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.
About the cover
Apparently, when you hire a strategic planner, you get dinner and a show. One of the three facilitators’ job was white-boarding raised to the level of collectible pop art. My preview of the meeting (below) is somewhat mixed, but her ‘lists’ and drawings were really something.
Highline Journal
I want to give a periodic shout out to the Highline Journal, the other digital news source for the area. Their coverage of last week’s 33rd Town Hall was exceptional.
It’s hard to believe, but back when we had the Des Moines News, the Robinsons intentionally worked with two beat reporters for City Hall: one a bit left-of-center, and the other a bit right-of-center.
The Waterland Blog and Highline Journal (sorta) follow that same dynamic and that is why I encourage people to look at both. Some of their articles may not be to your taste, but many, particularly those by Stuart Jenner, will usually be much more detailed and thoroughly sourced. That’s not a slam against the WB. Every news outlet has certain preferred word counts, slants, etc. So, for example, the WB published an article about budget shortfalls at Highline Schools, which may strike many of you as a surprise. But the HJ follows almost every HSD meeting and has been sending an alarm about budget and educational weaknesses in the district for a very long time.
Earthquake Preparedness
Saturday was the 25th anniversary of the Nisqually Earthquake. Where were you when this happened?
Moi? I was running out into a Burien street with a small child like complete eejits, of course! 😀 There was a 2-3 second warm up. Then a period where the world looked and felt like a belt sander. It got so intense, we stumbled and couldn’t move. And then… it simply stopped. No slowing down. Someone flipped a switch on the cosmic belt sander. Ya know how they say “time slows down” during an accident? My memory says it was several minutes of me yelling at our dogs, “GET THE F… OFF THE PORCH YOU STUPID M…F..! Which is my pet love language. 🙂 But apparently it was less than 60 seconds. And in case you’re concerned, it was so loud they couldn’t have possibly heard me to be ‘traumatised’. 😀
There were no aftershocks. So, when we realised we weren’t going to die that day, we started giggling and happily walked down to Seahurst Park for our afternoon constitutional. And… Opaleta! Several beautiful split-level houses on the hillside had simply… well… split. 😀 The top halves having collapsed onto their bottoms.
In the aftermath, there were efforts at rebuilding better. Retrofit grants. You could even take home classes (for free!) on how to do them.
But with the passage of time, I’m struck by how few homes actually got upgraded. And even more, how many people have still not signed up for Code Alert and ShakeAlert. Which you should do right now! Because relentless nagging is my other love language. 🙂
Although the Nisqually ‘wave’ seemed to be very selective in what it damaged, we have a lot of very similar structures here along some very nice hillsides. Hint, hint.
That’s the problem. Memories are short. Even something that devastating? If it didn’t happen in your neighbourhood, it’s easy to ignore.
In short, for realz earthquakes do happen here and the Nisqually event was expected. And there’s an even bigger one predicted for the next few decades.
I don’t want to oversell this. The best warning you can expect is 30 seconds. But it’s still worth doing because 30 seconds is the difference between getting out of the garage in yer very nice split level… or not.
Highline Mast Live Stream
The underwater camera at the MAST in Redondo is back online. It’s not exactly the most riveting show, but they say it will be moving soon closer to where divers usually hang out. So perhaps that will have more EXTRATERRESTRIAL SIXGILL SHARKS! (from Maury Island, no doubt). Until then, if yer one of those people who put on “sounds of the shore” to fall asleep? This works. 🙂
City Manager Stuff
City Manager Reports! February 27, 2026
This Week
Not much other than, yet another five hours of City Council Meetings! This one gets the Action Packed Seal of Approval! A perfect opportunity to call me (206) 878-0578 and let me know every little thing on your mind… well… Des Moines-wise. 😀
Thursday
Committee of the Whole/Study Session
March 05, 2026 City Council Study Session Agenda Packet
The COW
Surface Water Management Tree Preservation Program Update (25 min)
Depending on your level of cynicism you can view this in two ways.
- On the one hand, it is a forward-thinking move to create a real long term plan for managing our tree canopy and watershed.
