1:38] Mayor Matsui: At this time, I would like to call the September 24th, 2026 Des Moines City Council meeting to order.

[1:46] Mayor Matsui: Council Member Harris will lead us in the pledge. Please stand if you are able.

[1:53] Council Member Harris: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

[2:12] Mayor Matsui: Please let the record show that all council members are present. Tonight we have one proclamation, the Centennial of the Seashore Club proclamation. Is there a motion?

[2:20] Council Member: Second.

[2:29] Mayor Matsui: Moved and seconded. All those in favor, please raise your right hand and say “I.” [Ayes.] That passes unanimously. Thank you. I do have the proclamation here and I’ll go ahead and read it today. Here we go.

[2:45] Mayor Matsui: [Reads proclamation] Whereas our community known as the Seashore Club is located on the Puget Sound in the Zenith neighborhood of Des Moines, founded by courageous Danish immigrants who through vision, hard work, and perseverance created a lasting legacy. Whereas the history of the community traces back to 1872, when the first landowner, John Collins — Seattle’s fifth mayor, 1873 to 1874 — purchased about 160 acres. Over time, a large parcel was divided and platted into smaller lots by Des Moines’s pioneer Thomas Massie. Later, Gustaf Rasmussen and Franz purchased an old rundown home and orchard on Lot 7 in 1925–1926. They transformed that property into a Danish community known as the Seashore Club.

Whereas the Seashore Club was founded by Danish immigrants renowned for taking care of their own. After clearing the land, the first structure they built was the clubhouse. Many members initially stayed in white canvas tents while 13 summer cottages were being built in the Danish co-housing style that still exists today.

Whereas the Seashore Club members did more than build their co-housing colony — they also attended St. John’s Danish Lutheran Church in Seattle, helped establish Washington Hall, a community hub for new immigrants near Yesler Terrace, and helped found the Northwest Danish Old People’s Home.

Whereas in 1926, to commemorate the founding of the Seashore Club, the Danish founders installed a bronze plaque with each founding member’s name. These members were prominent in their Danish community and were performers, bakers, dairymen, plasterers, carpenters, machinists, blacksmiths, and attorneys, etc. A couple were knighted by the Danish king for their work in the Seattle and Danish communities.

Whereas we learned of our rich history through archives, newspaper articles, surveys, and maps in preparation for the Centennial, we take immense pride in the strength, culture, and traditions that have been preserved. There are no Danish owners currently residing at the Seashore Club, but we take great pride in our past and the community has an even brighter future.

Whereas to celebrate and commemorate the Centennial, the names of all current residents will be added to a new plaque near the original one, and a time capsule will be buried on the premises during the Centennial celebration on September 12th, 2026, to be opened again in 50 years.

Whereas it’s our honor to be celebrating both our great nation’s 250th anniversary and the Seashore Club Centennial in 2026. Now therefore, I, Yoshiko Grace Matsui, the Mayor of Des Moines, Washington, do hereby proclaim September 24th, 2026 to be the Centennial of the Seashore Club. Signed this day. Thank you very much, and it was a lovely ceremony on the 12th as well — thank you for making us a part of it.

[6:06] Mayor Matsui: [Applause] Okay. Would anyone else like to come down?

[Recognition ceremony, off-mic — 6:32–7:52]

[7:55] Mayor Matsui: All right. Thank you very much, clerk. Is there any correspondence from the public that was not previously received by the council?

[8:04] Clerk: No other correspondence, Mayor.

[8:06] Mayor Matsui: Great, thank you. Now it’s time for comments from the public. We ask that you keep your comments respectful. When I call your name, please come to the podium — you’ll have three minutes to speak. Please state your name and city of residence. First, I have Mark Everton.

[8:34] Mark Everton: [Public comment — largely inaudible/off-mic in source recording]

[10:10] Mayor Matsui: Thank you. Brent Bratton.

[10:10] Brent Bratton: [Public comment — largely inaudible/off-mic in source recording]

[12:08] Mayor Matsui: Thank you. Ray D[?] — [name unclear in source audio]

[12:08] Ray D[?]: [continuing from an inaudible opening] …watched that four-way stop for a period of time and within 20 seconds he had somebody pulled over. And I also contest his retort to me when I said you could generate revenue for the city — he said, “Well, that doesn’t generate any revenue for the city.” Of course it does. Maybe not a lot, but I can assure you, having worked in city, state, and federal government, issuing citations generates revenue even if the city doesn’t get a huge part of it. That was one of my issues. The other issue is I think people are dismissive of the fact that we need more patrol down there. I’ve spoken with a couple of police officers who work for Des Moines and I understand their issues with the main drag, Pacific Coast Highway or whatever it’s called — I haven’t lived here very long. But based on my experience, I’ve witnessed what I believe to be criminal activity, called the police, and was told I’d have to make a report in person and that they’d call me back. I never received the call. I guess that’s my time, but I’d like to see more proactivity by the police in that part of the city.

[15:23] Mayor Matsui: Traci Buxton.

[15:32] Traci Buxton: Hello, my name is Traci Buxton and I am the President of the Chamber of Commerce in the city of Des Moines, and I feel incredibly privileged and thankful to be standing here tonight. My comments tonight have to do with Consent Item Number 3, where there’s just over $7,700 in support of the Chamber’s Oktoberfest event aboard the Argosy Good Time II, which occurred this last weekend. I’m here to offer support tonight in favor of including Item Number 3 in your yes vote for the following reasons.

As our strategic plan says, our waterfront shapes our identity and our aspirations. The council has honed our mission statement to say it’s our mission to be a premier waterfront community on Puget Sound. Your Chamber wants to support that vision by contributing to the activation of that waterfront for the enjoyment of our own residents as well as all visitors.

This activity — the Oktoberfest cruises — was designed to be the first of many, a series of cruises that can be produced for the enjoyment of our citizens and used as a tool for the promotion of our businesses and business community. The LTAC grant was designed to support tourism, and we believe cruises like the two we conducted definitely qualify, as passengers came from an assortment of zip codes. In addition, this activity, in partnership with Argosy, the premier name in maritime tourism in the Puget Sound, works to brand Des Moines as a community with an active waterfront that invites the region and its visitors to recreate and maybe even relocate.

Thus far, that activity has been pretty much the most tourism-driven event to occur down at the marina. This in turn sets the table as a very desirable place to do business in Des Moines. Your Des Moines Chamber is very busy supporting all of these initiatives. And by the way, the available capacity was 400 tickets across both cruises, and we sold out both. It was amazing. So for these reasons, we would appreciate your yes vote tonight on consent, including Item Number 3. Thank you for your consideration.

[18:01] Mayor Matsui: Thank you. Barton DeLacy.

[18:13] Barton DeLacy: Good evening. My name is Barton DeLacy. I’m a resident of the Woodmont neighborhood of Des Moines, and I come here tonight — I first want to say it has been an honor to be appointed to the City Planning Commission, and I come before you as the Planning Commission Chair. As you’re all aware, we are the city’s first Planning Commission in almost two decades. Our first meeting was in April, and we’ve spent most of the past six months in one form or another of orientation. I suspect it will take a while before residents, if not the development community, are aware of and get used to our presence and our role in planning the future of the city. I am not sure we have had any significant public input at our meetings to date, and this is not due to lack of interest — it just takes time to get the word out that we exist.

You’ll be asked tonight to pass a development agreement ordinance on a second reading. The Planning Commission approved the ordinance at what was only our fourth meeting, in July. We were all pretty green, particularly with regard to commission-council protocols. I submit that there was little notice or opportunity for the development community to respond or provide input. The ordinance was passed in haste and really in a vacuum, and since that meeting we have received at least one or two very credible critiques from the development community — and hearing out these kinds of concerns was the very reason a Planning Commission was established in the first place.

Without regard to the merits of the letters, I would nevertheless like to request the ordinance be remanded back to the commission for reconsideration and discussion with staff. I’m asking for a mulligan. I know it could create the wrong precedent, and just this evening my fellow commissioner Curry concurred — she wouldn’t mind a do-over as well. Going forward, we’ll be better advised as to timing and noticing issues. Thank you for your indulgence.

[21:00] Mayor Matsui: Thank you. Chuck Coleman.

[21:10] Chuck Coleman: Good evening, Madam Mayor, Deputy Mayor, City Council, City Manager, staff, and the public. For the record, Chuck Coleman, Redondo, Beach Drive. I spent more than 40 years in the commercial real estate business, and a good part of that was negotiating development agreements on behalf of property owners. Now that I am retired and proudly serve on the Planning Commission, my job is the reverse — to protect the city.

One career lesson carries over: when experienced real estate and legal people flag a problem, you do not take it lightly. Their job is to keep owners out of bad agreements. That is the job in front of you tonight. When the Mayor first addressed the Planning Commission, she said something that stayed with me: developers can take their business to any city, and our job is to make sure they choose Des Moines. From my experience, what quality developers and their lenders and investors want is very simple: clear expectations upfront, accountability that runs both ways, and no surprises. A code that defines those elements plainly is what earns their trust.

Mr. Matthews, Mr. DeLacy, and Council Member Steinmetz got it right — the notice, cure, and assignment language needs to be tightened to protect everyone, the city included. Counting myself, you’ve now heard from four experienced real estate and legal professionals on this point.

In 2007, the city signed a development agreement with Pacific Place. That agreement gave the developer 60 days’ written notice and a chance to cure before the city could terminate. It set performance milestones at 4, 7, 10, and 13 years for a very large, complicated project, and it provided that the city’s consent to an assignment would not be unreasonably withheld. Everything the council asked staff to add on August 27th was already in Des Moines’s agreement 19 years ago. I’d ask that staff pull that document and use it as guidance.

I understand that referring the ordinance back to the commission is not normal because the public hearing has already been held. Mr. Matthews’s letter answers that — a large portion of the operative text was recently added and has never been before the Planning Commission. The ordinance will be the template for every development agreement the city signs for years to come. Des Moines has precious few development sites left, revenues are declining, and the economy is uncertain. We cannot afford to miss the opportunity to attract quality developers and businesses. We have gone many years without this ordinance — there’s no reason to rush the last two weeks. Thank you.

[23:57] Mayor Matsui: Thank you. Bobby.

[23:57] Bobby: Good evening, City Council. Hello, fellow residents. My name is Bobby. I’ve been a resident of Des Moines for nine months, but I’ve been visiting the area off and on for a decade or so — spent lots of money and lots of time in the city. So excited to be in front of you all today.

