Weekly Update: 04/03/2022

Public Service Announcements

This Week

Tuesday: Police Advisory Committee. I hope to hear more about the implementation of our new towing ordinance.

Thursday: City Council Study Session (Agenda) This is our ‘Strategy’ meeting. If you recall, the Mayor instructed each of us to submit our top five priorities by March 18th.

My top five…

Here are three I submitted that required some detail (Digital Presence, various process reforms.)

• SSP-040722

I also sent a separate request with two other items, neither of which seemed to have been included in the final Agenda. Here they are:

• Research a property tax lid lift dedicated solely for public safety. We actually had this for many years. It compensated for the loss of State revenue sharing in the 2000’s. The voters rejected it in 2012 and that’s a big reason why we have at least a dozen fewer police now than fifteen years ago.
• Research the possibility of annexing the remaining bits of Kent that are west of Pacific Highway. As far as I know, the issue hasn’t been seriously discussed in over a decade. The commercial property owners are mad as hell about the crime and deeply concerned about the impacts of Sound Transit. And ditto for the residents. This may be the only time it will ever be possible in our lifetimes and in my opinion we should at least look at it seriously.

₂The process…

So the process for preparing for this Strategy Sessions was supposed to go like this:

1. Staff would research our submissions to help organise the discussion. But looking at the Packet, it seems as though whoever read them simply decided to group idea fit into one of these twelve arbitrary and broad categories:

2. And then, seeing which of those seemed most popular, whittled our twelve contestants down to five finalists consisting of:

Well, that really nails things down for me. 😀

(The first thing that went through my head when I read this? A ₂beauty pageant. And, yes, once again, I just didn’t make it past the swimsuit competition. (sigh)

Deja vu all over again…

If that sounds a bit snippy, but it felt quite a bit like our ARPA Spending fiasco last September. I asked to see  my colleagues’ full submissions, but thus far I have not–and I do not understand why that might be. We all (including the public) should see what we submitted wrote because it’s what we value. I’ve spent a considerable amount of effort creating viable legislation. Hopefully the meeting will provide clear and specific direction to the Administration, but given last September, I am not altogether optimistic at the moment.

Last Week

Monday: I completed the only required training for Councilmembers, which is basically to watch a couple of videos on OPMA and records retention every couple of years. But there was this other thing was National Incident Management Training System (NIMS.) That was boooooooooooooooooooooooooooring! 😀 But, I have to admit, extremely useful. It’s a standard set of procedures for handling any and all emergencies and, all kidding aside it really matters.

That said, I’ve been here now 2.3 years and I still have no idea what our ‘survival plan’ is. But it’s a real thing. We’re supposed to have a plan in place so that if, say, the Russkies blow up City Hall and I’m like the only elected left (O.M.G!) there’d be some protocol for me to pick up the ₁red phone and swing boldly into action to keep the government working.

Tuesday: I met with former Arts Commission member and Brazilian guitarist/vocalist Eduardo Mendonça. He had intended to open a cultural center here, but his timing could not have been worse. As soon as he opened, COVID hit. But he is a fantastic entertainer and educator and exactly the kind of talent I know we can do great things with in Des Moines. To get a taste of what he does, check out BrasifFest, August 21st at Seattle Center.

Thursday: King County Flood Control District Advisory Committee, chaired by our own King County Councilmember Dave Upthegrove. This was our first meeting of the year. It seems like one of those “somebody’s gotta do it” sort of deals, which I actually enjoy doing. The good news is that the County has recently expanded its grant programs to provide for the kind of ‘urban flooding’ we get here–even in Upper Woodmont where I know there are a lot of problems. Stay tuned.

You can learn about your area’s risk of flood here

Thursday: City Council Meeting (Agenda) (Video) There were several important items for residents that probably didn’t look like much at first glance. It was the longest meeting in my tenure because there was not one but two private sessions. I guess I can spill the beans (since CM Achziger did on one) that the State recently updated OPMA to allow for the description of any closed session to be placed in the minutes.

Previously, we’d have these private sessions, like the City Manager Performance Review, but technically you were only supposed to refer to it as “Review of an employee under RCW…” That cloak and dagger was just that silly. Anyhoo, the first private session had something to do with the Police Guild. Animals may or may not have been in there, I honestly can’t recall what with all the novocaine :D. The second was about the NeverEndingStory. No, not that one, the one involving the Legacy Foundation. Equally childish, IMHO.

Recap below.

Friday: Police Chief Ken Thomas released the March 2022 Community Policing Report.

Saturday: Kent Historical Museum Re-Opening I prefer Des Moines History, myself. But one needs to keep abreast of that competition. 😀 If you have a chance, check it out.

March 31, 2022 City Council Meeting Recap

1. We approved a change to our Municipal Code to allow police certainty to ticket and tow any vehicle left unattended for more than 72 hours. Many of you have already commented as to why cars just ‘sit’ for long periods.However, the new law goes into effect in thirty days and we provided for no public announcement. There are many reasons someone may leave their vehicle in one spot for more than three days. If you know someone in that situation, please be a good neighbour and inform them of the change!Of course our police will try their best do the right things. Still, I do not want people to one day find their vehicle gone simply because they did not hear about the change.
2. We held a Public Hearing (which no member of the public showed up for) and then approved, a ten (10) year contract with Recology with nineteen percent (19%) increase and no explanation as why it was a good deal, other than:
   1. The absence of self-reported customer complaints.
   2. A testimonial from our consultant that it was a great deal.
   3. Some of my colleagues seemed to feel that, because our previous contract had been of ten years in duration, it proved that doing it again was also a good idea.

