City Council, Position #2
Non-partisan. Independent.
Next City Council Meeting is December 5, 2024
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A 'private' community presentation by the Mayor to the DMMA membership. I include a transcript, which the DMMA objected to but whatever, because the Mayor revealed a number of items that should have been part of the September 27 public meeting. Must read....
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Boy, is it ever. 😀
I wrote in my Weekly Update that the Futures Report was useless and I demonstrated this by posting a page from yesterday (11/06/2022.)
And below are pages from the version updated 1today. And what I learned, today, is this:
Look, I’m not disparaging any of the items on these Agenda. But the fact that these things show up out of the blue does make the whole thing take on a level of theatre.
And then there is this: Although we will have had about the same number of full meetings as in past years, we’re continuing a trend which goes like this:
Jam a ton of stuff into the beginning of the year. Which makes those meetings performative.
Keep long stretches of the calendar empty. Which makes those meetings performative.
Then round out the year by cramming a ton of stuff at the very end. Which makes those… (you get the idea.)
Also there’s this: We’ve had fewer committee meetings this year than any time since I can remember. COVID, schmovid, most of these meetings have become rote. The notable exception has been public safety. However that has been mostly in response to events: upticks in crime, and the increased community activism in Redondo (way to go community. 🙂 )
One of the many things that makes this state of affairs troubling is something CM Steinmetz has gone on about more than once: education. Most CMs are not subject matter experts. And frankly, most of us do not take outside education classes. So, every committee meeting is one of your few chances to learn the material. And if you don’t know the material, you can’t meaningfully question what is being presented to you. The best you can do is, “use your common sense”… and then vote ‘yes’ on whatever is put before you. That’s not how this is supposed to work. One has to have opportunities to develop a baseline of expertise.
Our current system gives the staff the authority to cancel meetings when they have nothing to present. That’s just the tail wagging the dog. After all, they are supposed to be Council-led committees.
1Yeah, the document header says it was updated November 4th. But it was not there on 11/06/2022. I just happened to click on it today in response to a reader question. So it could not have been uploaded before (11/07/2022.)
Get get that 3rd COVID Booster (the new ‘bivalent’ model.) Now. Deaths are slowly rising. Again, again, it takes about a month to achieve full efficacy. And the number of people who have had all four injections is now below fifty percent. Football, Thanksgiving. Christmas. I think you know where I’m going here. They’re doing walk-ins now pretty much everywhere. 🙂
Monday: Dept. of Ecology briefing on their upcoming plan to identify communities most impacted by pollution. and set up monitoring to move towards legislation which protects us. (Spoiler alert: I’m pushing for Des Moines. 🙂 )
Tuesday: Port of Seattle Commission Meeting (Agenda). The Commission will approve their 2023 budget.
Tuesday: King County Flood District. Ditto. The group will vote to approve our 2023 budget.
Wednesday: Des Moines Marina Association Annual Meeting
Friday: 11:00AM Veterans Day celebration by the Des Moines Memorial Drive Preservation Association at Sunnydale School in Burien. (Check out their web site for some great history on Des Moines Memorial Drive. 🙂
Tuesday: 6:30PM Highline Schools Listening Session at Mt. Rainier High School, with Superintendent Dr. Ivan Duran and District #5 Director Azeb Hagos. I made a comment at the end of this week’s meeting which I fleshed out here on Facebook. This has nothing to do with the merits of Prop 1. It’s truly for information only. But the HSD ballot info on the tax implications was not exactly ‘clear’. So please read and attend this meeting.
Thursday: Public Safety Committee Meeting (Agenda) (Video)
This was a very action-packed meeting–and in fact the first Committee meeting I’ve seen in many years that actually went over-time and I encourage everyone to watch it.
The first discussion was on Code Enforcement, which is always a crowd-pleaser.
The topic shifted to Flock Cameras, which silently read license plates as people drive by them. It’s a lot like a speed camera. Basically, a computer finds that the associated driver has an outstanding warrant, it pings the Police Department. The PD is super-jazzed about the program as a force-multiplier. I always have privacy concerns because a) it’s just a matter of changing the software to do a lot more than just look at license plates. And b) unlike most of you, I’ve actually been to true surveillance states (like the Soviet Union) many times and so I am that nervous nelly.
There was also a discussion about placing a speed camera in Redondo. The City is limited by State law to where it can place speed cameras. The State can allow an special exception for a camera in a specific spot (and Mayor Mahoney and I both testified for that in Olympia last year.) But we did not get that permission.
What the City is proposing is to designate a couple of parcels as some form of park land. On the plus side, it sounds good. On the other side? The State can just also allocate us a ‘slot’ for a speed camera in the next legislative session in April, so we may not need that ‘loophole’.
Regardless, the thing that I’m impressed by is the recent organisation by the Redondo community. That is what makes things happen. And my message to readers from that neighbourhood (and others) is this: If I sound in any way ‘pessimistic’ about the City Attorney’s plan, that is not the case. I just know that things often don’t go to plan and you’ll need to keep going. We should still be testifying for those speed cameras in Olympia, just in case. And you may find that a speed camera is not the be all, end all. What matters is to keep at it.
I also want to say a few things about the Chief’s recent press campaign, which has included multiple press releases about quick releases of people arrested after violent offenses from King County Jail. We’re all fed up with the ‘catch and release’ vibe coming from the County. But I’m also not exactly sure how those press campaigns will improve the County court system and I think it would be better if whenever any part of the Administration does press that they explain it to the Council first.
In the second instance, where the Water District #54 employee was brutally attacked, I know the man, his injuries were even more severe than it might appear from the video going round, and I encourage everyone to send their best wishes to him via WD54.
Now, the larger picture is that civil servants like him truly are essential workers. It takes years to develop the skills and certifications to keep our drinking water safe. And if we don’t keep them safe, they can’t keep us safe.
So my interest is in seeing if there is anything the City can do to help all our essential workers avoid a repeat of that situation.
