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Categories Policy, Weekly Updates

Weekly Update: 01/30/2022

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Public Service Announcements

Next Week

Tuesday: SMART (Southside Seattle Chamber Of Commerce) I haven’t attended these in a while, but I try to check in to see what SSCOC has going on with Des Moines. My peers in Tukwila and SeaTac speak glowingly of SSCOC. It’s been sort of an ongoing chicken and egg thing. We need to attract more visitors to the area, but we also have to recruit restaurants and other interesting reasons for people to visit.

And this kinda brings up an essential difference in philosophy I’ve had with my colleagues: Build vs. Recruit

Before I moved here, I lived in Detroit. And one of my ‘investments’ was as co-owner of a Vegan Restaurant in a proto ‘hipster’ suburb—a bit like how Fremont was run down and then became ‘cool’. The place became the hangout for the arts/music community of the time. It was magnetic.

And just to be clear, this was not my idea. My co-workers told me “what Detroit really needs is Macrobiotic Fast Food!” 😀 My accountant told me that by some tax legerdemain, even if it tanked, I’d be OK. Frankly, I thought it would be a bunch of hippies listening to Reggae, but in fact, it turned out that it drew a broad mix of people.

Traditionally, Des Moines has had a lot of Councilmembers who like to build. Realtors. Contractors. There is a natural bias towards ‘If you build it they will come.’ But frankly, If you look at the new businesses that thrive, they’re in the same funky buildings that often struggle to get up to code! The only thing they seem to have in common is offering a unique product that people can’t get just anywhere.  (Eg. Mini The Doughnut, Creole Soul, Eight Dive Shop) They’re definitely not commodities.

My point is simply this: It is my belief that new construction is only relevant to the extent that it provides functionality. What matters is offering a unique product. That is what draws people in, not the container. Don’t confuse construction with economic development. Building projects last only a few years. And that is why I keep trying to encourage our City to focus on formation and recruitment. Find the entrepreneurs with the unique value proposition and get them to think about Des Moines.

Tuesday: First day of Black History Month. I’ll be attending a couple of events, but sadly not in Des Moines. Frankly, most of my family’ involvement in African American cultural events seemed to center around the Central District, which was kind of a nexus for the Black Community when we moved here in the 90’s. I keep trying to drum up more local interest. If you have interest, please contact me! 🙂 Here is an article on the influence of the American Civil Rights movement and Ireland.

Tuesday: Chief Thomas’ Police Advisory Committee. Since our last meeting, there has been a lot of activity in the State legislature.

Thursday: MRSC Training on Tax Increment Financing (TIF). I’m learning about this because the City Manager and our lobbyist periodically mention it for big economic development projects. It hasn’t come before Council, yet but one wants to be prepared. 😀

Thursday: City Council Meeting: (Agenda) Sign up here for public comment. Watch the meeting on Youtube here.

There is no Consent Agenda, something I cannot remember seeing before. There is one item of New Business, renewing our contract with Recology. If you have suggestions or concerns, this is your chance to weigh in!

This is now our fourth meeting of the year and I have to say, once again, this is pretty light. My assumption is that the City and Mayor are holding off on any number of items until the Councilmember vacancy is filled. More to say about that below in my note about Committee assignments.

Last Week

Tuesday: Port Commission (Agenda) One highlight is a discussion of the WSDOT SR-509 property along 216th that the City Of Des Moines has handed off to the Port for expansion of the Business Park.

Thursday: Association Of Washington Cities Action Days. About 100 years ago before COVID, this was a multi-day event in Olympia to meet with legislators, colleagues from across the state. I believe I mentioned at the time that I was committing myself to becoming a better schmoozer. After an irritated comment from a reader I started cataloguing “words that are so annoying they were worth commenting on.” I’m imagining a solid red pencil.

Thursday: SeaTac Rotary Club: I heard a presentation by Noemie Maxwell and Sandy Hunt of the Defenders Of North SeaTac Park

Presentation slides

Thursday: 5:00pm City Council Meeting (Agenda) (Video)

Friday: South King County Housing Homelessness Partners (SKHHP). There was a discussion of Housing Benefit Districts.

Saturday: Coho Pen!

We assembled the Coho Pen today. And by ‘we’ I mean I mostly stood around and watched John Muramatsu of Trout Unlimited and four other people, including Marina staff and Friends Of Saltwater State Park. 🙂
Next week, 30,000 Coho fry will get a new home for 90 days. And then? They are set free, Free, FREE! into Puget Sound. After that? Who knows! If ya believe ‘science’ that 90 days will imprint our location on their little brains and they’ll return here in a couple of years. Does that happen? Who knows! 😃
The good news is that we had a new person under the age of AARP volunteer with the assembly and then two more people watching who volunteered to do the feeding. THAT’S what we need! YOUTH!
If you want to sign up to feed the little critters? (Takes 15 minutes one day a week) send me a PM. It is entertaining!

City Council Meeting Recap

(Agenda) (Video) At 34 minutes, this may have been the shortest meeting in the history of our City Council. Rick Johnson’s concerns about not getting his money’s worth? 😀

Mayor Mahoney announced a schedule for filling the vacancy on the Council left by the resignation of Anthony Martinelli.

COMMITTEE ASSIGNMENTS DEFERRED

The Mayor also announced that he was deferring Committee assignments until after the seat is filled. This is one of those areas where people can reasonably disagree. Having gone through thise in 2020, I wanted CMs to get their preferred assignments, get the boat in the water, and when the new person is chosen, assign them to the remaining slots. After all, it is, in theory, a temporary appointment.

The Mayor’s approach pushes the Committees out to March and that crams more stuff into the year, which, you’ll hear over and over from me, like a broken record, hinders the Council from its job of oversight. The format of committees is for the staff to make presentations and get us to sign off on their projects. They don’t need us to do most of their work. They need our permission. The fewer meetings? The less permission. Not a fan.

Also, fewer meetings mean less learning. All these topics are deep. He’s gone now, so I have no reason to hold back. When I asked the last DPW Director for some ‘learning materials’ on storm water systems he simply refused. We’re voting on millions of dollars in technical stuff all the time based on trust. Fine. But if you only have nine chances to ask questions vs. twelve, you’re even more in the dark. One advantage Matt Pina had was this: you spend fifteen years at these meetings and you’re gonna absorb a certain amount of knowledge by sheer osmosis. But I want better for my colleagues.

PROCLAMATIONS

The Mayor read off proclamations re. Black History Month and Human Trafficking Awareness Month, which Deputy Mayor Buxton talked about.

These are the moments I recall extremely well-meaning community members telling me: You gotta campaign with your children! Put their piccies on every page!

New Business

During the New Business Section, I asked/proposed three things.

    1. I wanted the Council to direct the City Manager to provide an update on when the ARPA Stimulus money we voted for September 16, 2021 would be getting out the door. I got a significant amount of crankiness from the City Manager and it did not pass.  The final rule was was just released and I am asking every grant recipient to weigh in.
    2. I asked for when the administration planned on getting a new towing policy ordinance on the calendar. I got a significant amount of crankiness from the City Manager and it did not pass.
    3. I asked that the Council block out time to discuss the process for filling the vacancy on the Council and that was agreed upon. So, this is one of those small victories of process. At the beginning of the meeting, Mayor Mahoney announced that he would announce the format of the Vacancy process. He was following former Mayor Pina in doing so. That is not a duty assigned to the Mayor. So I asked the Council to block out time for the group to decide and I very much appreciate their agreement.Because other than CM Nutting, I’m not sure if any of my colleagues recognise that each appointment process has been handled very differently. More on that soon.

City ManageR NIGGLES

If you notice, the City Manager does not take questions after delivering his report. We are the only city that does not provide a formal place in the meeting for CMs to ask short, general questions of the administration. If the question requires research, the City Manager should offer to follow up with a time estimate and let us vote to approve that research at the next meeting.

Asking for updates on things like towing policy and the ARPA spending are not only reasonable they are necessary. The Council has the ability to simply direct the City Manager to put come back with a direct answer to any inquiry or place an item on a meeting calendar. So neither of my requests in New Business were in any way novel or inappropriate. It’s just that my colleagues (or you) aren’t used to seeing the City Council actually give a formal direction to the City Manager. But in all our sister cities, the Council provides formal direction as I was requesting at least once at every meeting.

When I ask for updates and receive a tone, it implies that my request is unreasonable. That is untrue. At bottom, a City is one ginormous Customer Service Machine. Your taxes allow you access to the Customer Service Desk. I’m not asking for me.  When I’m on the dais, I represent businesses and voters who are concerned about grants they need and cars that aren’t getting towed. When the City Manager gets cranky with me, he’s getting cranky with you. I’m asking your questions, not mine. And that is also something I wish my colleagues would understand. You’re entitled to a cheerful and complete response to every one of your inquiries.

Comments

Mayor Mahoney made a final comment reading a statement from Chief Thomas about the passing of former Chief of Police Roger Baker. I met the Bakers one day on my way home from the Marina. He was in this Hawaiian shirt and for some reason I did not recognise he had been ‘the Chief’. I stopped because their home, which I jokingly called ‘The Spanish Villa’ was so amazing. And his lawn was just awesome. They had meticulously restored the place to how it must’ve looked when it was built in the 30’s.

So I interjected at the end to encourage the public to take a peek at their place across from the demolished Van Gasken property. For some reason, this caused a bit of a stir, the Mayor saying he ought to have stopped me from commenting. I find this puzzling. Surely people who put up Christmas lights want the passersby to enjoy them? Yes, it’s private property, but the place is one of the best pieces of architecture in Des Moines and if you’re passing by, do take a peek.

If you disagree with me, as always, I hope you’ll let me know.

Previous Articles

Categories History

Bloody Sunday 50th Anniversary in Northern Ireland and Black History Month in America

2 Comments on Bloody Sunday 50th Anniversary in Northern Ireland and Black History Month in America

This is an article about Black History Month, but it will take a while to get there.

This photo is one of many annual marches to commemorate Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland (the event the U2 song comes from) where police shot and killed 26 unarmed and peaceful protesters. Today is the 50th anniversary.

What is commonly referred to as ‘The Troubles’ began in 1967 as a series of peaceful civil rights protests directly modeled on the strategies and tactics of the American Civil Rights movements–and particularly Dr. Martin Luther King. Despite being roughly similar numbers of Catholics and Protestants in most areas, Catholics were subject to all manner of segregation and discrimination, quite similar to Jim Crow here.

Although we justifiably view it as horrible, the backlash against protesters here in the 50’s and 60’s, involved a (relatively) small number of deaths and violence. (Hang on, I know that stung.) But it was followed by the highly successful Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965. So there was every reason to assume a similar approach might work in NI as well. NI Protesters did not expect an easy time. But they assumed they might ultimately prevail. After all, the British government could have done what the US government did.