- On the other hand, it is also a tax increase, pure and simple. Because our General Fund sucks so hard, we’re doing everything possible to shift costs that, in previous eras, would have been ‘GF’, into fee-for-service revenue sources (utilities). Does this thrill me? Absolutely not. And as much as my colleagues have talked up the ‘regressive’ nature of utility taxes, we keep leaning into them.
Our watershed and tree canopy are among our most important (and most expensive) assets. Aaaaand they are not in great shape. One last word on that. Some people go mental whenever the City removes any trees. I try to get the City to give people a heads up on that and the response I get is
“thank you for your perspective, councilmember.” 😀
That also does not thrill me.
But the fact is: a lot of the things you call ‘trees’ are either rando or dying or both. This may sound too mechanical, but trees are like any other City asset: they have a lifespan and a cost and a job to do environmentally. If they’re weak, they’re not doing their job. It’s not merely that the quantity of the large vertical objects you call trees is decreasing, many are on life support. Next time you walk through any wooded area in Des Moines, like Steven J. Underwood, look at a few trees closely. Do a lot of those things look particularly healthy to you? Many of the trees planted when the ball fields were installed did not make it. Why? Having 1,200 flights a day overhead probably did not help. We need some kind of ‘plan’, not only to increase their numbers, but to plant better quality specimens that can thrive in their environment.
Draft 2027–2046 Transportation Improvement Plan (TIP) (25 min)
We’ll talk about adding a ‘last mile option’ for the southern half of the City, something I strongly favour. However, the packet indicates that the City looked at Redondo — where potential ridership is super-low and that data should also have been the essential part of the discussion. The east west connectivity we need is more like 240th, 260th, where people who actually use transit, especially workers and potential visitors to downtown, currently are. That said, there is a system called MetroFlex, which offers on-call service that I am a big fan of, and which would be very helpful for Redondo. But the next spot we obtain east/west funding for should be where we will offer the most opportunities to connect people both to Light Rail and to the downtown.
City Council Study Session (6:00 – 10:00 PM)
Proclamation Recognizing March 7, 2026 as a Day to Remember Master Police Officer Steven J. Underwood (5 min)
Local Road Safety Plan Update (25 min)
I’m being a bit flip, but at bottom, this is the speed cam discussion, something I’ve been going on about for a couple of years. The item also has a lot of very good info on pedestrian safety which, if you walk as much as I do, know is a big problem. You take your life in hand on many of our roads and I very much appreciate this update–which has been needed for a while.
Back when the City did that thing to create a (cough) ‘park’ at Redondo in order to install speed cams, I noted that the law also allowed for three other placements based on a safety study. Do I enjoy speed cameras? Not so much–especially red light cams. But (see above), more and more we need fee-for-service to cover our costs. Wait, I did not say that. It’s all about safety. 🙂 Actually, in the right place, the speed cams are useful.
Apparently, a few states are working on pilot Automated Crosswalk-Cams. When the tech gets fully baked, I want that!
Amenity Rentals Discussion (40 min)
Appointive Committee Code & Citizens Advisory Board Code Update (30 min)
Like a lot of things in our Municipal Code, the language concerning ‘committees’ has been out of whack for a very long time. We totally rejiggered our Citizen committees last year with the Citizens Advisory Board, and as the packet says, there are some ‘ambiguities’. My first read is that this is all common sense. But there are a suprising number of teeny, tiny redlines, which tells me I need to re-read vewwwy carefuwwy, as Elmer Fudd might say. 😀
Last Week
Monday
Police not-ride-along with GPS Monica. I’ve been wanting to get a sense of some of the work our dedicated ‘Getting People Services’ officer does. You can’t really do a traditional ‘ride-along’ for this but I’ve been a big supporter of Behavioural Health in public safety since forever. The concept gained traction after George Floyd, but the interesting thing is that there are so many different types of programs. When I became aware of the concept, it was called ‘mental health co-responders’. Many cities do operate in teams (or even units of three) in purpose-built vehicles. But GPS Monica often works on her own. It also took our City a couple of tries to find the right person. We still don’t have ongoing funding, although I am certain that there is no going back. Thankfully, the concept of having behavioural health professionals on staff is now the proper standard of service.
