Weekly Update: 01/15/2023

This Week

Monday: Northwest African American Museum for MLK Day celebrations

Wednesday: Congressman Adam Smith’s office to discuss his priorities for Aviation Legislation in 2023–including the upcoming FAA Reauthorisation (every five years Congress requires a re-write of FAA regulations.) Courtesy of SeaTacNoise.Info, here is the Federal Legislative Agenda  I support. As you will read, it is quite different from that of the City of Des Moines, which has been, for decades now, “If it’s good for the Port of Seattle, I’m in” for a very long time now.

Thursday: Meeting with Westside Seattle Publisher Tim Robinson. Mr. Robinson’s family published basically all the local papers here for almost fifty decades–including the Des Moines News and Highline Times. He is the go to guy on local history, especially when it comes to politics.

Last Week

Tuesday: First Port of Seattle Commission meeting of the year. (Agenda) I wrote last week that the Port is taking several steps to improve passenger flows, including Widening the Arrivals Driveway.

But it’s always worth noting that every action that makes life nicer for passengers, whether in the airport, on road, or in the air makes hurts Des Moines. Almost none of the revenue generated by the airport reaches Des Moines or its residents.

The reason I spend a lot of time talking about the airport is that Sea-Tac Airport is the poster-child for “trickle down economics.” The Port of Seattle has been very successful in selling a complete myth that the airport provides huge benefits for the City (and people) of Des Moines. Factually inaccurate.

It’s quite a bit like the current nonsense over the Marina. Over the decades, we developed a very bad habit here of believing lots of stories about what actually drives “economic development.”

Wednesday: 7:00PM Des Moines Marina Association first meeting of the year. (Agenda) If you have any interest in ‘the Marina’ you should consider joining 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 set its schedule for the year. There was some talk about Barnes Creek Mitigation in relation to SR-509, but that’s too big for today. CM Achziger asked about ridership for the 635 Shuttle and when you get them, let me know! 😀 (Actually, I just went to the King County records site because they want people to know about their programs. 🙂 ) My main concern about ‘shuttles’ right now is, How do we get another one for the KDM Light Rail Station before it opens?

Thursday: Environment Committee Meeting (Agenda) (Video) The Committee set its schedule for the year. We got a $300,000 grant to study how to redo 223rd for the whole ‘urban creek’ thing, but that study may not even begin this year.

Thursday: 6:00PM City Council Meeting. (Agenda) (Video Part 1) (Video Part 2) This was our first meeting of the year. And whereas last year opened with a new Mayor and a new commitment to civility and communication? Yeah, this year is not gonna be like that. More below…

01/12/2023 Council Meeting Recap

The meeting opened with an Executive Session under RCW 42.30.110 (f). Which you should find weird for several reasons, which I’ll touch on a bit below…

The annoying part from your POV was that people had to wait until almost 7:00PM for the real meeting to begin.

City Manager’s Report

There was, once again, a presentation we did not get advance copies of–and that has gotsta go. In this case it was the Finance Director’s Third Quarter report. And I have a message for all you Ferry Fans™ (I hope to trademark that.) See that the 3Q sales taxes are up 9%? Sounds cool, right? Well, that increase is similar to all other Cities. It is what one would expect in any City coming out of COVID and with an improving economy. What you do not see? A Ferry Pilot economic windfall. Despite what you may have heard, there is no observable positive effect from spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on that project.

ARPA Spending Update

Some of you may recall from the mists of time (September 2021) where we voted to allocate all $9MM of ARPA money in a single night. At the time I objected strenuously, since the law allows us two years to decide–and all our sister cities decided to take their time. Tuns out we didn’t need to allocate all that money after all. Which means the City Manager has decided to move even more money over to the Ferry! (I’m shocked.)

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What kills me about that is, if you recall from December 1, 2022 the big news then was how we had spent much less money than expected (not quite 100%, but whatever) on the ferry initial pilot. Which meant we would have lots of money left over for Phase II. Apparently not. 😀

Which means we’re going to waste the remainder of the money from Phase I, and then waste even more money from this ARPA fund.

This is the bit that got on my ‘progressive’ nerve. Councilmember Martinelli and I proposed allocating$250,000 for Emergency Utility Assistance. My support for this was based on the fact that, unlike other forms of assistance, this was the one type of relief we could get out the door fast–but only if it went to local utility districts. Why? Because they already know who is behind and could get them help immediately. Instead, we chose to work with PSE, which was very slow and frankly they already have grant funding for people in need. So, we ended up leaving most of that money on the table. Again, again, again, good intentions, poor process, wastes money!

Consent Agenda

There was a Consent Agenda item for the Redondo Restroom which I voted ‘no’ on for a couple of reasons. First, 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.

New Business: Redondo Speed Camera

There was 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.

I only voted for it because it might have applications throughout the City. If it were only about ‘Redondo’ I likely would have voted against it. Because despite the passion from the public (which I totally love, btw!), many is the night I’ve spent watching what goes down there–with a speed board sitting nearby. 😀

What’s my bright idea? A police officer. That’s what people really want. A police presence. Put a police officer on the beat. Then do the study. Then, if the results are good, then consider a speed camera. Data. data. data.

I’m not saying this to be snippy, but we also need to start collecting some neighbourhood-specific statistics. Because, I’ve been watching the same movie in Redondo for two decades and I agree we need to do something now. l just want to start doing the right somethings.

Thus endeth the lecture. 😀

Closing Comments

Councilmember Steinmetz mentioned that he felt that having a separate Marina Committee (and perhaps restoring other groups we used to have such as a Public Planning Commission would only add an additional layer of bureaucracy. That called to mind something that our previous City Manager Piasecki tried very much to work on. I wrote about it here.

Read that link and decide for yourself. In the case of the Marina, I think it is in your best interest to have a single, purpose-specific Marina Committee.

Executive Session

As I said last week, the purpose of our Executive Session was to respond to a complaint about moi under RCW 42.30.110(f), which 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.

The ‘complaint’ in question is without merit, full stop. That is not to say that people do not have a right to complain, or that the employee’s concerns do not matter, both to the person and to me. I want to be clear about that. However, the way the City and my colleagues, responded is just plain nuts.

As the statute reads, I had the choice to air this out in public–which I would have preferred. Given a choice between Councilmembers behaving badly in private or Councilmembers behaving badly in public? It’s an easy call. I chose to do this in private in order to de-escalate; to avoid embarrassing both the City and the employee in question. I do not think they appreciate the olive branch I offered.

You will hear all the time from experts in all types of human interactions that the thing to do with any conflict is to de-escalate whenever possible. In personal relationships; In customer service; In the workplace; With the police. It’s almost a universal.

I still hope that we will all choose to do what we all should have done in the first place. De-escalate.