Some bits of business…

City Manager Stuff

City Manager Report – September 5, 2025

Despite getting off to a slow start, the Marina dock replacement is on schedule! You can watch videos of progress in action here: https://www.youtube.com/@CityofDesMoinesMarina

There is also a new Community Survey. Yes, we did a parks survey and a communications survey just a couple of years ago, but well… new management, right? 😀 This one also asks for your ideas on a broad range of stuff like event planning and programs for kids and seniors and it”s all great. 🙂

And… since you can never take too many surveys, this is my personal fave, this concerning some big improvements at the Beach Park. Take the Beach Park survey!

Light Rail Opens December 6, 2025!

https://www.soundtransit.org/southkinglink

SR-509 Tolling and free Good To Go stickers

Here is a detailed blog post on how SR-509 and tolling will work. There is also an offer to get a free Good To Go sticker. I got a $15 FlexPass for free! You can too!

https://engage.wsdot.wa.gov/sr-509-expressway-opening/

Restaurants!

There have been more restaurant changes in town. So this is a good time to remind you of the local restaurant guide TakeOutDM.Com or TakeOutDesMoines.Com. There is a sign-up form which emails signees when various establishments are offering specials! If you are a new restaurant owner, you should also let them know when you are having said specials so they can spread the woid.

This Week

Monday

4:00pm Des Moines Aviation Committee

6:00pm JFK Airport Community Roundtable (there are airport roundtables all over the place. 🙂 )

Tuesday

Port of Seattle Commission Meeting. The highlight is where the PortComms will vote to further dilute what used to be the Airport Community Ecology Fund into just another ‘economic development grant’ program. Shame.

Meeting with State electeds on, what else, airport legislation. 🙂

Thursday

City Council meeting

Regular Meeting – 11 Sep 2025 – Agenda – Pdf

Zoom…

One highlight: this will be the return of Zoom participation for the public, which ended in 2023! I’m pretty sure it works, since Councilmember Nutting has been using it exclusively for so many months. 😀

FCS Financial Analysis

Another highlight is the long-awaited FCS Financial Impacts Study

I have seen their work in Burien and I think this will also very valuable. Still, and especially because of all the Marina nonsense, I urge you to read it carefully. Personally, I give it 50/50 on the bullshit meter. That has nothing to do with FCS – again, big fan, they do what they do with (x) dollars. My concern is us… and the fact that it doesn’t take into account so much either the Marina or the Airport – the two biggest impacts on city finance for decades. Literally cacting as though they don’t exist.

It’s like not having a plan for dealing with the SAMP, and choosing not to develop numbers on a dry stack (or any other capital projects at the Marina) simply because “We don’t know which direction the Council wants to go in.”

There’s this old joke about the man searching for his car keys under a lamp post — instead of where he lost them. “Because the light’s better over here.”

Steven J. Underwood Park Management

There is also a proposal to outsource management and maintenance of SJU to a firm that organises baseball and softball. I am not saying it’s a bad idea on its face. I’m just saying that I wish we didn’t have to do it — especially given some previous attempts in other contexts (Wesley).

The place has recently been used more and more for soccer and I am hopeful that we maintain the ability to schedule that kind of thing as the game has become so much more popular with Des Moines residents.

Last Week

Tuesday

Meeting with State electeds on, what else, airport legislation. 🙂

Thursday

City Council COW/Study Session – recap below.

Friday

Meeting with Airport staff. Turns out the Director is a Liverpool supporter. Grrrr!

City Council

Study Session – 04 Sep 2025 – Agenda – Pdf

5:00pm COW

SUSTAINABLE AIRPORT MASTER PLAN UPDATE

The SAMP Draft EA Record of Decision will drop somewhere between the end of September and the end of October. What does this mean? It is the main approval for expansion of Sea-Tac Airport into 2032 – a larger expansion than the Third Runway.

I brought up the absolute necessity of conducting a new Impact Study.

This SAMP approval is a bit like COVID in February 2020. I can tell you clearly what is going to happen. But we’ve been so unprepared for so long, every year it gets tougher to get people to take action.

DISCUSSION ON COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE PILOT

At the request of City Manager Caffrey, we abandoned the standing committees we’ve had since forever for a six month trial of the COW. I favoured restoring a few of the committees, but not all.

I think it’s an ‘American’ thing. Because we have such short memories, we tend to think that how our committees worked over the past 7-8 years has been how it ‘always’ worked. Not true. They have fluctuated a lot. For example, I seem to recall a combo Transportation/Public Safety Committee at one point. And then a combo Finance/Economic Development Committee.

I think we got hung up on ‘six’ as though they were like the Constitution – set in stone. But at least in my experience, three seems to be about the right number.

The Municipal Facilities and Economic Development Committees were long running jokes. If the MFC had been working properly the Marina Redevelopment plan would be comprehensive and consistent and we would not have ended up with the Steps project. Economic Development? What economic development?

It is perhaps self-serving, but I wanted to maintain the Environment Committee (which I chaired) and Finance Committees. Until recently, those were the only long standing committees. In its short duration, and despite disagreements, the FC did very useful work. There was/is no shortage of monthly research to be done on improving finance throughout the City and it is reasonable to assign a few Cms who want to drill into the accounting.

I had hoped the Environment Committee would remain. First of all because it is an enterprise fund that covers a lot more of the budget than people realise. Like, a lot more. Also I wanted it to take on airport issues because it is the closest overlap in expertise to what the airport does to us. I did not feel we needed a separate airport committee of new people because what the City needs, more than anything else, is to make the airport an ongoing priority, not something that comes and goes every couple of years. It is that lack of continuity that has allowed us to get screwed over and over and over.

Unfortunately, my colleagues did not agree. Frankly, the COW is simply too convenient for all concerned. Frankly, a lot of it comes down to time. Many electeds have day jobs or just don’t want to put in the time to develop expertise on various issues. In the past, if you already agreed with the City Manager’s plan for the Marina? What was the point?

The makeup of the Council will change dramatically in January. I hope we will restore three committees then because the current COW thing does not yield better decisions. Steinmetz seemed to echo something I was afraid of all along. The first Thursday of every month may look like ‘democracy’ but in reality it has morphed into one over-long study session.

6:00 Study Session

• INTERLOCAL AGREEMENT WITH HIGHLINE SCHOOL DISTRICT
  Staff Presentation by City Engineer Tommy Owen
• DRAFT ORDINANCE 25-001 SHORT TERM RENTALS; AMENITY RENTALS Staff Presentation by Prosecutor Tara Vaughn
• DES MOINES MARINA STEPS FUNDING AND BIDDING UPDATE
  Staff Presentation by Public Works Director Michael P. Slevin III, P.E
  and Finance Director Jeff Friend

The presentation on the new Pacific Middle School was cool. There is a video fly-around of the new design and the confusing thing I’ve heard is “where is the front?” 😀 The video begins at the entrance, which facing 24th Avenue.

They are continuing with the excellent sound insulation that other recent schools are receiving. The funding for that is the typical 80/20 split from the FAA. What is slightly different is that the FAA money is not a part of the ‘official’ Part 150 program. It’s an earmark finnagled by Congressman Smith a few years ago. I only mention that because people seem to think that Port Package money is locked in stone. And it’s not. You can ask for other things. 🙂 Cm Nutting seemed concerned about the cost of sound insulation. We need to get past that. The materials now are a lot better and cost-effective. Nobody grouses about the added cost of modern wiring or plumbing gear. Same difference. It’s about health and safety; not a luxury option. 🙂

Short Term Rentals

We approved Draft Ordinance 25-001 for a second reading. (Note that this was the first draft ordinance of the year and we’re into September. I keep meaning to ask how these things get put onto the stack. 😀 )

My one contribution was a change in the noise portion from 80 Ldn to 80 LaEQ. To give you a sense of why language matters, Ldn is the same as the noise standard around the airport – which is 65. As you know, when a plane goes overhead it is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay louder than 65dBa. Ldn is a 24 hour average. So, an 80 Ldn would require hundreds of noise events as loud as a 747 to be out of compliance. LaEQ is based on a much shorter time frame – as would happen if neighbours were having a party for a few hours. And proving once again that there really is a Youtube for everything…

https://youtu.be/rh2mgW2sQxM?si=_8Wn8edn81XnDcHn

Amenity Rentals

At the last Economic Development Committee meeting, the group recommended splitting the discussion of short term rentals and amenity rentals into two pieces. And this is why I hated the EDC. Because despite that, this thing ended up here as sort of a package deal with three options and I hated all three.

All the kerfuffle seems to concern one use case.

Regardless, again, having one use case so dominate the discussion makes for bad law. Psychologically you can’t help but tailor the ordinance to that one thing.

My colleagues seem to feel that ‘amenity rentals are the coming thing!’ But we’ve been talking about this for two years and yet there are literally no nearby Amenity Rentals ordinances. If it’s such a  coming thing, why haven’t other cities already gotten on board?

What I proposed was simply tabling the discussion until other cities take the plunge (see what I did there. 🙂 ) My rule of thumb? Let the other guy work out the bugs. But nooooooooooooo.

Marina Steps

We voted 4-3 to move ahead with Option A of the Marina Steps in order to spend down the remaining money from Bond Ordinance 1773. We are $900,000 short, even with the $100,000 value engineering fee, so we will be taking money from other funds next year such as necessary repairs to the police station.

You can’t make me

When I ran for office I said, “Politics is politics is politics”. And what I meant is that there is a story we really enjoy telling ourselves about being a ‘small town’, which makes it hard to see that we function (or not) just like every other form of government.

Those of us, of a certain age, remember this explanation of how government works.

Sadly, Jack Sheldon never sang a song called “Someday I wanna be an ordinance!” 😀

People have only the vaguest idea of how the federal government works, but they have come to expect it to be both partisan and ugly. In contrast, people (including candidates) have absolutely no idea how local government works and it is both partisan and ugly.

For any number of reasons people haven’t seemed to care about compromise for a long time at any level of government. Perhaps because they do not see the point. They think their solution is the solution. And if you have that attitude, of course the only thing that matters is winning. By any means necessary.

That is what happened on Thursday and throughout my tenure. The biggest arguments I’ve had have not been with colleagues; they’ve been with residents who refuse to believe that people have already made up their minds on almost everything – not just the Marina Steps. I would say, “No, it’s really not like that.” And perhaps by disagreeing it just ends up proving how difficult I must be all the time! 😀

Even though people accept division and rancor at the federal level, they don’t want that to be true in our small town.

