Some bits of business…
City Manager’s Report
City Manager’s Report January 12, 2024
This Week
Monday and Tuesday: In Olympia to testify on House Bill 2103 and Senate Bill 5955 and House Bill 2070.
Wednesday: Regional Transit Advisory Committee. This is my first meeting and my understanding is that I will be oriented. Or orientated. I can never remember which is which. 😀
Last Week
Wednesday: King County Emergency Management Advisory Committee. This was my first meeting but I was immediately struck by how wide-ranging the discussion is–people are expected to consider situations that sound highly unlikely. Considering that I can’t remember ever hearing the word ‘pandemic’ outside of a sci-fi film before December 2019, this seems like a good idea.
Wednesday: Des Moines Marina Association all-tenants meeting. This was their last meeting. Like ever. 😀 They voted to officially dissolved. I showed up to thank them–and to make a comment: Their membership has a strong interest in the next City Manager. We are one of the only city-owned marinas left anywhere. Edmonds? Poulsbo? They are special purpose districts.
For sixty years we have engaged in a noble and somewhat unique experiment: a City-owned marina, which serves multiple purposes. For better or worse, the last City Manager had a profound influence on the Marina. So will the next one. Watch. Carefully.
Thursday: City Council Meeting (Agenda) (Video) Recap below…
Saturday 4:00PM: Korean American Day celebration at Highline Performing Arts Center in Burien. Great event. I was there to do what I can to learn how they do it. And since it was a gathering of so many area electeds, to whip up support for HB2103. 🙂
January 11, 2024 City Council Meeting
Public Comment
There were three commenters. One speaking about the Masonic Home, the others to ask the City Council to consider adding resident members to our new Finance Committee (and to criticise me personally for not finding that option a great idea. 😀 Unlike our last mayor, I always give residents the last word. 🙂 )
Presentation from Police Chief Tim Gately
Chief Gately gave a pretty detailed report originally intended for the Public Safety Committee. Since new Mayor Buxton has not decided on committee assignments yet, the PSEM has not met, so all seven of us got the benefit. And you should too. He covered a laundry list of small, but meaningful upgrades.
New Business
There were three big ticket items, which made the meeting ‘long’ by Des Moines standards, which, according to our Council rules have a hard stop at 9:00PM. But before we get into those, a few words on process…
As we got close to that 9:00PM cut-off we had to decide how to extend the meeting. This points out one of the crappiest, most conniving aspects of our rules of procedure you probably don’t know about. Which is the fact that few cities have this hard limit. The County Council does not. Neither does the Port. Or the State. Or whoever. Basically, most normal legislative bodies run their agenda and end when they reach that agenda. How do they keep meetings from going on for-evehrrr? They pre-plan each agenda with a reasonable number of items. They develop a calendar at the beginning of the year to balance the load of each meeting. (Eg. the Burien City Council sets aside a few minutes every month to ‘check in’ on that calendar and make adjustments as they go. Great idea.)
What we do is over-schedule various meetings and then under-schedule others. The net effect is one of many techniques we’ve developed to make thorough discussion impossible. Many of these decisions have to be made, so the ticking clock limits the range of outcomes.
The hard stop needs to go. Instead, the City Council needs a yearly planning calendar that the entire body has a role in. That will allow for ‘load balancing’–putting the right number of items on every meeting. It will also help the public. Knowing in advance when various big items are coming will improve engagement. Fewer surprises.
DISCUSSION OF 2024 CITY COUNCIL LEGISLATIVE PRIORITIES
Every city has a legislative agenda they decide to pursue. Our city’s lobbyist, Anthony Hemstad gave a presentation and the Council tweaked his recommendations. I referred to his presentation as “Showing up for the Fourth Quarter” meaning that the State legislative session has already begun.
We bickered a bit on the order of priorities, which I would’ve been more interested in had this conversation happened last year. This discussion should have happened many months ago. Because the game was already in progress, our input on any of it was somewhat moot.
We added support for HB2103–which makes us look a bit silly not having been read into its existence until the presentation.
And, in classic DM fashion, on the dais we were looking at three versions of the recommendations: the one in the packet, a printed copy made early in the day and a last-minute version hot off the presses which changed the wording on a $1,000,000 request for funding a hydrofoil electric ferry. Hoo boy.