Instead, the government refused to negotiate towards reform of any kind. And the most basic reason is because the Protestant majority did not want any change. The majority -wanted- as forceful a response as possible. The government did exactly that. Ironically, the leadership of the time argued cynically that they were not being sadistic or unjust. Democracy -demanded- that they listen to the will of that majority.

The failure of peaceful protests led inevitably to the rise of terrorist groups on both sides (Catholic and Protestant) and thousands of deaths over 30 years.

Things are certainly far from perfect in America now. However, I come at this from the perspective that the American Civil Rights movement demonstrated that the government, at one moment in time, -was- capable of listening and responding to minority protest and then offering meaningful reform.

But it takes both sides: It takes a public willing to organise, not just complain. And then it takes a government on the other side willing to compromise and listen to that minority.

As we begin Black History Month, recognise that Dr. King influenced people around the world to follow his approach. In America it had success. But in other places and times? Eh, not so much.

So credit where credit is due: in 1964 America there were partners on the other side who were willing to admit that democracy is not merely as ‘the will of the majority’. It also demands justice for all.

If there is an issue you care deeply about, I hope that you, the residents of Des Moines, will consider that -protest-, not merely, “I have a concern”, is an essential part of our democratic process. Organise. Push hard for what you want. It’s not easy. You have to demonstrate that you represent a real constituency.

And my personal pledge, and my hope, is that if you put in the work and demonstrate that you -are- for real, we will be willing, not merely to listen, but to really examine where the City needs to change–and then take action.

My point is that, in my lifetime, I’ve seen it can go either way. But here, we have a track record of (eventually) doing the right thing.

The trick is to keep doing it. Because the other small detail is that this crap never ends. Something good happens, you walk away and five years later, it looks like things are sliding back again. I don’t just mean civil rights. It could be -any- aspect of government, at -any- level. Very few things in government are ever ‘done’.

Categories Airport, Policy, Transparency, Weekly Updates

Weekly Update: 01/23/2022

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Public Service Announcements

This Week

Tuesday: Port Commission (Agenda) One highlight is a discussion of the WSDOT SR-509 property along 216th that the City Of Des Moines has handed off to the Port for expansion of the Business Park.

Thursday: Association Of Washington Cities Action Days. About 100 years ago before COVID, this was a multi-day event in Olympia to meet with legislators, colleagues from across the state. I believe I mentioned at the time that I was committing myself to becoming a better schmoozer. After an irritated comment from a reader I started cataloguing “words that are so annoying they were worth commenting on.” I’m imagining a solid red pencil.

Thursday: 5:00pm City Council Meeting (Agenda) Sign up here for public comment. Watch the meeting on Youtube here. There is a proclamation re. Black History Month and Human Trafficking Awareness Month.

The best comment I’ve received in years, came from Rick Johnson. And I’m outing him because he’s the only person in town other than myself who has consistently attend City Council Meetings in person over an extended period. I know maybe 50-100 watch the meetings on Channel 21, but you cannot ‘get’ what is going on unless you sit in those plastic chairs and look at the big steering wheel. And here is his comment:

“I’m not getting my money’s worth.”

By which I think he meant that it did not seem to him that the Council was doing very much these first few meetings. I could not agree more and it’s something I’ve ranted about many times. The meeting calendar is unbalanced. There are large swaths where not much at all seems to happen, then these periods where waaaay too much material is jammed into just a few meetings. And then starting in October there is this race to the end of the year to cram waaaaaaaaaaaaay too much really important stuff onto each agenda.

And I’m sure some may say, “How dare you! Proclaiming Human Trafficking a serious problem is important.” Absolutely. It also takes three minutes to read that Proclamation into the record.

Meeting agendas are developed by the administration. Internally, they must have some sort of calendar that spans the years, even as Councilmembers (and Mayors) change. That planning should be made public–as it is in other types of corporations–and the Council should have a say in creating agendas that balance our work more evenly across the year.

I understand that they run the City day to day, but we cannot provide any meaningful oversight if some of our meetings have nothing to ‘oversee’ while others are jammed with multiple issues requiring hundreds of pages of reading.

Last Week

Monday: Destination Des Moines meeting. The group is welcoming a new board member and setting it’s agenda for the year. The hope is that 2022 will (finally) be a return to Wine! Fireworks! You know… normal. 🙂

Wednesday: Reach Out Des Moines. The group’s long-time facilitator Cynthia Ricks-Maccotan will be moving on soon so it will be interesting to see where things go from there. I want to thank her in case I forget because the program provided me with evidence of how to reduce teen crime and improve outcomes without bazillion dollars and without guns and badges. It’s an important message. Based largely on events in other parts of town, the current direction is towards more guns and badges. But Reach Out Des Moines works. The big problem with the program is that it isn’t available everywhere in Des Moines. Yet.

Thursday: 30th Legislative Elected Call with Senator Claire Wilson, Rep. Jesse Johnson and Rep. Jamila Tayor. The call mostly concerned the legislation being worked on. I think you can get a good overview of things by watching their January 20 Public Town Hall

Councilmember Martinelli’s resignation…

To the residents of Des Moines:

I’ve lived here long enough to see several scandals on our City Council. And the thing I’ve learned is that the public has all the tools it needs to handle them; quickly and efficiently. The best thing colleagues can do at those times is to stay out of it. That is tough because there is an irresistible urge to make a statement of values (especially for people of faith such as myself.) But the moment colleagues weigh in, the issue instantly becomes politicised.

My lived experience tells me that councilmembers should avoid even the appearance that they might be using scandal for political ends. There is a risk of engendering cynicism and that in turn actually hinders a resolution. I understand that will sound deeply unsatisfying to many. But my interest is always to find the best approach and, unfortunately, sometimes that will not be the popular approach.

I would remind the public that Councilmember Martinelli’s resignation was never subject to the City Council. State law wisely makes it the voters’ responsibility to change our City Council–either by election, recall or public pressure. If it were otherwise, council majorities would certainly abuse that power.

So I want to thank you, the community. It is your voice that has resolved this issue. In my opinion it was harder than it should have been and took much longer than it should have done. For that I am sorry.

I also want to thank Anthony Martinelli for hearing that community voice. Some of you may mock that sentence, but many politicians today seem to have lost the ability to hear that voice entirely.

As to the substance of the issue: if you are a regular reader, you will notice something missing in this article: the hyperlinks. Unlike every other article, where I scrupulously attempt to provide citations for everything I describe, this contains only two. My hope is that you will notice them, understand why I provided them, and avoided all others. For the first, I said everything I have to say about domestic violence a long time ago.

The second link contains some observations on our shared working relationship over the past two years, including a difference in philosophy that I think is important to make clear. Then follows a timeline of the past four months from my point of view. I include it because every day I am reminded how much the public misunderstands what happens off the dais. They correctly assume that it is significant. I believe that, to the extent possible, and without betraying confidences, we should provide a window into at least a portion of that world. It contains no hyperlinks.

Now what?

I believe the public voted for change in 2019; a set of positions and not any person. I also believe they were voting against something: the status quo. That only makes Councilmember Martinelli’s failure an even greater disappointment.

But if you share my deep disappointment, I ask you not to become (more?) cynical. Bear in mind that any significant change requires a willingness to fail. (And if you don’t believe that, just go to Youtube and look at how many test rockets blow up before even one gets off the launch pad.) In my opinion, the worst lesson the public could take from the past four months is that choosing someone ‘different’ is a mistake.

Instead, take this as a cautionary tale that Des Moines desperately needs more choice and new blood. There are many people here of great ability who are not active in civic life and it is time for them to step up.

I’ll have more to say about that soon, but for now:

  • Think about applying for the vacant position on the City Council. Even if you do not think this is your time, if you have considered public service, going through the process is, in itself, a way to get started.
  • Or tell me about someone in the community you think would be great for the role. Same advice applies.
  • And call me if you have questions about any aspect of the process or what the job of Councilmember entails. You know where to find me. (206) 878-0578.

The City Clerk will shortly post an application for filling a vacant seat on the Des Moines City Council. If you want to get a head start on that? Email Bonnie Wilkins. Go get ’em.

As always, it is my honour to serve you.

Categories Transparency

Councilmember Martinelli’s resignation

To the residents of Des Moines:

I’ve lived here long enough to see several scandals on our City Council. And the thing I’ve learned is that the public has all the tools it needs to handle them; quickly and efficiently. The best thing colleagues can do at those times is to stay out of it. That is tough because there is an irresistible urge to make a statement of values (especially for people of faith such as myself.) But the moment colleagues weigh in, the issue instantly becomes politicised.

My lived experience tells me that councilmembers should avoid even the appearance that they might be using scandal for political ends. There is a risk of engendering cynicism and that in turn actually hinders a resolution. I understand that will sound deeply unsatisfying to many. But my interest is always to find the best approach and, unfortunately, sometimes that will not be the popular approach.

I would remind the public that Councilmember Martinelli’s resignation was never subject to the City Council. State law wisely makes it the voters’ responsibility to change our City Council–either by election, recall or public pressure. If it were otherwise, council majorities would certainly abuse that power.

So I want to thank you, the community. It is your voice that has resolved this issue. In my opinion it was harder than it should have been and took much longer than it should have done. For that I am sorry.

I also want to thank Anthony Martinelli for hearing that community voice. Some of you may mock that sentence, but many politicians today seem to have lost the ability to hear that voice entirely.

As to the substance of the issue: if you are a regular reader, you will notice something missing in this article: the hyperlinks. Unlike every other article, where I scrupulously attempt to provide citations for everything I describe, this contains only two. My hope is that you will notice them, understand why I provided them, and avoided all others. For the first, I said everything I have to say about domestic violence a long time ago.

The second link contains some observations on our shared working relationship over the past two years, including a difference in philosophy that I think is important to make clear. Then follows a timeline of the past four months from my point of view. I include it because every day I am reminded how much the public misunderstands what happens off the dais. They correctly assume that it is significant. I believe that, to the extent possible, and without betraying confidences, we should provide a window into at least a portion of that world. It contains no hyperlinks.

Now what?

I believe the public voted for change in 2019; a set of positions and not any person. I also believe they were voting against something: the status quo. That only makes Councilmember Martinelli’s failure an even greater disappointment.

But if you share my deep disappointment, I ask you not to become (more?) cynical. Bear in mind that any significant change requires a willingness to fail. (And if you don’t believe that, just go to Youtube and look at how many test rockets blow up before even one gets off the launch pad.) In my opinion, the worst lesson the public could take from the past four months is that choosing someone ‘different’ is a mistake.

Instead, take this as a cautionary tale that Des Moines desperately needs more choice and new blood. There are many people here of great ability who are not active in civic life and it is time for them to step up.

