Citizens Advisory Board Meeting (2026 Budget Presentation)

machine-generated transcript

Des Moines Citizens Advisory Board Meeting
Wednesday, October 29, 2025

COUNCIL PRESENT:
Deputy Mayor Harry Steinmetz
Mayor Traci Buxton
Councilmember Gene Achziger

POSSIBLE CAB MEMBERS PRESENT:
Barton DeLacy, Alyson Chapin, Eddy Duggar, Jeff Crompe, Charlene Bacalzo, Mackenzie Meyers, Jim Lampariello, Bill Linscott, Randy Richards, Diane Hoyer, Corrine Anderson-Ketchmark, MaryEllen Laird, Victoria Andrews, Lisa Franz, Bettina Carey, Colleen Gants, Mary Guiberson, Magdalena Herrera, Aileen Evans, Rick Laycock, Justin Pirtle, Susan White

STAFF:
Jeff Friend (Finance Director)
Tara Vaughan (Staff Liaison)

DEPUTY MAYOR STEINMETZ: It’s 6 o’clock. I’m going to call the Des Moines Citizens Advisory Board meeting of Wednesday, October 29th to order. I’m Harry Steinmetz, the deputy mayor. I’m going to remind everybody to please remember to turn on their microphones and help each other remember to do that because putting together the minutes can be a bit challenging afterwards when we can’t hear what they’re saying.

What we’re going to do is we’re having a presentation from Jeff Friend who’s our finance director. So we’ll do roll by everybody just introducing themselves around. Barton, I know you can just jump right in.

BARTON DELACY: [inaudible]

DEPUTY MAYOR STEINMETZ: Okay. Can you give her a microphone?

SUSAN WHITE: Hi everyone. Susan White from Redondo.

LISA FRANZ: Lisa Franz from Midway and Bettina Carey from the Marina District and also on the arts commission.

MARYELLENLAIRD: I’m MaryEllen Laird and I can’t remember what neighborhood I’m in, but it’s very close to Mount Rainier High School. Is it like North Des Moines perhaps? And I have the honor of serving on the human services group with a couple of these lovely ladies here who keep me in line.

COLLEEN GANTS: Hi, I’m Colleen Gants with the Zenith Neighborhood and I’m focused on strategic planning community engagement efforts.

CORRINE ANDERSON-KETCHMARK: I’m Corrine Anderson-Ketchmark and I am on the human services subcommittee and I’m the chair of that committee.

DIANE HOYER: My name is Diane Hoyer and I’m on the Human Services Advisory Council and part of Zenith.

JIM LAMPARIELLO: I’m Jim Lampariello from the Marina District.

BILL LINSCOTT: I’m Bill Linscott representing the Marina tenants and from the Marina District as well.

MACKENZIE MEYERS: Mackenzie Meyers and I am representing the businesses.

CHARLENE BACALZO: Hi, Charlene Bacalzo. I also represent the business district and am on the arts commission.

RICK LAYCOCK: Rick Laycock, central district at large and arts commission.

JEFF CROMPE: Jeff Crompe, arts commission, also chairman of the arts commission.

EDDY DUGGAR: Eddy from Wesley and I’m in the arts. Also.

AILEEN EVANS: Aileen Evans with the senior services division committee and Marina District.

ALYSON CHAPIN: Alyson Chapin from central north central apparently and I represent the people with small children.

COUNCILMEMBER ACHZIGER: I’m council member Gene Achziger.

MAYOR BUXTON: Mayor Traci Buxton.

TARA: And Tara, staff liaison.

JEFF FRIEND: As was mentioned, I’m Jeff Friend, the finance director. A little bit about myself – I became a CPA in 2007. I’ve been working in government finance for 22 years. I worked for the Muckleshoot Indian tribe. I worked for King County Housing Authority for about 10 years. Spent about two and a half years at the city of Tukwila. Came here after that in 2021 as deputy finance director. And then in January of 2023 became finance director and this is my third year in a row visiting this committee – board. It’s a board now. We’ve got one piece of business to do before we get to…

DEPUTY MAYOR STEINMETZ: Okay, sorry, that was my presentation time. Excuse me. Agenda item number one is simply the approval of the minutes from the September 24, 2025 meeting. Has everybody had a chance to read them? Is there a motion?

JEFF CROMPE: [Motion to approve]

BARTON DELACY: [Seconded]

DEPUTY MAYOR STEINMETZ: Jeff Crompe moved them. Barton seconded. Any discussion changes? All in favor signify by saying aye and raising your right hand. All opposed? The minutes are passed.

And now we have a presentation on the city budget from Jeff.

JEFF FRIEND: Okay. So normally this is my third time doing this presentation. Normally I have a budget that’s in the process of being adopted. We’ll get into why this year is different. This year it’s a midbiennial budget review. And another aspect to this too is probably the best time to do this presentation is in November. There’s no November meeting. So our choice was do we come really early in October or do we do this presentation in December and we decided to do in October because I think we’d have the ability to touch base with the board as opposed to if we did it in December the process would be finished and then we’d show up and say hey here’s what we did we didn’t talk to you yet.

So we are showing up a bit early. We’re still working on things. So it’s not like normally you guys – I would have given you the budget and you’d be looking at it and then we’d have discussion on that. I don’t have anything to give you. It’s kind of a general presentation, but we do have some numbers and information about how the budget works in the city and different things going on. So, apologies that it’s not meatier, but I think that it is a good discussion.

So, I’ve got a clicker here. We’re going to start off discussing the strategic plan, where the budget begins. A strategic plan sets the direction, the budget puts into action. So the purpose of a strategic plan – it defines the long-term vision for the community. What kind of city we want to be sets the shared priorities for the city council, staff and residents. Provides a roadmap for decisions, guiding how resources are invested. Helps ensure that policies, budgets and projects all work toward common goals and improves transparency and accountability by measuring progress over time.

I think the accountability piece is really important because I’m sure anybody in any city is like why is my money being spent like that? And when a city doesn’t have a strategic plan then decisions can be made that aren’t adhering to a long-term strategy. So it’s really key that the city creates a strategic plan which is what we’re doing now.

In fact, we did win a budget award from the government finance officers association for the current budget and they give you feedback. You submit your budget and then it’s scored by like three different people. They give it back to you. And one of the comments we got was, “Well, your city doesn’t have a strategic plan or a long-term financial plan. So, we’re giving you this award, but if that stays the same, you ain’t getting another award.” So it’s really foundational for any city really to have a strategic plan that has the community input. This is what we want to see happen over the long term and then council’s decisions adhere to that plan and then there’s a form of transparency and accountability. But then everything – those level decisions and everything under that staff make would also adhere to that plan.

Charting our course. That’s the name for the strategic plan effort. Charting our course. This is the logo that was designed by a staff member so that it differentiates communications from just general city communications. So if you see this logo, you can know that’s the strategic plan and it’s not just the general community city communication. So it helps the public identify communications regarding this project and there is an updated web page at this address.

This is the strategic planning timeline. I believe Katherine was here in September and presented this timeline. Currently we are in the fall early winter learn which is learn and hear from the community council and organization. So, this is where we need the board’s help. So, this is a good time for the community and for you guys to share your input on what you want as far as the city’s direction to be.

Focus groups. So, on October 21st and 22nd, last week, there was focus groups held over the course of two days. There was more than 50 attendees and thank you to all the citizens advisory board members that were able to attend. All members were invited. Each session was 90 minutes and led by facilitators from Raftelis. They heard about the vision hopes concerns for the city and all this feedback will inform the survey questions and the overall plan. So the survey questions I believe are going out to the community next month.

So in November there’s a communitywide survey and there’s also on December 9th a communitywide town hall from 6:00 to 8:00 PM at Des Moines Elementary. So I think charting our course is a good slogan because it really does for the budget and all decisions. It really is like sets a direction.

Also on what’s next – community champions for the project focus group participation. So we’ve checked those off and then help with public engagement. I believe we are also seeking help from the community advisory citizens advisory board for help with getting public engagement for the town hall. Passive engagement – I’m not sure what passive engagement is maybe just word of mouth but spread the word and spread the word on the online survey.

