to where we were years ago. I see this as a variant of that old saw …a billion here, a billion there and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.
I am totally on board with all worthy marketing efforts that are part of a strategic plan. But we approve many things we cannot afford, essentially on impulse, because they’re fun and they’re ‘only’ (x) thousand dollars. And if you question it? Surely, you aren’t against saving endangered sharks, councilmember! (You mean the sharks that are super-cool for divers to experience, but which exist in basically every ocean of the world, and are in no way endangered? 🙂 )
Look, would you rather have a drone show or animal control? That’s the kind of choice we are making that people do not seem willing to accept.
And the really frustrating thing, is that by making these frivolous choices, we make it even harder to get to where we actually can afford these things.
.
Last Week
Every week seems to have a ‘theme’. And last week’s was ‘not enough time’.
I hate reviewing these things but they hold a lot of the odd fascination that got me attemdomg meetings in 2008. 😀
Communication IÂ – there continues to be a ton of interest in ‘communication’. Here’s one irony: The City does not promote the Citizens Advisory Committee meetings. Like at all. I practically have beg to find out when they’ll occur or if they’ll be live-streamed or recorded. How on earth do we expect to get more people involved in civic life if we don’t show them what it’s like?
Communication IIÂ – Check This Out!It’s my attempt to automate grabbing the video of the meeting, creating a transcript I can skim through, and a summary (ie. ‘minutes’.) I keep fooling around with AIs – not like some ‘coder’, but like any retiree fooling around with the remote control. I’ve got the process down to 15 minutes. My goal is to get to 3 minutes very soon.
Why this matters? People are always grousing about ‘misinformation’. Very few people spend two hours watching anything. When the Waterland Blog or a resident – or even our new City Manager – watches any meeting they’re only seeing a portion of what is really going on – a lot of which requires context. Which almost no one has. This is extremely awkward. It sounds totally condescending to tell someone that, because they moved here in 2018 they don’t know that ‘we already tried that!’ 😀
One person at the meeting suggested created some form of catalog of information. That is exactly what I’ve been trying to get the Council to create since my election – a database of information that electeds and city officials can search through to find the context.
People don’t seem to get it. This entire web site isn’t so much my opinions. It’s mainly my ‘catalogue’. It’s how I research all the ‘junk’ I’ve studied up on since 2008.
Use us! A common theme at these meetings is that people feel under-utilised. The challenge for me is that members seem to have very different ideas of the purposes of the CAC.
The CAC was originally created to advise the Council – as representatives of each neighbourhood. The City has provided staff to help members reach out to their neighbourhoods. My question is: how well are members communicating back? I rarely hear that sort of talk anymore and I wish I did.
Some members also want to contribute, ie. perform services. Cool. What specific tasks can this committee accomplish as a group? Staff members don’t like to say it, but they already have their hands full dealing with seven Cms! 😀
Subcommittees – the deal seems to be to have an umbrella committee with several ‘subcommittees’ performing the same functions as before (human services, arts). I thought the idea was to consolidate work? 😀 Look, if the City is not doing a great outreach, we run the risk of simply re-creating the same ‘bubbles’.
Thursday
Thursday was a big day. 🙂
Thursday: SKHHP Dashboard
This is the new Microsoft Teams Speakers Gallery. Apparently, we’re all watching a movie in the forest 😀
Councilmember Achziger joined me for a presentation by South King County Housing & Homelessness Partners on their affordable housing inventory dashboard. The group has studied the affordable housing stock in Des Moines. But the results are not public because the dashboard shows property addresses. The challenge I have is in building urgency on this. Without numbers it is hard to get people to understand that we have very few affordable places to live. And it is entirely likely that the number will decrease in the next five years.
Good news. We’re ahead on sales tax! Basically due to some construction. Construction is good, but it’s also not consistent. Still…
We won a GFOA award for budgeting, scoring 3 out of 4. This is tricky. I wanna acknowledge this, because (see next item) much of the information the Council is now getting is a lot better than it was in recent years. However, getting to a ‘4’ means improving our main documents – and there is a long way to go. And like so many things these discussions get awkward.
We discussed a draft investment policy. Which is a step up from having no investment policy. 😀 OK, that was mean. We have an investment policy. It’s decades out of date. Our finance director has been providing a lot better information on this.
We also signed off on something other committees have already discussed: a Long-Range Financial Plan and Development Impact Analysis. Ideally, I’d have preferred this be done before anything else.
Despite some initial skepticism (mainly over length), I have to admit: our first ‘Committee of the Whole’ went surprisingly well! One sample does not make a trend – and I do not think these are substitutes for committee work (see above), but this was encouraging. 🙂
Why it went well. Ahead of the meeting Ms. Caffrey did something smart – sending a memo allocating (x) minutes to each presentation. This should be standard practice at every meeting. In fact, that is standard practice in other cities. The presiding officer uses that to keep the meeting on track.
If things run out of time, they are automatically rescheduled to a future meeting. This avoids the tension of members feeling ‘cut off’ by a quick vote.
5:00pm Committee of the Whole (Inaugural)
Neighborhood Traffic Calming Procedures
Traffic Calming initial pilot program
Obviously, we’ve always done studies and performed traffic calming, but the public was unsure how to get the City’s attention. This formalises the process. There will be a sign up form at the end of the month. My comments were to provide as much information as possible and to set expectations. Just doing these speed tests take time and they are not cheap. And also this, when people are upset about traffic, the City may suggest intervention (x) but you want A ROAD BLOCK! 😀 And even after the intervention is installed, it takes a long time for people to feel the improvement. In addition to the sign-up form, I’m hoping we follow through with data, so that residents feel more confident that these interventions really work. Which they do. 🙂
Contracting Alarm Management
Chief Boe has proposed outsourcing traffic alarm fees to a contractor for a 27% fee. Since we don’t seem to be capturing a lot of fees very well, that sounds like a fine idea.
What surprised me, was the number and expense of false alarms. Apparently the City gets over 1,000 false alarm calls every year. And I guess we bill $45,000, but only collected 50-70%? I’m not sure these numbers entirely add up, but it’s worth trying. Although – what is up with all these false alarms? 😀
Accessory Dwelling Units
I don’t think it’s unfair to say that, until recently, many cities, especially ours, generally found the concept of increased density about as appealing as (insert your fave dental surgery here.) Like most 1970-ish suburbs we’ve been NIMBYs – and proud of it. So, it has been hard for me to not walk into these meetings without a tiny chip on my shoulder.
However, we have a new Planning Director, a new City Manager, and most importantly, a couple of new State laws that are leaning on us to provide more housing options – including ADUs.
A lot of my questions probably seemed confusing. Essentially, we always could have allowed much more density than we do currently. In the past, the answer tended to be ‘no’. Now the answer is leaning more towards ‘yes’. How far can we extend that without creating problems? Eg. I don’t think we need to continue to offer parking spaces for each unit. But I also don’t want to push that to on-street clutter or ten vehicles on a lawn. I do want to allow for more than two units, but not if it means we can’t capture our impact fees, or create a nightmare of code requirements for builders – or our building dept.
I keep asking the City to investigate pre-permitted ADUs – which look great. I don’t know how well they are going in practice. I also have not seen much manufactured housing here. It’s totally allowable, and the build quality is often superior, so I honestly don’t get why it hasn’t gained more traction.
6:00pm Study Session
City Logo Discussion
We had four options. And of course, we were presented with a fifth option, on the fly, which the Council chose. Of course they did. Unfortunately, Choice #5 uses the same font as 2Normandy Park. Except that the Council also chose to remove ‘City of’ and ‘Washington’. And maybe the outlines (called the stroke) around the boat? So I think it’s more like this?
I tried to make the point that with the City Manager’s reports (among other things) the City has moved towards sort of a ‘theme’, which is looking a lot better (I mean a lot better). So let’s try to make whatever we do fit into that, rather than starting over. But let’s not use the same font as our next door neighbour. 🙂
I know I sound cynical. Branding does matter. I just don’t think the payback has been worth it. Every 5-10 years another Council insists on re-visiting this sort of thing because people really think the new look will do something. If you’ve lived here a while, you’ve probably stopped noticing how many different ‘themes’ we’ve had.
What should our logo be? Well, (cough) ‘obviously’ it should always have been this. Looks nice with new City Manager’s report (see example at right). Zero dollars. 🙂
Protocol manual update
We started down a long list of tweaks, primarily provided by Councilmember Grace-Matsui, Mayor Buxton, and moi. We began in that order and worked on about six of their concerns. Here are the highlights…
Second Reading. Prior to 2023, all ordinances required two readings, ie. two discussions before a final vote to become law. That changed to a single ‘touch’. Grace-Matsui proposed restoring the second reading, which I support.
End time. Currently meetings have a hard stop @ 9:00pm This is not how other governments do it. Grace-Matsui proposed ending @ 10:00pm. Buxton proposed no end time (my preference). Cm Nutting was strenuously opposed. For me it comes down to a game clock. Human beings start off every interaction ‘loose’. Unfortunately, the way our meetings work, the most important issues are often put off to the end. This creates unnecessary stress. I’d prefer no end time, but I see 10:00pm as a reasonable compromise because statistically, we’d almost never get there. Most of the time, all people need is a few extra minutes, without worrying about ‘penalty time’. It’s having to vote (beg) every damned time for ‘five more minutes, Ma!’ that seems so petty.
I have real empathy for Nutting’s position. He has a 3job, and we need to encourage more people to run for Council with careers and families. He feels strongly that meetings can finish on time with better time management. I addressed that above by scheduling each item.
However, Buxton gave a sort of ‘explanation/defense’ as to why our meeting agenda are so packed. Frankly, we’re playing catch-up on a ton of things from years ago. I’ve been saying it til I’m blue in the face – Des Moines has the same complexity as cities several times our size. The job of councilmember is no longer some ‘volunteer’ job. We’ve put off any number of issues over the years in order to reduce the ‘workload’.
If you really read this, you’ll see at least four items of business where our code is grievously out of date. We simply did not take it seriously and that is why I don’t take any of our planning documents seriously.
We’ve deferred a ton of work to City staff that should have been given a regular once-overs by the Council. We’ve developed partnerships with community organisations in an attempt to outsource tasks that should be handled by the City – and by doing so not served the entire City as equitably as we might. Basically, we’ve done everything humanly possible to make the job easier (or dumb it down depending on your POV). And in my opinion it hasn’t worked. It’s pushed a lot of stuff off into the future and it certainly hasn’t encouraged more people to run for office. It’s made people think the job doesn’t matter.
One can automate certain things – like certain rate reviews. But even that, one has to (occasionally) make sure that the ‘automation’ is working! There is simply no way to get round the fact that the gig does take and will continue to take more time and more education to do well. The era of people running for Council armed with ‘common sense’ is over.
Disclaimer. We currently require Cms to provide a series of disclaimers and disclosures concerning public communications, which Mayor Buxton suggested is kinda impractical. I agree. Although, I do have that disclaimer at the bottom of every page on this site. 🙂 One reason I do so is because I want you to know that, when you contact me, or anyone at the City (or any public agency), communications are not ‘confidential’.
Comprehensive Plan Update
We covered four chapters, which seems like a lot except that these were the easy ones. I had several fiddly comments, mainly to do with the airport policy, trees, and parks. Almost all were graciously accepted by my colleagues.
