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Marina, Policy, Transparency, Weekly Updates

Weekly Update: 09/18/2022

This Week

Wednesday: Reach Out Des Moines meeting. Group leader Brenda MBaabu invited me to a community listening meeting at Midway Park last week and the discussion concerned how to organise events like National Night Out all year long in the area. Stay Tuned! 🙂 Just so you understand, these are not simply ‘feel good’ events. The research shows that community events, after school activities, all that ‘fun’ stuff, makes a big difference in reducing teen violence and improving outcomes for our kids. Teen crime was reduced over seventy percent in Pacific Ridge between 2013 and 2019! 2013 being when RODM got started. The program is effective and it’s a lot cheaper than guns and badges.

Thursday: Economic Development Committee (Agenda). Marina Redevelopment Update. An update on the housing situation with SKHHP (see below.) 2024 Comp. Plan Update? PSRC preview for October 21 Kent/Des Moines Station Walking Tour.

Thurday: Municipal Facilities Committee (Agenda) There will be a discussion of renewing the Quarterdeck’s lease. Apparently, the owner plans to sell the place to a new group of investors?

Thursday: City Council Meeting (Agenda) Some highlights:

City Manager Report

1. Citizen Recognition. It would be nice to know who is being recognised, but if nothing else, this gig has taught me to embrace ‘surprises’. 😀
2. 2nd Quarter Finance Report. This

Consent Agenda

1. Pothole repair report. There will be a presentation on what is getting fixed. This gives me an opportunity to remind you of DEMOCRACY! Mundane things like potholes get fixed when YOU MAKE SOME NOISE!

Main Business

1. Capital Improvements Plan (2023-2028) This is a list of projects we will fund, with priority scores and tentative dates. There are several feeder plans (Transportation, Parks, etc.) that are also scored, but they mean nothing unless or until they get on the CIP. You should look at the CIP once in a while because that tells you what the City considers to be important projects.
  A letter to Neighbourhood Activists: I’ve noticed a new form of strategery take shape this year involving the word ‘budget’. Look, nobody appreciates a good hack more than moi, but please note the number $50,000. If a project costs less than $50k, the Council probably does not see it or vote on it because that is the City Manager’s spending authority. And CMs rarely ask for permission unless they have to. 😀
  
  Sometimes the Council will take up a low-dollar item, but that usually involves something extraordinary, like a new holiday, a disease, or puppies. Seriously. It is not the Council’s job to micro-manage. I’m not only saying it, I believe it.
  
  I do want you to get what you want. But if you start saying “put this on the budget” or “move this up the list”, understand just what you are saying: You are asking the City to spend more than $50,000, which, despite inflation, is still $50,000. And you’re also telling a highly credentialled, subject matter expert, a person who studies the City every day for a living, that the City’s priorities, which are designed to be equitable and evidence-based, are out of whack. Wow. Look at you. 😀
  
  I’m not saying don’t do it. I’m just telling you that is the field of play. There are tons of worthy projects in Des Moines. Your only advantage is that those people aren’t working as hard as you are. Your job is to do your homework, be careful, polite, and persistent. It will not, nor should it happen in one meeting or maybe even ten. As that guy says in Saving Private Ryan, “earn this.” 😀 I know you want/need it now. Truly. But the fact that it’s often so arduous will improve your arguments and likely lead to a better solution. Go get ’em.

City Council Meetings are scheduled for Thursdays at 6:00PM at City Hall 21630 11th Avenue S., Suite #C Des Moines WA 98198. They can also be viewed live on Comcast Channel 21/321 or on the City’s YouTube channel. Committee Meetings are either at 4:00PM or 5:00PM, also on Thursdays.

You do not have to sign in to attend a meeting!
The sign-in sheet is only for people wishing to make a Public Comment.

There are three ways to provide Public Comment:

In person: Show up a few minutes before the meeting and sign the sheet. Public Comment is usually conducted at the beginning of the meeting.
By e-mail: All e-mails sent to citycouncil@desmoineswa.gov are considered public comment. They are instantly available to all members of the City Council and the City Clerk who includes them into the record of public comments at the next meeting.
By US Mail: Attn: City Clerk Office, 21630 11th Avenue S., Des Moines WA 98198 no later than 4:00 p.m. day of the meeting. Please provide us with your first and last name and the city in which you live.

All letters or e-mails requesting a specific action are referred by the City Clerk to the appropriate City department.

If you would like a follow up from me, personally please indicate that or call me (206) 878-0578.

The Clerk does not read e-mails to the Council in full; only the subject line. However, we do see them as soon as you send them. Your comments are added to the Agenda Packet available on the City web site following each meeting.

Friday: Midway Park 5:30PM. I will be there with Reach Out Des Moines to do a listening session on teen violence and public safety. If you missed it? The next meeting will be September 23rd, also at 5:30PM. See you there!

Last Week

Sunday: I attended the mini-hydroplane races at Angle Lake Park. In addition to trying a little bit to get some local businesses involved, the “Des Moines” angle is that I’m doing my semi-annual “no car for a few weeks” routine to see how transit is doing. It’s never been easy here, and… I can report that… it’s about the same. 😀 Transit here is a cultural deal. Tell people in Des Moines you’re taking the bus and they’re likely to say, “Something wrong, dude?” Apart from that stigma, it’s OK if you have one or two routes. But I live near 216th, probably the best place for transit in all of Des Moines and for free-form travel it’s no day at the beach. We have to improve transit here–especially in the South End. And I don’t mean ‘light rail’. Not in two or five years. Now.

Tuesday: Port of Seattle Meeting (Agenda) There were actually several meetings this week, most of them audit committees which the public rarely sees. But the fact that they have an audit committee is a big deal. I wish we had one, that’s for sure. 😀

Friday: South King County Housing and Homelessness Partners. There was a presentation on ‘inventory’, which means understanding what is the available stock of ‘affordable housing’. It’s important to recognise that how one defines both those words are still open questions. Which houses/apartments are considered affordable? Is it because they are subsdised or because they’re just plain run down? If they’re run down and a developer refurbishes them, can they be motivated to keep them affordable? So many questions. 😀 But it’s no joke. Doing an inventory is all very well, but the main reason housing is so nutsy expensive is simple supply and demand. Developers are very careful to only build so much. And at some point, governments will need to provide more incentives (carrots and sticks.) The more people who move here? The more homes they will need. And I would prefer it if those homes are ownership based if possible. That’s what people want and the taxes are what cities like Des Moines need.

Saturday: I did not attend the International Coastal Cleanup, but I want to give a sincere shout out to Mayor Mahoney, Deputy Mayor Buxton, Washington Scuba Alliance and all the volunteers who picked up five hundred pounds of trash. However… 😀

I’ve done a bunch of these types of events over the years. Every year 300,500, 700 pounds of junk gets scooped up–which is great. OK, so where does it keep coming from? 😀 I’m only being half facetious here. If you’ve watched the aftermath of any storm at Saltwater State Park, a new batch of logs will magically appear on the beach from far away; that’s how oceans work. But a lot of this crap is home grown. And I always wonder what things we could/should be doing here to reduce that ‘supply’?

Ad Hoc Rules Committee #1

Intro

Fair warning: All is true, but I walked into this with a chip on my shoulder. Because:

The meeting was held with the bare minimum 24 hours legal notice.
At a non-standard location (Police Station)
Was not recorded.
Did not show up on my City Calendar like other committee meetings.
There was nothing on the web except one tiny marker on the City web site.
And even little details like wi-fi were challenging.

The notice on the door indicated that there might be a ‘quorum’. Four people showed up, all from Redondo, including Councilmember Achziger. I assume they found out about it from either he or moi.

Back in time…

When the Council voted for some form of update to our Rules back in July, Deputy Mayor gave a presentation. I asked for a one-sheet specific task list. Because when we leave things open-ended (and we always leave things that open-ended) something bad always happens. It’s designed that way.

Buxton: My view of an ad hoc committee is administrative in mostly administrative like to gather information organize it and for me put everybody's input into a draft...

