This was done with Google Earth Pro (GEP.) GEP is very rudimentary and I have the drawing skills of an 8-year old. But GEP does allow one to draw boxes to scale. So all the ‘buildings’ are about 35ft high (the zoned limit.) I actually started this project to see if the September 27 Skylab Presentation does or does not block the new bathroom we just built for $1MM. (See the ‘RR’ in their drawing? That means ‘relocated restroom’.)
#1. This is a flyover from the North Entry.
Former Mayor Don Wasson’s house is now the Beach Park lawn nearest the north entry. The Cliff House and Mariner condos are across the street (in white.)
#2 This is in front of the Quarterdeck looking NW towards the proposed hotel.
And… the hotel does cut into the new $1MM bathroom (which is why it is marked as “relocated” in the Skylab drawing.) So…does that mean a smaller hotel? Or does it mean the bathrooms really would need to be moved?
#3. Now we fly up again to take in the Adaptive Purpose Building
The initial cost estimate of the APB is $4MM. It will replace the sheds and provide dry stack storage.
In addition to the dry stack storage, 27 September presentation calls for tearing down the harbormaster’s office, moving SR3 and the farmers market into the APB, and if there’s room left, possibly some office space or shops or whatever. Hence the name ‘adaptive purpose’.
An example of indoor dry stack boat storage
#4. Flying up to take in the view against the South Shores condos on 22rd and Cliff Ave.
#5. Here is from a more southerly vantage point so you can see both the empty space behind CSR and then SR3.
Now: what to do with those two empty spots?
The consultant report talks about the potential of up to four restaurants. But those spaces could also be used for a second dry stack storage–and dry stack storage is not a “maybe it will pencil out, may it won’t” deal. Dry stack is, like in-water moorage, a true moneymaker.
#6. And finally pulling out to take in the entire area.
By the way, the green in the east bg was the originally planned site for SR3 on 223rd and Sixth Ave. It’s just there for reference.
The Blank Canvas
I know this is so ugly it will drive some people nuts. I’m not trying to be anti-anything. I just want people to understand what goes where and most of us seem to ‘get’ visuals like this about 1,000% better than long text descriptions. And again, the City has already budgeted for a professional to do an aesthetically pleasing rendering so you can ask them to get on the stick. 🙂 Marina Redevelopment Town Hall ARPA Proposal.
What I really wanted to be able to do was see a blank canvas. As I’ve written before, it drives me nuts that we’ve been building things one piece at a time, ie. we’ve committed to Quarterdeck, SR3, and now the new bathrooms. And that is making the architect have to work around all this ‘stuff’. Imagine what could we do if we just had a clean sheet and could design exactly what we want! And then it occurred to me: We could do exactly that, because we own all this! We don’t have to work one piece at a time. We don’t have to sell off anything. Instead, we could create a single, unified design.
There are other details I did not talk about, eg. the blue line along the south edge of the Marina Floor. That’s the south seawall, which will soon need to be replaced–just like the north seawall this past year. More cranes! More permits! More $$$$ 😀
As we get more details, and when I can find an 9-year old to help me learn Google Earth one year better, I’ll add in the complete animation so you can ‘fly around’ yourself.
If you spot any errors or have any questions, please let me know, so I can make corrections. (Eg. In the latest Skylab drawing, the Adaptive Purpose Building has been split into two pieces, basically covering the same area. My drawing skills have not progressed to where I can split my ‘APB’ into the two separate things. Maybe tomorrow. 🙂 )
There has been a lot of concern recently concerning Marina Redevelopment and the master sums up my feelings about the situation. Plus, listening to a great song always helps calms me down when I’m upset about things like this. 🙂
If, like me, you are not happy with things, below you will find:
Policy Solutions (the things the City can do to move things in a better direction) and then
Your Action Items: the things you can and should do to make that happen.
Two Issues
But before we get to that, to answer one very popular question, according to the City Communications Director, the new bathroom will not need to be moved. (Even though the September 27, 2022 Skylab Presentation clearly shows that happening.)
But for me that raises two issues…
The presentations we’ve had so far are so confusing and filled with conflicting ‘stuff’ that you cannot tell what’s what.
Why on earth are we building this, literally, “One piece at a time.”?
