This Week

Oh, you thought I’d miss a Weekly Update? It takes more than some ‘Pandemic’ to stop me from gassing on about Des Moines! Actually, I was kinda waitin’ to hear what Governor Inslee had to say at 5:30pm. Short answer: We’re on lockdown, folks.

I will not be at the Port Of Seattle Special Meeting (agenda) tomorrow. Although it will be of great interest to people in Des Moines and I urge you to watch it with me. Not on my couch, of course. But here. It will include a contract to (finally) sound insulate Villa Enzi condominiums on 216th and allocates the first money to the new sound insulation initiative I keep banging on about and finalizes the Flight Corridor Safety Program (aka ‘tree cutting along 200th’). Though originally slated to chop down 3,000 trees, it’s been reduced now to 170. Whew.

And I will (apparently) not be at City Hall for our City Council Meeting (agenda) at the extra-special time of 5pm on Thursday March 26th. But I will be attending ‘telephonically’ per our City Manager’s recommendation. Technically, you can’t prevent people from showing up to a public meeting, but we are encouraging people to stay home and watch on Channel 21. People who show up will be ‘screened’ –this simply means taking yer temperature and answering some basic health questions. Now normally I’d be like, “screw yer telephonic, mate” because every call-in-councilmember I’ve ever witnessed has been something of a joke. But speaking of jokes, the Agenda is such that that is the least of my objections. More below.

Last Week

I did not meet with City Manager Michael Matthias. More below.

I did a bunch of driving around, delivering food, running errands, whatnot.

I had a tele-conference training on Emergency Preparedness for the National Incident Management System NIMS, which was interesting. There is a whole system in place from top to bottom which is designed to keep all the governments running in case of situations like this. Thank God. I’m not entirely thrilled with how we all are handling the current Coronavirus thing, but I’m probably a little calmer about it than you are after learning just how well-thought out most of these systems are.

As of Sunday, Saltwater State Park was the busiest I have ever seen it. I mean, the parking lot is overflowing. The Marina Beach Park and Redondo Beach are also going gangbusters. I see whole gaggles of children and parents congregating at every school. Frankly, people are simply not taking the situation seriously enough. I’m sure I’ll come off as a total jerk to some, but I spent a good deal of time during the week asking, begging our City Manager to shut these down. I’ll stand by that because, as one of my neighbours told me, “If we’re going to go through all this pain, we shouldn’t do it half-assed.” Right.

Newsflash: People have already tested positive here. In Des Moines. When you’re passing dozens and dozens of people, we think we’re ‘social distancing’. But we’re not. Please stay home. I know it’s boring as hell and I know there are only so many shows you can binge or games you can play. But stay home.

One last thing: If you aren’t at home and you see people congregating like ignorant jerks? SAY SOMETHING! Don’t place politeness over your community.

The Incoming Wave

There is a whole timeline of how this disease is supposed to spread. And I think one reason people have so much trouble taking it seriously is that they think that what we’re doing now is ‘it’. This is not ‘it’. This is like a 7-10 days before it.

The way to think about the situation is that we’re like in a boat and there’s a slow motion Tsunami coming. We know it’s coming so we batten down the hatches (note to non-sailors, that really is a thing). The tighter you make the boat, the less chance you have of being swamped. Sure, you may get some water inside, but if you’re good, not enough to be a total disaster.

When we behave in cavalier way because people aren’t dropping like flies now, we’re like the guy who waited until the wave was upon him to batten down the hatches.

Again, resources to help people to cope are starting to emerge, including food, transportation, unemployment benefits and small business loans. I’ll be posting specifics on my Facebook Page as they come in.

Emergency Government

Since this whole thing started, there has been an almost complete shutdown on information from City Hall to City Council (well to me at least) with the exception of occasional Coronavirus updates. It’s disconcerting to get questions from Councilmembers in other cities about Des Moines’ business. It tells me that they’re getting more info than we are (or at least I am).

When I entered office I complained that in a Council/Manager form of government, you can really have a tough time getting information if you’re in the minority. And when you couple that with the Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA), one can feel pretty blind as to what is going on at City Hall.

To review: in our form of government, the City Council has no real authority outside of official meetings. It’s almost completely up to the discretion of the City Manager as to what information to share. And it’s illegal for a quorum of Councilmembers to meet outside of a public meeting–and that includes emails and phone calls. And there is a limit on the number of meetings during a calendar year. And only the Mayor or City Manager can call a special meeting. And as a practical matter, the Mayor or City Manager have total control over the items on a meeting Agenda.