   Background: At our February 3, 2022 meeting, we voted to extend the current contract through 2023 to afford staff the ability to negotiate the best possible long term contract. I voted no because what we were presented with was simply was not good enough. Because:

   1. I wanted an opportunity for a better analysis of their customer service. That was the only public hearing. I will never vote to approve any long term contract like this without a customer survey because our contract with Recology requires them to provide us with a log of customer complaints. That’s fine, but it’s self-reporting. Once again, the City Manager basically called me a big fibber, but all I can say in reply is, “Dude, you’ve obviously never heard of The Mystery Shopper.”
   2. I saw no data on our competitors. All I saw were comparisons with other cities. The Council should have at least seen the possibilities available from competing vendors if we had voted no. If the deal as presented was the best possible, that comparison should have looked even better.
   3. There was no waste reduction component. Waste reduction is the biggest aspect of fighting climate change you haven’t heard about. Processing waste is one of the biggest contributors both to pollution and climate change. Reducing the creation of waste is the single most important aspect of waste management and it’s something real the City can do now.

There’s a lot more to say about this (later), but for now, it’s a long contract. And there are several aspects that can be renegotiated over that ten year lifespan to respond to changing conditions.  There could have (and should have) been one paragraph in there that allowed for the City to add that bit in later. We gave away a chance to do something real about climate change until 2034. We’re screwing my grandchildren and that is starting to really piss me off.

3. There was also a Public Defender line item on the Consent Agenda which adds an estimated $1,250 a month to our costs for using Body Cameras. I initially voted against Body Cameras last year for reasons like this. We went ahead initially with $140,000 in the budget. But there was no policy language in place and no agreement from the Police Guild. The goal was to ‘go live’ January 1, 2022. We did a ‘beta-test’ run with two cameras and found some technical issues. Fine. So we hired a consultant, both to help stand up the program, but also to provide ongoing advice–so that cost will never go away either.  Now it’s April, we still have no Guild agreement, the costs have basically doubled and we still don’t have the final policy language  on data retention and usage (when the police can turn them on and off!) I’m all in on Body Cameras. They’re inevitable. All we had to do was a) buy two cameras ($8,000), do our beta-tests, sign an agreement with the Guild, gather all our costs and then give the Council something to vote for. And in the mean time, use the remaining $132,000 for something else we can use now.

The Mystery Shopper

Anyone who has worked in retail has heard of The Mystery Shopper. It’s simply an actor hired by the store owner who acts as a customer and takes note of how employees perform customer service.

Now what our contract with Recology seems to do is have them self-report their complaint logs to the City. That’s fine, so far as it goes.

But every corporation my company worked with (and we’re talking hundreds) also had a Mystery Shopper. The Mystery Shopper exists not because you don’t trust your employees, but because the customers themselves are never accurate sources of their own satisfaction.

You’re too damned nice!

Unless really provoked, most customers do not like to complain. We’re trained from an early age to be polite; it’s what keeps society from descending into Ragnarok. 😀 When most of us have a bad experience one of two things happen:

• If we have a choice, we simply go somewhere else.
• If we don’t? We suck it up.

That’s what’s holding civilisation together, pal. 😀

You?

When I tell people my company used to do customer service programs they don’t believe me. I guess they imagine Fred Rogers would do that. First of all, I’m a very nice guy, goddamnit! 😀 But regardless, Fred is not who you want for Mystery Shopper. Fred wouldn’t complain. He’d just put on his tennis shoes and go somewhere else. Steve Jobs? Now that guy woulda made a great Mystery Shopper. 🙂

And it cuts the other way. No matter what objective evidence one provides, residents routinely swear that cars are flying down the road in front of their house at supersonic speeds.

I want to make sure you understand I am not picking on Recology. They may now provide stellar customer service. I talked to a CSR last week who told me they had quintupled their customer service team recently. Very cool!

But the fact is, for a very long time during the pandemic, I got dozens of complaints about their performance. Their on-line bill pay didn’t work for weeks. Their customer response time was often measured in days. I’m not angry about it. I’m not saying it’s a deal breaker. But it was no ‘allegation’ as the City Manager insinuated. It’s the truth.

How do I know? I was the Mystery Shopper. I talk to residents. But it’s a monopoly. It’s COVID. They bitch, but they don’t ‘follow the proper procedure’. That’s called human nature.

How do I know? I’m a member of the City Council. I talk to residents. But it’s a monopoly. It’s COVID. They bitch, but they don’t ‘follow the proper procedure’. That’s called human nature.

There is absolutely no way in heeeeeell a company can determine customer satisfaction based on either kudos or complaints. You have to work a little harder than that.

The fact is that corporate staff and vendors have to work together and try hard to get along in long term contracts like the one we have with Recology.  That’s why you need a board to do periodic oversight. Part of the Council’s job is to ask the tough questions because staff and vendors have just as strong incentives to avoid confrontation as customers in any retail store. We all do it.

And I don’t like confrontation any more than anyone else. But it’s the Council’s job to represent your interests. Hopefully vendors like Recology understand that and can respond in the proper spirit of customer service and without defensiveness. Our City Manager definitely should.

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₂Thankfully, you’re probably too young to remember Bert Parks and all this sorta shite.