In my closing comments I said that elected office is by definition patronising. You will always know more than the people you represent. You have to make decisions on their behalf and it’s quite easy to confuse what you want with what is best for them and the City.

And if you stick your head up to listen, even a little bit, you will get yelled at ALL THE DAMNED TIME. 😀 It’s just easier to attend ribbon cuttings and take selfies.

The Mayor’s approach to the Marina Steps discussion was terrible parliamentary procedure. But it was a very ‘Des Moines’ move. Passive aggressive and practical. 😀 She was absolutely correct: there were no minds to be changed. As she said, she wanted to get something done before leaving office. Mission accomplished.

I liken her approach to a dead marriage where the best the couple can do is to maintain ‘civility’. Hopefully the next mayor will encourage electeds to actually compromise rather than simply tolerating one other in cold silence. Because more than anything? Genuine compromise is what this Council needs.

We all add value. All of us. Not a meeting goes by where I don’t learn something valuable from people at the dais I disagree with. But by not compromising, it makes obtaining and extracting that value impossible.

All some people seem to care about is that we maintain ‘appearances’. It never seems to occur to some people that we need everyone. We can’t afford to do it this way. That is what led to the Steps – as well as 100 other less than great decisions that fly under the radar, although they could/should have been a lot better.

We create all these incentives for people not to have to listen and instead do what they think is best. In the hope that, one day, you’ll thank us for it. 🙂

Maybe.

Some bits of business…

City Manager Stuff

City Manager Report – August 29, 2025

Despite getting off to a slow start, the Marina dock replacement is on schedule! You can watch videos of progress in action here: https://www.youtube.com/@CityofDesMoinesMarina

There is also a new Community Survey. Yes, we did a parks survey and a communications survey just a couple of years ago, but well… new management, right? 😀 This one also asks for your ideas on a broad range of stuff like event planning and programs for kids and seniors and it”s all great. 🙂

And… since you can never take too many surveys, this is my personal fave, this concerning some big improvements at the Beach Park. Take the Beach Park survey!

Seattle Times Article on Big Catch sculptor

If you’ve ever noticed the hysterical guy kissing the fish sculpture and wonder how it came to be the centrepiece of Big Catch Plaza? This article gives you a biography of Rich Beyer – and a family-friendly version of the story of how how your City Council got more than it bargained for. Seattle’s ‘Waiting for the Interurban,’ other works show artist’s humor

Light Rail Opens December 6, 2025!

https://www.soundtransit.org/southkinglink

SR-509 Tolling and free Good To Go stickers

Here is a detailed blog post on how SR-509 and tolling will work. There is also an offer to get a free Good To Go sticker. I got a $15 FlexPass for free! You can too!

https://engage.wsdot.wa.gov/sr-509-expressway-opening/

Restaurants!

There have been more restaurant changes in town. So this is a good time to remind you of the local restaurant guide TakeOutDM.Com or TakeOutDesMoines.Com. There is a sign-up form which emails signees when various establishments are offering specials! If you are a new restaurant owner, you should also let them know when you are having said specials so they can spread the woid.

This Week

Thursday

City Council

Study Session – 04 Sep 2025 – Agenda – Pdf

5:00pm COW

SUSTAINABLE AIRPORT MASTER PLAN UPDATE

The SAMP Draft EA Record of Decision will drop somewhere between the end of September and the end of October. What does this mean? It is the main approval for expansion of Sea-Tac Airport into 2032 – a larger expansion than the Third Runway.

Des Moines is to the airport what suburbs of Detroit were/are to the auto industry. Decades ago we developed an eco-system of people who work in the airline industry or construction and we got attached to the notion that the airport/aviation are somehow ‘good’ for Des Moines. This has allowed the airport to get away with doing tremendous damage to the Citynerate a ton of money, none of which stays here.

This SAMP approval is a bit like COVID in February 2020. I can tell you clearly what is going to happen. But we’ve been so unprepared for so long, every year it gets tougher to get people to take action.

DISCUSSION ON COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE PILOT

At the request of City Manager Caffrey, we abandoned the standing committees we’ve had since forever for a six month trial of the COW. In theory, the committee system is much better than what we have now. I chose the committees I wanted to work on because I knew they could very productive. Others have been terrible. And as a specific, I would cite Municipal Facilities, the group charged with reviewing the Marina Steps.

First of all, I never thought that committees were ever meant to make big decisions. They were meant to develop expertise on specific issues, which would lead to good policies. That would speed the full meetings where drafts would only require a final polish to become law. Study Sessions? They used to not be about making big decisions. They were about, you know, studying things. The current system has morphed committees being Study Sessions and Study Sessions being just another meeting.

This is frankly because the Council has been both fractured and also, uninterested in putting in the time necessary to take advantage of the benefits committees offer.

Frankly, a lot of it comes down to time. Many electeds have day jobs or just don’t want to put in the time to develop expertise on various issues. In the past, if you already agreed with the City Manager’s plan for the Marina? What was the point?

The makeup of the Council will change dramatically in January. I favour foregoing any decision until then, and re-instating committees then

6:00 Study Session

• INTERLOCAL AGREEMENT WITH HIGHLINE SCHOOL DISTRICT
  Staff Presentation by City Engineer Tommy Owen
• DRAFT ORDINANCE 25-001 SHORT TERM RENTALS; AMENITY RENTALS Staff Presentation by Prosecutor Tara Vaughn
• DES MOINES MARINA STEPS FUNDING AND BIDDING UPDATE
  Staff Presentation by Public Works Director Michael P. Slevin III, P.E
  and Finance Director Jeff Friend

At the last Economic Development Committee meeting, the group recommended splitting the discussion of short term rentals and amenity rentals into two pieces. And yet? This thing is here as sort of a package deal. I dunno what to think.

All the kerfuffle seems to concern one use case. But ordinances apply to the entire city. On the one hand, you have someone with a very nice home, with a very nice pool, which sounds like a lovely use case for a short term rental – as stated in the ordinance. On the other hand, the homeowners also have a web page offering to rent the place for parties up to 40 people, by the hour. That sounds like something very different, especially given the fact that they have neighbors on three sides, one of which is a hard ‘no’.

Everything about this is awkward and complicated. How complex? There is language in the draft mentioning ‘noise’ as 80 Ldn. The bad news is that the aircraft overhead (supposedly) conform to a 65 Ldn. To get a special permit requires a hearing costing $7k. And then there are state public health requirements for commercial pools that have my head swimming. 😀

You too can run for City Council!

Marina Steps

As I wrote last week, the Council will decide whether to move ahead with the Marina Steps project. It is being described by the City as a ‘go/no go’ decision point. Here is Bond Ordinance 1773.

We are $900,000 short, even with the bond money and numerous attempts at downsizing (including a $100,000 value engineering fee)  and taking money from other funds. The only path forward would be to take more money from other projects in future years, such as necessary repairs to the police station.

I am, frankly, troubled by some of the slides in the packet. The City is recommending that we proceed with all options.

• It does not mention that we could reduce that deficit to $400,000 by removing some of the options (B,C,D).
• While the City Manager admits that borrowing all this money before having any projects ready to go was not good, there is no accountability as to why. In fact, at every fork in the road, every time anyone raised the notion of ‘a la carte’ – breaking the bond money, and elements of the Steps into separate projects. When I mentioned simply omitting the splash pad in 2024? Nope. That wasn’t the Council, that was then City Manager Tim George. We’re bidding the whole thing. This entire thing has been all or nothing.
• And yet now, completely out of left field, the packet raises a possibility of moving the money to Midway Park, even though the Council was repeatedly told that the ordinance was limited to five specific projects. And apparently Midway Park is at ninety (90%) design? What? The last memory I have is a presentation to the Council in August 2024 which said the project was ten (10%). That’s what the presenter says on video.

Plan B

All the questions re. Plan B and accountability are obviously mine.

There has been a broad Marina Redevelopment strategy since at least 2007. You can already see some of the bones of the original Marina Redevelopment planning. If you look at the new park above the Beach Park, that is close to what was proposed over a decade ago. The upcoming Beach Park renovations have also been on the board for over a decade. But the Marina Steps, and everything from the center of the Marina south is nothing like what was proposed starting in 2017. The only constant has been that the City and the majority want something. Anything. Whether it’s good, bad, or indifferent has become irrelevant.

And to now even suggest, out of the blue, that one can arbitrarily move money to other, totally unrelated projects, and that they are fully designed, when there is so much work left to do at the Marina? It’s not only poor planning it’s a violation of public trust. It’s just more of the same.

When I’ve raised the notion of dry stack (boat storage), tenant restrooms, or any pre-engineering on long term projects at the Marina, the City simply quashes it by saying, “We need to do another capital project study – if the Council wants to do that.” Uh huh. If the packet is to be believed, the implication is that the City has had no trouble proceeding to a final design on Midway Park — without the Council.

You simply get the result you want by working on the things you want to, and avoiding proper information on those you do not. That is why there is no Plan B. It is Cortés destroying his ships in order to only make one outcome possible. (It’s also the Port’s go-to move: we can’t help with airport issues because We need another study. Hopefully Congress will get right on that!  Someday! )

I said it from the dais a few weeks ago, ‘public planning’ in Des Moines is currently an oxymoron. Setting up a planning commission, a strategic plan, a fiscal plan, after all the ‘planning’ is decided is cynical.

I have always supported connectivity between 223rd and the Marina Floor. It was a good idea in 2007 and it still is. But not this. We should make every attempt to repurpose the remainder of the bond money towards other projects at the Marina which will create a net plus over time. Boring, but financially responsible. When the City is stronger, when we have a strategic plan we are committed to, then we should build the  project that residents and businesses truly deserve.

Some bits of business…

City Manager Stuff

City Manager Report – August 22, 2025

Despite getting off to a slow start, the Marina dock replacement is on schedule! You can watch videos of progress in action here: https://www.youtube.com/@CityofDesMoinesMarina

There is also a new Community Survey. Yes, we did a parks survey and a communications survey just a couple of years ago, but well… new management, right? 😀 This one also asks for your ideas on a broad range of stuff like event planning and programs for kids and seniors and it”s all great. 🙂

And… since you can never take too many surveys, this is my personal fave, this concerning some big improvements at the Beach Park. Take the Beach Park survey!

