Over the past few years I’ve heard from colleagues and candidates and residents words to the effect, “You’ve made your point. Enough with the ‘educating’. It’s annoying. It makes the City look bad, etc.” The implication being that all the fact checking is some ‘gotcha’ tactic. It was never tactical for me, except to the extent that I think government works better if it’s based on what actually happened. One of the main reasons I ran for office is because I attended meetings fifteen years ago where I know what was said. And then I’d watch subsequent meetings where the Council could simply act like that ‘thing’ never happened. If we have no newspaper and we only call out the truth when it’s ‘polite’ (or expedient) to do so, good luck with decision making.
Anyhoo, I make references all the time to prior meetings and things the Council and City did that nobody seems to recall now–even though they were often literally only ten years ago. But putting all that junk into every article turns 800 words into a Russian Novel. So what I’m trying to do is find a way to explain some key events as stand-alone items. Hopefully that will give interested parties a sense of why certain things are the way they are–the politics and history–at least since I’ve been watching.
What I’m getting to is: If you have some things you’ve always wondered about, please let me know. That’s what I want to put in those spots.
This Week
Wednesday: SeaTacNoise.Info will be sending out our quarterly Port Package Update letter. (Big deal, right? 😀 ) I only mention it periodically because, as hard as it may be to believe, some of you are still not aware of STNI’s ongoing work to get bad sound insulation systems fixed! If you have a Port Package which is falling apart and mold and haven’t gotten the memo, please read this before you start calling window replacement shops.
Thursday 5:00: Public Safety/Emergency Management Committee Meeting (Agenda) (Video). There will be an update on the Redondo ‘speed camera’. The agenda has been updated. The new agenda concerns CERT training, Accreditation, Ham Radio operators.
Thursday 6:00: City Council Study Session (Agenda). (Video). This is a ‘Rule 10’ meeting, which means that public comment will be limited to items under discussion. It will cover annual ‘goals’ and the the Communications Consultant. Somehow.
A preparatory letter from the City Manager:
Council,
As you saw from the first portion of the retreat, staff’s current workload is extremely full, however, it is also our responsibility to effectively implement directives that come from a majority vote of the Council. Given the context that we have so many significant programs and services to provide, while at the same time wanting to be able to implement potential new directives received from a majority of the Council, we are interested in hearing from the Council about priorities you may have that are not being addressed. Once this information is obtained, administration can come back to the Council with potential alternative arrangements that would allow us to address these identified priorities, as well as identify the impacts and areas where staff time may be reduced.
The April 6 study session will be an opportunity for Council members to identify their priorities to City Administration for potential inclusion into the City’s work programs. As none of these ideas/priorities will have been previously adopted by the Council, there likely will be further steps before implementation depending on the will of the Council.
That’s the kind of letter that really makes a guy want to propose something. 😀 But OK, here are some longstanding small-ball things we can do that would make a difference…
- Public Planning Commission. Every other city has one–and until 2013, so did we. It’s time to bring it back to make certain that residents have a voice in the growth of our City.
- Web site. There’s nothing left to say about it.
- Better reporting. The City has spent a lot of money over the past few years on new accounting software. We’re paying an ongoing consultant to provide training. It’s time to start seeing the results.
- Sales tax by neighbourhood. Asking for this caused a big kerfuffle last year, when I was told it was ‘impossible’. Apparently, other cities like Poulsbo didn’t get that memo. We should know how each street is doing.
- Crime stats by neighbourhood. We currently provide no regular reporting by neighbourhood, even though officers are required to key that info (and lots of other good stuff) into every call. The closest we get is a combination of the Marina and Redondo–which makes no sense to me.
- Remote access (Zoom) for meetings–both for the Council and the public. Again, we had it and dumped it. But every other city kept it going and there’s nothing left to say about it.
- Grants. After you’re on the Council for a while, you’ll start to hear about grant opportunities that other cities are taking advantage of.
- Urban flooding. The County has money, previous set aside for flooding along rivers, which can be assigned for storm water updates–something we desperately need throughout the City.
- Trees. Our tree cover continues to decline. (29% and falling at last count.) The good news is that there are many opportunities for us to obtain free trees from any number of sources.