One that got unexpected push back, from Councilmember Mahoney, concerned the artificial tire reefs along our shoreline. I proposed a new line in our comp plan to support removal and restoration of these toxic tires. There are tens of thousands of them along our shores. I think we came to some agreement. The State made us create these in the 1970’s under the now discredited idea that they would create more sport fishing opportunities.Given that it was their idea, and it will cost many millions to correct, this should be an important legislative policy.
The disagreement comes over what to do. Ideally, one would not only remove the tires, one would also restore the area to what DNR calls an ‘edenic state’ – the salmon-friendly habitat that was there before all the tires. If you hoik out thousands of tire and leave giant gashes in the seabed, you’d likely make the ecosystem much worse. So the cleanup is not only a) spending an absolute fortune removing all the tires and sending them to a toxic dump site. It’s also b) spending another fortune to re-landscape the area. Underwater.
I am, by training, skeptical of planning documents or mission statements. Ideally, they’d be like a constitution. Like in that movie 12 Angry Men. When grappling with a seemingly unsolvable problem, one member of the group would pause and say solemnly,
“Edna. Hank. Norma. Let’s take a step back. Does this ordinance really reflect Goal 3.1.6 of our Plan? Frankly, I’m beginning to have doubts.”
And then Stan would stand up and say,
“You’re absolutely right Gail! We haven’t been following our own vision. Thank you for reminding us to use those principles to help us get where we need to go!”
I can’t seem to recall that kind of deep reflection.
On the other hand, the State makes us spend hundreds and hundreds of hours on this stuff – not just giving us rules to follow, but also trying to encourage better policies. So, perhaps planning documents are more like Sunday School. Even if you aren’t guided by them moment to moment, just going through the process makes some kind of overall ‘impact’ on all of us. I sure hope so. 🙂
Saturday
On Saturday, as I was looking at the Memorial Flag Triangle construction, I stumbled across the ‘Hands Off’ protest at the Fish Plaza Place. 😀
Regardless of politics, the following are worth noting.
Despite not a lot of promotion (at least in Des Moines), there were a lot of people. I mean a lot.
The demographic was at least 90% seniors. And despite what you might think, not everyone was from Wesley. From what I could tell, many were also from nearby cities. But they were almost entirely seniors.
Despite non-stop honking and whooping – and some of the most 1creatively profane signs I’ve ever seen, the entire deal was completely peaceful.
I only noted this to make a point. Regardless of your politics, age, or whatever you can be passionate, very well-informed, extremely nice… and swear like a sailor. Be yourself. 🙂
1As something of a student of the art, I thought I’d heard it all by now. I am not worthy. 😀
2Achziger suggested ‘Futura’, which looks right, but I’m half blind.
3Sucker. 😀 jk. Being retired gives me a unique freedom to bone up on the material. But I can (vividly) recall working 25 hours a day, kids, marriage, and something vaguely referred to as a ‘life’. People deeply resent being told they can’t do it all. But the more I do this, the more I’ve come to realise that to do the job well requires a ton more work than most people think when they sign up. But unlike a for realz job, no one can ever tell you you’re not putting in enough time.
I updated this article slightly to coincide with a mailing list update to highlight the two Committee of the Whole items on ADUs and Traffic Calming. (See Thursday meeting @ 5:00pm.)
Future Agendas is the closest thing the City currently has to a calendar of upcoming City Council topics. It’s not dynamic, ie. you have to click it every time you want to see a new version. And it’s not always accurate. But until we develop a genuine calendar, this can be very useful if there is a particular issue you don’t want to miss.
King County Metro is re-instating fare inspection on buses. There will be teams of two individuals who will (gently) help people make payments. If you recall, this was put on hold during COVID.
Speaking of transit, I heard about this shortly before I learned that Angle Lake Station was shut down ( because of the huge storm that did not happen. 😀 ) I was asked a few times this week why they chose that ‘insider’. And the real answer is that we tried several ‘outsiders’ and the results have not been exactly tip top. 😀
I whinge because I use transit and I love trains. But when people talk about ‘rail’ as the alternative to Sea-Tac Airport? I struggle to not roll my eyes. Everywhere I go – from Mukilteo to Angle Lake, the results are nowhere near as reliable as (gasp) an airplane. People on all sides of ‘transit’ should be fed up. If we’re serious about transit we have to stop giving it unconditional love. You’ll know that trains are for real when it isn’t just the haters who are sick of paying 2-3x what trains cost elsewhere.
Call To Action: Port Packages!
The Governor’s proposed budget cuts the $1 million in funding that was secured last for fixing failed port packages, which were meant to insulate homes from airport noise but have deteriorated over time. Please mail key these legislators and let them know how important this funding is for our communities.
Last week, I offered an exceedingly fun-filled prize for the answer to “Why is it spelled ‘Camp Khaos'”? Gift card on the way for the correct answer. 4Which is…
Kids. Having. An. Outrageous. Summer!
In years past, I remember that being plastered on signs and banners. Haven’t seen it in a while. But it has been an award-winning program and I would love to see that slogan displayed more prominently. Because the program is outrageously good. I also wish we had trademarked it. 😀
City Manager Stuff
The City is now offering an e-mail sign up for City Manager Reports – which I strongly encourage.
It’s also giving the Mayor her own separate e-mail sign up – which I do not support. That is no reflection on any mayor. There should be only one communication channel for the City and it should be the City Manager’s Weekly Updates — which continue to be great. Anything else is just politics and should not be supported by the City.
City Manager’s Report March 28, 2025 The recipe this week involves Turkey Burgers. I am skeptical. However, as an elected official, it is important to keep an open mind. 🙂
Ms. Caffrey also noted the retirement of long-time Marina employee Pat Wolfrom. If you spend any time at the docks you’d see Pat doing more jobs than a farmer. And I mean that as a high compliment – ‘jack of all trades’ doesn’t begin to cover it. Pat has been such a fixture for so long it will be hard to imagine the place without him. I mean that literally. Whenever a long time employee leaves my first thought is the immense amount of knowledge he takes with him.
Run for City Council
The City Manager’s report also beat me to the punch in noting that this is election season. These four seats up for election on our Council. You should run. But first, you should find out what yer getting yerself into.
Tuesday, April 1 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Register for the April 1 session
Monday, April 7 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Register for the April 7 session
You should also go to King County Elections and look at the Candidate Manual. Above all? Do. Not. Be. Intimidated. But please do study. 🙂 And let me know if you have questions.
Dueling Taxes
And if you need an issue to run on? Taxes! 😀
Every year, there is at least one bill at the State hoping to give city councils like Des Moines the ability to raise property taxes automatically up to the rate of inflation – without giving you a vote. This year, there has been a particularly strong push including a letter by our Mayor in the Seattle Times. The idea, of course, is to obtain support from the large populations of wealthier, more tax-friendly communities like Seattle.
I believe it is a terrible look for our city to promote this so aggressively — only a few months after Des Moines voters decisively said ‘No’, twice, to more property taxes.
I am not anti-tax. But property tax is the one tax people expect to have a say on. Taking that sense of choice from voters is wrong.
Long-Range Financial Plan and Development Impact Analysis. I’ve grown so cynical about ‘studies’ I can’t afford to gush. But this is something I’ve been talking about since I ran for office. If the results are what’s on the tin, this would be (I can’t believe I’m writing this) a game changer. 😀 Sorry, couldn’t help it. But these are some great looking bullet points and City Manager Caffrey deserves big ups for proposing this.
This feels weird. We’re having the first ‘Committee of the Whole’ deal at 5:00pm, followed by a ‘Study Session’ at 6:00pm. Is it just me, or is this basically two Study Sessions in one? Like those two-sided breath mints. However, I promised our City Manager to give this a sincere try. But speaking broadly? This is a lot of ‘stuff’ for one evening.
Traffic Calming initial pilot program
5:00pm Committee of the Whole
Neighborhood Traffic Calming Procedures: this looks really interesting!
Contracting Alarm Management
Accessory Dwelling Units
Proposed ADU summary
6:00pm Study Session
City Logo Discussion (see header image) All this fluff – which people cannot help but care about, could be a time-waster. My main comments:
1Look familiar? 😀
People love to stress about ‘how to pronounce Des Moines’. Wanna know something else people obsess about? Making sure everyone knows we’re not in Iowa! 😀 If you’ve traveled around the US a bit, you’ll see the same city name in a dozen states. I honestly don’t see why we need ‘Washington’ on our logo. But, as my kids used to say, what-evehhhhr. 🙂
Comprehensive Plan Update: This should be a big deal. I honestly don’t know if it will be. Frankly, it has been presented over the past two years as (mostly) a huge PITA compliance procedure. I’m probably being unkind; it is a ton of work. But my concern is: what can we do with it? What tools will it give us to build more places for people to live? To encourage more productive business formation?
City Council Protocol Manual Review
The City Council follows two ‘books’, the Municipal Code – which has all the ordinances (laws) that govern the City, and then a separate Council Protocol Manual (CPM) which, as the name implies, concerns the City Council. It’s based on something you may have heard of called Robert’s Rules of Order. The CPM doesn’t have the force of ‘law’, but it’s important because, in the immortal words of Michael Matthias “He who controls the agenda, controls the meeting”. Where it goes outside the ‘standard’, it’s generally to do with extending the authority of the Mayor. In other words, in RROO, the person swinging the gavel has very limited authority. They run the meeting in a fair manner and that’s basically it. In fact, you don’t need a ‘mayor’. You could have basically anyone do it.
When the City was incorporated in 1959, we created a bog standard rule document, according to the State’s recommendation. We tweaked it every so often, but it was basically the same. The tweaks were often to do with extending the mayor’s authority in certain ways we now take for granted.
In 2023 three members of the Council (Buxton, Mahoney, Steinmetz) formed an Ad Hoc Rules Committee and decided that it didn’t just need a few tweaks, it needed to be completely re-written as a Protocol Manual, based on the one from Bothell. It was a terrible experience. It unnecessarily wasted enormous amounts of time, City Resources, and actually made the Council process worse than before. To give you a sense of the political ugliness…
Meetings were held with 24 hour notice (the bare legal minimum) at the Police Station – not at City Hall – and unlike any other Council committee – were not recorded.
Draft versions had language like “…public expression of dissent and protest outside the open public meeting is inappropriate unethical behavior.”; which is unconstitutional.
Required attire specifically excluded ‘hats’.
To prepare for this item, I simply need to bring my list of (common sense) failed amendments from that debate.
A big part of City Council is ‘process’ – which no one cares about. That’s what makes it so tough to improve local government. My metaphor is manufacturing. People don’t care about ‘the assembly line’, they just want their car to work. If they get what they want, they think the process was great. If they get a lemon, they just want that product fixed. Either way? People generally don’t give a hoot about the assembly line that made the product. I do. Because if it isn’t working right, not only is the quality hit or miss, everything is a lot more expensive than it needs to be.
That has been my ‘thing’ since running for office.
Better process = better decisions.
Last Week
Every week seems to have a theme. And last week’s was virtue signaling.
There was a briefing on the SIRRPP (ie. Port Packages) which was covered by Sea-Tac Noise.Info Their Port Package Update program is terrible. Total virtue signaling – the Port wanted to look like it was doing something, without actually doing something. I had hoped that Councilmember Mahoney (our official rep) would speak to this during his end comments at the City Council meeting, but he chose not to.
