This Week
Tuesday: Testimony on HB1791 (Second Airport) This is a follow-on to what I wrote last week. Basically, my group SeaTacNoise.Info has always advocated for ongoing impact fees, rather than ‘mitigation’ on any specific construction project. What’s the difference? Rather than having a long and expensive argument every time the Port builds anything, our City should work towards obtaining a fee for the ongoing variety of impacts that are intrinsic to living next door to an airport. This concept is used in many contexts–sports stadiums for example. The stadium owners pay a sliding scale fee to cover the added costs to municipal services. As attendance and revenues increase, the fees paid to the city increase accordingly. This revenue gives the city tools to solve many problems on its own.
Wednesday: Highline Forum (Agenda) Perhaps a bit of background is warranted here as well. As you are probably aware, there was a long series of lawsuits from around 1991 to 2004 to fight the Third Runway being built. It was clear that the cause was lost long before 2004, so city leaders began negotiating with the Port to create an ongoing group to (hopefully) work out differences in a less confrontational manner. At the same time, Des Moines was very keen to develop what is now the Des Moines Creek Business Park. The result of all those talks was the Highline Forum, a group of six cities and Highline Schools which meets four times a year. It has kinda devolved into more of a regional kaffee klatch than any attempt to negotiate airport issues, but that came down to a huge change in politics here. Most cities adopting an “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” approach–hoping that the Port’s ‘economic engine’ would benefit all cities. That dream did not happen, but it’s still a good thing to be communicating rather than not.
Thursday: 3:30PM Ad Hoc Rules of Procedure Committee Meeting at Police Station. More below.
Last Week
Tuesday: 12:00PM Port of Seattle Commission Meeting Pier 69 (Agenda) Two items of note:
- There was a finance review, with the kind of depth I dream about here. They need to have a lot of very good financial reports because their empire is so freakin’ complex. The Port isn’t one thing, it’s four things and we could learn a lot from how they present information and how the PortComms handle these discussions.
- The second item was their Annual Tourism Program. One quarter of the empire, includes both their real estate division and tourism–and that should tell you something. The Port owns a bunch of properties (including the Des Moines Creek Business Park and several marinas) and they all make money. When they talk tourism they have a strategy you can actually follow.
Wednesday: Reach Out Des Moines. The group is going through a transition away from having an external organiser (CHI Franciscan). So perhaps that merits a recap. RODM was created around 2015 as a group of educators, kids program coordinators, the City of Des Moines Police, King County Library, to find ways to reduce teen violence and improve school attendance in the Pacific Ridge neighbourhood. It turns out that by doing simple non-police interventions like after school activities, you can really make a difference. And the success has been dramatic–eg. teen violence was reduced over 70%! So the question now is, “What’s next?” Stay tuned. 🙂
Thursday/Friday: I had meetings with several legislators in Olympia, mainly concerning the airport, which I ranted on about last week (and above. 🙂 )