- Clean-ups. We have resident-heroes who regularly do clean-ups on specific streets. Well done. But the State also offers money to hire people to pick up trash and organise community-wide clean-up events.
- Fix the ‘D’. I’ve told this story many times, but the sign on City Hall has been cockeyed for many years. But instead of just fixing it, everyone just laughs it off as a ‘petty detail’–along with broken links on the web site, incorrect dates on letters and forms, and hundreds of other ‘details’ that great organisations do not tolerate.
Last Week
Tuesday 12:00: Port of Seattle Commission Meeting (Agenda) The Port provided a letter co-signed by all six cities in the StART, speaking of their shared goals to address various airport impacts. The fact that all six cities now sing from the same hymnal as the Port should tell you everything you need to know about how sincerely we are advocating for our residents. It’s shameful.
Thursday 12:00: Commercial Aviation Coordinating Commission (CACC) Meeting.
- I don’t expect anyone (well, normal people 😀 ) to sit through three hours, but if you fast forward until you see some of the presentation slides, I think you’ll find it very interesting. I’ve struggled to explain to people why a ‘second airport’ will not help us at all. And these slides make it easy:
- I’ve also been talking to a lot of the activists in towns that are under discussion and it’s very refreshing to see so many people engaged. Obviously, that’s because they see an imminent threat in the way we do not. But it just shows something I’ve known for a long time: It’s not the issue, so much as the energy. The reason they’re getting so much attention from State lawmakers now is because they trust no one and they are organised. What happened here is that we sorta got ‘used to things’. So we no longer push our electeds to do anything.
- If that seems ‘snippy’, as with that Port letter to the FAA, long ago we stopped asking the Port to do anything it does not want to do. Those activists will succeed to the extent that they remain engaged and respectively hold their local electeds to account. It’s hard to do, but I keep bringing it up because everyone has been short sighted in the following way.
- In the 1970’s, the Sea-Tac Communities Plan proposed a system by which residents near Sea-Tac would have a voice in airport planning. Local electeds all bailed on that. But by doing so, it created huge cost overruns for the Port and ongoing misery for residents. And now, people everywhere else know that the only sane response to a ‘second airport’ is not just ‘no’ but “Hell No!” The better long game would’ve been to treat airport communities better. Maybe a few bucks more in the short run, but it would’ve saved hundreds of millions in the long run.
Less politics, more cooperation, please…
Last week, Mayor Mahoney published an article in the Spring 2023 issue of City Currents Magazine, similar to his previous sales pitches for the ferry. Both are political propaganda, rather than informational as was the practice of past Mayors.
Tout our many notable accomplishments. Announce important events. Describe significant challenges the City faces. But never use public money to engage in politics. The community deserves deserves information, not a sales pitch, and definitely not a scolding.
If any member of the council wishes to to state a point of view? Go for it. But pay for it from your own pocket. Using a City publication, in fact the only mass media outlet in Des Moines, for political purposes is simply wrong.
Never blame the public…
The Mayor speaks of four paths the City might take at the Marina and in broader terms of economic development. But as he describes it, only one of them is a reasonable choice. His choice. He actually scolds the public, suggesting that it is the residents who have often been responsible for preventing the city from ‘moving forward’!
Never blame the public.
The current Marina proposal…
Truthfully, the City has presented only one real option over the past five years, and few if any specifics as to costs or true revenue potential. To the extent there has been public enthusiasm, my guess is that it comes from so much pent up frustration, plus the fact that residents (rightly) assume that any proposal we put forward would make financial sense. Not so.
But not understanding that is also not the public’s fault. It would be hard to imagine a less transparent process, filled with 1numerous exaggerations and 2blatant inaccuracies. Despite the benefits of modern media, we held our first community meeting on the plan in two years without a microphone.
The downtown
There are many myths about the current state of our downtown–and they have all been fed by that ongoing lack of transparency. According to the US Census 2/3 of you have not lived here long enough to know that, until the Great Recession, our downtown was actually doing better than it is now–with those same ‘1962’ buildings.