Des Moines currently has no active sound code after repealing its 2007 ordinance in 2012. Over a year ago, Council agreed to have the EDC revisit the issue. The staff memo (which was excellent) discussed hiring a sound engineering consultant to draft a more modern version of that code – and put us back on par with Burien and SeaTac – the two other cities with Port Packages.
But the entire discussion ended up being through the lens of a builder. Not one word as to public health or what it means for the community. After more than a year of dithering, the Committee was still divided – asking staff to come back with maybe a scaled back proposal? We had absolutely no business dropping sound code. As STNI said in its scathing coverage:
“Budgets are moral documents… Why should the Port, or the State or the FAA invest in any programs if Des Moines shows no willingness to spend anything?”
Harsh. But fair. At the moment Des Moines does not care about airport issues. Just more virtue signaling.
Short Term Rentals
The City presented a draft ordinance regulating short-term and “amenities” rentals (e.g., pools or sports courts). The City Attorney made it clear that we were new to this. I’ve said previously that I support this (in general), which I do. However, in reading that draft, I was struck by all the ‘detail’. My initial reaction was “Why do we need all these rules? Can’t we simply rely on some existing code and the common sense of our code enforcement?” In software, the more rules (if/then/else statements) you need to make a thing work, the more things there are to worry about.
I think the word to describe this section of the meeting was ‘awkward’.
The meeting opened with a presentation from King County Councilmember De’Sean Quinn. Quinn was on the Tukwila City Council for a long time and was appointed to the seat left open when Dave Upthegrove went off to pursue his 2dream job as Commissioner of Public Lands. However, the seat is up for election in November so there may well be someone different in the seat next year. It was awkward for me because, while I very much appreciate him showing up, he was presenting new information verbally, which is still in flux. And then he split and the Council discussion, which was based on different information, happened 2.5 hours later.
We then heard one comment from a resident who wants to utilise the Short Term Rental Ordinance discussed at the EDC.
We then we heard a passionate ‘No’ from the next door neighbours. And as I’m listening, I was thinking about Jurassic Park. “Oh. That’s why the ordinance is about two million lines of code.” 😀
Sorry. It’s no joke. I’ve been a landlord for a good while. It’s a two-way street with neighbours. You have to live together. As an engineer, if you need a lot of ‘code’ it probably means you’re expecting errors – in this case people not being able to work things out amicably. I’m not sure the specific conflict the Council heard can be resolved by any ‘code’. Regardless, we do need code and it was important to hear both sides of the story. In fact, I’m sure there aren’t two sides. I’m pretty sure there will be a many ‘sides’ – and if you are interested in the topic, please reach out to me with your perspective.
Consent Agenda
Item of note:
SKHHP Funding Allocation South King County Housing/Homelessness Partnership pools resources from 12 cities to fund affordable housing across South King County. Des Moines has already contributed the funds; this resolution formalizes how they’ll be spent. We’ve been at this since before I joined the Council. And it has yielded no new construction in Des Moines and only a few remodels. As with the airport, it is simply more virtue signaling. We pay a (relatively) modest amount every year into this fund, to look like we’re doing something – rather than actually building housing here.
New Business
2025 Poverty Bay Blues and Brews Festival Proposal
My colleagues voted 5-1 to accept Rotary’s three year proposal to put on their Blues and Brews event. The event was not the reason for my ‘no’. And I want to be clear that the event is fantastic and 3their proposal had some very good aspects which are much better for the City than in previous years.
However, I encourage you to watch this portion of the meeting. Any notion of parliamentary procedure broke down – with members of Rotary literally joining in on the discussion – something I have literally never seen in any other local government. That’s a ‘process’ problem in Des Moines. It tends to happen here because we’ve normalised councilmembers having such personal interests in various issues. Get it? We simply cannot be objective about these kinds of decisions.
Why does this matter? Last November the Council spent thousands of dollars to decide (this time) to really, really, really, really, really, really, really commit the City to becoming “the Premiere Waterfront Destination in the Pacific Northwest”. Other than the Fourth of July, and the Waterland Parade, Blues and Brews is the only reasonably well marketed event we do. And we don’t do it – they do.
So I didn’t call it a ‘partnership’. I called it a leveraged donation. Basically, we are donating $10,000 – and that helps Rotary do $40,000 in fund raising towards good organisations we also support in our Human Services Budget. One of our dollars yields four. Great.
But the argument seems to be that this event drives repeat business – helping to make the City a ‘destination’. I have absolutely zero doubt that it drives repeat business to this event. People who like various niche musics show up year after year. Blues here. String Quartets in Kitsap. Ukuleles in Astoria. Fantastic. But that is not the same thing as leveraging the City.
Long-established groups are great. But they receive preferential treatment that would be unavailable to any potential new group. It’s already hard enough to stand up a new organisation. This sort of thing ends up discouraging the formation of new initiatives that might broaden possibilities for Des Moines.
Fact: since I’ve lived here we never had a marketing plan that increased our reach. It’s completely unrealistic to ask the City Manager to develop one this year. So instead of doing a one year agreement – and letting the City, have time to at least start figuring a better system – one that encourages other groups to engage in various events – we’re now locked into the same approach we’ve tried for decades. “Premiere Waterfront Destination” is more virtue signaling. We want to look like we’re doing something new and improved, while actually doubling down on exactly the same things we’ve always done.
All that said, I have absolutely no doubt the event will be a success.
Executive Session
POTENTIAL LITIGATION RCW 42.30.110(1)(a)(i) – All I can tell ya is that this was 20 minutes of my life I wish I could get back. It’s only worth mentioning because it came in the middle of the meeting, which meant we emerged from the Cone of Silence to an empty room. A lonely feeling, my friend. 😀
King County Parks Levy
As I wrote, the meeting opened with County Councilmember De’Sean Quinn making a presentation about this item. This discussion, 2.5 hours later was the reason for his appearance.
Your property tax bill includes a bajillion slices. One of the smaller ones is the City of Des Moines – which you vote for. However, there are several levies which are automatic. The Port gets one. County Parks is another. The Deputy Mayor had expressed concern as to a possible rate increase and whether or not Des Moines was getting a fair share of that slice and wanted the Council to do something. But it was hard not to feel like the discussion was premature because we don’t yet have a clear idea of what the County’s proposal is.
My comments were
To ‘automate’ the process. That’s shorthand for developing a simple annual formula for cities like Des Moines rather than having a project-based grant system. Grants are great. But they lack certainty. If we knew every year that we were getting (x) dollars for parks, it would make it a lot easier to plan for park space improvements.
I’d like the City to have a more defined ‘wish list’. Yes, we have a Parks and Rec Master Plan. And a Comprehensive Plan (see above). But realistically, we focus almost all our energy on grants (what seems doable in the moment) rather than acting like ‘plans’ actually make a difference.
New Items For Consideration
I asked the Council to direct the City to prepare a letter in support of the Municipal Research and Services Center. MRSC is a non-profit organisation that provides educational resources to all cities and their electeds in WA. Much of the information is available to the public.
One proposal in the State budget is to gut their funding. Whoever thought that was a good idea should be… hang… er… lose their employee parking spot. 😀 What makes it so annoying is that the legislature threatens this every few years. But cutting access to educational resources for lawmakers? Seriously?
1A NP friend calls this ‘the sailing trees’.
2That’s Dave’s quote. I actually agree. The job completely aligns with his personal interest in the environment going back decades.
3In previous years, the event would be allowed two days for set up and break down. So the City will have one more available day of rental. It will be a mighty long day for Rotary to set up and break down in one day.
4Who says I don’t put in the work on graphic design?
You probably have not heard this. There is a big push in Olympia this year to give city councils the ability to raise property taxes not by 1%, but up to the limit of inflation – and without giving you a vote. There has been a LOT of promotion to make it happen, including a letter by Des Moines Mayor Traci Buxton in the Seattle Times. https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/mayors-to-wa-lawmakers-lift-the-local-property-tax-cap/
Speaking only for myself, I do not support this. I believe it is a terrible look to promote this — only a few months after voters decisively said ‘No’ to new property taxes in not one, but -two- elections!
I am not against property tax increases so long as voters get to choose. And I believe voters will feel betrayed if they find out in a few months that the City Council can take that choice away — increase their property taxes — in spite of not one but TWO elections in Des Moines last year!
If you haven’t done this before, here are some instructions.
1. Select the bill 5798 (Property Tax)
2. Select ‘I would like my position noted for the legislative record’
3. Fill out the form. (Be sure to choose ‘Con’!)
Let me know if you have questions!
Trust
One last thing. These groups take pains to say that this is not ‘automatic’; that the bill only gives cities a choice. That is completely disingenuous. The key element of SB5798 is to allow property taxes to rise automatically based on inflation. If inflation rises, the ability to tax you, without a vote, also rises.
Currently, cities also have a ‘choice’ to take the 1% allowed by State law. How many cities say ‘no thank you!’? Basically, none. If this bill passes, it is a certainty that most cities will take advantage of the extra taxes. It’s easier to blame inflation than ask voters for help. If not, why would they be pushing so hard? That lack of sincerity is almost as bad as a new tax you don’t get to decide on.
To me, the strategy is clear: people in wealthier, more tax-friendly parts of King County are far more numerous so lobby them for votes they cannot get in their own cities. State lawmakers, with their huge deficits, cynically can see this as a way to ‘help’ small cities get more money – without actually giving it to them. If we do not push back, this may pass.
The other side
To be fair, here are links to some of the groups in support of this new taxing authority, including that letter from Mayor Traci Buxton in the Seattle Times.
Future Agendas is the closest thing the City currently has to a calendar of upcoming City Council topics. It’s not dynamic, ie. you have to click it every time you want to see a new version. And it’s not always accurate. But until we develop a genuine calendar, this can be very useful if there is a particular issue you don’t want to miss.
While I’m at it, this Federal Funding Data Display is worth a gander. Note that both HSD and FedWay obtain some of the highest levels of Federal (and State) funding in the State of WA. I mention that for two reasons:
Any disruption to that funding stream (as keeps getting talked about in the news) would not be good for us.
School quality rankings, however you define them, tend to run opposite to those funds. The schools that rely least external funding (ie. more on local taxes) tend to be higher quality. Many are in wealthier cities – but not all.
It’s something we paper over, but both HSD and FedWay are struggling. Said it before, say it again: you cannot have a healthy Des Moines without better education opportunities.
With all that cheer, I really want to do everything possible to help Dr. Espinoza (and both school districts) succeed. 🙂
It’s Spring. Time For Critter Guilt Trip!
I’m preaching to the choir here, but… it’s Spring. Critters are running around having baby critters. And that means a high number of unnecessarily smushed varmints. Not sure what to do about it, except to employ my Ninja-Like Jewish Grandmother Guilt Superpower.
“So, you were texting and driving. Again. You heard a small thump? Don’t worry so much. Probably it wasn’t a totally defenseless opossum. Trying to feed her children.”
Call To Action: Port Packages!
The Governor’s proposed budget cuts the $1 million in funding that was secured last for fixing failed port packages, which were meant to insulate homes from airport noise but have deteriorated over time. Please mail key these legislators and let them know how important this funding is for our communities.
The City is now offering an e-mail sign up for City Manager Reports. Other than that, two highlights are Camp Khaos and a note that the Des Moines Activity Center is available to study, work, have lunch, and basically just chill Monday through Friday.
New Contest: Camp Khaos!
Speaking of which: there is an exceedingly fun-filled prize for a non-random answer to this burning question: Why is it spelled ‘Camp Khaos’?