Okay. So, biennial budgeting. So, now that that’s the strategic plan, I believe there is after this presentation, there’s another presentation on the strategic plan. Biennial budgeting. So, there’s two ways that the state of Washington allows a city to budget or local governments to budget. One is annual budgeting which is where you budget one year at a time or you can do biennial budgeting which is you can budget for two years at a time and last year council allowed us to switch from annual budgeting to biennial budgeting and we’ll get into the next slide is about the advantages of biennial budgeting. So what it is is budgeting for two years instead of one.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: What’s the advantage of annual versus biennial? Why did we switch?

JEFF FRIEND: Maybe the next slide. And then also I wanted to say after this presentation I did allow for a question and answer period for whatever you want to ask questions on.

So what is budgeting for two years instead of one and how it works is year one is the adoption. So last year would have been the adoption of the budget. So council approves the budget for both years. So in 2024 they adopted a budget for 2025 and 2026.

So then one of the most frequent questions last year was well what happens on the off year. So what happens this year? This year’s the midbiennial review. So basically by state law, if you adopt a budget for two years, you can’t just – it’s you’re doing it so far in advance for that second year that you can’t just call it good and not look at it. So you’re required in the latter part of this year to review that budget for the next year.

And as to the advantages, it saves time and resources. It’s very similar to annual budgeting except in this year we didn’t have to start from scratch and that saves a lot of time for directors and departments or anybody that’s managing a budget. So you can have your engineers, they have more time to work on engineering things or the police chief spends a little bit less time budgeting and has more time focused on the police department.

It improves long-term planning. So with the annual budget, when I was in Tukwila, we did biennial budgeting and then I came here and we did annual budgeting and it really does feel kind of like a short-term view because you’re looking one year ahead and you make your plan for that one year and then you can stop being like, okay, we must be good and you’re not really thinking, what about the next year or what about a year after that. You do a forecast, but the annual – it’s not a right or wrong choice, but the annual, it felt like from what I was used to, very short-term thinking. And so then when you go to the two years, which we did last year, it kind of holds you more accountable when you’re budgeting because you might have that first year and be like with an annual go, oh, we’re good. But when you’re looking at two, that first year, you might have to work on that a little bit harder because it affects that next year. So it makes you look out further than one year and so that kind of puts an emphasis on looking longterm instead of just getting by year to year.

Enhances oversight. With the review period this year we have more time to actually dig into it with for looking at where we have to make changes where maybe we were off. Looking at where we need to cut. So that’s another advantage.

Supports strategic priorities. Again that kind of goes with the long-term view of when you’re budgeting more than one year. So that it’s a lot easier to fold into your long-term priorities when you’re looking at two years as opposed to one. And if you have a strategic plan, then you can tie those priorities in to be consistent with your plan.

Improves public engagement. One of the things we want to do next year is have town halls by neighborhood to get more public engagement in the budget process. And so those are the main ones, but really it’s very similar to what we are already doing except we get to save time and resources and we look out further. And both of those things together I think are more financially healthy than if you’re looking at just one year at a time.

So that’s why this year we’re saying it’s a midbiennial review. So the budget for next year has already been adopted. It was adopted last year, but we’re looking at it and making changes.

So, having said that, how does the budget work? How is it organized? And we’ll take a look at the different funds the city has and how those funds operate.

So, the city’s budget, there’s really two kinds of funds. There’s governmental funds which you have your general fund, the special revenue funds, debt service funds, capital projects funds, and internal service funds. And we’ll look at all those in the following slides, as well as the enterprise funds, which are the marina and surface water management.

So, the first one is the general fund. This is the city’s day-to-day operations. And so this is one where you might have heard a lot about because of the levy lid lift and all that last year. But this is really the day-to-day operations and really what residents – where their tax money really directly goes to directly pay for the services that are provided. So property tax money, sales tax revenue, utility taxes, program revenue if you have kids that are using parks programs. That would go into the general fund and infractions like parking violations or running – well if you run through a red light that would go into the general fund. Not all camera money goes here but that one does. So that all comes in and really the big ones are the property tax, sales tax, and utility tax. And then we have other stuff. So that comes into the general fund and that pays for the police, it pays for recreation programs, it pays for senior services, it pays for the court, city clerk, legal finance and parks maintenance. So your police, this is where they get paid and that’s the money that’s the funds that is collected by the city that pays for the police. So day-to-day operations is your general fund.

Enterprise funds. So enterprise funds are basically they operate like businesses and so they operate based on fees that are paid by people who are using that business. So it’s a fund used for city services that operate like a business where people pay fees that cover the cost of providing those services. We have two enterprise funds. One is the marina and one is the surface water management fund. So, the marina. Yeah, that’s a whole another can of worms. Okay, we’ll talk about that. So, surface water management, which is a utility, and the marina.

And one question that’s asked a lot on Facebook is like, well, couldn’t the city use money from the marina to help the general fund? And the answer is no. That is against the law. The reason it’s against the law is because these funds charge rates. And so, basically, like your surface water management, you’re paying a rate for that. And if the general government started taking money from that utility, your rates are going to go up. And so that’s why it’s against the law and they have to be treated as really their separate entity. So that’s the two enterprise funds that we have and we do not co-mingle their stuff with the rest of the general government’s operations.

Capital projects funds – this is where your capital projects are funded. It’s a fund used to track the cost of building, buying, or improving major city facilities and infrastructure. And we classify a capital project if it costs more than 25,000 and its life is over five years. And I have a slide to show how these are funded. We have several funds, but when we report on them, we roll them all together and combine them as one fund.

And how these work here, and that’s a picture of the dock replacement at the marina. They are paid by usually by grants. So, we can get a grant from the state, we can get a grant from the federal government, maybe even King County. Bonds if we were to issue bonds. Impact fees. So like traffic impact fees is when a developer has a new development they’re building and they have to pay a fee because of the impact and increased cost it was take to maintain the effects of the increased traffic. Real estate excise tax is a really big source of funding for capital projects. That’s when you basically someone sells their property, their house. There’s a quarter of a percent that comes in as that tax. There’s actually two of those quarter of a percent. King County, there’s a park levy. We get funds from the park levy. And then car tabs is another funding source that’s used for transportation. So there’s a wide variety, but the point really is is that these projects, they’re not really funded, they’re not funded by sales tax and property tax. They are funded usually with these types of funding sources because I do see on Facebook quite often it’s like well if the city’s struggling how can they have this capital project well it’s because it’s not really related this is capital projects aren’t day-to-day operations.

So the funding sources really it’s like they used to say follow the money. So with capital projects it has different funding sources than just the day-to-day operations of the general fund.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: So, are you saying that when you’re talking about this division of funds, are you saying that, for example, the city could have several million dollars in other places like SWIM or the marina or whatever, and still go bankrupt because the general fund is without funds?

JEFF FRIEND: Yeah, I think if – well I haven’t gone through a bankruptcy which is probably a good thing. So let me preface it with that. But I would say like our current audit so we just finished our audit. We don’t have any findings but the state auditors did mention that they were looking at it as a going concern which is not good. I think what I’m trying to clarify here is that how why there’s a misunderstanding that we could have $50 million in the city or a hundred million dollars. We could have millions and millions of dollars in some of these other funds but still the general fund because is could really have some difficulties. Right? That’s what I – it’s because the general fund is your day-to-day operation, right? And if that is underwater, then you can’t provide your day-to-day operations.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Would it be a correct statement to say as a super simple summary that operations pay for what people do and or excuse me, the general fund pays for what people do and the other stuff pays for things.

JEFF FRIEND: Yeah, I would say the general fund pays for services, right? So, parks programs, public safety, court, so it pays for the services, right? And then the projects aside from the marina and SWIM, the projects are funded for, basically like you said, things. So I assume that if your general fund were to go under and you don’t – is not no longer sustainable then whatever – you’d probably have projects to finish and then somebody else would be like I’d take that marina would take it maybe they take over the business but like I said I haven’t been through that so I don’t know if that’s the best answer.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Just trying to get some super simple summary of why there could be loss of money and you could still have problems, right?