I’ll have more to say about that soon, but for now:

  • Think about applying for the vacant position on the City Council. Even if you do not think this is your time, if you have considered public service, going through the process is, in itself, a way to get started.
  • Or tell me about someone in the community you think would be great for the role. Same advice applies.
  • And call me if you have questions about any aspect of the process or what the job of Councilmember entails. You know where to find me. (206) 878-0578.

The City Clerk will shortly post an application for filling a vacant seat on the Des Moines City Council. If you want to get a head start on that? Email Bonnie Wilkins. Go get ’em.

As always, it is my honour to serve you.

Categories Transparency

Councilmember Martinelli: Timeline

1 Comment on Councilmember Martinelli: Timeline

Two years ago…

Anthony Martinelli and I were both elected in 2019. We both defeated incumbents (which was almost unheard of over the past three decades) and shared many broad policy positions. But there was a real difference in philosophy. In one sentence: I was interested in the long game; he seemed focused on helping people now.

A good example of this distinction was the ARPA Stimulus discussion in September.

  • My colleagues in the majority were following the City Manager’s recommendations. Simple.
  • Anthony successfully advocated for straight dollar amount grants for businesses, eviction relief, etc. Simple.
  • In contrast I’m objecting to the entire notion of spending $9,000,000 in three hours. And on every line item I’m complaining: Why are we using one time money for salaries? Show me some stats on actual need. When can we get money out the door? How do we insure equity? What’s the process? Basically, I’m the ‘Dad’ asking my colleagues to behave responsibly. Goes over great with teens. Goes over even better with electeds.

The main thing we seemed to have in common was being mistreated as Councilmembers from day one. He and I disagreed on how to manage that reality. Ironically, he accepted that as ‘part of the game’ and from my point of view bent over backwards to be non-confrontational. If you look at his *social media it is unfailingly optimistic about all City actions except in two cases where he agreed to co-sign a letter I wrote. He went so far as to avoid submitting performance reviews of the City Manager. Drove me nuts. 😀

He also served on the Public Safety Committee.  When he chose to, he had no difficulty objecting to language he felt needed improvement and providing specific and useful edits. It was notable because that’s exactly what CMs are supposed to do and frankly I wish it happened more often.

My points being:

  • Much of the animus directed against him began long ago. People hold grudges here and it is a shame that there is no price to be paid for doing so. But none of it had anything to do with this scandal or the way he conducted his official duties.
  • He felt his approach was the pragmatic way to help people now.

The incentives to get something done now are incredibly strong; on all ends of the ideological spectrum. That is why almost everyone goes to such extraordinary lengths to avoid difficult discussions, even under the most challenging circumstances.

We’ve all heard the expression, “You can’t fight city hall”. It would be truer to say we choose not to. Some essential change requires at least minimal confrontation and a willingness to defer gratification. There is no other way.

And if that sounds like some hippie agitator crap, I will tell you that, no, that is just another common sense Dad Lecture:

  • Sometimes you have to complain. Repeatedly. It’s not you. It’s them.
  • You should balance your checkbook and review your spending. You can save a lot of money that way.
  • And sometimes you have to put off that spending in order to save for something much better down the road.

But very few people, both the public and electeds, find any of that a particularly entertaining prospect when it comes to government. In our private lives, sooner or later we pay a very high price for not listening to Dear Ol’ Dad. But when it comes to government, both the public and electeds have every incentive to pretend that these rules do not apply.

An uncomfortable reality is that Councilmember Martinelli lost his seat for an issue in his private life. We all agree that the accusations are beneath contempt. But by the same token, the entire City Council can make absolutely monumental screw-ups with your money and suffer absolutely no consequences. Hell, we may even get a plaque on a building. And you may not even know the truth until after we retire down to Boca.

That is the ceiling of what is possible; not ‘city hall’.

Martinelli navigated that ceiling as best he could because his goal was to help people now. I disagreed with that approach. In contrast, I was and will continue to try to punch through it.

I went through all this to tell you one simple truth: if you too have ever complained “you can’t fight city hall”? That’s the reason. It has nothing to do with ideology or character or age or anything other than the fact that the system incentivises all of us electeds to behave like that and then tell the public it’s the best we have to offer.

Four months ago…

Within minutes of Councilmember Martinelli’s arrest in October, then Mayor Pina issued a press release claiming to speak for the entire Council. That was not true. But if he had asked my advice, I would have reminded him of 2015. At that time, the Council, of which he was a member, handled a comparable situation with restraint. The public responded immediately with an outpouring of letters of outrage. Shortly thereafter the Councilmember understood that it was best to resign. Her legal woes dragged on for over a year, but the political scandal lasted about a week.

In contrast, the 2021 City Council made every possible effort to inflame public sentiment. Then Deputy Mayor Mahoney went so far as to encourage the public to download a police report containing highly personal information about the alleged victim which I felt put her and her children at risk.

The Waterland Blog also went to town, publishing not only the press release, but gratuitously placing the police report on their web site in multiple locations. I called the publisher to complain and he took them down, but by then the ‘reach’ was in the thousands according to the almighty Google.

After the November election, the Council discussed a censure, which seemed entirely reasonable to me. I spoke with one colleague and said that I would only vote for a censure if the police report were removed, and discussion limited. Consider the children and remain calm. Going so over the top is bad on many levels.

But when the Agenda packet was published, the entire report, all 123 pages, were included! The language of the resolution addressed none of my concerns and in fact upped the ante saying that the notice be placed prominently in front of City Hall (with a link to that police report) and forwarded to basically every elected in South King County.

Regardless of motive, we subjected his current partner and three children to unnecessary public exposure. It was cruel, bad press for the City, and if the majority goal was not merely ‘censure’ but to hasten Councilmember Martinelli’s departure? It was also poor strategy. I voted No.

Last week…

Thursday Jan 13

About an hour before a City Council Meeting I got a phone message from Sydney Brownstone of the Seattle Times, asking for comment on an upcoming story she was doing but with no specifics. I returned her call, got her voice mail and did not hear back.

Sunday Jan 16

On Sunday the Seattle Times ran her story with new allegations from two former partners, including the mother of two of his three children, Cydney Moore. The article was 2,500 words, three times the length of a typical small town piece and left no detail to the imagination. I’d go so far as to call it ‘advocacy journalism’ and not straight news.

Mayor Mahoney wasted no time in responding with a short statement in the Waterland Blog.

TUESDAY Jan 18

Based largely on that Seattle Times piece, the 33rd Democrats announced they were calling for Councilmember Martinelli’s resignation.

WEDNESDAY Jan 19

At that point I decided to call Mayor Mahoney. I told him I appreciated both the measured tone of his statement and especially the fact that he was clear to say that he was speaking on his own behalf and not for the entire Council. I told him I considered that a marked improvement over the events of October.

And then I reminded him of how the Council had handled the comparable situation in 2015 and urged him nicely, but firmly that leaving it there was in everyone’s best interest.

THURSDAY Jan 20

I watched Councilmember Martinelli’s pre-trial hearing. Now: if one were to watch that video as an outsider; truly dispassionately, the Judge is upbeat. There is no scolding and the tone is 100% optimistic. Someone watching with no other references would certainly register a note of hope for the future. The Judge’s job was not to punish. Her job was to execute the law and encourage the guy to successfully carry out the terms of the agreement. I thought she handled it well.

Within minutes he posted on Facebook that he would not be resigning.

The City also had a press release ready to go. It was factually accurate, but again, not exactly flat.

Councilmember Martinelli wrote me a short note that afternoon commenting on that press release.

I wrote back something longer. I told him that the press release was spun in an extremely negative manner. But I also I told him that he should have come to expect that after the past two years and he should expect even more over the next two years if he stayed.

I told him I felt I had been more than fair in my handling of his situation. A lot of the public would not understand that I had merely acted in a principled manner.

I told him that he should expect the video of his court appearance to be as widely viewed as that police report.

The Court video has been removed from Youtube and I’ve read some notes on social media suggesting that there is something fishy in this. Probably not. The Court live streams videos and Youtube caches them for a while. But I’ve never seen any of our Court videos hang around for very long.

And finally, I made it clear that our working relationship had not been what it should have been from the beginning. If he intended to remain on the Council I expected that to change. The public did vote for change in 2019. It takes years of mutual cooperation to fix the long standing problems in both our politics and our government. More ‘Dad’, I suppose.

He sent me a one sentence reply, only asking a question about the video.

But almost immediately, I started seeing dozens of people linking to that court appearance and of course none of the comments were positive. Every person used that video as a platform to say, ‘resign’.

Another example of ‘sharing’. There were only two and then three people listed as viewers during his hearing and I was the only one who publicly identified themselves. I did not share the link. So one person shared that link and that turned into dozens and then hundreds within the space of an hour.

FRIDAY Jan 21

Councilmember Martinelli announced his resignation Friday night on Facebook. Resigning via social media is non-traditional, but it is also exactly what I would expect from the person I know.

Within minutes the Mayor responded that he was taking action to start the replacement process–which I assume means Rule 33 of our Rules Of Procedure.

I asked the Mayor, the City Attorney and Councilmember Martinelli to confirm his resignation via official email. The City Attorney wrote me that he considers that post sufficient.  I wrote back that I’m not exactly wild about any official action being taken based on social media. A growing percentage of the public mistakenly assumes that posting something on Facebook is the same as contacting the City for services. It’s not.

Sunday January 23

Sydney Brownstone published a 1,000 word update describing Councilmember Martinelli’s resignation. If I appear to have something of a tone here, it’s only because it has gone beyond advocacy journalism into the realm of “if it bleeds it leads.” There are any number of stories the Seattle Times could do that would be of greater impact to Des Moines. The article is about Des Moines but it is targeted for a Seattle audience.

Three small details…

I applaud any woman for coming forward. But the family dynamics of three small children and two electeds were and remain complex. My understanding was that he and his current partner were the primary caregivers for all three–including the two eldest with Cydney Moore. One of my primary concerns from day one was to minimise their exposure to any of this.

An inconvenient truth…

I keep noting the difference in approach between 2015 and 2021 because, with all the media coverage, all that energy, there was nothing approaching the public outrage of 2015. There have been a handful of obvious partisan complaints and an on-line petition with less than 200 anonymous entries. But not to trivialise the issue, the Council has heard half a dozen issues over the past two years that generated more public comment.

You may say, “I don’t give a damn how many people wrote in. This is domestic violence!”

It’s also democracy. And sometimes the voters want things they cannot or will not say openly. I do not believe that anyone condones heinous conduct like domestic violence. But my guess is that many people were torn at being forced to choose between the change they hoped for in 2019 and even appearing to support domestic violence.

I am also aware that a large number of residents never got over our last appointment process in February 2020. At that time, the person I defeated was re-appointed to another vacant seat only three months later and by what I can safely say now was an unethical process. Many people considered that move deeply undemocratic and a slap in the face of the change they had just voted for. The possibility of a repeat held no appeal for a large part of Des Moines.