So during a declared emergency, where there are either no or severely truncated meetings, business either doesn’t get done, gets done on auto-pilot or is left to the City Manager or Mayor’s discretion. Which is OK for yer basic short-term emergency (nuclear explosion, volcanic eruption, etc. 😀 ) This makes total sense when one needs to focus 100% of the corporation’s attention on instaneous considerations of public safety.

However, we’re definitely not well-suited to a crisis with a months-long trajectory which doesn’t feel quite as dramatic as the above examples. One where it’s difficult to physically meet and we don’t have a fancy schmancy video-conferencing system. One that not only allows for Councilmembers to interact seamlessly with each other and the public at large (remember, these are public meetings). When you add all that up then you have a recipe for… um… well I dunno exactly what it’s a recipe for, but it’s not something I want a steady diet of, that’s for sure.

(As I write this, I just got a reply from the Mayor saying that video-conferencing is in the works, so stop worrying. Good!) My only reply is that it would be nice if the entire Council were getting updates that work like that is getting done. Also, with such a truncated meeting Agenda, how does one even find out what is going on, right?

Speaking of City Hall, we’re running a skeleton crew at City Hall, which is largely unavoidable. That too will need to be examined: how can we keep more of the corporation running so we can keep helping the public as much as possible.

Anyhoo, not trying to get all ‘negative’. I’m an engineer and process improvement is how I think. The staff I’ve spoken with have been doing an admiral job–special shout out to our City Clerk Bonnie Wilkins who has  had one of the toughest jobs in King County these past few weeks answering a gazillion questions at all hours, seven days a week, with amazing patience and good humour.

This Week

It’s now all-Coronavirus all-the-time. A lot of the City government is shut down or curtailed now (including the court.) Our City is taking COVID-19 very seriously (as I hope you are) and you can check here for good info from King County on the current status of the situation.

I’ll be meeting with City Manager Michael Matthias to get an update on what his Staff are doing to keep the City safe and functioning.

I’m also doing a certain amount of volunteering–basically giving people lifts to places now that so many things are shut down.

There are a number of routine meetings that are now being done via tele-conference (ironically one is on Emergency Preparedness) which I’ll talk about if and when anything interesting happens. 😀

Resources to help people to cope are starting to emerge, including food, transportation, unemployment benefits and small business loans. I’ll be posting specifics on my Facebook Page as they come in.

Last Week

Our City Council meeting (Agenda) was cancelled. I have no further information yet as to when meetings will resume. I’m trying to balance my concern for this pandemic with the need for oversight. Frankly, I’m a bit nervous letting the government run itself for too long without the full Council having a say. We’re way behind schedule on Committee meetings, partly due to the recent resignation/appointment process, but also because (sorry colleagues) not enough activity was going on at the committee-level  last year. We’ve got some catching up to do.

Thursday I had a brief chat with 30th State Reps. Mike Pellicciotti and Jesse Johnson–mainly to thank them (again) for their work on various pieces of legislation, including big things like HB1847, but smaller and very meaningful work like getting money to repair the Redondo Pier and getting funding for South King County Fire & Rescue to buy a new boat, which has been sorely needed for some time. By the way: Our 30th Legislators are unique in that they make a point of scheduling regular phone calls with City electeds while the Legislature is in session–which I totally appreciate.

Friday I donated blood. OK, not exactly part of the job. But I got a note from the WA Department Of Health telling electeds that the blood supply had dipped dangerously low–people are not donating due to the Corona Virus outbreak. They want me to assure you that it is completely safe to donate. Check out the Bloodworks Northwest web site to make an appointment.

The New Normal

When I was six, I got sick; I mean really sick. That took about two years to get past and I still have ‘issues’ as a result. I used to kinda laugh at how ‘trivial’ so many common diseases now are. For example, a typical case of meningitis can now be treated with a single injection. We’ve come a long way.

The COVID-19 response, as uneven as it has been thus far, is actually a big step forward.  As big a pain as it now seems, it’s going to save a lot of lives.  And my real point is that it’s going to be the new normal. We’re going to be doing ‘this’ every few years or so because it’s clear that such things are becoming much more common (Remember: there was a COVID 1-18, right?)

So we should think about what that means going forward. Back in the early ’60’s when I got sick–when people in general got sick–you just shrugged and dealt with it as best you could on an individual level. There was not a great understanding of how to prevent whole populations from coming down with Polio or Measles or whatever. If you got sick, that was really sad, but… society just kept limping along–which only got more people get sick.

