Weekly Update: 08/20/2023

Heads up!

I’m publishing this one day earlier than the label on the tin because the next City Council Meeting is one day early. Fake news!

It’s also a kinda/sorta defensive reminder that I publish this thing at like 3:00AM on Sunday (…er… Monday morning) for a reason. I’ll get a few comments about ‘I never see you at the Marina’ and what these people really mean is, “I don’t see you between 10AM and 2PM at the Farmers Market on Saturday.” To which I reply, the Marina is the reason I moved here! I’m trying to, you know, get on the water on the weekends–so I can do this public service gig the rest of the week. 🙂 Otherwise, you’d see me… come to think of it, you also wouldn’t see me at the Marina–but for weeks at a time, if you take my meaning. 😀

My point is, you wanna see me ‘at the Marina’, or anywhere else, I’m available six days a week (206) 878-0578. Like for the play at the Beach Park on Sunday at 5:00PM

This Week

wednesday, Wednesday, WEDNESDAY (not Thursday) 6:00pm: Study Session concerning Water District 54. (Agenda.) My previous sparkling prose on water quality (see what I did there? 😀 )

Last Week

Wednesday 5:00pm: Citizens Advisory Committee. Which I encourage everyone to watch. More below.

Thursday 6:00pm: City Council Meeting (Agenda) Recap below.

Friday: Association of Washington Cities seminar on creating more inclusive community. A group of two dozen electeds from around the State discussing things like how to increase awareness and participation in various cultural events.

I decided to participate after last week’s wildly successful Cambodian festival. It got me thinking about how the City might do better at creating events like it–not just for one cultural group, but how we might get that same energy for events that attract everybody.

Anyhoo, I got more than I bargained for–in a very positive way. And here are my takeaways:

• Many cities have had the same kinds of cowardly, passive-aggressive issues we have had–eg. the hateful graffiti or stickers or tearing down of Pride flags and so on.
• Some cities are having full-on expressions of open hate that I do not see here. This is unbelievably disappointing to feel like it’s always “two steps forward, one step back.” I applaud those electeds for showing up and being willing to discuss what to do in a frank manner.
• Most cities at that meeting are, like Des Moines, in the process of becoming majority BIPOC. However, some are better than others at participation, ie. getting members from all these constituencies involved in community-wide events.

One idea I heard repeatedly was to have some form of City-supported cultural events organisation. I’ve seen that be highly successful in some of our neighbouring cities and I think that’s something we should consider, especially given the recent decline in volunteerism. The City used to play a much more active role in various local groups and if we want the services they provide to persist and thrive into the next generation, we’ll need to give them a boost.

Council Meeting Recap

This one is kinda dark.

Opening Statement on Travel Inn

There was (again) an unscheduled opening statement by the Mayor concerning the Travel Inn Motel on Pac Highway and an ongoing and unresolved dispute with Catholic Social Services. He used the word ‘homelessness’, but provided no detail.

I would remind the Mayor that he is one member of the City Council, not the City’s comms director. If there is a dispute worthy of public mention at a City Council Meeting–and especially using such a charged topic, then the circumstances should be made available to the City Council.

What’s the point?

This was the shortest meeting of my tenure. As I said in my closing comments, at 32 minutes, this was the fastest $250 I’ve ever gotten.

City Council meetings are meant to discuss issues of concern and make decisions on your behalf. We’re not up there to do a show. One or two ceremonial duties are fine, however the entirety of the 17 August meeting was performative. There was literally no business before the Council; just the Mayor’s statement and then a series of employee acknowledgments. (Man I hate doing this because people already get upset about ‘the word count’ but it should go without saying that employees deserve recognition. But unless it’s someone’s last day before retirement, let’s do it at a meeting that has some actual people’s business.)

The City Attorney was MIA. The DPW was MIA. A member of the Council was MIA. There was one public commenter who showed up to ask a question and could not get their question answered. This is one of those ‘details’ that drives me nuts.

So to my mind, the meeting should have been cancelled. If ever there was a reason to save the public some dough-re-mi, this was it. You may roll your eyes and consider that this is just one of those things people do in polite society.  I do not. It costs several thousand bucks to put on any City Council Meeting. That’s a paycheck, a community event, a something far more useful. If you watch as many meetings as I have, you start to notice how much of that we do and how it adds up. It was the civic version of eating raw cookie dough (not even a baked cookie) in lieu of an actual meal.

Go get ’em…

Perhaps it went forward because new Chief Tim Gately had invited a number of people to his second (ceremonial) swearing in. Despite my crankiness, the strong show of support from his family and former colleagues is not only endearing, it’s reassuring.

Given my feelings concerning the necessity of the meeting, I hope you’ll understand why I kept my comments to one sentence. I have already spoken to the new Chief. More importantly, he’s already gotten some excellent feedback from the community and he already knows he has the full support of the Council. There’s nothing else to say. As I applauded I was trying to think of a new manager situation in my career where everyone was rooting as hard for the new hire. I just wanted him to get out and celebrate with his family.

The Mayor said “we look forward to your leading us.” Again, not to be picky but the Chief of Police works for us; and for you. I mention this because we don’t make these changes very often. And although the Chief has that strong support, a lot of the problems here are longstanding. This isn’t just a change in whose name is on the door. This is a unique opportunity to take a fresh look at policing in Des Moines.

Citizens Advisory Committee

Again, in my closing comments, I urged the public to watch the Citizens Advisory Committee–including the members of that committee.