I started interacting with the city several months ago on several different occasions since I moved to Des Moines. It’s a lovely place, but I quickly realized there were some flaws I could hopefully address, so I wanted to get involved with my city council. I needed some inspiration, so I found one of the city council members here — Harry, Dr. Harry Steinmetz. He said when he was running for council that the current council had made a number of decisions he disagreed with, and these decisions seemed disconnected from the neighborhoods affected by them. He went on to say that fundamentally, the council’s decision to put a methadone clinic and involuntary treatment facility 600 feet from your house — or from your kids’ school — caused concern, which I completely understand.

About six weeks ago — and by the way, I live at 506 South 226th, at Sound View Park, the condo on the first floor right next to the Mexican restaurant, very lovely place, so you know exactly where I’m living — two new “no parking” signs showed up on the block. They also changed the parking from three painted spots to two, reducing parking on that block alone by 33%. Across the street, they reduced it by 25%. We have these wonderful stairs to nowhere — where are these people going to park? Because now they’ve created nowhere to park where I live, and that’s driving traffic to the dead end where I live.

Why did they put up those signs? Because I realized the Director of Public Works, Michael Slevin, has sole discretion as to where he puts those signs. I called him — “Michael, where did these signs come from?” “Oh, you know, Bob and Harry over there at the condo told me to put them up because they didn’t like what was going on.” What? Citizens have that much power? I heard you were going to be on the docket here, Michael, so you can confirm that conversation. Regardless, I’ve had a great conversation with no one at the city about getting this issue resolved.

Take down the “no parking” signs. Put up a sign — you all love signs — that says handicap parking only, right where it says dead end. Tow somebody out. I’ve never seen anybody towed or ticketed there, and I live there, I look out that window all day, I work there, I see that area more than anybody else. Take down the “no parking” signs — I don’t want problems coming to my place, because I will deal with them. I can’t call the city and say “put up a no parking sign here, tow this” — I don’t have that kind of power, but obviously somebody does. Just make a phone call and no-parking signs go up without figuring out what’s going to happen with the traffic. There’s already no parking in the city. So please address that issue. You can’t just move problems away — that’s not going to happen, or we’re just going to be like Seattle. Thank you everybody, have a great day.

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[27:04] Mayor Matsui: We’re currently running a Committee of the Whole meeting. However, council members do serve regionally on other committees. Do any council members have any items of interest to the public or council? Council Member Harris.

[27:19] Council Member Harris: Yeah, thank you. I serve on the Regional Transit Committee advisory, and I just wanted to note — at our last meeting, Metro, to my pleasant surprise, is shifting to a full-on electrified route at the Tukwila base. This is far ahead of schedule, largely due to the increase in oil prices and so forth. It’s a shift in emphasis, not a change in budget. They’ll be offering a tour very soon and I look forward to that very much. It’s been this funny thing of “is there enough capacity, can you run a whole shift on one charge” and so forth — but not only are the finances shifting, the technology is shifting very quickly. To my pleasant surprise again, they’re moving to meet that pretty aggressively, and it will be deployed on our lines. So stay tuned.

[28:39] Mayor Matsui: Thank you. Council Member Bloss.

[28:49] Council Member Bloss: Thank you, Mayor. I’m a member of the King County Board of Health. We had our meeting last week and spent most of the time talking about the effects of the federal bill HR1, also known as the “Big Beautiful Bill.” It mandates large cuts in Medicaid and SNAP benefits, and Washington State is going to be hit especially hard. The cuts start September 30th, at the end of the month — 11,000 Washingtonians are going to lose their health benefits, and by 2034 it’s estimated 175,000 Washingtonians will lose their health insurance. That’s going to affect us all. When people don’t have health insurance, they don’t get annual checkups or preventative procedures, and then they end up going to the hospital when they really need it, which costs a lot of money — probably driving up health premiums for everyone. And SNAP benefit cuts start October 1st. That’s going to be hard — our own Des Moines Food Bank is always struggling to feed everyone and raise enough money, and they’ll have to find more money to offset those cuts. So, not great news on that front, but that’s something we’re looking at.

[30:07] Mayor Matsui: Thank you, Deputy Mayor Achziger.

[30:11] Deputy Mayor Achziger: Yes, I serve on the South King Area Transportation Board — SKATBd — and I just wanted to notify everybody that this Saturday at 10:00 a.m. at Kent City Hall there’s a town hall regarding transportation in South King County that people might be interested in. It’s being sponsored by County Councilwoman Stephanie Fain, so please plan on attending.

[30:51] Mayor Matsui: All right, we’ll now move to the City Manager report, and I’ll turn over the meeting to City Manager Katherine Caffrey.

[30:59] City Manager Caffrey: Thank you, Mayor and council. Tonight we have an update from Dan Eernissee, who does some fractional economic development work for us. You’ve had a couple of updates from him earlier in the year — this is the next one, talking about results learned through outreach over the summer.

[31:16] Dan Eernissee: Really happy to be here and to give you an update — and I now have power over the PowerPoint too, so that’s awesome. The general gist of what we’re trying to do is improve the downtown climate for businesses, both from a consumer/resident perspective and, maybe more importantly, from the business perspective — that it’s a really healthy place to do business in town. We’ve been working on this thanks to a grant from the Port of Seattle.

It has five components: we created an enriched database for downtown owners and property owners, which continues to evolve as we talk to more property owners. We’ve done a business and property owner survey, which is largely what I’ll talk about tonight, and business roundtables, which we’re right in the middle of, so I have some anecdotal information from those and from reaching out to businesses that didn’t respond to the survey — everything from vacant property owners to the newly-vacant Red Robin property owner, people with really important properties for redevelopment downtown. Then the next two points are how businesses and property owners work together, and some kind of marketing messaging for the downtown region — not a full advertising campaign, but more how we talk about ourselves and our businesses.

Survey at a glance: we sent it to about 220 businesses and property owners and got 44 responses, about a 20% return rate — I think as we talk to more people that’ll go up. It’s interesting — some people would rather do a one-hour business roundtable than fill out a 10-minute survey; different people respond to different things. A lot of respondents have been here a long time — about two-thirds over five years. There’s a real sense of opportunity as people talk about Des Moines. About half of respondents were businesses that lease downtown space, and the other half either own the building they operate in, are just property owners who lease to others, or both.

The more red a bar, the more negative respondents were on a statement; more blue/purple, more positive. One thing stood out: business-and-owner collaboration. I thought that might be an issue going in, which is why I put it in the Port grant application based on anecdotal conversations, but we heard it loud and clear in this survey — on the negative side, business owners and property owners just aren’t doing a lot to connect and improve the business climate. The property owners were very outspoken about this too — I expected it from business owners, but heard it loud and clear from property owners as well. One quote, in green, from someone who owns businesses and leases property: “They hold businesses hostage for their price” — referring to some other property owners.

What’s holding downtown back? The big one is neglected properties. We didn’t have the nuance in the survey to define “neglected” — is it a vacant lot, or a building that’s just run down without pride-of-ownership signs? I think it’s both. One person I talked to yesterday said, “If you have big vacant lots on your main street, that’s not a good sign.” Interestingly — and I said this to Chief Bouie — we didn’t get a lot of feedback on public safety as a negative factor holding people back, which is good, though that wasn’t top of mind compared to some other business communities I’ve been around; somebody starts mentioning Seattle and that reputation got tagged during the pandemic and hasn’t really recovered.

Owners versus lessees: not a lot of difference on collaboration — owners were more outspoken there — but on future optimism, businesses that were leasing were more optimistic. An interesting point: where do they point the finger? Lessees tended to point at landlords — feeling like just an asset on their financial statement — while property owners tended to point at “the city,” or government generally, though often what they describe is really a county or state issue (permitting, health department, taxing) that just gets lumped in as “government.”

Four challenges bubbled up: collaboration; cost of doing business and red tape; properties sitting neglected; and assets poorly connected — meaning, as big an asset as the marina and beach park are, businesses didn’t see a direct benefit from them. People love the marina and beach park, and it’s good for the city generally, but visitors weren’t necessarily then coming downtown to shop, or vice versa.

On the positive side: real optimism, a lot of potential, new energy around downtown revitalization. People talked about feeling more confident in city leadership and in certain projects. The Des Moines Theater got named several times as a real investment in the downtown core — something that could not only show well but attract people from all over, and people were proud to call Des Moines home. I was pretty impressed that 81% of respondents belong to the Chamber, which is impressive given how young the Chamber is — whoever’s president is knocking on a lot of doors, Traci. A lot of people were happy to participate in a roundtable, which we’re continuing to populate — I’ll go light on roundtable results today and give written feedback as they progress. 70% left contact information.

My preliminary takeaways, not shocking: we need to collaborate with real purpose — it’s great to have social events for business people and property owners, but there needs to be real structure around what we’re working toward and how it helps the business climate, and that has yet to emerge. We need to tackle neglected properties the best way we can. We need to connect the waterfront to downtown — the stairway project is a huge step in that direction, and we should keep looking for other ways to do that. It was resoundingly clear that people felt more people living downtown or close to downtown would help business overall, so anything we can do to encourage more housing and more people downtown as a matter of routine is a real positive. In gray, I put streamlining permitting — I separated that out because even though it came up, I think it’s more of a citywide initiative than specific to downtown, so for this initiative I’m setting it aside to be dealt with more broadly.

That’s my update. I know you have a full agenda, so I’ll stop talking, but I’m open to discussion or further nuance I can draw out from that.

[43:26] Mayor Matsui: Council Member Harris — not to sound pedantic, but can you define the area you’re talking about as “downtown”? I mean that parenthetically — I’ve been part of community groups where people bicker over what that actually is.

[43:50] Dan Eernissee: Yeah, thank you — and I didn’t clarify that initially. The database we created was largely commercial properties in the downtown and Marina district — from about 8th Avenue toward the marina. We didn’t include condo buildings, more the commercial/retail/services.

[44:22] Council Member Harris: So would you say roughly 216th to 227th, and Marine View Drive down to the water?

[44:30] Dan Eernissee: Yeah, that’s right — there’s a particular map from the comprehensive plan, I’m blanking a little, but I worked with the EIS consultant — the comp plan has a “Marina neighborhood” that’s about what you’re describing, 216th to 228th-ish, Marine View Drive to the water. We used GIS to pull all the addresses in there.

[44:56] Council Member Harris: Okay — the only other thing is, when each group points fingers at each other, are you going to have more discussions before submitting a final report?