Des Moines currently has no active sound code after repealing its 2007 ordinance in 2012. The staff recommends creating a modern sound transmission code to address aircraft noise and align with evolving building standards. Key recommendations include:
Hiring a sound engineering consultant to draft the code, advise on cost-effective solutions, and define noise zones.
Developing both prescriptive and performance-based compliance options using pre-tested wall and window assemblies.
Focusing on major remodels for existing buildings, especially where external walls or systems are altered.
Incorporating lessons from Burien and SeaTac, such as multi-zone frameworks and modern ventilation standards.
Anticipating future impacts from Sea-Tac’s expansion under the SAMP (Sustainable Airport Master Plan).
The goal is a balanced, cost-feasible code to protect residents from airport noise while not hindering development.
Short Term Rentals
A draft ordinance regulating short-term and “amenities” rentals (e.g., pools or sports courts). The ordinance includes Permit requirements, annual renewal, business license, and designation of a 24/7 local property representative. Neighbor notification and a posted Good Neighbor Agreement to promote accountability and reduce complaints. Occupancy limits based on number of bedrooms and a ban on overnight amenities rentals. Strict parking and garbage rules to reduce neighborhood disruption. Noise restrictions with escalation: after three verified complaints, owners must install noise monitoring systems.
I support this, however I will note that this does not apply to long-term rentals – historically, a much bigger problem. Since ending its mandatory landlord partnership with King County in 2011, Des Moines has had a history of problems with absentee landlords and these same standards should apply to all landlords.
We’ll vote on an ordinance to create a new parking infraction for unattended vehicles left on the ramp, allowing officers to ticket and potentially tow them without locating the driver. The ordinance aims to protect recreational access and improve operational clarity.
SKHHP Funding Allocation South King County Housing/Homelessness Partnership pools resources from 12 cities to fund affordable housing across South King County. Des Moines has already contributed the funds; this resolution formalizes how they’ll be spent.
The key financial points:
Des Moines has already contributed the $39,811 — this vote doesn’t approve new spending. It just permits SKHHP to spend it on specific regional projects.
The only Des Moines project ever funded in 2023. And that was restoration, not new construction.
Funds are pooled with other cities to support regional affordable housing — meaning Des Moines is subsidizing housing development elsewhere with no guarantee of future return. The SKHHP structure allows wealthier or better-organized cities to pull in more funds than they contribute, depending on project readiness and advocacy. While Des Moines retains the right to vote on how its funds are used, there is no prioritization mechanism ensuring proportional geographic return over time.
For me, this has gotten perilously close to virtue signaling. We pay a (relatively) modest amount every year into a regional fund, to look like we’re doing something rather than building housing here.
2025 Poverty Bay Blues and Brews Festival Proposal
Des Moines is being asked to partner with Destination Des Moines for the 2025 Poverty Bay Blues and Brews Festival, held at Des Moines Beach Park. The goal is to raise money to support their non-profits.
Some key points:
A $10,000 discount of rental fees, plus in-kind support (police, parks?) Rotary also wants a three year agreement.
In exchange we get to be corporate sponsors.
Tourism value: organizers expect the event to draw 31500-1800 people, anecdotally boosting local business visibility.
While Rotary emphasizes the event’s tourism benefits and charitable goals, the City forgoes rental income for this event during prime summer weekend use.
Frankly, girlfriend, this one is giving me the blues. And I don’t mean like Albert, Freddie or B.B. I’ve worked with many organisations that do sponsorship deals and they were all structured very differently. For one thing there was a lot more accountability, ie. a corporate sponsorship implies imparting obvious value – one that would not otherwise pertain.
Think of it like this: Alaska Air sponsors an event at the Marina. They plaster their logo on everything. Their VP of Marketing gives a little speech. But that logo means something because you’re not on their corporate campus. Get it? What is the value add of having a Des Moines logo on an event at the Des Moines Marina where the 2City is already 100% guaranteed to give a speech? 😀
Why three years? Where is the prior evidence to merit three years instead of a trial period of one. There is no requirement for tracking that event benefit going forward. And no accounting to compensate the waterfront zone for the loss of revenue. It’s not a ‘sponsorship’. We’re just giving the same off-the-books discount we’ve always done. Which is not like any corporate sponsorship I’ve seen.
Also, we just implemented a two year budget system; in part as a response to concerns over fiscal responsibility. There’s no accommodation for this in that budget. We deep-sixed our finance committee – which would have been the logical vehicle to start a policy revision like this. As a professional musician, I understand better than most that ‘the show must go on’ 😀 But what is the point of implementing a new budget system if we end up doing exactly the same things we did before?
Bottom Line: I would much prefer we offer a standard, competitive grant budget every year; no more ad hoc anything. And frankly, it might be better evaluated by an independent body (and by that I mean like the way we hire an independent hearings examiner to evaluate property decisions.) It’s really hard for any Council to look at decisions like these objectively. They’re just too personal.
As a City we can’t call doing exactly the same thing ‘new and improved’ if we hope to actually achieve the goals we’ve laid out for ourselves. As Little Milton liked to testify… sometimes you need to have the blues for a while in order to get to a better place. 🙂
Executive Session
POTENTIAL LITIGATION RCW 42.30.110(1)(a)(i) – 20 minutes “To discuss with legal counsel representing the agency matters relating to agency enforcement actions, or to discuss with legal counsel representing the agency litigation or potential litigation to which the agency, the governing body, or a member acting in an official capacity is, or is likely to become, a party, when public knowledge regarding the discussion is likely to result in an adverse legal or financial consequence to the agency.”
Wednesday: Regional Transit Committee. Essentially, this group advises the County Council on bus services. 20250319-RTC-packet. The Council gets occasional letters on transit safety and I want to assure everyone that not a meeting goes by that ‘safety’ is not number one with a bullet. I ride the bus and take the Light Rail several times a week and I definitely do.
At this meeting, we also got a presentation on a new Fare Inspection program. Since COVID, Metro has not been enforcing fares. This has been controversial as the service does really need the money. For some, it also created a perception of lawlessness. The irony, of course, is that adding back fare enforcement leads to concerns over unnecessary friction – which no one wants. The 2-person teams are not police – they are more like drivers (although they will have emergency training like CPR 🙂 ). To my mind, this is a good experiment. When you see them, I hope you will show your appreciation and support. Personally, I love Metro, because where I live, it’s super-easy. For me, the biggest problem is that there is not enough of it for the rest of Des Moines.
Some bills passing through Olympia
As I’ve written, this is lawmakin’ season in Olympia and there were/are a ton of bills that will affect us. The problem is that, although the hearings are transparent, the actual process is super-convoluted and sometimes the furthest thing from it.
Over-Simplication Alert: there are rules that allow certain bills considered ‘important’ to basically bypass the hearing process entirely and get worked out in truly backroom deals.
One rationale being that if an item has broad funding concerns it cannot easily be worked in a single committee.
Property Taxes will likely rise, whether you like it or not. But the main thing I’m beating around the bush on is: property taxes, which voters want capped and almost all cities desperately want increased are coming. So I’m punting to the Seattle Times which has a pretty good summary of the situation. Read it.
We will likely have more property taxes and more business taxes. Which should assuage whatever guilt you may have had in voting against Prop #1 last year. 🙂
The population of Washington State has been declining for many years now. I used to be one of those who joked, “Great! Move to Oklahoma!” or like that movie Mars Needs Women! 😀
I was being facetious. And entitled. I used to travel to OK, AR and KS a lot for work and noticed that Walmart spent a millions of dollars on community amenities to attract workers – the kinds of parks and community centers we could never afford here. Still, what I noticed was this: all things being equal, people seemed to prefer Puget Sound to the reclaimed 1swamps of Rogers, AR. 😀 Maybe that’s just me.
But this also has to do with taxes and it is a real problem for Des Moines. People are getting priced out of Seattle, which may be OK for ‘Seattle’ since they have the wealth to keep chugging. It’s also largely irrelevant to lucky geezers like me – retired and sitting on that absolutely bitchin’ 3% mortgage.
But if families don’t just require two incomes, but perhaps two six figure incomes to raise a family here, what does that mean for the ongoing value proposition of Des Moines? Said it before, say it again, 30 years ago, that was easy: low cost of ownership, decent schools, waterfront, easy access to the airport, downtown, and basically everywhere. Today, the incentives appeal to a much different demographic and we need to confront that. Because, just between you, me and the wall? Us AARP types are not exactly big spenders. 🙂
HB1923 the Mosquito Fleet bill, ie. Passenger Ferries will likely pass. As it stands, I support it – as does basically everyone in the region. However, like the tax bills, it has also undergone a few ‘backroom’ changes outside the strictly public process. After removing the following provision in the House, the Senate re-added this: the possibility of dinky cities (like Des Moines) of creating their own ferry district. That is a completely sensible idea for some small island communities — and also as completely insane for Des Moines as our previous pilot program.
1Rogers, AR is Where Possible Lives. All joshing aside – in addition to ‘possible’ over 70,000 people also live there – and it’s growing fast. I think most people in Des Moines would absolutely kill to have their main street, low property taxes, and various services.
2Just tryin’ to lighten the mood. 🙂
3Semi-fake news. The packet actually says 1,200 – 1,500. I think the absolute max for such an event could be 1,800 so I’m being extra-generous. If ticket prices are in the $50 range that’s $90,000, which would be great. But that still not does answer the question the City should press on if it’s a true ‘sponsorship’. What would those 1,800 people do for the City? It’s not just semantics. If it’s a grant, that takes away any false pressure.
Future Agendas is the closest thing the City currently has to a calendar of upcoming City Council topics. It’s not dynamic, ie. you have to click it every time you want to see a new version. And it’s not always accurate. But until we develop a genuine calendar, this can be very useful if there is a particular issue you don’t want to miss.
The Governor’s proposed budget cuts the $1 million in funding that was secured last for fixing failed port packages, which were meant to insulate homes from airport noise but have deteriorated over time. Please mail key these legislators and let them know how important this funding is for our communities.
The highlight is that the City is now offering an e-mail sign up for her City Manager Reports. Hopefully, this is only the first step towards a complete suite of better recip… er… on-line services. 😀
This Week
Wednesday: Regional Transit Committee. Essentially, this group advises the County Council on bus services.
As the 800lb regional gorilla, ‘Seattle’ gets a lot of grief. But as with so many things, there are two sides to every story. In terms of regional planning, Des Moines is considered a ‘transit oriented community’ – the idea is to provide workers for the region. But for the past several decades, we’ve shown very little interest, either in building housing or more transit. So, bus service naturally focused on Seattle – where there is more obvious interest and demand.
Everyone, include moi,can argue that we need more routes. But we struggle to provide actual evidence that they would get used. How do you model demand for areas which not only have no service, but also do not show evidence of providing more housing to fuel that demand? As we approach our upcoming Comprehensive Plan, we need to have serious discussions on this. Transit depends on housing.
Every election cycle, candidates for County Council always tell me how great our Marina is – which is not where the need for transit or housing) are. Since this is an election year, my hope is that the new batch will visit the areas where the County can actually help.
Unlike other events, the list is specific so check carefully. Batteries. Electronics. Wood. Mattresses. Appliances. Scrap metal. 4Nuclear waste.
Last Week
Tuesday: Port of Seattle Commission (Agenda) This meeting included a summary of the Port’s various grant programs — including the FAA-funded sound insulation plan for the year. Spoiler alert: once again, nada for us.