This article has an important update today (11/07/2022)
This a snapshot from our Future Agendas Report taken today. Every City has some form of official calendar like this. I’ve written about this issue before but it’s worth re-visiting because it’s not exactly getting better.
First off, there are no meetings on November 10th. (They were moved to November 17th weeks ago.) But even more important, there’s no there there. It’s usually not filled in with anything meaningful, literally until the week of the meeting.
Also, at every meeting, the Council is blindsided with unannounced presentations and proposals, including the one at our last meeting where we were expected to vote on an ordinance with zero notice.
No other nearby City functions like this. No public corporation would function like that. Every other City Council I’m aware of dedicates at least some time periodically fleshing out their future meetings calendar. We never do. So it is the case that we have (cough) ‘planning meetings’ in April for items that never actually get on the calendar.
(In fact, there are items the Council voted on last year, which still haven’t made it to this year’s calendar.) The entire Council calendar is truly a black box.
And if the Council itself has no idea what’s coming, there is no way in hell that residents can become engaged.
At one of the first meetings I had with the City Manager, I asked to see an example of his administration’s planning calendar. He looked puzzled and said there wasn’t one. That cannot be the case. There has to be a planning calendar. It may not be public facing, but you cannot run a business our size without a working calendar.
It must be seen that the administration finds this climate of ‘need to know’ preferable. The less information one shares, the less opposition one will receive.
Wanna hear an irony? I hear from peers in other cities that doing these Weekly Updates simply helps people push back against me. I actually tell people what I think, where I’m going, what I plan to do. How stupid is that? (Or so goes the argument.) I don’t know how to respond to that except to say this: If you really believe in ‘democracy’ you cannot treat this like a poker game. You have to be open.
I do not think it is a coincidence that democratic government in America has been so tightly linked with the free market. A free market provides great results–but only when all sides have access to the same information. That’s the key: buyers and sellers all knowing exactly the same things. That is how you are able to get to the fair price for anything you buy or sell.
But that is also the weakness. If one party has information the other side lacks? The game is up. The incentive to have an ‘edge’, to know something the other guy does not, to ‘play your cards close to the vest’, is almost irresistible. And that is what leads to the cynicism most of us feel today.
Politics is exactly the same. If one side has more information, of course they can (and will) run the table. But then it’s not democracy; it’s a poker game.
But on the other hand, if you think things here are going great, than all of the above is just sour grapes. It’s only ‘bad’ because you’re not the one running the table, Harris! 😀
Look, just talking about a blank Future Agendas Report is probably too abstract for most people to care. Residents will (rightly) demand to know about Crime! Taxes! And all their other immediate concerns.
But a City Council is about planning and oversight. It’s not meant to react to events. We’re supposed to create policies to prevent crime, to make sure the roads don’t fail, to make sure there are all sorts of things taken care of in advance. And I don’t know how we can say we’re doing that properly if the entire Council (and you) don’t all have access to the same information. Without that, it’s not a free market; you can’t be sure you’re getting the best deal and there can be no accountability.
Update: 11/07/2022: At some time today, the Future Agendas Report was updated to include the preliminary agenda for the 11/17/2022 meeting. QED.
This article has an important update today (11/07/2022)
This a snapshot from our Future Agendas Report taken today. Every City has some form of official calendar like this. I’ve written about this issue before but it’s worth re-visiting because it’s not exactly getting better.
First off, there are no meetings on November 10th. (They were moved to November 17th weeks ago.) But even more important, there’s no there there. It’s usually not filled in with anything meaningful, literally until the week of the meeting.
Also, at every meeting, the Council is blindsided with unannounced presentations and proposals, including the one at our last meeting where we were expected to vote on an ordinance with zero notice.
No other nearby City functions like this. No public corporation would function like that. Every other City Council I’m aware of dedicates at least some time periodically fleshing out their future meetings calendar. We never do. So it is the case that we have (cough) ‘planning meetings’ in April for items that never actually get on the calendar.
(In fact, there are items the Council voted on last year, which still haven’t made it to this year’s calendar.) The entire Council calendar is truly a black box.
And if the Council itself has no idea what’s coming, there is no way in hell that residents can become engaged.
At one of the first meetings I had with the City Manager, I asked to see an example of his administration’s planning calendar. He looked puzzled and said there wasn’t one. That cannot be the case. There has to be a planning calendar. It may not be public facing, but you cannot run a business our size without a working calendar.
It must be seen that the administration finds this climate of ‘need to know’ preferable. The less information one shares, the less opposition one will receive.
Wanna hear an irony? I hear from peers in other cities that doing these Weekly Updates simply helps people push back against me. I actually tell people what I think, where I’m going, what I plan to do. How stupid is that? (Or so goes the argument.) I don’t know how to respond to that except to say this: If you really believe in ‘democracy’ you cannot treat this like a poker game. You have to be open.
I do not think it is a coincidence that democratic government in America has been so tightly linked with the free market. A free market provides great results–but only when all sides have access to the same information. That’s the key: buyers and sellers all knowing exactly the same things. That is how you are able to get to the fair price for anything you buy or sell.
But that is also the weakness. If one party has information the other side lacks? The game is up. The incentive to have an ‘edge’, to know something the other guy does not, to ‘play your cards close to the vest’, is almost irresistible. And that is what leads to the cynicism most of us feel today.
Politics is exactly the same. If one side has more information, of course they can (and will) run the table. But then it’s not democracy; it’s a poker game.
But on the other hand, if you think things here are going great, than all of the above is just sour grapes. It’s only ‘bad’ because you’re not the one running the table, Harris! 😀
Look, just talking about a blank Future Agendas Report is probably too abstract for most people to care. Residents will (rightly) demand to know about Crime! Taxes! And all their other immediate concerns.
But a City Council is about planning and oversight. It’s not meant to react to events. We’re supposed to create policies to prevent crime, to make sure the roads don’t fail, to make sure there are all sorts of things taken care of in advance. And I don’t know how we can say we’re doing that properly if the entire Council (and you) don’t all have access to the same information. Without that, it’s not a free market; you can’t be sure you’re getting the best deal and there can be no accountability.