[45:17] Dan Eernissee: Yes, absolutely — the roundtables. We’ve had one, four more scheduled, and I’m also having one-on-one conversations. I was struck by the slide where each group points — the lessees point at property owners, and property owners point at government — but I always hear from property owners, or actually the lessees, when they want permitting. So there’s this crosspollination I hope to dig into more.

[45:58] Council Member Harris: Yeah, I honestly think you’ll probably get an earful from both — I’ve already heard quite an earful from property owners about zoning, though I know that’s being addressed through other processes right now, and could not be more timely.

[46:18] Council Member Harris: I just don’t normally hear property owners talking about improvements disentangled from an actual business prepping to open. So I’d be curious to see. Thank you.

[46:38] Mayor Matsui: Council Member Steinmetz.

[46:38] Council Member Steinmetz: Yeah, Dan, thank you very much — there’s a lot of great information in there and I think you’ve done a nice job laying it out. That list at the end is a good laundry list that will guide us into the future. I really appreciate the work you put in. Thank you. I have no idea if a 20% return rate is expected, high, low, or middle — can you comment on that? And given the small number we’re working with, is there any attempt to expand it a little more?

[47:18] Dan Eernissee: As I mentioned, my guess is it’ll grow to closer to 30% by the time we’re done with conversations. Two things: these surveys, if you get over 10%, you’re feeling pretty good — but that’s when dealing with lots, like a citywide survey of 220 people. We really wanted to hit 40 and got 44 — I would’ve loved well over 50. So that’s pure pragmatic numbers. What I’ll say is that people were very consistent, so I wouldn’t anticipate that if we’d gotten 80, the findings would’ve been that much different — we’d have had some outliers, but overall pretty consistent. So I think we got pretty good feedback for the value of a survey. Some people don’t fill out surveys, they prefer to talk; some would prefer the government not bug them at all. I think we did okay for that part of it.

[48:52] Mayor Matsui: All right, well, thank you very much for your presentation. I look forward to hearing more about your ongoing work on this issue.

[49:11] Mayor Matsui: All right. Clerk, will you please read the consent agenda?

[49:15] Clerk: Item 1, approval of vouchers. Item 2, approval of minutes. Item 3, 2026 Lodging Tax Advisory Committee spending recommendation. Item 4, 2026 City Hall Suite A restroom and kitchen remodel. Item 5, Judge Pro Tem compensation, second reading. Item 6, Marina tenant restroom replacement. Item 7, draft Resolution 26-103, Midway Park RCO grant authorization. Item 8, 24th Avenue South Improvement Project, Segment 1, TIB grant award and consultant services contract.

[49:44] Mayor Matsui: Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as read?

[49:52] Council Member: So moved, Mayor.

[49:58] Mayor Matsui: I hear a second by Council Member Steinmetz. Does any council member wish to pull an item? Council Member Harris.

[50:04] Council Member Harris: Item 8, please.

[50:12] Mayor Matsui: Item 8. Okay, thank you — any others? No? Okay, we’ll vote on Items 1 through 7. All those in favor, please raise your right hand till I call your name: Deputy Mayor Achziger, Council Member Steinmetz, Council Member Harris, Council Member Desimone, Council Member Nutting, Council Member Bloss, and myself. That passes 7–0.

We pulled Item 8. Council Member Harris, would you like to speak to that item?

[50:47] Council Member Harris: Thank you. I am not a fan of not undergrounding utilities, and unless there’s some compelling reason to make this decision now, I will be voting no on Motion 3. Thank you.

[51:11] Mayor Matsui: Thank you. Is there a motion to approve Item 8? Council Member Nutting.

[51:16] Council Member Nutting: Second.

[51:20] Mayor Matsui: Council Member Steinmetz — all right, all those in favor of Consent Agenda Item 8, please raise your right hand till I call your name: Deputy Mayor Achziger, Council Member Steinmetz, Council Member Desimone, Council Member Nutting, Council Member Bloss, and myself. All those opposed? Council Member Harris. Motion passes 6–1. Thank you — I’m sorry, 6–1, thank you, my apologies, it’s been a long day.

Let’s go ahead and read those motions for Item 8.

[52:00] Clerk / staff: I move to adopt draft Ordinance Number 26-094, clarifying to the Washington State Transportation Improvement Board (TIB) that full funding is secured for the 24th Avenue South Improvement Project, Segment 1, and further authorize the City Manager to sign the TIB grant agreement form.

[52:27] Mayor Matsui: All those in favor? Deputy Mayor Achziger, Council Member Steinmetz, Council Member Harris, Council Member Desimone, Council Member Nutting, Council Member Bloss, and myself. That passes 7–0. Can I get motion number two?

[52:44] Clerk / staff: I move to approve the consultant services contract with Parametrix, Inc. to provide engineering, design, and right-of-way acquisition services for the 24th Avenue South Improvement Project, Segment 1, in the amount of $1,200,029.98, and further authorize the City Manager to sign the contract substantially in the form submitted.

[53:14] Mayor Matsui: Second by Council Member Steinmetz. All those in favor, please raise your right hand: Deputy Mayor Achziger, Council Member Steinmetz, Council Member Harris, Council Member Desimone, Council Member Nutting, Council Member Bloss, and myself. Motion passes 7–0.

[53:40] Clerk / staff: Motion three: I move to direct staff to make the necessary arrangements to have all existing overhead utilities relocated as needed for the construction of the 24th Avenue South Improvement Project, Segment 1, waiving the requirement for undergrounding of utilities in accordance with DMMC 12.25.110.

[54:11] Mayor Matsui: Seconded by Council Member Steinmetz. All in favor, please raise your right hand: Council Member Steinmetz, Council Member Desimone, Council Member Nutting, Council Member Bloss, and myself. All opposed: Deputy Mayor Achziger, Council Member Harris. Motion passes 5–2. Thank you.

[54:32] Mayor Matsui: All right, we’re moving on to unfinished business. First is the development agreement ordinance, second reading.

[54:49] Staff: Mayor, council — I’ll go through the first part quickly since much of it’s the same. Development agreements are binding agreements; the authority is given through the RCW. The benefits provide flexibility for our development standards. The ordinance has general provisions requiring specific items within a development agreement, provisions on maximum terms, when a minor modification can be done, and what can’t be amended within the municipal code.

What’s changed for the second reading, based on the last discussion: we added Section 9 — the parties specifically agree that damages may not be an adequate remedy for breach of a development agreement, and that the city is entitled to compel specific performance of all material terms by a party in default. Section 10, Assignment — the development agreement is binding and inures to the benefit of the parties; the original party shall not assign its rights without written consent of the city, and any assignment is at the sole discretion of the city. And we added a further section: the development agreement expires and is of no further force and effect if the developer does not construct the project as described, or submits applications inconsistent with the agreement (as determined in the city’s sole reasonable discretion), or for a breach of the agreement (as determined in the city’s sole reasonable discretion).

The suggested motion is to move to approve draft Ordinance 26-030 related to the regulation of development agreements. Council also received a comparison chart — I have hard copies, it’s small, which is why we sent it ahead of time — showing how other cities handle performance and assignment together, termination and enforceability, and how some cities specify what needs to be in a development agreement. Some of these are ones we looked at when drafting our code. I’m happy to answer questions.

[57:44] Mayor Matsui: Council, let’s start with questions — questions only, please, one at a time. Council Member Steinmetz.

[57:57] Council Member Steinmetz: I don’t recall anything about specific performance in there — where did Section 9 come from?

[58:08] Staff: I had a note on “remedy and performance” — I thought that was part of what you were looking for.

[58:20] Council Member Steinmetz: That is not what I asked.

[58:39] Staff: Okay, I apologize. Questions?

[58:41] Mayor Matsui: Deputy Mayor Achziger, is there a particular time element with regard to adopting this?

[58:48] Staff: No.

[58:56] Deputy Mayor Achziger: So there’s nothing pressing about us taking action now?

[59:03] Staff: No.

[59:10] Mayor Matsui: Thank you. All right, is there a motion? Council Member Desimone.

[59:16] Council Member Desimone: I’d like to make a motion that this goes back to the Planning Commission, that they get that second chance at reading it, and that it gets a little more fine-tuned to what we’ve just been discussing — and then I’d look forward to seeing it again.

[59:32] Council Member: I second that.

[59:34] Mayor Matsui: Seconded by Council Member Nutting. Discussion — Council Member Steinmetz.

[59:42] Council Member Steinmetz: Some of the changes here are not what was asked for when I brought them forward previously. So I agree we need to send this back, and remanding it to the Planning Commission for further work is the appropriate thing to do. I’d support the motion.

[1:00:05] Council Member Nutting: I feel the same way. I made the motion for discussion on the first reading so we could have a discussion — there wasn’t much. I do agree the Planning Commission was a little green at the time. We’ve received a few letters stating there are flaws in this, and if we’re going to adopt something, I think it needs to be correct and solid. I’m absolutely going to support Council Member Desimone’s motion.

[1:00:49] Council Member Harris: This is one of the rare times I did not read the item in detail in the packet, because I already knew what I wanted to do. I have wanted the restoration of the Planning Commission since basically forever, and I’ve always felt it was in the city’s interest to stand up a robust advisory group. It takes a while for any group like this to find their feet. The term “mulligan” is apt — I’m not sure how many people play golf anymore, but it’s hard to say no, especially to something really — everybody wants to say yes, they have an intrinsic trust, and we’re a very polite group of people. But it would have been better to work up to something like this — this will change the way development is done in this city. So it’s beyond the details of this particular ordinance — I want the Planning Commission to be a strong body that can say no once in a while, and the council will listen. I want to give them that freedom to the extent that I can. Thank you.

[1:02:30] Council Member Bloss: I heard today from the chair of the Planning Commission asking for it to be brought back to their commission, and I don’t think we should move forward to a second reading given that — I’d agree to bring it back to the Planning Commission.

[1:02:48] Mayor Matsui: All right, all those in favor please raise your right hand till I call your name: Deputy Mayor Achziger, Council Member Steinmetz, Council Member Harris, Council Member Desimone, Council Member Nutting, Council Member Bloss, and myself. Motion passes to remand the development agreement back to the Planning Commission, 7–0.

[1:03:03] Mayor Matsui: Thank you. Item number two: consideration of the city’s 2027 legislative agenda.