The 24th Ave Road Project is finally moving along! Repaving began on Monday July 21st. There have been issues with traffic and traffic lights. Probably best to avoid if possible. 🙂

SR-509 Tolling and free Good To Go stickers

Here is a detailed blog post on how SR-509 and tolling will work. There is also an offer to get a free Good To Go sticker. (Disclaimer: This is in no way an endorsement of tolling. -I- didn’t support it. Remember that! 😀 But it’s happening. And if you don’t already have a sticker, you should at least get a freebie in case you need to use the tolled section. 🙂 )

Cut to the chase? I got a $15 FlexPass for free! You can too!

https://wsdotblog.blogspot.com/2025/08/tolling-begins-on-sr-509-expressway.html

https://engage.wsdot.wa.gov/sr-509-expressway-opening/

Metro Survey

As Link light rail gets ready to open here (maybe by end of 2025!) Metro invites you to learn more and take this survey by August 31.

Restaurants!

There have been more restaurant changes in town. So this is a good time to remind you of the local restaurant guide TakeOutDM.Com or TakeOutDesMoines.Com. There is a sign-up form which emails signees when various establishments are offering specials! If you are a new restaurant owner, you should also let them know when you are having said specials so they can spread the woid.

Last Week/This Week

It’s been a quiet week in Lake W… er.. 😀

We’ve had a mostly ‘meeting-free’ August. But that does not mean nothing is going on, far from it. These meeting deserts seem fun, but go against my long-standing feeling that meeting schedules should be load-balanced – ie. map out the Council calendar more evenly.

Given the various staff cuts we had to make, the Council agreed to give the City Manager free reign to reduce/re-organise committees and generally try to give staff a break. However, in my opinion we have over-corrected. This ‘break’, coupled with the lack of standing committees, means that the next few meetings, and into budget season, will likely be as bad or even more jam-packed than in previous years in terms of passing legislation without adequate consideration. For example, I think it would be better for the community to have a Finance Committee meeting regularly to discuss our budget in more detail than giving the new CAB one presentation from the Finance Director.

Masonic Home

Last week I attended the City’s Masonic Home demolition open house at the Beach Park. There were relatively few people there, certainly not most of the people I know are deeply concerned. There were some good questions, but the mood seemed more like one of the lattermost of the Five Stages of Grief than anything else. Apparently the Waterland Blog recorded it but has not published the video as of yet.

The one comment I keep hearing, which I always find offensive is that the current City and Council are blameless.  It’s the old “Wasn’t on my watch!” nonsense that every government or management uses to avoid any accountability, for anything, ever. Said it before, say it again: when you accept leadership, it doesn’t matter who started whatever, or whenever, if something happens on your watch, it’s your fault. That’s what “the buck stops here” means. It’s my fault. It’s my colleagues’ fault. It’s the City’s fault. The future won’t care about names. They’ll blame all of us for being so stupid as to let something this meaningful slip away in such a friction-free manner. And rightly so.

The process of courting development was never transparent. Going back many years the City had an obvious intent. And without ratting anyone out in particular, I can share one clear example. Since taking office, I’ve had the honour of meeting all our federal electeds at least once – and many on multiple occasions. I have found all of them to be straightforward. If you mention ‘Des Moines’, they and their staff all mention ‘the Marina’. But if you ask about ‘the Masonic Home’? To a person, they and their staff have all said, “The what home?” We lobby like crazy every year for ‘Marina’ stuff. But the Masonic Home, the one project that always needed and deserved federal funding? Never on the radar.  Contrast that with the City of SeaTac, which, every year lobbies at the federal level for projects they care about — like North SeaTac Park. You can tell what any city actually cares about by looking at what they lobby for and how they do it. Full stop.

What slays me is that no one seems to notice that the City Council controls zoning. Over the past two years we’ve been going through a lengthy and extremely labour-intensive update to our Comprehensive Plan. That building is zoned ‘IC’. People who care should have looked that up a very long time ago. My guess is that almost no one, residents, electeds or developers think that stuff actually matters–at least not here. Perhaps there is an implicit notion that the moment someone buys a property of that magnitude they will be able to do basically whatever they want with it. What that tells me is that none of us understand or take seriously the City Council’s role in planning. But you or I cannot buy property like that. Individual homeowners have to respect a rigorous set of guidelines for what we can and cannot do with our small pieces of property. We certainly can’t buy a parcel under any assumption that we can change its use case. But the fact that no one has mentioned the future use of that space, based on our Comprehensive Plan, is another clear tell.

I could be totally wrong of course. But I don’t think it matters much all that much that the developer has not revealed their plans. Do you really think they would have bought the place and assiduously avoided public engagement unless they felt sanguine that, whatever zoning changes they requested would be okeedokee?

By not having a firm plan, since the first discussions 15 years ago, the City and the Council have been telling developers that it’s open season at Marine View Drive and 240th.

I may not find the developer particularly user-friendly, but they have done nothing wrong as far as the Council can tell at this point. What they are doing is taking advantage of a city with a chronic history of strategically avoiding planning. Plausible deniability for all concerned is just a bonus.

Marina Steps

Speaking of planning, at the September 4 meeting, the Council will decide whether to move ahead with the Marina Steps project. It is being described by the City as the final ‘go/no go’ decision point. We are $900,000 short, even with the bond money, numerous attempts at downsizing (including a $100,000 value engineering fee)  and taking money from other funds. The only path forward would be to take more money from other projects in future years, such as necessary repairs to the police station.

I suppose we could offset that $900,000 by doing what we always do: go to Olympia and beg for grants and then proclaim ‘success!’ if we succeed. Maybe it would work, maybe not.

But to my mind, constantly having to rely on grants to perform necessary functions is another example of the lack of planning that has plagued this city since I’ve lived here – essentially dealing with the emergency du jour and leaving the future to fend for itself. It is a key reason we have been so chronically strapped and why I pushed so strongly to reinstate a planning commission and to develop some form of financial analysis.

We are going ahead with both those ideas, but notably not until after this decision point. And the Masonic Home. And Des Moines Creek West. And. And. And…

Also, as you read above, the City is conducting a community survey (which you should take).

We should wait until all those processes are complete and then figure out what the true potential of the Marina Steps project is, how the community truly feels, and how to prioritize it properly for the long term.

The thing I always keep coming back to is that when the Marina opened in 1970 it began making money on day one. It didn’t have to make a financial case or justify itself in any other way. It’s paid for itself many times over and everything else we now take for granted there was just the gravy.

The City has just committed several million dollars to renovate the Redondo fishing pier, an existing structure that had failed. Great. That is a project with unquantifiable benefits – which is OK because nobody expects it to pay for itself or be transformative. It doesn’t have to justify itself because what it did was enough. Frankly, it has not been particularly transformative and if it continues not to be, no one will mind. It’s all gravy because that was not its purpose.

No benefits from the Marina Steps project can be quantified. But that is a very different situation. From day one the Steps project was explicitly sold to be transformative. To leverage the downtown area. To create growth for the community in a way perhaps almost as significant as the Marina itself. That is what the City, and several of my past and present colleagues have said. As such, it should be subject to a much higher standard of scrutiny regarding that potential across all domains – especially financial returns.

In contrast, there is no shortage of necessary projects at the Marina and these are eligible under the ordinance – projects that will require tens of millions of dollars to complete, including dock renovations and seawall (which are not optional) and boat storage which was recommended 25 years ago because it would be an instant cash generator. And you don’t need to be a CPA to know that the one thing this City needs is cash.

Those truly necessary projects, projects with clear long-term financial benefits, will only become more expensive over time. So, the best time to do them is now. If that is possible, acting now would save the City millions in borrowing, far more money than we could ever hope to generate from a Marina Steps. Boring, but true.

You can already see some of the bones of the original Marina Redevelopment planning. If you look at the new park above the Beach Park, that is close to what was proposed over a decade ago. The upcoming Beach Park renovations have also been on the board for over a decade. But the Marina Steps, and everything from the center of the Marina south is nothing like what was proposed starting in 2017. For whatever reason, we should admit how far the project has drifted and stop saying that getting anything is better than nothing. The sunk cost fallacy is a fallacy. Spending more money on the project you did not plan for just because you’ve already spent a ton does not make the project any better.

This is supposed to be the marquee project for our waterfront. It must be the Pearl of Great Price. To move forward with anything else would be to do what mothers everywhere tell you, “don’t settle.”

To be clear: I have always supported connectivity between the Marina floor and 223rd. And there are many really great ideas we can get to if we can be patient enough to wait for the right project and the right funding.

I am particularly concerned that the City has not provided a ‘Plan B’ and I have urged the City to have that ready to go in the meeting packet.

Thus far, we have used the bond money productively for docks and for Redondo and the Flag Triangle. We can quibble on some details, but those are all projects people can take pride in. Given our financial position and how many other needs the City has, even the strongest supporters of the Steps should take those wins and not feel bad. Nobody bats 1,000.

We should make every attempt to repurpose the remainder of the bond money towards other eligible projects and make them a net plus over time. Boring, but financially responsible. When the City is stronger, we will then build the project that residents and business truly deserve.

Don’t settle.

Some bits of business…

City Manager Stuff

Back from vacation, the City Manager’s new weekly report format is viewable here. It includes some bad news on the Masonic Home. LUA2019-0032 Zenith Demolition Decision

The next step is a community meeting is scheduled for August 21, 6:30-8:30 p.m. at the Beach Park auditorium.

City Manager Report – August 8, 2025

The 24th Ave Road Project is finally moving along! Repaving began on Monday July 21st. There have been issues with traffic and traffic lights. Probably best to avoid if possible. 🙂

Highline College Survey

The College has asked that everyone take this College Perception Survey survey to help them understand how they can better serve not only the students, but also residents of Des Moines.

Sounders Free Tickets!

If you haven’t been to a Sounders FC soccer game, your first ticket is totally free! The program is sponsored by the Rave Foundation (which has helped fund projects at Midway Park, among other things.)

Can we talk for a minute? Like many of you, I got (re)-interested in football when my kids started playing. In addition to the fun factor, I got hooked on Sounders games because they are just so convenient by transit. For me, I just hop on the 635 Shuttle Bus to the Angle Lake Station, get off at Union, and the Stadiums are two blocks away. That’s how transit is supposed to work.

SR-509 Tolling and free Good To Go stickers

Here is a detailed blog post on how SR-509 and tolling will work. There is also an offer to get a free Good To Go sticker. (Disclaimer: This is in no way an endorsement of tolling. -I- didn’t support it. Remember that! 😀 But it’s happening. And if you don’t already have a sticker, you should at least get a freebie in case you need to use the tolled section. 🙂 )

https://wsdotblog.blogspot.com/2025/08/tolling-begins-on-sr-509-expressway.html

https://engage.wsdot.wa.gov/sr-509-expressway-opening/

Metro Survey

As Link light rail gets ready to open here (maybe by end of 2025!) Metro invites you to learn more and take this survey by August 31.