Mahoney: I would i would just say that this is the purpose of this is administrative, to get us ready to have that meeting in a constructive format where everybody's had input. So essentially the meetings that would occur in November and December would attend. It would essentially achieve that everybody's input would be there but it would be formatted and ready for the discussion any any subsequent meetings before that...

Harris: Having done this for a little while now and been kind of been a sap, I am going to recommend to my colleagues that the deputy mayor prepare a written proposal with a specific process bring it back at the next meeting and then we amend it and pass that. We've had this history of doing this kind of ad hoc, from the dais, sloppy business. And one person's understanding is this or that. You want a piece of paper. One page...

Pennington: I don't know that any one of us have that kind of expertise or time...

Harris: I made the motion because i have every confidence in the deputy mayor's ability to prepare a parliamentary procedure that is accurate and would be for the good of the council. And on one page.

That motion failed 2-5. No one spoke on my behalf.

The funny thing is that if you look at the Agenda, we were given two options to vote on, a ‘tweak’ or ‘complete re-write’. We never even voted on that. We just voted for… er… ‘something’.

All I took away from the above was that ‘we’ had decided to hire a consultant who would interview each of us as to our needs, wants desires. The consultant would compile those together, then submit a report. And then the committee would convene, discuss those ideas, and submit a draft to the full Council for debate.

As I said, I’ve been through this before. And yeah, that’s not what happened.

On the plus side, apparently, we have hired a consultant, Ann McFarlane of Jurassic Parliament, with whom I have taken several classes on various aspects of parliamentary procedure. I’ve also posted articles of hers here many times.

On the minus side, the committee (of which Deputy Mayor Buxton was named chair) showed up to the meeting having already developed a draft proposal, but before gathering that individual input. So whatever concerns CM Pennington may have had regarding anyone’s lack of time or organisational skills seem to have been misplaced.

In fact, during the meeting they were very pleased with their progress, seeming to have gone through about reviewing two thirds of that first draft.

You can stop right there.

In my opinion, that right there is, unethical and shows such bad faith as to be considered corruption. And if it had been recorded, I would’ve just walked out. There wasn’t even the pretense as to good faith.

Let’s start over…

Again, this is not a series of tweaks. It is a full re-write being done by the committee before it is even seen by the rest of the Council or the consultant and that is not what the Council discussed or voted on.

Over our history, our Rules of Procedure have slowly evolved from a standard template of language provided by the State of Washington for cities like ours. We’re referred to as ‘Code Cities’ because we adopted that State’s template of ‘code’. And every few years we amended that template.

The members had already spoken among themselves in private and developed a work plan. Rather than simply amending the existing Rules of Procedure as we have every time in the past, they decided to do a complete re-write based on two cities they apparently found attractive. Bothell and Kirkland.

Non-decision

And regarding that consultant, as much as I admire Ms. McFarland, our City Council has never before felt it necessary to retain a ‘consultant’. Deputy Mayor Buxton could have used her obvious vast store of energy and saved the taxpayers a few bucks on yet another ‘consulting fee’. And when I said that ‘the Council decided’ to hire her, actually City Manager Matthias says in the video that he had already researched hiring a consultant ahead of the meeting. So we really didn’t ‘decide’ anything, of course.

Side by side…

To give you a sense of why this bugs me so much… here is the table of contents and one page from our current rules concerning the role of presiding officer (Mayor). We have thirty seven rules and the whole thing takes up thirty three pages.

Now, here is a similar TOC and page describing the role of Mayor (presiding officer) from Kirkland. It has twenty five pages, but is subdivided into fifty five ‘rules’:

Looks easier, right? Sure. To you. But it functions exactly like our current system, which we already know how to navigate. And (sorry) it wasn’t meant for you. So again, the committee was starting from scratch, with two new documents, which do the same things, but are now formatted in a radically different manner. They were cutting and pasting large sections of each of these together before even sitting down?

Why forms don’t change…

Think about your 1040 tax form for a minute. Sure, it could be designed to be easier. But one reason it stays the same is because familiarity is a very good thing with legal documents.

Every year your accountant only goes over changes that might affect you. You expect the 1040 to look (mostly) the same every year. That allows you to focus only on the differences. That is also how the law works. You don’t generally scrap the entire presentation of the law. You amend it. To do otherwise would breed suspicion.

Proposing a completely new format forces any serious reader to review every frickin’ line old vs. new to make sure everyone covered all the bases.

So, far from making things ‘easier’, though the new system is meant to appear ‘friendlier’, it offers no real value. There are passages in the current RoP that could be made clearer or simplified for sure. But generally speaking, in no way is the current system difficult to understand. In fact, it’s waaaaaaaaaaaaaay simpler than most of the 1040EZ. Frankly, anyone who has real difficulty in navigating the current RoP, probably should not run for City Council.

And also, though they are a Public Committee of the Council, they provided none of the materials they were working from. So even if the public had shown up, it would’ve been impossible for them to follow along.

The process

As I wrote, the members mentioned in passing having looked at RoP from various ten other cities, but only Vancouver and SeaTac were mentioned by name and none of their code was used in the discussion. (Although they failed to mention the examples I submitted for some reason. 😀 )

So, they worked from that draft–going section by section through whole sections copied from Bothell and Kirkland. They mentioned sections they liked as being in blue? Sections they didn’t were in red? Sections they thought were ‘unneeded’ were simply cut out (eg. a travel budget, which many other cities do have, btw.) That was a theme: if there was something in those cities’ RoP that we do not currently have but which they did not appreciate, they didn’t say, “I know some people want to discuss that!” They simply cut it.

When they got to bits where they thought there might be hard opposition, they would say things like “that will be a discussion”, marked it off as such and then moved on.

At the tail end of the meeting a lot of the meeting was spent using the word ‘sanctions’. Basically, how to make the rules have some form of enforcement component.

Efficiency

By having what was essentially a private draft worked out in advance, they were, by their own able to get through about two thirds of their work in two hours. Woo hoo!

Left for next time? The apparently thorny subjects of ‘social media’ and ‘conflict of interest.’

Let’s talk about Bothell and Kirkland

I love Bothell. I was married off of Juanita Bay (which is technically Kirland? 😀 ) Hi there, Kirkland City Council! But those two cities are part of the North Shore School District, which includes Woodinville. Let’s just say that the (cough) demographics, challenges, and just about everything are slightly different from Des Moines. 😀

I’m sure both cities are doing great things and I mean that literally. Bothell and Kirkland have over twice the budget we do. (Long time watchers of our City Council meetings may remember Bothell because Traci Buxton has used them three times over the years as an example during salaries bumps for our City Manager. At last check, the Bothell guy was the highest paid City Manager in WA. And if we had as much money as either of these two cities, I’d be more inclined to think that appropriate as well.)

Why we would choose to use cities so different from ours as a model for either salaries or our RoP on escapes me. Perhaps those are the Cities my colleagues wish we could be.

Highlights

Spending Authority

All three agreed on the notion of raising the City Manager’s spending authority from $50,000 to $100,000, apparently to account for something ‘inflation’? Again, if we had twice the budget, I might be more amenable to twice the spending authority.

Appointments

They acknowledge that our Mayor has not always been using the proper procedure for appointments. So they seemed to indicate a willingness to just codify this de facto practice as the new rule. This doesn’t kill me because:

Just look at our current assignments, which are solely and arbitrarily at the whim of the Mayor. He assigned himself to ten things, the Deputy Mayor to a dozen things, removed me from assignments during the term, and even invented assignments without a vote of the Council–in direct violation not of our RoP, but of the City Municipal Code.
I’ve also registered at least a dozen complaints from residents who applied for various advisory positions and found the whole thing to be a black box. To which I reply, “Welcome to my world.” 😀

Two years to be mayor

One rule that has been controversial is the requirement that one must serve for two years to be eligible to be mayor or deputy mayor. All three members agreed that that this should be retained. Mahoney: “When I got started I didn’t know anything.”

I could not agree more. No matter what you think you know going in, it does take two years to understand what’s going on, let alone to do a fair job as Mayor. Without that experience, you are simply at the mercy of staff guidance. And no matter how helpful they are, that prevents one from maintaining the proper professional distance.