[1:03:16] City Manager Caffrey: Mayor and council, as Anthony’s coming up — in your packet you’ll see Option 1. We had some requests for modified language, so there’s Option 2 as well. If the council feels comfortable with Option 1 tonight, we can do some specific wordsmithing separately — we don’t have to all edit together.

[1:03:53] Anthony Hemstad: Thank you, City Manager. Good evening, councilors. I’d consider it a success tonight if we don’t send this back to the Planning Commission — now that the bar has been set — and I hope we can get through this quickly. We had a robust discussion on the council’s legislative priorities a month ago; I took your comments and made several changes to this document. We also received several suggestions on wording changes, all of which are very reasonable. If we can agree on the substance of what we’re trying to achieve on each issue, and you leave it to City Manager Caffrey and myself to finish dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s — because we may be a little over one page right now and I do want to keep it on one page — there will be a few words that move here or there, but if you give us that discretion and approve overall what we’re trying to achieve, that would be even better than sending this back to the Planning Commission.

Also, the image that was just on screen is the wrong one — we’re trying to find it in real time, but if you look in your packet, that’s the correct version; it would have airport issues at the top, then funding, then public safety. I’m not sure where the one on the screen came from, but please refer to your packet.

That’s Option 1 — I’ll let you all take a look for a moment. There’s an Option 2 that was sent out with some slightly different wording. On that version, we added point-to-point cameras and non-moving violations, which came from the August discussion, and we put back the airport study, also discussed in August. Those were the substantive changes from the agenda document you saw a month ago.

Option 2 mainly revised wording on how some of the projects were worded, and — sorry, I’m looking for it — substantively, Option 2 was sent in an email Tuesday night titled “questions/responses to your questions,” and Deputy Mayor Achziger, I did have a substantive change as well, adding information about license plates. Deputy Mayor, would you like to expand on that?

[1:08:24] Deputy Mayor Achziger: Pull it up if you’d like. I found it, apologies for the confusion. Okay — for the legislative issue, the first one revised was the Redondo Esplanade project. The proposed new language was “the Redondo Waterfront Resilience and Esplanade Project.” I think there was a desire from a council member to focus on the environmental needs — so the revised language is: “The 70-year-old bulkhead at Redondo is near the end of its life, and king tides are already damaging the wastewater utility district’s pump station it protects. If the station is not better protected, it could discharge more than 100,000 gallons of raw sewage a day into Puget Sound. The city needs state assistance to plan and design a replacement bulkhead.” Basically, instead of framing this as a tourism/quality-of-life draw, it emphasizes the infrastructure-safety parts of the project.

I’ll go to the next one while we wait for hard copies — apologies. The second is regarding Cliff Avenue — again, talking more about the infrastructure benefit. The proposed new language: “Cliff Avenue Connector. Cliff Avenue needs safety improvements as more people walk in the downtown and waterfront areas. Today, pedestrians share a narrow roadway with vehicles, including fire and emergency responders. Raising the pedestrian path above the road would separate people from traffic, keeping the route clear for emergency vehicles and improve ADA accessibility.”

So there were two items on capital projects. The third change was toward the bottom, under Public Safety, the fourth bullet point. Right now it says “support non-moving violations for vehicles that obscure license plate recognition.” This makes it a little more broad: “support non-moving violations for vehicles that obscure license plate recognition, fail to display both required plates, or have expired registration.” We’re getting hard copies — again, apologies.

[1:11:02] Mayor Matsui: Those are your changes, right? Do you want me to move into questions?

[1:11:10] Deputy Mayor Achziger: Yes, please.

[1:11:20] Mayor Matsui: Council Member Steinmetz.

[1:11:23] Council Member Steinmetz: I believe not having proper registration is already a moving violation, not a non-moving violation.

[1:11:32] Deputy Mayor Achziger: This is non-moving.

[1:11:33] Council Member Steinmetz: I know — so it wouldn’t be accurate to reduce the severity of it to non-moving.

[1:11:41] Deputy Mayor Achziger: Oh, I’m sorry — yeah, I think the ask is to push for legislation that moves it from a moving violation to a non-moving one, so cars that are parked may be ticketed for no registration.

[1:11:57] Council Member Steinmetz: I think we probably need to address the apparent conflict — if the vehicle is moving it can be ticketed one way, if not moving, another way.

[1:12:11] Deputy Mayor Achziger: That could be the legislative —

[1:12:18] Council Member Steinmetz: But I just — my first reaction was, wait, it’s already a moving violation. I don’t know if the Deputy Mayor —

[1:12:26] Deputy Mayor Achziger: Yep, sure — so I guess the question is, is it possible to make it both applicable? What would we have to do to make there be no distinction between a moving and non-moving violation with regard to registration? Is that possible?

[1:12:49] Anthony Hemstad: Well, it’s state law, so state legislators would have to vote it that way — we can’t, but we can certainly advocate. This is part of the legislative priorities — to advocate for that. Basically what it would do is: we don’t care if you’re moving or stationary — if you’re not registered, you’re eligible for a ticket.

[1:13:21] Deputy Mayor Achziger: Thank you for the clarification. Can I go back to another question, or —

[1:13:25] Mayor Matsui: Come back to you on proposed language — let me ask for questions first. Let’s stick with this one since we’re talking about it — the non-moving violations language for vehicles. Any other questions on license plate recognition, failure to display, expired registration?

[1:13:53] Mayor Matsui: If I may — in general, with our legislative agenda, I find it more helpful, and also in working with legislators, to have general goals and directions we’re heading in. When we get really specific, that can be somewhat straitjacketing. So if we can identify the direction we want to go without being too specific, that might be more helpful and give us a better shot at success, instead of being extremely —

[1:14:44] Mayor Matsui: Questions about either that or this revision. All right — Council Member Steinmetz, did you have a proposal?

[1:14:57] Council Member Steinmetz: I was just going to say, if we can just put in that parked cars can be ticketed as well —

[1:15:07] Mayor Matsui: Council Member Desimone.

[1:15:16] Council Member Desimone: Oh, I’m sorry — I do need a point of clarification. This document is referring to what we’re asking the legislators for, correct? Our legislative priorities that give Anthony direction to go lobby for these things on our behalf.

[1:15:24] Anthony Hemstad: Correct — we’re asking them to help us with legislation to address these things.

[1:15:39] Council Member Desimone: Okay, yes, absolutely — will you repeat that for me again, I’m sorry, Council Member Steinmetz?

[1:15:50] Council Member Steinmetz: That it includes moving and parked vehicles — [turns on mic] — that cars parked on a public street can be cited for failure to register. How does that sound? Do I have enough thumbs up?

[1:16:21] Mayor Matsui: One, two, three, four, five, six. Okay — is that clear to you, Mr. Hemstad?

[1:16:30] Anthony Hemstad: Yes. And I’ll work with Tim George as well to make sure this makes sense.

[1:16:39] Mayor Matsui: Thank you in advance, Tim George. Let’s talk about Cliff Avenue — oh, sorry, did you have a question?

[1:16:53] Council Member Nutting: I did have a question — all-encompassing. So the ask, as I understood it, was that we pass this with the motion presented and that there be wordsmithing — am I correct?

[1:17:14] Anthony Hemstad: So, yes — I’m sorry, we don’t have the right copies. The one in your packet is Option 1; we got requests for changes, so I’m trying to get, Council Member Nutting — do you want to use Option 2 in spirit, and we’ll tweak the little things? So yes, but it’s really Option 1 or 2 on how you want to approach these items. We do need direction on which way you want to go — wordsmithing will happen either way.

[1:17:35] Council Member Nutting: Yeah, understood — I didn’t get a copy.

[1:17:44] Mayor Matsui: Oh, someone else has one — my fault, thank you. All right, can we move to Cliff Avenue? Will you scroll up, please?

[1:17:59] Anthony Hemstad: So Cliff Avenue — the one in your packet focuses more on, as you can see, safety improvements, really more pedestrian-focused. We got a request to integrate the emergency-access impact, so Version 2 says: “Cliff Avenue needs safety improvements as more people walk in downtown,” but it also focuses on fire and emergency responders.

[1:18:32] Mayor Matsui: Looks like I have six thumbs up there. Okay, how about the last one — Redondo?

[1:18:44] Anthony Hemstad: The version on the screen focuses on destination/location; we got a request to focus on the critical infrastructure component, especially as it relates to nearby wastewater. Is this a question?

[1:19:00] Mayor Matsui: Council Member Bloss, let’s do questions.

[1:19:09] Council Member Bloss: So the wastewater pump is in the city-owned parking lot, right? And the bulkhead failing is at the north end of Redondo — is the king tide problem at the north end?

[1:19:26] Staff / Mike Slevin: Lake Haven sewer, which is not near the park, has the wastewater infrastructure — but the idea is if that were to fail — Mike, do you want to address it?

[1:19:35] Mike Slevin: The Lake Haven wastewater pump station — the sewer drains at Redondo downhill to the north. There are a few pump stations, but one of the major ones is at the very north end of the bulkhead, inward maybe 20 feet from the bulkhead wall, and that pumps all the way to the station.

[1:19:53] Council Member Bloss: Is there another pump by the parking lot?

[1:19:58] Mike Slevin: Yeah, there’s two different pumps — the one we’re worried about is the one at the very north end of the block.

[1:20:01] Council Member Bloss: Okay — because that’s where the king tides are going, that’s where the sewer’s failing. Okay, that makes sense — and that’s where the proposed esplanade was.

[1:20:08] Mayor Matsui: Council Member Nutting.

[1:20:08] Council Member Nutting: Thank you, Mayor. My question is — I’m always about the environmental impacts, but where are we going to best get the dollars? If we go environmental impacts, are we going to get grants quicker, faster, better? Or if we go with tourism?

[1:20:39] Anthony Hemstad: Well, for the purpose of this document, where we’re going specifically in trying to get earmarks in the capital budget, there’s the possibility of Climate Commitment Act (CCA) dollars, a separate category within capital that could allow more options — though there’s a question of how much CCA funding will be available, since much of it was redirected last time and there’s a good chance that happens again. So this doesn’t fully answer your question — there are a fair number of unknowns right now — but by talking about environment and ecology, that at least leaves the door ajar if we want to try the CCA route. Beyond the legislature, staff and others will be trying to get other grants as well — that won’t be limited by this document.

[1:22:04] Mayor Matsui: Council Member Harris.