Redondo Parking – get a pass!

However, Redondo Paid Parking is now live. So, get a sensibly priced annual pass by contacting the Marina. 🙂

Restaurants!

There have been more restaurant changes in town. So this is a good time to remind you of the local restaurant guide TakeOutDM.Com or TakeOutDesMoines.Com. There is a sign-up form which emails signees when various establishments are offering specials! If you are a new restaurant owner, you should also let them know when you are having said specials so they can spread the woid.

News Flash! After five years of being only ‘98198’, TakeOutDM is expanding its list to include establishments people think (or wish) were in Des Moines. For example, if you like French casual cuisine (and who wouldn’t?) I really like Peyrassol West in Normandy Park across from the QFC.

Last Week

Tuesday

There was an election and Peter Kwon and Steffanie Fain will vie in November for position #5 on the King County Council. Also of note, Edwin Obras and Kevin Schilling will go at it in the 33rd House seat.

I did not endorse either candidate but I heard more anger from residents about the 33rd  than I’ve heard about any race in a loooong time. Both campaigns went negative (albeit in very different ways) and it soured voters on all sides.

I have reached out to both finalists and asked them to dial it back. The funny thing is: I don’t think it helped either.

I’m also a bit freaked out about all the moolah. Ms. Fain spent almost $200k . Both Obras and Schilling were near $150k. And this is just the primary? In one sense, the most successful candidate was Peter Kwon at roughly $50k. Speaking as someone who has spent about $4,500 to win two elections, ‘efficiency’ rules, we approve. 🙂

https://jcharrisfordesmoines.com/wp-content/uploads/20250805results.pdf

National Night Out

I attended four of these. Apparently, the mayor attended ten. 😀 I dunno how she does it. What happens to me is that I always find at least a couple of people who have interesting things to talk about…

Thursday

City Council Meeting (recap below).

Saturday/Sunday

I attended the Cambodian Cultural fest at Saltwater State Park. No piccies this year, but always fun. I try to remind people every year that this is the largest ‘event’ in Des Moines and as much as I like promoting our Marina, it is easy to book and the views are pretty spectacular.

Speaking of cultcha, I also attended ‘As You Like It’, presented by Seattle Shakespeare Company at the Beach Park. Not my top-five Shakespeare, but a good crowd and a lotta laughs (and a surprising number of kids!)  I am sooooooooo proud and grateful for the City helping to organise and support fine arts.

City Council Meeting Recap

(Agenda).

Public Comments

There was a fabulous public comment from a resident of Huntington Park asking about transit. Be still my beating heart! 😀 Like moi she was a former New Yorker and mentioned Grand Central Station. She quizzed me on various bus lines and I failed miserably!

There were quite a number of public comments on the Masonic Home demolition EIS, both opposed and a large number in favour.

Zenith Demolition Presentation

After the City presentation we asked a series of questions. We will get the answers later. I tried to ask the questions the public has: Why the owner is allowed not to provide planning details? What are the possible zoning options? How was the mitigation negotiated?

Transportation Element

This was the last ‘element’ in our updated Comp Plan. We were supposed to have the whole thing finished last year. But the previous Planner retired, we got a new City Manager, so the new Planner has been doing a lot of catch up.

I am not a fan of comp plans – especially after watching the way the City has handled (or rather not handled) the Masonic Home. But I have to say the new team is a serious upgrade. I focused my questions on

• Bike Lanes – at some point we need to decide on a path to connect the City.
• Transit – the public comment on east/west options was perfectly timed.
• Traffic Calming – something that is not as fleshed out in the language as you might expect considering that it’s pretty much the number one concern people express to me transportation-wise.

Barnes Creek 240 Extension

We approved a contract to complete one segment of 240th between 16th and 20th. Which is fantastic. But somehow it is being folded into the discussion of the Barnes Creek path that will ultimately make part of that trail connection. Cm Grace-Matsui pointed out that it’s $9M for only a few miles of road. But actually, it’s really $9M for four blocks.

I made the kind of comment I always do, “Who is in charge of making sure we don’t hit anything?” I’m sure it sounds snippy but I am frankly sick of almost every project having some form of delay or cost. One difference between myself and a lot of my colleagues – especially Cm Nutting who is in construction – is that, over time people get inured to that sort of thing. I get it. But at some point, you gotta start expecting these things to go right. It is possible to probably pre-map this stuff. I does happen.

Rando thoughts on two buildings…

There was a moment when the Masonic Home was likely doomed. But that moment was well over a decade ago, when the City decided to limit the possible redevelopment uses it would pursue. When you limit the things you study, you limit what is possible. In my opinion this is the worst aspect of government. Nobody to blame. Everything was handled with scrupulous fairness. How dare you suggest otherwise? But the results were totally planned.

If you look at our neighbours in SeaTac, they are about to embark on a project to replace a 45 year old office building with a new civic campus on 8.8 acres of parking lot at 200th and Pac Hwy. The final cost will be in the same ballpark as restoring 30 acres of absolute historic, architectural gold. People can’t get their minds around this. That’s just what any large building costs today. New. Used. Es macht nichts.

All the use cases failed to pencil out because they all depended on making money. There were never evaluations of other purposes. The new City Hall we’ve needed for years. The Community Center for the south half of town we will never have. Half a dozen others. Those use cases were never considered. They did not need to be. By the current owner today. By the City twenty years ago.

The real question was never money. It was vision. I’m sure the one-time money and the temporary construction jobs will be nice.

City Manager Caffrey did a radio interview on Tuesday that telegraphed the presentation on Thursday and then the decision for Friday. And if you think that timing on all these were coincidental? Well… 😀

My one concern on her messaging was where she said that her duty was to be financially responsible. I am unclear  what she meant. But what the residents I’ve talked with heard was, “We need the construction money!” It may have unintentionally reinforced the constant desperation over money we’ve had here since I’ve been watching: Get the one-time money! And if you’re always living paycheck to paycheck, of course you’ll never save anything.

That said, her City Manager Report statement was much more nuanced and people should read that carefully. So other than that one small quibble, she is handling it with professional grace. But for those who are still unimpressed, I would remind them that it’s tougher to bleed for someone you do not know.

Given the length of time the property has sat, neither Ms. Caffrey or many others did not have friends who lived there. She never saw a show there. Or had a meal there. She never saw the place dressed. Or walked the magnificent rose gardens and orchards. She may never have stood at the entrance to witness the best view of the Sound in the entire area. I don’t know if she had been on a boat to see the property (ie. Des Moines) from the centreline with Mt. Rainier and the moon behind – no Photoshop required.

In fact, it says something about what our community values that I cannot find any of the photos or video so many people took back in the glory days. To a certain extent we all took the place for granted. As they say, “piccies or it didn’t happen.”

Ms. Caffrey has only been here a few months. She can only see the place naked,  decrepit and with absolutely no dignity. The abandoned person in such rough shape one struggles to see as fully human.

If you listened to some of the construction workers eager to tear down the place, it sounds like a toxic, rat-infected scene out of Escape From New York. I dunno what to do with that. Because it’s not that. And you need just as many talented, well-paid workers to rehab a historic place as you would to tear something down and build 5/1 stick frames or towers or whatever.

In my closing comments I mentioned my niece who passed recently from a genetic condition at the age of 27. From the age of six she was well aware she probably wasn’t going to make it to 30. Only a few thousand people get it, so research was almost non-existent. About 10 years ago, gene therapy came into being and therapy for her illness went from science fiction to, ‘what if?’ and then a race against time – which she lost. She asked us to donate money to a foundation that supports the cure and my guess is that her illness will be extinct in the next decade because at least now it can be tested for. But in a final kick in the ‘nads, we learned last week that the primary researcher on the project has been de-funded by the administration.

I grieve. Not only for this. But for the fact that something so terrible is so friction-free. In my opinion, the best way to honour the Masonic Home is to make sure something like this never happens again. And that is one of the worst aspects of government: plausible deniability.

A tiny pebble starts downhill and after 100 bad decisions, all yer left with is, “We still have our memories!”

There is another bit of black humour about ‘military intelligence’ being an oxymoron. So is ‘urban planning’. As a practical matter there has been no such thing in my time here. You have dedicated city staff doing their absolute best to obtain grants and do the right thing as resources become available, but if you say that any of the major crossroads we’ve come to were part of some big ‘strategery’? You must be smoking something.

One notable feature of the demolition plan is $1.1M for historic preservation. When I first moved here I coulda told you ten places to put that. Now? I’m struggling to think of more than one. We have eradicated so much.

What has led to the gradual diminishment of our City has been the constant prioritisation of one-time money over long term planning. We’ve equated any construction project as progress because we’ve been so consistently broke. And I’m sick of that false narrative. Our job is to build the right thing, not just anything.

Have you noticed how hard we are struggling to obtain ten million to do the umpteenth down-sized version of the Marina Steps? We’re still $900,000 short. And if the Council figures out some way to make it happen, you should know that we  pushed ourselves right to the edge for something a long way from what anyone ‘planned’. (A the next person who tells me “we can’t move money around!” should wash their mouth out with soap.)

When people tell me how much they like our little town, I assume they mean the few blocks near the Marina. I assume they don’t care about the ability to develop at least one bike trail. A better downtown. Transit stops. Better roads. And those were just the topics from this meeting. I assume they’ve decided that this is as good as they want. Not what was ever possible.

SeaTac can afford to build a new civic campus. And restore North SeaTac Park. And build sidewalks. And more housing. And provide far more community programs. It’s not some ‘airport magic’ that we can never tie into. It was a conscious decision we made to stay broke. The city of SeaTac was not given anything. They worked on agreements to benefit their city from the airport and they worked on it for 40 years. It’s not because of an accident of geography or God or anything like that. They kept pushing every year. The Port would say no to various things. But over time you work at it and you get something. Or you don’t and tell everyone how everything worked out for the best. Ignorance is bliss.

Some bits of business…

City Manager Stuff

The City Manager’s new weekly report format is viewable here. Before leaving for vacation, she dropped two bombshells! 😀 One on that report and one not.