Councilmember Steinmetz has criticised me for not feeling he belonged on this one particular committee and this is exactly why. No matter how many games you’ve watched, it would be inappropriate having someone make rules about baseball until they had actually spent some time on the field.

Business Owners

Everyone felt that it was important to clear up any confusion as to the role business owners have on committees like the Lodging Tax Committee. The feeling seemed to be that since they generate business they should be in control.

I disagree completely. I believe that no City board/committee should ever be controlled by people who are not residents of Des Moines. Of course business owners should be a strong component of all relevant advisory groups; but never the controlling interest.

Sanctions

The committee spent a lot of time discussing ‘sanctions’ and ‘punishment’.
They also talked about having Councilmembers sign some form of ‘contract’ after being elected–agreeing to abide by the Rules of Procedure.
A ‘three step process’ was mentioned.

Councilmember Steinmetz mentioned the possibility of conducting a ‘sanction’ process in Executive Session. And for the uninitiated, Executive Session means in private. Nothing from Executive Session may be recorded or even discussed in public.

¹And here’s the best part: Under state law you’re never allowed to tell people anything as to what just occurred behind the curtain. Ever. You’re not even required to provide Minutes if you don’t want to. ES is the exact opposite of accountability and transparency.

In the past, the only time there has been an Executive Session here concerning an elected was when an elected was involved in litigation that might involve the City (eg. Don Wasson, ca. 2003.) There was no ES during the Anthony Martinelli kerfuffle because legally speaking his personal issues did not affect the conduct of City business.

This will be interesting.

Better…

For those of you who will complain ‘fake news!’? Fine. Show up at the next one, which is September 29 at 5:00PM. I told you that, they didn’t. Listen for yourself. Demand a recording. Prove me wrong; or over the top; or a complete fabulist.

This is my opinion (one of the rule changes the committee seems to want is that one provide an explicit disclaimer at all times)

The word ‘better’ was mentioned many, many times without defining what that means.

The RoPs in Bothell and Kirkland may appear more user-friendly, but ‘user-friendly’ was never our problem so I don’t see that change as ‘better’ or even ‘necessary’. I see it as taking time.

But the discussion I heard did nothing to address my definitions of ‘better’. Which are:

Transparency
Access to information
Accountability
Outreach, both to the public and to members of the Council.

Regardless of any personal animus, these changes will affect every new Councilmember going forward. It will create a new ceiling as to what is possible here, using two very different cities as the model. Candidates will fool themselves into thinking, “Oh, I’ll be nicer. It won’t be a problem for me.” That. Does. Not. Happen.

Be careful…

As I said, without any specifics, the City of SeaTac was mentioned in passing. Like Bothell and Kirkland, SeaTac’s budget is also at least twice our size. But their RoP does address many of my concerns. And many of those improvements were made in the past five or six years, by a Council with very different politics. Which only goes to show that good government is not about ideology. Ironically, it is exactly as Deputy Mayor Buxton said in her opening remarks. It all comes down to one’s ethics.

But that’s a conundrum that more than one CM has expressed to me in private over the years. By implementing processes like a right to inquiry and providing more public access to meetings and town halls, the prior SeaTac Council helped contribute to the recent change in their Council majority.

In other words, if you work to make your government truly more transparent, accountable and inclusive you make it easier to be replaced.

Transparency

Ad Hoc Rules Committee #1

3 Comments

Intro

Fair warning: All is true, but I walked into this with a chip on my shoulder. Because:

The meeting was held with the bare minimum 24 hours legal notice.
At a non-standard location (Police Station)
Was not recorded.
Did not show up on my City Calendar like other committee meetings.
There was nothing on the web except one tiny marker on the City web site.
And even little details like wi-fi were challenging.

The notice on the door indicated that there might be a ‘quorum’. Four people showed up, all from Redondo, including Councilmember Achziger. I assume they found out about it from either he or moi.

Back in time…

Buxton: My view of an ad hoc committee is administrative in mostly administrative like to gather information organize it and for me put everybody's input into a draft...

Mahoney: I would i would just say that this is the purpose of this is administrative, to get us ready to have that meeting in a constructive format where everybody's had input. So essentially the meetings that would occur in November and December would attend. It would essentially achieve that everybody's input would be there but it would be formatted and ready for the discussion any any subsequent meetings before that...

Harris: Having done this for a little while now and been kind of been a sap, I am going to recommend to my colleagues that the deputy mayor prepare a written proposal with a specific process bring it back at the next meeting and then we amend it and pass that. We've had this history of doing this kind of ad hoc, from the dais, sloppy business. And one person's understanding is this or that. You want a piece of paper. One page...

Pennington: I don't know that any one of us have that kind of expertise or time...

Harris: I made the motion because i have every confidence in the deputy mayor's ability to prepare a parliamentary procedure that is accurate and would be for the good of the council. And on one page.

That motion failed 2-5. No one spoke on my behalf.

As I said, I’ve been through this before. And yeah, that’s not what happened.

In fact, during the meeting they were very pleased with their progress, seeming to have gone through about reviewing two thirds of that first draft.

You can stop right there.

Let’s start over…

Non-decision

Side by side…

Now, here is a similar TOC and page describing the role of Mayor (presiding officer) from Kirkland. It has twenty five pages, but is subdivided into fifty five ‘rules’:

Why forms don’t change…

Think about your 1040 tax form for a minute. Sure, it could be designed to be easier. But one reason it stays the same is because familiarity is a very good thing with legal documents.

Proposing a completely new format forces any serious reader to review every frickin’ line old vs. new to make sure everyone covered all the bases.

The process

When they got to bits where they thought there might be hard opposition, they would say things like “that will be a discussion”, marked it off as such and then moved on.

At the tail end of the meeting a lot of the meeting was spent using the word ‘sanctions’. Basically, how to make the rules have some form of enforcement component.

Efficiency

By having what was essentially a private draft worked out in advance, they were, by their own able to get through about two thirds of their work in two hours. Woo hoo!

Left for next time? The apparently thorny subjects of ‘social media’ and ‘conflict of interest.’

Let’s talk about Bothell and Kirkland

Why we would choose to use cities so different from ours as a model for either salaries or our RoP on escapes me. Perhaps those are the Cities my colleagues wish we could be.

Highlights

Spending Authority

Appointments

Just look at our current assignments, which are solely and arbitrarily at the whim of the Mayor. He assigned himself to ten things, the Deputy Mayor to a dozen things, removed me from assignments during the term, and even invented assignments without a vote of the Council–in direct violation not of our RoP, but of the City Municipal Code.
I’ve also registered at least a dozen complaints from residents who applied for various advisory positions and found the whole thing to be a black box. To which I reply, “Welcome to my world.” 😀

Two years to be mayor

Business Owners

Sanctions

The committee spent a lot of time discussing ‘sanctions’ and ‘punishment’.
They also talked about having Councilmembers sign some form of ‘contract’ after being elected–agreeing to abide by the Rules of Procedure.
A ‘three step process’ was mentioned.

This will be interesting.

Better…

This is my opinion (one of the rule changes the committee seems to want is that one provide an explicit disclaimer at all times)

The word ‘better’ was mentioned many, many times without defining what that means.

But the discussion I heard did nothing to address my definitions of ‘better’. Which are:

Transparency
Access to information
Accountability
Outreach, both to the public and to members of the Council.

Be careful…

In other words, if you work to make your government truly more transparent, accountable and inclusive you make it easier to be replaced.

Transparency

An excerpt from the City of Sequim Rules of Procedure

1 Comment

This is an excerpt from the Rules of Procedure in Sequim, which is typical of many cities in Washington. I picked it simply because long-time Councilmember Bob Sheckler moved to Sequim and applied to be on their City Council so I became familiar with their system.

Almost all Washington cities copy our RoP from a ‘template’ provided by the State of Washington. So we have a section in our RoP which is similar.

What Sequim does is spell out a number of ‘social norms’ that almost every city adheres to without writing out the words. In other words, they write out practices that other cities simply take for granted. What they say below is so normal that other cities don’t feel a need to spell it out.