[1:22:07] Council Member Harris: Thank you. Somewhat rhetorical but short — I tend to vote no, or thumbs-not-up, on any of this stuff, because I think we just tell you what we want and then you decide which meeting to go to in order to put it into effect. There may be an Environment Committee meeting where that language is productive, or an emergency transportation committee meeting, whatever — and it’s the job of the lobbyist, because there’s a dozen meetings every day during session and you can’t be everywhere. I’m concerned about hamstringing that by saying “this is the avenue you’ve got to go down.” I think council members should just tell you what we want and you figure out how to make it happen — that’s my unasked-for advice to all my colleagues: keep it — this could be even shorter and have the exact same effect.

[1:23:15] Mayor Matsui: Thank you. Deputy Mayor Achziger.

[1:23:24] Deputy Mayor Achziger: Are we still in questions, or in comment?

[1:23:29] Mayor Matsui: It’s kind of blended at this point, since I’m trying to get feedback on these priorities — so it has to be both.

[1:23:38] Deputy Mayor Achziger: We’ve stated previously on this dais that protecting infrastructure and public safety are our main priorities. The idea of “we’re going to ask for money for an esplanade” doesn’t fit either of those criteria — but actually emphasizing the fact that we could be dumping 175,000 gallons of raw sewage into the Sound every day because of king tides and that wall failing — I think that will get the legislators’ attention more than anything. However it has to be massaged to go through the sausage-making process is fine, but from our standpoint it fits our criteria for what we think is important with these projects.

[1:24:50] Mayor Matsui: I’d add — I agree with both Council Member Harris and Deputy Mayor Achziger. One, this is a serious issue of failing infrastructure that protects the environment, our quality of life, and city resources. Two, I want to agree with Council Member Harris — you’re in the meetings and daily communication with legislators, which puts you in the best place to say which argument will work best. I’ll say bluntly, I want any argument to work, whichever one you feel will be most successful — and I think actually it’s multiple: it’ll improve infrastructure, quality of life, could be better for the environment, etc. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. I do want to get this down to one page, since I’ve been told repeatedly not to give a two-, five-, or six-page legislative agenda. So I’m happy to leave the wordsmithing to you all, but generally, if we get across that we want a seawall replacement, that’s good enough. How does everyone feel?

[1:26:06] Mayor Matsui: Hey, that’s seven thumbs, thank you very much — we’re good. Oh wait, should we have a motion now that we’ve done the wordsmithing?

[1:26:20] Mayor Matsui: Council Member Nutting.

[1:26:22] Council Member Nutting: Well, the motion in front of me says: I move to adopt the 2027 City of Des Moines Legislative Priorities as presented.

[1:26:29] Mayor Matsui: Presented — let’s do that.

[1:26:37] Council Member: Second.

[1:26:37] Mayor Matsui: Council Member Desimone, I’ll give that to you. Any discussion? All those in favor, please raise your right hand: Deputy Mayor Achziger, Council Member Steinmetz, Council Member Harris, Council Member Desimone, Council Member Nutting, Council Member Bloss, and myself. Motion passes 7–0. Thank you very much. Item number three.

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[1:27:12] Mike Slevin: Good evening, Mayor and council. We’re here tonight to talk about the 223rd Street project — we were asked to bring back Option 2 for your discussion. Just a quick project history: December ’22, council approved the planning study contract, before my time here. December ’23, we had public outreach — online survey, website. April ’24, a finalized study report of the 10% design was presented to council. November ’24, presented to council. April 2nd, council provided direction to decline the water quality grant that was part of that initial design — we’ve had a change in direction on that. August 9th, council requested reconsideration of the grant project, and we had that meeting; August 13th, alternatives to that option were presented to council. August 31st, we officially notified Ecology that we declined the grant, as directed by council. And today, council is revisiting Option 2.

Option 2 is just the sidewalk improvements along 223rd — the same layout presented before, basically connecting [pointing] the 6th Avenue/223rd intersection, filling in missing sidewalk on the south side from 6th to 7th, and filling in missing sidewalk mid-block on the north side toward 6th. So those are the improvements — no additional improvements to overhead lines, no landscaping or placemaking of any type. Estimated cost at this point is about $500,000.

Option 2, for discussion: it brings sidewalk connections to ADA compliance between 5th and 7th. Limited grant applicability, though there’s a possibility tied to recent work by the Transportation Department on SS4A and other Safe Streets grants — Kai has presented to council several times this spring, and we’re looking good for a grant covering 6th Avenue from 223rd to 225th, just ADA sidewalks. It’s quicker to implement this particular option, a much lesser scope, much more affordable — the downside is it may come more out of the general fund, since grants for these smaller projects are harder to come by; it’d be transportation funds, not general funds.

[1:30:32] Mayor Matsui: Let’s start with questions. Council Member Desimone.

[1:30:35] Council Member Desimone: I just wanted to confirm this is the project where it’s not removing parking stalls — I know there were a couple of different pictures last time. I want to make sure this is the one where there isn’t parking being removed, we’re just improving what’s existing.

[1:30:49] Mike Slevin: Correct — exactly. If you look here, this stays pretty much all the same, and all we’re doing is adding the sidewalk up here. There’s currently no parking at this location anyway, and over here there’s no parking for the alien exhibit — this is just grass and gravel currently, and there’ll be sidewalks there now.

[1:31:16] Mayor Matsui: Okay, thank you. Council Member Bloss.

[1:31:20] Council Member Bloss: Thanks, Mike. There are currently some flower pots along the route — would these be kept, or removed/replaced? Do you have thoughts on that?

[1:31:29] Mike Slevin: If we want to do beautification with temporary add-on flower pots like we have on Marine View Drive, those would be doable — but it does not have irrigated planting strips or anything like that.

[1:31:44] Council Member Bloss: I think there are already some flower pots — would you keep them, or would you need to remove them?

[1:31:45] Mike Slevin: We absolutely could keep them — yes. This level of design doesn’t address that.

[1:31:58] Mayor Matsui: All right, any discussion? Council Member Bloss.

[1:32:03] Council Member Bloss: Last time I proposed a motion to increase the funding for beautification, but after talking to my colleagues and staff, I trust the city will do their best effort to make it look nice — the rendering doesn’t really show what it will look like in the end, with decorative lighting and so on. So I don’t think we need to increase the funding for that anymore.

[1:32:20] Mayor Matsui: Council Member Steinmetz.

[1:32:27] Council Member Steinmetz: I’d like to thank my colleagues for taking the time to talk this through and come up with something I think we can all live with. I think it’s going to look much better and will make the connection from the steps to 7th, joining all the way up to Marine View Drive, which already has sidewalks. I think this is an excellent approach. Thank you.

[1:33:00] Mayor Matsui: All right. Do I have a motion? I don’t see suggested language — it can simply be, “I move to proceed with Option 2 as presented.” Council Member Steinmetz.

[1:33:14] Council Member Steinmetz: I move to proceed with Option 2.

[1:33:21] Council Member: Second.

[1:33:25] Mayor Matsui: Second by Council Member Nutting. All in favor — Deputy Mayor Achziger, Council Member Steinmetz, Council Member Desimone, Council Member Nutting, Council Member Bloss, and myself. All those opposed? Council Member Harris. Motion passes 6–1. Thank you.

[1:33:43] Mayor Matsui: All right, let’s move on to a new business item — welcoming Anthony Hemstad back for a discussion about multifamily tax exemption. Thank you very much, Mike.

[1:34:04] Anthony Hemstad: Here we go. Okay — in all my years working with the City of Des Moines, I’ve never presented twice in one meeting, so it’s good to be back. Today we’re going to talk about the multifamily tax exemption program — MFTE. This is a fairly complex program; I want to give you enough information to make a judgment on it. I don’t want to get into the weeds, because this can go in lots of different directions — you don’t necessarily need to be an expert in the RCWs after we’re done, just to know the concepts, though happy to go into more detail if you want. I’ve had planning commission meetings on this with other cities that go for hours — we’re trying to keep this high-level if possible.

First off — why am I your advocate here talking about MFTE? About half the work my firm, Hemstad Consulting, does is economic development work, and within that we’ve become somewhat expert on MFTE — we’ve worked with a number of jurisdictions on their MFTE programs, and with developers on how to use the program. MFTE has gone through two reforms in recent years — I was very active in the last one, which passed in 2025 — [shows photo] that’s when we signed it with Governor Ferguson. Interestingly, I’m the only lobbyist there — everyone else is a complete policy wonk, because this is really, really wonky.

What is MFTE? It’s really a public-private partnership to stimulate housing — specifically multifamily housing. It’s a property tax waiver program, and both cities and counties can use it. It’s been around a long time and has been expanded so that many more cities and counties can use it than before — it used to be very limited to just infill areas, now it can be very flexible depending on what cities want to do with it. There’s a variety of options, and cities can tailor it to their goals.

Interestingly, Des Moines actually had MFTE — adopted in 2009, repealed… well, not repealed — when adopted it had a 10-year sunset, so it was allowed to sunset in 2019. I talked with your former staffer, Susan Cesar, who many of you know, and she said that during her time here the program wasn’t used — she doesn’t even recall inquiries about it. We can talk about why that is; there’s been a variety of changes from 2019 to now. In talking with the Department of Commerce, which keeps track of these things, they had never heard of Des Moines using the program — that said, they still had Des Moines listed as a city that had the program. So, this will be shocking to all of you, but Commerce is not infallible.

How does it work? The underlying land is always taxed just like today, and any non-multifamily development on that land — say a mixed-use development with commercial on the ground floor — that commercial portion is still taxed. But the multifamily portion, the added value strictly from the multifamily, is not taxed. There are different flavors of MFTE — by far the most common is the 8-year, but now there are 12-year and 20-year programs too; we’ll go into how those differ. It’s up to the city to determine where this can happen — some cities say anywhere multifamily is allowed, we’ll allow this program; others say we want it on these two blocks specifically, to funnel interest to a certain area. So it depends on what you’re after — just more housing, specifically more affordable housing, and where you want it.

It works for new construction, or for renovating existing buildings that aren’t currently habitable but could be with an incentive to make that work. And since this only focuses on property tax, all the other fees associated with development still get collected by the city — so it’s definitely a way to spur activity.