• The Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) on the Masonic Home was released on Thursday, July 31, 2025. The report is posted on the City’s website. “City staff will present the FEIS findings and implications to the City Council at its regular meeting, August 7 at 6 p.m. at City Hall. This is an informational presentation only. A community meeting is scheduled for August 21, 6:30-8:30 p.m. at the Beach Park auditorium.” As has always been the case, the City Council is continually admonished not to talk about the issue for fear of violating the Appearance of Fairness Doctrine – one of only a couple of items where an elected can be in violation of state law. But I also think it says something that when the Seattle Times showed up to do a story on the building in 2023 not one of my colleagues showed up –there was no ‘law’ preventing that. And, sorry, I thought then and think now that it says something about our City and our values.
• Marina Moorage rates are going up. To be clear, the City Council does not set rates. (We also do not set fuel prices.) I also think it’s important to note that less than 20% of tenants are now Des Moines residents. Still, this is a big change and I’ve asked to see the studies done to support this. When I first started using the Marina in the 90’s, sailing was a solidly middle-class pursuit. Although the Marina needs a serious amount of money to finance its much-needed upgrades, I don’t want boating (and especially sailing) to become a past time that can only be enjoyed by the wealthy.

City Manager Report – July 31, 2025

The 24th Ave Road Project is finally moving along! Repaving began on Monday July 21st. There have been issues with traffic and traffic lights. Probably best to avoid if possible. 🙂

Highline College Survey

The College has asked that everyone take this College Perception Survey survey to help them understand how they can better serve not only the students, but also residents of Des Moines.

Sounders Free Tickets!

If you haven’t been to a Sounders FC soccer game, your first ticket is totally free! The program is sponsored by the Rave Foundation (which has helped fund projects at Midway Park, among other things.)

Can we talk for a minute? Like many of you, I got (re)-interested in football when my kids started playing. In addition to the fun factor, I got hooked on Sounders games because they are just so convenient by transit. For me, I just hop on the 635 Shuttle Bus to the Angle Lake Station, get off at Union, and the Stadiums are two blocks away. That’s how transit is supposed to work.

SR-509 24th Ave and Veteran’s Drive are open and free!

Well, temporarily. 24th Ave and before you get to 200th, on your right (east side of the street) you’ll see a new exit onto the first mile of SR-509, which takes you directly to I-5.

There is also the new Veterans Memorial Drive near Military Road.

They will be tolled – but not yet! So take the next month and stick it to da man! WSDOT has free GoodToGo cards if you sign up, but before paying call 1-866-936-8246.

Metro Survey

As Link light rail gets ready to open here (maybe by end of 2025!) Metro invites you to learn more and take this survey by August 31.

Redondo Parking – get a pass!

However, Redondo Paid Parking is now live. So, get a sensibly priced annual pass by contacting the Marina. 🙂

Restaurants!

There have been more restaurant changes in town. So this is a good time to remind you of the local restaurant guide TakeOutDM.Com or TakeOutDesMoines.Com. There is a sign-up form which emails signees when various establishments are offering specials! If you are a new restaurant owner, you should also let them know when you are having said specials so they can spread the woid.

News Flash! After five years of being only ‘98198’, TakeOutDM is expanding its list to include establishments people think (or wish) were in Des Moines. For example, if you like French casual cuisine (and who wouldn’t?) I really like Peyrassol West in Normandy Park across from the QFC.

This Week

Thursday

City Council Meeting (Agenda). The most ‘notable’ item,the one at the top, is the Masonic Home demolition EIS, something we have no control over.

There will also be a presentation on the Transportation Element of our comprehensive plan.

This stuff does not get a ton of attention and that’s interesting to me. Frankly, I used to think that this was ‘the strategic plan’ for the City. But over time, it’s become clear to me that these deals are somewhat ‘compliance mills’ – sinkholes where staff are required by state law to spend hundreds of hours on big honkin’ documents that aren’t used as intended. They have all the information we need to drive the conversations we need to have. But they’re left so aspirational that we often end up doing something very different, or hiring someone else to get the rest of the way there.

Last Week

Wednesday: King County Flood Control District Advisory Committee. The group has been meeting a lot to try to nail down multiple budgets. The City’s interest is in protecting money for urban flooding, a relatively new concept for the County. Unfortunately, that money is always in competition with more traditional river floods elsewhere. But as I try to point out Des Moines has so many pieces of ‘water’ to defend, they all cost money, and the goal is to keep every dollar available for us. 🙂

Some bits of business…

City Manager Stuff

The City Manager’s new weekly report format is viewable here. Before leaving for vacation, she dropped two bombshells! 😀 One on that report and one not.

• The Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) on the Masonic Home will be released on Thursday, July 31, 2025. The report will be posted on the City’s website. City staff will present the FEIS findings and implications to the City Council at its regular meeting, August 7 at 6 p.m. at City Hall. This is an informational presentation only. A community meeting is scheduled for August 21, 6:30-8:30 p.m. at the Beach Park auditorium.
• Marina Moorage rates are going up. To be clear, the City Council does not set rates. (We also do not set fuel prices.) I also think it’s important to note that less than 20% of tenants are now Des Moines residents. Still, this is a big change and I’ve asked to see the studies done to support this. When I first started using the Marina in the 90’s, sailing was a solidly middle-class pursuit. Although the Marina needs a serious amount of money to finance its much-needed upgrades, I don’t want boating (and especially sailing) to become a past time that can only be enjoyed by the wealthy.

City Manager Report – July 25, 2025

The 24th Ave Road Project is finally moving along! Repaving began on Monday July 21st. There have been issues with traffic and traffic lights. Probably best to avoid if possible. 🙂

Highline College Survey

The College has asked that everyone take this College Perception Survey survey to help them understand how they can better serve not only the students, but also residents of Des Moines.

Sounders Free Tickets!

If you haven’t been to a Sounders FC soccer game, your first ticket is totally free! The program is sponsored by the Rave Foundation (which has helped fund projects at Midway Park, among other things.)

Can we talk for a minute? Like many of you, I got (re)-interested in football when my kids started playing. In addition to the fun factor, I got hooked on Sounders games because they are just so convenient by transit. For me, I just hop on the 635 Shuttle Bus to the Angle Lake Station, get off at Union, and the Stadiums are two blocks away. That’s how transit is supposed to work.

SR-509 24th Ave and Veteran’s Drive are open and free!

Well, temporarily. 24th Ave and before you get to 200th, on your right (east side of the street) you’ll see a new exit onto the first mile of SR-509, which takes you directly to I-5.

There is also the new Veterans Memorial Drive near Military Road.

They will be tolled – but not yet! So take the next month and stick it to da man! WSDOT has free GoodToGo cards if you sign up, but before paying call 1-866-936-8246.

Metro Survey

As Link light rail gets ready to open here (maybe by end of 2025!) Metro invites you to learn more and take this survey by August 31.

Redondo Parking – get a pass!

However, Redondo Paid Parking is now live. So, get a sensibly priced annual pass by contacting the Marina. 🙂

Restaurants!

There have been more restaurant changes in town. So this is a good time to remind you of the local restaurant guide TakeOutDM.Com or TakeOutDesMoines.Com. There is a sign-up form which emails signees when various establishments are offering specials! If you are a new restaurant owner, you should also let them know when you are having said specials so they can spread the woid.

News Flash! After five years of being only ‘98198’, TakeOutDM is expanding its list to include establishments people think (or wish) were in Des Moines. For example, if you like Fr I really like Peyrassol West in Normandy Park across from the QFC.

This Week

Wednesday: King County Flood Control District Advisory Committee. The group has been meeting a lot to try to nail down multiple budgets. The City’s interest is in protecting money for urban flooding, a relatively new concept for the County. Unfortunately, that money is always in competition with more traditional river floods elsewhere. But as I try to point out Des Moines has so many pieces of ‘water’ to defend, they all cost money, and the goal is to keep every dollar available for us. 🙂

Last Week

Monday

Director of Public Works Mike Slevin was gracious enough to wander around the perimeter with me. Most people focus on the pea patch area, but if you look at an aerial, we own a lot of trees and wetlands from 16th to 20th, not just the bit you see in the front. There’s the Daisy Sonju Orchard in front, which still has some production apples, but in back, where you can’t go without spelunking, there is wide diversity of species which look like they were planted (or volunteered) somewhat randomly. They’re mature trees, but not exactly the 100-year models planted by the original land owners here.

Wednesday

2:30 Highline Forum at Highline College Bldg 8. See my comments below.

Thursday

6:00pm City Council Meeting Regular Meeting – 24 Jul 2025 – Agenda

Saturday

Tribal Canoe Journeys Saltwater State Park. OK, I missed the big arrival ceremony this year. Still it was pretty great – got to talk to a ton of of participants and their families. Here’s a photo gallery from last year’ ceremony: Tribal Canoe Journey at Saltwater State Park

Also, not to go off on a tangent, but I want to remind people that the Snack Shack is back! Thursday – Sunday. No rentals atm. But a Seattle Dog is a fine reason to your visit to our very own State Park. 🙂

July 24, 2025 City Council Meeting Recap

6:00pm City Council Meeting Regular Meeting – 24 Jul 2025 – Agenda Transcript

As expected, it was a very short. When the new City Manager was first on board she complained of all the meetings – to which I am sympathetic. I may have made a strategic error in pointing out that in previous years the Council basically met only twice a month and often took August off. 😀 Burien does this – as do many other cities. Having ‘summer vacation’ is a mistake, as you’ll see once again when the load for meetings accelerates and too many large issues get rammed through (Marina, Masonic Home, Budget, etc. etc. etc.) too quickly. One of the best things you could do to improve local government – I mean all of it, would be to balance meeting items more evenly. And… I could win the Lotto next week. 😀

Public Comment

There was a public comment, praising Chief Boe’s Immigration Policy memo, and encouraging the Council to oppose cooperation with ICE beyond the strict letter of the law. Agreed.

There was a presentation from Legacy vice president Pierre Blosse thanking the City for their support for the parades last week. Mr. Blosse is a candidate for City Council and if he is successful that will mean at least three members of the Council will be past/present board members of Legacy — a big turn-around in the group’s fortunes.

Presentation from KC Metro

As you may have heard, the two new Link Light Rail stations will soon be opening – maybe even by the end of this year!

The Metro presenters, they seemed surprised that I was so complimentary of their current dashboard software – which tracks ridership. I was harsh about it once, but they fixed it. And now I’m lavish about how good it is. People always seem to get stuck on ‘criticism’. You’re not criticizing to criticize. You’re just telling people something is wrong so they fix it. And then everybody’s happy. That’s how government is supposed to work.