JEFF FRIEND: Special revenue funds. Oh, sorry.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: But can you discuss chargebacks for services? So the marina for example, right?

JEFF FRIEND: Yes. So as I said there are separation between funds but the general fund like we said is services and the general fund provides services to the community but also provides services to other funds. So for example general fund provides accounting services to the marina. They don’t have their own finance department. So that would be one example of a service that we provide the marina. The marina pays us for that. So there is something that we call an indirect cost allocation. So we have a model that tracks a lot of different things and then we the general fund bills out for those services that it provides. So if the general fund is providing police services let’s say to the marina for whatever reason then the marina would pay for that. So there is a chargeback and I do believe that in the past that was controversial because it was viewed as one way the city was trying to sustain itself was by just charging the marina a bunch of money. But that was before we had the model we do now that was created by a consultant that we use that we can use because the auditors are also looking at that and so we can prove out the basis for what our chargebacks or charges for services are and what they’re based on.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: So, for an example, the replacement of the piers at the marina, okay, that requires permits. It requires, basic overhead and all that stuff. Where does that money go?

JEFF FRIEND: Well, they pay for permits. That goes to community development and most likely in the – well, it would go in the development fund, so it wouldn’t go in the general fund. And that what was the other part of the question besides the permits?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Well, there’s sales tax.

JEFF FRIEND: Yeah. So then the sales tax on a capital project if there’s a project in the city usually it’s not our own project though, but if somebody – Yeah. So there’s a difference between a city project – Well, maybe there’s not. A project that’s valued at $15 million or over in the permit process, that’s onetime tax. So we recognize that as like that’s not going to happen all the time. That’s not recurring. And so that comes into the general fund and we break that out and say that’s one time sales tax. I think the point you might be getting at is we don’t want to rely on one-time money because that’s also a bad practice in the past is like because if you want to sustain yourself in the general fund and the services you provide, you want to have a handle on what’s happening from day to day. And if you start relying on things that just kind of drop in your lap every so often, then you’re not going to be as sustainable because you’ll say, “Oh, well, we’re going to get like such and such amount of money one time next year.” And if it doesn’t show up, then you’re kind of you’ve relied on that to show up and you’ve planned to spend it and now it’s not there. So that’s why you want to plan to have like this is how much revenue we tend to get. So we want to have expenditures that line up with that. And if we get something that shows up for one time, which we did this year, we take it, but we don’t want to rely on it for just recurring level of services, if that makes sense.

SUSAN WHITE: I have a question. Goes back in time. But is so is the marina operate itself basically or does the city rely on any money from the marina for like the general fund or anything or is it self-sustaining?

JEFF FRIEND: It’s self-sustaining. I think the only transaction between the marina and the general fund is what we just discussed which is when they pay the general fund for services.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: So I’m sorry, but that was my point was that there’s fluidity here. It’s not a strict, everything that goes into the marina fund stays in the marina fund. Some of it comes back into the general or other funds based on these agreements we have across departmental.

JIM LAMPARIELLO: Jim can you speak a little bit to how particular taxes are associated with certain funds you know for instance when the real estate excise tax was passed was it passed with a restriction saying it can only be spent on capital projects or how does that get allocated?

JEFF FRIEND: Yeah. So, that and that kind of relates to what we’re about to talk about here. Is a lot of the money and it’s actually frustrating on my end to think because the state loves to do this. It’s like they hate cities having money for operations. So like you mentioned real estate excise tax, it can only be used for capital projects. So, I mentioned there’s two quarters of a percent. It’s a little confusing. So, they call it the first quarter. So they take a quarter of a percent and that’s restricted to capital projects and then they take another quarter of a percent and that’s similarly restricted to capital projects but that’s kind of more focused on parks. So we do collect that on a monthly basis and that goes into a capital projects fund. So that’s not part of the general fund or anything that goes into the capital projects fund because that’s what it’s meant for is for capital projects.

JIM LAMPARIELLO: Yeah, I think that’s what I was asking for clarification on when you say that’s what it’s meant for. Is that city law? Is that state law? Is that

JEFF FRIEND: That’s state law.

RICK LAYCOCK: Rick, I just want to go quickly back to the marina. So, the employees at the marina are not paid by the city. They’re self-sustained by what the marina brings in.

JEFF FRIEND: Well, they’re paid by the city, but their salaries and benefits are on the books of the marina. Okay. So it doesn’t come out of the general fund like these salaries and all that.

RICK LAYCOCK: No.

JEFF FRIEND: No, we have some employees that are split allocated across the variety of funds.

BILL LINSCOTT: Bill, just one question on the unique leasehold tax. Okay. So the leasehold tax gets charged probably in just a couple areas. The marina being one of them. And when it’s collected, it’s collected out of the marina. When it comes back to the city, does it go back to the marina or does it go into the general fund?

JEFF FRIEND: I think it goes into the general fund. Actually my memory is a little fuzzy on the percentages but yeah because the tenants I think it was not the tenants but yeah it actually does go to the state and then comes back I believe to the general fund because it’s the it’s taxed that’s paid to the city.

BILL LINSCOTT: So if we’re looking at a way to improve the revenue stream to the marina – I question why we wouldn’t just if they’re collecting the tax basically from them whatever piece of it makes it back to us why wouldn’t it go back into that enterprise fund it’s just something don’t give it a thought to I’m just looking for anything that sends money to the marina these days

JEFF FRIEND: Yeah. I don’t have an answer for that one.

AILEEN EVANS: So, just to clarify, the Marina employees, are – it comes out of their fund, their money, right? But their vacation, pay their insurance that they get all their benefits. Are those like taken from the city and then it’s a buyback, then you charge them that percentage to get the deal the best deal of insurance or whatever. So they’re I mean paying they’re basically paying their vacation.

JEFF FRIEND: So they’re subject to like the city’s policies, so whatever benefits there are that city employees get that. So they’re a city employee. They’re not an employee that’s charged to the general fund. So when we run a payroll, let’s say somebody works for surface water management and somebody works for the marina, there’s codes to our general ledger that takes their salaries and benefits and costs and puts them in those funds just directly. So there’s nothing going back and forth in regards to that.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay, no questions.

JEFF FRIEND: Okay, so special revenue funds. So talking about restrictions, special revenue funds tracks revenues that must be spent only for specific purposes required by law or policy. So the example of funds that we have would be the police drug seizure fund, the hotel motel tax fund, the affordable housing tax fund. PBPW stands for planning building public works automation fee. ASSE automated speed enforcement. So like lodging tax is collected by the hotels that has to that can only be spent on things that are related to tourism. Affordable housing tax must be spent on costs related to affordable housing. I think what we do with that money is we give it to a regional nonprofit SKIP. Yeah. Which you would know the full name South King. Yeah. Right. Which is about 30,000 a year. The automation fee when there’s like a permitting transaction at for community development. Our municipal code says it has to be spent on hardware software that supports the basically the software systems that they use for those departments. And then automated speed enforcement is the that is the school zone cameras and that would be focused on transportation. So we can’t take lodging tax and just do whatever. So these funds are separate from the general fund and because of they have external restrictions.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Can you explain with the automated traffic cameras? They don’t all go to the same funds.

JEFF FRIEND: Well, a lot of that. So, we can say like the Redondo speed enforcement cameras. So, those are restricted. They’re park zone cameras. They’re restricted by state law. And they’re basically they can what’s what they pay for is any costs related to the camera. They pay for any court costs related to the camera system and then there’s court costs for processing those tickets. They can pay for that and it can pay for like traffic safety capital work and so that can go to different funds.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: And so, where do the school zone cameras go to?

JEFF FRIEND: I think there hasn’t been much money in there because the 24th Street project. I think that would mainly go to other transportation projects as well.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: And then the red light cameras.

JEFF FRIEND: So, red light cameras are different because they’re older. And so before they had all these restrictions, those go right into the general fund and we get about a million dollars a year which is declining every year.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah. I just want people to understand that it doesn’t all go in the same direction. It goes everywhere.

JEFF FRIEND: Yeah. It goes everywhere. Yeah.