Wednesday: Emergency Management Advisory Committee The group had a very interesting after-action report concerning last November’s 1bomb cyclone. What we experienced as mostly some fallen trees and a day of power outages was a true regional emergency up on the north and east side of the County. Several cities activated their Emergency Operations Center. What I found fascinating is that when they opened their warming centers, they laid out tables with rows of power outlets to let people charge their phone. Which they could easily do because proper emergency centers have tons of backup power. This was brilliant! A zero-dollar way to provide a real community benefit. When we have our next genuine emergency, the one thing everyone will need is a way to keep their cell phone charged.
Highlight: Review of capital project progress, including the Memorial Flag Triangle and 24th Ave. projects. (Why the Memorial Flag Triangle is a ‘transportation’ project? ‘Vanity Project Politics’ as one of my colleagues put it. See below. This was a much deeper dive on both projects than the full Council got so watch this meeting.
Thursday: Environment Committee – 13 Mar 2025 – Agenda We did a review of our NPDES permit, which included some recent enhancements worth talking about. But first, a grouse and a compliment.
Last month, Councilmember Mahoney and I were the lone votes against ending regular meetings of our standing committees. I can’t speak for him, but for me both these two meetings demonstrated why it was premature. Each of these allowed for much deeper dives than any ‘committee of the whole’ will do — especially with our stupid ‘meetings must end by 9pm or we’ll all die!’ rule. One only develops fluency on complex issues by visiting with routinely.
The compliment is for our surface water team. When I first moved here, the engineers I got to know (sorry) seemed to view environmental regulations as ‘a pain in the butt’. That’s a quote, btw. At the time, a common view was that surface water management was literally that – managing the flow of water to maintain the built environment. Anything ‘environment’ was something of an add-on. The current team has never given me that impression – in fact, having consistently demonstrated a desire to go above and beyond in improving environmental processes. Or, they’re much better actors than the civil engineers I used to run into. Either way, I’m sold! 😀
The NPDES process now includes trees and wetland restoration as integral components. I’m over-simplifying here. The City has a Federal permit to manage all the waters in the City. And that permit requires us to demonstrate various ways we’re improving that environment. But now, Now, NOW! We can get credit not only for ‘water’ but also the inter-connected tree canopy and surrounding land as one holistic thing! You have no idea how happy this makes me. I’ve heard over and over from planners that one needs to consider the entire system.
One reason I watch the airport is that (literally) everything environmental is downstream of the plateau on which it sits (prox. 400 ft above us.) For example, the City is just beginning to study and test PFAS chemicals now. As users of tens of thousands of gallons of the stuff in firefighting operations, the Port of Seattle started freaking out about it (and shutting down their water wells) a decade ago.
I have no idea how an airport committee (see below) can work this kind of issue better than our own engineers in tandem with a properly functioning environment committee.
Saturday: 33rd Legislative District Town Hall, Highline College. The crowd was almost entirely supporters of our representatives so there was none of the ‘heat’ you might have expected on issues like ‘homelessness’ which has garnered so much local media attention. Still, worth watching for answers from all three.
One thing I try to get across to residents is that our State electeds often focus on issues of personal interest to them, as much as, if not more than, the interests of Des Moines. That’s not a slam. One works hard to get elected and one should further issues of personal importance. However, we (the City) have to fight for their advocacy just as hard as anyone else because, if an elected is passionate about (x)? That is what they focus on. And frankly? Thank God. As just one example, if our electeds only responded to what their city councils proposed, there would have been none of the airport legislation passed during my tenure. Fact.
The other thing? The 33rd Legislative District should be the poster-child for ‘diversity of opinion’. The district stretches from Kent to Normandy Park and the opinions are often night and day based on neighbourhood. If you disagree with their position on any issue, you may not like it, but rest assured there is just as large (or larger) constituency for that position elsewhere in the 33rd. Most legislative districts in WA are homogenous — not the 33rd.
Council Meeting Recap
Once again, we hit the three hour limit, and once again, due to poor time management. And once again, the presentations the Council saw were not included in the packet. These ‘details’ happen so often it’s no accident. Sorry. Not sorry. But if there is a ‘theme’ it was Councilmember Mahoney’s night. Regular Meeting – 13 Mar 2025 – Updated Agenda
Public Comment
Des Moines Yacht Club announced the upcoming Opening Day. More soon.
Des Moines Memorial Drive Preservation Association (DMMDPA.org) showed up in support of the Memorial Flag Triangle. Check their web site to learn more about their great work in support of World War I Veterans.
There were several Redondo divers who showed up to support the Sixgill Shark thing below.
City Manager
K4C
We voted to join the King County-Cities Climate Collaboration (K4C), a County group that helps identify projects to help with climate change (duh, right? 😀 ) Joining was something I first proposed back in 2020 so I had no comment. The annual cost was always 1negligible. The opposition was “we can attend meetings for free.” And I was like “Yes, but we can’t actually get in on any of the programs for free.” 😀 It was code for “we don’t care about that climate-changey jazz.” It’s a good thing, and yes I know I sound like a broken record, but being five years behind schedule gets old. (Conversely, that’s also why I gush so hard when our surface water team gets ahead of the curve on environmental issues. 🙂 )
Sixgill Capital of the world
Councilmember Mahoney has championed making Des Moines the Sixgill Shark Capital of the World. Apparently, these sharks are a highly prized sight for divers in Redondo.
There was the notion of some sort of commemorative sign – akin to ‘Waterland Way’. And some sort of event on July 6. And then something to do with helping some other (perhaps private group?) create some ‘swag’ (t-shirts, mugs, etc.) I found it all pretty vague. And puzzling… because those sharks are off-shore of Redondo – nowhere near Sixth Ave. But he insisted. ‘Sixth Avenue’ it must be – and the rest of the gang went along with it.
I’ve said it before, and it bears repeating: we don’t compromise. Rather than simply proposing the idea, then having the City bring back a specific proposal, he insisted that it had to move forward tonight. Forget that.
This all sounds harmless, but it was 40 minutes of the Council’s time. And it follows a long string of promotional ideas like Cape Cod In Des Moines, Men In Black, Burning Boats, Premiere Waterfront Destination, FIFA, etc. that also add up to fun for a small number of people but never seem to create that ‘destination’ magic. But perhaps one reason it does not happen is because we constantly indulge in this kind of ad hoc jazz rather than developing a for realz marketing plan.
Passed 6-1.
Consent
I pulled an item asking for an additional $130k contingency (ie. ‘just in case’ money) for the Redondo Restroom. Basically everything to do with the 2023 bond money is going over budget — except the one project I support borrowing money to fund (dock replacement).
I also want to briefly note an item that, unlike that bond stuff, and with my complete agreement, floated under the radar – as consent items should. However, I do have to acknowledge that it could come off as kinda sneaky – being added to the agenda on Tuesday. There is always a fine line between ‘transparency’ and not having people go absolutely mental whenever anyone mentions the word ‘homelessness’. But this is that line for me.…
The Council voted to fund a $75,000 cleanup of a homeless camp behind Parkside School. If you live in the area, you know it’s already been cleared. The money is for environmental remediation. $75,000 seems like a lot, but in fact, is nothing as these things go. The (cough) ‘low’ cost is the signal that it is not some crisis. It just costs a lot of money whenever you have to hire cleanup specialists. As to the former ‘residents’, they are human beings, and in my opinion nobody should consider living in a wetland to be their best option. I will be asking for more detail soon and I’ll report back — but only if there is actually something worth reporting beyond this. We provide people with services. We provide the environmental cleanup. Thanks to the City for doing all that. Moving on. 🙂
Items/Votes
Flag Triangle
Pro tip: Always. Bring. Piccies. 😀 I’m on my third City Manager now and for whatever reason this is still like pulling teeth. But despite the fact that this has been going on for years, I don’t think any of us (including the public) has a clear understanding of how this thing will look.
Like the Sixgill thing, this began as a personal project for Councilmember Mahoney, back when he was mayor. But in this case, it was originally funded with the same bond money as the docks and marina steps. Terrible. We have absolutely no business borrowing money (with interest) for a public park when there are grant funds to be had. (Ironically, Councilmember Achziger seemed to have objections to using park grant funding. 😀 )
The original design was crazy expensive and it should never have been trotted out as a ‘park’ or talked about as a place for people to picnic. Anyhoo, the City did not provide a presentation, so here’s a reminder from the January Municipal Facilities meeting, where the cost was $424k and got no bids.
It’s since been scaled back several times, but it’s still gonna be crazy expensive because every not-a-park project now costs a fortune. And the flag pole needs replacing. But here’s the winning bid of $453k. I guess. 😀
Despite the improvements, I remain skeptical because there are also three proposed parking spaces (not in the piccies, grrrr….) I did not express it well at the meeting, but in my opinion, there should never be parking anywhere near that triangle. I don’t want to encourage parking or congregating anywhere near such a traffic-intensive spot. It should be a place for special events and that’s about it.
But this constant pressure to “get ‘er done” by Memorial Day only adds to the heartburn. After all, the traditional celebration of World War I is not until November. Perhaps because Mr. Mahoney’s seat is up for election this year. Who can say? 😀
I also wanna throw in another grouse about ‘committees’ and ‘compromise’. With a properly functioning committee, and two tablespoons of compromise, this woulda been sewed up a long time ago and before it got to the dais. The absence of piccies, the lack of clarity, the failure to compromise, has turned what shoulda been a simple, elegant monument to veterans into an unnecessary, years long kerfuffle – including this meeting. No one will remember the cost overruns or the animus; they’ll just enjoy the monument. And that’s why we’ll keep doing projects in this verkachte manner over and over. All’s well that ends well!
The Des Moines Memorial Drive Preservation Association (DMMDPA) have been trying to get the City to do this for over twenty years! They showed up to show appreciation for finally getting their plaque placed — the one artifact which directly celebrates the history of the road and its significance for our veterans. But instead of doing the polite thing and handling the item up front, they were forced to sit through two hours of other stuff before we got round to this pointless 4-3 vote. I cannot speak for my colleagues, but I was embarrassed and I am sorry whenever that happens to honoured guests.
Airport Committee Structure
Last October, Councilmember Mahoney asked the Council to support resuscitating our airport committee. Despite rumours to the contrary I was not a fan because airport issues – including the Sustainable Airport Master Plan are not something any citizen group can tackle effectively. Not to mention that the Federal portion of the permit is likely to be approved even before the committee meets. Oops.
This was our fourth meeting on the topic and my colleagues have narrowed it down to five residents, or business owners, who may or may not know anything about the airport, or may or may not have interest in the topic, so long as they are not a member of a group, but definitely not a member of our City Council. Oh, and it may be temporary. Or permanent. Although it will definitely include the one remaining StART member. Because everyone else quits.
You can’t make this stuff up.
This is is yet another attempt to appear like we’re doing something useful to respond to the negative impacts of the airport – while actively making things worse for our residents. It is contemptible greenwashing. My colleagues and our staff know about as much about airports as I do about sixgill sharks.
One thing I can tell you: like warehouse taxes, dry stack, and it’s money we left on the table years ago in favour of rubbish ideas that have left us poorer in health and economics than 20 years ago.