Consent Agenda

• ANTI-CRUISING ORDINANCE – 2nd Reading Motion: To approve Draft Ordinance No. 25-065 prohibiting cruising. As I wrote last week, I oppose this until it has staffing. Creating yet another largely unenforceable law will only frustrate residents. This one also leaves a loophole for future automation – ie. surveillance.
• TELECOMMUNICATIONS FRANCHISE AGREEMENT WITH HYPERFIBER – 2nd Reading. Much more high speed internet seems to be coming to Des Moines. But look carefully at the map. See all the areas that are not covered? I never got a straight answer as to why they were not committing to wire the entirety of the City.

NEW BUSINESS

• CITIZEN’S ADVISORY BOARD RE-ORGANIZATION. As I explained last week, I voted no. According to the language, the Mayor chooses all twenty three (23) members. The CAB presiding officer (the Mayor, or someone chosen by the Mayor) chooses all subcommittee assignments. But those Subcommittee members recommend grant funding which will not be reported directly to the Council. And with up to eleven at-large members (more than neighbourhood reps) it’s entirely possible for the Mayor to choose people so that one or two neighbourhoods completely box out everyone else. Since the group’s inception, the City has done absolutely zero work to reach out to a wider audience and that is creating exactly the opposite of sincere and broader representation for all 33,000 residents.

More, sir

Being such a short meeting, most of the Council felt comfortable expressing themselves a bit. It’s worth watching to give you a sense of the personality of the Council at the moment. Several colleagues were extremely appreciative of the parades – I was there for the Children’s Parade on Friday, and it definitely was an upgrade from recent years.

I found several comments (read the transcript) telling on a couple of issues and it’s an awkward discussion. For example, the Mayor said – and you know, she may have just been winging it, but words to the effect that “It doesn’t matter if the committee or an ordinance is good or not. It’s something to try.”  Fair enough, sometimes it’s good to experiment. But if you want to talk about finance and having the money to do various things, we have to take various things a bit more seriously.

In my closing comments, I talked about the Highline Forum. Councilmember Mahoney, our official rep., failed to mention how candid everyone is on how little we can expect from FIFA in 2026. Having attended all the Club games last month, I can vouch for that completely. No matter how many people travel to Seattle it is highly unlikely that it will make much of a difference for us. And if there aren’t opportunities to benefit Des Moines, we gotta stop talking about it as if there are. We do a lot of that. Putting a lot of effort into fun things, which is great, but spending as if they will make money, which they don’t.

Government isn’t supposed to be like Oliver Twist – you know, just be thankful for what you get. Sometimes what you get is not enough. (Do people even read Dickens anymore? 😀 )

The City of SeaTac reported that it is going forward with building a new civic campus. $40 million just for the land. But it’s more than that. Not only will the final cost be well of $100 million, they’re also sacrificing lucrative parking fees out of production. Forever.

They are also working to obtain North SeaTac Park for another $20 million. And then working out a deal with the Port of Seattle to help them finance it.

That isn’t an accident of geography or just fate. The fact is, the negative impacts of the airport are more severe in many ways in Des Moines than in SeaTac. But if you don’t take it seriously enough to embark on a program to get compensated, how can you change it?

There was also a report from Tukwila. Apparently, Southcenter Mall is experiencing something of a renaissance. Despite how much we hear about how malls dying, they are seeing improvements and if you walk around the area — away from Strander – the ‘bones’ of a really great, walkable downtown are in place.

Now the thing I wanted to bring home is that I think people have been sold a bill of goods that the airport is like living next to a highway. Tukwila – but without Southcenter. There’s nothing you can do about it.

But it’s not like that. You can’t begrudge Tukwila economic benefits from Southcenter, because the moment you leave the area, all the negative impacts go away. They get the pluses and the minuses. We get neither. That seems fair.

But Sea-Tac Airport airport is fundamentally different. You can be many miles away and it can be just as bad for your health, your city finances, education, crime, etc. as if you are right next door. That’s always been the inequity. It should not be the case that all the benefits accrue to one group, while all the negative impacts damage everyone else.

It’s not like living next to a freeway. Not at all.

But at some point, we bought into it – like Oliver Twist. Just be happy with what you get. But unlike Oliver we took it to the next level. We forgot what to even ask for.

It’s great to point out when we do events that are as nice as the Waterland Parade. But at some point, you know, if you want to solve the financial problems, you have to be able to have the courage to think about that differently.

Some bits of business…

City Manager Stuff

The City Manager’s new weekly report format is viewable here.

City Manager Report – July 18, 2025

The 24th Ave Road Project is finally moving along! Repaving is happening on Monday July 21st. Probably best to avoid if at all possible.

Sounders Free Tickets!

If you haven’t been to a Sounders FC soccer game, your first ticket is totally free! The program is sponsored by the Rave Foundation (which helped fund Midway Park, among other things)

Can we talk for a minute? Like many of you, I got (re)-interested in football when my kids started playing. In addition to the fun factor, I got hooked on Sounders games because they are just so convenient by transit. For me, I just hop on the 635 Shuttle Bus to the Angle Lake Station, get off at Union, and the Stadiums are two blocks away. That’s how transit is supposed to work.

SR-509 24th Ave and Veteran’s Drive are open and free!

Well, temporarily. 24th Ave and before you get to 200th, on your right (east side of the street) you’ll see a new exit onto the first mile of SR-509, which takes you directly to I-5.

There is also the new Veterans Memorial Drive near Military Road.

They will be tolled – but not yet! So take the next month and stick it to da man! WSDOT has free GoodToGo cards if you sign up, but before paying call 1-866-936-8246.

Metro Survey

As Link light rail gets ready to open here (maybe by end of 2025!) Metro invites you to learn more and take this survey by August 31.

Redondo Parking – get a pass!

However, Redondo Paid Parking is now live. So, get a sensibly priced annual pass by contacting the Marina. 🙂

Restaurants!

There have been more restaurant changes in town. So this is a good time to remind you of the local restaurant guide TakeOutDM.Com or TakeOutDesMoines.Com. There is a sign-up form which emails signees when various establishments are offering specials! If you are a new restaurant owner, you should also let them know when you are having said specials so they can spread the woid.

News Flash! After five years of being only ‘98198’, TakeOutDM is expanding its list to include establishments people think (or wish) were in Des Moines. For example, if you like Fr I really like Peyrassol West in Normandy Park across from the QFC.

This Week

Monday

Sonju Park Tour with Director of Public Works Mike Slevin. If you look at an aerial, we own a lot of trees and wetlands from 16th to 20th, not just the bit you see in the front.

Wednesday

2:30 Highline Forum at Highline College Bldg 8.

Thursday

6:00pm City Council Meeting Regular Meeting – 24 Jul 2025 – Agenda

As we get into summer, the load-balancing issue once again rears its head. At many points of the year, Council meetings will be packed with several major and unrelated items get jammed together like one of those unholy jello salads from the 1960’s. And then there will be deserts like this meeting where you’ll hear people comment about how much they enjoy ‘efficient’ meetings. But the price to be paid for these occasional respites is having to digest a ton of stuff you really don’t wanna have to swallow in one sitting other times of the year.

Consent Agenda

• ANTI-CRUISING ORDINANCE – 2nd Reading Motion: To approve Draft Ordinance No. 25-065 prohibiting cruising. As I wrote last week, I oppose this until it has staffing because it is unenforceable and leaves a loophole for future automation – ie. surveillance.
• TELECOMMUNICATIONS FRANCHISE AGREEMENT WITH HYPERFIBER – 2nd Reading. Much more high speed internet seems to be coming to Des Moines.
• 2025 DOE LOCAL SOLID WASTE FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE AGREEMENT: Authorize the City Manager to sign the 2025-2027 Local Solid Waste Financial Assistance Grant agreement between the City of Des Moines and the Washington State Department of Ecology.

NEW BUSINESS

• CITIZEN’S ADVISORY BOARD ORDINANCE. Speaking of bad Jello Salad, I will vote no. According to this language, the Mayor chooses all twenty three (23) members. The CAB presiding officer (the Mayor, or someone chosen by the Mayor?) chooses all subcommittee assignments? Subcommittee members recommend grant funding which will not be reported directly to the Council? And with more at-large members than neighbourhood reps, it’s entirely possible for one or two neighbourhoods to completely box out everyone else. This is exactly the opposite of how to obtain sincere and broader representation.

Last Week

Tuesday

UECNA Noise Summit. Sea-Tac Noise.Info participates in about fifteen community roundtables, both in the United States and this one in Europe. We follow the UECNA conference because the European Union is several years ahead of us in terms of various regulatory standards like curfews and air pollution. In short, their airlines have been able to run profitably while treating their communities more equitable. (Don’t tell them that however. 😀 Everything is relative. But objectively speaking, they are waaaaay ahead of us and we have a lot to learn.)

Wednesday

• Metro Regional Transit Committee meeting. We’re basically doing some last minute chatting about the Rapid Ride budget. Over 420,000 people are using KC. And about 117,000 are currently using Link Light Rail. As you can see, our Rapid Ride A has pretty much gotten back to pre-pandemic levels. The A-Line began in 2010 and is the oldest Rapid Ride line. And now we’re considering a ‘REV 2.0’.  The new Des Moines and Federal Way Light Rail stations should be opened by end of 2025.
  During the meeting, I mentioned I was about to get on transit to attend a Sounders game. And I was praised for ‘modeling good behaviour’. And my reply was “Modeling schmodeling. I’m doing it because it’s easier and cheaper. If it weren’t, I wouldn’t do it.” In my mind. 😀 But that’s the thing. I’m not ‘modeling’ anything. For me, it really is cheaper and easier – especially for events or day trips like to the fabulous new downtown walk.

Thursday

• King County Flood District Advisory Committee. We’re at the budget phase. The County originally only funded traditional, big river flooding projects. In the past decade, the mission of the Flood District expanded to cover urban funding – including neighbourhoods in cities like Des Moines. With recent cuts — including federal – the natural tendency is to dial back to basics. Our goal is to continue to defend funding for our projects. 🙂

Some bits of business…

City Manager Stuff

The City Manager’s new weekly report format is viewable here.

City Manager Report – July 11, 2025

SR-509 24th Ave and Veteran’s Drive open and free!

Well, temporarily. Drive north on 24th Ave and before you get to 200th, on your right (east side of the street) you’ll see a new exit onto the first mile of SR-509, which will take you directly to I-5. It will be tolled – but not yet! So take the next month and stick it to da man! WSDOT has promised free GoodToGo cards if you call customer service: 1-866-936-8246 now.

