The City of Des Moines has a Spirit Of Des Moines Award for people who have made big contributions to our community. (It’s described in Appendix A of our Rules of Procedure.) There’s a “person of the year” version and a “lifetime achievement” version. It’s supposed to be given out every year? Or two years? Here is video of the last one in November 2019.
I had a bad week in a sense. I talked with at least half a dozen residents, all with real and longstanding issues. I sound like a Cassandra all the time (a really old Cassandra since who studies Greek myths, right?) but my biggest frustration thus far in elected land is in convincing residents of a few things:
- You can change things.
- It’s not that hard.
- But there’s a right way and a wrong way to do go about it.
I’m gonna give you an example of how to do things right–a person who should get that Spirit of Des Moines Award. Then I’m gonna tell ya all things you’re doing wrong. 😀
This is what change looks like
This week, I said goodbye to a resident who is moving from DM and though I don’t know him well, I will miss him dearly.
In 2019, at the 11th hour, he learned (from somebody 😀 ) that a developer was proposing a miserably inappropriate mega-apartment complex (replete with ingress and egress of over 500 cars a day) into his neighbourhood–a quiet street where a dozen children play on any given day.
So… he organised a mailing list and got eighteen (18) people to show up to two City Council Meetings wherein the arcana of zoning is discussed. Since the usual amount of human beings who attend such decisions is typically zero, the members of the City Council a that time, seeing a genuine public will, voted down that re-zone and the developer backed out.
Two weeks ago, it was my pleasure to approve a new zoning proposal for twenty three (23) market rate beautiful town homes on the same spot. It will provide six times the home ownership opportunities and provide a ton more city revenue.
That guy changed Des Moines for the better and forever. (And the funny thing is… I’m not even sure he showed up for the meetings. 😃)
I stopped by to tell him that in my 13 years watching our Council that was one of maybe five similar events I’d seen in all that time. He seemed surprised because for him it was so straightforward.
Project Summary:
Organisation: 2hrs.
Work labour: 18 people show up for meeting @ 1hr each.
Other Expenses: $0
That’s what it took to flip a $20M transaction and change a neighbourhood for the better and forever. 18. 2. 0.
He succeeded for several reasons
- He was naive to the process. The guy is super smart. It’s just that no one had told him how “impossible” it is to change zoning or fight “the City” or “developers” or whatever. He had no axes to grind.
- He had someone who had watched our City Council provided him with a very simple process: “Do a, b, c.”
- And he just followed the instructions. He had no one on social media talking him out of it. He wasn’t trying to be a Karen “I’ll just speak to the manager about this!”
The issue bugged him. He had a couple of spare hours. Done. Now maybe he was willing to do that because he has an involved job and didn’t have a lot of time, or maybe it was because he trusted someone who sounded like they knew what they were talking about.
But for whatever reason, he didn’t improvise. He didn’t “reach out to the City” or try to “schedule a meeting with whoever“, or do anything other than a, b, c.
And it worked.
So now he is thrice blessed:
- He got to make a huge and positive difference in his community,
- It was easy, and best of all…
- He leaves here with a positive sense of how to change government.
From a civics standpoint that’s about as good as it gets. So if anyone ever deserved a Spirit Of Des Moines Award, it would be him.
The Moral
If you look at that video, the winners are business owners and Boy Scouts and one activist. The one activist did not get the things she wanted. So the plastic arrow looked (to me) like some sort of a consolation prize.
Which means:
- No one gets a Spirit of Des Moines Award for getting the government to do something it does not want to do.
- All the procedures the City has in place to help you are fantastic. But, they only apply if you want the government to do something it wants to do.
- In fact, all those rules are meant to help you do things the City wants you to do. Which means that if you want the City to do something else, following their advice will actually prevent you from getting anywhere. So ignore them. If they lead to success it will only be a coincidence.
It’s not rocket surgery…
It’s that last part that totally blows residents’ minds–they simply refuse to believe it. But consider this: Why on earth would any organisation help you to do something that is contrary to its plans?
As I wrote, at our last City Council Meeting my colleagues voted for the City to ‘research’ the start times of our neighbouring cities. By the time I was elected I had already attended hundreds of our City Council meetings. In person. In addition to learning when meetings begin from Mukilteo to Auburn, I’ve gotten to see hundreds of people either get (or not get) what they wanted from local government.
And I’m here to tell ya, what it takes to get the City to do something it doesn’t want to do is not rocket surgery. If you sit by the shore as long as I have, even a complete idiot will learn how to catch a fish.
That’s the one really great thing about spending so much time watching local government–you learn what works.
But on the other hand, it’s also something of a downer watching hundreds and hundreds of people fail in the same ways. Over and over and over. And over. And over.
You can do it!
I’ll occasionally get some snippy comment about ‘not accomplishing more’ over the past 2.4 years. Look, we’ve had crappy government here for 20+ years. I didn’t expect to change people’s minds on the dais and I don’t sweat any of those votes.
My challenge has been changing your mind. If I have any regret it’s all the times residents like you could have (and should have) gotten what you wanted, but didn’t.
So at the risk of repeating myself, I’ll close by saying the same thing I opened with–in a slightly different way:
- You can change things.
- It’s not that hard.
- But if you want to do something the City doesn’t already want to do, you’ll likely need to do something different in order to succeed. And that is where I can help.
And in the next year and a half, I hope you we can work together to help you obtain the change you would like to see.
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