Some bits of business…
Future Agendas is the closest thing the City currently has to a calendar of upcoming City Council topics. It’s not dynamic, ie. you have to click it every time you want to see a new version. And it’s not always accurate. But until we develop a genuine calendar, this can be very useful if there is a particular issue you don’t want to miss.
I don’t feel tardy
This article was delayed by… life. Yeah, yeah, that’s the ticket. The 80’s called and want all their catch-phrases back. They can’t have them. But these meetings are so action-packed, its still worth a read.
The Election
November 2025 General Election Results – King County, Washington
- In Des Moines, congratulations to Gene Achziger (unopposed), Robyn Desimone (unopposed), Harry Steinmetz and Pierre Blosse.
- Our new King County Councilmember District #5 is Steffanie Fain (two ‘f’s 🙂
- Girmay Zahilay is the new King County Executive
- Sen. Tina Orwall (unopposed)
- Edwin Obras House Rep. Position #1
- Blaine Holien Highline School District #5 (unopposed) In fact, all incumbents were re-elected.
- Highline Schools Levy passed by 60%
Overall, it looks like Fed Way will trend a bit more conservative–for us that has meant a steadying decline in interest on airport concerns. Jim Ferrell re-elected. Burien shifts more progressive. SeaTac as well. Caitlin Konya showed an interest in airport issues during her campaign.
Burien’s Public Safety Property Tax Levy was defeated, but it was closer than ours in 2024.
All three Port Commissioners ran unopposed.
I want you to look at something regarding two campaigns.
First, the 33rd race. Here is the campaign spending from the PDC. If this is correct, both campaigns raised over half a million dollars. (See both the campaign fund and the PAC money for and against.)
I know people were offended by the really negative campaigning on both sides. I agree 100% But the money is also offensive. What has not quite happened here (yet) are massive campaign spends, but many area council races are now routinely spending $50-80k even $100k. And, not to sound snippy, but it ain’t like all that money makes for higher quality electeds.
Then there was Peter Kwon v. Steffanie Fain for KC Council #5. Despite being outspent more than 2-1, Mr. Kwon bested five other candidates in the primary by knocking on so many doors you wouldn’t believe it. And still it wasn’t enough to win the general.
Look at the featured image of this article. Despite what I heard in the election about Des Moines being a ‘young’ city, that is not true of the people who vote. Voting in general is in decline, but worse, it’s becoming more concentrated into a single demographic. White. Senior. Water.
And IMO, if one cares about such things, one can take a couple of basic positions:
- Passive – Hey, I voted! If they don’t care? Sad, but don’t try to guilt me. Hopefully education will improve. Hell, it might even be better if only people who care vote.
- Active – It’s bad whenever the turnout is so mismatched with the broader electorate. It’s a bit like income inequality. It’s undemocratic. And it leads to poor governance.
Like most things, it’s complicated. But the number of truly competitive elections is declining. Forget the money, at every level of government, I see people trying. But more and more, they simply have more than they can handle–because government (including Des Moines) keeps getting more complicated. So we just shrug and pat each other on the back for doing our best. This may sound harsh, but doing our best is not the same as delivering. You want a system that makes great (not passable) outcomes the norm, rather than the exception.
It may be that we want something no longer possible: put out yard signs, wave at people for a couple of days, say a few standard things at a campaign forum (there was one this year at a senior living center viewed by about 50 people before ballots dropped) and call that ‘democracy’.
On the other hand, if you are pleased with the candidates who won, this all sounds exactly like small town democracy. Perfectly fine. 🙂
City Manager Stuff
City Manager Report – November 7, 2025
Strategery
The City is taking community input on the first Strategic Plan since our founding in 1959! Take this ten minute survey and let us know what your long term vision is for Des Moines.
DocuPet
Sign up your pet with DocuPet. It’s easy. Even the part where you have to upload proof of vaccination. Spend $10 and get a custom tag (the City gets 20% 😀 ) The new program will bring in significant money to restore animal control and help make sure all our pets are vaccinated and findable. It’s easy to do and I encourage you to share this link with everyone.