When I first ran for office, a certain number of residents told me, very directly, that the solution to people on the street, was “a one-way bus ticket to…” 😀 Or some form of compulsion. You can certainly try. But regardless, if you’ve ever had a friend with an addiction or serious mental health problems, it often takes 2, 5, 10, 20 tries, over a very long period, to turn things around. Ultimately, someone has to be available, with the right services at the right time.
It takes a special kind of person to meet people where they’re at and recognise that this is a long game.
Tuesday
Port of Seattle Commission (agenda) The non-airport item of interest is Order 2026-03 which re-states their longstanding de facto policy: they do not intend to use any of their property for civil immigration enforcement, eg. ICE. This means the Des Moines Creek Business Park. The airport is required to provide a limited facility for the purposes of deportation (flights), but their other properties cannot be compelled to do anything. And they have no intention of leasing properties to ICE.
UWDEOHS/Governor’s Council in Tumwater. Dr. Elena Austin, who is supervising our upcoming Air Quality Monitoring Station, will be presenting on aviation fuel pollution.
Wednesday
10am – 2pm Commercial Aviation Work Group (CAWG). This is the ‘second airport committee’. This one was in SeaTac and I was glad to see a couple of people from our Airport Committee. 🙂 People who are not airport specialists (OK, even people who are airport specialists 😀 ) find them tedious. But the reason we tend to do so poorly with the airport, is that we don’t know how airports really work.
For example, I saw a couple of reporters there, furiously scribbling away and this was their story…
Aviation group raises possibility of high-speed rail link to SEA Airport | king5.com
Hoo boy. In a four hour meeting, the group spent maybe two minutes on ‘high speed rail’. I feel confident betting that a high speed rail will not be built within 100 miles of Sea-Tac in my lifetime. (And if you can collect after I’m dead, well done to you.) It makes for a very nice story. And it’s just enough of a distraction to get people away from doing something useful for us now.
Thursday/Friday
February 26 and February 27, 2026 Strategic Plan Workshop (below)
February 26, 27 Strategic Plan Workshop spoilers…
Video/audio not available yet. When available I encourage people to watch/listen carefully, because in the moment it felt as though City Manager Caffrey was putting her thumb distinctly on the scale as to what she thinks the City’s top priority is for the next 3-5 years. Spoiler alert: it isn’t developing a healthy balance sheet, which is my #1. And #2 and 3 don’t count. But you may love it. 🙂
The first day was about something called ‘governance’. I would call it more like marriage counseling. 😀 The second day was labeled ‘strategic planning’ but was actually goal setting. Valuable, but not the same thing.
It seems like nitpicking, but some of my colleagues really focus on language: using the text, the agenda, to drive the meeting. We’ve spent entire meetings ‘wordsmithing’ things like our Mission Statement.
Fair enough. Language does matter. For example, every word of the US Constitution really matters. I don’t mean that in a chest thumping way. If you want some real inspiration about how great the USA can be? Read a few pages from the Federalist Papers. They argued over almost every sentence for years. And you can actually read that argument as it’s happening. They took the job, and each other, very seriously.
At the local level, said it before, say it again, a major reason the Port of Seattle is now so successful is that they started acting more like what they really are: a business. Like any serious business, their mission statement (The Century Agenda) is well-crafted, has measurable goals, and they use it as an active filter, meaning this: if you were nosy enough to look at their internal emails, everyone is required to specify how policy (x) hits target (y) on the Century Agenda. Mind blowing! A for realz plan!
Get it? Their ‘plan’ actually guides policy. I don’t want to oversell it, but you can’t propose (oh, I dunno ‘Steps’ or a ‘ferry’ 😀 ) and make up any rationalisation you want for doing it. You have to have numbers to make your case. Their plan actually creates accountability. They do regular check-ins to see if they’re hitting their targets.
Frankly, we don’t do either of those kinds of serious wordsmithing. But to be fair, almost no city does. It’s mostly one form or another of motivational-speak blather.