Now, we have an understanding of how to ‘flatten the curve’; which is great. A whole bunch fewer people are going to get sick as a result of all the steps we’re now being asked to take. It really is progress. But to many of you it certainly doesn’t feel like progress. For most of us ‘progress’ means not impacting my daily life. We just haven’t had a lot of practice dealing with community-wide events like this. We don’t yet have the infra-structure to cope with schools, daycare, movies, sporting events, churches, basically everything being shut for a few days, weeks until things blow over.

The way that I’m thinking about it is kinda like a very, very long Tornado Drill–a thing which we don’t do in Puget Sound, but which is extremely common in other parts of the United States. Basically, you go into a basement, with some snacks, water and a radio and you wait for the twister to pass. You remain calm. You’re almost certainly not going to get hurt so long as you don’t act stupidly. Those things usually only last a few hours.

OK, so the trick for us is two-fold. First, as with the Tornado Drill not to panic. That’s actually  the easy part. People used to Tornado Drills have that part down.

The second one is a bit more tricky because this thing may last a good long while. How many of us even have one of those ’emergency preparedness’ kits we’re all supposed to have, right? Well, maybe this isn’t as extreme as an earthquake, but we do have to think about hunkering down for several weeks now. How many of us have plans for School. Work. Church. Shopping. Daycare (!)

Because here’s the thing: This is not the last time we’re gonna deal with this sort of thing. New viruses like this are springing up every couple of years now. Some turn out to be mild and some not so much. And if we’re smart, we’re gonna have to expect something like this to happen from time to time. Again, it’s the new normal.

So my thinking is not so much about ‘The dreaded COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020!’. I’m pretty sure we’re going to be fine. Annoyed as hell, but fine.  What I’m already thinking about is next time. There will likely be any number of  proposals to dramatically expand emergency spending when this is over. Some will be worthy and some will be totally cockamamie (remember after 9/11 how many cities were seriously thinking about buying tanks?) Yeah, I’m not voting for any of that.

What I hope we take away from this mostly is on a more personal level. We are all going to need to be prepared to do what we’re all doing now–which really is not all that onerous or scary, right? We’ll just need to do do it in a less frantic way (got enough toilet paper and ramen, guys? 😀 ) It’s just a very long Tornado Drill.

Currently the City is providing information and keeping essential services running. But going forward we will also need to a lot more. We’ll need to help individuals and businesses get services to help them stay on their feet. We’ll need to advocate for much better and above all consistent State and Federal policies so that when this sort of thing reccurs, we can quickly provide ways to get relief to individuals and businesses. We will have to learn to all be on the same page from the jump.

Please stay inside. Wash yer hands obsessively–with soap. Just to be clear: we’re not over-reacting. And it’s not the end of the world. But it is the new normal.

This Week

Wednesday is the next Reach Out Des Moines (RODM) meeting. The stated purpose of the group is to reduce ‘juvenile violence’ but the stuff that gets talked about are some pretty basic stuff: activities for kids, finding out who needs a school uniform, making it easier for kids to get to school. Anything that keeps kids showing up is a big help.

Wednesday is also a Sound Cities Association (SCA) ‘networking’ event. I think I’m getting the Pork entree. Any chance I have to practice ‘mingling’ is worthwhile. 😀

Thursday I’m back in Olympia for yet another hearing on HB2315 (Port Package Updates). Why so many frickin’ trips? Because there are like eleven steps to getting a State bill passed. It starts in a Local Government committee, then goes to an Executive Session, then goes for a finance review, then… you get the idea. It’s the democratic process. And even though we got through the House unanimously, we’re now moving to the Senate where things might go completely differently. Or even if they don’t, someone may want to tack on an amendment–which sends it back to the Hosue for re-evaluation. And the session runs out and then you have to start all over again next session. In fact, that’s one very common technique for killing legislation–just innocently tack on a tiny little deely-bobber when you know there’s only a week left in session. Poof. It’s gone. And that’s also why it’s best to keep legislation simple. Because the more detailed you get, the more likely some guy from a far-away district will have a question and then… Poof. It’s gone. Anyhoo, you gotta show up for every stage because when you take it for granted bad things happen.

Somewhere in there are various sit-downs with various Councilmembers and, in my other ‘job’ with SeatacNoise.info, taking a look at people’s homes with Port Packages. As I shoulda expected, once HB2315 became vaguely possible, a gazillion people now want to know if they can get help.

Last Week

Last week ended getting dominated by (as has become the norm) ‘Port Packages’ and ‘political intrigue’. I’m waiting for things to calm down to boring mode. One note: I’ve put more miles on my car since the election than in most entire years.

Tuesday was a regular Port Of Seattle Meeting. Borrrrrrring. (More below.)

