This Week

Apparently it’s an airporty kind of week.

Monday: UW Ultrafine Particulates Meeting. Here is an interesting graphic showing how many flights passed over our schools in one typical year: Flights Near Schools.

Tuesday: I met with Farmers Market manager Susie Novak. And… business is good. 🙂

Tuesday: Port Of Seattle Commission Meeting (Agenda) The highlight for me is a discussion of the Noise Program.

Thursday: Adam Smith FAA Re-authorization Meeting. If you want to 463 pages of light reading here is the 2018 model. It’s notable how few of the items meant to address community issues are still unfulfilled. My recommendations have been strictly about money and science. Trying to get the FAA to do anything involving community engagement at this moment is pointless. And since the Congressman’s list of ‘asks’ will be limited to about a dozen things, we must limit our requests to things that are actually useful.

Last Week

Tuesday: 5:00PM National Night Out! Midway Park!

Thursday: 5:00PM Public Safety Committee Meeting (Agenda) (Video)

Thursday: 6:00PM City Council Meeting (Agenda) (Video) Some highlights:

• The City Manager gave an update on the Ferry Pilot which is scheduled to start August 10th.
• We waived Destination Des Moines rental fees for all summer events: prox. $12,000.
• We are accepting two vehicles from King County for use by our new Mental Health Responders
• We are approving two construction projects concerning Barnes Creek which should (DV) improve fish passage.
• We were asked to use our Lodging Tax (which comes from hotel stays) for these purposes:
  • Application from the City of Des Moines for reimbursement of expenses to host the 4th of July Fireworks Show. Total application request = $28,000.
  • Application from Seattle Southside Regional Tourism Authority for creation of a digital discount and incentive app for local merchnts. The idea is to give coupons to people at the Famers Market which they can use at local shops. Total application request = $12,500.
  • Application from Seattle Southside Regional Tourism Authority for digital marketing of the Des Moines Fast Ferry. Total application request =$15,500.

Meeting Recap

Public Comment

I don’t usually talk about Public Comment, but a couple of things…

Masonic Home people…

I was deeply impressed by the organisational skills of the people behind the Masonic Home rally. That’s no endorsement. But I have to say, that is exactly how to effect change.

And I have a beef with the Mayor and the City Manager’s treatment of the commenters. This is about parliamentary procedure and decorum.

People often complain that there is no dialogue at Public Comment. This is actually by design. And part of the reasoning (which I agree with) is to protect the public. As electeds on the dais, we’re literally elevated above the audience. We always get the last word. Therefore,  we have no business critiquing comments. The only reason to ever respond is if the public violates the rules or if we have some service to offer. We should not try to correct them or defend the City’s reputation or nothing. People at the dais often have an urge to always get the last word when they don’t like what they’re hearing. And they should squash it! That is your time (the Public’s time) and I regret not speaking up on your behalf.

Dear Redondo:

Several people from Redondo showed up and I gotta say it is frustrating as hell to me that those people were not following exactly the same strategies and tactics as the Masonic Home advocates. I’ve watched people go on and on about the same problems at Redondo for fifteen years. You’re not gonna fix it until you develop a community voice. And frankly, your neighbourhood hasn’t. But when I tell ya that’s what it will take? You get mad at moi. It’s not my fault. Other neighbourhoods do organise and that is why they get results. Stop bitching about how the City doesn’t listen. That’s exactly why I ran for office. And it’s about as useful as complaining about the weather until you give me colleagues who care about such things. For now, your best play is this: Create a community group. I’ll definitely help as I can. Make a shared list of demands. Show up at meetings. In force. Every year. Starting in March. Trust me, then you’ll see some permanent changes.

City Manager’s Report

I used to complain that the City Manager did not report on very much. Note to self: be careful what you wish for. 😀 It has become the increasing strategy of the City Manager to do two things:

1. Pack a ton of presentations into the City Manager’s Report that would be separate agenda items on any other City Council.

2. We get no advance notice of these presentations, so often we have to make decisions on the fly based only on a Powerpoint.

Both of these practices are insidious and the height of irony. By overloading the Council with surprise information it actually decreases transparency. But if one complains, it’s like complaining when yer ²spouse ‘slaved all day’ on a totally crap meal.