Say you find your little bit of heaven—your DREAM property? Who builds the bathroom first and -then- starts building the other rooms? No one does that. Instead, you’d get the architect to come up with your complete DREAM DESIGN to go with your–dream property. You’d get the entire thing together -before- you started building. Johnny’s song is no joke. You build any big project one piece at a time and you get what you deserve.
SOLUTIONS
The solutions are really, really simple. They’ so simple, I fear you won’t believe me.
Just get twenty people to go to City Council and demand this: “Stop all landside development until the City does three things.”
Immediately implement the Marina Town Hall we already voted for in 2021 https://jcharrisfordesmoines.com/marina-town-hall-arpa-proposal/
Reinstate the Public Planning Commission we had until 2013 to give residents a seat at the table on all land use.
Reinstate the Marina Committee we had for decades when the Marina was first built.
All of these can be done now and implemented in January with no impact on the docks or the hoist projects. But we need this approach to create a Marina footprint that truly serves the interests of the public.
Why?
Each of the above has a very specific purpose. At bottom, this is all about zoning. And zoning has veeeerrrrry specific laws. You can’t go to the City and say “Don’t block my view!” or “Don’t build a hotel!” or “Build a hotel here, but not there!” Or, “I like everything except…” That’s really not how zoning works, and besides those are band-aids, not really solutions.
You’re not asking why we would want a hotel. Or if we even need a hotel. You’re not considering that a developer may not want to build in a particular spot or what impacts it might have on the entire area. Zoning is supposed to be the process that allows the entire community to answer those questions and plan for the future.
The fact that we’re the only city in the area without a public planning commission should tell you something about all our land use decisions.
The solution is to get back to having a fair process and let that get you where you want to go. That’s what those solutions will do. You can’t cut corners and expect things to work out right on such a long term project. Electeds come and go. City officials come and go. You need to ‘get it in writing’.
The Virtual Town Hall is a first step. It’s the method we should use for every important land use decision in the future. It lets everyone visualise the project in advance. And the really good news? We already budgeted for it over a year ago, so there’s nothing holding us back from doing it today.
A Planning Commission (PC), which every other city has, is the place where members of the public get to have input on the actual design of the City. The PC would organise the town halls, gather input from the public, advise the Council on what you want. And it would do it not just for the Marina, but for every planning decision. No. More. Surprises.
A Marina Committee, like our other Council Committees, brings everyone concerned about the Marina to the same table. The Marina is now the essential public square for the entire city. No more preferential treatment for any single constituency. No more ‘in-private’. No more uncertainty as to when or where you can engage with the City and the Council on issues of concern. A Marina Committee creates a single public place where all stakeholders can go, every month, to plan for Marina-specific issues.
I urge you to read the above, attend all of these and give public comment in support each of these ideas. If we get started now, we can have a better process started IN JANUARY, with no delay to -anything-. But you must start SHOWING UP and you must ask for these specific things…
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. 🙂
This Week
Tuesday: 6:00PM Des Moines Housing Action Plan Open House at Highline College. See what we have going on with land use planning!
Wednesday: Highline Forum (Agenda) Updates on StART, Sound Transit, WSDOT SR-509
Thursday: City Council Meeting (Agenda) (more info below.)
Friday: South King County Housing & Homelessness Partners (SKHHP)
November 17 City Council Meeting Preview
City Manager’s report
We will get our first (and only) report on the Human Services Advisory Committee. This is outrageous.
Consent Agenda
We’ll vote on 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 and then 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.
Public Hearing
As we get near the end of year, we jam as much ‘stuff’ into each meeting.
2022 Amended Budget: Why we’re finalising the 2022 Budget in November? Oh, like I’m supposed to know. 😀
2023 Budget Second Reading: I will vote no for one simple reason: There has been no time allocated for CM Amendments.
New Business
Suspending restriction on use of one-time money for the third year in a row. I will vote no.
Legislative Priorities. I was restricted from asking our lobbyist questions.
Executive Session
I can’t tell ya the details, but it may or may not have something to do with the olicePay ontractCay. And if this sounds a bit phoney baloney, please understand: My belief is that you, the residents, want more police. But there is simply no path to get there if we cannot talk openly about how to pay for it.
Last Week
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 approved their 2023 budget.
Tuesday: King County Flood District. Ditto. The group voted to approve our 2023 budget.
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. 🙂
One piece at a time…
There has been a lot of concern recently concerning Marina Redevelopment and the master sums up my feelings about the situation. Plus, listening to a great song always helps calms me down when I’m upset about things like this. 🙂
If, like me, you are not happy with things, below you will find:
Policy Solutions (the things the City can do to move things in a better direction) and then
Your Action Items: the things you can and should do to make that happen.
