Happy Holidays. There isn’t much going on this week, so I decided to do my first ‘essay’ in a while. It’s a longee. But our last meeting was action-packed with several truly big ticket items concerning our future. Rather than go down a list I wanted to talk about the three items I think say something about where the Council has been and where we might be going in 2026. Two were about pay raises. The third concerns the largest airport expansion in Sea-Tac History — the Sustainable Airport Master Plan (SAMP).
City Council Pay Raise
Outgoing Mayor Buxton introduced this a while back. It used to be the custom that mayors held the gavel, but avoided proposing legislation. It has been my experience that the old approach worked better. Anything to do with ‘pay’ is a touchy subject and perhaps by proposing something she won’t benefit from, it was easier than asking other sitting Cms to do so. To be clear: no sitting Cm will benefit from it either. Pay raises only apply to new people because the law says you can’t vote for your own raise.
My colleagues talked about how we haven’t gotten a raise since 1999 and compared us to other cities. They point out that the proposed dollar amounts are small. Both are true.
Regardless, I do not support this for the same reasons I voted no on the other pay increase (see below.) COLAs and comparables are important factors in compensating staff and working people. But leadership is something else. I believe you reward leaders based on success–not on any automatic formula.
What does success look like? The Council’s last pay raise was a very long time ago and various versions have done some very nice things since then. However, we’ve also gone through so many financial crises you probably think they are just ‘normal’. Many of my colleagues will tell you so. They will tell you that they are inevitable. I tell you they’re not. But if you keep telling people that being so poor you can’t even afford animal control is normative? Well… 😀
Regardless, things will likely be even tougher for the City in 2026 than 2025. For me, the timing and optics are poor. If we expect to be paid more, we should at least provide some evidence that ‘this time will be different’. If you say “it’s just an employee COLA,” remember: a lot of people are not getting anything these days. But more important (for me) we are not employees.
It said clearly in the packet that COLAs are illegal for elected officials. And yet that was brought up by my colleagues anyway. One of many uncomfortable features of our government is that electeds show up, and whether or not they are prepared, or how much effort they put in, they get the same check. I know you’re shocked. Shocked. But if you want better decisions, you should expect and encourage leaders who are prepared to make those decisions.
Councilmember Mahoney wanted to limit education money.
“The tendency has gone to just one or two where we could allocate it fairly and give everybody opportunity.”
I believe he meant that only one member of the Council has taken advantage of educational opportunities in recent years. Guess who? But nobody was ever limited. In fact, the total amount the City has spent on any training in recent years has been almost trivial. and that should be the real concern. Where I come from, we encourage people to pursue professional education. Because it makes for better decisions. 🙂 I am only an outlier in Des Moines. Many other cities have multiple electeds with similar credentials.
Another point raised was our low hourly wage. Again, more employee-think. But the good news? At the request of our new City Manager, the Council voted to end our standing committees, saving both staff, and the majority of the Council from any workload beyond Thursday meetings.
However, the notion of effort is valid–and completely unrecognized in our current system. Many colleagues complain about putting in extra time and they are right to do so. Again, unlike other cities, we get a flat fee for Thursday night meetings and zero for anything else.
It should be a simple matter to allow for reimbursement. If you attend regional meetings, if you attend various events (see below re. Port meetings) or airport conferences as I do (which ain’t cheap), you should be able to submit an expense report. That is equitable. And it shouldn’t matter whether I care about airports and environment or you care about something else you are doing to sincerely improve the City. That makes people feel like the added effort matters.
We are all different. Some of us will have more time. Hopefully we will represent a range of interests. The Council benefits from the widest variety of talents. But if you put in more effort, it should be reimbursed.
However, automatic raises based on formulas, during a financial crisis, with no recognition or compensation for added effort? I know how ‘old guy’ this will sound. But frankly, that sounds a lot like what I encountered in the Soviet Union, pal. 😀
We ended by moving the discussion to the December 4 meeting. Frankly, it’s not the money. It’s the mindset.
To address all the concerns I heard, I will propose an amendment to maintain the current pay rate, but provide a $500 annual reimbursement (equivalent to a 4.5% increase) for every Cm, to be used only for training and education. If you don’t use it, you can roll it over into the next year.
City Manager
For years there have been grave concerns over transparency across multiple domains. One was the 2016 hiring process for City Manager. To address that, last year’s process was really protracted. The entire Council wanted to make sure the public was fully informed and involved in that decision – including compensation.
But last Thursday, we sat for forty minutes in executive session, came out to an empty room, and in five minutes, approved three motions to increase compensation; not even waiting until the next meeting for the scheduled vote to to give the public a chance to weigh in. The desire to move this forward quickly and quietly was so obvious, the Mayor asked for a motion to end the meeting — forgetting to have a final vote authorising the City to prepare the contract. To his credit, the City Attorney did the right thing and double-checked to see if the Council really wanted to do it this way. Write-up and signatures. 10:00pm. All in one night. No one watching.
