Weekly Update 04/12/2026

Some bits of business…

About the cover

Not to shill, but every so often I want to remind people that TakeOutDesMoines.com still provides a (wait for it) piece of paper restaurant guide for Des Moines, WA! And… a mailing list which will tell you when/if one of said restaurateurs offer an event and/or menu special!

Long story short, at the beginning of COVID, Destination Des Moines did a short video of local restaurants to try to encourage ‘take out’ and I whipped up this humble page to help promote it. (Now) Councilmember Gene Achziger created the logo and the site got 350 sign-ups in the first week.

It’s been six years and a lot has changed–including the slogan.  But it’s always been a play on words to the effect that there is more to Des Moines than ‘waterfront’. Only two restaurants face the water. But the other forty plus are (and always were) definitely worth visiting.

There is one ‘tech’ thing I should mention. TODM was one of my first attempts futzing with AI–which wasn’t great at the time. But the goal was both laziness and ‘community engagement!’ It generally only changes based on someone sending in an update. Think about what that means for a sec. 🙂

So… is it always 100% accurate? Not if you don’t point out changes! Does it always send out specials? Not if owners don’t send them in! Does it respond to criticism? About as well as yelling at a sewing machine. Get it? If no one keeps it fresh, it gets stale, people try it, think it’s crap, and things just spiral down from there. When people contribute it gets better. Just like democracy. 😀

Fortunately, all it takes are one or two rando people sending in changes, so it keeps chugging along. It still gets a surprising number of non-robot hits every month.

If you’re a shop owner who has a special, send it in. If you hear of a new restaurant? Update it. If there are errors? Send in a correction. Subscribe, or print the flyer.

And if you print a hard copy, print a few more and give them to shop owners to hand out to their customers. It has always been my sense that Des Moines is still a paper kinda place. If you visit any local business, you should see a restaurant list. And here it is.

One last thing: I’ll see people on social media slam local restaurants when they’ve a bad experience–and then get roasted for doing so. Speaking as a former restaurant owner–you have it wrong. I doubt any review (other than in Yelp or maybe the Seattle Times) changes hearts and minds. More likely, the majority of people haven’t even heard of a lot of local places. So even saying something negative may help spread the woid. When people write something nasty, people assume you’re the problem–and try the restaurant. 😀 Among the comments TODM records (but ignores) are tons of similar hate.

Since I’ve lived here, an absolute ton of people talk about business promotion.  But just telling the same few people here how great things are inside our little bubble doesn’t do anything to draw more business.

The reason I didn’t turn off TODM after ‘the pandemic’ is not because I thought it was snazzy. It’s because so few things here seem to persist. Frankly? People come and go. And I don’t think such things need to look snazzy. They just have to be useful and they need to keep going. Craigslist doesn’t look snazzy. And I think that if everyone simply kept something like this going, and offered a fresh piece of paper to every visitor, that would go about as far as one can to make Des Moines “the premiere waterfront destination in the Council of 12 Galaxies…”

eBike Rebate Lottery

Last year’s eBike Rebate program was so popular, the State will be offering a second round. In fact, it is a lottery-based approach, so sign up now! Hope you get chosen. Washington’s e-bike rebate program opening second application round March 30

City Manager Stuff

City Manager Reports! April 10, 2026

The highlight for moi is the Salary Commission apply here. This is your chance to give the Council more money. So, please… Dream Large, my friend! 😀

And in the spirit of keeping it simple, there was also this link to an article from Fodors Travel saying that the Des Moines UFO thing is one of the top ten unique travel experiences in America!

I say this as a former professional entertainer, an Irish citizen, and with all the love in my heart: I can’t believe we used to buy their guides. 😀   And also? I am just about blarnied out. Seriously. Between the current, non-stop hyperbole of AI, our Federal government, and my time in local politics, I am just done with exaggeration being fobbed off as cute ‘salesmanship’. I know, that you know, that Des Moines is not one of the ten most unique travel experiences in America. And that ferries and drones are just more blarney, balleyhoo and balderdash. But the place is also pretty fantastic just as it is. In other words, as above, I think we’d get farther by not marketing ourselves like the Wall Drug of the Pacific Northwest. 🙂

This Week

Monday

Airport Committee (Agenda courtesy of STNI)

Other than that (and taxes)? Not much. 😀 A perfect time to give me a call and let me know what’s going on in your neck of Des Moines (206) 878-0578.