I watched the meeting with my own little ‘focus group’ of fellow residents and one person quipped that they have never seen a meeting here that benefited in any way from stickers. (I confess, that made me laugh out loud–you’d have to have gone to the various Marina meetings to get it. 😀 )

Actually, my impression while watching was that it reminded me of Council Retreats of a decade ago. Those Councils were just as ‘divided’ as things are now. But somehow they were able to have true planning retreats where there was an actual discussion of big picture issues–some real back and forth. I think I was kinda jealous. 😀

However, as I watched I was also imagining a ‘screen crawl’ at the bottom of the screen listing the costs of things people were suggesting, correcting the things people thought were possible that aren’t, or that they assumed are ‘impossible’ but are possible.

And that goes for the Mayor too. He was no neutral party. He got a free pass to continue to sell his ‘vision’ and seemed to be the person who spoke most. I don’t think that squares well with the purpose of the group. It is incredibly hard to do for realz focus groups and if you’ve ever watched video of one, the decision makers are never there.

It was described it as a listening session.” No it wasn’t. It was two-way and in fact, the Mayor repeatedly offered to answer questions–which carries his implicit biases. The facilitator was compiling the participants responses, but the CAC members were also taking back what they experience to the their neighbourhoods–including the Mayor’s feelings on any number of issues.

Community and Communication

The first round discussion concerned each person’s neighbourhood issues, which was great. But there was also a second round of questions involving city-wide planning.

The one thing everyone mentions is communication–feeling a bit disconnected. The Mayor mentions that he tries to drive around the City for an hour every week and that he takes different routes. Which is good because no way in heeeeeell can you get a sense of this ‘small’ City in a one hour drive. Speaking as someone who has walked (and does walk) every frickin’ foot of all ¹three zip codes, one reason it’s hard to build ‘community’ is because we don’t have ‘nine’ neighbourhoods–it’s at least ³twenty three and I don’t think most residents understand just how much there is… er… here. As I’ve pointed out many times, just reaching a true majority of the population once, even in the case of a real emergency would be a major undertaking.

Consider our very nice City Currents–which is the closest we come to that ideal, via USPS. That is literally the most effective outreach one can do. And it costs a fortune. Let’s assume we could do that level of outreach every week or two. Is the City Currents the kind of unbiased information people want, considering that the main story is usually an editorial from the Mayor? Or is it just another free pass to sell a particular vision?

Budgeting?

Many people say they want a bakery or sidewalks or more staff or whatever. But they are not asked to consider the costs or where the money comes from. As I wrote, the costs of what people are asking for range from stunning to, “Stop I’m laughing so hard I can’t breathe!” So it was easy for the Mayor to sound slightly dismissive–as would I under the circumstances.

CAC members will be asked to review our budget and provide input, which every member of the public can also do over the three legally required meetings. In fact, per State law, we have public hearings specifically to solicit public comment. In my time on the Council I can’t recall one soul choosing to do so. Here’s our most recent budget. The next one will likely be much the same. Go for it. Please. 2023 Preliminary Annual Budget

But on the other hand, electeds have access to resources and educational materials most of you do not. (Whether or not we take those classes, well… 😀 ) My company wrote corporate accounting software for a living and still I’ll spend more time than I would like reading our budget docs.

Politics…

This is not to say that the CAC is not valuable. It certainly is. It’s partly to say that, I think it could be far more useful.

Speaking as that old fart management analyst, if all we wanted was to understand ‘the community’ we could just as easily do a statistically valid community study and (multi-lingual) focus groups any time we want to and drill down to ‘what the community wants’.

Perhaps in that magical world, the City Council would find some new truth we had not previously considered and implement a strategic plan to address something like a community will.

Back here on planet earth, news flash: it is unlikely you would hear a darned thing at one of these things that the Council does not already know about. That’s not cynicism or dismissiveness. In fact, I’m sure you, and everyone at that table, knows that. It’s just raising another kind of communication question:

How does a citizen body discuss what really is possible? Why are/aren’t longstanding issues being addressed? Is the CAC format (or any City or Mayor-sponsored newsletter) really a venue to educate the public in an unbiased way? In other words, how does the general public intelligently discuss big picture issues in an objective manner when the Council itself struggles to do so? It’s a real question, by the way. 🙂

The fact is, any CAC will be a dozen or so people, who want to be there to promote their vision. They bring their biases, their experiences, their ideas, in addition to acting as proxies for their neighbourhood. If that sounds like politics, you may have a future in elected office! 😀

But that’s great. And for the simple reason that in the fifteen years I’ve been watching our City Council, I can count, on the fingers of one hand, the number of residents who showed up routinely to our meetings, and only from one or two of the same spots. In other words, the CAC is a list of public commenters from a broad geography being given equal weight, rather than the current situation where, from time to time, a group from one particular neighbourhood will come out in force to speak on one particular issue. Also great, but in a different way. 🙂

One other solution…

The CAC guarantees at least some participation–which is great. But to be truly effective, we should endeavour to take the politics out of it. And in fact, if it were moi, I would organise it more like this:

Have a Council ²Study Session 3-4 times a year. Members of the CAC make a presentation, then field questions from the entire Council. The facilitator would compile their presentations into a summary report, which the Council would use in our planning meetings.

That may be less than ideal from the Mayor’s point of view–and perhaps for some of the participants for whom the politics is appealing. I get it. But if we truly want to learn as much as we can from each member of the CAC–and use their questions) as a vehicle to help educate the entire community on the broad topics the Council can’t currently seem to bring itself to do? This is a way.

¹98198, 98148–at the north end of town, and 98032–in a few bits which are legally Kent, but inside our assumed boundary so we let them hang. 🙂

²Actually, the City Council schedules three meetings every year, including one Study Session every month. I can’t think of a year where we’ve held more than two meetings a month. But if it meant improved public engagement and another $250? I’m so there. (Keeeding; a true discussion as I’d prefer would certainly be one of the longer events in the calendar. But you’re worth it. 🙂 )

³We’re a city of twenty three (mostly small) annexations. Until very recently, a majority of people liked being in their little pocket.