That is the practical effect of slowly eroding public trust. The public remembers. Every time the City Council acts in anything less than a completely ethical manner, it creates bad unintended consequences for the future.

To be specific: whatever benefits the majority may have felt they were obtaining by appointing Luisa Bangs in February 2020 only made the events of October 2021 more difficult. And that in turn will make the February 2022 appointment process more fraught.

In short, the relative silence from the public was, in itself, a message. My hope is that our City Council can hear that message above the din of scandal.

Now what?

Our Council has some trust building to do. The February 2022 appointment process is a key moment, either to improve or further erode that trust.

Already I see people speculating about ‘who’. But my primary concern, as usual, has more to do with that process. So long as the process is good, I trust the public to do the right thing. And the upcoming appointment process must be a model of fairness.

*I assume because I do this blog and he was on Facebook a lot, we get lumped together. But in fact, Anthony Martinelli was a very conventional  progressive local politician. He used Facebook to communicate. And yes, his partner and he would coordinate on social media messaging. But others on our Council also have social media surrogates to fight their battles for them. You just don’t know it.  And other CMs were web-illiterate and complained that somehow he had taken ‘unfair advantage’. Ridiculous. That nonsense made him look far more ‘different’ that he really was. One can disagree with his policy goals (and as you can see I certainly did at times) but those goals and his approach were not out of the mainstream.

Categories Policy, Weekly Updates

Weekly Update: 01/16/2022

Leave a comment on Weekly Update: 01/16/2022

Public Service Announcements

This Week

Monday: Destination Des Moines meeting. The group is welcoming a new board member and setting it’s agenda for the year. The hope is that 2022 will (finally) be a return to Wine! Fireworks! You know… normal. 🙂

Wednesday: Reach Out Des Moines. The group’s long-time facilitator Cynthia Ricks-Maccotan will be moving on soon so it will be interesting to see where things go from there. I want to thank her in case I forget because the program provided me with evidence of how to reduce teen crime and improve outcomes without bazillion dollars and without guns and badges. It’s an important message. Based largely on events in other parts of town, the current direction is towards more guns and badges. But Reach Out Des Moines works. The big problem with the program is that it isn’t available everywhere in Des Moines. Yet.

Thursday: 30th Legislative Elected Call with Senator Claire Wilson, Rep. Jesse Johnson and Rep. Jamila Tayor. I’ve been a huge fan of these calls since day one. You get information on how the State session is going, but also what electeds in Federal Way and Federal Way Schools are thinking about. I don’t think the public realises just how many pieces of legislation the State goes through during even a short (60 day) session.

At least once a year I seem compelled to mention that your State legislators (like most around the nation) are paid about $50,000 a year. And how insane that is. I know people are angry about public spending. Me too. Wait, I have a cost management idea! Elect people to manage a $50B organisation, then pay them so little you either attact people who are independently wealthy or who have to take second jobs. Good plan.

Last Week

Wednesday: Des Moines Marina Association. The only item of note was that this was that the Council received a warning from the City Clerk that a quorum (four members) of the Council had attended. If a CM anticipates that four members of the Council will attend any event together, we’re required to inform the City Clerk so that she can post a public notice. Under OPMA, we’re not supposed to be in the same ‘room’ without public notice.

This only demonstrates that the Council should create a new Advisory Committee for the Marina. The fact that a quorum of the City Council feels it is important to be at those meetings acknowledges that the significant discussions regarding both waterside and landside development occur first in a private organisation. Creating an Advisory committee would require the DMMA to be part of the City (public) process, rather than our staff and Councilmembers going to the DMMA, a private organisation, and thus not subject to the same disclosure.

Thursday: State Auditor meeting. This was a follow up to the Auditor Exit Interview from January 6. Those interviews are pretty rote and this gave me a chance to understand the process a bit more and make suggestions. One suggestion: until now, the Auditor would have an Entrance Interview with a single member of the City Council, which described the process and specific goals (those change from year to year based on anticipated risks.) My suggestion was for that invitation to be extended to all CMs.

Thursday: City Council Meeting (Agenda)  (Video) The main order of business is the election of the next Mayor and then Deputy Mayor by the Council. Only Councilmembers with two years of experience are eligible and these include Jeremy Nutting, Traci Buxton, Matt Mahoney, Anthony Martinelli and moi.

City Council Meeting Recap

Last Thursday’s meeting was a triumph of civility. You never saw such civil sons o’ bitches in all your life. 😀 I was looking for ‘signals’ as to whether this was a surface thing or something deeper and my comments reflect on what cues I got.

  1. I’ve heard about a dozen times about how the Council has ‘turned a page’.  Cool. But one defect in our Council is that the calendar has almost zip at certain points of the year–including the beginning. There just wasn’t much to disagree on. Give it time. 😀
  2. In his new role as front man for the band Mayor Mahoney was perfectly fine. But if you haven’t done it before, it’s like when yer learning to drive. You’re pre-occupied with operating the controls. Every presiding officer I’ve watched here tries to signal that they are going to be fair-minded people. And then begins the slow descent into hell.  😀 I know how that sounds, but it’s not a dig against anyone as much as a caution: no matter who you think you are, there is something that the job of mayor seems to do to people in Des Moines over time. Self-care is probably a good idea. 🙂
  3. Several fairly obvious items were raised as new business and we all agreed that they were items to put onto a meeting agenda. It’s fun to agree.
  4. I proposed to devote a meeting to an update of our Rules Of Procedure. Something we have not done since December 2019. I added a bonus which also got support. And that was, to devote a block of time at a meeting before then to discuss the ground rules. The previous Council had a nasty habit of scheduling important, complex meetings, such as the ARPA Stimulus meeting, where the rules would not be worked out in advance or where the Mayor would simply ‘announce’ how things would go. Having a discussion of the ground rules is, in itself, a major upgrade. But again, at the risk of sounding cranky, I reserve judgment. The ground rules discussion simply follows a normal procedure. I’m not gushing over ‘normal’–and definitely not until I see normal actually happen.
  5. City Manager Matthias made a point to note that he agreed with me on something. But then followed up by emphasising how rare that is. Alrighty, then. 😀
  6. Councilmember Nutting and I often get fiddly on parliamentary details. I rarely mentioned them before because, well, I’m trying to be civil for 2022. 🙂 Deputy Mayor Buxton proposed two ideas that I fully support, but both were not fully-worked out in my opinion. And I wanna stop here and say that what I just wrote is one change I want for 2022. They weren’t fully baked. I don’t feel bad about saying that and I ain’t gonna feel bad about it. And neither should she. That’s how I talk. Fix the problem, not the blame. One sign of true ‘civility’ will be how we accept one another and how people take constructive criticism. (The only weird thing is that this sort of thing is very out of character for Deputy Mayor Buxton. Normally, she is meticulous, a quality I highly value.)
    1. She seemed to be proposing to provide a mechanism by which proclamations which noted significant events or causes would be remembered every year. I knew what she meant, but Councilmember Nutting had a valid point. A proclamation is actually a one-off. When you proclaim “LGBTQ Pride Month” you do it once. We want people to remember it every year, but the actual resolution only happens once.  I’m still not exactly clear how that process will be implemented, but since we weren’t talking about, say… demolishing a historic home, for example… I was willing to roll with it. But as I said in my comments, I fully support the idea. If we proclaim June as LGBTQ Pride Month, then we should find a way to mention that we do every year from now on. We have that obligation to the issue and to the community.
    2. She also wanted to add language from a State House bill still being negotiated to a current proclamation, but only if the bill passes. The sounded fine, but she didn’t bring a copy of the draft bill. I’m sure it’s fine, but that’s not the point. This is a matter of ‘good hygiene’. When you propose something, please provide the document. (And in fact, a rule change I will propose will allow councilmembers to have documents like that added into the packet ahead of time to insure that we (and the public!) can see what is being proposed.)
  7. Councilmember Steinmetz proposed having a meeting discussion about the web site. Which is great. He credited Councilmember Achziger for help with the idea but not me was a little weird. Not mentioning the one person on the Council who actually nagged about it for over a year? Who, you know, built commercial web sites? Who proposed a budget amendment to fix the thing? OK. 😀 I honestly don’t care about credit. As long as I get what I want. 🙂
    1. And I’m saying it just like that because I am a subject matter expert on this sort of thing. For all their great qualities, none of my colleagues besides CM Martinelli are particularly literate with digital media. It would be foolhardy for my colleagues to marginalise my input on this sort of issue. And frankly that is exactly what happened during the past two years. We’d have situations where CMs acted based on personal animus. I mean that literally: I agree with you on the issue, but because I cannot stand you, I’m not doing it. The web site was just such an example. Until now I had never experienced that kind of professional pettiness. Seriously. I had never had a case where my colleagues did not behave ethically based on how they felt about one another. You’ll know that the Council has turned a page towards civility if the web site turns out to be something special. If not? Dad-Mobile. 😀
    2. And by special, here’s one example. In my comments, I mentioned ‘phones’ and it’s been my mantra. Every resident of Des Moines now has a cell phone, not a computer. It’s the one universal that crosses all boundaries. We can educate, alert, market, improve public safety, provide better customer service.  We improve our digital presence on phones and we instantly move the needle on equity, outreach and public engagement.

https://youtu.be/I02BxxD2M0E

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

I often tell people various anecdotes about the importance of Dr. King in Northern Ireland when I was a kid because I’m not sure Americans recognise how influential he was across the world. But rather than celebrate the “I have a dream” speech, I recommend the book Death Of A King by Tavis Smiley, because it documents his real life–especially that last year.

Because the uncomfortable truth is, both he and his message were deeply unpopular for the majority of his career. And I mean both with white and black people. After that famous speech and passage of the Civil Rights Bill(s) it was all downhill. And I mean way down.

I think it’s fair to say that he lost popularity for a couple of reasons:

1. Because people thought that once there were some laws, remaining problems of inequity would take care of themselves. ‘The battle’ was over and they did not particularly want to hear that a functional right to vote was just the beginning.

2. His message became about what we would now call ‘structural racism’. And that notion was as controversial then as it is now, both with blacks as well as whites. He was against the Vietnam War, in part because it was disproportionately hard on black people. Poverty? The poor were disproportionately black. Education? Environment? Business opportunities? All were disproportionately problematic for minorities. But not exclusively.

He stopped talking about issues that were exclusive to black people (like voting rights) and moved onto issues that potentially affected everybody, but mostly affected people of colour.

And what I find striking about that is how much it seemed to annoy everybody. Again, the idea of accepting responsibility for issues beyond voting rights was deeply offensive to whites. And failing to maintain focus on issues of immediate and specific to their needs was also not thrilling for many blacks.