Who uses it? It’s been around 30 years; currently about 60 communities have it — though I think that count includes Des Moines, which, per Commerce, doesn’t actually have it as of 2025. It includes all our larger neighbors — includes Normandy Park, SeaTac, Kent, Federal Way, and our near neighbors Auburn, Renton, and Tukwila all use it. In 2025, 71 projects were built using this. Important: about 30% of all multifamily projects started in Washington State last year used MFTE — I’d guess it’s considerably higher this year. Wearing my economic development hat, I was at a conference earlier today about real estate and economic development in the South Sound, and the word is things have slowed down very substantially. What I’m hearing from developers is: “if it doesn’t have MFTE, we’re not going to build it” — and even with MFTE, they’re not building because of various factors that have driven up development costs so much that we’re in a challenging time. But having this policy in place could help get us back to a point where development happens once some macro conditions change in favor of it.

On to the three big types. The 8-year program — by far the most used, and the simplest, because the state doesn’t require any affordable housing component. It’s market rate, and developers understand it — no hoops to jump through, no studies or reports that go to Commerce, no monitoring the income of residents. However, local communities can change that — if you want to require an affordable component even on the 8-year program, you can. There’s a lot of local initiative possible. This would be used, for instance, if you have an area — say downtown — that isn’t developing, where some properties have been looked at for development and the cost doesn’t pencil out; this helps get to a point where it mathematically makes sense to go, rather than not going, which has been happening in some areas for years.

The 12-year program: about 15–20% of overall MFTE units developed use the 12-year program. By state standards, at least 20% of units in a 12-year program must be for low- or moderate-income households — that’s changed too. Low income is defined as up to 80% of area median income (AMI); moderate income up to 115%. Again, it’s up to the local community — you can say we’re only doing low-income for that 20% set-aside, or mix and match as you want.

One important wrinkle for Des Moines: the AMI we use isn’t an AMI for Des Moines or South King County — it’s for King County as a whole. Des Moines, taken independently, would have a much lower AMI than being lumped in with places like Hunts Point and Bellevue. So while the state only requires going down to 80%, if we wanted to actually get that same roughly-80%-for-Des-Moines effect, we might want to drop that threshold to 70% or 60% — again, up to the city to decide, and that can be adjusted in a variety of ways. AMI charts are complicated, but just for an idea: at 80%, that’s roughly $82,000 for one person in King County, or $117,000 for a family of four.

The 20-year program is the newest and most difficult to actually use — I don’t want to spend a lot of time on it. It’s really designed for nonprofit groups like Habitat for Humanity, or government entities like a housing authority — it gives a 20-year tax abatement but then requires 99 years of being kept at an affordable level. Very few projects have been built using this; it’s only applicable to a few places, so we may not want to spend much more time on it.

There’s a cousin of MFTE that was passed in the Transit-Oriented Development bill a year ago, which will require many cities, including Des Moines, on high-capacity transit corridors, to adopt a variety of reforms — including a different wrinkle of the 20-year MFTE program. You as a body will have to consider that; it’s required to be done by 2029. I’ve talked to Rebecca, and it’s scheduled to come up in 2028. That 20-year program is called MFTE too, but it’s different and in a different RCW — they’re making it very complicated. I’d recommend looking at that in 2028, or sooner if you want to move it forward, but the 8- and 12-year are the things to consider now if you want to consider any MFTE.

Residential Targeted Areas (RTAs): earlier it was very formulaic about what cities could designate as an RTA — that’s gone. The bottom line is, as city council, you can name any RTA you want in the city — two blocks, the entire city, greenfield areas, infill, up to you. MFTE can only be used where you’ve designated a Residential Target Area.

Again, you can localize a lot. You’ve heard the big-picture state minimums, but you can mix and match — just an 8-year program, or 8 and 12; you decide how much affordability you want in those programs. You can also add additional requirements — say, prevailing wage, apprenticeships, or inclusionary contracting — but that takes away much of the incentive, since it drives up development costs. I’ve seen communities layer on many things and then wonder why MFTE isn’t being used at all — because if you’ve actually increased the cost of development, it won’t be used. Also, something that just passed in the last legislative session: there can be 12-year extensions to the 8- or 12-year program, but even if the 8-year was done at market rate, if you do a 12-year extension, you then have to put at least 20% affordable housing into it. We can go into more detail, but there’s a lot we don’t necessarily need to cover.

What does it mean for revenue? The tax on the underlying land continues to be collected no matter what, and all other taxes and fees are collected as well. The city benefits from new residents and the per-capita payments all cities get. And then — this is the thing even legislators often don’t understand — there’s a tax shift that takes place. The city doesn’t actually lose income from property tax, because — and we can walk through this a couple of times — when the multifamily construction happens, it’s up to the county assessor to determine what to do with that new construction, and every county assessor but one so far has said, “that’s new construction” — meaning there’s more real estate value in the community than before, and that value should be taxed. It is taxed, but not on the property that has the exemption — rather, it’s spread to the other taxpayers in that taxing district. The impact on an individual household is usually relatively small, and it’s spread on a value basis. It’s not just city property tax — it’s all property taxes, because of that exemption, so in many communities it goes mostly to those who pay the most property tax. How it’s shifted depends on the location of the development and what taxing districts it’s in — even within Des Moines, different areas have different overlapping property tax districts, so it can vary block to block. We have a simplified, generalized example, but two blocks over, it could be different depending on what districts you’re in or not in.

[1:55:54] Mayor Matsui: Yeah — I’m sorry?

[1:55:56] Anthony Hemstad: No, no, no, and it is complicated — could we maybe just do an example?

[1:56:09] Mayor Matsui: That’s why I didn’t want to — that’s perfect, let’s go to the example.

[1:56:17] Anthony Hemstad: There are two slides here — this one is the benefit to the developer, why this moves the needle. Hypothetically, say a new-build corporation builds 100 units, average $250,000 per unit, that’s a total value of $25 million. Looking at a Des Moines property tax rate — for many areas in Des Moines that are in the Highline School District, because the rate moves considerably with school district, but most of Des Moines has a rate of about 8.65 [per $1,000] — again it can vary by area, but just using that — the MFTE-exempted value on that would be about $2,162.50 per unit. Multiply by 100: $216,250 per year. So the developer isn’t paying that, but King County Assessor says that’s new value, it should still be taxed. This also keeps all the junior taxing districts happy — because if we told Highline School District, “hey, you’re going to get some kids but no taxes to pay for it,” the superintendent would be here, our friends from South King Fire would be here, and any other property tax jurisdiction would be complaining, saying “you’ve got to make us whole.” The tax shift makes everyone whole.

Let’s go to the next slide to explain further. That $216,250 — or that $25 million total — for Des Moines and its overall valuation, works out to about 3 cents per thousand. What does that translate to for the median home in Des Moines — pulled off the internet, supposedly around $591,000 — about $24 a year of tax shift. Again, that’s for a median home; it can vary based on the value of your home or building. We’re using 100 units as an example because it’s a big development and easy to calculate and compare — a 300-unit project would be more, a 25-unit project less. And the council, if it desires, can put a cap, like the council did in 2009 when they said “let’s not ever do more than 3,000 units” — 3,000 units was very optimistic. But you could say 300 or 500 units, or set a point to reassess, if this is a program you want to consider using.

[2:01:23] Anthony Hemstad: All right, I’m sensing definitely you’re fading, so let’s keep going to advantages. Yes, this is a complicated program. MFTE can really spur redevelopment — if there’s a bunch of one-story buildings that aren’t being redeveloped, putting MFTE in that area can get developers to look again. Adds housing choice. For cities, new construction adds a lot of sales tax and development fees, and cities benefit from utility taxes and every other tax that would normally be paid, except property tax on the multifamily portion — plus the per-capita payments already mentioned. Projects are often bought and sold after completion, adding REET for the city as well. And again, no hit to the city’s property taxes, because of the tax shift.

Disadvantages: probably first and foremost, the tax shift — this can become controversial to some, because normally it’s just a few dollars, but if it’s used in a small community and a big development comes in, it can be very different — I’ve seen communities like that. That would not happen in Des Moines — I couldn’t see that scenario, since there’s just not that much developable land and it’s already a fairly built-out community. There are debates, but some argue residential in general, for cities, loses money in the long run, because residents cost more in services than they generate individually — though that’s changing as people shop online rather than at commercial centers, which can be an argument against more residential growth generally. And if the city adopts this with an affordability component, there are reporting requirements — it’ll take some time from your community development staff to file those reports; usually not onerous, but it will take some time.

Okay — this was trying to be a 10,000-foot view of MFTE, positives and negatives, to see if council has interest in looking at this again as a tool to encourage redevelopment of certain areas. If you’d want to consider market rate or the 12-year, up to you whether to keep going down this road, put it aside for a while, or think about it — this is informational. This is coming to you because we talked during your retreat about tools that encourage density downtown — Council Member Nutting has expressed his past experience with this tool, which I’m sure he’ll talk about — but this is simply meant as a tool to encourage density. Are you interested or not? Questions and discussion.

[2:05:40] Mayor Matsui: Council Member Steinmetz.

[2:05:44] Council Member Steinmetz: Two things. How does this interplay with the 1% cap on property tax rates? Is that what causes the redistribution to other things?

[2:06:02] Anthony Hemstad: It would go above and beyond the 1%, because it’s de facto seen as new construction — because it is new construction. But it’s new construction that’s spread to other taxpayers.

[2:06:14] Council Member Steinmetz: Okay — and then, if — I lost it, you remember it?

[2:06:24] Mayor Matsui: Council Member Bloss.

[2:06:27] Council Member Bloss: In your first example, the $216,000 that’s tax-exempt — does that mean the city will generate $216,000 more in property taxes that year than the year before?

[2:06:38] Anthony Hemstad: No — that’s all the taxing jurisdictions together, and the city’s is a small proportion, like seven or eight cents.

[2:06:50] Council Member Bloss: Yeah, yeah — so this is a way to create much more leverage than just forgiving the city property tax, because the city property tax is pretty low.

[2:07:05] Anthony Hemstad: Yeah, but it’s the school district, the state, the county, and others — really above and beyond the 1%, like Council Member Steinmetz said.

[2:07:14] Council Member Bloss: Those are really not connected — if I get what you’re saying, what increases is the assessed value of other properties, and it’s the assessor who sets those, nothing to do with us increasing a rate above 1%? It’s the county assessor who says “your community is putting in 150 new units, so the values of homes around you are going up” — is that correct?

[2:07:45] Anthony Hemstad: That the overall assessed value has gone up, and that value is spread to the taxpayers — right, Council Member Harris?

[2:07:59] Mayor Matsui: Council Member Harris.

[2:08:00] Council Member Harris: What are the odds of obtaining the language from the prior version of this? Just because it sounds like this is different, new and improved, and I’m interested in why the earlier version got a very round number of adoption — as they say.