Two Issues
But before we get to that, to answer one very popular question, according to the City Communications Director, the new bathroom will not need to be moved. (Even though the September 27, 2022 Skylab Presentation clearly shows that happening.)
But for me that raises two issues…
The presentations we’ve had so far are so confusing and filled with conflicting ‘stuff’ that you cannot tell what’s what.
Why on earth are we building this, literally, “One piece at a time.”?
Say you find your little bit of heaven—your DREAM property? Who builds the bathroom first and -then- starts building the other rooms? No one does that. Instead, you’d get the architect to come up with your complete DREAM DESIGN to go with your–dream property. You’d get the entire thing together -before- you started building. Johnny’s song is no joke. You build any big project one piece at a time and you get what you deserve.
SOLUTIONS
The solutions are really, really simple. They’ so simple, I fear you won’t believe me.
Just get twenty people to go to City Council and demand this: “Stop all landside development until the City does three things.”
Immediately implement the Marina Town Hall we already voted for in 2021 https://jcharrisfordesmoines.com/marina-town-hall-arpa-proposal/
Reinstate the Public Planning Commission we had until 2013 to give residents a seat at the table on all land use.
Reinstate the Marina Committee we had for decades when the Marina was first built.
All of these can be done now and implemented in January with no impact on the docks or the hoist projects. But we need this approach to create a Marina footprint that truly serves the interests of the public.
Why?
Each of the above has a very specific purpose. At bottom, this is all about zoning. And zoning has veeeerrrrry specific laws. You can’t go to the City and say “Don’t block my view!” or “Don’t build a hotel!” or “Build a hotel here, but not there!” Or, “I like everything except…” That’s really not how zoning works, and besides those are band-aids, not really solutions.
You’re not asking why we would want a hotel. Or if we even need a hotel. You’re not considering that a developer may not want to build in a particular spot or what impacts it might have on the entire area. Zoning is supposed to be the process that allows the entire community to answer those questions and plan for the future.
The fact that we’re the only city in the area without a public planning commission should tell you something about all our land use decisions.
The solution is to get back to having a fair process and let that get you where you want to go. That’s what those solutions will do. You can’t cut corners and expect things to work out right on such a long term project. Electeds come and go. City officials come and go. You need to ‘get it in writing’.
The Virtual Town Hall is a first step. It’s the method we should use for every important land use decision in the future. It lets everyone visualise the project in advance. And the really good news? We already budgeted for it over a year ago, so there’s nothing holding us back from doing it today.
A Planning Commission (PC), which every other city has, is the place where members of the public get to have input on the actual design of the City. The PC would organise the town halls, gather input from the public, advise the Council on what you want. And it would do it not just for the Marina, but for every planning decision. No. More. Surprises.
A Marina Committee, like our other Council Committees, brings everyone concerned about the Marina to the same table. The Marina is now the essential public square for the entire city. No more preferential treatment for any single constituency. No more ‘in-private’. No more uncertainty as to when or where you can engage with the City and the Council on issues of concern. A Marina Committee creates a single public place where all stakeholders can go, every month, to plan for Marina-specific issues.
I urge you to read the above, attend all of these and give public comment in support each of these ideas. If we get started now, we can have a better process started IN JANUARY, with no delay to -anything-. But you must start SHOWING UP and you must ask for these specific things…
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....
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:
The Ferry Update that was scheduled for November 17 has been pushed back to December 1st.
That November 17 meeting now includes
Our Legislative Agenda–where the Council proposes ideas we want to push to our lobbyist and State, Federal electeds, is also on the 17th. First we’ve heard of that.
Apparently, the 2nd Budget Reading is still on the 17th, but unlike past years, there is no mention of amendments. In every year since I’ve been watching, the City and Mayor would block out time for CMs to research possible amendments and discuss.
We’re also having a public hearing on the 2022 budget–which never seems to have been locked down earlier in the year.
A vote on our Human Services Funding. For the third year in a row this is the only time the Human Services Advisory Committee has presented any information to the Council–at the meeting where we approve the budget, of course.
December 1st is, again, the Ferry Update and then renewals of three related consultants:
The Ferry consultant
The Marina consultant
The ex-City engineer who shepherded the Port’s acquisition of SR-509 surplus over to the Port for Des Moines Creek Business Park West. (Why we’ve been paying someone to do this for the past six years is beyond me.)