Redondo Parking – get a pass!

Speaking of not having to pay, apparently the Redondo Paid Parking did not go live as expected. So continue to park for free! And get an annual pass by contacting the Marina. 🙂

Restaurants!

There have been more restaurant changes in town. So this is a good time to remind you of the local restaurant guide TakeOutDM.Com or TakeOutDesMoines.Com. There is a sign-up form which emails signees when various establishments are offering specials! If you are a new restaurant owner, you should also let them know when you are having said specials so they can spread the woid.

News Flash! After five years of being only ‘98198’, TakeOutDM is expanding its list to include establishments people think (or wish) were in Des Moines. For example, if you like Fr I really like Peyrassol West in Normandy Park across from the QFC.

This Week

Tuesday

UECNA Noise Summit. At my day gig, Sea-Tac Noise.Info participates in about fifteen community roundtables, both in the United States and this one in Europe. The European Union is years ahead of us in terms of various regulatory standards like curfews and air pollution. They are where we want to be because, in short, their airlines have been able to run profitably while treating their communities more equitably. (Don’t tell them that however. 😀 Everything is relative. But objectively speaking, EU communities are waaaaay ahead of us and we have a lot to learn.)

Wednesday

• Metro Regional Transit Committee meeting.

Thursday

• King County Flood District Advisory Committee.

Not posting agenda on either here because there is a flurry of activity – multiple meetings in the same month. Basically, the goal for both committees is to get the County budget passed. More soon.

Last Week

Thursday

This week’s City Council featured a Committee of the Whole (COW) meeting at 5pm, some major decisions, and some surprises. Here’s the recap…

City Council Meeting Recap

Regular Meeting – 10 Jul 2025 – Agenda

The C.O.W.

Surface Water Management Utility Tree Preservation Program

Conceptually, the City is proposing to transfer ‘ownership’ of all its trees to the Surface Water Management (SWM) Fund. This could (and should) be transformational for the City in protecting and enhancing our environmental footprint. Or, it could be a fairly elaborate accounting trick, which raises taxes slightly, and frees up some money in other departments. It will likely be a bit of both, but hopefully skewed heavily towards the former.

At the dais, I likened it to a corporation where each department has its own computers. At a certain point, it decides to transfer ownership and maintenance of all that stuff to a central IT department. It off loads all those assets to the IT department, which (the theory goes) can provide better service and save each department time and money. In this case, the assets are trees. For me, that accounting aspect really is the fascinating part. You’re going to have the SWM fund expanding its portfolio dramatically. To a certain extent this is great. But it also comes with a real risk of transparency. In 2017, the City moved a large part of what was ‘the Marina’ into a ‘Waterfront Zone’. I still hear from people what a genius move it was. But frankly, it was mainly an accounting trick – a way to borrow more money, and avoid the discussion of actually having the Marina make more money. It’s literally the same staff doing the same stuff as before, but it’s now more difficult figuring out where the money goes.

Regardless, it will cost money. Some of it will likely require a small rate increase. Hopefully, it will also help us obtain a lot more grant funding. But as I’ve been saying for-evehhhr – we have a fortune of environmental riches, which cost a fortune to maintain. 🙂

The City did a great job of making clear that this program is only about City-owned trees and wetlands. But of course, the Council likes to make everything about everything and talk about ‘overall tree canopy!’, which is the wrong discussion. Why? Because whenever you use some arbitrary ‘overall’ number, it gives politicians an excuse to do less, to say “We’re doing great, look at that overall number! No. You look at each project individually for opportunities to maximise environmental value.

One thing. In the years leading up to SR-509 and Link Light Rail, both Sound Transit and WSDOT offered thousands of free, high quality trees. We took zero. Sure wish we’d had a program like this then.

Implementation of WA Department of Commerce Grant for Economic Analysis of the Electric Water Taxi Pilot Program

This did not happen. Basically, the City talked about how they had been conversing with King County to see if they might be interested in doing this study. There was some vague notion of handing over to King County the $160,000 grant we received to do this rubbish study so they could do their own rubbish study. If someone offers you $160,000 to study the economic value of bird calls, who says ‘no’?

I asked if we might simply repurpose the money towards something real.

Regular City Council Meeting

Investment Policy Update, Credit Card Policy Update

These were bundled together as ‘code cleanup’, Cm Grace-Matsui spoke enthusiastically about ‘code clean up’. Which is great, but I see them as very different things.

On the plus side, it’s great that the Council is now getting regular investment reports. It’s hard to overstate how much that did not happen before.

At the risk (see what I did there? 😀 ) of sounding ungrateful, what I really want is to see on investment reports are comparatives — year on year.  If you’re going to manage investments, you need to have a clear idea of the returns you’re getting over time.

But what always  goes through my mind during these ‘code cleanup’ celebrations is this: somehow we seem to putter along just fine for years at a time out of compliance. Not just on this, but dozens of things (no exaggeration.) It is a reasonable question as to why one even bothers updating various codes when government seems to ‘work’ whether they’re in place or not. And that goes for our council ‘rules’. In other words, how often does one hear any elected or staff member say,

“Gee Bob, I have deep concerns about proceeding with (x) until we’re in compliance on DMMC 451.3.x! What do you think?” 😀

Redondo Fishing Pier Construction Bid

The City received a bid under the budgeted amount! So, it looks like we’re a go for $5,811,000! In fact, this is the second bond-related bid that has come in under.  In this case, ‘value engineering’ seems to have done the trick.

City Council Protocol Manual Update and Adoption

Passed 5-2. I voted ‘no’ along with Nutting. It’s been heading in the wrong direction since I’ve been watching in 2008. But until more people run for office who care about good governance, it will likely continue to slide. There are simply too many incentives now for Cms to go in the other direction.

Cm Nutting voted ‘no’ over time. He thinks meetings go on too long as it is. He’s right in one sense, wrong in another. But this is an existential conversation the Council has been having for a very long time.

Frankly, the material is getting more and more complicated because cities, especially Des Moines are getting more complicated. Many of us simply do not study enough (sorry), preferring to simply follow the City recommendation and avoid all that pesky homework. If you trust the City, that’s an easy call. But frankly, that is how one ends up with the City going years without doing ‘code cleanup’. 😀

Cm Nutting has not appeared at the dais for several months. Many of us like to scowl about ‘wasting time’ – which is a proxy for ‘asking questions’. Either you elect Cms who value that diligence – including a willingness to put in extra hours, regardless of jobs and family, or you elect retirees like me, or you simply give the keys to the staff — and give up any pretense of the Council providing useful policy and oversight.

What I find offensive is that, in previous decades, Cms worked much harder. They just did. They had jobs and families and still made the time. Today, with all the conveniences we have (including remote access), electeds should have far less to complain about, and yet we complain more…

And in a bit of irony, the City put in the agenda packet a recommendation to move meetings from 6PM to 5PM — with no advance notice. The Council already voted to have a second reading for items of business. Having the City itself try to put something that meaningful through in one night was not a good look. Especially since we’ve already given up on committees – largely to reduce the workload. It did not pass.

As a sort of ‘consolation prize’, the City is talking about bringing back Zoom remote participation – something that should never have left in 2023. The fact is: Public participation actually peaked during the pandemic. Moving meetings from 7PM to 6PM caused a backslide. Ending Zoom means it will likely never come back. What people don’t get is that when you allow muscles to atrophy, it is many times harder to get back into shape. And that includes public participation.

What concerned me most is that none of my colleagues seem to get this. As a geezer who walks to City Hall, I’d be fine with meetings at three in the afternoon. In the summer, that would give me time to get in nine holes after. But it’s not about me. Or the Council. Or the staff. There is no way to get more people involved if we don’t make these things as easy as possible for them.

In view of the increased complexity, there is no way to have good government without the Council putting in a bit more effort. Sorry, not sorry.

Anti-Cruising Ordinance

Passed 6-1. I abstained – which counts as a ‘no’. Although I agree with the concept in principal, it is, for all intents and purposes unenforceable.

But the main reason to vote no is because this is a foot in the door towards surveillance. Having worked in the Soviet Union back in the day, this is something very personal to me. People will scoff, but in the past decade the world has made alarming moves towards that surveillance state. Super convenient; but convenience is not safety. The City already has a number of cameras throughout the City. But currently they can only be used to track a crime as it is occurring (photo enforcement).

All I asked for is that the monitor be confined to a designated human in order to prevent future automation (surveillance.)

By leaving the ordinance open-ended, it opens the door to a future City Council simply hitting the ‘on’ switch and tracking everyone in the City. I have already heard electeds talk about how much they favour that sort of thing and I’m not having it.

Actually reducing poor behaviour is challenging without a police presence. But this puts the cart before the horse. Let’s get the staff we need to do something real, then worry about ordinances.

Strategic Planning Agreement with Raftelis

Passed 7-0. I almost voted ‘no’ because, essentially, we’re spending $75k to hire a firm to do work we’ve already done, or could do, but cannot agree on. There I said it. 🙂

We spent $100k in 2023  on a communications study that did nothing.  The ‘outreach’ mentioned in the presentation, once again, ignores the majority of the community. We spent $10-15k on a Mission Statement last autumn that was supposed to be the goals we’re driving towards.

The financial analysis work the City Manager mentioned will be valuable. But why haven’t we done the basic work we can do — looking at the Marina – because it’s simply too politically fraught? And even worse, there was zero mention of the airport – although that has always been the single biggest driver of economic decline (not growth, decline) in our history.

My family used to have horses. Super-expensive. But since I wasted a boatload of money on… er… boats… I couldn’t complain. 😀

Anyhoo, ya know how horses (and cows) are always givin’ ya the side eye? It’s not because you’re suspicious (OK, you are, not me. 🙂 ) It’s because they don’t see what is directly in front very well. I referred to this at the last meeting as a scotoma. Except that it’s not some true ‘blind’ spot like glaucoma. Horses just see the world differently. Even though they’re missing a ton of visual information right in front of their noses (literally), to them the world looks entirely ‘normal’. They truly don’t know what they’re missing.

My concern with hiring any strategic planner: if they don’t have specific expertise with key issues like airports and marinas; if they follow our Mission Statement; if they continue to survey the same people we always point them to, they are likely to have that same kind of blind spot – through no fault of their own. But still, obtain the same rubbish conclusions prompted by previous rubbish studies.