Update: 11/07/2022: At some time today, the Future Agendas Report was updated to include the preliminary agenda for the 11/17/2022 meeting. QED.
They’re doing walk-ins now pretty much everywhere. 🙂
Tuesday: 6:30PM Highline Schools Listening Session at Mt. Rainier High School, with Superintendent Dr. Ivan Duran and District #5 Director Azeb Hagos. I made a comment at the end of this week’s meeting which I fleshed out here on Facebook. This has nothing to do with the merits of Prop 1. It’s truly for information only. But the HSD ballot info on the tax implications was not exactly ‘clear’. So please read and attend this meeting.
Thursday: Public Safety Committee Meeting (Agenda) (Video)
Saturday: 9:00AM – 3:00PM Fall Recycling Event at the Marina
Monday: Meeting with Finance Dept. to ask budget questions. I made some comments on the format of the document, which I go into below. One improvement was this infographic. We have a huge number of seniors living alone, many in their own homes (which were affordable years ago.) The current tax system the City of Des Moines is based on, both property and utilities, is highly regressive. The City needs more revenue. We need the higher assessments that the next generation will provide. But we also need a way for seniors, who did their part, to age in place gracefully.
Monday: Dept. of Ecology meeting on Aviation Emissions. After all these years, we still do not have a single Air Quality Monitor anywhere near the airport. We have like five organisations working on it and that should tell you something about how slow-walked things have been here on fighting aviation pollution.
And I learned something. A community activist asked if she could get a small stipend for door-to-door community outreach. I’m ashamed to say that never would have occurred to me. But it was exactly the right thing to ask for. You could spend $15,000 on a billboard or you could print $50 of flyers and hire some kids to go door to door–and get waaaaay more people to show up for any community meeting here.
Tuesday: Speaking of which, the Port of Seattle did their Budget Study Session. Their process is very different from ours. Due to their complexity, they have sort of a rolling process which starts in July. And unlike us, they publish all their presentations up front. And this meeting was also their Tax Levy Presentation. It was also the start of the first Part 150 Study in nine years.
Tuesday: I was thrilled to attend this meeting of the Des Moines Historical Society and hear Ken Robinson speak.
Thursday: City Council Meeting. (Agenda) (Video) Highlights?
There wasn’t a lot of new information in the budget. So my comments/questions centered around the format of the document. For you bookkeeper types, our budgets strike me more like a trial balance than a budget.
The intro to the document says that budgets are statements of values. Absolutely. But our budget consists almost entirely of what my company used to call bodies and buckets, not ‘values’.
A City budget mainly consists of many funds (the buckets)—think of them as your bank accounts. You might have one for ‘college’ and one for ‘vacations’ and one for ‘retirement’. Just so, we have a Marina Fund, a Transportation Fund, a Development Fund, etc. The budget process here is to pump dollars into each of those buckets. We don’t generally say, “We’ll spend $20,000 on project (x).
But we also vote for staffing levels for each fund (the bodies.) So, this is where we could say, “add four more police officers, tout suite!”
An obvious cognitive dissonance is that those bodies represent dollars. So, realistically the staffing ends up being driven by the amount in the appropriate fund. IOW: the buckets also determine the bodies.
We vote ‘x’ dollars for something called ‘public safety’ or ‘marina’. But we do not vote specifically for a ‘boat hoist’ or any specific road project. When the Council votes on ordinances and resolutions during the year, the City Manager pulls the money from the appropriate fund.
But as the City Manager said, the Budget is supposed to be about values. I call the current Budget Document more of a ‘trial balance’ than a ‘budget’ because although it shows those numbers, it doesn’t explain the Why? ‘Why’ are the values. Why are we spending (x) here and (y) there… and not the other way round? Why do we expect this revenue to be up and that revenue to be down? Decision makers need the Why as much as the dollars.
To do that properly, the document needs footnotes and explainers to go with all the key numbers. Ideally a budget should be almost self-documenting. Any person who understands the basics could read it and ‘grok’ how and why money is flowing here, there and everywhere. Currently we’re not there.
And I write this the way any golfer describes that perfect 18 holes at Pebble Beach. You can never get there, but that’s the dream. And no one should take offense at describing that ideal document. I took pains at the meeting to say how much work those footnotes can take. (It’s just like writing computer code, programmers hate documenting their code because it takes almost as long to do the ‘explainers’ as to get the actual code done.) You do all that extra work because it’s not for you. Others have to be able to read and understand it.
A trial balance tells the bookkeeper that everything adds up. But a budget needs to be far more than that in my opinion. Otherwise, it’s far more difficult to determine what the City truly values. OK, enough speechifyin’.
At last night’s Budget Session, the Mayor and City Manager teamed up on yet another totally blindside move which was at least as egregious as last month’s Marina Redevelopment Community Meeting. It’s a pattern.
At least a day before the meeting, the City Attorney had prepared a Draft Ordinance placing an ’emergency’ moratorium on land use applications under a provision of State code RCW 36.70A.390, to apply to a stretch of 216th from The Barnes Creek Trail to 24th Avenue.
But the item was not on the Agenda as part of a public process. And it was not mentioned in the City Manager’s section at the front of the meeting (where he also regularly throws out blindside items with no prep.)
No, this was next level. Instead the Mayor waited until the end of a three hour budget meeting, with almost all of the public gone, at the section allocated for Councilmember New Items For Consideration, and gave the City Manager the floor for an ’emergency’ item. But without telling us what it was.
The City Planner steps to the dais to give a presentation describing an emergency need to immediately stop land use applications for the next six months. But without specifying what that emergency was or is or why it couldn’t simply be put on an Agenda Item. There are vague references to GMA and Vision 2050, which I’m not sure some of my colleagues have even been briefed on. (Spoiler Alert: The GMA and PSRC provide targets, not requirements that suddenly need to be acted upon overnight.)
