Weekly Update: 01/08/2023

I’m baaaack! Did ya miss me? I missed you. 😀 I posted a Happy New Year! article and a boatload of new ‘stuff’ about the Marina (see what I did there?)

This Week

Tuesday: First Port of Seattle Commission meeting of the year. (Agenda) To give you a sense of the schizophrenia we have here about the airport:

• You’ll be glad to know that construction on several items that will reduce the delays at the airport will be funded. (eg. Widening the Arrivals Driveway.)
•  OTOH, every time the airport does these projects two things happen:
  1. They go over budget. The Port has an abyssmal record. And it’s your tax money.
  2. It makes it possible for them to run more flights per day over your house.

Do as you please, but whenever I see delays at the airport? I smile. 🙂

Wednesday: 7:00PM Des Moines Marina Association first meeting of the year. (Agenda) If you have any interest in ‘the Marina’ you should join the DMMA and attend their meetings–at least until the City Council votes to approve a public planning committee and Council Marina Committee. Said it before, say it again: the DMMA often finds out what’s going on before everybody else. It’s a bad state of affairs, but until it changes, you need to be in the game and not just taking (or ignoring) what I say at face value.

Thursday: Transportation Committee Meeting (Agenda) (Video) The Committee will set its schedule for the year.

Thursday: Environment Committee Meeting (Agenda) (Video) The Committee will set its schedule for the year.

Thursday: 6:00PM City Council Meeting. (Agenda) (Video) This is our first meeting of the year. Highlights?

The meeting will open with an Executive Session under RCW 42.30.110 (f). Which you should find weird, but it involves around a complaint made against me.

But as of Sunday night, if you want to make public comments, you may have to stand around in an empty room for until 6:30 while we go off to our secret lair to discuss whatever.

RCW 42.30.110(f) reads: “to receive and evaluate complaints or charges brought against a public officer or employee. However, upon the request of such officer or employee, a public hearing or a meeting open to the public shall be conducted upon such complaint or charge.” I hate ES. I have yet to attend one that had any public value. But I elected to do this in private in order to avoid embarrassing the City. If that was the wrong call, I’ll be more than happy to go into it further. 🙂

There is a Consent Agenda item for the Redondo Restroom which I will vote ‘no’ on. The design, which was discussed at the Municipal Facilities Committee – 25 Mar 2021 mirrors the new Marina Restroom which has turned out to be crazy expensive ($1,250,000.) But more than that, I feel that the design bears no relationship to any narrative representative of ‘the Waterland City’. The proposal was never vetted by the public or even brought to a vote by the Committee. Again I say: we need a public planning commission.

 

There will also be a presentation by the City Attorney on an idea the City put forward at a Public Safety Committee Meeting last November to convert some bits of property along the Redondo beach front into a ‘park’. It’s meant to capitalise on a technicality which would allow us to install Speed Cameras along Redondo Way, which I know sounds great.

And I have a short, general-purpose rant. I completely understand the desperation people have for items like this. And the marina. And the downtown. And the whatever. But you will always find me a bit skeptical; not against ideas, just skeptical. The reason being, I am skeptical of any idea that is not straightforward, especially when people are desperate. Anything that is not straightforward often comes with unintended consequences you’ll end up paying for sooner or later. For example, back in 2020, in the wake of George Floyd, we were gung-ho to approve body cameras asap–before we had a policy written and buy-in from the Police Guild. So, they’re only coming on-line in 2023 and they will be way, way, way more expensive than the initial proposal.

All that said, this may indeed be a great idea. But last year we were already working on getting a straightforward proviso from the State–without this legal end-around. And we came close. Why can’t we continue to work that process–which may bear fruit as early as April of this year? We’ll see. 🙂

Last Week

As I wrote above, I have not been idle over the holidays. Since ‘the Marina’ seems to be the current talk of the town, I’ve written a good deal on the Marina. It may be worth noting that you can read everything I’ve written about the Marina by clicking on the Articles by Category link near the top right of every page. Like I said, click that and then the Marina link which will magically appear. Et Voila!

• 
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And I’ve written not one, not two, but three, Three, THREE, action-packed articles about The Marina, already this year! I don’t expect you to read all of them. But just in these three, Three, THREE articles (sorry, I already did that gag) there are references to basically every question people ask about the Marina. It occurred to me that I can never write one ‘explainer’ about all this jazz. It’s simply too complicated. My hope is that you’ll peruse/scan each of them and hopefully something catches your eye.

• A timeline of key events in city planning for the Des Moines Marina (Draft)
• 223rd Explainer
• Google Earth as a tool for Marina development

So what?

There will be a Council Study Session on January 26 at 6PM. A ‘study session’ is simply a meeting of the City Council which is dedicated to a single issue. A study session is not a ‘town hall’. As with any CCM, there is public comment at the beginning where anyone can show up and speak for three minutes, but there is no dialogue and neither the Council or the City Manager take questions from the audience.

The single issue for that meeting will indeed be “The Marina”, but that is as much as I know.

But what I do know is this: You (Jane Q Public) should start writing to citycouncil@desmoineswa.gov with your QUESTIONS and not just variations on “Grow, Baby Grow!” or “Hell No!” 😃 (I did not make those up by the way.)

You should be formulating short and specific questions, concerns, suggestions and ideas, as best you can, and sending them to the City Council soon. Because my other hope is that the City will provide informative answers to your questions in that meeting.

That’s why I wrote all this stuff; to help you come up with the good questions, the great ideas.

Because there is one thing I fully agree with my colleagues on: Doing nothing is not an option. The City is going to do something with the Marina land side. Just getting all yer buddies to say ‘no’ to anything and everything is a baaaaaaaaad strategy and I will not support anything that even smells like such an approach. I may disagree with my colleagues on the ‘what’, but let’s be real here, they did not invent the notion that a lot of Des Moines was always ‘do nothing’. It’s that constant ‘no, No, NO’ that created at least some of the ammunition they use to say “Doing anything is better than doing nothing.” They’re wrong, but as I wrote, desperation often makes people willing to make poor decisions.

You have a job in this, whether you like it or not. 😀 And that is: to make sure that what we say ‘yes’ to is fantastic. My job is just to give you enough information to help you do that.

I also suggest that people SHOW UP at 6PM on January 26. Said it before, say it again. Ten people at City Hall is far more useful than 300 Likes on Facebook.

As always, if you have any questions, you know where to find me.