• The City Manager gave an update on the Ferry Pilot which is scheduled to start August 10th.
• There was also a presentation by the South Side Regional Transit Authority.
  • Basically, it sounds like they want to do a marketing campaign tied into the Farmers Market. Fine. There is also a tie in with Destination Des Moines. $15K from Lodging Tax
  • They’re also doing some sort of marketing web site for the Ferry. This is, on top of  the $70,000 allocated in the original contract. Everyone is already talking openly about next year. Beta Test, my ass.
• And, there was another financial report with no financials by the assistant finance director. These things truly hack me off. It’s August and we’re now only getting Q1 numbers. And it’s not even a financial report. I see no P&L. I see no balance sheet. I see no flow of funds. All I see is a frickin’ Powerpoint of eight or nine revenue numbers. Woo hoo.
• There was a presentation by our HR Director. She showed a series of recruiting videos. These are the best digital pieces I’ve seen the City do so far.
• And… the engineering guys did a presentation on the never ending fish passage culverts of Barnes Creek/Massey Creek and then flood relief upstream in McSorley Creek.

Consent Agenda

Once again there were no main agenda items. More on this in a moment.

I pulled Items #3 and #4, relating to the Lodging Tax and Destination Des Moines. Basically, I want to open a discussion about the Lodging Tax Committee. The thing is opaque. It’s all local business people and one Councilmember. It didn’t bug me so much before because, frankly, we generate very little Lodging Tax. But if this ferry thing means we’re trying to get serious, we should start managing it transparently and strategically.

I’m also concerned about Destination Des Moines, as well as other civic groups. I want them to thrive, but we’re getting sloppy. City Manager Matthias said he agreed with me (and that’s a bit scary) but I’m not questioning their value. I want all these groups to be

• Sustainable
• Part of a 360 degree strategy
• And be on a level playing field with other non-profits.
  

And you can’t do those things without a transparent discussion of all these ‘advisory committees’.

• We waived Destination Des Moines rental fees for all summer events: prox. $12,000.
• We are accepting two vehicles from King County for use by our new Mental Health Responders
• We are approving two construction projects concerning Barnes Creek which should (DV) improve fish passage.
• We were asked to use our Lodging Tax (which comes from hotel stays) for these purposes:
  • Application from the City of Des Moines for reimbursement of expenses to host the 4th of July Fireworks Show. Total application request = $28,000.
  • Application from Seattle Southside Regional Tourism Authority for creation of a digital discount and incentive app for local merchnts. The idea is to give coupons to people at the Famers Market which they can use at local shops. Total application request = $12,500.
  • Application from Seattle Southside Regional Tourism Authority for digital marketing of the Des Moines Fast Ferry. Total application request =$15,500.

Board And Committee Reports

Another thing I don’t usually comment on. But… what-ehveehr. There are several points here which directly relate to my earlier blatherings…

Presentations vs. Information

Councilmember Steinmetz has had an ongoing bug about all those items on the Consent Agenda. This time he had had a little back and forth with the mayor about putting the surface water management dealios on the main agenda. This is one of those things where we agree on the symptoms, but he is completely wrong about the ‘cure’. In fact, this is Reason #327 why I also hate how we give agenda setting authority to the Mayor.

I actually agree with CM Nutting that items, like infrastructure, generally do belong on the Consent Agenda. I have no problem pulling them if there is a question or two (like a 300% cost overrun 😀 ), and if the team hadn’t done that presentation I certainly would have done so.

But the meeting is not the place for on the fly education. I keep throwing out the concept of a Councilmember Information Request (an easily searchable library of previous CM questions/answers and presentations that we can always refer back to.)

What we should want is for CM Steinmetz to come to the dais already educated as to the wonders of SWM. We should not want any CM taking in that much new information and then having to make an in the moment spending decision–the very thing that drives me banana pants about the City Manager’s ‘Reports’. It’s unfair to CMs and to the residents who deserve well-informed decision makers.

What we should want is a library of explainers, that new CMs can refer back to when they onboard. IOW, the staff could simply do a “McSorley Creek 101” or include links to previous discussion in the packet and on the web site. And the reason this is so important is because of the questions that CM Nutting and I asked.

We are a City of annexations of some very old infrastructure from King County. When you annex it’s like buying a used car. You’re taking on the previous owner’s problems, and you often don’t find out what they are until months/years later. Every frickin’ project we do has some unexpected ‘gotcha’. The pipes were never mapped after WWII, oops. There was no geotech report, oops. There was some hincky easement between the water district and City on a particular street, oops. And we have twenty three of those annexations. Many of these systems are at, or nearing, end of life–especially in Lower Woodmont and Redondo. The challenges we’re having on these projects are gonna keep happening. We need a way to get new CMs up to speed on the wonders of SWM and not on the dais.