But it doesn’t have to be. For me, a for realz strategic plan would include language saying that we will leave the City in financially better shape than today–and here is our strategy for doing it with measurable goals. We’ll check in periodically and if we aren’t hitting those marks? We are required to change course based on facts. It should be that non-negotiable.
That did not seem to be the consensus. But I will leave you with some slides that stuck out to me.
That is who we really are now. We’re much younger, more diverse and economically challenged than when I moved here. But if you looked at the survey, the one with close to 1,000 respondents, or the town hall, or the composition of almost everyone in civic life? Let’s just say those demographics do not match up. At all.
Here are some other slides as to who we really are:
What I’m driving at is that you can either govern based on the few people who engage in civic life, you can try to govern based on all the people who are here now we never hear from, or you can try to govern for the people who will be here ten years from now.
I think more about the future than anything else because the timeline to ‘transform’ is measured in decades. The Marina Steps and Redondo Fishing Pier are only being done ‘fast’ (meaning 7-9 years) because we owned the property, we worked for years to get a credit card (which we promptly maxed out), and those projects were not constrained by what developers actually want to build.
Projects like The Des Moines Theater (which has taken eleven years to fully come on-line) are more typical. And even that required a lot of City help. As happy as I am to see the place open, it is unlikely we will ever any financial return on that.
Looking at the state of the world right now, do you have any idea where things will be in eleven years? Me neither. Frankly, I marvel at the confidence previous electeds have had that they could choose wisely so far in advance. I try to focus on providing good basic services, but I’d prefer to leave the future people the resources to choose for themselves. (The Gift Card theory of government. 😀 )
Earlier, I went on a bit on transportation funding to get to this point. Over the years, there have been any number of opportunities the City has had to do projects that were very cool which you don’t know about. Or you’ll hear rumours, many of which are not true. And that is because they were/are discussed briefly in Executive Sessions, which never go anywhere, because there’s never any money to do them. It’s absolutely maddening to not be able to talk about all these ‘roads not taken’.
Reserves are freedom. Having money you don’t spend gives people down the road more and better options than we have today. Patience is the best gift we can give to residents. That is not anti-growth. It is exactly the opposite. It is the ability to do the really cool thing rather than wasting money just to do something.
I want a future Council to see a great opportunity in one of those Executive Sessions and be able to say ‘Yes!’ rather than return to the dais and sigh.
And if your reply is, “Why not both?”, that is exactly the reason we never achieved our (cough) ‘potential’.
Last night we had a community meeting for marina district and Mike from city(can’t remember) his last name. He involved in the Marina step project( what a waste of $$$). I asked him several questions about the project and safety . My husband and I have lived in the Des mariner condos for 12 years and every I ask for speeds down the hill into marina and every year I get a different answer for no. This years was the best, kids aren’t speeding up true hill they’re, they are shifting down just to make noise (really) anyway then I asked why redondo got new speed which first he only said they had two new, but when I corrected him that hey had at least 6/8 I was told speed bumps cause 20 second delay for fire or aid to get to you if you have a heart attack and you’re in and old community 🤪 duh! I then told I was worried because we have AEDs on each floor of our building. I was then told redondo has a better council representative(sure what that means) so I thought u would ask you for speed bump help now cliff drive into the marina. I was told the data show them not speeding but they do and the noise is terrible between 12 and 3 in the morning. I did ask about police was told we don’t have any I realize this but they stop speeding money on steps we don’t need and hire more police! I’m sorry now I’m just ranting! All I want is two speed bumps and a cop after midnight to drive through Marina. It does no good to see a cop at 10 or 12 in the morning having coffee at the quarterdeck. Thank you for your ear and listening.
Cheri Halko
There -was- a private security service that was supposed to make the rounds of the Marina floor several times a night. I will see what the status is for that. WRT Redondo, they get more attention because they’ve developed a very active community group which usually attends every City Council meeting. I know there are at least -three- people who live at or near the Marina on the CAB but the topics you are mentioning don’t seem to come up much. Have you spoken to them?