Pressing that kind of approach, which so few people wanted to hear? That’s courage.

The next generation…

Dr. King’s entire agenda focused on goals that could not be achieved in his lifetime. It is an extremely challenging message. It’s one thing to tell constituents that you may not make it to the promised land, but telling them not to expect to get there? Good luck with that.

It was always about the next generation and time has proven him absolutely correct. And after his assassination, I’m sure many people found that thought comforting. Said no one, ever.

Economic inequality has only increased since Dr. King’s time. Schools in Des Moines are performing worse than when I moved here. We face environmental challenges that we have not begun to address seriously as a City. And despite the fact that we’re now a younger and very diverse community, participation in civic life remains overwhelmingly older and white.

In a way, these are tougher problems to solve than voting rights. In 1964 discrimination was so overt it made interventions a fairly simple matter.

The challenges we face today are so longstanding and so entrenched that many people truly no longer can see them. Others have become so cynical they just shrug and accept them as ‘life in the real world.’  But those are exactly the kinds of structural issues Dr. King would be working on had he lived.

Soaring oratory…

If you listen to any of his speeches beyond a few sound bites, it’s pretty amazing that the guy even got as far as he did. He’s giving sermons. But these are not feel-good affairs by any stretch of the imagination. He often begins by telling you that the road ahead is going to be painful. OK, with ya so far. But then he goes on to scolding and being bossy as hell. I don’t mean just about white people. He’s often telling his own audience:  you need to change, you need to do more and you need to do a. b. and c. or else none of this is going to work. I assume the soaring oratory helped, but even so, this must have been a tough message.

Apart from the difficulty of organising people on any major public issue, can you imagine anyone be successful in 2022 by scolding? I don’t care how eloquent one may be, that would take some doing. (When was the last time you heard any politician get very far saying “ask not what your country can do for you”?)

Back here in Des Moines…

I’m gonna break it down for ya by telling you something that every group organiser wants to tell you, but is simply too nice to tell you.

1. Not enough people volunteer. For anything.

2. And when they do, they also tend to volunteer for the same stuff. It’s all good stuff. But it’s the same stuff. People know what they know.

3. Not to put too fine a point on it, but, well… people tend to wanna do what they wanna do and often not what the group actually needs. And if you try to redirect? They don’t return. So group leaders are constantly having to calibrate their aspirations based not on factors such as money, but by the fact that, sadly… this is not the military.

4. It’s also much easier to get volunteers for programs involving something they can see and concerning now. And if it seems like it directly benefits them? Even better. The toughest job is getting people to work towards improvements for the next generation.

A bigger picture…

There is a tendency these days to thank ‘saints’ like Dr. King for their service and assume that all the heavy lifting has already been done. And if it hasn’t? Well, I’m sure we gave it our best.

But next time you walk Des Moines Creek Trail ask yourself if that sort of project could be completed today. You’ll likely answer ‘yes’. But the honest answer is ‘no’. Something so beloved now was not something our City leadership was united on. And that was as recent as 12 years ago. There is a tendency to believe that projects we see and love now were inevitable then. Most definitely not.

You don’t think that has to do with Martin Luther King, Jr? Maybe you haven’t visited the Beach Park or walked the trail recently. That’s where you find diversity in Des Moines. That series of projects benefited the environment, created sustainable revenue for the City and preserved a sense of shared history. I do not find it coincidental that it is one of the few projects in our history enjoyed equally by the entire community.

Dr. King (literally) gave his life for the future. His famous quote “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice” was not his and misinterpret it as sort of a free pass. *Actually he injected that as a sort of momentary bit of relief in a much longer and scolding passage which I’ll summarise like this, Yes, the arc bends, but not unless you help bend it. The short term wins give us hope that we can succeed. But the future does not take care of itself.

Action items…

I get that we’re past an age where you can motivate people by scolding or guilt. But seriously… would it kill you to…. 😀

Please vote. Don’t ask your neighbour to vote. You wanna change the world, find one person in a precinct where people do not vote and nag the living crap out of them until they do. You get one person to become a habitual voter and you’ve done something.

Volunteer. But when you decide how to invest your precious time? Look, I can’t argue with donating blood or the Food Bank and so on. Helping people with immediate needs? Always a good idea. But remember that projects like the Des Moines Creek Trail and the Beach Park took decades to achieve, look better than any commercial development, build community, and will provide equal enjoyment for all here. Forever.

The future does not take care of itself.

*In one of the most controversial choices in the history of history, after his death the King family decided not to place Dr. King’s speeches in the public domain. But instead aggressively marketed them in order to fund further activism. I became familiar with his work because of an underground network of bootlegs. I’d travel home several times a year and bring dozens of cassettes with me because that was the only way to get his complete speeches in Ireland.

Categories Policy

recap-220113

Last Thursday’s meeting was a triumph of civility. You never saw such civil sons o’ bitches in all your life. 😀 I was looking for ‘signals’ as to whether this was a surface thing or something deeper and my comments reflect on what cues I got.

  1. I’ve heard about a dozen times about how the Council has ‘turned a page’.  Cool. But one defect in our Council is that the calendar has almost zip at certain points of the year–including the beginning. There just wasn’t much to disagree on. Give it time. 😀
  2. In his new role as front man for the band Mayor Mahoney was perfectly fine. But if you haven’t done it before, it’s like when yer learning to drive. You’re pre-occupied with operating the controls. Every presiding officer I’ve watched here tries to signal that they are going to be fair-minded people. And then begins the slow descent into hell.  😀 I know how that sounds, but it’s not a dig against anyone as much as a caution: no matter who you think you are, there is something that the job of mayor seems to do to people in Des Moines over time. Self-care is probably a good idea. 🙂
  3. Several fairly obvious items were raised as new business and we all agreed that they were items to put onto a meeting agenda. It’s fun to agree.
  4. I proposed to devote a meeting to an update of our Rules Of Procedure. Something we have not done since December 2019. I added a bonus which also got support. And that was, to devote a block of time at a meeting before then to discuss the ground rules. The previous Council had a nasty habit of scheduling important, complex meetings, such as the ARPA Stimulus meeting, where the rules would not be worked out in advance or where the Mayor would simply ‘announce’ how things would go. Having a discussion of the ground rules is, in itself, a major upgrade. But again, at the risk of sounding cranky, I reserve judgment. The ground rules discussion simply follows a normal procedure. I’m not gushing over ‘normal’–and definitely not until I see normal actually happen.
  5. City Manager Matthias made a point to note that he agreed with me on something. But then followed up by emphasising how rare that is. Alrighty, then. 😀
  6. Councilmember Nutting and I often get fiddly on parliamentary details. I rarely mentioned them before because, well, I’m trying to be civil for 2022. 🙂 Deputy Mayor Buxton proposed two ideas that I fully support, but both were not fully-worked out in my opinion. And I wanna stop here and say that what I just wrote is one change I want for 2022. They weren’t fully baked. I don’t feel bad about saying that and I ain’t gonna feel bad about it. And neither should she. That’s how I talk. Fix the problem, not the blame. One sign of true ‘civility’ will be how we accept one another and how people take constructive criticism. (The only weird thing is that this sort of thing is very out of character for Deputy Mayor Buxton. Normally, she is meticulous, a quality I highly value.)
    1. She seemed to be proposing to provide a mechanism by which proclamations which noted significant events or causes would be remembered every year. I knew what she meant, but Councilmember Nutting had a valid point. A proclamation is actually a one-off. When you proclaim “LGBTQ Pride Month” you do it once. We want people to remember it every year, but the actual resolution only happens once.  I’m still not exactly clear how that process will be implemented, but since we weren’t talking about, say… demolishing a historic home, for example… I was willing to roll with it. But as I said in my comments, I fully support the idea. If we proclaim June as LGBTQ Pride Month, then we should find a way to mention that we do every year from now on. We have that obligation to the issue and to the community.
    2. She also wanted to add language from a State House bill still being negotiated to a current proclamation, but only if the bill passes. The sounded fine, but she didn’t bring a copy of the draft bill. I’m sure it’s fine, but that’s not the point. This is a matter of ‘good hygiene’. When you propose something, please provide the document. (And in fact, a rule change I will propose will allow councilmembers to have documents like that added into the packet ahead of time to insure that we (and the public!) can see what is being proposed.)
  7. Councilmember Steinmetz proposed having a meeting discussion about the web site. Which is great. He credited Councilmember Achziger for help with the idea but not me was a little weird. Not mentioning the one person on the Council who actually nagged about it for over a year? Who, you know, built commercial web sites? Who proposed a budget amendment to fix the thing? OK. 😀 I honestly don’t care about credit. As long as I get what I want. 🙂
    1. And I’m saying it just like that because I am a subject matter expert on this sort of thing. For all their great qualities, none of my colleagues besides CM Martinelli are particularly literate with digital media. It would be foolhardy for my colleagues to marginalise my input on this sort of issue. And frankly that is exactly what happened during the past two years. We’d have situations where CMs acted based on personal animus. I mean that literally: I agree with you on the issue, but because I cannot stand you, I’m not doing it. The web site was just such an example. Until now I had never experienced that kind of professional pettiness. Seriously. I had never had a case where my colleagues did not behave ethically based on how they felt about one another. You’ll know that the Council has turned a page towards civility if the web site turns out to be something special. If not? Dad-Mobile. 😀
    2. And by special, here’s one example. In my comments, I mentioned ‘phones’ and it’s been my mantra. Every resident of Des Moines now has a cell phone, not a computer. It’s the one universal that crosses all boundaries. We can educate, alert, market, improve public safety, provide better customer service.  We improve our digital presence on phones and we instantly move the needle on equity, outreach and public engagement.

Categories Policy, Weekly Updates

Weekly Update: 01/03/2022

7 Comments on Weekly Update: 01/03/2022

Public Service Announcements

This Week

Tuesday: Port Of Seattle Commission Meeting (Agenda) This marks the debut of two new Commissioners: Hamdi Mohamed and Toshiko Hasegawa. They represent many firsts, including the first women of colour. Ms. Mohamed is also the first Commissioner from SeaTac. Both have shown a strong interest in issues of equity in Des Moines. For me that means, education, environment and health, and business formation in Des Moines. Traditionally candidates would talk about ‘jobs and economic development’ as sort of a ‘rising tide lifts all boats’ proposition. But that never worked out. The economic benefits of Sea-Tac Airport always tend to go north and east while the environmental impacts stay right here. And over the years, those disparities have only increased. The Port does not directly control flight paths (that is set by the FAA), but they can redirect some of that river of money more in our direction.