I specifically do not want anything on the main agenda for ‘education’. Our meeting time is short. We already have a stupidly compressed calendar. What you want are explainers. The City does all these presentations at our meetings and calls that ‘public outreach’. But since so few people watch the meetings and you’d need a geiger counter to find anything on our web site, those presentations may as well be like how we send messages out into space searching for ET.

Too Little Information

Deputy Mayor Buxton said that she attended something like thirty three meetings and events. And I believe her. But then said, “Anyone can call me for information.” Ennnnh (that’s my buzzer sound. 😀 ) Apart from the fact that she and the Mayor assigned themselves to like nine committees, her job is to report out on all those committees. She can’t do it in four minutes. Nobody can. I contend the following:

a) Being assigned to so many committees is intrinsically stupid

b) Limiting committee reports to four minutes when the only place to report out on them is the public meeting is stupid.

c) Having to tell the public that they can call you ‘any time’ to get public information is stupid.

We never get reports on what is going on with Humans Services or Farmers Market or nothing outside of a single yearly visit from a representative of each group, and where we get to (on the fly!) vote for the annual spend. And that is…

d) Stupid.

Other cities don’t work like that. Choose committee assignments fairly. Balance the work load equitably. Do the same for citizen advisory appointments. Put all committee work product on the City web site, along with financials. (And while yer at it, advertise volunteer opportunities about 10x more aggressively.) Allow CMs adequate time to report on important events at committees. These are all things that normal cities do. They are all things we used to do.

I’ve been highly critical of our upcoming (cough) ‘Rules of Procedure Update. But how can one improve such a broken system unless one is aware of how things used to work here.

Moi

My comments were mostly about the above airporty stuff. But as soon as I was done I realised I was trying to say something much bigger, and also something that could not fit into four minutes. And basically it’s this:

We’ve been getting needlessly screwed by the airport for decades. The path forward always should have been in terms of land and cash because that was the agreement we came to back in 1976.

Every picayune thing we now fight, fight, fight over was definitely not inevitable. The FAA re-authorisations, the tree cuttings, Des Moines Creek West. Partly we go through this nonsense because I’m certain that most of colleagues (and staff) aren’t even aware of what was already worked out back in the day. But frankly? The biggest part of it is because they love the story the Port is selling. They believe in the whole free-market-prosperity gospel worldview that I recall so vividly with the auto industry back in Detroit. It was ruinous for communities there just as it’s ruinous for us here. A factory is a factory. And people who believe in that trickle-down-economics deal will never give it up, regardless of facts.

And you can see it in this letter from former mayor Dave Kaplan, now the Port’s lobbyist to our City. There is so much wrong with it, it will require a separate response. But suffice it to say, I regard it as being in exactly the same alternative fact zone as the ‘Pilot Ferry‘.

¹We Have Met The Enemy…

t still, it is hard to overstate the fact that there is a lot to be learned from history. Our history. Even looking at our Rules of Procedure or our web site twenty years ago is instructive. They were better. And that fact that they’re not is quite intentional. Dave was our Mayor and on the Council for twenty years. We’ve had a number of long-timers who made not have always appeared to get along, but frankly had very similar worldviews–which you voted for, time and again.

I’m going to take a moment for another gratuitous dunk on our web site. I just happened to look at the City of Enumclaw web site today. Not spectacular, but about 400% better. This has nothing to do with IT savvy. They have one quarter our General Fund. And exactly the same web site provider. But…

We get perpetually screwed by the Port and the FAA because we wanted the relationship we now have with the Port and the FAA. We have a crappier web site than we used to have because for the past two decades the Council majority wanted to have a crappier web site. We have a much more opaque way of running the City in general because the majority wanted it that way.

It wasn’t one City Manager or any one CM. And it certainly won’t change by electing any new person. It is you, the public, who have chosen this, for the past twenty five years., and keep choosing it. You complain endlessly, but do nothing as if this is as good as it gets. If you want something different, you can have it. Things are different other places. But whether it be Redondo or the airport or anything, you have to consider the mindset that keeps bringing in the same results.

None of these were accidents. And it’s time to stop pretending like we’ve been victims. We chose this and if we want something different we have to intentionally un-choose it.

¹I doubt more than a handful of readers will get this reference from an old Pogo cartoon. Sorry. Terrible writing. I just can’t resist because it’s the first thing that comes into my head on any of these recurring problems that do not happen in other cities.

²Don’t try this at home, kids.