I highlight in red those bits where they spell out those social norms. And then after each section I explain how things work (cough) ‘differently’ in Des Moines. We are true outliers.

CITY OF SEQUIM RESOLUTION NO. R2020-27 ARTICLE 5 – RELATIONS WITH CITY MANAGER & STAFF

5.1 Role of the City Manager

The City Manager has general supervision over the City’s administrative affairs. The Manager is directly accountable to the City Council for the execution of the Council's policy directives, and for the administration and management of all City departments. The powers and duties of the City Manager are defined by Washington law (RCW 35A. 13.080). Such duties may be expanded by Ordinance or Resolution. Balanced with the City Manager's accountability to the Council for policy implementation is the need for the Council to allow the City Manager to perform legally defined duties and responsibilities without inappropriate interference by the Council in the day-to-day management decisions of the City Manager.

5.2 Administrative Interference by Council Members

Neither the Council, nor any of its committees or members, may direct or request the appointment of any person to, or his/her removal from, any office by the City Manager or any of his/her subordinates. Except for the purpose of inquiry, the Council and its members must deal with City staff solely through the City Manager and neither the Council nor any committee or member thereof may give any orders to any subordinate of the City Manager, publicly or privately; however, nothing in this section will be construed to prohibit the Council, while in open session, from fully and freely discussing with the City Manager anything pertaining to appointments and removals of City officers and employees and City affairs. (RCW 35A.13.120). See Section 5.4 for additional information concerning communication with staff.

In Des Moines, all communication, even routine questions, with staff must first be approved by the City Manager–even with the City Attorney. So for example, if a CM has a concern about the City Manager, or wanted help drafting an ordinance, he/she has to ask the City Manager for permission to obtain a response from the City Attorney.

5.3 Administrative Complaints Made Directly to Individual Council Members

When administrative policy or administrative performance complaints are made directly to individual Council members, the Council member will refer the matter directly to the City Manager for review and/or action. The individual Council member may request to be informed of the action or response made to the complaint. Council Communication with Staff.

In Des Moines, complaints from the public are not passed onto the Council. We literally do not see them. I have dozens of examples where a resident or business owner wrote me, I passed it onto the City and either:

a) Received no follow-up or…

b) was told that residents and businesses must contact the City directly. I’ve been scolded for taking complaints from residents and businesses and passing them on–exactly as the Rule states. Apparently, the City would prefer that CMs not listen to residents’ concerns, but simply give them the City’s contact information.

5.4 Council Communication with Staff

The City of Sequim encourages open communication between the City Council and staff. The City's philosophy is that open communication creates healthier working relationships within the organization. Staff is encouraged to communicate directly with the City Council and the City Council is encouraged to communicate directly with staff, following the guidelines below. These guidelines are established to help everyone receive the information that they need to be successful in their roles. Following the guidelines will also improve efficiency by reducing the number of repeat questions and conversations that take place internally and in City Council meetings. These guidelines do not apply to Councilors conducting business with the City outside of their Councilor roles.

• Councilors will copy the City Manager on communications with staff;

• Council requests for information from staff requiring more than 2 hours of staff time will require City Manager approval. It is incumbent upon staff to confer with the City Manager under these circumstances and for the City Manager to communicate with Council if an issue requires policy direction or resolution. Under those circumstances, the City Manager would refer the item back to the entire City Council in a public meeting for direction;

• Councilors are not to direct staff actions beyond the research requests mentioned above;

• Councilors acting in volunteer roles with separate organizations should keep the City Manager informed when interacting with staff.

In Des Moines, Councilmembers have no guarantee to research of any kind. Questions asked ahead of Council meetings go un-replied to. And from the dais, all Councilmembers are encouraged to ‘ask questions’. But almost always, the promised follow-up does not occur.

5.5 Staff Communication with Council

• Staff will copy the City Manager and Council on communications with the community in response to requests for service that come through the Council. Keeping everyone in the loop regarding the resolution of issues reported through the City Council is important to the Council and to the City Manager. The City Manager will inform the Council of the initial staff assignment of requests to the Council where a staff response is warranted;

• The City Manager and staff will share information requested by one Councilor with the entire Council, as a matter of practice. This will typically be done as a part of a response to a Councilor's request. Where possible and feasible, the City Manager will sometimes “bundle” these updates to the whole Council in the weekly update or in the City Manager’s Report during City Council meetings.

Unless a resident cc’s the Council in their communication, the Council will likely never become aware of their concern–unless it is praise. I have dozens of emails from residents who wrote the City and then had their praise forwarded to the Council. I have zero complaints that were not emailed directly to me.

End of Article 5 - Relations with City Manager & Staff

Summary

In short. In Des Moines, the City Manager has made himself the gatekeeper for all information. This is an abuse of authority which is not in the spirit or letter of our Rules of Procedure. The Council majority has enabled the following abuses:

Constantly attempting to block Councilmembers from access to unfavourable information, both internally (staff) and externally (legitimate and appropriate communication with other agencies and electeds.)
Providing some Councilmembers with preferential treatment, while others receive no cooperation whatsoever.
Keeping the Council in the dark as to resident communications. Not passing on complaints from residents or providing the follow-up specified in our RoP.

Some of this is illegal. All of it is completely unethical. None of it occurs in other cities.

It’s not like we don’t have rules like other cities. We do. And as I said, they are very similar to other cities. We just interpret them (cough) ‘differently’.

These abuses occur here because enforcement of any Council Rule requires a majority vote of the Council. In other words, the Council polices itself. There is no independent review of ethics.

So in Des Moines, ‘good ethics’ or even ‘legal’ is whatever a majority of the Council thinks they are.

Some of my colleagues will say, “We’re just going along until the next election” or some rubbish like that. My 30 years of study tells me that has never been true. People do not ‘go along’ and then become ethical. Judge my colleagues based on how they vote. Nothing else matters.

Economic Development, Marina, Neighborhoods, Policy, Public Safety, Transparency, Weekly Updates

Weekly Update: 09/11/2022

This Week

Tuesday: Port of Seattle Meeting (Agenda) There are actually several meetings this week, most of them audit committees which the public rarely sees. But the fact that they have an audit committee is a big deal. I wish we had one, that’s for sure. 😀

Wednesday: Reach Out Des Moines meeting. Group leader Brenda MBaabu invited me to a community listening meeting at Midway Park and there was talk of how to organise events like National Night Out all year long in the area. Stay Tuned! 🙂 Just so you understand, these are not simply ‘feel good’ events. The research shows that community events, after school activities, all that ‘fun’ stuff, makes a big difference in reducing teen violence and improving outcomes for our kids. It’s effective at crime prevention and it’s a lot cheaper than guns and badges.

Friday: South King County Housing and Homelessness Partners. There will be a presentation on ‘inventory’, which means understanding what is the available stock of ‘affordable housing’. It’s important to recognise that how one defines both those words are still open questions. Which houses/apartments are considered affordable? Is it because they are subsdised or because they’re just plain run down? If they’re run down and a developer refurbishes them, can they be motivated to keep them affordable? So many questions. 😀 But it’s no joke. Doing an inventory is all very well, but the main reason housing is so nutsy expensive is simple supply and demand. Developers are very careful to only build so much. And at some point, governments will need to provide more incentives (carrots and sticks.) The more people who move here? The more homes they will need. And I would prefer it if those homes are ownership based if possible. That’s what people want and the taxes are what cities like Des Moines need.

Last Week

Tuesday: Police Advisory Committee. I was added back to the list. And then was (cough) kicked off again. This has to be some kind of record. Or maybe I’m eligible for frequent flyer miles. 😀 Given that this is yet another example of straight up corruption, I think I have pretty good sense of humour about it. This actually matters for local politics and I hope you will read. https://jcharrisfordesmoines.com/more-fun-with-advisory-committees/

Wednesday: Marina Tenants Meeting (Video). I’d like to say that I was surprised by the lack of advertising by the City, but… I’m not. Anything to do with the Marina should be promoted to all residents because the decisions that are being made affect everyone, especially people who live anywhere in the Marina District. I added a transcript below to compensate for the poor audio.