Having run out the clock, rather than extend the meeting properly, we voted in 12 minutes to spend $1.2M extra to get the 24th Avenue project moving by October. 40 minutes to market a fish. 12 minutes for a $1.2M cost overrun. That money will come from next year’s road budget. Hopefully, we will recoup that money from Puget Sound Energy, who we appear to blame for everything.
This lack of regard makes me even more nervous about dumping standing committees. I encourage you to watch the Transportation Committee meeting above for a (slightly) deeper dive.
But the overriding sentiment seemed to be, “Hey we have to spend it, so why talk? We can ‘finger point’ later.” Rubbish. As with the airport, or flag triangles, if you never look back you will keep making the same mistakes. Over. And over.
And ‘blame it on PSE’ is simply incorrect. The project began in 2020 – when I was on the Transportation Committee. There have been many issues along the way. Here’s just one. Over my strong objection, Councilmember Mahoney rallied support to override our 3own ordinance, which requires us to underground utilities like that. It was a cost saving measure – instead choosing to give over that money to – wait for it – underground the utilities behind the Theatre. (now known as Backstage Alley). Long time readers will remember that the completely bogus rationale was that by so doing it would turn the alley into an entertainment spot, something like Post Alley in Seattle. Does this look it’s going to become Post Alley any time soon? Whenever anyone tries to tell you how un-developer-friendly we are here? Point them to Backstage Alley. We should have simply done what our own ordinance specifies – underground those utilities and provide the benefit our children.
I only voted ‘yes’ on this as a measure of faith in our new Director of Public Works. If this were twelve months ago, I woulda voted Hell No.
But this, “It happened before my time” business has already started to get old.
Passed 7-0.
1You know it’s a significant weather event because it has its own Wikipedia page.
2Even a micro-park like Cecil Powell will run close to $1M these days. And that’s without ‘tariffs’ on steel and lumber.
3By ordinance, uilities are supposed to be undergrounded. It basically takes two votes of the City Council to override that. But as with so many ordinances meant to provide some form of consistent ‘discipline’, if you look at our track record, we always seem to find ways around it. In this case? It was exactly what it looks like: valuing a commercial alley more than school children.
4Just wanted to make sure you were still awake. 🙂
Future Agendas is the closest thing the City currently has to a calendar of upcoming City Council topics. It’s not dynamic, ie. you have to click it every time you want to see a new version. And it’s not always accurate. But until we develop a genuine calendar, this can be very useful if there is a particular issue you don’t want to miss.
Important change: City Manager Caffrey has adopted a new format. Good news? Much more colourful! Bad news? Short-term.
This is an unexpired position expiring in 2029. Individual must live within the District boundaries. Two monthly meeting a month are required. Meetings are held at the District Office at 922 So 219th St. in Des Moines at 4pm on the first and third Tuesdays of the month. Position is currently paying a per diem rate of $161.00
If you have questions regarding this position please call 206.878.7210. Please send letters of interest to patti.clayton@kcwd54.org before 3/14/2025.
Highline Schools District 5 Open Seat
HSD has re-opened applications for the School Board Director #5 position left open by the recent resignation of Azeb Hagos. This is a big deal for us as District #5 covers most of Des Moines. Please apply here by March 13, 2025!
The Governor’s proposed budget cuts the $1 million in funding that was secured last for fixing failed port packages, which were meant to insulate homes from airport noise but have deteriorated over time. Please mail key these legislators and let them know how important this funding is for our communities.
In her most recent report Ms. Caffrey included a bit of history regarding the proper pronunciation of ‘Des Moines’. I used to think it was a bit of a joke that the City went through all the trouble to pass an ordinance making the ‘French’ pronunciation official. It is not a joke. I cannot stress how seriously some of my predecessors felt/feel about this. Coming from Ireland, where basically every place name has gotten butchered over time, here is the final word on how to properly pronounce Des Moines.
Mea Culpa
In my last Weekly Update, I stated incorrectly, that there was no recipe in Ms. Caffrey’s February 28 City Manager’s Report! For my sins, here is that recipe, 1in full, for what she claims are ‘the BEST chocolate chip cookies’. Bold statement. 😀
3Wea Culpa
I also got several messages last week following the (cough) ‘fit up’ cruise of the King County Water Taxi MV Sally Fox, covered in a video by the Waterland Blog. (Having used the Water Taxi system many times, I did not attend.) A couple of problems.
Our consultant was coaxed into implying that a passenger ferry might be docking in Des Moines in time for FIFA (June 2026). I do not think that was a great thing to say on camera, to a media company that relies on clicks, and especially given the obvious passions about the issue.
Members of the Council stated that the City had spent $1,000,000 of ARPA money on our previous pilot program. Not to be that guy, but I’m pretty sure we’ve spent $45,000 of federal dollars on anything ferry-adjacent.
But that does not mean we have not paid. According to the City our hard costs for the pilot program were $445,000. That’s too low, but whatever. One way or another it was all your money.
And no one talks about the original (cough) Ferry Demand Study or the consultant fees we’ve paid since 2020. 5If you total all our ‘ferry’ costs and bake for 10-14 minutes at 375 degrees until golden brown, I’m pretty sure it’s several hundred thousand more. 🙂
But why quibble over a few hundred grand? 😀 For me, the real question is this: regardless of where that money came from, did we need to spend anything? And the answer is: No. If you learn nothing else following this issue? It is that passenger ferries are something that the entire region has been pulling for – and for a very long time. When the conditions are right, it will come to us without these tactics, for the simple reason that we are a logical spot. In addition to working for us, Mr. Philips does regular (paid) regional conferences to promote ferries and we should encourage him to keep doing them.
But once and for all, we should admit that we were wrong and stop acting like we ever had to spend any of your money on this.
This Week
Tuesday: Port of Seattle Commission (Agenda) This is an important meeting for Port watchers. Anyone watching the City or contemplating a run for office should also take note in light of our strategic plan (see below.) All that aside, it also includes a summary of their FAA-funded sound insulation plan for the year. Which is, once again, nada for us.
Recently, the City Manager quipped “We really take salmon seriously here.” 😀 Actually, we like the idea of salmon – which have been in a catastrophic decline for decades. It’s the reason we’re redeveloping the marina. The entire north half of the marina was all about fishing. If the salmon hadn’t gone away? We’d still have a sling launch and there’d have been no talk of ‘hotels’.
We spend an inordinate amount of money on various techniques that either do or do not help bring back salmon, depending on who you ask. But these requirements do provide substantial revenue opportunities, and responsibilities.
My interest is water. If you walk around Des Moines, there is water, water everywhere. Creeks, creeklets, creekletitos… 😀 You can’t go a block through most neighbourhoods without finding some body of water or active wetland we’ve built on or next to or underneath. Most of it comes from the airport plateau. All of it ends up in Puget Sound. Regardless, although you take it for granted, it costs a stonkin’ fortune to maintain – and that is why, if you look the balances of our Surface Water Enterprise Fund (which I oversee for six more days muwahahahaahaa!) look so massive.
So, our fishy friends really do drive an awful lot of decision making here. They connect with money, tribes, culture, land.
I had a talk with a Seattle Times reporter about this years ago. I was bemoaning the fact that you can get millions of dollars for fish culverts but it’s like pulling teeth to get even $10 to do anything about air pollution from airports. Her reply, “You need someone to do a study to prove that aircraft pollution is harmful to salmon.” 😀
A budget amendment which will add over a million dollars to the cost of the 24th Ave. project. ow, ow, ow, ow, Ow, OW!
We we also will discuss the structure of our upcoming airport committee.
There will be a notable update to the packet on two items on Tuesday. I will re-post this article with that update when it is released.
Last Week
Monday
SAO Audit Exit Conference. The State reported the results of its 2023 audit of our books. Obsessive watchers will note we’ve had a couple of ‘dings’ that I don’t get exercised about. What does annoy me, and I say the same when we do it, is when we gather for an ‘exit conference’ and some of the referenced materials are not ready to go. The more obvious question is “Why are they still reviewing 2023?” To answer these burning questions, the SAO people will make a short presentation to the City Council. On the other hand, we just won a GFOA award for excellence in budgeting. Frankly, I don’t pay too much attention to that either. 😀 I know people want some sort of shorthand (good or bad) as to how well we’re managed. But it doesn’t work that way. If there was a shortcut, you wouldn’t need electeds. 🙂
Thursday
Washington Climate Action Plan Public Feedback Session
This is one of those long game things. Every year the Dept. of Ecology does a survey to help implement climate change into the planning documents it imposes on cities based (HB1181). Here is the 2024 results. It took a looooong time to get the areas under the flight path recognised for what they are: among the most polluted and heavily impacted in the entire state. The next step is to convert that recognition into legislation that helps mitigate and compensate us for those harms. Bills like HB1303 (see below) move that even further.
Although he’s still in his first year as Chief, Ted Boe’s data presentations to the Burien City Council were always excellent – and this presentation to our PSEM brought the same value.
As to the data. It’s a complex picture. The cover story, that ‘overall crime is falling’ is too simple. Certain types of crime are increasing and these worry me because they seem to be of the kind you can’t ‘automate’ with cameras and tech. Those will require more officers to prevent and enforce. And as these much better presentations become more ‘the norm’, and if we can just add in that ‘human factor’, ie. the toll the workload takes on the force, I think the public will understand and be more willing to help us get there than during last year’s Prop #1 not-so-great-sales-pitch.
We’ve never had a strategic plan before. We do ‘goal setting’ every year but frankly it’s never been about much for the simple reason that we do not agree on a lot of things. This will take time to develop. And I sure hope we can put aside our differences enough to make it something we all agree on – otherwise it will be like so many previous wastes of consultant money.
(Sorry, the really tragic thing is that, down deep, we actually agree on a lot of things. We just don’t compromise well. There’s no reason we can’t make this a historic and productive project. 🙂 )
Anyhoo, the Council gave a bunch o’ feedback to the City Manager and I encourage everyone to watch this portion of the meeting carefully. My comments:
Start from the money we need and work backwards. I maintain that we currently need at least $5,000,000 every year more than we currently take in, to achieve the goals we talked about when I took my seat in 2020. If you think that’s wrong? Give me a number.
Don’t use a consultant we’ve worked with. We’ve tended to choose people who’ve had previous (and tenuous) connections with the City. Eg. the communications study we did in 2023 was $75,000 and was done by an engineering company.
If you can, choose a consultant who has worked with cities like ours. The examples chosen bear little resemblance to Des Moines. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Or maybe we can’t be that choosey. But if we have a chocie? We should choose a firm that knows about marinas and airports and our demographics.
Watch the Port of Seattle. They are so frickin’ complicated. So they take great pains to provide their electeds all sorts of ‘check-ins’. They don’t use an expensive ‘dashboard’. Instead, they follow the old sales maxim, “tell ’em what yer gonna tell ’em, tell ’em, then tell ’em what ya told ’em.” This Tuesday’s meeting is typical. It gives an outline of how all their committees did last year as a springboard into what they plan to do this year. The entire Commission is given a summary of how each committee did and what it plans to do. It’s relatively inexpensive, low-tech, and for such a complex beast it works surprisingly well. I think one reason our committees have languished is because we never created this kind of structure.