The Shutdown
City Manager Caffrey put out a special City Manager Report to provide some sort of guidance, which I very much appreciate.
Now that the longest shutdown in American history seems to be ending (well, at least for about a month? 😀 ) I have no idea what to think. I seem to be in old guy mode more than usual this week, but…
Sonny, when I got to America we were #1! 😀
I’ve watched us squander some of the biggest advantages of any nation in human history. We shoot ourselves in the foot so often now, I’m not sure how we even get back to where we were last year, let alone move the ball down the field.
This Week
Tuesday
Port of Seattle Commission: Port of Seattle Commission Meeting – Sea-Tac Noise.Info They passed their budget forward. There was a very good discussion on the Tax Levy. It was an odd thing — the staff discouraging the Commissioners from raising rates! Again, this should signal people how well they are doing — and how increasingly out of touch Commissioners are with airport communities.
It’s been two years and they have not fixed a single Port Package using the Tax Levy funds they promised. And second, the amount of funding for community grants continues to increase–which they will crow about. However, the actual amount available for cities like Des Moines has plummeted.
I attended a Veterans Day ceremony at Sunnyside Elementary, with the Des Moines Memorial Drive Preservation Association. Yes, there is a ceremony at SJU. I’ve been attending this one for a decade now, and it’s become routine. I support their work because trying to reduce traffic on DMMD, create and improve the Lake to Sound Trail, and make all of it as beautiful as possible have always been worthy goals. 🙂
Wednesday
Emergency Management Advisory Committee
Thursday
City Council Meeting Regular Meeting – 13 Nov 2025 – Agenda – Pdf
This will be the initial presentation of the second year of our first biennial budget. Got all that? 😀 It’s a truly action-packed agenda. But here are some highlights…
- B&O Tax Model Ordinance Update – 2nd Reading.
- 2025 Neighborhood Traffic Calming Project – Contract Award
- Sea-Tac Stakeholder Advisory Round Table (StART) Reappointment
- 2026 Property Tax Levy – 2nd Reading
- 2025/2026 Biennial Budget Amendments – 1st Reading
- Land Use Application Abandonment Ordinance – 1st Reading
- Co-Living Housing Ordinance – 1st Reading
- 2026–2031 Capital Improvements Plan
- Interlocal Agreement for Coordinated SAMP Review and Legal Services
- City Council Compensation Framework Discussion
- Executive Session – Performance of a Public Employee (40 min) — this is the City Manager’s for realz annual review.
A couple of these are worth noting.
- The Budget Amendments are interesting. It is no secret I have not been happy with our financials, both the budgets and the reporting since for-ehveeehr. However, I want to acknowledge some small, but meaningful improvements. On the moolah side, we’re ending about $600k less than original projections and nowhere close to our reserve targets. ow, Ow, OW! But in 2026, the City proposes $50k for a ‘contingency fund’. In a perfect world this should not be necessary. Ideally, you want enough money in the bank to buy whatever. Back here on planet earth, this is something I mentioned at a Finance Committee meeting last year, so whether it’s coincidence or not, I approve. For now. On the reporting side, be still my beating heart: footnotes! 😀 There are now explanations for some key adjustments. These may seem like little things, but they matter. You want people (or rather me) looking at each line and wondering, what happened here. 🙂 Why I’m still not a happy camper? NO FORECASTS! At some point, we need some way to look beyond 1-3-6-9-12 months. When I used to complain about this, the last City Manager would say, “Unfortunately, I left my crystal ball at home.” I’m sure that joke continues to kill–wherever he now is.
- The property tax thing is just the standard 1% — about $13/avg taxpayer.
- The B&O tax thing is to accommodate a new law on service businesses, not a rate increase on existing businesses. We’re required to do this by the State. Rates are another (upcoming) discussion. Since it’s new there’s no way to know yet what difference it will make.