Thursday: City Council Study Session. (Video) Recap below.

Friday: Midway Park 5:30PM. I was there with Reach Out Des Moines to do a listening session on teen violence and public safety. If you missed it? The next meeting will be September 23rd, also at 5:30PM. See you there!

Saturday/Sunday: Angle Lake Park for Mini-Hydro Races. OK, it’s SeaTac, not DM, but I did have a teensy part in organising the thing but the main thing is that it is fun as heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell. 😀

Budget Retreat 2022: Where I offer to sell my soul for the sake of financial transparency…

Councilmember Harris: I think I could almost die happy if we could get a for realz balance sheet, or a p/l or something, to that effect, at least a couple of times a year.

City Manager Matthias: If you’re able to commit to that promise, I’m more than able to commit to [doing that].

Except for one moment of dark humour, the Budget Study Session was, as expected, an eventful non-event. The most frustrating thing for me, as your representative, is to have to explain that our meetings are a lot like the UN or some really boring Russian Spy Novel. There’s a lot happening, but it doesn’t look like it.

The City always breaks long meeting videos into two parts, which is unfortunate because, as of this writing 140 people watched the non-event (the first two) hours) and only 40 people watched the 40 minute Q&A, which is most of the important part.

Pro tip: at least with this City Manager, focus on the overview, fast forward through any presentations without numbers, then listen for the questions.

Here is that second part, with subtitles.

Some background for people who do not regularly attend these things.

They are theatre and they should be torn down and remade completely. You can stop reading here. 😀

I made a point of order at the beginning of the meeting to protest the format, as I have each year. Because every year, each department parades to the podium, gives their three minute overview and… after two hours of that… we break and then we ask questions. Think about your college days. You attend several classes in a day. And then, at 3:00PM, all your lecturers would re-convene and then you’d get to ask allllllllllllll your questions for the day! No one does that. And in fact, more than one dept. head had to restrain themselves from saying “Questions?” at the end of their bit. Because that’s what normal groups do.

Each department prepares a slide show in advance. But the Council does not see the slides until the meeting. First of all, I’m visually disabled so I can’t see them, but every other government hands out presentations in advance, so the Council is actually prepared.

Oh… and after the break, but before we ask questions, CM Nutting will make a motion for a hard stop after 30 minutes of questions. So…. we get 30 minutes to ask all our questions for the year on every department.

And this was new, our new Mayor tried to insist that all questions be directed to the City Manager; not to the actual department heads. Which makes one wonder why we bother with the whole ’round table’ format, right?

Residents do ask me what the point of that is. Here’s the answer: There is no point. No other City does that. All it does is make it impossible for people to make eye contact. It also makes video and audio more challenging (like that aspect of our meetings needs more challenges, right? 😀 )

Summary

1. We have a Budget Study Session, with no financials, just a preview of coming attractions.

2. Where every question is dodged with:

“There will be plenty of time” (not true) or…
“We’ll have that information for you at the Budget Presentation.” (why can’t we have it now, you know, at the study session?)

3. The City Manager gives a short overview, which is basically the most real part of the thing.

4. We then sit through two hours of presentations, which we could simply look at on our own.

5. We then get thirty minutes of ‘questions’ and… basically I’m the only one who asks any real questions.

6. And it doesn’t even follow the stated purpose of a Study Session, which is to have a discussion. The whole purpose of the ’round table format’ is to encourage the back and forth which is supposed to happen at a Study Session; not the usual formalities of “I recognise you, then you and you and you”, which the Mayor tried to conduct the even like any other meeting.

One thing, I repeat from time to time. Those who meet me in public recognise that I am not a chronic stammerer as it appears on these videos. There’s an old joke that dads constantly stammer to avoid using profanity when they see their kids screwing up–the self-censorship (to avoid bruising delicate young feelings) makes them appear like blithering idiots. Just so, I struggle to put sentences together that will not start a fight at these things. I take all these notes and then I listen to all my colleagues ask no questions, but simply compliment the staff on their awesomeness or make speeches, and in my mind, I’m tearing up my notes and having a confetti party. In my mind. 😀

The fact is, I try very hard not to create tension. And I’m willing to go this far to lighten the mood:

Councilmember Harris: I think I could almost die happy if we could get a for realz balance sheet, or a p/l or something, to that effect, at least a couple of times a year.

City Manager Matthias: If you’re able to commit to that promise, I’m more than able to commit to [doing that].

Of course, I know I’m asking for a snappy reply like that. But… can you imagine the shit storm if any CEO did not have some self-control and said something like that to any elected, anywhere else? Or even if the City Manager made such a crack to any of my colleagues? A CEO who feels that ‘unfiltered’–with that little respect for basic decorum? That person is telegraphing something. And it ain’t good.

Regardless, the whole thing is theatre. All these are tactics, that waste time for an already over-burdened staff. And if we cannot do something real, the whole thing should be scrapped. Why? Because… news flash… I hate wasting anyone’s time. Why should the staff be required to stay late and do a completely unnecessary party piece? You want to motivate people? Give them a hearty handshake and tell them they let them go home early. 😀

Specifics: The cat on the roof…

We were sent very mixed messages about the future which reminded me of a very famous Yiddish joke known as the cat on the roof story.

On the one hand the reserve is very good. That has been the point of pride for the City Manager and the current majority. In 2015 the City was at a point of insolvency. Today the reserve is at the recommended level, we have a new accounting system, we pass all our audits. We’re successfully rebuilding outdated infrastructure like the North Bulkhead and the Redondo Fishing Pier. Excellent.

Now, apart from the fact that I completely disagree with the City’s Marina Redevelopment strategy, the ferry is completely insane, and the fact that we’re actually complicit with the Port of Seattle in their upcoming airport expansion, which will be as damaging to the City as the Third Runway?

Here’s the bad part. 😀

1. Employees are stressed out, hard to recruit, and they are about to become waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more expensive. Increases of 9% where mentioned which would add at least $1.3MM to the budget or 5% to our budget. My concern was that money is not a cure for stress. Because one of the draws of municipal work through the ages has been the work environment. It wasn’t meant to compete with the private sector. If it’s no longer a better work environment than we do have a problem.

2. Services are already stretched. We have about a dozen fewer police than we did back in 2007. It’s just a fact. The City Manager is constantly praising the heroism of our staff. Tech can help with that somewhat, but… (keep reading.)

3. We have already voted every year since I’ve been on the Council for a couple of things:

Not to raise your taxes. We have not taken even our measly allowed 1%. You’re welcome. And even when it came to piddly things like stormwater utilities, we actually raise rates less than the recommended amount to save you all about $7 a month. You’re welcome. But… it came at the cost of pushing back necessary replacements by three years. We’re betting that there won’t be another Woodmont Landslide. Fingers crossed!
The City Manager is proposing to continue to use one-time money, not meant for the general fund, in order to keep that healthy general fund balance and to pay salaries. That is what he was referring to by ‘Fund 105’ and ‘Fund 114’ in his intro.
- Fund 114 is ARPA Stimulus money, which was supposed to be used for ‘recovery’ and ‘future projects’, not to fund new hires which will require payment long after that money runs out!
- Fund 105 is one-time money from construction projects. It’s set aside for our future capital projects (parks, community center, etc.)

This is exactly what former Mayors Kaplan and Pina swoooooooore we would stop doing. That they were the reasons we got into trouble. That we would neeeeeeeeeeeeeeever go down that road again because one time money is not sustainablllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllle!

And they were right. We’re using it to hire new police officers and as soon as that dough runs out in 2-3 years? If construction stops? Oops. Now where do you get an extra million or two? Wait, I know! THE MARINA! Which is what we did in the 2000’s… and why we have no money to pay for the docks now. One time money. Bad.

4. Also: the City Manager was telegraphing cuts in services, at exactly the time when we need more people.

5. Which I do not quite get because if you look out past 2023 (when the one-time money is used up, the forecast makes an assumption that our revenues will just blast off to make up the difference. But again, because there are no for realz financials, there is no way to know where that money is coming from. And in my three years on the Council, I have never received an answer to a basic question:

Please show me the forecast model on which these assumptions are based.