Wednesday was not my first Sound Cities Association (SCA) event by any means, but it was my first Public Issues Committee (PIC) 101 meeting.  As I said last time, SCA is sort of a ‘league’ of all us smaller cities to try to have more regional clout with the much larger Puget Sound Regional Council. There are all sorts of sub-committees involving transportation, flood control, human services, issues, public safety, etc. but PIC is sort of a clearinghouse for all issues of concern that we want to lobby the State on. Our representative on ‘the PIC’ is Traci Buxton.

One fascinating thing to me about SCA is that it is ultra-democratic. Almost nothing becomes an official position unless all 38 cities agree. (Maybe this is a response to how un-democratic the rest of regional governance can be where small cities almost always get voted down by larger cities like Seattle and Bellevue.) The only problem is that this means that a lot of issues (like airport stuff) don’t get taken up because they are not of concern to everyone. See the thing a lot of people don’t recognize is that King County is huge. It is the fourth largest county in the United States by area. So there are a lot of very small cities that have very different needs/wants/desires.

City Council Meeting Recap

Thursday was the 02/13/20 regular City Council Meeting (Agenda, Video) where Luisa Bangs was re-appointed. Here is a letter Mayor Pina and Deputy Mayor Mahoney wrote to the Waterland Blog. And here is my reply.

One little detail for you pros out there: there was a Consent Agenda Item (remember, we discussed those a while back?) to schedule a ‘routine clean-up’ of the Municipal Code. You may have noticed a little kerfuffle at the beginning of the meeting where I asked of that Item could be re-scheduled from 12 March to the following meeting (I’ll be in the other Washington meeting with a bunch of Councilmembers from nearby cities to lobby on airport issues.) The Mayor and City Attorney scrambled to tell me if moving that item were even possible. And acted all puzzled as to why I might want to do that for ‘routine clean-up’? Well, because there are some zoning changes in there that are important. Now you pros know that councilmembers get one ‘phone-in’ meeting per year. Can I do a phone-in? Sure I can. Are phone-ins totally useless for discussing detailed issues like zoning? Sure they are. So I sure hope they agree to re-schedule. 🙂

Re. the applications for the vacant Council position, I was extremely pleased that I got to speak at length with David Black, Tad Doviak, Dan Harrington, Semere Melake, Meiling Sproger and Harry Steinmetz. And the question I had when I was done was: WHERE THE HELL HAVE THESE PEOPLE BEEN HIDING? All these people would have made fine choices for the position and what I told all of them was: 2021 is just around the corner. There will be four spots open. Run hard for them. Traditionally, it’s been very tough to run against an incumbent so most people don’t even try. But the last election proved that the ice is breaking. And the actions of the current majority, captured on video during the first four meetings will give the right candidate a lot of ammunition.

Panning For Gold

Occasionally, someone will ask me to back up my policy ideas–especially compared to councilmembers who have had a lot more time on the job. And I just direct them to video archives of all sorts of boring meetings I’ve participated in over the years. Call it my unpaid internship if you will. City Council Meetings in six cities. PSRC Meetings. SCA Meetings. Port Of Seattle Meetings. Highline Forum Meetings. King County Council Meetings. Puget Sound Clean Air Meetings. SCATbd Meetings, State Legislature hearings. A gazillion ‘stakeholder’ get-togethers.  I started attending these meetings years before I joined the Des Moines City Council. I’ve logged over 300 of these in the past four years. Which is insane, right? I mean, think of all the episodes of Star Trek I’ve missed?

Why? When we started SeatacNoise.Info, we quickly realized that we had to learn what was going on, not only in each of the affected cities, but also in all the organizations that have influence over Sea-Tac Airport. Because so many of the decisions made by each City going back sixty years seemed to be so contrary to the interest of residents.

So I started attending all these affairs for the same reason beat reporters do. You’re panning for gold: hours and hours of boredom in order to get the occasional nugget you can’t obtain any other way. There isn’t a meeting I go to where I don’t meet someone or have some side-conversation or overhear something that actually matters. At least… if you want to understand the why.

So when I comment on various issues it’s usually because I’ve already  seen how people approach the same challenges in lots of other places. On a wide range of issues and processes I know what is and is not being done, or is at least possible. That’s the side-benefit of attending all these boring soirées: one gets to learn how people in far away lands with exotic names like Tukwila and Federal Way conduct their affairs. And then, like Marco Polo, if you make it back alive, you get to report back on this amazing thing called ‘spaghetti’. Of course, then you have to convince people to try it, but that’s a story for another day.