*Improving the ferry pilot program

My post on the Ferry Pilot Program (with the subtle title This Is Insane) has been one of the best moments in my short career as your low-rent elected. I’ve had the absolute (and rare) pleasure of having at least *~~ten~~ people tell me last week,

At first I was all for it. Then I read your article.

A significant number of average people took the time to read a fairly dense article with a very provocative title, with some actual evidence and… wait, here’s the best part: Changed their minds.

It doesn’t get much better than that. 😀

Now what?

An excellent question. I have a couple of action items below. One of them even involves instant gratification! The others are boring, hard but also quite doable with your help.

But first a bit of background:

The money for the first two months sailings cannot be recovered. However, the City has also booked other costs, such as a $70,000 marketing campaign, which may be at least partially recouped.
The Council established no metrics for success or failure of this pilot project. And that means there’s no ‘off’ switch.
- [update] The fare will be free for the first week, then $10 and $5 for seniors. With sixty two (62) passengers and 22 sailing days a month, even with 100% full price capacity, the City will lose $75,000. But because of the schedule, summer vacation for kids, and the proximity for seniors, my guess is that many of the riders will not be paying full price.
At our ARPA Spending Meeting last year, the Council voted money for a web site and other materials (including a model and video animaton) to explain the entire Marina Redevelopment to the public as it… er ‘develops’. 😀 The first step would be a Town Hall Meeting. My idea was that the project was so large and it would be changing over time, so we needed this to start filling in the gaps for people, rather than just ‘unveiling’ each item as separate things. (nb: at our 14 July RCM I asked for this to get underway and got nothing. This matters for two reasons:
- The project is far enough along to where everyone, boat owners, condo owners, etc. wants to be able to visualise where everything is going to go, like the Adaptive Purpose Building (APB), dry stack, hotel, parking,
- People don’t seem to get that the Marina is about to undergo many years of construction. You think that one crane is annoying? 😀 There are going to be crews down there working on all that stuff for the next decade. Are you starting to tune in to the frequency here? We need the public to understand the schedule.
The entire Marina was set up to be an independent business known as an Enterprise Fund. It is, in fact, the largest business source of revenue for the City. The whole point of an enterprise fund is that it must pay for itself. So any project within the Marina must at least break even.
When the current City Manager took over, he almost immediately broke the Marina into pieces. The docks are still in the Enterprise Fund, but as you can see from this graphic, the fishing pier and the old “Wasson House” near the beach are not.

That made it much easier to finance the seawall replacement–the City can use it’s full borrowing authority from the General Fund. But it also made it easier for the City to finance other projects on the floor. And that is, in fact the case with the Ferry Pilot. The City Manager decided that the Ferry Pilot money would come from the ‘Waterfront Zone’, which means it does not have to break even. And it is now drawing from the same pool of money as every other core City function: police, parks, human services, roads, etc.
For many years, the Des Moines Marina Association (DMMA) (the boat owners) had an extremely contentious relationship with the City and many brutal public town hall meetings. That changed several years ago. Now, the City attends DMMA monthly meetings. Neither the public or even representatives of the condo owners are usually there. But it has been there that much of the Marina Redevelopment planning has been rolled out first. For example, when the Marina Redevelopment survey was done, it was distributed only to those boat owners! Giving the DMMA so much influence over the entire Marina Redevelopment process was even more insane than the Ferry Pilot itself, for the simple reason that over 80% of the boat owners do not live in Des Moines.

Policy…

These are the things I need your help with to bring some accountability to both the Ferry program and the Marina Redevelopment. It’s always worth repeating that the way the ferry is being handled is the way every aspect of the project is being handled. Everything we can do to make the ferry program more transparent and accountable will have the same benefits for every other aspect of this $50,000,000 project.

#1 MARINA Town Hall

The City Council should vote to execute on the Marina Town Hall Presentation we funded at our ARPA Spending Meeting of September 2021 immediately. The entire ferry program should be put on hold after the initial sixty (60) days until after the presentation is built and until we can have that town hall meeting to explain the entire thing to the public.

The presentation should include a complete fly-through animation model of the expected components, a complete financial overview, and a five year projection–including the ferry.
It should be followed by a statistically valid survey of Des Moines residents.

Only when these tasks are complete could the Council vote to re-start the program. Consider this a public vote of confidence, which seems appropriate given the scale of the Marina Redevelopment.

#2 Marina Committee

We need a full City Council Committee devoted exclusively to the Marina. Given their expertise and special interest, the DMMA would continue to have great influence of course.

- But this discussion is the biggest chunk of money we will ever spend and the entire public should be able to participate in the process and every bit of it should be conducted as a public meeting.
- Also, it’s the only way to get at least a few members of the Council better educated on the topic. The whole point of a Transportation or Public Safety Committee is to have a subset of the Council put in extra time to really learn the material.

#3 Put the Ferry in the Enterprise Fund

The Ferry is a boat. It’s inside the docks. That is within the Enterprise Fund. So, it should accounted for in the Enterprise Fund. If it’s a real money maker? Schweet. The revenues will help pay for the docks and Marina upkeep. If not? It dies a quick death, without sucking oxygen out of the General Fund. Putting the Ferry into the Enterprise Fund provides instant accountability.

Action Items

Look, if it’s ‘free’, I would advise most people to ride the ferry. It’s not like boycotting grapes or whatever. That’s the fun part.
OK, now write the City Council citycouncil@desmoineswa.gov or show up for public comment at our next meeting Thursday July 7 at 6:00PM and show your support for the two above policy items:
1. Town Hall Presentation
2. Council Marina Commitee

We are considering an update of our Council’s Rules of Procedure this Thursday. And it is in those rules that committees are defined. So the timing could not be better.

*When I say ‘improve’ this program I’m taxing my ability to be open-minded to its absolute limit. Because the program is even worse than I described in the original article. This is a page from the contract we never even got to at the meeting. Sharp-eyed viewers will note that I was trying to be extra ‘nice’ at that meeting, even when I’d ask a question and the City Manager, instead of quoting a number would say, “it’s in the packet.” Actually, we’re spending at least $470,000 on this two month turkey. Check out the fuel no one mentioned and the $70,000 for marketing. Think about that: $70,000 on a ‘marketing program’ for a $200,000 ‘test’. (In fact, I’m thinking I may have to order more air quotes from Amazon if this thing keeps up.)