Okay. So those are the exciting funds. Now we have the boring funds. Debt service funds. It tracks money used to pay back city debt, both principal and interest. And essentially these funds collect the money from other funds to pay off the bonds, whatever bonds we have and I think we have a couple of small loans from like 20 years ago. But the examples we have is the 2018 LTGO and refunding bonds and the 2023 LTGO bonds.

So, right now we don’t have any money from the general fund going to pay off any of this debt. We did have a payment that was going from the general fund paying off part of the 2018 bonds, but last year when we worked on the budget, we moved that to real estate excise tax, because the general fund needed help. So, it didn’t make sense to send a quarter of a million dollars to this debt payment when we could do it with another source.

Internal service funds. So internal service funds they track the cost of services shared across city departments like IT, equipment or facilities. So these funds are provide services and they’re funded by other funds. So equipment rental operations, equipment rental replacement, that’s really the fleet funds. So equipment rental replacement, that’s all the cars that the city owns. And if public works has tractors or trucks, we set money aside, the city sets money aside here to fund replacing them and other fund facility repair. So that’s for repairs for city city facilities and computer equipment replacement. So when our computer stuff gets old, we’ve set money aside there as well to replace computers.

I think probably the most relevant thing I think as far as the city finances have gone has been the equipment replacement fund, the fleet fund because we had did have a global pandemic and different cities had different strategies for how to get through that and one of the city strategies was to not transfer like a million dollars from the general fund into that rental replacement fund, which is okay for a short-term strategy. But you also kind of dig yourself a hole. So long term you’re going to have to get caught up again. So we’ve started doing that the last couple years. This year it’s fully going to be fully funded. But that’s kind of like one of the strategies because the general fund was when your revenue disappears all of a sudden unexpectedly you need to do what you can. But the funds that put money aside, like the marina will put money into this fund for the vehicles the marina owns. And then when we have to replace a car, then that’s where the money would come from. So the police really are interested in this fund because they have a lot of vehicles.

JEFF FRIEND: And Jeff, we have a regular schedule now.

COUNCILMEMBER ACHZIGER: Yes. The police are following for replacement of police vehicles.

JEFF FRIEND: Yes. So that we never have vehicles going out of service that we can’t afford to fix.

COUNCILMEMBER ACHZIGER: Yeah. And the idea. Yes. And our new public works director and I we’re going to be working on a fleet management strategy next year. Because we do have a schedule but we also have to have priorities and just build some efficiencies in in some different areas where like maybe this department doesn’t need a car, that kind of thing. So, we’re going to be tackling that, next year.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Real quick, so when purchasing computers, vehicles, that kind of stuff, is that for everywhere, including the marina, so you’re not buying the marina, buying two cars, and then the city’s buying 50, right?

JEFF FRIEND: Yeah, that’s a good point that that’s true. And that brings up something that we’ve discussed in my department recently is so like I mentioned like the enterprise funds can’t support the general government but then you have the general fund and say the marina and surface water management putting money together into this fund but we can’t even then we have to keep that separate. So we can’t take money from the marina and buy a police car even if it’s living outside of those original funds if that makes sense.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: But you can buy Marina a vehicle when you’re purchasing other city vehicles, right?

JEFF FRIEND: So we can use the money the marina put in there to buy a Marina vehicle along with buying a police car with money from the general fund.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: And this is just curious just because it popped in my head, where do we do we have our own mechanics or do we send out all the maintenance and mechanical work for the police cars and all that?

JEFF FRIEND: We do have our own mechanics. One just retired. So we have one on staff, but I think there are times where they might, depending on what the issue is, go outside, but for at least the daily maintenance and repair, we have our own shop.

Okay. So just this slide again, now that we’ve gone through them, shows again the structure of the budget. So we have governmental funds that focus on just the general government which is the general fund, special revenue funds, debt service, capital projects and internal service and then enterprise funds or the marina and surface water management and they function as their own businesses.

And then where the money goes. So I felt bad I didn’t have any numbers to bring but I’m bringing at least to show like the current 2026 budget just to get an idea of what it looks like now. It’s not going to change all that much, honestly. But so here’s the general funds at the top. The 2026 budget has revenues budgeted about 26.4 million and expenditures about 26.2. And I like it when the budget has more revenue than expenditures in it. That’s what a good plan looks like. At least as far as plans go. Actuality might be different, but at least let’s plan to have some revenue.

Then all of those funds underneath are special revenue funds. So you can see you got street maintenance and street pavement. And the development fund. The development fund is kind of like the community development department and that’s anything that’s based on people paying fees is captured there. Police drug seizure fund. So if the police get some money from a drug dealer, it goes in that fund. And we report to the state quarterly on those transactions. There’s really not that much activity. Hotel motel tax fund and then oh we’re going to talk about parking.

So the question was about the marina and parking. So, the state auditors way back when, and I not a big fan of auditors, but essentially what they said was the parking lot on the north side of the marina, like out to the north bulkhead in the pier out there, that’s not marina business is what they said. So, the marina can’t support that. In Redondo, that area, that’s also not the marina. So we were required to separate that from the marina. And so we so the parking revenue for the new parking systems that revenue is accounted for in these two funds that are the waterfront zone and the redondo zone. So that’s where it’s initially comes in. The code does allow us, the municipal code allows us to transfer money from the waterfront zone into the general fund if we choose and we might be choosing to do that. But we’ll see in the budget amendments for this year. Also if there’s a marina person who goes out and works in the parking lot or something then their time is charged their salary is charged for those hours in these funds. I’ve heard complaints about this, but there’s not much we can we can’t keep. We can’t fold them back into the marina. The state would not allow us to do that.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay. So, who when you say somebody came, was it the state auditor that comes and kind of defines what the city has then as an enterprise fund? Because what you’ve got are Marina people actually servicing both these, right? And do they have the ability to come in and define our own enterprise funds or is that our decision and one we made about breaking those out and then supporting it with that?

JEFF FRIEND: It’s I mean they audit us. They can make that determination. So if they determine that that parking lot I mean we can argue with them and I have argued with them on other topics but if they say the parking lot has nothing to do with mortgage. It has nothing to do with the marina’s actual business and purpose. I mean they can make that determination. You can try to fight them but I mean they have the but basically they would they I’m just really surprised they have that kind of authority. They can audit you and then define your structure.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: We could ignore them and get findings every year.

JEFF FRIEND: No, you don’t want to do that. Not really my preference, but

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay. Thank you.

JEFF FRIEND: So Jeff, as you know, the state law says that we have to have a balanced budget. So every year we have a balanced budget. Yet folks believe that we don’t have a balanced budget. Can you address why we still have a balanced budget even though we might be projecting into the future that we need to raise more revenue?

JEFF FRIEND: Yeah, I think for me personally when I hear balanced budget, my expectation just personally is that your revenues at least match your expenditures like in a way that you’re breaking even. However, that’s not really how it’s defined as far as like the state law and everything goes. A balanced budget basically means we’re not spending more than we have. So, if you have, let’s say you have a million dollars and you do a budget and your budget says, well, I’m going to have $500,000 of revenue and I’m going to spend $5 million. Then you’ve spent past what your revenue and your reserves are and so that’s not balanced. But as far as my perspective is is I don’t especially in our financial situation now I don’t want to I hate seeing a at least a budget where our expenditures are more than our revenue and I know Katherine feels the same way. Because I think if you look back at Yeah, there’s some budgets in the recent past that well they’re they were technically balanced but I don’t know if I would have been happy working on it if that makes sense. But the last few years we’ve gotten much closer to having revenues and expenditures equal at least as a minimum. But it’s hard when when you have revenue issues. It’s really the revenue side that’s been just frustrating. But we’re doing everything we can to make sure our expenditure stayed within. I mean, it’s like you don’t want to live above your means.

SUSAN WHITE: So the city, do we have reserves like because we’re close it looks like on revenues and expenditures. What kind of reserves does the city have?

JEFF FRIEND: Yeah. So, are we required to have x number of reserves?