The Clerk then passes out the draft ordinance to read with an aerial map and no mention of how it conflicts with the current Comprehensive Plan the Council has already vetted and approved. We then sit in silence for ten minutes reading. And then there are actually two discussions. The Council votes to invoke Rule 26a, which is another ’emergency’ rule to pass an Ordinance without a second reading. And then the discussion went even more Orwellian. There are concerns about “not zoning for more trucks”, which sounds sympathetic to residents, but actually has little to do with this. But then the actual “Whereases” are strongly weighted towards more commercial development–the exact opposite.
The reason you see me squeezing my head is that I have tried not to scream at my colleagues or staff this year. The get put at the dais and it’s basically daring me to throw hard balls at our staff which no one wants to do.
But Councilmember Pennington told a story, with Councilmember Steinmetz seeming to nod approvingly, which was simply not accurate. He referred to a previous zoning hearing concerning my neighbourhood in 2019, while I was running for office. It’s one of the 327 irritations the City (and my colleagues) developed with me long before my election.
In 2018, a neighbour and I got wind of a developer’s plan to build an apartment complex on 216th and 14th. That conflicted with the City’s Comp Plan. His plans, which the public had not seen, included ingress/egress through the residential neighbourhood. (It had nothing to do with 24th Ave. as my colleague said.) The tension was that there were several property owners within the proposed development who were aware of the plan and were eager to be bought out, regardless of the impacts to the surrounding neighbourhood. (Ironically, I had first heard about it from one of those enthusiastic home owners.)
The City had slipped in a Draft Ordinance as an amendment to the annual Comp Plan review to re-zone the area for apartments. The Council was not voting on the apartments per se, ‘only’ to change the Comp Plan to allow for apartments.
Like everyone else, my neighbour tried writing some letters and was typical in his frustration. Hee and I spoke, I suggested a strategy, and he really came through. He established a mailing list and together we organised about twenty people to show up and scream bloody hell about it; not once, but twice. And after the 6second reading…
The Council backed down.
Without that organised and very vocal campaign, they were totally going to approve it.
That is what happened.
This year, I was happy to see another project presented to City Council, this time with a plan we could see, for 23 Town homes, providing ownership, and no disruption to the neighbourhood. That was what the Comp Plan provided for. That is the power of local activism. And that is why I try to tell people over and over how to organise and why you must organise. Because. It. Works. You just have to do it.
Zoning is now so intrinsic to the functioning of every city, it’s hard to believe that it only really came into use in the 1920’s. But the manifest potential for abuse has always been so profound, courts have gone out of their way to try to take local government out of the equation.
If a City can simply declare an ’emergency’ any time it chooses, how is one to know if any project is being chosen fairly? Why couldn’t the City have simply invoked the same moratorium on the area around 240th and Marine View Drive back in 2018… you know, ‘to give the public six months to provide feedback on the city’s future’?
There are only two possible reasons to make this an ’emergency’,
As I walked out the door I heard the two remaining audience members discussing what had just happened and one seemed to shrug it of cheerily by saying, “Hey, I guess if it’s legal.”
The funny thing about that is that the resident has been doing his own campaign to get some longstanding issues resolved in his neighbourhood.
My colleagues will argue that the outcome of the moratorium might be good. Agreed. The zoning in that are should be cleaned up. But that’s just more ‘the ends justifies the means’ rubbish. 4One could declare martial law as an excuse to find a cure for cancer. Noble, but screw that.
What has caused bad government here for so long is not merely the leadership. Sorry, but it’s also our residents. You vote for this. And you also tend to see everything as transactional. You’ll laugh about “that crazy City Council” but not make the connection with your issue.
Friends, the City is like any corporation. It has a culture. It does not do some things one way and other things another way. The lesson people should take away from last night is this:
This type of hanky panky is how everything works. So, your issue is being handled exactly the same as we handled this issue. So even if you’re personally satisfied, you don’t know that it could likely be a whole lot better.
The reason it sometimes seems as though I focus on issues like this ‘process’ stuff more than any individual concerns is because if we can just move away from single issues, and fix the broken process, we instantly make every individual concern easier to deal with. That resident is working an issue that has metastised over two decades.
Planning Commission.
1The last time we invoked this moratorium thingee was in 1998 with regard to Third Runway and Pacific Ridge.
2I am intimately familiar with the area. It includes Stephen J. Underwood Park as well as the Post Office and some houses across from the FAA building. The zoning is nuts. But it’s been nuts for quite some time and we have Comp Plan updates every year. All those years no one seemed to be particularly annoyed that the Barnes Creek Trail is zoned as BP. So saying that is now some hair-on-fire emergency just for the sake of ‘having a public discussion’ is pretty rich. Points for audacity.
3One note about that RCW, which may (or may not) be instructive. It was amended last year in order to account for affordable housing and emergency homeless shelters, which all cities are now required to site. The law was passed because every city (including Des Moines), and regardless of its concerned rhetoric, has consistently stonewalled siting all such things as hard as they used to redline neighbourhoods against people of colour.
4We just ended 2.5 years of giving the City Manager emergency powers, most of which he did not need.
5If you click the link we technically do have a (cough) Future Agendas Report. It usually only gets filled in from meeting to meeting. Eg. the agenda for the 17 November meeting got filled in the day of the 27 October Meeting. Most of the time, it just contains placeholders for all the possible meeting dates–many of which get cancelled.
6And by the way: this is exactly the reason Rule 26a (which allows for ordinances to be propose and passed on the same night as we did this Thursday) is such rubbish. Without that second reading (which my colleagues dismissively refer to as ‘two-tap’), there’s no time for the public to learn and engage and get to the right solution. It’s sort of like the right to a fair trial: even though most people who are arrested are guilty, a fair process is worth it because we’ve decided as a society that ‘most’ isn’t good enough. You need that extra layer of protection because ordinances (and especially zoning ordinances) often have permanent consequences
At last night’s Budget Session, the Mayor and City Manager teamed up on yet another totally blindside move which was at least as egregious as last month’s Marina Redevelopment Community Meeting. It’s a pattern.