Wednesday: Sound Cities Association (SCA) Board Member Orientation. This is where I get to learn what I got myself into as a member of the Flood Control District. 😀

Thursday: State Auditor Exit Interview. In previous years this was done within the framework of a City Council Meeting. This year it’s apparently being handled a bit differently–the State Auditor has invited members of the City Council to a presentation, Q&A. There are no materials so I have no idea what to expect. Sure hope it’s good news! 😀 (That’s me being as nice as possible. This City Council is the only period of my life where I’ve gone into meetings where words like ‘audit’ and ‘review’ are mentioned–and with no way to prepare.)

Thursday: City Council Meeting (Agenda) The main order of business is the election of the next Mayor and then Deputy Mayor by the Council. Only Councilmembers with two years of experience are eligible and these include Jeremy Nutting, Traci Buxton, Matt Mahoney, Anthony Martinelli and moi.

So far, only Traci Buxton has made an on the record pitch for the position of Deputy Mayor; not Mayor.

Last Week

Last week I mostly took the week off hoping to have not one but two elective surgeries that have been on hold for almost a year. And…. they were both cancelled. Again.

There will be 1,000,000 dead Americans by summer. The completely unnecessary chaos we have inflicted on our country. The damage that we may not recover from in my lifetime, including an entire generation of people who are checking out on careers in health care and all other forms of customer service.

I’ll close this mini-rant by noting that the death toll in South Korea, a nation with 55,000,000 people, is currently about 5,500. No that’s not a typo. South Korea has literally performed thirty times better than the United States. And by what form of technology or space magic have they utilised to achieve this level of performance?

As a people, they have simply been more willing to cooperate in a time of national emergency.

Time is a flexible thing. You can watch a thousand sci-fi movies and still that whole ‘relativity’ thing makes no sense. But if you got nothing else out of this pandemic, now you know what it might be like in a space ship approaching the speed of light: where one year can feel like an absolute century.

Below are some of the items I worked on. It is not comprehensive and it does not include items that I did not sponsor or play a key role in.

Many succeeded while others failed due to lack of support. All were ideas I deeply believe in and will return to. That’s worth mentioning because many great pieces of legislation take more than one attempt to obtain support, including in Des Moines.

Most of these were in my role as a member of your City Council, while some were things any private citizen could take on. Regardless, all these efforts directly benefit you, the residents of Des Moines, Washington.

Here are some things I worked on in 2021

Normally I am pretty scrupulous about providing links and citations for everything. I ran out of time and will have to circle back. If you see an item and can’t ‘Google’ the appropriate reference, please let me know.

Group stuff…

  • I made sure to participate in Reach Out Des Moines (RODM). RODM is described as a ‘youth crime/violence reduction program’ for students in the Pacific Ridge neighbourhood and specifically Pacific Middle School. What that means in practice is that a bunch of people meet monthly to come up with ways to keep kids in school and give them after-school activities. It sounds so simple (and it is). And it sounds so not ‘public safety’. But it has reduced youth crime (especially violent offenses) by almost 70% from 2015 to 2019 and it keeps kids from getting into ‘the system’ which has permanent benefits that cannot be tracked. Best of all it is ridiculously inexpensive. The only downside is that it doesn’t include all of Des Moines–and that’s not a bad thing to consider for 2022.
  • I attended the Des Moines Marina Association Meetings. Since the group is open to all residents, I would encourage anyone who cares about the Marina (especially condo owners in the Marina District) to join up. These meetings often were where the City first announced various aspects of the Marina Redevelopment proposals (and frankly, seeing information presented at a private organisation before it reached the City Council did not thrill me.)
  • I attended the South King County Housing and Homelessness Partners along with Councilmember Buxton. This is our City’s collaborative effort with Auburn, Burien, Kent, etc. to tackle, well housing and homelessness. 😀
  • I attended Destination Des Moines along with Deputy Mayor Mahoney. DDM organises most of the outdoor events that many of you think are organised by the City, including the Fourth Of July Fireworks, Halloween, Christmas Tree Lighting, etc. (you know, all those things COVID keeps ruining. 😀 )
  • I was a member of our Transportation Committee.
  • I was a member of our Environment Committee, which primarily oversees our Stormwater Utility.

Single event stuff…

  1. Early in the year, Mayor Pina agreed to my proposal to add a New Business item to each meeting Agenda. However, he did so by simply announcing “this is what we’re doing” from the dais and that’s that. I proposed instead creating a new item for our Rules Of Procedure. My concerns were that it was not proper to give the Mayor the ability to change the Order Of Business unilaterally. I also felt strongly that if we did not make it a rule he could also take it away at will.  My proposal was voted down by all my colleagues. And of course, he did drop New Business at several meetings–again, simply by saying so. And I never want to miss an opportunity to repeat: that is not an authority given to the Mayor in Council-Manager government. But if you have the majority and no one is willing to object? You have the authority.
  2. In February, I attended the University Of California Davis Noise Conference. This is the ‘premiere’ event in the group of people who study the effects of aviation impacts on communities. In addition to getting ‘intel’ from the FAA and various updates on research, the value of these events is that you learn what other airport communities and airport staff are doing across America. So when I propose something like the Port Package Update bill and air quality monitoring programs, I already know what is being worked on across America. I am the only Councilmember from Des Moines to attend.
  3. Throughout the spring, I attended a series of conferences around the management of Marinas, including the Pacific Coast Conference Of Harbormasters. I was told I am the first Councilmember from Des Moines to attend any of these. Again, the Marina is a $4,000,000 business for us. I’ve enjoyed sailing around the Salish Sea all these years, comparing the various marinas from a boater’s point of view. But it’s a whole different thing when you start to learn how the management side works.
  4. I proposed a directive to record Council Committee Meetings which passed. The goal now is to make that permanent when we go back to In-Person Meetings. At our ARPA Stimulus Meeting, I proposed funding to make that happen, but that did not even get a vote. Frankly, the sense seemed to be that, even though these are consider Public Meetings, some of my colleagues and staff kinda preferred the fact that almost nobody ever attended them. We need to fix that.
  5. In June I proposed, and the City Council passed, a proclamation declaring the entire month to be LGBTQ Pride Month.
  6. Throughout the year I worked with Rep. Orwall and the University of Washington DEOHS air quality monitoring in a couple of ways, both in contributing to the Budget Proviso language and then as a member of her UFP Advisory Group which last met in September.
  7. In August, the Port of Seattle Commission approved a plan to expand the Port Package program to apartment buildings–most of which are in Des Moines. I’m mentioning this for a couple of reasons.
    • First of all because, well, because it was one of my original nags about Port Packages that began years before I was elected. Think about the area around 25th and Kent Des Moines Road. It’s right under the flight path. Almost all the single family homes received Port Packages twenty years ago. Not to put too fine a point on it, but these are predominantly white residents. While at the same time, apartment dwellers, who are predominantly people of colour, got zilch. That disparity may have been unintentional, but the implications are obvious. The Port was willing to consider this as an issue of equity. Everyone under the flight path deserves sound insulation.
    • Second, the Port used its own money to move ahead. It slow-walked sound insulation systems for years by saying that it would only do homes after it obtained FAA grant money. There was nothing in the regs that said that explicitly. So in addition to this project moving ahead, it set a precedent for future sound insulation projects like the Port Package Update program.

Anyhoo, a huge shout out to Commissioner Stephanie Bowman. This is what real equity looks like and she pushed for it even though it was the least sexy big ticket item imaginable. I mean, no big ‘Maritime High School!’ photo ops on this one. It was simply the right thing to do.   (Yeah, I know I went way into the rough on this one but this is $80 million dollars and those are the details that make things happen.)

  1. I supported using a portion of our ARPA Stimulus spending to support Anew apprenticeship programs in the construction trades. My hope is to help them expand the program to create more Des Moines contractors–something that is very much on the Port’s radar–and also to get more kids into all forms of skilled trades. (Said it before, say it again, I went to trade school and then to college.)
  2. At that same event I proposed a Utility Voucher Program, which was increased by Councilmember Martinelli, and passed.
  3. I sponsored a grant to help Friends Of Saltwater State Park develop a new web site. There was also money set aside for two programs run by Trout Unlimited which will aid in salmon recovery–including an expansion of the very popular Coho Pen at the Marina. (If you wonder why I go on all the time about Saltwater State Park, it has to do with a whole other universe of environmental actions that need to happen in the waters in front of Des Moines. For example, there are literally thousands of old tires in Puget Sound at SWSP, Redondo and our Marina, placed there intentionally in the ’70’s. Oy.)
  4. And finally on the ARPA Stimulus bandwagon, I developed a plan to hire an Environmental Strategist… which went absolutely nowhere. But it is probably the best idea I’ll ever have. Because the one thing I’ve come to realise is that we need someone with the environmental chops to develop a comprehensive plan to increase tree cover, restore sealife, coordinate with sewer districts and storm water, obtain proper mitigations with the airport–and then do the lobbying to make it all happen. The environment here is the long game.
  5. At our last Budget Meeting of the year, I proposed several small amendments, one of which was to fix the City web site as well as provide a phone app to enable residents to report public safety concerns, file Fix-it requests and receive emergency alerts from any mobile device with a single click. The Mayor did not allow that to even come to the table, but given the recent increase in both crime and emergency requests, I am even more certain now that it was a good idea and I will be bringing it back.
  6. In November I received my Certificate Of Municipal Leadership (CML) from the Association of Washington Cities. The AWC has a number of education programs like this (including one our Deputy City Clerk just received.) The CML is not anything super-difficult. It’s simply a way to stay on track with topics you should be studying as a matter of course. In some cities the majority of Councilmembers obtain a CML as a matter of course.
  7. And in December, Rep. Orwall and Sen. Keiser reconvened many of the people who helped pass legislation to enable Port Package Updates. The Port was inching its way to properly funding the program, but COVID dropped a bomb on that. I don’t wanna jinx it, but I’m optimistic about 2022. 🙂 So if you are having problems with your Port Package, please contact SeatacNoise.Info and get on their list of.

Constituent stuff…

  1. There were over 75 constituent requests I helped residents navigate. I did a double take when I looked at my calendar. No wonder I’m tired! 😀 And a word about that: a Councilmember cannot ‘intervene’ on anyone’s behalf. My ‘Dad Joke’ used to be, “I can’t fix your parking tickets.” I stopped saying that because instead of falling down laughing, many people seemed genuinely disappointed. And that indicated to me that we had some educatin’ to do.

But just because I can’t fix parking tickets does not mean you shouldn’t contact a Councilmember if you have an issue.

  • First of all, we probably know how to navigate the system better than most people. You may not know who to call or what procedure to follow. We probably do–or know who does.
  • And second of all, though we cannot ‘intervene’ we are tasked with oversight. If you’re having difficulties, the Council is unaware until you tell us. The Administration does not give us routine reports about services it provides or complaints they receive. But by cc’ing me on an issue, that allows me to monitor how we’re doing.