ChatGPT. Not. Kidding. $20 a month and some elbow grease can create our own model containing every City Council document going back to 1959. Use that as the starting place for everything. I know this may sound like ‘space magic’ to some, or ‘ya gotta walk before you can run’. However, this is tech that high schoolers are now fluent with. As I said last week, we have a ton of great planning info that would be impossible for someone other than moi to ingest without help. The Council has also had every discussion as to “Why the downtown is what it is?” you can ever hope to have. And I’m kinda sick of all the myths and rumours that get endlessly recycled. Get it? It’s that ‘fog’ – that wilful avoidance of all the things we’ve already tried – that allows each new City Council (and administration) to come in and avoid dealing reality.
Discussion on City Council Committees and Appointive Committees.
This is really two discussions that should have been separate. The first went very poorly. The second a lot better.
The end of Standing Council Committees in favour of a more ‘Burien’ style approach. Passed (2-5). We ended a system of committees that has been in place since 1959 on a single vote. I voted ‘no’ along with Councilmember Mahoney, who opined as to whether or not hell may be freezing over. 😀
Frankly, we’ve both spent a certain amount of time developing expertise on various issues. And I stand by my contention that Cms – especially new Cms, need committees, if for no other reason, than to learn at least some specific area.
 At a minimum, we should have had the City Manager consider our feedback and bring the item back for a second reading. For this reason alone, it was a mistake to end our two-readings policy in 2023.
Revisions to all the appointive (resident) committees. I moved that this be brought back for a second reading. And in this case, the Council agreed. That alone tells you something as to what the Council values.
At the end of the day, I understand why the City grouped these together – and what they get out of it: more time for their daily tasks. Good. But there was no mention of how that balances with the benefits. The packet made it out like committees are mostly a pain that takes staff away from ‘the real work’. Not. Cool. And we will regret their passing.
Executive Session: Performance of a Public Employee RCW 42.30.110(1)(G) –30 Minutes
This was the second of a two-parter review of Ms. Caffrey’s first three months. Last week was 45 minutes of – I have no idea. But this one included Ms. Caffrey. I can’t divulge the contents without having to join the Foreign Legion, but after the councilmember comments, I asked Ms. Caffrey to take the floor. She was candid with us, and I hope this will become a regular part of her review process.
Don’t think I’m going soft here. If anything, this has been the 2honeymoon period. 😀 But she knows that. 🙂
If you sit in just the right spot in the audience, you’ll see the ‘Watch Your Step’ sign appears over the head of the City Manager. Me being me, I always found that slightly amusing.
I’m going to riff on something the current and recent interim city managers have both said to all of us. A colleague of mine in another City said something about her Council – which is just as divided as ours. “We disagree well.” That was smart. As I said above, and will continue to say, all seven of us actually agree on a lot of things. The problem is, we don’t compromise. The best we can do is vote cordially. But that is not compromise. People sometimes gag at the thought of being ‘transactional’. But in local government horse-trading is really just being productive. If all seven of us would simply give in 15% here and there, I can’t think of an issue we could not reach true agreement on. See that’s the thing – you can ‘win’ all these divided votes. But all that friction prevents genuine progress. If we had a ferry program, tax program, marina program, airport program, whatever program that all of us (grudgingly) were on board with? We’d get a lot more done. Look at all this bond stuff? By being so divisive, and having every vote be like pulling teeth for years it’s (literally) adding millions of extra dollars to those projects. When you can disagree well, reduce that friction, ie. compromise, you may have to swallow hard sometimes, but the net benefit to the City is massive.
Some bills passing through Olympia
As I wrote last week, this is lawmakin’ season in Olympia and there were/are a ton of bills that will affect us. Here are the ones I’m watching…
HB1334Almost every city, including Des Moines, officially supports giving City Councils the ability to raise property taxes up to 3% without a public vote.
HB1380 is a ‘homelessness’ bill sponsored by our own Mia Gregerson. Basically, every City hates it. I share some of the same concerns. But the topic is so radioactive I dunno what I could say to convince you that, whether it passes or not, the sky will not fall. Read the amended bill summary. And show up at Highline College this Wednesday @ 11:00am to ask questions.
SB5757 would take 50% of the speed camera revenue back to the State. Ouch. If this does not thrill you, click that link and comment. 🙂 Ironically, it was proposed by a Spokane representative whose city benefits from them. His objection – and he has support, is this: It’s a fugazi. All these automated speed enforcement cameras are supposed to be about ‘safety’ but they’re really about cash. He’s not wrong, of course. Every agency testifying against spoke about the hole it would cut in local budgets. No one spoke about how it would devastate public safety. We’ve had the Redondo cams for a year and frankly, if we knew this might be a possibility, I’m not sure we would have bent over backwards to installe them. It is about the money.
SB7575 (no you don’t have dyslexia) is one of two bills that would enable the City to increase our local sales tax .1 cent without a vote specifically for the purpose of increasing public safety. It also allows the County to add a similar tax. Normally, I would not be thrilled for the same reasons I always give: I try to avoid tax increases without giving voters a choice. But this one has a twist. If the law passes and we change our ordinance before the County does? They have to credit us back the amount with no out of pocket to you, the voter. 🙂
HB1923 the Mosquito Fleet bill, ie. Passenger Ferries. The bill just passed the last hurdle (an amendment to avoid routes used by orcas) before getting a floor vote. So, it looks like smooth sailing. 😀 Does not mean we get a ferry right away. But it means the places that have the proper infrastructure and truly need passenger ferries will be able to get them. The thing I keep trying to say is this: Everyone wants a ferry.
Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies
The BEST chocolate chip cookies
Okay, okay—I know—that is a big statement to make…but these
really are the best. They have a crunchy outside and chewy inside…
and are perfectly round. I also got a question about how you make
cookies that aren’t flat—I swear by fresh baking soda and fresh
baking powder, and 4good butter at the right temp. The butter
should be at room temp, but not insanely soft…or then the cookie
won’t rise
Ingredients
1¾ cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
14 tablespoons unsalted butter (1¾ sticks)
½ cup granulated sugar
¾ cups packed dark brown sugar (adds more flavor)
Use fresh, moist brown sugar instead of hardened brown sugar, which will make the cookies dry
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1 bag (10-ounces) of chocolate chips or chunks (preferably 60% cacao)
Instructions
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper.
Whisk 1¾ cups flour and ½ teaspoon baking soda together in a medium bowl and set aside.
Whisk the ½ cup sugar, the ¾ cup brown sugar and the teaspoon salt together in small bowl and set aside.
Divide up the butter, put 10 tablespoons into a 10-inch skillet.
Note: Avoid using a non-stick skillet to brown the butter; the dark color of the nonstick coating makes it difficult to gauge when the butter is browned.
Put the remaining 4 tablespoons butter into a large heatproof bowl.
Heat the 10 tablespoons butter over medium-high heat until melted, about 2 minutes. Continue cooking, swirling pan constantly until butter is dark golden brown and has a nutty aroma, 1 to 3 minutes.
Remove skillet from heat and, using heatproof spatula, transfer browned butter to the heatproof bowl that holds the 4 tablespoons of butter. Stir the butter together until completely melted.
Add the sugar and salt mixture plus the 2 teaspoons vanilla to the bowl with butter and whisk until fully incorporated.
Add in the egg and the yolk and whisk until mixture is smooth with no sugar lumps remaining, about 30 seconds. Let mixture stand 3 minutes, then whisk for 30 seconds. Repeat process of resting and whisking 2-3 more times until mixture is thick, smooth and shiny.
NOTE: This whisking and waiting time is an important step and really makes a difference with the texture of the cookies.
Using rubber spatula or whisk, stir in the flour mixture until just combined.
Stir in the chocolate chips, giving the dough a final stir to ensure no flour pockets remain.
At this point, put the batter into the refrigerator for about 5 minutes, as it can sometimes be too soft to handle.
Divide dough into 8 portions per cookie sheet. If you want to add a bit of Maldon or flaky sea salt crystals to the tops of the cookies, you can do so at this point. Just sprinkle a bit on the top of each dough ball.
Bake cookies 1 tray at a time (or both trays if you have a double oven) until cookies are golden brown and still puffy, and edges have begun to set but centers are still soft, 10 to 14 minutes. Rotate the baking sheets halfway through baking (after 5 minutes).
1She’s far too young to remember, but back in the day, even a recipe for Beef Wellington would be like six sentences in cookbooks. 😀 It stuns me that anyone ever got any decent results with an any of those Joy Of Cooking books.
2Which is like taking yer honeymoon at Niagara Falls. Back when people used to go over in a barrel.
3Yes, it’s Nostra Culpa. I went for the cheap Catholic School gag. 😀 But the Brothers would have me hide for not putting in this footnote.
4Now see if she were really ‘Irish’ she’d insist that the real secret is: Kerrygold.
5It also does not include the $160k grant we’ve got for more ferry economic impact studies and another $1,000,000 for some sort of electric battery dock. You can call those ‘free money’, but… said it before, say it again… every grant you get for fluff, is money that could have gone for something worthwhile. We get (x) amount of grant money every year. But let’s say that the battery dock does get used five years from now? Is that really what we most needed in 2024?
Future Agendas is the closest thing the City currently has to a calendar of upcoming City Council topics. It’s not dynamic, ie. you have to click it every time you want to see a new version. And it’s not always accurate. But until we develop a genuine calendar, this can be very useful if there is a particular issue you don’t want to miss.
Important change: City Manager Caffrey has adopted a new format. Good news? Much more colourful! Bad news? Super short-term. However, thanks to moi, you can track each committee’s planning calendar here. 🙂
Call To Action: Port Packages!
The Governor’s proposed budget cuts the $1 million in funding that was secured last for fixing failed port packages, which were meant to insulate homes from airport noise but have deteriorated over time. Please mail key these legislators and let them know how important this funding is for our communities.
Good article in Seattle Times on Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs). We’re redoing our zoning and building codes this year so if you’re interested, please let me know how we can help you make yours come true.
City Currents
There’s a new Spring 2025 City Currents Magazine. I collect the PDFs, which are easier for me to read, but also fun to look back at to see where the City has been.
Keep your little ones active with exercise and play! We will have fun tumbling mats, ride-on-toys and age appropriate sports equipment available in the gym. Join in the fun and watch them make new friends along the way. Check out dates and times here.
This Week
Monday
SAO Audit Exit Conference. The State reports the results of its 2023 audit of our books.
I generally don’t follow month to month stuff like this, but if you haven’t seen it before, this is a good thing to browse to get a sense of the money we bring in from various businesses.
One problem I have is that the City Manager previously proposed doing a revenue potential analysis. It seems to me that we should get that done first — learn what is possible, first. Second, we actually have a number of ‘plans’, including a parks and rec plan and a marina master plan and soon a new comp plan and a ‘ferry economic benefits study’. So, why not get those together and leverage them into that strategic plan?
Also, there’s this: none of these cities are much like Des Moines. Nor will we ever be. Why use them as our model?Finally, in 2023 we spent $75,000 on a Ccommunications Study which yielded nothing, but ‘looked like we were doing something’. A refreshing new strategy would be to ask for ‘return on investment’ statement before embarking on this. Frankly, I’m weary of doing things just to check off a box.
Discussion on City Council Committees and Appointive Committees.
This is really two discussions that should be separate.
The end of Standing Council Committees in favour of a more ‘Burien’ style approach. Spoiler alert: I had no idea this was being proposed.
Revisions to all the appointive (resident) committees
The packet lays out some valid problems with Current Council Committees: There is a ton of redundancy for both the Council and staff.
Recommended Changes to Council Committees:
Modify the monthly Study Session (first Thursday) to begin at 5:00 PM. The first hour would act as a “Council of the Whole” where all Councilmembers receive staff reports on items typically handled by committees.