The City Manager and Finance Director simply refuse to provide that basic information. And for that reason alone, I will welcome a change.

6. Then there is IT.

The one real question I heard from my colleagues came from CM Achziger, one which I already knew the answer to. There will be no new digital presence this year. Probably not next year. Our IT manager is retiring. Our CFO is retiring. The City Manager bemoaned the fact that hiring people in those fields was extremely challenging. However, I will note that we’ve already spend $70,000 on marketing, including a new web site, just for that damned ferry. You can hire talent, but it’s a struggle to recruit it.
On the other hand, apparently we will develop the hybrid meeting system (zoom and in person) I asked the Council to budget for last year–simply because we use the Council Chambers to hold Municipal Court and the Court will require it. So Judge Leone will do what we should have started doing last year.

My concerns..

See why this reminds me of the Cat On The Roof joke? The airport expansion is on the way, which no one even mentions. And our Council is betting everything on some future date when ‘marina redevelopment’ will create ‘the destination’, rather than focusing on the blocking and tackling of business development using the great things we have here now. Instead of creating a decent marketing program (like every other City) we’re throwing the kitchen sink at that ferry and if it has any benefit, it won’t be because of the ferry. It will be a bit like the Court, where we’ll spend money on something else to fund the thing we should have funded in the first place. Except that the Court is definitely something we should spend money on. 🙂

Because the truth is? We’ve had some restaurant openings. The Beach Park is doing great. Boating is doing well now. We have some opportunities to earn a sustainable business community if we develop a digital presence and put a bit of stick into it. Nooooow! I complimented our new Events Manager because the Beach Park is going through the roof. A lot of that is pent up demand and it will definitely decline next year, but even with a terrible web site and almost no marketing we have things to draw people. No ferry required.

There was actually very little talk of the Marina Redevelopment, beyond the costs. In fact, nothing that will actually generate new money is coming on line for at least five years. It’s all spending. So depending on that ‘waterfront’ as our new cash machine that far out, without better numbers is like depending on a grand slam to win a baseball game. And if we continue on our present trajectory, we’ll be giving up land we spent decades acquiring just for that one swing.

The Ceiling

Here is an audience frame from last Wednesday’s Marina Tenants meeting. Sorry guys, but notice something about the audience? Anyone? Do I have to even say what the boating demographic is? The boating community is 80% non-residents and that is not the future of our City, which is becoming younger and more diverse. The boating community is super important. I’ve been one of them for forty five years. But boaters are not what will drive “tens of thousands of visitors and millions of dollars” to Des Moines (as our Mayor likes to say.)

The Marina is beautiful. It was perhaps the smartest decision our City has ever made. (And note that It was a 100% public project.) But there has been and will always will be a ceiling to boating revenue. The Marina was meant to do a particular job, it does it very, very well, and as such it should be well maintained. But no one should try to make it out to be something it is not and can never be. We are never going to be the San Juans. Never. That’s not our place in the universe.

Do I have some ‘crystal ball’ as the City Manager likes to say? No. I just read the forecasts from agencies like the Puget Sound Regional Council as well as every other State agency that studies economic growth. They have all looked at our City and already figured out our place in the region. Their leadership will come here and say encouraging things about us, because that is their job; in public. But their real work is to do studies, modeling and planning. And their numbers tell a very different story.

And, at the risk of being a tease, as soon as our City Council gets some real numbers, I’ll do an A/B so you can judge for yourself. Of course, if I’m struck down the day they’re delivered, I may have to take a rain check on that comparison.

If that’s what it takes to get some real numbers in Des Moines? Just know that I was happy to give my life for the cause of financial transparency. 😀

The Moral

But, all kidding aside ladies and germs… given the constant flux our City has undergone since the late ’90’s, financial reporting should have been priority number one for Des Moines. It never was and hasn’t been over the past three decades, regardless of administration. We held onto antiquated systems for decades because we just didn’t value information. We always thought we could wing it and that there was always some crisis that was more important. And now, even with newer systems in place, and with all the grand ‘economic development’ being proposed, it’s still about the last thing the administration thinks to spend money on. So even today, the Council is still in the dark.

In fact, in 2022, the Council gets poorer financial reports than in 2007.

Other cities, no matter how small, kept moving with the general flow of progress and left us far behind. So today, we can’t see the kinds of numbers that every other City in the region takes for granted.

None of my colleagues seemed to think that worth even mentioning. Perhaps they’re not aware how far behind we are. Perhaps they want to avoid public embarrassment and think they can fix it ‘in private.’ Perhaps their trust is so implicit it doesn’t matter.

But that right there tells you everything you need to know about Des Moines. It’s what I’ve been trying to change since day one. For any company, especially one of our size, where public money is on the line, giving the Council (and the public) the numbers should always be our top priority. Always.

Economic Development, Marina, Policy, Taxes, Transparency, Weekly Updates

Budget Retreat 2022: Where I offer to sell my soul for the sake of financial transparency…

Some background for people who do not regularly attend these things.

They are theatre and they should be torn down and remade completely. You can stop reading here. 😀

Summary

1. We have a Budget Study Session, with no financials, just a preview of coming attractions.

2. Where every question is dodged with:

“There will be plenty of time” (not true) or…
“We’ll have that information for you at the Budget Presentation.” (why can’t we have it now, you know, at the study session?)

3. The City Manager gives a short overview, which is basically the most real part of the thing.

4. We then sit through two hours of presentations, which we could simply look at on our own.

5. We then get thirty minutes of ‘questions’ and… basically I’m the only one who asks any real questions.

The fact is, I try very hard not to create tension. And I’m willing to go this far to lighten the mood:

Councilmember Harris: I think I could almost die happy if we could get a for realz balance sheet, or a p/l or something, to that effect, at least a couple of times a year.

City Manager Matthias: If you’re able to commit to that promise, I’m more than able to commit to [doing that].

Specifics: The cat on the roof…

We were sent very mixed messages about the future which reminded me of a very famous Yiddish joke known as the cat on the roof story.

Here’s the bad part. 😀

3. We have already voted every year since I’ve been on the Council for a couple of things:

Not to raise your taxes. We have not taken even our measly allowed 1%. You’re welcome. And even when it came to piddly things like stormwater utilities, we actually raise rates less than the recommended amount to save you all about $7 a month. You’re welcome. But… it came at the cost of pushing back necessary replacements by three years. We’re betting that there won’t be another Woodmont Landslide. Fingers crossed!
The City Manager is proposing to continue to use one-time money, not meant for the general fund, in order to keep that healthy general fund balance and to pay salaries. That is what he was referring to by ‘Fund 105’ and ‘Fund 114’ in his intro.
- Fund 114 is ARPA Stimulus money, which was supposed to be used for ‘recovery’ and ‘future projects’, not to fund new hires which will require payment long after that money runs out!
- Fund 105 is one-time money from construction projects. It’s set aside for our future capital projects (parks, community center, etc.)

4. Also: the City Manager was telegraphing cuts in services, at exactly the time when we need more people.

Please show me the forecast model on which these assumptions are based.

The City Manager and Finance Director simply refuse to provide that basic information. And for that reason alone, I will welcome a change.

6. Then there is IT.

The one real question I heard from my colleagues came from CM Achziger, one which I already knew the answer to. There will be no new digital presence this year. Probably not next year. Our IT manager is retiring. Our CFO is retiring. The City Manager bemoaned the fact that hiring people in those fields was extremely challenging. However, I will note that we’ve already spend $70,000 on marketing, including a new web site, just for that damned ferry. You can hire talent, but it’s a struggle to recruit it.
On the other hand, apparently we will develop the hybrid meeting system (zoom and in person) I asked the Council to budget for last year–simply because we use the Council Chambers to hold Municipal Court and the Court will require it. So Judge Leone will do what we should have started doing last year.

My concerns..

The Ceiling

If that’s what it takes to get some real numbers in Des Moines? Just know that I was happy to give my life for the cause of financial transparency. 😀

The Moral

In fact, in 2022, the Council gets poorer financial reports than in 2007.