At least a day before the meeting, the City Attorney had prepared a Draft Ordinance placing an ’emergency’ moratorium on land use applications under a provision of State code RCW 36.70A.390, to apply to a stretch of 216th from The Barnes Creek Trail to 24th Avenue.
But the item was not on the Agenda as part of a public process. And it was not mentioned in the City Manager’s section at the front of the meeting (where he also regularly throws out blindside items with no prep.)
No, this was next level. Instead the Mayor waited until the end of a three hour budget meeting, with almost all of the public gone, at the section allocated for Councilmember New Items For Consideration, and gave the City Manager the floor for an ’emergency’ item. But without telling us what it was.
The City Planner steps to the dais to give a presentation describing an emergency need to immediately stop land use applications for the next six months. But without specifying what that emergency was or is or why it couldn’t simply be put on an Agenda Item. There are vague references to GMA and Vision 2050, which I’m not sure some of my colleagues have even been briefed on. (Spoiler Alert: The GMA and PSRC provide targets, not requirements that suddenly need to be acted upon overnight.)
The Clerk then passes out the draft ordinance to read with an aerial map and no mention of how it conflicts with the current Comprehensive Plan the Council has already vetted and approved. We then sit in silence for ten minutes reading. And then there are actually two discussions. The Council votes to invoke Rule 26a, which is another ’emergency’ rule to pass an Ordinance without a second reading. And then the discussion went even more Orwellian. There are concerns about “not zoning for more trucks”, which sounds sympathetic to residents, but actually has little to do with this. But then the actual “Whereases” are strongly weighted towards more commercial development–the exact opposite.
The reason you see me squeezing my head is that I have tried not to scream at my colleagues or staff this year. The get put at the dais and it’s basically daring me to throw hard balls at our staff which no one wants to do.
But Councilmember Pennington told a story, with Councilmember Steinmetz seeming to nod approvingly, which was simply not accurate. He referred to a previous zoning hearing concerning my neighbourhood in 2019, while I was running for office. It’s one of the 327 irritations the City (and my colleagues) developed with me long before my election.
In 2018, a neighbour and I got wind of a developer’s plan to build an apartment complex on 216th and 14th. That conflicted with the City’s Comp Plan. His plans, which the public had not seen, included ingress/egress through the residential neighbourhood. (It had nothing to do with 24th Ave. as my colleague said.) The tension was that there were several property owners within the proposed development who were aware of the plan and were eager to be bought out, regardless of the impacts to the surrounding neighbourhood. (Ironically, I had first heard about it from one of those enthusiastic home owners.)
The City had slipped in a Draft Ordinance as an amendment to the annual Comp Plan review to re-zone the area for apartments. The Council was not voting on the apartments per se, ‘only’ to change the Comp Plan to allow for apartments.
Like everyone else, my neighbour tried writing some letters and was typical in his frustration. Hee and I spoke, I suggested a strategy, and he really came through. He established a mailing list and together we organised about twenty people to show up and scream bloody hell about it; not once, but twice. And after the 6second reading…
The Council backed down.
Without that organised and very vocal campaign, they were totally going to approve it.
That is what happened.
This year, I was happy to see another project presented to City Council, this time with a plan we could see, for 23 Town homes, providing ownership, and no disruption to the neighbourhood. That was what the Comp Plan provided for. That is the power of local activism. And that is why I try to tell people over and over how to organise and why you must organise. Because. It. Works. You just have to do it.
Zoning is now so intrinsic to the functioning of every city, it’s hard to believe that it only really came into use in the 1920’s. But the manifest potential for abuse has always been so profound, courts have gone out of their way to try to take local government out of the equation.
If a City can simply declare an ’emergency’ any time it chooses, how is one to know if any project is being chosen fairly? Why couldn’t the City have simply invoked the same moratorium on the area around 240th and Marine View Drive back in 2018… you know, ‘to give the public six months to provide feedback on the city’s future’?
There are only two possible reasons to make this an ’emergency’,
As I walked out the door I heard the two remaining audience members discussing what had just happened and one seemed to shrug it of cheerily by saying, “Hey, I guess if it’s legal.”
The funny thing about that is that the resident has been doing his own campaign to get some longstanding issues resolved in his neighbourhood.
My colleagues will argue that the outcome of the moratorium might be good. Agreed. The zoning in that are should be cleaned up. But that’s just more ‘the ends justifies the means’ rubbish. 4One could declare martial law as an excuse to find a cure for cancer. Noble, but screw that.
What has caused bad government here for so long is not merely the leadership. Sorry, but it’s also our residents. You vote for this. And you also tend to see everything as transactional. You’ll laugh about “that crazy City Council” but not make the connection with your issue.
Friends, the City is like any corporation. It has a culture. It does not do some things one way and other things another way. The lesson people should take away from last night is this:
This type of hanky panky is how everything works. So, your issue is being handled exactly the same as we handled this issue. So even if you’re personally satisfied, you don’t know that it could likely be a whole lot better.
The reason it sometimes seems as though I focus on issues like this ‘process’ stuff more than any individual concerns is because if we can just move away from single issues, and fix the broken process, we instantly make every individual concern easier to deal with. That resident is working an issue that has metastised over two decades.
Planning Commission.
1The last time we invoked this moratorium thingee was in 1998 with regard to Third Runway and Pacific Ridge.
2I am intimately familiar with the area. It includes Stephen J. Underwood Park as well as the Post Office and some houses across from the FAA building. The zoning is nuts. But it’s been nuts for quite some time and we have Comp Plan updates every year. All those years no one seemed to be particularly annoyed that the Barnes Creek Trail is zoned as BP. So saying that is now some hair-on-fire emergency just for the sake of ‘having a public discussion’ is pretty rich. Points for audacity.