That is not transparency.
After one year (original agreement), the City Manager’s pay jumps from $245,000 to $269,000. And $6,000 more per year retirement funding until 2030. And three months extra severance (about $67,500.)
Earlier in the meeting, during our Budget discussion, our Finance Director acknowledged something many of you already know: the State of Washington is in a recession. Again, in my opinion, the optics are terrible.
How many of us get those kinds of boosts after one year? In this economic climate? In an organization that may well be losing as much money next year as in 2025?
During the hiring process, one of my colleagues wanted any reference to CEO—chief executive officer—changed to ‘chief administrative officer’. To say that I disagreed would be an understatement. I don’t even like the word “manager” for this role.
To me, a “manager” of 160 people connotes running a Safeway, not a complex organization representing so many long-term strategic interests. More than one of my colleagues refer to themselves as fellow employees.
I don’t think most people really think of their electeds as ’employees’ or would say it serves the public well. Though we often disagreed, former Mayor Pina used the metaphor of the coach of a professional team—with seven owners representing shareholders (you the voters.) That sounds closer to the mark. The Council sets goals. But the coach leads and develops the winning strategy. They’re not managing a store.
And we’re not employees. We’re the oversight. We must stand apart. I’ve been saying that since I ran for office. Frankly, it’s disturbing to hear newer Cms still calling ourselves ’employees’.
One truth is that, in her initial contract, the Council gave Ms. Caffrey almost everything she asked for. Another is that she got thrown into the deep end and could not possibly know ahead of time what she was getting herself into. I am extremely sympathetic. But I have to represent the interests of the residents who told me very clearly: be more cautious going forward.
The changes she has made thus far are great, but they are reactive, not proactive. That is no disparagement. On the contrary, her tasks during this first year have been neither ‘easy’ or painless. But though hard they were straightforward for any skilled manager: cut costs, rebuild customer experience.
The leadership—the CEO part—really begins in 2026. There must be new revenues. There is the SAMP. These are issues that are not easy. They are Mortal Kombat Level 23. And she needs to handle those effectively, sometimes despite the Council. Because frankly? We’ve had decades to act on various systemic issues and rarely had the will to do so.
(Note that the SAMP was announced in 12012 — and yet we literally waited until two weeks before an appeal deadline to act. And then act poorly.)
In other words, I see a great manager. But there has not been enough time to see a great CEO.
Nobody wants seven bosses. But City Councils generally do want leadership. Because, again, we are part-timers. We try, but truthfully, we are not always as well-prepared as we would hope to take on these challenges. We should come to grips with the reality that we are not a ‘small town’. We are often required to make decisions as complex as those of towns 2-3 times our size. The danger, of course, is that is why we’re so easily bamboozled. When you make big-town decisions with a small-town mindset you are asking for trouble.
A leader is the person who gets to the airport solutions we should have had decades ago. A leader is someone who implements better accounting practices that help both the public and the Council see information they don’t know they need–so we can finally stop deluding ourselves. A leader is a mentor, one who doesn’t control, but helps decision makers see all the possibilities—not just the ones inside the bubble.
But we are gushing so hard to have a better communicator, we can’t see we’re engaging in exactly the same irrational exuberance as last time. People really should read the reviews of Mr. Matthias. Right up until the end, they were just as gushy.
We are, after one year, giving her larger increases than the ones people used to get so upset about. Discuss.
Not to sound snippy, but when he got his big pay days, (the ones that seem so much smaller now) the Council could at least try to justify it by saying that he’d put in several years and (cough) proven his economic genius. And at least then, everyone was required to vote in a full room. Not like people trying to slip one by at 10:00pm.
We always talk about wasteful spending at the federal government, the state government. During Ms. Caffrey’s hiring and in her initial review, the Council directly addressed salary inflation at the director level. These kinds of decisions make that even more challenging.
Look at what we do, not what we say. Last Thursday we seemed on the verge of giving ourselves automatic raises, during a financial crisis. We used the same rationale to give our City Manager about $100k in extra compensation — after one positive year.
(One other thing. Perhaps one reason some colleagues jones so hard for increasing the property tax cap is not because we can’t simply go to the voters. More likely it is because they like the word ‘automatic’. Automatic means “we can do it without having to convince anyone.” Get it? “It’s not us. It’s just automatic.“)
As with her predecessor, my colleagues have expressed concerns about her feeling appreciated. Perhaps even using Des Moines as a quick ‘resume-builder’ before jumping ship. This year was the resume builder? Have you seen our books?
But OK, taking those concerns seriously, perhaps this example might prove instructive – for all parties.