Anyhoo, among the various issues I helped residents resolve were:

  • Business development
  • Permitting
  • Public safety
  • Signage
  • Tenant/Landlord Issues
  • Trees
  • Traffic calming
  1. And last but not least, there’s this. And by this I mean this ‘blog’. Love it, hate it, it’s an objective fact that this blog was the single biggest draw to public participation at City Council and Committee meetings in 2021. Really.Public engagement is nowhere near where it needs to be, but more people are engaging with the City now. People think I’m exaggerating, but before I was elected, months and months would go by where I was the only person at a City Council Meeting who wasn’t paid to be there.Also, I want to mention that the whole idea of doing the blog is 100% Kosher for Passover. There has been this ongoing trolling of various sorts such as:
    • Doing a blog without my colleagues’ permission is ‘illegal’
    • Showing any public disagreement after a vote is ‘illegal’

    Neither of those are true. But over and over, colleagues and trolls would throw out this rubbish simply because they dislike it the way a lot of people say “Honey, let’s not fight in front of the kids!” But dislike is not illegal, immoral or even fattening. And saying so is two lumps of coal for you, from Santy. Because when people throw out that sort of crap, it’s basically daring me to publicly shame them, which I have absolutely no desire to do.

    And in conclusion…

    If I could accomplish only one thing (OK two things) during my time in office it would not be any ‘legislation’ it would be to convince people of this:

    • Good government works better. It saves money, serves more people. Swear to God. I know many of you (most of you) believe that “it’s not what ya know it’s who ya know”, but that is as wrong as when you try to steer your car against the skid. I know how ‘right’ that feels with every muscle in your being. It also yields poor results.
    • It takes a ridiculously small number of residents to change City policy on anything. But you have to show up and you have to do things a certain way. It annoys my colleagues and every municipal employee in the history of municipal employees to read that, but not because it’s untrue. Rather because no one (including moi) likes to be nagged. No one respects our staff more than I.

But our City is one big customer service center that you pay for. We’re here to serve you. You don’t have to feel sorry for us. Your job as a resident is to tell us when you need service and advocate productively for the things you want. As me Gran used to say, “I’m not a mind reader, JC.” 😀 And I’m always puzzled by people who feel guilty for reporting a legit issue.

Those of you who showed up this year now know what I’m telling you works, and in this age of cynicism and COVID, you have no idea how much I appreciate your willingness to steer with the skid.

Keep up the great work in 2022. 🙂

Categories Policy, Weekly Updates

Year In Review

Time is a flexible thing. You can watch a thousand sci-fi movies and still that whole ‘relativity’ thing makes no sense. But if you got nothing else out of this pandemic, now you know what it might be like in a space ship approaching the speed of light: where one year can feel like an absolute century.

Below are some of the items I worked on. It is not comprehensive and it does not include items that I did not sponsor or play a key role in.

Many succeeded while others failed due to lack of support. All were ideas I deeply believe in and will return to. That’s worth mentioning because many great pieces of legislation take more than one attempt to obtain support, including in Des Moines.

Most of these were in my role as a member of your City Council, while some were things any private citizen could take on. Regardless, all these efforts directly benefit you, the residents of Des Moines, Washington.

Here are some things I worked on in 2021

Normally I am pretty scrupulous about providing links and citations for everything. I ran out of time and will have to circle back. If you see an item and can’t ‘Google’ the appropriate reference, please let me know.

Group stuff…

  • I made sure to participate in Reach Out Des Moines (RODM). RODM is described as a ‘youth crime/violence reduction program’ for students in the Pacific Ridge neighbourhood and specifically Pacific Middle School. What that means in practice is that a bunch of people meet monthly to come up with ways to keep kids in school and give them after-school activities. It sounds so simple (and it is). And it sounds so not ‘public safety’. But it has reduced youth crime (especially violent offenses) by almost 70% from 2015 to 2019 and it keeps kids from getting into ‘the system’ which has permanent benefits that cannot be tracked. Best of all it is ridiculously inexpensive. The only downside is that it doesn’t include all of Des Moines–and that’s not a bad thing to consider for 2022.
  • I attended the Des Moines Marina Association Meetings. Since the group is open to all residents, I would encourage anyone who cares about the Marina (especially condo owners in the Marina District) to join up. These meetings often were where the City first announced various aspects of the Marina Redevelopment proposals (and frankly, seeing information presented at a private organisation before it reached the City Council did not thrill me.)
  • I attended the South King County Housing and Homelessness Partners along with Councilmember Buxton. This is our City’s collaborative effort with Auburn, Burien, Kent, etc. to tackle, well housing and homelessness. 😀
  • I attended Destination Des Moines along with Deputy Mayor Mahoney. DDM organises most of the outdoor events that many of you think are organised by the City, including the Fourth Of July Fireworks, Halloween, Christmas Tree Lighting, etc. (you know, all those things COVID keeps ruining. 😀 )
  • I was a member of our Transportation Committee.
  • I was a member of our Environment Committee, which primarily oversees our Stormwater Utility.

Single event stuff…

  1. Early in the year, Mayor Pina agreed to my proposal to add a New Business item to each meeting Agenda. However, he did so by simply announcing “this is what we’re doing” from the dais and that’s that. I proposed instead creating a new item for our Rules Of Procedure. My concerns were that it was not proper to give the Mayor the ability to change the Order Of Business unilaterally. I also felt strongly that if we did not make it a rule he could also take it away at will.  My proposal was voted down by all my colleagues. And of course, he did drop New Business at several meetings–again, simply by saying so. And I never want to miss an opportunity to repeat: that is not an authority given to the Mayor in Council-Manager government. But if you have the majority and no one is willing to object? You have the authority.
  2. In February, I attended the University Of California Davis Noise Conference. This is the ‘premiere’ event in the group of people who study the effects of aviation impacts on communities. In addition to getting ‘intel’ from the FAA and various updates on research, the value of these events is that you learn what other airport communities and airport staff are doing across America. So when I propose something like the Port Package Update bill and air quality monitoring programs, I already know what is being worked on across America. I am the only Councilmember from Des Moines to attend.
  3. Throughout the spring, I attended a series of conferences around the management of Marinas, including the Pacific Coast Conference Of Harbormasters. I was told I am the first Councilmember from Des Moines to attend any of these. Again, the Marina is a $4,000,000 business for us. I’ve enjoyed sailing around the Salish Sea all these years, comparing the various marinas from a boater’s point of view. But it’s a whole different thing when you start to learn how the management side works.
  4. I proposed a directive to record Council Committee Meetings which passed. The goal now is to make that permanent when we go back to In-Person Meetings. At our ARPA Stimulus Meeting, I proposed funding to make that happen, but that did not even get a vote. Frankly, the sense seemed to be that, even though these are consider Public Meetings, some of my colleagues and staff kinda preferred the fact that almost nobody ever attended them. We need to fix that.
  5. In June I proposed, and the City Council passed, a proclamation declaring the entire month to be LGBTQ Pride Month.
  6. Throughout the year I worked with Rep. Orwall and the University of Washington DEOHS air quality monitoring in a couple of ways, both in contributing to the Budget Proviso language and then as a member of her UFP Advisory Group which last met in September.
  7. In August, the Port of Seattle Commission approved a plan to expand the Port Package program to apartment buildings–most of which are in Des Moines. I’m mentioning this for a couple of reasons.
    • First of all because, well, because it was one of my original nags about Port Packages that began years before I was elected. Think about the area around 25th and Kent Des Moines Road. It’s right under the flight path. Almost all the single family homes received Port Packages twenty years ago. Not to put too fine a point on it, but these are predominantly white residents. While at the same time, apartment dwellers, who are predominantly people of colour, got zilch. That disparity may have been unintentional, but the implications are obvious. The Port was willing to consider this as an issue of equity. Everyone under the flight path deserves sound insulation.
    • Second, the Port used its own money to move ahead. It slow-walked sound insulation systems for years by saying that it would only do homes after it obtained FAA grant money. There was nothing in the regs that said that explicitly. So in addition to this project moving ahead, it set a precedent for future sound insulation projects like the Port Package Update program.

Anyhoo, a huge shout out to Commissioner Stephanie Bowman. This is what real equity looks like and she pushed for it even though it was the least sexy big ticket item imaginable. I mean, no big ‘Maritime High School!’ photo ops on this one. It was simply the right thing to do.   (Yeah, I know I went way into the rough on this one but this is $80 million dollars and those are the details that make things happen.)

  1. I supported using a portion of our ARPA Stimulus spending to support Anew apprenticeship programs in the construction trades. My hope is to help them expand the program to create more Des Moines contractors–something that is very much on the Port’s radar–and also to get more kids into all forms of skilled trades. (Said it before, say it again, I went to trade school and then to college.)
  2. At that same event I proposed a Utility Voucher Program, which was increased by Councilmember Martinelli, and passed.
  3. I sponsored a grant to help Friends Of Saltwater State Park develop a new web site. There was also money set aside for two programs run by Trout Unlimited which will aid in salmon recovery–including an expansion of the very popular Coho Pen at the Marina. (If you wonder why I go on all the time about Saltwater State Park, it has to do with a whole other universe of environmental actions that need to happen in the waters in front of Des Moines. For example, there are literally thousands of old tires in Puget Sound at SWSP, Redondo and our Marina, placed there intentionally in the ’70’s. Oy.)
  4. And finally on the ARPA Stimulus bandwagon, I developed a plan to hire an Environmental Strategist… which went absolutely nowhere. But it is probably the best idea I’ll ever have. Because the one thing I’ve come to realise is that we need someone with the environmental chops to develop a comprehensive plan to increase tree cover, restore sealife, coordinate with sewer districts and storm water, obtain proper mitigations with the airport–and then do the lobbying to make it all happen. The environment here is the long game.
  5. At our last Budget Meeting of the year, I proposed several small amendments, one of which was to fix the City web site as well as provide a phone app to enable residents to report public safety concerns, file Fix-it requests and receive emergency alerts from any mobile device with a single click. The Mayor did not allow that to even come to the table, but given the recent increase in both crime and emergency requests, I am even more certain now that it was a good idea and I will be bringing it back.
  6. In November I received my Certificate Of Municipal Leadership (CML) from the Association of Washington Cities. The AWC has a number of education programs like this (including one our Deputy City Clerk just received.) The CML is not anything super-difficult. It’s simply a way to stay on track with topics you should be studying as a matter of course. In some cities the majority of Councilmembers obtain a CML as a matter of course.
  7. And in December, Rep. Orwall and Sen. Keiser reconvened many of the people who helped pass legislation to enable Port Package Updates. The Port was inching its way to properly funding the program, but COVID dropped a bomb on that. I don’t wanna jinx it, but I’m optimistic about 2022. 🙂 So if you are having problems with your Port Package, please contact SeatacNoise.Info and get on their list of.