3One note about that RCW, which may (or may not) be instructive. It was amended last year in order to account for affordable housing and emergency homeless shelters, which all cities are now required to site. The law was passed because every city (including Des Moines), and regardless of its concerned rhetoric, has consistently stonewalled siting all such things as hard as they used to redline neighbourhoods against people of colour.
4We just ended 2.5 years of giving the City Manager emergency powers, most of which he did not need.
5If you click the link we technically do have a (cough) Future Agendas Report. It usually only gets filled in from meeting to meeting. Eg. the agenda for the 17 November meeting got filled in the day of the 27 October Meeting. Most of the time, it just contains placeholders for all the possible meeting dates–many of which get cancelled.
6And by the way: this is exactly the reason Rule 26a (which allows for ordinances to be propose and passed on the same night as we did this Thursday) is such rubbish. Without that second reading (which my colleagues dismissively refer to as ‘two-tap’), there’s no time for the public to learn and engage and get to the right solution. It’s sort of like the right to a fair trial: even though most people who are arrested are guilty, a fair process is worth it because we’ve decided as a society that ‘most’ isn’t good enough. You need that extra layer of protection because ordinances (and especially zoning ordinances) often have permanent consequences
If you recall, it takes about a month to achieve full efficacy. And the number of people who have had all four injections is now below fifty percent. Football, Thanksgiving. Christmas. I think you know where I’m going here.
They’re doing walk-ins at SAFEWAY. Rite Aid. Sea-Mar. As you find locations, I hope you’ll let me know. 🙂
Monday: Meeting with Finance Dept. to ask budget> questions. Which means I better read the budget. 😀 Keeeeeeeeding. This year, the City made me a printed copy, for which I am thankful. 😀
Monday: Dept. of Ecology meeting on Aviation Emissions.
Tuesday: Speaking of which, the Port of Seattle is doing their Budget Study Session tomorrow. Their process is very different from ours. Due to their complexity, they have sort of a rolling process which starts in July. But this meeting matters because it’s the Tax Levy Presentation and it’s the start of the first Part 150 Study in nine years.
Tuesday: I am absolutely thrilled to make the following PSA:
Thursday: City Council Meeting. (Agenda) (Video) Highlights?
Wednesday: Public Safety Round Table (Video)
Thursday: City Council Meeting. (Agenda) (Video)
As usual, there were a couple of unscheduled presentations. And as usual, I’m gonna tell ya how annoying I find these, because I compartmentalise. I frequently go from things I absolutely hate to things I absolutely love, sometimes every five minutes. I know you don’t live your life that way, but that’s what these meetings are for moi.
South King County Housing and Homelessness Partners (SKHHP) is one of them. 😀 I was glad to hear from the Director on the organisation’s progress. On the other hand, I recall my predecessor remarking that it’s taking too long. And if it was OK for her? It’s OK for me. 🙂 Too. Slow. I asked a question about ‘inventory’ and it will be almost four years before we get an inventory of our housing stock–so we know how the quantity and quality our homes. Seriously? It’s taking four years to get a count? And the reason it’s too slow? Frankly, because some of the member cities want it to be slow. It’s as simple as that. It would be kind to say that some people are ‘cautious’. But sometimes? You can tell what people care about by how long various things take.
In addition to renewing our membership in SKHHP.
We also voted to end the City Manager’s Emergency Powers. CM Pennington gave a ten minute speech on the importance of emergency management and gave the City Manager such praise that Mr. Matthias joked “The check is in the mail, Vic.” Which was exactly what I was thinking. 😀
But seriously, ladeez and germs. Without giving a letter grade, I think it’s fair to say that every agency, from the Feds down to the dog catcher, were caught off guard by COVID. It takes nothing away from everyone’s great work to say that. And it’s just best practice to do a serious lessons learned after such a massive beat down. The facts are: We lost waaaaaaaay more people than other countries, we spent trillions to mitigate that discomfort, and now we’re going through the worst inflation in forty years.
Winter Farmers Market Fee Waiver: We also voted to waive the fees for the Farmers Market Holiday thing. Which is fine, but I shoulda pulled the item because we’re voting on this before they present to the Council and that drives me *Shazzbatt!
Those of you who follow me know that I raised the need for a marina virtual town hall system and a Marina Committee at our last meeting. But the City Manager, and our ferry consultant, were quoted in the Puget Sound Business Journal on Wednesday and I urge you to read it. Their statements, and the implications of the article are so troubling they demanded a response.
The Mayor announced the cancellation of our RFQ and sweeping changes to our Marina Redevelopment plan at a community meeting with no microphone, and without the knowledge of the Council. (Do I need to remind people that in Council/Manager Government the Mayor is merely the presiding officer at the meetings and has no executive authority. They aren’t even supposed to send a Condolence Card without a vote of the Council.)
And in that same article the City Manager is quoted as basing the decision to move the proposed hotel site based on feedback from condo owners who were concerned about blocking their particular views. Wait, we moved a hotel based on some private complaints? Making that kind of land use change without involving the Council should not be tolerated for the reason I gave to close my comments:
If they did it once. They’ll do it again.
This is not how government is supposed to work.
As I wrote, we will be voting to extend the current lease for the Quarterdeck for another five years. And the rate, which was $300/mo will go up to $381/mo. In the Agenda, the explanation is that the Quarterdeck is provides unquantifiable value to the community.
Look, I get the appeal of the place. Love it. Furthermore, if one breaks it down on a strictly per/sq ft basis, it’s not as weak it sounds.
However, for me, saying that the benefits of anything on the Marina are ‘unquantifiable’ is just wrong. Everything on the Marina Floor must be quantifiable, for the simple reason that the whole point of re-developing the land side is to generate $50,000,000 to pay for the real business of the Marina, aka “the docks.”
So forgive me, but saying that the Quarterdeck or SR3 or the Farmers Market or a new hotel or anything on that Marina floor is ‘unquantifiable’ is more than a bit cheeky.