[2:08:24] Anthony Hemstad: Yeah, we can certainly pull that — the default is still in the code.

[2:08:31] Council Member Harris: And I’m not — my question is more, you know, dumb economics — like if someone wants to site a Starbucks or any kind of store, they have very accurate predictions of what costs will need to happen to make that profitable. And I’m struck — is there any data on, if we do this in this block, not certainty, but “there’s a 60% chance somebody will take the bait”? That should be somewhat knowable, rather than just putting the thing out there. I’m not saying it isn’t the greatest idea — I’m just concerned about setting these things and creating an ongoing expectation for future development. There should be some predictive aspect to this, as to how effective it will be in certain parts of —

[2:10:04] City Manager Caffrey: May I jump in? I think your comment and question is a very good one, but we’ve been presented with three different items that have 20 or 30 different permutations. I think at this point we need to know if we’re interested in pursuing it, and then it would need to be refined further — it would be very tough to model for the total number of options.

[2:10:20] Council Member Harris: I just — we had this earlier thing from FCS about the cost of service in a particular area, and I can imagine expanding that kind of work to other parts of town, having some idea what the true cost to serve is for a particular area, so if you provide this benefit —

[2:10:46] City Manager Caffrey: I’m not disagreeing with you, Council Member Harris — I’m saying we probably don’t have enough information at this time; one would have to further refine whether you want to pursue it to get to that kind of number, because it would vary dramatically based on 8 years vs. 20 years, King County median vs. Des Moines-level median — there are too many factors. I think if we get further down the road on one of these, you’d be able to develop a model.

[2:11:20] Mayor Matsui: Other questions?

[2:11:28] Anthony Hemstad: If I can jump in — a portion of Council Member Harris’s question, I believe, is also asking why it wasn’t used for a decade. I think MFTE would have worked much better if there was more flexibility on heights. Quite frankly, with low heights and one- or two-story buildings on locations that would have to be demolished — you could build a three-story building after demolishing a two-story one, and it’s not going to pencil out. [laughter] You’d have to go five or seven stories. Also, MFTE has gone through two substantial legislative changes since it existed here in Des Moines — it’s become more flexible, but also more complicated. In its most recent form it can go as small as a fourplex — before it was seen as really “bigger construction” only. So depending on where MFTE was allowed, it could happen in neighborhoods. But if, hypothetically, you wanted to do it downtown, where you’re building five stories with limited land, and with floor-area-ratio requirements you’re almost certainly going to need structured parking — that’s really expensive, and you need incentives to counterbalance that, because today, frankly, if you’re doing structured parking, it’s not going to pencil out in Des Moines. It will not.

[2:13:56] Mayor Matsui: Okay. Council Member Nutting.

[2:14:03] Council Member Nutting: Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Anthony, for your presentation. You answered my first question, which was why wasn’t it used — and I absolutely agree it was because of heights, although we have properties up on the highway that could go higher and denser. My question — and I apologize to staff, I sat in a meeting yesterday and didn’t get this out in time — do we have a mandatory housing affordability program, where a developer can pay into a pot to get more [density], but provide more affordable housing inside these projects? I’m only asking because it’s the MHA holiday that every developer in downtown Seattle is waiting for — that’s the reason there are only four cranes in downtown Seattle right now, they’re waiting for this holiday, because the current pot isn’t conducive to developing property anymore.

[2:15:11] Anthony Hemstad: Right — Tim and I are both not aware of us having any of that in place right now.

[2:15:15] Council Member Nutting: Okay, if we can take a look — because I’d be in favor. I’m fine with MFTE at 8 years, and I’d be in favor of doing a holiday for the MHA, if that’s something the city has as well, because I think that’ll spur more development than we’re looking at — and of course, I’m always an opponent of heights, so —

[2:15:47] Mayor Matsui: Council Member Desimone.

[2:15:47] Council Member Desimone: I have a question, and I know Anthony said this earlier as a joke, but I’m actually serious — shouldn’t this be a Planning Commission question?

[2:15:58] Mayor Matsui: I’m sorry?

[2:16:01] Council Member Desimone: [Barton DeLacy] had asked for it to come to them first.

[2:16:01] Mayor Matsui: Oh — we don’t have to take a vote today, we’re not voting.

[2:16:05] Council Member Desimone: Exceptional, exceptional. And then — I also had the same question about why it wasn’t used before, which got answered — but why wasn’t it brought back sooner, thinking it might be a good idea? Was it just left to die, sitting there, or —

[2:16:20] Anthony Hemstad: No — it was implemented for a 10-year period, per the code we found. “Repealed” isn’t really accurate, it just expired.

[2:16:29] Council Member Desimone: Expired.

[2:16:33] Anthony Hemstad: Expired in 2017 or 2019 —

[2:16:33] Council Member Desimone: Thank you.

[2:16:33] Anthony Hemstad: — 2019, and for whatever reason it wasn’t brought back until now that it was asked about.

[2:16:42] Council Member Desimone: Okay — and I do understand the property-value part of the tax we were discussing, took the whole time to put A and B together. But I do have questions about the service side of it — Anthony touched on it — more kids in school, more police, more fire calls, whatever — I’m not 100% clear on that.

[2:17:07] City Manager Caffrey: I think that’s also what Council Member Harris is getting at. So, two things: one, if you do this program, the taxes are being paid — they’re just not being paid by that property owner, you’re spreading them across the community. So in one way, the services those people need are being paid for.

[2:17:20] Council Member Desimone: I think what — for whatever that period of time is, and then it goes back to that property owner to pay — I’m thinking of the “your dollar” infographic. So we don’t get the highest part of that money — it goes to those other taxing districts.

[2:17:37] City Manager Caffrey: That’s why it goes to all those other taxing districts — if the valuation of a house goes up, more goes to the state, more to Highline School District, utilities, fire district, etc. We get just our portion of those taxes, not the whole.

[2:18:01] Council Member Desimone: Yeah.

[2:18:05] City Manager Caffrey: But I think what also Council Member Harris is getting at — you had a presentation earlier this year from FCS on different land uses, and at a high level, the best one for us financially is commercial, strip centers, because it doesn’t cost as much to serve. A single-family house costs us more to serve than it brings in. So as we bring in more people — Anthony touched on it — there’s a point where they’re not paying their way. That’s something you can get into in more granular detail — what type of units, how many bedrooms, there’s a way to get into that, and we can look at it in the future if you’re interested.

[2:18:44] Council Member Desimone: Okay, yeah — thank you for the details.

[2:18:52] Mayor Matsui: Hold on, hold on — okay. Council Member Harris.

[2:18:56] Council Member Harris: Yeah, I do think this is the kind of hard-hitting, deep-mind research appropriate to a Planning Commission, and I look forward to them taking it up next year. Thank you.

[2:19:09] City Manager Caffrey: It will be taken up if we decide we’re going to go in this direction, because the direction goes from city council to Planning Commission.

[2:19:18] Mayor Matsui: Deputy Mayor Achziger.

[2:19:22] Deputy Mayor Achziger: So the only question then, is with regard to — do we want to explore this, do you need an answer now on 8, 12, or 20?

[2:19:38] City Manager Caffrey: No — I think you could tell me we’re not interested at all, or we’re interested and should have Planning Commission work on it, or we want to hear more and then we’ll tell Planning Commission to dive deeper.

[2:19:51] Deputy Mayor Achziger: Okay, I’d be in favor of exploring this, I have no problem with that. I’d ask that we be brought back information on how onerous this is, as far as having to keep track of the various property figures.

[2:20:13] Mayor Matsui: Council Member Steinmetz, your second time.

[2:20:23] Council Member Steinmetz: I thought we were taking our moment here to say — I’d be interested in the 8 and the 12. I’m not interested in [the 20].

[2:20:32] Mayor Matsui: Not necessarily a question we have to decide today — is do we want to go forward with getting more information?

[2:20:39] Council Member Steinmetz: Yeah, okay — particularly on the 8 and 12, yes.

[2:20:44] Mayor Matsui: Council Member Bloss, second time.

[2:20:44] Council Member Bloss: I have a question for you, Anthony — you said this could be used for rehabilitating existing structures. It’s got to be substantial rehabilitation, right? It can’t just be cosmetic changes and then you apply and get the tax exemption?

[2:21:00] Anthony Hemstad: It would have to be adding to the housing base — often it’d be a historic structure, for instance, so this could be an incentive. It could have worked great for the theater, although you ideally don’t want an incentive on something that’s going to happen anyway — but that was a very heavy lift to get that property redeveloped. If there are other historic buildings you’d want redeveloped that aren’t currently used for residential purposes, this would be perfect.

[2:21:59] Council Member Bloss: So you’d have to convert from non-residential to residential?

[2:22:02] Anthony Hemstad: Yeah.

[2:22:02] Council Member Bloss: Okay — so it can’t be an existing residential structure that gets rehabilitated?

[2:22:09] Anthony Hemstad: It can, if it’s not currently inhabited — if it needs so much renovation that it’s empty today.

[2:22:20] Council Member Bloss: Okay — and for the record, I’m in favor of going forward with this, and I like the 8 years.

[2:22:26] Mayor Matsui: Council Member Desimone, we’re going to get there, give me a second — I want to make sure we got all the questions, but I sense we’re getting close.

[2:22:35] Council Member Desimone: Okay, I promise. Thank you.

[2:22:36] Council Member Desimone: All right, I still am not sold on this — I’m never a “yes” on 20 years on anything — but I am in favor of exploring this a little more, and looking forward to a sales pitch I might get on board with. But I’d be a yes on moving forward.

[2:22:58] Mayor Matsui: All right, sounds like we’re there since we’ve moved into recommendations, even though I said we were taking questions — that’s okay. So I’m going to ask: are we moving forward with pursuing this as an option to review, either us first and then Planning Commission, or Planning Commission first — however we want to do that? All we’re asking today is are you interested in getting more information, investing some research into what this program could look like for Des Moines?

All right — is that a question, or —

[2:23:32] Council Member: I’m asking for a yes/no.

[2:23:37] Mayor Matsui: We had questions, so now I’m asking for yes/no.

[2:23:44] Mayor Matsui: You didn’t raise a thumb, sir — you raised your whole hand — [laughter] — okay.

[2:23:51] Council Member: Yeah — well, one means this, one means this.

[2:23:56] Mayor Matsui: Just making sure — we’re all trying to get to the end of the night. I think that was all seven, yes.