So, I think one thing that’s comes up a lot in council meetings is discussion of they we refer to the 16.67%. And that is in the code. It’s based on a best practice and what it is is the government finance offices association which actually is a big deal in finance for us. The best practice is that you have enough what they call fund balance which is like equity in your house. So that that number is high enough that you can cover two months of your operating expenditures. So 16.67% is really just two of 12 months. So we have tracked that and we have been right at 16.67 at the end of last year. But we’re also trying to shift the focus from fund balance because like equity in your house is like or in your personal finances like every all of your assets less whatever money you owe and that’s your fund balance. But we want to we shifted our accounting to focus on cash because really that’s what you have on hand. And so it’s been a little frustrating for our department because our fund balance is fine at 16.67 but our cash is much lower and cash is only one piece of that fund balance and so but it’s held to the same standard. So our cash we have typically we’ve I think we ended the year last year at like $2.8 million and that is less than 16.67%. I think it was down at like 12 or 11%. I think halfway through this year we were at like 8.2%. for cash. But one of the things we’re looking at with the midbiennial review and what actually what Katherine really impressed me with was looking at our cash because we still had a deficit with cash, but even though our revenues and expenditures matched and we were like, well, okay, well, we should be okay. She looked at the cash and was like, we really need to build the we have to have some cash on hand. So, we that’s one of the priorities of of what we’ve done with working on the budget review is is to make some cuts so that our our cash can grow because I mean there’s been times where because of our cash flow because most of our cash is property tax comes in April and October. So, usually when it gets to be late September, I’m like, “Oh, I hope we can make payroll, which is kind of scary and stressful.” This year was okay. But I mean it’s it’s a roller coaster and if we had more cash like we did a few years ago, well then it wouldn’t be as stressful and and we’d have plenty of reserves.

BARTON DELACY: Jeff, could you explain what the development fund just how that works? There’s revenue allocated to it or does it generate money and then what is it spent on?

JEFF FRIEND: Okay. So, that there’s two pieces to that fund, which is engineering and community development. And it it’s the revenue is like permit fees from projects. So, if you have a large project that’s like $50 million, they get a substantial amount of revenue. And I believe it was designed and separated out from the general fund so that it could when development activity increases, we have staff in place. And I think the idea is then when it decreases then we decrease the costs as well. So that’s kind of like the revenue comes from those permit. In fact we call it like fee based. It’s all those fees come in and then it’s spent on plan review and everything related to development and whatnot.

BARTON DELACY: So, how would the Masonic Lodge property and demolition, how would those monies impact that or have they or does that show up here at all?

JEFF FRIEND: I would say as far as the the EIS or the study that went that that’s paid for by the developer. And so what they did, and this was my predecessor, which I’m glad because I don’t know if I would have known this, but she made sure they prepay. So whenever there’s expenses related to that and EIS, it’s coming out of money that we took from the developer. And if we get down to zero, I have a guy who monitors that. We get close to zero, we give them a call and say, “We need more money before you do anything else.” So that’s kind of how that’s managed.

So, your next probably slide or somewhere down the line or you might be talking about how we’re going to be looking at other revenue sources and I think between the council and you guys that you’ve been really exceedingly creative in generating new revenue sources as well as reducing expenses even if that meant some jobs were cut. What’s your overall kind of like assessment of ideas that are going to be popping up in the city, addressing how to raise more revenue?

JEFF FRIEND: Well, I think it’s council’s assessment that matters actually. Yeah, that is one thing we’re working on. I don’t have a slide for it, but I did mention that just lack of revenue is an issue just in general for any city right now. As far as Yeah, there were I think around 10 or a couple more ideas that were brought to council that were ideas and they’ve asked to hear more about them. And that’s kind of where that’s would stand. Not all of them would benefit the general fund directly. Forgetting some of them off the top of my head, but yeah, but we are looking at the revenue side. and we have been looking at cutting costs as well. I mean we looking at both.

Okay. Next slide is just more of the balances for the different funds. And I mentioned the debt service fund. Really money just goes in there and goes out at the same amount because it’s just paying making a debt payment. There you can see the real estate first and second quarter percentages. That’s actually interesting to get the report. We get a report from the county basically listing all the property transactions for the month. That is slowing down a bit. We did a lot of other cities declined in their REET over the last year and a half. We kind of held steady and are declining a little bit now. So I I’m actually encouraged on that that side of things and that of course is money for capital projects park levy onetime tax revenues. So in the code we have what I mentioned if projects are valued at $15 million or more we break that out if we had more financial resources what we’re supposed to do is transfer that money from the general fund into this one-time tax revenue fund. But we’ve actually had to rely on that staying in the general fund the last few years. Then you have the two big funds are the municipal capital improvements and transportation capital improvements. So that really handles most of the projects as compared to the other funds. And as I mentioned we roll all of that up into one fund. So if you look at our annual financial statements you’ll see one capital project fund. But as far as managing all the different pieces that’s why we kind of have it set up this way.

Marina has about 5.9 budgeted million budgeted for 2026 in revenue, 5.7 in expenditures. And the SWIM surface water management fund about 7.3 million in revenue and about 7.3 in expenditures. And then the other ones are internal service funds. You can see equipment rental replacement fund, which is where the fleet lives. It’s about $1.3 million in revenue and then expending a little bit more, but that’s okay. If we’re buying cars, we’re setting money aside. That’s more of a what we in accounting call a timing issue.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Earlier you had that 25,000 over five years and this 15 million. Is that something that’s set by the state? Is that based on the size of your city or is that the exact same number no matter if you’re King County or Des Moines?

JEFF FRIEND: That’s set by the city. So that’s determining what a capital asset or project is is really just our judgment. And then the $15 million that was just set in the code. I can’t remember what year, several years ago. I think it might have been like even 2007. I can’t remember the exact year but many years ago. that was just set I think in 2014 at 15 million. We did we during we had a finance committee where we did discuss different aspects of the one-time tax because we haven’t been sending it over from the general fund. And perhaps 15 million is an old number. Maybe we need to adjust that for inflation to make it Yeah, that’s realistic considering inflation. Yeah, there’s a lot of numbers in the that we actually been updating this year and taking the council saying this is 30 years old maybe we should update this to what where inflation as is now.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: So if that was the case then wouldn’t the number go down that you would charge more for you would charge sooner rather than at 15 million wouldn’t it go down

JEFF FRIEND: No so if it was a project that was valued at 15 million say 10 years ago then it would the inflation due to inflation is probably about 20 million now. So we’d want to value the project at 20 million. So it’s just really just the inflation factor on there.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: So if you would only start billing them at 20 million. Is that what you’re saying?

JEFF FRIEND: Well, I’m just making this up. This has not gone to council. Let me explain that first. This is hypothetical. But yes, 15 million. So if we say all projects at 15 million in 2014, we should consider that one time because that doesn’t happen a lot. We would and we wanted to adjust it to inflation now. Then we would say, well, the projects that don’t happen often are the ones that are over 20 million because maybe 15 to 20 is now more common than they used to be due to inflation.

DEPUTY MAYOR STEINMETZ: All right, we’re an hour into the meeting and we still have two other presentations to go.

JEFF FRIEND: Okay, I think I’m about done. You’re fine. I think just one more slide. Yeah.

So what to expect with the midbiennial review. We do have some additional onetime revenue that will show up in the general fund, which I’m very thankful for, but doesn’t mean we’re relying on it. Reduced revenue. Some of our revenue in the general fund that we projected out was a bit high. So we are going to be reducing that and also we are reducing some budgeted expenditures and outside the general fund really the main thing that happens with the other funds is we align it with the capital improvements plan which is a plan for the next five six years on all the capital projects the city has on its radar and that actually goes will be presented at the next council meeting at the committee of a whole and then we’ll go to two readings meetings at regular meetings after that in November and December. And if you ever want to know like how a project is funded, you can go to the website to the finance department and we have a link to the capital improvements plan and you can go in there and there’s a project number for every project and you can find a page for just that project and it’ll show you all the funding sources. So that is handy. And then that is the end of my presentation. Any additional questions?

[Applause]

DEPUTY MAYOR STEINMETZ: Thank you.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: The one-time funds that are coming into the general fund. What are those going to be used for or potentially recommended that they be used for?