What it’s really saying is that the City has unilaterally decided to shift the burden of those lands, which benefit a relative few, on to other parts of the budget in order to pay for the docks; or roads; or public safety; or human services; or any of those other core services that benefit everybody.
Ironically, I don’t mention CSR Marine because that’s the only business that actually has to be on the floor in order to run… you know… a marina. 😀 Everything else, should be delivering financial reports to the City Council before we offer subsidies, grants, and especially long-term leases.
That does not mean I don’t love these things as much as the next person. It’s just the way you run a business–especially a public business that needs to find $50,000,000 it does not have.
Because lest people forget, the Marina is an Enterprise Fund; ie. a business inside a government. It’s supposed to pay its own way. That is the law.
Currently, the Marina’s real business (ie. boats) makes a modest profit. But there is zero money in there for dock replacement.
So, since the Council chose not to have the virtual town hall I requested, let me break this down for you using my ninja-like multi-media skills:
This is why I get snippy about rents and grants –not to mention ‘ferries’ and ‘hotels’ and ‘dry stacks’ and ‘adaptive purpose buildings’ and ‘year round farmers markets’ and ‘paid parking’ and every other darned thing on that Marina floor.
The largest bills in City history will start coming due soon. And without sounding unkind, do you see anything on the Marina floor that looks like it will make that nut? Because if not, it’s coming out of your pocket.
Highly rushed due to failing water heater! Only a few minutes before I have to get back to bailing! 😀
Monday: Not an event, but notable: the City got dinged by the State Auditor’s Report about our ARPA fund. This seems fairly minor in and of itself and the City acknowledges the problem. But in one passage of its response seems to be saying that it was following the State’s own policy as well as it could under the circumstances and therefore the finding should not be considered negative. I accept that response.
However, one detail: as you know, the City was granted $9MM in ARPA funds back in July of 2021. We were given until 2024 to decide how to spend it. But at our 16 September 2021 meeting, the City Manager presented a spending proposal for the entire $9MM. And over my strong objections, the Council voted to budget that entire $9MM in one night. We are the only nearby city to have done so. Our sister cities are only now getting round to spending the majority of their allocations. The City acknowledges only spending about $1MM of that fund in 2021. So in my opinion, we would have been better off doing as our sister cities did: taking our sweet time in budgeting that money until the final rules had been decided by the State and Federal governments.
Thursday: Public Safety Emergency Management Meeting (Agenda) (Video.) There will be an update on our drone program, the Great Washington Shakeout. But the highlight is a discussion of Short Term Rentals. One element could be requiring a business license. Another? How to enforce accountability for the occasional misbehaving guest. That is of interest to me because the topic of accountability for long term rentals is also a big deal for many neighbourhoods.
Thursday: City Council Meeting (Agenda) All items are Consent Agenda. There is no “discussion topic” ie. Old or New Business. (Come to think of it, until 2017-ish I recall that we used to have a regular “Old Business” section of our meetings, since many things did seem to require more than one meeting to resolve. Ah… the good old days. 😀 ) Anyhoo, meetings with no New Business often have ‘surprises’ to fill the space. Surprises are generally not what you want in local government.
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.
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The sign-in sheet is only for people wishing to make a Public Comment.
Last week was action packed! Since I’m pressed for time, I’ll just refer you to my articles on these which (I hope) cover the essentials fairly well–in addition to my obvious opinions. The meetings were not recorded so you’ll have to make do with my cell phone recordings and machine transcription of each for veracity–included in the respective articles.
Tuesday: Marina Redevelopment Town Hall
Thursday: Ad Hoc Rules Committee #2
Please watch the following video. This is one example of a tool which every and I do mean every architect and engineer and construction manager that has an internet connection, anywhere on planet earth uses every frickin’ day of their lives.
And just to be clear, there are maybe a dozen programs I’m aware of like this. It is no more ‘complex’ for architects than an MRI machine would be for any physician. It is commonplace.
Before last Thursday’s Marina Redevelopment Community meeting at the Senior Center, I (and everyone else I spoke to) thought the proposed ’boutique hotel’ would be here. Or rather, along that cement wall at the back of the Marina property known as Parcel A.
The Council went so far as to vote to negotiate an exclusive developer agreement after a sixty day RFQ process. We spent staff time and your tax money going through that process.
It was on the Council’s calendar for August 18th to take a field trip to Point Ruston and meet with the developer to discuss the project. That meeting was abruptly cancelled in July.
I know I was not the only member of the City Council who walked into Thursday night’s meeting not expecting to hear that, not only is the Parcel A apparently canceled… The hotel? Why now it’s going to be where those containers are at the north parking lot. There’s a new parking structure. And, the Harbormaster’s house? Finito. Apparently, we’re going back to design, as they say in the engineering world. Which is a euphemism for We’re starting over, guys.
And the reason it is moving was at least in part because, apparently, the City and/or the architect just identified a possible conflict with the fuel storage tanks.
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but those storage tanks hold 30,000 gallons of fuel. They didn’t suddenly get moved, you know, under cloak of darkness in the ten months since the City voted to approve the Parcel A RFQ?
The problem is not this project and I’m going to ask you for a moment to not focus on your individual concern. The problem is that the City of Des Moines has no public planning process. Every planning issue we do is this flawed. We are fundamentally unlike other cities in this respect. Truly.
The solution for everybody is to fix this process, and not to try to attack each individual concern. Here’s how:
You need to start showing up for meetings (Thursdays, 6PM) and making your voice heard. Not just once. For as long as it takes.
IMPORTANT: Anyone who tells you “We cannot stop! We have to keep moving forward!” is not on your side. Taking a pause to implement the proper oversight is not a hard stop. Again, after September 27 anyone who does not see the need for both these proposals is not on your side.
We’re betting our City’s future on this update. Let’s do it right.