Marina

Des Moines Marina L, M, N Dock Tenant Meeting

September 8, 2022March 6, 2024

1 Comment

At City Hall with Scott Wilkins and Katie Bevegnie. Unfortunate that it was not advertised as it concerns everyone who lives near the Marina....

... [Continue Reading] ...

Transparency

More fun with advisory… er… ‘listening’ groups…

1 Comment

Introduction

In the ongoing silliness that makes residents’ eyes roll. But this actually matters. It’s one of a zillion examples where the Mayor uses the fact that most people have no idea how limited his authority is. He uses the title to take advantage of situations big and small–as has every mayor since i’ve lived here.

Over the years, the Council has created various ‘Advisory Committees’ by a vote and ordinance as defined in the Des Moines Municipal Code. These positions are nominated by the Mayor, then approved by the full Council.

To add to the fun, also over the years, some members of the City staff (most notably the Chief of Police) have created personal “advisory” groups to gather feedback from the community. To avoid confusion, I’m going to refer to them as “Listening Groups”, because, as the Mayor says below, that’s their purpose. Theye have no legal connection to the City Council and no one on the Council has authority over them. Whoever organises a listening group makes the rules and anyone who attends (like councilmembers) are just like any other member of the public.

Chief Thomas has several such listening groups and I have been attending one of them–by invitation of the Chief–on and off since I was elected in 2020.

The last part of this setup is that, *I’ve been booted off, then re-invited, booted off again, then re-invited again, and now threatened to be re-re-booted off again now three times. 😀 The Chief invites me, but then someone else, apparently dis-invites me from the Chief’s group for some made up reason.

It’s like a bad divorce where you need a court order just to ride the elevator together.

On 9/6/2022 4:43 PM, Matt Mahoney wrote:

Councilmember Harris,

It has come to my attention you attended today’s Police *Advisory Board without designation to do so.

Per our previous conversation I had requested you to no longer attend those meetings.  The primary purpose of this meeting is for the police chief, his staff and selected residents to share their thoughts and views on various subjects concerning Public Safety.

It is not and has never been a place for a councilmember to push a personal agenda.  As I stated in our previous conversation, I received several complaints from many different parties who attend concerning your comments, domination of time and distractions you created from the overall purpose of the meeting.  It is for these reasons I asked you to no longer attend.  According to council rules, should you have questions etc. you are to contact the city manager either with your questions or concerns, or ask for permission to speak to the Police Chief.

I have asked city staff to remove you from invites and reiterate my request that you no longer attend these meetings.  I expect you to honor this request.

Matt Mahoney
425-941-6298
Mayor
Des Moines City Council

Mayor,

1. You are attempting to exercise authority you do not have. Perhaps the name is confusing. Chief Thomas’ group is one of his private listening groups, not a Council Advisory Committee. (Maybe we should change this nomenclature to avoid future confusion?) Please check DMMC 4.24 which provides a list of Council Advisory Committees and the rules governing appointments. This is not such a group. And even if it were, you would not have the authority to remove anyone from such a group arbitrarily. The Code has a specific public process.

2. In my opinion you have repeatedly committed Councilmember Interference in violation of RCW 35a.13.120. You have no authority to directly ‘request’ the staff to do anything not specifically mentioned in our Rules of Procedure. By directing the Chief to remove me earlier in the year and stating in writing your intention to do so now, you are directing staff to take a specific form of action outside your authority. Is that really what you wanted to write?

In short, you had no authority of any kind concerning to (cough) ‘remove’ me earlier in the year. You have no authority to get upset now. And you have been and continue to violate State law by attempting to direct staff, which is the sole province of the City Manager.

3. The group invited me, I attended and am grateful. I hope the Chief continues to do so. I think it would send a positive signal that the Department welcomes voices from the entire community. There is -no- evidence of -any- complaints by group members. So hopefully, the members themselves recognise that value as well. If there are concerns (I cannot imagine what they might be since I have not heard them) I would welcome a chance to address them.

That’s really all I have to say of any consequence. But on a personal note…

You can continue to attempt to push the envelope for whatever reason. I get it; the urge is almost irresistible. Plus, it’s so easy to cross the line when almost no one understands what ‘Mayor’ truly means in Council/Manager government. But you know that you are simply one of seven, sir.

But your actual authority is to hold a gavel a couple of times a month. Sign letters on behalf of the Council. Cut ribbons on behalf of the Council. You are simply a mouthpiece for decisions made by the Council. As individuals we are nothing. For better or worse that was the form of government the people chose and my belief is that we should take pains to respect the process.

After 30 years here my experience has been that the best thing a mayor can do for Des Moines is to exercise restraint. Stick to Rule 5. Because every time a mayor tried to make the job into something it’s not, bad things happen.

Sincerely,

—JC

Councilmember Harris,

You are not designated for this group.

You fail to understand the intent of the group!

You take away from the purpose of the group!

The request was made thru the City Manager.

All your questions and comments are to go thru the City Manager.

There is nothing more to say.

I stand by my decision and will be more than glad to have our city attorney interpret our actions right or wrong.

Matt

You do not ‘designate’ membership on private groups. You do not get to arbitrarily remove people from -any- group, city or private. And you do not get to ‘direct’ -anyone- arbitrarily, which is what you’ve said and what you wrote. This is a pattern—acting as if you have administrative authority. It works 90% of the time because people don’t know, don’t care or are complicit. Worst case? You can walk it back when someone notices.

If the Council and City Manager have been willing to enable your abuse of, sadly that has been the pattern here for 30 years. Hopefully at least a few members of the Council will realise that this is illegal, corrupt and contrary to the spirit of C/M/G and will be willing to speak up on its behalf.

—JC

*Timeline

In Autumn 2020 City Manager Matthias was upset about something he read in this blog and apparently ‘ordered’ Chief Thomas to give me the boot.
In October 2021 Chief Thomas re-invited me saying it was “his group and not up to the City Manager”.
In April 2022 Mayor Mahoney said he was kicking me off under his authority as Mayor–which the Chief said was not true at all.
The next week, the City web site was changed to show that Councilmember Pennington had been assigned to the Police Advisory Committee. Which again, is not an actual Council assignment. (In fact, lots of CMs have cycled in and out of this listening group over time. Again, again, it’s just a listening group by invitation of Chief Thomas.)
Then last Friday I got re-re-invited. So I attended the 6 September meeting. Nothing exciting happened, trust me. 😀
And the following day I got the following email from Mayor Mahoney.

Economic Development, Marina, Neighborhoods, Policy, Public Safety, Transparency, Weekly Updates

Weekly Update: 09/05/2022

This Week

Tuesday: Police Advisory Committee. Could be a mistake. But I was added back to the list. On. Off. On. Off. On. First time in me life… I think I may need a ®Dramamine.

Thursday: My third Budget Retreat with no numbers. On the one hand, I used to encourage people to show up to these because they were often the most informative meetings of year. But honestly? I’m not sure any more. And with regard to public comment, Rule #10 limits public comment to issues on the Agenda. So if you have a comments on the budget, my suggestions would be, just off the top of me head:

Why don’t we have a financial report available in advance for this Study Session?
Hell, why don’t we have at least quarterly (or monthly) financial reports all the time like every other city in the area?

Friday: Midway Park 5:30PM. I’ll be there with Reach Out Des Moines to do a listening session on teen violence and public safety. Hope to see you there.

Last Week

Friday: Knocked on doors in Pacific Ridge with Reach Out Des Moines coordinator Brenda MBaabu.

Most of the rest of the week I spent time reconnecting with various activists and electeds from previous airport expansions…

SeaTacNoise.Info just celebrated our 200,000th page and our sixth anniversary. For those of you not clued in, SeaTacNoise.Info is basically a digital museum of everything having to do with the airport from the community POV. We’re the first, the largest, and… the only one. 😀

There are a gajillion places to learn about ‘the history of flight’ or airports or ‘aviation’ but they’re all from the POV of pilots and passengers and basically how great it is. 😀 Having owned three small planes, trust me I get it.

But SeaTacNoise.Info is about the communities that live next to all that stuff. Some of it is good. Most of it is, objectively speaking, not.