Standing Council Committees would only meet when an issue requires more detailed discussion.
However, this can also be perceived as a power grab based on the never-ending theme “staff are over-worked!” That has gotten ooooooooooold. Not because it isn’t necessarily true, but rather because there has never been a way to quantify it. I’ve been hearing this since I started watching and no one ever lays out proof to demonstrate how changing would benefit the City. Sorry. Not sorry. But just giving people back a few hours is not the same thing.
Another downside is this: New Cms (and even not-so-new ones) are sometimes not exactly the most well-prepared people. And the City is so complicated, it’s not realistic to expect every elected to bone up on every area. Sorry. Not sorry. Committees give Cms a chance to ‘earn while you learn’ – to gain experience and specific expertise on various issues. As they say ‘practice makes perfect’. One ‘committee of the whole’ could end up with more ‘democracy’ from seven equally clueless people.
Appointive Committees
The City currently has seven citizen advisory committees, with plans to add two more (Airport Committee and Planning Commission). Again, there are valid problems: Infrequent meetings. Lack of agenda items. Unclear roles. Underutilization. Heavy staff workload. All true.
Recommended Changes:
No changes to: Citizens Advisory Council, Civil Service Commission, Lodging Tax Advisory Committee, Police Advisory Committee
Merge the Arts Commission, Human Services Advisory Board, and Senior Services Advisory Board into a new Community Enrichment Board. Existing members with unexpired terms would be offered positions on the new board.
I have real problems with this. Many are not representative of the community and many are black boxes. You have no idea who are on most of these and neither do I. Also, their work product is non-existent and… some members like it that way. They like having ‘private’ meetings to speak ‘candidly’. Every committee worth keeping should be recorded and maintain minutes.
Executive Session: Performance of a Public Employee RCW 42.30.110(1)(G) –30 Minutes
This is the second of a two-parter review of Ms. Caffrey’s first three months. Last week was 45 minutes of – I have no idea. But this one will be with Ms. Caffrey.
Last Week
Wednesday: StART (Agenda). The highlight was a report on the Port’s SIRRPP survey of Port Packages. As expected, it was a sham, claiming that none of the homes they tested seem to merit an update. Of course, they hand-picked 30 out of 9,400 for testing. Follow Sea-Tac Noise.Info (STNI) for coverage – and contact STNI, if you have bad sound insulation.
Thursday: Municipal Facilities Committee (cancelled)
Charm Factor. This is a beautify the downtown idea – it specifically mentions using decorative screens to cover ‘the Pit’ and the Des Moines Yacht Club boat storage on MVD and getting it done in time for FIFA 2026. Councilmember Nutting raised some concerns. In fact, he really went to town, so I urge you to watch just for that. 😀 We disagree on those reasons, but I too am concerned. His concerns seemed to be more about ‘money’. Fair point. Mine are more about strategy. We have this nasty tendency to promote trial ideas, which either waste a lot of money or turn into permanent features – whether they make sense or not. We use the plucky small town volunteerism as a substitute for doing something long term. Frankly, it’s the reason a trial project like the Quarterdeck can end up becoming the centrepiece of the entire waterfront. I am suspicious of anything ‘Let’s try something!’ because once it gets in? You ain’t never gettin’ rid of it.
Woodmont Development. The City has received interest from a developer on the area that (in ancient times) was called ‘Rosie’s Diner’, but was last referred to as ‘Oh no, the drug rehab clinic!’. A primary reason I want the planning commission re-instated was to prevent that sort of blindsiding from recurring. In this case, I think the City will be able to daylight the developer’s proposal in a way the public will find acceptable, but it still puts the onus on one public hearing to obtain public engagement.
Sound Code?: This topic was moved onto the next meeting. Call me what you will, but this indicated where the committee’s priorities are.
City Council Meeting Recap
Shortest. Meeting. Ever. 🙂 No public comment. No items of business beyond a short consent agenda. I picked the right meeting to telephone in sick. 🙂
North Conference Room, next to City Manager’s office. Executive Sessions are held here. Zoom works great. 🙂
Parenthetically, my first phone-in meeting was not a great experience, tech-wise. Ironically, I was able to Zoom in for the private Executive Session and that went great. Lesson learned? Let’s move City Council into the North Conference Room where all the plumbing works! 😀
Apparently, we got no bites from the three expected bidders. But there is still time. Our DPW says he’s still aiming for a Memorial Day (May 26) completion and that the all-in cost will be $376k – a lot less than previously mentioned. I will not hold it against anyone if we don’t make that date and I’m still going with the previous estimate of $472k because:
I love that can-do spirit (seriously)
It’s local government. 🙂
Consent Agenda
There was an item to approve a grant to put a solar roof on the Senio… er… ‘Activity Center’. Woo hoo! If I had been IRL I would’ve put forward an item to see if we can’t redo the awning while we’re at it. The place was never ‘just’ the Senior Center. It’s the Des Moines Activity Center, not in name, but in terms of mission. It’s time to have that consistent brand throughout the City.
Executive Session
ES is supposed to be subject to the cone of silence. But again, again, the law requires us to mention the legal purpose. And whenever we do a ‘review of a public employee’ that means ‘City Manager’.
The following Executive Session was twice as long and it was the first of two evaluations of our new City Manager.
I said last week that I thought the review might be premature. Part of the reason is that the council does not have a unified view of what ‘success’ even means. I feel like we’re focusing too much on optics and not substance. For example, we’re doing two executive sessions just for her first three months. Woo hoo! But the second review, occurs the same night that Ms. Caffrey unveils two huge items (see above). Sure glad I have time to really take it all in!
The problem is this: the City Manager has a multi-layered fiduciary responsibility. She works for ‘the Council’ but she also works for ‘the City’. Those are the legal responsibilities and they are all about the present. But great leaders also represent ‘the future’, ie. not the people who live here now, but the people who will be here 10-15-20 years from now. That’s tricky. Shareholders… er… ‘voters’ only care about now. The law only cares about now. Councilmembers tend to only care about now. But the future is where the real opportunity happens.
Here’s the problem: the future doesn’t get a vote. I watched one previous city manager go on for years catering to the needs/wants/desires of councils that could not make up their minds. And another take exactly the opposite tack in order to manifest a grand vision we could not afford and that will be a boat anchor on the City for a decade.
At some point, any CEO has to establish their own destiny. Hopefully it is one that focuses on the people and businesses we want to be here for the future; because the people and businesses who do live here are not only not ‘enough’, time and again have chosen not to make room for that future.
Some bills passing through Olympia
As I wrote last week, this is lawmakin’ season in Olympia and there were/are a ton of bills that will affect us. Most of the goofy ones (redesigning the State flag) die the quick deaths they deserve, but many do not. And in the ones that affect us there is a recurring theme, which I keep bringing up: overspending. When the State was ‘flush’ (ie. last year?) it overspends. Then this year it’s cut, Cut, CUT! Sound familiar? 😀 What I object to is that it is cities which always seem to take it in the neck. And, ironically, it’s often the most ‘progressive’ lawmakers that are the worst in that regard. We’re given all kinds of mandates (most of which are great ideas, btw) but no money to pay for them. Or we’re offered the fabulous opportunity of taxing our residents without a vote in various ways. What we’re almost never offered is, you know, State money.
HB1334Almost every city, including Des Moines, officially supports giving City Councils the ability to raise property taxes up to 3% without a public vote. But don’t hate the playa, hate the game. Over time the State and County have reduced the amount of money they share with cities like Des Moines and keep more of it for their own needs and especially education. All worthy endeavours. However, as with housing, one could also see a system which kicks back more of existing State and County money to cities like Des Moines. But since that will never happen, cities like Des Moines are left to try anything they can to raise taxes — including this. Desperate times, and so on… Speaking as one person, I do not support these bills. I think most voters find anything like this (including the 2023 bonds) a bit sneaky. People like to have a vote. They like to be sold.
SB5757 would take 50% of the speed camera revenue back to the State. Ouch. If this does not thrill you, click that link and comment. 🙂 Ironically, it was proposed by a Spokane representative whose city benefits from them. His objection – and he has support, is this: It’s a fugazi. All these automated speed enforcement cameras are supposed to be about ‘safety’ but they’re really about cash. He’s not wrong, of course. Every agency testifying against spoke about the hole it would cut in local budgets. No one spoke about how it would devastate public safety. We’ve had the Redondo cams for a year and frankly, if we knew this might be a possibility, I’m not sure we would have bent over backwards to installe them. It is about the money.
SB7575 is one of two bills that would enable the City to increase our local sales tax .1 cent without a vote specifically for the purpose of increasing public safety. It also allows the County to add a similar tax. Normally, I would not be thrilled for the same reasons I always give: I try to avoid tax increases without giving voters a choice. But this one has a twist. If the law passes and we change our ordinance before the County does? They have to credit us back the amount with no out of pocket to you, the voter. 🙂
HB1923 the Mosquito Fleet bill, ie. Passenger Ferries. In a win-win, the bill passed out of committee. But it was amended to remove the portion I objected to – ie. the possibility of dinky cities (like Des Moines) of creating their own ferry district. One of the speakers said, quite sensibly, he was getting a bit tired of offering cities more ways to tax themselves. Agreed! The thing I keep trying to say is this: Everyone wants a ferry. We never had to ‘sell’ anything. Let the people who actually need it, and can afford it, pay for it. When we’re ready, our great location will bring the ferry world to us.
You may have seen that the County did a ‘test run’ of the MV Sally Fox Water Taxi on Saturday. This was more pointless salesmanship. There’s nothing to ‘test’ because, as with the ‘pilot’ program we squandered so much money on three years ago, they are not the boats that would come here. If the City Manager wants an ‘Easy A’ on her first review? Commit now to never renewing Peter Philips’ contract again — something that was supposed to happen a year ago. How can a City with so many budget issues continue to waste so much money?
I stole this pen from the Governor’s desk when no one was looking.
The next ‘key date’ on all this is around March 12th when the Governor weighs in with his response to all these items. WA is somewhat unique in that we give the Guvernator a line-item veto. That power kinda acts as a check on legislation. Who wants to put in all the work to pass a bill the Governor can de-fang with a stroke of a pen?
These four seats up for election on our Council. And at least two incumbents have already decided not to run again.
There’s been this container sitting at the back of the 216th/Barnes Creek Trail parking lot for over a year. And then suddenly, other trucks and equipment began showing up. Given the concerns over Des Moines Creek West and the recent sale of the adjoining WSDOT surplus property, this causes concerns. Allay your concerns. 😀
Airport Advisory Committee. We keep putting this off and the clock is ticking on important aspects of airport expansion. For example, there is a pivotal StART meeting going on this Wednesday and we have only one community member there.
SR3 Open House. This generally happens only once a year so you should do it. But maybe get there early.
Not Des Moines, but I attended one of the best ‘student’ concerts I can recall at the Key To Change Studios main campus in Renton. Key To Change offers string education for kids and recently opened a branch in Des Moines across from Mt. Rainier High School. The recital featured one of their success stories – a former student now working towards her PhD at the prestigious Peabody Conservatory. I’m not saying your kid will learn how to get to 1Carnegie Hall, but parents always appreciate knowing that the programs they enroll in have a track record of success. I look forward to Key To Change concerts here in the near future. 🙂
1Look familiar? 😀
Finance Committee (Cancelled)