The final recommendation was to alter that request to $1,000,000 for upgrading the Marina electric system to ‘support’ electric ferries. It removes the ask for a boat. But electricity is electricity. So it will likely be applicable to most electric devices; so I decided not argue the language any further. I was being nice. 🙂
But I was not kidding when I said that I support electric ferries. I grew up on an island after all. I like taking ferries to get places. But not until there’s a lot more than 1one boat of its type in existence. 🙂
FINANCE COMMITTEE
Last November, the Council voted to create an ad hoc committee (meaning short term.) I said that such a committee should be standing (permanent) and consisting of three councilmembers–like all our standing committees. The staff recommended just that. Which made me happy. 🙂
Many other cities add ‘information technology’ to the portfolio of their finance committee, and that makes sense to me. I believe the purpose of a finance committee is not to make budget recommendations; that’s the job of the Council. (In fact, ‘the budget’ is one of the few jobs specifically mentioned as being a function of the City Council under state law.) Rather, I see the finance committee as a way to provide information and intelligence, something we’ve struggled with over the decades.
You can’t make good decisions if you can’t get timely information and see long-term patterns. I look at our financials over the past two decades and it’s a slog. We’ve changed software. We’ve changed presentation with each Finance Director. We’ve had re-orgs. We’ve changed accounting methods ( from a modified accrual to more of a cash basis.) It’s hard to compare apples to apples.
REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL EXECUTIVE SEARCH RECRUITMENT FIRM FOR CITY MANAGER VACANCY.
I confess to you, brothers and sisters, that I gassed on far too long on this. My excuse is that I am nervous about this process.
My colleagues (and staff) think I’m getting ahead of the process. We were decided on a process to determine the headhunter, not the actual candidates. Maybe. 🙂
Specifically, I asked about ‘videos’. I’m used to seeing people submit an audition tape with their resume. What I was on about (I’m doing it again 😀 ) was that I want a headhunter that will ask candidates to have a highlight reel. Why? Having been to a bajillion meetings now, I’ve decided that you can learn almost as much about an administrator by watching them at work (ie. at a public meeting interacting with their electeds) as you can reading their resume or even interviewing them in person. Seeing them ‘on the job’, how they relate to their board, is absolutely revealing.
I got hooked on this after looking at the research provided by our staff. You can go on Youtube and look at lots of city council meetings all over the country and watch their processes. And the more cities I look at, the more I’m convinced that no matter what conventional process we follow? Choosing a city manager can be a total crap shoot. And I’m just saying that watching people work seemed useful.
New Items For Consideration
As I said, meetings have a hard stop at 9:00pm. We have to vote to extend. And when necessary, it has become customary to ‘extend the meeting to complete item(x) and then dispense with New Items and Councilmember Comments’ rather than simple ‘to extend the meeting’.
I informed my colleagues during the meeting that I had a New Item I wanted considered, that there was a time crunch, and… they still voted ‘extend the meeting to complete the current item and then immediately end the meeting’, 4-3. Disappointing.
However, patience is a virtue. And by taking a breath, it allowed the Interim City Manager to save me from having to remind the Council that votes to extend require a super-majority (5-2.) Since 4-3 is not 5-2, my item was heard. Here it is…
“I would like the City to write a letter in support for the University of Washington Department of Environmental and Occupational Health and Science’s community grant application in the current State legislative session for air quality monitoring in the City of Des Moines.”
This long and extremely vague sentence was intentional.
Put simply, UWDEOHS does all the major research in the area on community health concerning the airport. They apply for state grants every session to do various projects, almost always sponsored by our own Rep. Tina Orwall and Sen. Karen Keiser. This particular idea is to perform air quality monitoring at a permanent site (specific place to be determined) in Des Moines. It had to be voted on immediately because their grant app needs to be in before our next meeting. It asked nothing of the City other than to say to the State legislature that we sure hope UWDEOHS gets that grant! It should be a formality, about as controversial as any proclamation.
And… ‘no’. Buxton, Mahoney, Grace Matsui, 2Nutting against. Worst. Vote. Ever.
I wrote that this was about as controversial as a proclamation. Except that in this case, this grant is not a symbolic gesture. It’s real work to improve public health now. And if you say, “Well you should’ve given your colleagues more notice!” How is this any different than the Council voting to support HB2103, the most important aviation-related bill in three decades–without knowing about that until the meeting?
Here’s another long sentence:
If one actually wants to improve air quality, reduce noise, improve health, our economy, and basically everything else in Des Moines; the only answer to any request for support by UWDEOHS is yes.
1As of last month there was one passenger hydrofoil electric ferry in service on planet earth. Not one fleet, one boat. It carries 30 people and it is in Sweden.
2Technically, Nutting abstained. However an abstention is counted as a ‘no’ in our rules.