Some bits of business…
Future Agendas is the closest thing the City currently has to a calendar of upcoming City Council topics. It’s not dynamic, ie. you have to click it every time you want to see a new version. And it’s not always accurate. But until we develop a genuine calendar, this can be very useful if there is a particular issue you don’t want to miss.
About the cover
There are generally three kinds of work the City Council does–fluffballs, maintenance, and the future.
I just invented ‘fluffballs’. 😀 You know what I mean–ribbon cuttings, events, selfies, speechifyin’. Then there’s the stuff most of you care about– maintenance: safety, roads, storm water. You know–city stuff. That’s all about now. The present. But then there’s ‘the future’, which is often goes without notice. Last year, the Council covered a ton of really good ‘future’ stuff involving zoning–ADUs, middle-housing. This is a continuation of that. I’m not sure I’ll be around long enough to see the fruits of this work. It’s certainly not exciting. But at bottom, cities are places for people to live and making it easier to subdivide is .
Masonic Home Demo Appeal
FYI, there has been an appeal of the appeal on the Masonic Home demolition permit. My understanding is that it may not be decided until June. And for the umpteenth time, the current City Council has nothing to do with this.
But at the same time, and for the umpteenth time, this would not be happening if past City Councils had acted more responsibly. And by that I mean less (sorry) ‘libertarian’. WA has a somewhat absolutist approach to property rights which I found mind-blowing when I first moved here. They apply not only to the Masonic Home, but also to the downtown and to the airport.
There is a concept called ‘segmentation’, which anyone who grew up here may call ‘normal’ and I do not. It means breaking land use projects down into tiny pieces. The entity getting a demolition permit will argue that whatever they do afterwards is nobody’s business–until they submit another development proposal. Get it? By default, each permit is constrained as narrowly as possible under WA law. Unless a local government goes out of its way to be proactive, the default is to defer to the property owner. Again, anything else may sound positively ‘socialist’ you. But if so, understand that it is this same ethos that also makes it very tough to address issues of vacant lots on Marine View Drive. And also massive airport expansions for that matter. By limiting what is under consideration, it minimises the consequences.
City Manager Stuff
The City Manager Reports are back! January 2, 2026
Planning Commission
Speaking of land use, one highlight is that applications are being taken for the Planning Commission.
While gassing on, although I’ve worked pretty hard to restore the planning commission–hopefully to encourage more proactive land use–I acknowledge that it could go the other way. Frankly, when I first moved here we had a planning commission and they fully endorsed a lot of really crummy ideas.
But, I continue to maintain faith in public participation. In other words, I’d rather give the notion of public participation a shot because we left it to the City for over a decade and those results did not kill me, either. 🙂
Flock
As many of you know, the Police uses Flock cameras (‘license plate readers’). The company has come under scrutiny recently for privacy concerns. I attended a Q&A with the Flock CEO a few weeks ago and asked them for some further info on how they work. I’m attending a ‘demo’ with Chief Boe in a few weeks and I will withhold comment until then–except to say that I see both sides to this. In the meantime, it looks like there will be legislation proposed at the State to address one of the main concerns which has always been data retention–how long can any agency hold onto information about anyone.
This Week
Thursday
First City Council Meeting of the year! The big highlight? We will choose a mayor and deputy mayor. City Council Agenda January 8, 2026
This is probably either a bigger deal than you think or not nearly as a big a deal as you think. In Council/Manager Government, ‘mayor’ is supposed to be ‘ceremonial’. It used to be. Unfortunately, over time it has accreted a lot more ‘authority’ than it really should have. Eg. the mayor sets the agenda for meetings–and ends up having an order of magnitude more contact with the City Manager and staff than other Cms. Over time this has led, more and more to activist mayors and the politicisation of the City Manager’s office. It’s hard to keep these things separate.
Some other items:
Unit Lot Subdivision, Lot Splitting, and Substandard or Nonconforming Lot
Regulations Update -1st Reading (covered above)
Planning Commission (covered above)
Calendar: For the first time, the City has put on the agenda discussion of a ‘calendar’. That gives me one more chance to note that although we are theoretically scheduled for 40 meetings, we’ve usually only had roughly 32–including taking off the month of August. I continue to disagree with this because it leads to terrible load-balancing. Just giving the Council a chance to make this official doesn’t make it any better.
The better approach would be more meetings with less to do at each. And, at the very least, doing what many other cities do–actually have the Council weigh in on that Futures Calendar.
Last Week
My understanding is that the Seahawks defeated the no-account, good for nothing, 49ers. Well done. There, I just covered about 50% of the political interests of Des Moines. 😀