If we could do so easily, we’d probably rename the site:

EverythingYouThinkYouKnowaboutSeaTacAirportIsWrong.whoops

Because, everything you think you know about Sea-Tac Airport is wrong. Whoops. 😀

In 100 words, aviation is exactly like any mature industry. When things were firing up in the 60’s, Boeing created lots of jobs. But as any industry matures, the profits move away. The jobs move away. The HQ moves away. But the people near the factory are left with terrible negative impacts that never get addressed. And the reason it’s soooooooo hard to rebalance is because: a) people are so nostalgic for a world that no longer exists and b) the industry simply cannot make money if it pays what it owes. ie. the entire financial model is based on not paying people for the community impacts. Des Moines is to the airport what the suburbs of Detroit were to the auto industry back in the day.

And if yer bugged about the airport and wonder why things seem impossible? That’s the reason. So if you have a chance, head on over there and take a look around. If it seems confusing? You’re not wrong. 😀 We’ve uploaded 200 terabytes of stuff. But it’s been mostly technical stuff for researchers and it’s been really hard to find basic stuff like “Why can’t they create a curfew?”

We need you to ask us some questions so we can figure out how to explain it in a way that makes sense for normal (non-technical expert) people. 🙂 c tends to get those types of studies because decision makers (wrongly) think that being next to the airport has the worst health effects. We don’t know that. In fact with lead, dosages don’t matter that much. That’s why we need a monitor in DM. It’s the only way we get paid for the health impacts.

Labor Day 2022

Back in the day, my *homebase was a spare room my great friend Stosh set aside for me at his house in Detroit. Stosh was old school union–working seven days a week at Clark Street, aka ‘Cadillac Assembly’.

Stosh had wanted to be an artist (he was really good.) But his dad passed, and somebody had to support his sisters and brothers, including one sibling with severe epilepsy. So, at seventeen he went inside and never looked back.

I’m stickin’ with the Union…

Stosh was a United Auto Workers man to his bones. The UAW had gotten him a house and put three children through college. And when he got cancer? It gave him ‘cadillac’ health insurance and a for realz pension for his wife after he passed. He never thanked “General Motors” for his life. He thanked “the United Auto Workers”.

By today’s standards, he was what someone under fifty might think of as an “Archie Bunker” figure. Well, yes and no. All ‘comedy’ aside, Archie Bunker was accurate as hell. He was no caricature. That was “the world”.

But I did not and do not think of Stosh like that for many reasons. He was a loving husband and though he did not even make it through high school, and considered whiskey, buttermilk and sardines a fine dining experience, 😀 he was the furthest thing from the ignorant figure of Archie Bunker you could imagine. He was amazingly skilled with his hands and capable of tremendous sensitivity.

And one other thing: In a similar way, Stosh’s entire generation represented a very real (though imperfect) level of environmentalism.

Direct action…

Stosh absolutely revered the generation of workers immediately before him who had built the Union through their courage and direct action. They had complained repeatedly to management that the factory had poor ventilation. So one day, a group of workers simply went up to a brick wall and took turns beating on it with sledge hammers, holding off plant security until they had created a very large hole. And when they were done, they told the plant boss, “You can put the fan there.”

But they did not stop there. Throughout the ’50’s and ’60’s UAW workers continued to stage a string of protests about issues outside the factory. It became the policy of the Locals to promote better water and air quality along the Detroit River and in their nearby neighbourhoods. They pushed the auto companies to be “better neighbours” because they recognised that all the pollution was bad not just for workers, but for their families.

I’ve written before about Congressman John Dingell, who was so pivotal in creating the EPA, the modern Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. Dingell was Stosh’s congressman. And no way would Dingell have succeeded if the UAW had not been behind him all the way.

Then something happened…

At some point in the ’70’s, a tension developed between the environmental movement and union workers. I believe this has been the result of people who do not have workers’ or union interests at heart.

Job killers?

Today, whenever anyone suggests that health, safety and environmental controls (which are all the same thing, really) are “job killers” follow the money.

The truth is, and always has been, that the nations, states and companies with the strongest environmental protections do better financially. Check it out. Want low wages? Just look at places with poor worker health and environmental protections.

The Airport Discount…

An ongoing argument I have had with my colleagues–and electeds across the region–is over “growth” and “the airport.” I’ve heard exactly the same quote from electeds who support everyone from Bernie to Trump…

“The airport keeps my taxes low.”

Which is a way of saying….

“Thank goodness for all that noise and pollution. Yeah, the schools are poor and people (especially kids) are at risk for all sorts of ongoing health problems, but that airport discount is totally worth it!”

If you’re conservative, you love the low taxes. If you’re the kind of ‘progressive’ you respond to something called ‘affordability’. Different bread, same sandwich.

And it’s a shitty sandwich. Your health, the health of your children, and the health of our town, are not worth some insane form of ‘airport discount’.

Why things never improve…

For those of you who are puzzled as to why our city (and others) have not been more aggressive in demanding less noise and pollution from the airport–even as it expands, that’s a big reason. Today, at the local level, there is simply no lane for “environmentalism” among electeds. You can energise both Democrats and Republicans by promoting “jobs!” and “growth!”

Somewhere along the line, the notion of healthy air and less noise became the same kind of shrug people used to have about lead in gasoline–sure it kills hundreds of thousands of people, but hey, I need to gas up my car!

or… Or… OR… we could just demand lead-free gas and stop listening to people who say how “impossible” everything is.

Please make up… (heart emoji goes here)

Unions have been on the downward slide for a long time in America. And the slide began at the same time that unions and environmentalists began to sit on opposite sides of most conversations. I think that was a mistake for both sides, not only because giving up on environmental concerns did not save jobs, but also because workers tend to live in neighbourhoods with the greatest need for healthier living conditions.

Most of us do not live out in some idyllic wilderness. Most of us live near a factory. A highway. An airport. And again: health and safety (including the planet) lead to better wages and working conditions for workers. Check it out.

I am extremely pleased to see unions making a halting comeback. It’s about time. And as they do, I hope they look back to people like Stosh and think about putting the environment further up on their list of priorities.

Summary

Environmental protections, including the noise and pollution from the airport can only help workers and their families. Those policies are not job killers. Again, the nations, states and companies with the strongest environmental protections do better financially–and so do their workers.

The ‘airport discount’ was always a lie. Des Moines should be quieter, have cleaner air, better schools and receive a fairer share of the economic engine of the Port of Seattle. That is formula that benefits everyone who lives here and that is the message I will continue to tirelessly promote for all working people and their families in Des Moines.

Happy Labor Day.

*I lived out of a suitcase for many years as a professional musician and a member of AFM Local 5 (Detroit) and AFM Local 802 (New York). Nobody thinks of ‘musician’ and ‘union’ in the same sentence these days, but there was a time where your AFM Card could be a ticket to a very good career.

Airport, Environment

The Clark Street Environmentalist (Labor Day 2022)

I’m stickin’ with the Union…

And one other thing: In a similar way, Stosh’s entire generation represented a very real (though imperfect) level of environmentalism.

Direct action…

Then something happened…

Job killers?

Today, whenever anyone suggests that health, safety and environmental controls (which are all the same thing, really) are “job killers” follow the money.

The Airport Discount…

“The airport keeps my taxes low.”

Which is a way of saying….

If you’re conservative, you love the low taxes. If you’re the kind of ‘progressive’ you respond to something called ‘affordability’. Different bread, same sandwich.

And it’s a shitty sandwich. Your health, the health of your children, and the health of our town, are not worth some insane form of ‘airport discount’.

Why things never improve…

or… Or… OR… we could just demand lead-free gas and stop listening to people who say how “impossible” everything is.

Please make up… (heart emoji goes here)

Summary

Happy Labor Day.

History

Pet Haven Pet Cemetery

Located just south of Kent Des Moines Road Pet Haven Cemetery 23646 Military Rd S. Kent, WA 98032 is one of those interesting spots you never knew existed.

I took an interest recently when a cell tower was there and a local group began campaigning for the place to be given historical status. I’ll let you know how it goes.