JEFF FRIEND: Do you mean recommended as part of the midbiennial review. Well, they’ve already so in the budget already they’re staying in the general fund and we’re not recommending anything different.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Would they be used to fund one-time purchases out of the general fund? Or could they go into cash reserves or do they just how do we keep how do we avoid relying on one-time revenue in the general fund?

JEFF FRIEND: Well, I think one answer is we build our cash. So that we don’t have to rely on that. So I would say yeah, the if you look at our forecast, we have a section broken out that shows the onetime revenues and onetime expenditures that they pay for. So, I don’t have it off the top of my head all the different items, but there’s different like sound transit items because we have some onetime sound transit money, but that we do have our forecast that we present with the budget that shows the expenditures that are onetime along with the revenues that are onetime.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay, thanks. That’s what I remembered, but I want to make sure everybody understood that.

RICK LAYCOCK: Rick, real quick on the biennial budgeting process. So, every two years then, does the city do a zerobased budget from the ground up with by department head or something?

JEFF FRIEND: We don’t do zero. So, zerobased is when you just start with zero. I know the city of Auburn is doing that now, which caught Katherine’s attention. I think she’s intrigued. But we haven’t done that yet. But you take what you have and yeah what that’s what we have been doing. But who knows what’ll happen next year.

DEPUTY MAYOR STEINMETZ: Hey thank you very thank you Jeff.

[Applause]

And we have a strategic plan update from Colleen.

COLLEEN GANTS: Hi everybody. Well, luckily Jeff gave us an overview at the beginning of the meeting of the strategic plan update. So, I was going to ask if you could pull up slide number five, Tara, if you have a second. Okay. Because that we’ll just build off of that. Okay. Oh, yeah. He already gave her presentation, so I was like I kind of thought I was going to do these slides, honestly. But that’s okay. Because we’ll just focus on this and I have kind of an old-fashioned and get ready you’re going to participate a little bit. So I know no just sitting and listening for this one and it’s going to be a short update. So we’ll get out hopefully before 8 because we still have our committee reports to do. So I have five items to go over with you today and I’ll just go through them pretty quick.

So, as you heard from Jeff all about the strategic plan, the city needs our help in the community engagement piece and you all represent neighborhoods all over the city of Des Moines and so you’re a fabulous resource for that. And I sent this document out before, but I’m going to pass out a copy to everyone with a little bit of highlighting on it. And this is our charting our course. You heard the name of the strategic plan. This is our volunteer plan. So everyone can get a copy of that and it gives a little background on the strategic plan that you can read at your leisure. And then opportunities for we as community citizen advisory board members to help and volunteer.

And I made an assumption here that we and ask for you that we might all give about seven hours of our time to the strategic plan. And some of you were able to come last week to a brainstorm session which I really appreciate. I know some tried to get there and weren’t able to and tried to log on and various different things. So we had about half the group and I’m going to share some of the information that we came up with there. We’re not going to meet again. We are on kind of a fast track here. The survey to go out to the community of Des Moines is going out next week. And so part of our community engagement work will be giving people access to that survey and then just making sure they know that we’re even doing this effort in the first place because a lot of people as you can imagine have no clue. And then it’s really hard to get in community engagement in the world of community engagement. It’s hard to get people involved in a strategic plan because it’s so nebulous and out there in the future and it’s hard, as opposed to building a new road or a new marina or something that seems so tangible.

So real quick, community engagement, for this strategic plan, there are I had written up some draft goals. Katherine wrote back and said, those are great, but after we had the focus groups that many of you participated in and then the recent brainstorm we had, she said, really our three main goals, and sorry I don’t have them perfectly worded because I couldn’t find her email, but they’re very easy to remember. The first one is to give everyone in the city of Des Moines a voice in the strategic plan. So, we want anyone who wants to to be able to express what they want to see in the strategic plan. and this the city’s vision for the future. The second thing is to reach out to those who historically maybe aren’t as likely to get engaged in this. All of us, we might get an email and we’ll just go ahead and do the survey. Others maybe that’s not maybe English is not their first language or maybe they don’t know much about the city of Des Moines. They don’t haven’t been involved before so they just kind of pass or it gets stuck in their spam filter or whatever it is. But we really want to take a little effort to reach people who are normally maybe hard to reach or historically underserved. That type of thing. And then the third goal would be to reach people with kids. Thanks Alyson for representing that group. But some of us express that we don’t see the kids around all that much. They’re in the school and all that, but we want to make sure that if we’re doing a plan for the future that of course it includes things that parents and kids would be also interested in for our city. So, those are the three goals for community engagement.

And as you can see on the volunteer plan, we’re looking here at the bottom of page one, it’s just a page one and two, we’re looking for your help. So, I mentioned the survey that’s going to be out in November. We also have a few priority events and I’ll just take a moment to say when I get to the brainstorm that we just did, we got a whole bunch of great ideas and I’m going to pass around sheets for you to add a couple other ideas. We’re not able to do all of those things, but there’s no bad ideas. We collected a lot of great ways that we can reach the community, but we had to make a few priorities. And and the ones that Katherine asked that we prioritize would be the holiday market, which is on November 8th. So, that’s coming up real soon. That’s our first event. Where we’re going to be offering some staffing of the booth, the Des Moines booth at the farmers market, holiday market. I’ll tell you how we’re going to do that in a second. And then, the tree lighting event on December 6. And then some possible popup booths at, large apartment complexes on Pacific Highway. And that that would reach that group that’s sometimes hard to reach. That would be one of the ways we do that. All of these actually would would do that. And then popups at both library branches.

And the final would be some really getting into the school advertising. And so we’re using Does anyone remember the name of the thing that we have to use?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes, Peach Jar.

COLLEEN GANTS: Thank you. Yeah, there is a method called peach jar that reaches the schools and we’re going to use that to get the word out through the schools mostly.

So those are the ways we’re going to be organized in our community engagement. But the second piece is that we’re also going to ask you all to really push this out through your networks. So, starting with your neighborhoods and, I call them, what do we call them? Micro events or, organizations that, your book club, your chess club, the different things that you participate in to really let those people know about the strategic plan.

So, let’s see. We, so Jeff’s update, city needs our help volunteer plan. Last week, some of us got together. So, what we did, we had boards all around the room and people were just full of ideas and things last week and, so some of the the four things we talked about were ways to reach out to our own neighborhoods. So, I’m going to pass this sheet around. This summarizes our ideas that were up on the board. There was people from Adriana, Judson Park, Marina District has monthly neighborhood group meetings. About 160 people go to those things, I guess. There’s an email blurb that they do, neighborhood emails through Redondo. We heard about community associations, boardwalks on sunny weekend days, things like that. So I’m going to pass this around and if you’re from one of the neighborhoods that wasn’t there or even if you were there, feel free to add, but I’m just going to pass this and just quietly have you jot down a few things that your neighborhood does. I’ll pass it this way first and then I’ll pass the next one that way so that we can be efficient.

BETTINA CAREY: The park run is a Saturday event that leads to the quarter deck. Why wasn’t it chosen as a popup?

COLLEEN GANTS: It wasn’t one of the priority events that Katherine noted, but it definitely is on our list. So, that is the next one, Bettina. So, I think it’s listed on one of these things. The park run is definitely one of the events that we would like to do. And so if we decide that’s something we want to set up, what we’re going to do is next week, on the 5th or 6th, we’ll have an optional I I’ll send you out a one pager about how we’re going to what what the city needs from us, what we’re supposed to be saying, our key messages and things, and what our toolkit, what you can expect if you want to do a popup at the park run, then what we’ll bring for you, the table, the handouts, all the things. And then we’ll have an optional meeting next week on the 5th or 6th. I was going to ask you which day is better to kind of do a mini training and walk through of what’s we’re supposed to be saying. You don’t have to go the cheat sheet will be enough for you, but thank you for bringing that up. So, under the that category, clubs and organizations outreach, we have another question.

MAGDALENA HERRERA: Are is the survey going to be available in other languages or only English?