But then, only a month later, the City asked them to, ya know, maybe re-think that? It was all to do with one of these newfangled phone app games that all the kids were playing called Pokémon GO. In the words of then Harbormaster Joe Dusenberry :
...By the end of July there were large crowds in the Marina every day and many of them played the game well into the early morning hours, ignoring the 10:00 pm closure for the Beach Park and the Marina parking lots. Early attempts by the Police Department to clear the lots resulted in many of the trainers moving their vehicles to Anthony's parking lot and walking back into the Marina to continue playing. While there was not a noticeable increase in vandalism, graffiti or property damage, the large crowds were noisy and did generate more litter than normal. Because the game requires the players to move around while looking at their mobile device the biggest public safety issue was the large numbers of trainers wandering around the parking lots and traffic lanes staring at their phones or pads and not paying attention to surrounding traffic. Additionally, there were some vehicle drivers distracted by their attention to the game. As a result of the large crowds, police resources were redirected to the Marina to insure safety and orderly conduct. Based on these issues and citizen complaints, the City Council voted on August 18, 2016 to direct staff to contact Niantic, Inc. and "opt-out" all City property and right of way for the game Pokemon Go.
My friends and I watched all this from the docks or having a g&t at Anthony’s and more than one wag said words to the effect,
Which was very true. How both the public and the City Council reacted to having so much new ‘activity’ is worth watching the first video (below.) Councilmember Nutting’s explanation of how the game works–and later his feelings as to the purpose of the Marina, is probably his longest speech from the dais ever. But it’s also worth watching the City’s response a month later, basically saying that basically everyone may have over-reacted. Just a leeeeetle, tiny bit? 😀
When people used to wonder why Des Moines was not a “Destination” the reason is simple, a majority of voters (and electeds) chose Quiet over Destination. Without going into the weeds, twenty years ago, the tax system was completely different, such that the City did not need a lot of visitors. And since the traffic was so much less, I had an office in Queen Anne which I could drive to every day in about 25 minutes. (Really. Why are you laughing? 😀 ) My wife and I did not care if there was nightlife here because we could get to a bajillion super cool things other places. Traffic was the real game changer.
Today we get literally millions less in revenue sharing from the County and State as we used to. Today the traffic sucks. But today we need to start rebuilding the docks, the most expensive capital project in City history. Perhaps $50,000,000.
So, we also need to ask “Where does the money come from?” Because one more fact is this: the City does not have the money to pay for the docks. The money the Marina was supposed to set aside for updates over the past 50 years is not there. We can argue about ‘why’, but arguing won’t change the fact that it is not. Moving on.
The City’s position all along has been that economic development will fund dock replacement and not your tax dollars. The City used the phrase “the landside must pay for the waterside.” That is, paying visitors to the Marina/Downtown (the land) will pay for the docks (the water.)
OK, fine. That means retail sales. Restaurants. Shops. Hotels. Entertainment. The ‘Destination’ many people here have longed for.
A couple more factlets:
So, the City’s plan requires doubling our sales tax revenue. And that means visitors. That is the reason the City has been willing to lose sooooo much money to subsidise a Ferry. SR3. Farmers Market. The Quarterdeck. A hotel. Drawing tourists here to spend money will (eventually) reap huge rewards.
It is a very convenient argument because those are all fun and popular things. It’s always great to hear that the foods we enjoy are also good for us.
But even if you believe in that (and I am not convinced) I want to ask every tax payer a very simple question:
Have you considered how much traffic (by that I mean not just cars, but also people) it would mean to double those retail taxes Think about who we really are here. We’re a town that has, traditionally rolled up the streets around 8:00PM. We’ve never really had ‘nightlife’ to speak of. One of the major complaints about Pokemon Go was that kids were playing after 10PM.
I don’t have to guess. I saw it. And so did everyone who was anywhere near the Marina in 2016 during Pokemon Go. And… They did. not. like it.
So much so that the City Council voted unanimously to put a stop to it.
See that’s the big problem with Des Moines: short term memory. We have such a high turn over of residents now that it is very likely you were not here five years ago. So you didn’t just miss Pokemon Go, you missed the only other real ‘community meeting’ on the Marina, which was in 2017. That meeting also featured stickers with “hotel” or “park” or “ferry.” The only difference? The 2017 meeting was on a cruise ship.
At last week’s community meeting, the City changed major elements of the proposal, without providing notice to the Council. It simply announced it was changing direction. But note that there were no real choices. The City simply told people what it was planning to do. And there were no stickers for “traffic”, “litter”, “crowds”, “public safety”, and “funding”.
Because, in short, the City has already chosen for the entire community: “Destination” over “Quiet”. This is not about a few buildings at the Marina.
Their ultimate goal is (and must be if the goal is to increase sales enough to pay for the docks) will dramatically increase traffic throughout the downtown.
The City has created a complete “vision” for “Destination Des Moines”–without describing either the financing, or the impacts to quality of life, or even giving you a choice in the matter.
Enough.
It’s time to have the real discussions we should have had many years ago. Not just about the pluses and minuses of the current plan (which the City has demonstrated it can change at any time without your say-so), but also what we actually want Des Moines to be. Just this once. Pretty please?
And yet, for the first community meeting since 2019, and only the second since the project was born, the City chose not to use money it had already budgeted to do that. They made every effort to keep the meeting as uninformative as possible, limiting audience questions to about twelve minutes.
We budgeted the money, so let’s do it. Now. We all need that kind of information and public outreach to make such important decisions.
A couple of quotes from the City Council discussion at that time: “The lawsuit is going to come when a mother watching her phone and not her two year old, swimming in the incoming surf, gets carried out and dies, in our beach park or our waterfront. I’ve witnessed and I’m certain that everyone in this room that has been down there has witnessed this as well and that’s where the lawsuits are gonna come.” And then this, “I put a post on a community page a couple of weeks ago and there was an overwhelming response saying it’s hurting our park. There were maybe three people said they’re just kids let ’em have fun. But I would say dozens of people said… their feelings wouldn’t be hurt…”
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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.