The Mayor also ignores the important work that occured during that economic downturn; not just projects like our beautiful Beach Park, but planning and design, with transparent budgets and innovative ideas. But rather than acknowledge and build on those efforts, the current regime simply ignored them. That was not only unkind, it was a waste of valuable effort and insight that we could benefit from today.
When the Third Runway opened at Sea-Tac, a ton of people left. Many of us who remained (rightly) got frustrated at the City’s failure to recover as well as other cities.
What politicians have often done in Des Moines is try to blame some external boogie man like ‘the evil Port of Seattle!’ or ‘those terrible landlords!’ for their poor decision making. And the one feature these stories always have in common? It’s all or nothing. Or rather just plain nothing. There’s nothing we can do–except to try to appease them.
Property rights?
Contrary to the Mayor’s scare tactics, other cities have had success in improving their commercial codes and the results speak for themselves. A previous Council performed a comparative analysis of other cities–and simply chose not to act. We should start again; and this time, evaluate the results more objectively.
If you build it they will come…
Des Moines has often tended to equate ‘developers’ with ‘economic development’. They are not the same. Developers build, provide one time money, and then leave. But again, leadership here has often insisted that we can’t improve our business climate until we spend millions wooing developers and ‘investors’. As with the Des Moines Creek Business Park, the promise is always that some grand project will drive “tens of thousands of visitors to our downtown!” Sound familiar?
Unfortunately for the Mayor’s narrative, many highly successful business communities have emerged with buildings no better than ours. (including us until 2008.) Given that truth, we should first study how others have done so much with what tools they already have.
Today, all smart cities today recognise that economic development is as much about the businesses that deliver the goods and services residents want than the building in which they reside. They work hard at business recruitment, education, marketing, retention and ongoing support. They make those functions as important to their strategic mission as generating building permits. And again, we should do the same.
Practical solutions…
But despite our differences we have plenty we agree on. First and foremost, we agree that we need to act now. I urge my colleagues to carefully examine the following ideas, already proven successful in other cities, and incorporate them into our economic development planning.
- Reinstate the Public Planning Agency we had for 50 years and that other cities depend on.
- Focus on the Marina business. Rebuild the docks and the boat launch now. Develop dry stack now, since boat storage is the one proven revenue source for the Marina floor.
- Create a business development office and make business recruitment and support a core function of City planning.
- Carefully study, then aggressively implement commercial zoning and code reforms proven effective in other cities.
Make the public our partners…
Consider that so many people here have repeatedly been willing to sign up for any idea, based mostly on faith. That’s how much people want this town to succeed! Imagine the level of public support if we earn their trust with a genuinely solid plan, which includes their meaningful input at every step.
We only get one shot at this. But fortunately, the City has loads of talent. Let’s find ways to use as much of it as possible and get to a place we all want to go.
1At one meeting the City Manager describes ‘numerous’ public engagement and ‘over 500 attendees’ to the 2017 Argosy Cruise and 2019 Yacht Club Community Meetings. According to the sign-in sheets there were only abou 100 at each. And as expected, most of them are the same people.
2In February 2021, the City claimed that there were no funds transferred from the Marina into the General Fund beyond essential operating costs. This, despite the issue being discussed on camera at any number of City Council Meetings, including three previous Mayors.
The real joke is, A tourist in Manhattan asks, “Hey buddy, how do I get to Carnegie Hall?” Practice. If you were a musician, that joke killed. In about 1931, I’d imagine. 😀
Thanks for that great list at the beginning .. I thought a Public planning commission had begun requesting candidates? is that not a reality ? Kaylene
There is currently no public planning commission under consideration at the moment. Perhaps you’re thinking of the Citizens Advisory Committee. That is a -very- different thing.
I went to the “coffee with the Mayor” Tuesday and asked about the items above. RE: code enforcement, specifically “the pit,” he intimated that there was new interest from a potential buyer. I will keep hammering on that and my craaaazzzy nicer fence suggestion. As for the citizens advisory committee, he seemed (outwardly anyway- benefit of the doubt here) pleased that there was at least one candidate from every neigborhood and that wasn’t what he was referring to, it was the sameness of every public forum outcome, time to get after it, yadda yadda. So, we’ll see what happens with the committee. Looking forward to the next two meetings.