COLLEEN GANTS: Yes, it will be available in other languages. I don’t know all those languages. Actually Katherine asked she was asking about how we decide what languages to do, and it’s based on the demographics of the city, but I know Spanish is for sure big in Des Moines. And I think she’s got access to that through the city somehow.

MAGDALENA HERRERA: And my other question is, is there anything happening virtually that people can join virtually?

COLLEEN GANTS: Yeah. No, that is a good question. Like an online open house because there because you probably saw in here also there’s a December 9th open house at Des Moines Elementary, but a lot of people can’t make it, don’t know about it. It’s much more convenient to be online. Right now, I don’t know of anything online, but thank you for asking that question and I’ll make sure to ask that. And by the way, Barton is my co-chair on the strategic planning community engagement. So if you have any questions for him, too. I am going to pass this she this direction. Clubs and organizations outreach. So daycare she just left, but she’s able to reach all the daycares not just her own. The yacht club, legacy, micro groups like the book clubs, mom’s stroller walks, park run, Saturday mornings, Rotary, senior activity center, things like that. So, if you could think of a couple other ideas, go ahead and list those out.

How are we doing on time? Okay, good. The other thing we talked about was

MAGDALENA HERRERA: More of a question coming. Are we open to also not necessarily an event, but to park at businesses that we know targeted people of color, different languages that people will visit, not an event, but it’s just like like a cookie. What is it? The Girl Scouts cookie stand.

COLLEEN GANTS: Yeah. Like they do that. That is a popup. That’s exactly it. That’s what’s referred to when you say popup is like a t usually a table somewhere that the organization will let you set up and with information and we’ll have a QR code for people to scan if they want to take it. And so then and access the different languages as well. But that question was perfect to get into this one. Unique places to reach hard-to-reach or underserved communities. So, to answer your question or I’d like to get your input, Magdalena and others in the room, for places some of them that are listed here, the apartment complexes on Pacific Highway, I mentioned churches, condos, Des Moines food bank, dollar store, Highline College, libraries, post office, private schools, public schools, St. Philomena, Woodmont, YMCA’s, things like that that might have people who who speak different languages, immigrants, various different populations that we don’t normally reach. I always like to say you cast the net wide first. Like it’s easy, what’s the easy thing? Like sending out an email to people and reaching big groups like that. And then you really focus in on the groups that are harder to reach and you have to put a little extra effort in there. So these are this that’s going around kind of represents those extra effort areas. And then finally, the other one I’m going to pass this way is where would you like to volunteer? So those of us who were there are listed here. What was kind of easy for us and something that would we would like to do? So, I’m going to pass this around the room also for you to have

AUDIENCE MEMBER: You already got clearance from the library.

COLLEEN GANTS: We have not gotten clearance from the libraries as far as I know.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Oh, all right. Do you have an in?

COLLEEN GANTS: No, but I would go there.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay, we will get we will get

COLLEEN GANTS: Okay. So, should I just go ahead and say

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Sure. If you’d like to be at the library.

COLLEEN GANTS: Yeah, that would be great. Any questions so far? More questions? Yes.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: This is going to take a lot of work and I think that it’s admirable that everybody’s taking this on. The one thing is that the old saying kill two birds with one stone. One of the things that we do have and the fact that we’re having to go out and do all of this leg work is that we don’t we don’t have a newspaper. We don’t have a communication effort going on but we do have the email list which I believe is up to about 7,000. Yes, that will go out. So I think it would behoove us to have an element of this whole thing is that you’re whatever you’re doing, you’re trying to sign people up to that email list. So in the future this will be much easier. But if we’re having to put in the effort to go out and and talk to people and get them involved. Yeah. Get them on that list.

COLLEEN GANTS: So, okay. Thank you. Thank you. I I was collecting emails and had a hard time reading their their writing.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: What am I going to say? Print.

BILL LINSCOTT: I have to call on Bill first. Yeah. Go ahead. No, no, go ahead. No. So in the in the meeting we had last week we talked about a couple of scripts that helped us in two ways maybe two of them. One would be a script so the communication is consistent complete that would accompany the the personal message like through an email you’re sending send it out and the other was was more of a script you might follow in a conversational sense at a table in discussing make sure you got the points. So, so are we close to having those scripts so when the it comes out we’re ready to start firing?

COLLEEN GANTS: Absolutely, Bill. Thank you for bringing that up. As a matter of fact, Katherine Carbone Rogers, some of you know her very well. She is doing some communication for the city. So, she’s writing those as we speak and we’ll have those ready next week to email out to all of you and then also kind of a game plan that in addition to the two training or the one training meeting that we’re going to offer optional so you’ll have it. Yep. Next week.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: So, this goes along the line that I you got me thinking about is in order to get a message out, in order to communicate well about the topic, what the the purpose you really need to have some good marketing materials. Yes. And it sounds like you’ve got someone in communications. Yes. And I’m I would be really interested because I’m having a hard time putting together the pieces. Yes. Yes. And trying to solidify what the hell are we doing? Right. Right. Just putting a fact sheet together. A a fact sheet, but also a description of what is charting the course mean. Okay. Where what course are we going on? Why are we going on it? And what are we going to do with it? Okay. And and so that to me That’s great. The purpose, the vision. Yeah. Right. The vision. Purpose. Right. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

COLLEEN GANTS: That’s I just real quick I just got to mention the that’s the whole idea of the strategic plan is that we’re gathering from the ground up and then so the story isn’t done. So you can’t really tell people ahead of time is something you’re working on it and then the strategic plan will be the story book of how you want your city to look and what you want to spend money on. So capture that

So, and I wasn’t able to be a part of this, but this was very helpful what you’re passing around. So, my first thought and hope, maybe you’ve gone over this, but I mean, I would totally be willing if you had a flyer that said that had the code and had all this information. And if you’ve missed the survey, you can go to city hall and get a copy and drop it after hours through a slot or whatever. Or these locations, go here, go that and put it at B&E meets, put it at Annie Irene, put it up in the highway in in places that people are regularly going, whether it’s the Starbucks by Fred Meyer or whatever. It’s just a good way to get a whole different variety of people, I think. Maybe all places. Yeah, I’m sorry. Oh, sorry. Yeah. Places of business like Merkantile like like Quarter Deck, all the places that people populate and you could get a whole group talking right there.

COLLEEN GANTS: Absolutely. Yeah. Conversation starters. So, you bring up a good point, Aileen. I think also we will have available hard copy surveys so to to take so in case someone’s not comfortable doing the QR code they could fill the take it home and it’ll have a place to drop it off will definitely need yeah we’d like that

SUSAN WHITE: Yeah so it’s pretty quick and it probably does sound like a lot of work so we’re going to keep it pretty that’s why we have to focus and have some priority events because we can’t do it all if we had a longer amount of time. It would be great. We even missed the deadline for the magazine that comes out. Is it called Currents or something?

COLLEEN GANTS: Yeah. Oh, so the survey will be done about I think it’s like December 15th, 13th, 15th something. Yeah. So, it’s only live for a little while and then they have Tara. Oh, yeah. No, I can do this myself. Right here the timeline. So you can kind of see fall and early winter, that’s all the time we had. It’s not a lot. So it’ be concentrated. Yeah. So this is the engagement up here on the slide. And then it the reason we have to get that done is because then in early 2026 they’re going to have the strategic planning workshops with staff and council. So we have to have our part kind of done by then. Spring 2026. the framework and finalized strategic and implementation plan. I mean they are working fast and then it’s going to be done on in summer of next year.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: So will we have any kind of like a pre-meeting or pre-information that kind of gives us an idea of what we’re going to be doing that’s very difficult.

COLLEEN GANTS: Yes. So, next week, early next week, by at the latest, I’ll send you like a one-pager about our work, the what you’re assigned to, what the community engagement is going to be like, and then I will offer you an optional kind of community engagement. It’s not really, I mean, training. You don’t really need training, but like just kind of overview, roleplay, kind of that sort of thing on either the fifth or sixth next week. Does anybody know about their calendars? like if the fifth or the sixth is better.

AILEEN EVANS: It’s after the election.