Telecommunications Franchise Agreement with HyperFiber

I seemed to tax my colleagues’ patience, but I found this fascinating. We’re going from zero to one to two to potentially five choices for broadband internet in Des Moines just this year! And I’m curious to know why. Why now is Des Moines turning out to be profitable?

It’s worth asking because, back in the pandemic, it sucked for about 2,000 school children who had to use really dodgy ‘wi-fi hotspots’ in order to go to school.

Closing Comments

I try mightily to stay out of Federal politics – although I know it’s where 99% of your ‘political’ attention lies. But the passage of HR#1 ¹(One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025) is everything I hate about local politics, expanded to the Federal level.

As a Boomer, I am sick to death of watching my country lose sooooooooooooooooooooooo much money over and over and over. When I arrived here in the mid-1970’s I had no idea that might be the high point. Since then, it’s been a stair step of one step forward and two steps back on everything from the environment to jobs to building houses to transparency.

It’s time to look in the mirror and recognise how much our generation prioritised us — and how little we are leaving for the next generation.

See here’s the funny thing. Even with a national debt seventy (70!) times what it was when I got to America, and a city with objectively less than it had when I moved here, I basically haven’t been bothered much at all — besides the absence of some petunias and decorative cabbage on Marine View Drive. The City has definitely changed. But those changes haven’t made it the same value proposition for the next generation it should be.

The OBBBA will likely be fine for me. And despite whatever feelings you may have about the current administration, if you are retired and well enough off to live or own property, or live at any senior community in Des Moines, financially, it will likely be fine for you too. The bill offers some shiny penny tricks for lower-income people like tax-free tips. But the real winners are not ‘the one percent’. The real winners are us. 

But it will be disastrous for the environment, for public education, public health, and basically the entire future. That’s the really cynical part. All the painful bits, the trillions more in debt, start in a few years. It’s all about now.

I’ve watched a number of protests here in recent months and I am sympathetic. But this has been building for a very long time. Decades. No matter how bad the decisions, people applaud that ‘the system works!’ and assume you can just change direction every 2-4-6-8 years.

But that is not how government works and why I am so careful in my votes. If you do the wrong thing on a City Council vote, you may have to live with it for a decade. And it is the height of cynicism to say in a cheery tone, “If something isn’t right, we’ll fix it next year!” Liar, liar, pants on fire.

At the federal level, even if the entire political landscape changes in 2026 or 2028, future governments will be locked into a series of even worse choices. It’s a boat anchor, disguised as a promise of ‘growth’.

Sound familiar?

Most of the services your City provides beyond the bare minimum are grant based and only last a year or two. So every couple of years, we struggle to retain what we already have. We consider it a ‘win’simply to replace something broken. We have to completely max out the credit card to build a Marina Steps. We applaud when any local foundation helps the under-served now. But devote almost nothing to deal with prevention.

We constantly praise one another for what we’re doing now. But what is happening now, at the Federal level, and at your City Council, are inevitable when people spend decade after decade constantly prioritising me and now.

My kids are doing fine. But despite being smarter, prettier, and above all much nicer, they are nowhere near where I was at 40. Most kids – regardless of education – are not doing better than their parents, which was (I was told) the promise of the USA.

Two major wars? Who cares. Great Financial Crisis? Nope. COVID. Pshaw. The stock market, your 401k, and your property value always recover. Which should tell you what people actually care about.

I can’t do anything about the Federal thing. But I can tell you that I think we need an attitude adjustment at every level of government. It will require more work, not less, to flip that script. And it definitely won’t be about changing one person – either at the Federal level or here. Somehow we have to find a way to acknowledge what we prioritised, what we’ve lost, and why.

But I can tell you this. As I wrote before, once you lose any muscle function, you have to work harder, not less, just to recover what you lost.

Some bits of business…

City Manager Stuff

The City Manager’s new weekly report format is viewable here.

City Manager Report – July 3, 2025

SR-509 24th Ave is now open and it’s free!

Well, temporarily. Drive north on 24th Ave and before you get to 200th, on your right (east side of the street) you’ll see a new exit onto the first mile of SR-509, which will take you directly to I-5. It will be tolled – but not yet! So take the next month and stick it to da man! WSDOT has promised free GoodToGo cards, but I haven’t seem ’em yet. Stay tuned.

Redondo Parking – get a pass!

Speaking of having to pay, Redondo Paid Parking is now paid. You can get an annual pass by contacting the Marina. 🙂

Restaurants!

There have been more restaurant changes in town. So this is a good time to remind you of the local restaurant guide TakeOutDM.Com or TakeOutDesMoines.Com. There is a sign-up form which emails signees when various establishments are offering specials! If you are a new restaurant owner, you should also let them know when you are having said specials so they can spread the woid.

News Flash! After five years of being only ‘98198’, TakeOutDM is expanding its list to include establishments people think (or wish) were in Des Moines. For example, if you like Fr I really like Peyrassol West in Normandy Park across from the QFC.

This Week

Thursday

This week’s City Council meeting will feature a Committee of the Whole meeting at 5PM. And every time I hear the City refer to the ‘COW’, I just have to smile re. complaints that Citizens Advisory Committee had to be changed to create a more dignified acronym.

Regular Meeting – 10 Jul 2025 – Agenda – Pdf

The C.O.W.

Surface Water Management Utility Tree Preservation Program

The City and our environmental consultant have compiled city-wide canopy data. Apparently they found 29% canopy citywide – which matches the Port study from 2017 so not sure if they did a new survey or what. Whatever.

But only 16% of that is on City-owned land (which makes up 5% of Des Moines). And the City has identified “stormwater-beneficial trees” (e.g. Tree clusters and forests).

Back in the dim mists of time, the City’s Environment Committee was more of an ‘environment committee’ and considered trees, water, wetlands, and even air sometimes in a more holistic fashion. In recent decades, it kinda withdrew into being ‘the stormwater utility’.

In my tenure as chair of the committee, I have tried to shift it back towards that broader vision.

State regulations are also now nudging us in that direction – to conserve and enhance tree canopy where it connects with all that stuff. Since we have staff and consultants who have those environmental chops this is good news. Eg. our consultants also work with us on the Beach Park and other interfaces like the Shoreline Master Plan and salmon recovery.

It will cost money. Some of it will come via a small rate increase. And some of it we can obtain through more grant funding. But as I’ve been saying for-evehhhr – we have a fortune of environmental riches, which cost a fortune to maintain. 🙂

Implementation of WA Department of Commerce Grant for Economic Analysis of the Electric Water Taxi Pilot Program

See below….

Regular City Council Meeting

Investment Policy Update, Credit Card Policy Update

I guess these go together as ‘accounting’ things, but they’re kinda not. They’re the latest in a long string of long overdue policy refreshes.

It’s hard to overstate the previous ‘transparency’ problems. There is an ongoing defensiveness/denialism about this (all’s well that ends well! and great job!) which I find troubling. Call it the ‘Jewish’ part of my soul. But when you don’t acknowledge past mistakes, you can be sure that, sooner or later, they will come back. And what makes it come back is the pearl-clutchy “How dare you!” Of course I dare. 😀 It takes almost no time for people to forget. (See anti-cruising ordinance below.)

Redondo Fishing Pier Construction Bid

The City received a bid under the budgeted amount! So, it looks like we’re a go for $5,811,000! In fact, this is the second bond-related bid that has come in under.  In this case, ‘value engineering’ seems to have done the trick.

City Council Protocol Manual Update and Adoption

I will vote ‘no’. It’s been heading in the wrong direction since I’ve been watching.

Anti-Cruising Ordinance

Speaking of how quickly people forget. I know how upsetting this issue is for people in neighbourhoods like Redondo. In 2021, the Council proposed an anti-street racing ordinance and improved signage – both of which were supposed to help. At the time, we discussed at length how difficult it is to enforce anything like this because the legal standard required a police officer to not only witness the event(s) but also see the face of the driver.

Unless the legal standard has changed, I want to level-set expectations. I’m not a fan of ordinances unless they can actually do something. We’ve passed several ordinances and automations. One made money (speed cameras). We like money. 🙂 But actually reducing poor behaviour is challenging without a police presence.

Consultant services contract on ferry economic impact study – presentation by Dan Eernissee

If Mr. Eernissee’s name sounds familiar, he was one of the finalists for the job of City Manager. Apparently, the new City Manager hired him to run this study. Mr. Eernissee does economic development work for the City of Everett, which has no ferry. (However, their Port district – a separate agency – was a key player in the recent state effort to create a new ‘Mosquito Fleet’.)

I urge you to read this agenda item carefully. The City continues to promote any number of Pants On Fire statements that the 2022-2023 Ferry Pilot program was a ‘success’ and continues to publish the same truly misleading and inaccurate financial information as the previous regime.

This goes beyond cynical. My colleagues, and the City, continue to talk about how ‘someone else will pay for a ferry’. If so, why are we continuing to host ferry vendors? Why publish this nonsense story rather than an objective re-assessment? Hell, why did we even apply for this study? Why does the scope of work mention our continued involvement? If it’s supposed to be about ‘environmentalism’, why does it ask us to consider if we’re interested in a fossil fuel vessel if an electric one is unavailable?

The very unscientific study we did after that program says:

• 76% indicated they arrived at the Des Moines ferry in a passenger vehicle.
• 76% were 55 years of age or older, and 5% were under 35 years old.

If King County is supposed to be running this? Why aren’t they doing this work? Who ‘studies’ something unless they intend to ask their tax payers to foot the bill? We already know the answers to all this stuff. This is a final kick in the you know where by the same people who brought you the same disastrous financial policies we will be digging out from for years to come. Because it looks cool.

Telecommunications Franchise Agreement with HyperFiber

This may pass by unnoticed, but as a big fan of electrons-I would note that Des Moines has taken a decade too long to obtain fiber. So much so that a former colleague wanted the City to attempt to establish its own utility. It’s gotten ‘better’ in the sense that we went from zero in many neighbourhoods to where there may be as many as four throughout the City in the next two years. However: anyone who has traveled to places like Japan and South Korea and any number of places in Europe will know how woefully behind the entire region is. Public 5G cell service in Seoul is faster than most people’s in-ground fiber here. Which is insane-o given that we’re supposed to be this ‘tech hub’.

Last Week

Nothing! (Well, nothing ‘official’.) But since I did take a brief detour to the 51st State (too soon? 😀 ), this gives me a shameless opportunity to display to plug Spud, one of my fave beavers of all time in celebration of Canada Day! (That’s not AI, btw, courtesy of Mike’s Beavers in Splendid Saskatchewan!) 🙂