Des Moines is sort of a patchwork. It wasn’t some ‘master plan’. In fact it wasn’t any kind of ‘plan’ at all. By any standard, King County was kinda the Wild West for many decades. The original ‘Des Moines’ was about 18 blocks in 1959, but over time we’ve had 23 annexations to get to where we are today.
Now you might’ve assumed that ‘the county’ would’ve provided services like sewer and water from day one. Aaaaaaaand, you’d be wrong. 😀
I mentioned all the annexations because people in the area seemed to like their services ‘a la carte’ whenever possible–usually because they thought it would keep taxes as low as possible. So they created separate organisations to provide them.
So, all that means that we ended up with five Special Purpose Districts (SPD) in Des Moines. Generally speaking, an SPD is a tiny 1single-purpose government, totally independent of the City, with their own elected boards. The City of Des Moines often works with these governments on various shared projects, but we do not have authority over their activities.
Water and Sewer
The following provide water and sewer throughout Des Moines. If yer unsure which provides service to you, click on the piccies to see a detailed map.
Storm Water
And, wait for it, the City of Des Moines also runs a utility! We provide storm water services for everyone in Des Moines through our Department of Surface Water Management. As you might expect, your City Council oversees it through our Storm Water Utility Committee. Not! (Actually we call it the Environment Committee. Don’t try to understand. Just embrace it. Like the ‘s’ in Des Moines. 😀 )
Challenges
As small cities like ours grow, they sometimes try to buy up these SPDs if they think having them under one roof would provide better service. This can be very controversial. I have no strong feelings one way or the other, but in my view, there are two challenges to having so many SPDs covering such a small area; one small and one big. Both have to do with communication.
- The small one is that when something goes wrong, residents often tend to call the City, not realising that they actually need to talk to one of these SPDs.
- The big one is that there is currently no way for any of us (the City or the SPDs) to reach everyone in an emergency.
Code Red
To tackle the second issue, there is the Code Red Alert system, which will send you a text and a phone call when there is a genuine emergency. You should sign up for it now. For realz. However, it is run by yet another agency… ie. King County and it is optional. It only works if you sign up. So please sign up for CodeRed now–and share this, while yer thinking about it.
1Fun fact: The Port of Seattle also began as a Special Purpose District. So sometimes an SPD ain’t so tiny. Or even ‘single purpose. 😀