COLLEEN GANTS: Yeah. So, we I’ll send that out to you all. Okay. So, I I am really pretty much done with my update because I really want to turn it over to the committees now and get you all out of here. Just real quick, what was the December 15th date?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: That was the date when this survey ends.

COLLEEN GANTS: It ends. And when will it be available to start handing out or people to start filling out?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Oh, next week.

COLLEEN GANTS: Yeah. It it launches next week. I don’t have an exact date, but it is after the election. So, because we don’t want to get it mixed up with all that. So, election’s over, then we send out the survey or make it available. It’s open and you’ll be able to access it through the Des Moines city web page.

BETTINA CAREY: Thanks for doing all

COLLEEN GANTS: Sure thing. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Bettina, did you have a question?

BETTINA CAREY: Yes. Colleen, just from my notes, you stayed really well saying that there’s three things and then one is community engagement. I made up that it was two and three was the workshop and counts and so can you priority events or originally you talked about not the goals you just said there there’s three priorities not the goals but just before that priority engagement was the first one.

COLLEEN GANTS: Yep. No, that that those were the goals. Community engagement goals and then there’s several priority events where I use the term priority is related to the events the holiday market on 8th. Yeah. So, sorry if I wasn’t clear on that.

BETTINA CAREY: Okay. Okay. Thank you.

DEPUTY MAYOR STEINMETZ: All right. Thank you very very much, Colleen. You’ve done a heck of a job. That’s amazing. And Tara is our liaison, by the way. She’s doing amazing. And Barton the co-chair.

And now item four are the subcommittee reports. Any subcommittee volunteering to go first?

CORRINE ANDERSON-KETCHMARK: Human services committee. Human services subcommittee and most of us are here tonight. We had a meeting what was it early this month and our agenda was to do our work plan do the assignment that you all gave us and we’ve been working on that. We’ve got a draft so far. The other is that Gene threw us a little bit of a wrench to tell us to go look and find out about SCORE and SKIP and see if that’s something we might want to look at in terms of some kind of configuration. But it that’s really something that’s out of our scope because we don’t have the capacity to do that. we were we’re we’re planning to do is just make a recommendation to the city council to take a look at that. And so we’re we’re in the process of charting our own course because we while we have a charge from the past, we don’t know what the the future is going to be in terms of what our role is. And that’s kind of what we’re in search of. And so we’ll have a meeting November 12th and we’ll discuss and it’s a it’s a lively group. We have lots of great ideas and people chime in with really good good comments. So that’s kind of what we’re up to at this point. So we have a draft and we’re going to work from there. See where we go.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Services. kind of the same plan. We don’t have anything formerly I’m sure not not sure we’re that far along with a planned per se other than to schedule initially meetings at the Adriana Judson Park and Wesley to distribute the survey and and encourage the participation of those communities in the survey. We’re kind of waiting. Randy isn’t with us tonight. We were going to sort of use Adriana as a as a guinea pig, kind of go in there to see meet with the administrator, find out kind of what we need to what would work, what would not work, launch it there and then go to Judson Park and, Wesley after that within the time frame. And then going forward, we see our role as periodically to meet with those bodies and and kind of report out what what the CAB’s doing, what what what the implementation may be of the strategic plan and of course we have the comprehensive plan along with it and sort of being a liaison to be able to explain those things.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Have you guys thought about the senior lunch service and that this this at the at the activity center.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes. Yes. I guess that’d be a fourth leg.

VICTORIA ANDREWS: Question. We’re going to save you a lot of time. Eddie and I both live at Wesley. We can handle Wesley. So, concentrate on Judson Park and the senior center and we’ll take it from there.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: We’ll do. Thank you. Awesome. And we might throw I don’t know Huntington Park I know was on the list and that would be one where we’ll have to figure out how we could meet with with their group.

VICTORIA ANDREWS: Yes. Huntington Park and I thought right if you could let us know Eddie we’ll we’d love

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah. Okay. Okay. I think you’ve both got my emails if and and Aileen and I. So if you have any ideas like that, just contact us.

DEPUTY MAYOR STEINMETZ: Last but not least, arts

JEFF CROMPE: Arts. Rocking the arts. Yes, indeed. So to tag on to a little bit, we had a lot of things that we’ve discussed and we’ve had. Our next meeting is next week. By the end of this week, we’ll probably have all the contracts back for the bands for next summer. Just to give you a little teaser because we wanted it. We’re We missed getting this out in the currents, but our opening band is going to be Spike and the Impalers. I’m not kidding. For those of you who’ve been around, they’ve been around 25 years. They’re a 70s 80s cover band. I went to their last concert in Puyallup in August. By their official people, they said there was about 3,000 people there. So, we’ve got them. The next concert is a a country and western gal named Kitty May that she covers Bonnie Raitt, Carrie Underwood, Dolly Parton, a number of those like that. So that and she’s young and I went and to a concert of hers or a thing that she did at a tavern down in Sumner. Our next group is going to be Nightwaves who was here this year. Yeah. So everybody knows them. They wanted that. The next one’s going to be Abigail. They they’ve been here before. I just went to their concert at Muckleshoot last Thursday and they had people rolling from their first song of Waterloo to the end of Dancing Queen. And then the f the fifth concert is Stevie and the Blue Flames. Charlene and I and Rick just went to them. They were at Creole Soul last Saturday night. They’re a blues band. Stevie is a guy I’ve known for 45 years. He’s former Washington State Blues Harmonica player of the year. He’s traveled nationally and internationally. And then we’re ending the summer concert with a group called Power of Love, which is a Huey Lewis cover band. Yeah. So, so those will some of them already sent their contracts back. So, yeah, we’re going to look at the we’re relooking at the food trucks for next year. And what we’re going to try to do is something like when we do the Stevie and the Blue Flames, that’s kind of a Louisiana based thing. So, we’re going to have Creole Soul’s going to be there to kind of give that that theme. When we have the country gal, we’re going to try and do that flavor. Yeah. That flavor. And then like when the when the country gal is there, we’re going to try and do some barbecue and that kind of thing. Squidarama, just so you know, that that’s Saturday, November 29th. It’s down at the beachfront. auditorium. In the past, the arts commission had kind of run that, but the arts commission, as we know, was kind of decimated over the last couple years. So, Highline College and the MAST Center, which is the Marine and Technology Center, they’ve taken it over. Our participation this year is going to be to provide three prizes for them. And the next thing is the arts and sculpture thing, which Charlene and Eddie have been doing. So, I’m going to turn it over to Charlene to kind of tell you some things and something that we just did today.

CHARLENE BACALZO: Wow. Well, just today we cleaned up American Venus. She was in the weeds and literally and out of commission for a few years now. and Fred Andrews who has been our mentor and educating us on the art commission duties. We procured a garage through with Tara I’m sure and Katherine’s help at the marina where we then were the muscle today. Well, these two especially, Eddie and I, more. Anyway, we cleaned her up because Fred did discover and when he started looked at her after all these years, that she was power coated, powder coated. So, the cleanup was really with 409 and elbow grease and SOS pads. And she looks sparkling clean now. and we will be placing her probably at the south end of the marina where those sculptures are. We’ll be the art commission has committed to paying for the plinth and the cleanup of course was all volunteer and the plinth will really which is the cement base of its structure. it will be done by, I know a guy. So, yeah, that’ll happen. And, and then moving forward, well, just on Monday, Eddie and I went and checked out all of the sculptures in our city and Redondo. And, so we kind of assessed their needs as based on fewer than we thought need new plat, very few, in fact. They’re all looking really good. There were two we couldn’t find at Redondo and we learned from Fred today, Fred today that they no longer exist. They’re like gone. So, a new map will be created and our goal is to have that all set up with the new map for the April event which is an international sculpture walk day which is the I think it’s the third or fourth Saturday in April and that’s around the world that particular. So, that’s where we’re at.

[Applause]

DEPUTY MAYOR STEINMETZ: There anything else for the good of the order? We got 20 minutes left. Or I could take a motion.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Oh, I move that we I move that You’re so good. I just move that we end the evening.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Second that.

DEPUTY MAYOR STEINMETZ: All in favor? I opposed.

Thank you.

[End of meeting]

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