Boeing’s new CEO Kelly Ortberg took a much smaller initial package than his ill-regarded predecessor—recognising he had some serious trust building to do. But the board also included some pretty sweet, and specific, performance bonuses for future years. To my mind, that is a better way to compensate and show commitment to a leader you want for the long haul.
Better communication is great. But if you want someone who leads, you have to treat them like a leader–and then have the courage to evaluate them like a leader—not a manager. Both sides should have some skin in the game.
The SAMP: Plan B
During the SAMP ILA discussion, Councilmember Mahoney definitely got one detail right (perhaps due to his participation in the PSRC.) 1994.
1994 was by no means the beginning or end of the Third Runway war. But that was the year every regional government came together at the Puget Sound Regional Council to abandon any search for a second airport – despite having identified three potential sites.
Unfortunately, even in 1994, opposition to the Third Runway was already so all-or-nothing, none of the communities paid attention to the absolutely crap mitigation plan offered at the same time–the consolation prize you may know of as ‘Port Packages’. Beyond that? There was never any real Plan B — ie. what we should get if we can’t stop the Third Runway.
Highline Schools came away with $150,000,000 in construction money from the Port/FAA. If you appreciate any of the new schools built since then, you have that conflict–and your City’s legal fees, in part, to thank for it.
Des Moines, Burien and Normandy Park ended up footing the bill for massive, mostly ineffective, legal challenges. But almost as a side note, did obtain a huge win in terms of water quality improvements, which the Port (falsely) claims as some heart-of-gold effort. That was us. And if you enjoy any portion of the Des Moines Creek Trail, or clean drinking water, or salmon recovery, give your City a pat on the back.
SeaTac, in contrast, refused to fight, and thus obtained yet one more of a long series of ongoing and ever-increasing paydays. And also obtained all those environment benefits. For free.
In a better world, one could have imagined obtaining the same environmental benefits, at far less cost, and getting paid. If we had gone down that road, this City would now be much different. At the time, we had a City Manager who considered that–having a real Plan B. But as so often happens with politics, they got canned.
If you think cockamamie ideas like having a self-funded ferry are anything new? Let me tell you about former Mayor Don Wasson, whose Council did the aforementioned canning. Personally, I liked Don. But his idea was to build a conveyor to move contaminated fill-dirt, barged in Vashon Island, from the Beach Park up to 200th. He thought that, rather than ‘fight’ the Port, helping to build the Third Runway would be the real pay day for Des Moines.
We have a history of small-town blindness and all-or-nothing thinking. Even when the Des Moines Creek Business Park opened, we were so thrilled to get something, we neglected to obtain the taxes we should have had. Fortunately, the now defunct Finance Committee (you’re welcome) proposed that six months before our new City Manager arrived. And in its first year (2025) it will bring in $515,000. I cannot imagine how any new City Manager could ask for any raise had that not happened. It’s good to be lucky.
Our former city manager/economic development genius missed that one. Perhaps because he (and the Council) focused all their energies on the miracles of self-funded ferries and Steps. But…if we had thunk of that in 2016, we’d have generated over $3,000,000 as of today. I came across it because I am constantly attending various regional meetings about the airport (for which I get nothing.) Warehouses in Kent and Auburn are one of many essential pieces in the airport eco-system. That wasn’t luck. One way or another, everything has to do with the airport.
We can do much better. But we need leadership that actually pays that attention — to what was always possible — even if the Council doesn’t.
Unfortunately, the SAMP ILA discussion before that Executive Session was terrible. To date we’ve shown none of the proper concerns we should for this once in a generation opportunity. Currently we are phoning it in. Checking a box.
My hope is that, now armed with a fresh sense of financial security (and appreciation), the City Manager will do better in 2026.
But not to end too harshly, the SAMP ILA discussion in Burien was even worse. Oy. They didn’t even know Normandy Park had dropped out when they voted! Awkward. 😀
Who did have the better discussion? Why SeaTac. Of course. And I strongly encourage readers to follow STNI for their excellent coverage of all three cities on this.
And from there, in the category of ‘irony of the week’, comes a comment from SeaTac Councilmember James Lovell. His concern seemed to be that… wait for it… by backing out of the ILA, Normandy Park might end up free riding on any benefits SeaTac might obtain in challenging the SAMP.
Perish the thought. 😀
If you care about the health and financial futures of Des Moines, I hope you will encourage the City Manager to make 2026 about the SAMP. Again, do not listen to what anyone says. What we’ve done on airport issues for the past 20 years has always been lip service — including last Thursday. Currently, we don’t know how to succeed.
But a truly great CEO can learn — break through that sludge and get us where we’ve always needed to go.
Doing something really meaningful — what our City has always deserved — about the SAMP would be utterly transformative for all of Des Moines. That should be the ‘resume builder’ of a career — and hopefully the 2026 Annual Performance Review.
1Same year as the Masonic Home came on the market, if memory serves?