And on December 8, which is our last meeting of the year is…
Farmers Market Report. Again, this is the first report we’ve received.
The City Manager Performance Review (which is actually supposed to be twice a year, but never mind that for now 😀 )
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. 🙂
This Week
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.
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. 🙂
Last Week
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.
Catch and release
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 areessential 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.
My calendar? It’s wide open.
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.
Democracy is information
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.
We have a terrible Futures report because it is to the Administration/Majority’s advantage to have a terrible Futures report.
We have a terrible web site because it is to the Administration/Majority’s advantage to have a terrible web site.
We have such poor public engagement because it is to the Administration/Majority’s advantage to have poor public engagement.
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.
Democracy is information
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.
We have a terrible Futures report because it is to the Administration/Majority’s advantage to have a terrible Futures report.
We have a terrible web site because it is to the Administration/Majority’s advantage to have a terrible web site.
We have such poor public engagement because it is to the Administration/Majority’s advantage to have poor public engagement.
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.
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. 🙂
This Week
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
Last Week
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 theirTax 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?
Transfer of lease to new owner of Quarterdeck and extension of lease for five years plus another five year option at $381/mo. I voted against this. It’s not that I don’t love ‘the QD’. I praised owner Ken Rogers a good deal for the reason that there have been several other restaurants on the Marina Floor and frankly, the Quarterdeck has been successful because he did not take it for granted–he worked hard to market properly. That said, the place does not need to be in that precise spot (it’s literally a cargo container, right?) And the long-term leases of both that and SR3 lock in the entire design of the Marina. Given the uncertainty of the whole plan (and the US economy), it is wrong to box in our choices. This is for the entire City for the next generation.
Council Meeting Recap
Budget: First Reading
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’.
Land Use Migraine
https://youtu.be/qpQ4WeaxvfI?t=10622
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.
What Happened
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’,
Either because the City has received some intelligence of an application that might be forthcoming, in which case, it could have discussed the nature of the emergency with the City Council in Executive Session.
Or simply because the City (and majority) finds it convenient to jam this kind of thing in, just to get more things done, without you know, going through all that pesky ‘process’. Several times this year, the Council has been presented with contracts that had to be approved tonight, because the City was up against some deadline we were unaware of.
First of all, unlike any of our sister cities, the Council has no calendar of important deadlines, or even a functional 5Future Agendas Report.
Second, as a college prof once told me (which annoyed me as much then as it probably does our staff now) your lack of preparation is not my problem. My job is to have time to review items and give the public adequate opportunities to weigh in.
Here’s the deal…
On September 27, the City (and Mayor) unilaterally changed the Marina Redevelopment plan.
At the very beginning of last night’s meeting, the council granted a ten year lease extension to the Quarterdeck, thus locking in the marquee piece of the waterfront redevelopment for $381 a month.
And at the very end? The City and Mayor again pulled a fast one, invoking a zoning provision designed for emergencies to ‘prevent an emergency’.
Hey, I guess if it’s legal…
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.
Two. Words.
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 technicallydo 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.
What Happened
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’,
Either because the City has received some intelligence of an application that might be forthcoming, in which case, it could have discussed the nature of the emergency with the City Council in Executive Session.
Or simply because the City (and majority) finds it convenient to jam this kind of thing in, just to get more things done, without you know, going through all that pesky ‘process’. Several times this year, the Council has been presented with contracts that had to be approved tonight, because the City was up against some deadline we were unaware of.
First of all, unlike any of our sister cities, the Council has no calendar of important deadlines, or even a functional 5Future Agendas Report.
Second, as a college prof once told me (which annoyed me as much then as it probably does our staff now) your lack of preparation is not my problem. My job is to have time to review items and give the public adequate opportunities to weigh in.
Here’s the deal…
On September 27, the City (and Mayor) unilaterally changed the Marina Redevelopment plan.
At the very beginning of last night’s meeting, the council granted a ten year lease extension to the Quarterdeck, thus locking in the marquee piece of the waterfront redevelopment for $381 a month.
And at the very end? The City and Mayor again pulled a fast one, invoking a zoning provision designed for emergencies to ‘prevent an emergency’.
Hey, I guess if it’s legal…
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.
Two. Words.
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 technicallydo 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
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.