[2:24:03] City Manager Caffrey: Thank you — I think this is another tool in the toolbox, look forward to hearing more. Appreciate your presentation, Anthony.

[2:24:10] Anthony Hemstad: I’m sorry, Mayor — I know we’re trying to wrap up tonight. Do you all want us to bring you back more information, or go to Planning Commission?

[2:24:18] Mayor Matsui: I would recommend we bring you back more information before the Planning Commission.

[2:24:26] City Manager Caffrey: Okay — Catherine, if —

[2:24:38] City Manager Caffrey: Okay. We need a thumbs up/down around the table — can you give me a thumbs up on “us first”? Again, I’m not presenting you an ordinance first, I’m coming back with a more detailed overview — we’re not voting the next time you see this, it’s just: do you want to look at it first and have it have some shape before it goes to Planning Commission?

[2:25:12] Mayor Matsui: Robin, I need your vote.

[2:25:16] Council Member: Well, then let’s see it — yeah, there we go.

[2:25:19] Mayor Matsui: Okay — one, two, three, four — four, three. Thank you very much.

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[2:25:29] Mayor Matsui: All right, let’s go — and this will be quick, I promise. Number two [on the agenda]: additional sales tax for children and family services, first reading. And again, we’re looking at this today because we asked for it to be looked at today. Just a quick reminder.

[2:25:46] Assistant City Attorney Matthews: Good evening, Mayor and council. Matthews, Assistant City Attorney, with the staff presentation on draft Ordinance 26-104, an additional sales and use tax for children and family services. I’m hoping this will be very familiar for all of you — we introduced this about two weeks ago at the council budget session.

The legislature recognized we’re under a lot of pressure, so they provided some new options for raising revenue. One is a new sales tax to fund children and family services. It’s very similar to the public safety sales tax council passed last year, with two important changes: first, it’s about ten times smaller; but on the good side, we don’t have to have the police department jump through hoops to enact it — the council can just enact it. Like the public safety sales tax, the funds are restricted to a specific purpose — children and family services. The statute provides a number of examples of qualifying uses, a few of which are on the screen, and staff is recommending that if council imposes the tax, it be used for Parks and Recreation programming — after-school programs, things like Camp Chaos.

How would it work? It’s a new sales tax that would raise the total state, county, and city sales tax from 10.40% to 10.41% — an increase of 1 cent per $100 in sales. The city’s take of the sales tax would increase from 95 cents per $100 in sales to 96 cents. At current revenue trends, we project this would bring in about $41,000 per year for children and family services. Like the standard sales tax and the public safety sales tax, the Department of Revenue will do the collection — we just have to notify them to start collecting. There are three possible effective dates, with a 75-day warning period — so if council wanted to impose the tax beginning January 1st, we’d need to notify DOR by October 16th.

That ends my presentation — suggested motion is there. Any questions?

[2:28:50] Mayor Matsui: Sounds like the answer is no. Do we have a motion? Council Member Nutting.

[2:28:59] Council Member Nutting: I move to pass draft Ordinance Number 26-104 to the second reading at the October 1st, 2026 regular council meeting.

[2:29:05] Mayor Matsui: Second by Council Member Steinmetz. Any discussion? No — please vote by raising your right hand till I say your name: Deputy Mayor Achziger, Council Member Steinmetz, Council Member Harris, Council Member Desimone, Council Member Nutting, Council Member Bloss, and myself. Motion passes 7–0. Thank you very much, Mr. Hemstad.

[2:29:27] Mayor Matsui: All right, new agenda items for consideration. Now, this is the time for proposing new business items for a future agenda — any recommendation simply needs a hand raise from three council members. Do any members have new business they’d like to propose?

I’m going to call that a no. Moving on.

[2:29:49] Mayor Matsui: Now is the time for council member reports, limited to four minutes. We’ll begin with Council Member Harris.

[2:29:57] Council Member Harris: Thank you. I want to express my appreciation to Mayor, City Manager, and Director of Public Works Slevin for the air quality monitor opening today. It’s a really big deal — I confess I didn’t want a ceremony or any kind of thing like that, I just wanted it to be on. But it is a remarkable thing — the first of its type in America — and you cannot fix problems if you do not do data measurement. Everything should go as easily as that — in fact, it should. We make things a hundred times harder than they need to be with the Port of Seattle; I just struggle to get people to believe that’s where the money is.

Other than that — I’m not feeling great right now, so just wanted to put in that thanks to the city and to everybody who’s been working on that for a long time. People come into airport issues and work at it — the joke, which I heard at one of the airports I’ve visited, is that Part 150 studies last three years, and people spend two years just learning the lingo, and then it’s over. Having that physical structure will hopefully provide some continuity, because what’s happened up until now is every couple of years someone does a one-off test because they want something happening right now, and they fail, get frustrated, and move on. This is the first step in terms of continuity I’ve seen in a long time, and I appreciate it — because it’s not about the next two or three years of frustration, it’s about 5, 10, 15, 20 years. The airport is going to continue doing things we don’t enjoy for a long time, and this is the right step. You cannot fix what you don’t even measure.

[2:32:43] Mayor Matsui: Thank you. Council Member Desimone.

[2:32:48] Council Member Desimone: I have nothing to report.

[2:32:48] Mayor Matsui: Council Member Nutting.

[2:32:48] Council Member Nutting: Nothing to report, thank you.

[2:32:57] Mayor Matsui: Thank you. Council Member Bloss.

[2:32:57] Council Member Bloss: Fall is here — summer is officially over. I want to take this opportunity to thank city staff for the beautiful flower pots throughout the city this summer — thank you to whoever designed, planted, fertilized, and especially watered those pots, it’s beautiful, makes the city more inviting, and I can’t wait to see what’s coming for fall, if anything — sorry, no, something’s coming for the holidays, yes.

Also want to point out some events at the theater: this Friday there’s a Dolly Parton tribute party, free for everyone, 6:00–10:00 p.m. — movies on the big screen, music, cocktails, and food. And in October, back at the theater, magic shows on Saturdays at 1:00 p.m. — October 10th, 17th, and 24th, a magician will be there — you’ll see me there, my kids may or may not be there, but I’m really excited for the magician. Thank you to the theater.

[2:34:03] Mayor Matsui: Thank you. Council Member Steinmetz.

[2:34:06] Council Member Steinmetz: Thank you — well, part of my thunder got stolen, I was going to talk about the Dolly Parton party too, sounds like a lot of fun, but that’s great. Also, the Des Moines Chamber of Commerce is having a wellness presentation at Allen Medical Aesthetics on Saturday, I believe, from 11 to 1 — please come by, that’s on 7th Avenue, I believe 220 or 222, they have a neighbor that’s here. Anyway, just a couple of fun things to do this weekend if you’re looking for things, which I rarely am right now because I find them.

The other thing I wanted to talk about briefly — I do not have the ability to make our staff do anything, change parking spaces in particular. That’s part of an ordinance passed just after I got on the council, which I opposed. The Public Works Director does have the authority to do that in our community, and I don’t want anybody to think that somehow I’m getting special privileges by simply talking to staff and saying “we need to do this” and getting it done — that’s simply not the case. Thank you very much, nothing more to report.

[2:35:32] Mayor Matsui: Thank you. Deputy Mayor Achziger.

[2:35:37] Deputy Mayor Achziger: Yes, thank you, Mayor. I’d like to remind everybody that this Saturday is the final Farmers Market, 10 to 2, for the season. Also, something coming up that I think is important to note: the annual trick-or-treat path will be at the other end of the month — Friday, October 30th, not the 31st — 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., in the Marina District along Des Moines Memorial Drive.

And I wanted to say something about when we were voting on the 24th Avenue next stage, and the question about undergrounding — I think we need to have a serious discussion on the council about how we require private development to underground utilities, and yet we then exempt ourselves from that obligation. I think we really need to have a serious look at whether we’re going to continue this. We have some major projects — the recently completed road work on 24th, we waived that responsibility, and it is expensive, but the question is: are we being a little too — you know, “we’ll make the public do it, not the private developers” — but for public projects we’re going to ignore it? We did it on the 16th too, didn’t require it. We did get a message back from Public Works saying, “well, it’s not a view property” — but I don’t think it’s necessarily a view issue, it’s infrastructure. Particularly along 24th, we have some extremely high-tension wires, and knocking those out isn’t going to just knock out individual homes, it’s going to knock out entire sections of the electrical grid. So I’d just like to put that out there — I didn’t bring it as an agenda item for consideration, but I think at some point we should consider taking a look at that. With that, it’s getting late, Mayor, I’ll yield.

[2:38:31] Mayor Matsui: Thank you. I wanted to say thank you so much to Traci Buxton for being here tonight to talk about the Argosy Oktoberfest rides — sorry I had to miss it, but it sounded like a fantastic time, and I saw many of the photos, and you all looked like you were having a great time, including some of our members here. So thank you. Special thanks to Bettina Carrie and Nadya Curtis for all the work on Oktoberfest down at the Quarterdeck — I didn’t actually realize I was going to chug beer in front of a large audience, maybe hadn’t read that one quite correctly, but I’m glad it didn’t go all over myself, so at least that was a win, but it sounded like everyone had a great time, and I always like a good oompah band, those are so much fun.

[2:39:23] Council Member: You did dribble.

[2:39:24] Mayor Matsui: Oh, I’m sorry — well, you win a little, you lose a little.

I also want to say thank you very much to our partners at University of Washington — a special call-out to Council Member JC Harris for his continued advocacy and action on getting our air monitoring station put in down here on the south end of the airport, and it will be, I believe, the only location that has both a north and south end measuring particle pollution and all sorts of things that will inform data and inform policy in the future. Thank you very much for that, and it was a very nice ceremony — I’ll say ditto to my thanks to City Manager Caffrey and Mike Slevin for making sure we had a place, and that it went in where it was supposed to go.

I want to reiterate that not only is it the last Farmers Market of the season this Saturday — hope to see you there, rain or shine, I don’t mind when it’s rainy — but we are also tabling for the very last time. So if you have other issues you want to come talk to us about, the city will be there holding court, and hopefully there will be no rotten fruit, but we will be there in case you want Dunk Tank 2.0.

Thank you very much — this is the end of our meeting. Our next meeting will be a regular city council meeting, a little unusual on October 1st, but we’ll see you then. Is there a motion to adjourn?

[2:41:03] Council Member Harris: You bet.

[2:41:11] Mayor Matsui: All right — second? All in favor? This meeting is adjourned.