Constituent stuff…

  1. There were over 75 constituent requests I helped residents navigate. I did a double take when I looked at my calendar. No wonder I’m tired! 😀 And a word about that: a Councilmember cannot ‘intervene’ on anyone’s behalf. My ‘Dad Joke’ used to be, “I can’t fix your parking tickets.” I stopped saying that because instead of falling down laughing, many people seemed genuinely disappointed. And that indicated to me that we had some educatin’ to do.

But just because I can’t fix parking tickets does not mean you shouldn’t contact a Councilmember if you have an issue.

  • First of all, we probably know how to navigate the system better than most people. You may not know who to call or what procedure to follow. We probably do–or know who does.
  • And second of all, though we cannot ‘intervene’ we are tasked with oversight. If you’re having difficulties, the Council is unaware until you tell us. The Administration does not give us routine reports about services it provides or complaints they receive. But by cc’ing me on an issue, that allows me to monitor how we’re doing.

Anyhoo, among the various issues I helped residents resolve were:

  • Business development
  • Permitting
  • Public safety
  • Signage
  • Tenant/Landlord Issues
  • Trees
  • Traffic calming
  1. And last but not least, there’s this. And by this I mean this ‘blog’. Love it, hate it, it’s an objective fact that this blog was the single biggest draw to public participation at City Council and Committee meetings in 2021. Really.Public engagement is nowhere near where it needs to be, but more people are engaging with the City now. People think I’m exaggerating, but before I was elected, months and months would go by where I was the only person at a City Council Meeting who wasn’t paid to be there.Also, I want to mention that the whole idea of doing the blog is 100% Kosher for Passover. There has been this ongoing trolling of various sorts such as:
    • Doing a blog without my colleagues’ permission is ‘illegal’
    • Showing any public disagreement after a vote is ‘illegal’

    Neither of those are true. But over and over, colleagues and trolls would throw out this rubbish simply because they dislike it the way a lot of people say “Honey, let’s not fight in front of the kids!” But dislike is not illegal, immoral or even fattening. And saying so is two lumps of coal for you, from Santy. Because when people throw out that sort of crap, it’s basically daring me to publicly shame them, which I have absolutely no desire to do.

    And in conclusion…

    If I could accomplish only one thing (OK two things) during my time in office it would not be any ‘legislation’ it would be to convince people of this:

    • Good government works better. It saves money, serves more people. Swear to God. I know many of you (most of you) believe that “it’s not what ya know it’s who ya know”, but that is as wrong as when you try to steer your car against the skid. I know how ‘right’ that feels with every muscle in your being. It also yields poor results.
    • It takes a ridiculously small number of residents to change City policy on anything. But you have to show up and you have to do things a certain way. It annoys my colleagues and every municipal employee in the history of municipal employees to read that, but not because it’s untrue. Rather because no one (including moi) likes to be nagged. No one respects our staff more than I.

But our City is one big customer service center that you pay for. We’re here to serve you. You don’t have to feel sorry for us. Your job as a resident is to tell us when you need service and advocate productively for the things you want. As me Gran used to say, “I’m not a mind reader, JC.” 😀 And I’m always puzzled by people who feel guilty for reporting a legit issue.

Those of you who showed up this year now know what I’m telling you works, and in this age of cynicism and COVID, you have no idea how much I appreciate your willingness to steer with the skid.

Keep up the great work in 2022. 🙂

Categories Transparency

Right of inspection

Former Mayor Pina frequently compared our city to a corporation. Not being nearly as cranky as people say, I never had the heart to mention that one legal title for our city is the Municipal Corporation Of Des Moines, Washington.

There’s a point to this (very) gentle dig. It isn’t a metaphor, it’s a fact. We have a Chief Executive (the City Manager, a Board Of Directors (the City Council) and voters (the shareholders). 

Information is power

In a corporation each group has access to a different set of information:  Shareholders (voters) can see any document not excluded by law. These include all emails and phone calls and faxes generated by any employee or contractor. You get can them via public records request here.

When people post on social media that, “the employee gave me permission to post this…” No they didn’t. Any communication you receive from the City is a public document. No communication you will ever receive from any employee of the City (including Councilmembers) is confidential. They’re never going to give you ‘insider’ information and you should never feel any reluctance at sharing what they send you. They know the rules before they hit ‘Send’. And now, so do you.

Board members obviously will have access to other information that must be kept private in order for the organisation to function. Some of these are negotiations and matters of oversight. But a councilmember’s access to information differs from that of a public corporation board member in one key way:

Right of Inspection Defined

In a public corporation there is always a right of inspection, a set of rules giving each board member independent access to the corporation for the purposes of research and oversight.

Among these are the ability to:

  • Interview employees up to the CEO periodically, solely for the purpose of research.
  • Visit offices, walk the factory floor on request.
  • Review all internal documents both past and present.
  • A guarantee that all reasonable requests for research will be faithfully honoured in a timely manner, or if the request is onerous, sent to committee or the full board with a cost estimate as to the requirements.

All that seems like common sense to most people. After all, how can one perform ‘oversight’ without unfettered access to everything and everyone? If the CEO or fellow board members had the ability to obstruct any board member from obtaining information or talking to employees, they would. If it is allowed? It happens.

We’re special…

Many of you know that there is a strong mayor type of city government (like Federal Way), where an elected mayor acts as CEO apart from the city council, and council-manager government (which we have), where the CEO is the City Manager, an employee hired by the city council and where the mayor is a member of that council.

In the elected mayor system, the city council always has a right of inspection. He’s a politician, right! 😀 (No, seriously, that’s the reason. Electeds in different branches of government have that in-built skepticism.)

What almost none of the public understands is that Council-Manager Government (CMG) provides no legal right of inspection.

However, most city councils have some form of rules that allow CMs some version of that. But there’s nothing in the RCW requiring it. Now, what the RCW does say is that all access to information or staff must go through the City Manager. For example, to try to communicate with staff without the permission of the City Manager is referred to as ‘councilmember interference’, and it is illegal. The City Manager is the Gate Keeper: to information and employees and any of the premises.

To be fair, almost all city managers understand the ramifications of this if taken literally and go out of their way to accommodate reasonable requests from councilmembers. But that is only a matter of courtesy, precedent and custom. State law protects the City Manager from pesky CMs. It says nothing about the reverse possibility.

Currently the City of Des Moines currently has no right of inspection of any kind. We are different from all our sister cities in that way. 

One seat?

Shifting gears for a sec. If you listen to any of those business news channels you’ll occasionally hear an analyst scoff when some interest group obtains one seat on an important corporate board. For example, environmentalists  worked for years to obtain a single Directorship on the Board of Exxon.

But that view is myopic. Those groups don’t work so hard for a single seat expecting to change policy. They want the seat so they can obtain that right of inspection. They want access.

It’s a hit with the public…

The right of inspection ensures that a board member who disagrees with the CEO or the board majority can’t be boxed out. Even if the CEO and every member of the board hates yer rotten guts, you still get the same access they do. Beyond that, it’s up to you to inform your constituency and shareholders, with what you’ve learned. That knowledge may help to obtain more seats, or help your constituency. But without independent access to information, neither are possible.

And for exactly the same reasons, an independent right of inspection is a hit with shareholders and investors. In public corporations this is absolutely essential because so much work has to be done out of shareholder view.

One big fear for any investor is that they are only getting ‘the corporate line’ and not all points of view. Investors may not agree with minority board members; but they listen to them.

The independence of board members is considered one of the keys to the success of American capitalism. The rest of the world invested with us not just because we invented light bulbs and electric cars but also because we developed controls like right of inspection that make our system trustworthy.

And now the bad news…

Ironically, the State Of Washington has one of the strongest open public meetings acts in the entire United States. So you would think that a municipal government would be a model of transparency.

But if your city has a council-manager form of government and does not afford each CM that right of inspection? OPMA is meaningless. In fact, it’s worse than that because it gives the public a completely false sense of reassurance.

In council-manager government, if a councilmember is denied access to information or staff or premises, their only recourse is the City Council. If the City Manager does not choose to cooperate with any CM, a majority of the city council must vote to take action. There’s no HR department for councilmembers.

Self-censorship

In that situation,  the vast majority of councilmembers will self-censor.

“You better not annoy your City Manager too much.” “You better not annoy the current majority too much.” Because if you do, you don’t just lose votes, you may lose a lot more.

Why it’s so tough to fix…

So… let’s say you’re concerned about some aspect of City Hall. You walk up to a colleague and ask them to support you in confronting the administration. They may agree with you (in theory) or they may not. But it’s asking them to court trouble.

Most people who run for city council do so in order to do something good for their community. Maybe cut a few ribbons. A plaque would be nice. 🙂

But that’s what makes reform so hard. If you have problems of governance, under these circumstances, you have no way to fix it, except using the following mechanism:

  1. Develop a pleasant relationship with the administration and the majority, but keep your feelings to yourself.
  2. Bide your time for  x) number of years, constantly working to recruit candidates who agreee to also run on an inoffensive platform, while committing in private to support ‘tough reform’.
  3. Attain the majority.
  4. Bend the administration to your will.

Great plan.

And because we are a ‘small town’, who else might stand up? Civic groups that are unhappy will not risk their status. We have no newspaper. And there are no public interest groups that operate at the level of a small town.

This lack of independence has absolutely catastrophic consequences for open government. It creates the strongest possible incentives for every elected to find ways to agree, and not attempt to address issues that the administration may not enjoy.

The scoreboard

  • For the past two years I have been barred from speaking with staff or to visit city offices. In fact, members of staff have ended conversations with me, literally in mid-sentence, after receiving a call from the City Manager. I have been told by third parties that they are under orders to avoid contact with me on the street for any reason.
  • I have been barred from any number of meetings where other council members were present. Dozens of emails with routine questions go unanswered. Emails that are replied to usually contain a single sentence reply. Almost none are meaningful.
  • The City Manager has refused to schedule a meeting with me or take a phone call since March of 2020. 

None of that conduct can possibly be related to the State Of Emergency because all other CMs have been able to do any and all of these things. Most of my colleagues have acknowledged it plainly. They simply refuse to take any action.

Again, in a public corporation that would not be possible. It would immediately trigger an HR investigation. And in cities with elected mayors or CMG with rules providing a functional of a right of inspection the above lack of cooperation does not happen either.

Here’s a chance…

Our newest councilmembers have pledged to be different. The thing I have tried to convey to them is that we should celebrate the independence of all CMs. An independent board builds public trust and has made America the model of corporate governance for the rest of the world. Des Moines is a corporation and would benefit greatly from adopting similar standards of excellence.

Therefore, we should update our Rules Of Procedure to provide a full right of inspection for each councilmember.

There are many reasons to promote an indepedent City Council, but the one you should care about most is this: It’s your money. You elected us to watch over it. And when it comes to oversight? Seven sets of eyes are always going to better than one single majority.