- The City Council Compensation Framework, means pay raises for Cms. (No letters, please, it’s outgoing Mayor Buxton’s idea. 😀 ) Either a fix dollar amount or some form of automatic annual percentage increase. I will vote no. What we should have, which got cut last year, are stipends for education, and city-related events. For example, I pay out of pocket to attend airport events that electeds in other cities (and the Port) get reimbursed for. How can we hope to get anywhere with the airport (or anything) if we don’t give electeds the incentives to participate?
- SAMP ILA. This was covered by Sea-Tac Noise.Info and I urge you to read their article. I, along with so many of you want the City to not only oppose airport expansion, but also work towards reduction and compensation for the current harms. 110%. But this agreement is really not great. And what has stymied us, decade after decade, are doing ‘something! anything!’ rather than the right thing.
Last Week
Monday
4:00pm Redondo Fishing Pier rebuild begins – a groundbreaking achievement. 🙂
If all goes to plan, it could be ready in 2026. There will be occasional use of pile drivers at the beginning of the project, but the City has promised to provide notice as much as possible.
Thursday
Audit Exit Conference. This is where the State tells us the result of the 2024 audit. Why are we finishing our 2024 audit in November 2025? Don’t get me started. 🙂 But you can look at some of our financial data, and compare it with other cities, at the State FIT Tool. The challenge (for moi, anyhoo, is that the state’s accounting categories aren’t quite the same as our budget book, which makes apples to apples comparisons challenging.)
Saturday
For the second week in a row I was in town! And at the Des Moines Historical Society, which is open the first Saturday of each month from 1pm – 4pm. Rooting around for old videos. On the City web site there are currently videos going back to 2005. But the City installed its first recording system somewhere in the 1990s. Turns out the DMHS has copies of at least some of that material.
During my tenure, there has been a certain amount of back and forth concerning (cough) ‘misinformation’. Which I find historical (see what I did there?). My feeling is that if I have piccies and documents and you have gossip and hearsay, I win. 🙂
The trick with library stuff is that storage formats change. Paper, it turns out, is a fabulous archival material that, properly handled, lasts for centuries. Floppy disks? Zip drives? CDs? Not so much.
Just finding these recordings was a job. The fact that the CD is still readable is a stroke of luck. And then you realise that the files are in RealAudio Format. Which was a huge deal back in 1998.
There are about 327 reasons to be pessimistic about democracy at the moment and this is one of them. The reason it’s so hard to retrieve the past is because, more and more, people do not care about the past. And if you don’t care about what happened before, if you only care about now, it is extremely easy to fool people. And that was before AI.
But the fact is, people are frequently wrong. It shouldn’t be a big deal. In fact, it should be like opening a Christmas pressie. If I get something wrong, it often means an opportunity to explore.
Before they stopped letting people walk around D.C. you could go into the Library of Congress and actually see the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Which was pretty darned inspiring if you ask me.
Even if our government does something super-inspiring, I’m wondering how jazzed anyone will be to visit a glass enclosure containing the thumb drive where the ‘original’ Health Care For All Act of 2030′ is kept. 😀
City Council November 3, 2025 Recap
Since it’s the first Thursday of the month, we’re having a COW at 5:00pm, followed by a Study Session at 6:00pm.
For this meeting, Councilmember Nutting was away. No, I mean really away. 😀 Like, an excused absence for his 50th Birthday. Congratulations. I hear it’s the new 40. But after ten years on the Council, it may also be the new 80. Or at least, that’s how I feel finishing my sixth.
Study Session – 06 Nov 2025 – Agenda – Updated
Committee Of The Whole
6:00pm Study Session
- Community Development Code Amendments Overview
- Transportation Benefit District Funding Considerations
- Commercial Parking Tax
- Discussion of 2026 City Legislative Priorities
One change I asked about was to put some real effort into historic preservation — I mentioned the old Des Moines Elementary School. Yes, it belongs to Highline School, but with the current problems with the Masonic Home, it feels to me like we have to start taking the few remaining buildings in town seriously. I’ve talked with several groups who would kill to start using the building.