Last Week

Wednesday

Emergency Management Advisory Committee The group continues to run exercises in preparation for FIFA. I haven’t talked about it much at City Council meetings because, well, um, er… it’s becoming a non-story.

The best idea I’ve heard so far involves communication–apparently the them of this Weekly Update. For major events, the group assembles a ‘JIC’ (Joint Information Center) to attempt to create unified messaging. One goal will be that every city will check in with the JIC for guidance if they hear about various rumours. The JIC is going to try to send out positive messaging during the events. Rather than waiting to react to rumours or people’s concerns, the group will work on reporting the actual status of practices, events, parties, etc. as they happen.

Thursday

City Council Meeting (Recap below).

April 9, 2026 City Council Recap

City Council Meeting: Updated April 09, 2026, City Council Agenda Packet

Public Comment

There was a proclamation on Black Wellness, which I always appreciate.

There was also a comment from a resident affected by ground water flooding associated with the new Pacific Middle School construction. What has often puzzled me about Des Moines is how apologetic people tend to be about ‘complaining’. People’s houses are flooding and yet they still feel some need to apologise for being too stroppy? It’s your house, dude!

People living in that neighbourhood have just finished up years of not great experiences with the 24th Ave. construction. Residents don’t make fine distinctions as to ‘fault’ the way government agencies do to avoid ‘actionability’. Said it before, say it again: It’s our City. And it doesn’t matter whose fault it is, it’s everyone’s fault. Somehow, these projects have to go more smoothly. I don’t care if it sounds sanctimonious. The public deserves the expectation that building will go to plan and decades of that not happening have been corrosive to public trust.

Human Services Funding

Human Services Grant Funding PowerPoint

The Human Services portion of the Citizens Advisory Board presented an overview of their work. First, kudos to speaker Corrine Anderson-Ketchmark who created an excellent pro-quality presentation.

As I wrote last week, the City has been slowly under, and even de-funding, various programs for years. It is the price of never having enough money we keep under wraps with all the proclamations and tearful thanks to service providers.

The Council approved the City performing a needs assessment in 2027. I encouraged the group to apply the magic wand experiment–a management exercise I wish more people engaged in.

The magic wand experiment is simple: You are given a magic wand. Time, money, resources are no object. Now write out your budget. What my firm found out is that people in government and non-profit corporations always struggle to do this. They are so used to not having any money they often can’t bring themselves to take such exercises seriously. Which is a shame considering they go into these fields desperately wanting to effect change.

Over the years, I can recall even the hardest-right members of our Council promoting the notion of ‘Two percent of budget for human services!’ Then it was 1.5%. But truthfully, the only time since I’ve been watching, that we’ve even gotten to one percent (uno) was during the pandemic.

Economic/Ferry Assessment

Economic Development/Ferry Eernissee Consulting

The economic development presentation spends even more time on the notion of a passenger ferry. But to be fair, it does seem to provide some fairly obvious facts. A stake should have been driven into this thing’s heart in 2008–because this thing keeps rising from the dead every few years, basically because, again, people come and go every few years and don’t look at previous work.

What I have asked for is a database, ie. a system to keep all the ‘contacts’ and ED work we do available for continuity–as is the case with engineering documents. It should never be the case again that we have to pay money to obtain even basic information on property data and regional conditions. Frankly, these basics should be ChatGPT stuff at this point.

New Items For Consideration

Councilmember Steinmetz proposed, and the Council agreed, to reconsider the previous week’s decision to reject a grant to develop the 223rd Street redevelopment project. Since I opposed that decision in the first place, I had no prob supporting this. 🙂

And I am pleased that the City Manager did not pick up the phone immediately to cancel the process. Often it pays to sit with a decision and give people time to give it another think.

As I wrote on Facebook last week, the City has recognised the need for a gateway to the downtown since at least 2008. I’ll say again that the impulse to save money is great. But since I’ve lived here, it has been the absence of financial education (sorry) that has led to so many poor long term decisions here. We spend hundreds of thousands of our own money on nonsense like a self-funded ferry we could never afford and then do penance by turning down free money to do something genuinely strategic.

A possible solution is to bring back the Committee system–at least finance. One hour a month of ‘COW’ is simply not enough background to make these kinds of decisions properly. Although this one decision is getting that reconsideration, making so many big decisions by ‘head nod’ in one sitting is no way to govern ‘strategically’.