Public Service Announcements
This Week
Monday: Destination Des Moines meeting. The group is welcoming a new board member and setting it’s agenda for the year. The hope is that 2022 will (finally) be a return to Wine! Fireworks! You know… normal. 🙂
Wednesday: Reach Out Des Moines. The group’s long-time facilitator Cynthia Ricks-Maccotan will be moving on soon so it will be interesting to see where things go from there. I want to thank her in case I forget because the program provided me with evidence of how to reduce teen crime and improve outcomes without bazillion dollars and without guns and badges. It’s an important message. Based largely on events in other parts of town, the current direction is towards more guns and badges. But Reach Out Des Moines works. The big problem with the program is that it isn’t available everywhere in Des Moines. Yet.
Thursday: 30th Legislative Elected Call with Senator Claire Wilson, Rep. Jesse Johnson and Rep. Jamila Tayor. I’ve been a huge fan of these calls since day one. You get information on how the State session is going, but also what electeds in Federal Way and Federal Way Schools are thinking about. I don’t think the public realises just how many pieces of legislation the State goes through during even a short (60 day) session.
Last Week
Wednesday: Des Moines Marina Association. The only item of note was that this was that the Council received a warning from the City Clerk that a quorum (four members) of the Council had attended. If a CM anticipates that four members of the Council will attend any event together, we’re required to inform the City Clerk so that she can post a public notice. Under OPMA, we’re not supposed to be in the same ‘room’ without public notice.
This only demonstrates that the Council should create a new Advisory Committee for the Marina. The fact that a quorum of the City Council feels it is important to be at those meetings acknowledges that the significant discussions regarding both waterside and landside development occur first in a private organisation. Creating an Advisory committee would require the DMMA to be part of the City (public) process, rather than our staff and Councilmembers going to the DMMA, a private organisation, and thus not subject to the same disclosure.
Thursday: State Auditor meeting. This was a follow up to the Auditor Exit Interview from January 6. Those interviews are pretty rote and this gave me a chance to understand the process a bit more and make suggestions. One suggestion: until now, the Auditor would have an Entrance Interview with a single member of the City Council, which described the process and specific goals (those change from year to year based on anticipated risks.) My suggestion was for that invitation to be extended to all CMs.
Thursday: City Council Meeting (Agenda)Â (Video) The main order of business is the election of the next Mayor and then Deputy Mayor by the Council. Only Councilmembers with two years of experience are eligible and these include Jeremy Nutting, Traci Buxton, Matt Mahoney, Anthony Martinelli and moi.
City Council Meeting Recap
- I’ve heard about a dozen times about how the Council has ‘turned a page’. Cool. But one defect in our Council is that the calendar has almost zip at certain points of the year–including the beginning. There just wasn’t much to disagree on. Give it time. 😀
- In his new role as front man for the band Mayor Mahoney was perfectly fine. But if you haven’t done it before, it’s like when yer learning to drive. You’re pre-occupied with operating the controls. Every presiding officer I’ve watched here tries to signal that they are going to be fair-minded people. And then begins the slow descent into hell. 😀 I know how that sounds, but it’s not a dig against anyone as much as a caution: no matter who you think you are, there is something that the job of mayor seems to do to people in Des Moines over time. Self-care is probably a good idea. 🙂
- Several fairly obvious items were raised as new business and we all agreed that they were items to put onto a meeting agenda. It’s fun to agree.
- I proposed to devote a meeting to an update of our Rules Of Procedure. Something we have not done since December 2019. I added a bonus which also got support. And that was, to devote a block of time at a meeting before then to discuss the ground rules. The previous Council had a nasty habit of scheduling important, complex meetings, such as the ARPA Stimulus meeting, where the rules would not be worked out in advance or where the Mayor would simply ‘announce’ how things would go. Having a discussion of the ground rules is, in itself, a major upgrade. But again, at the risk of sounding cranky, I reserve judgment. The ground rules discussion simply follows a normal procedure. I’m not gushing over ‘normal’–and definitely not until I see normal actually happen.
- City Manager Matthias made a point to note that he agreed with me on something. But then followed up by emphasising how rare that is. Alrighty, then. 😀
- Councilmember Nutting and I often get fiddly on parliamentary details. I rarely mentioned them before because, well, I’m trying to be civil for 2022. 🙂 Deputy Mayor Buxton proposed two ideas that I fully support, but both were not fully-worked out in my opinion. And I wanna stop here and say that what I just wrote is one change I want for 2022. They weren’t fully baked. I don’t feel bad about saying that and I ain’t gonna feel bad about it. And neither should she. That’s how I talk. Fix the problem, not the blame. One sign of true ‘civility’ will be how we accept one another and how people take constructive criticism. (The only weird thing is that this sort of thing is very out of character for Deputy Mayor Buxton. Normally, she is meticulous, a quality I highly value.)
- She seemed to be proposing to provide a mechanism by which proclamations which noted significant events or causes would be remembered every year. I knew what she meant, but Councilmember Nutting had a valid point. A proclamation is actually a one-off. When you proclaim “LGBTQ Pride Month” you do it once. We want people to remember it every year, but the actual resolution only happens once. I’m still not exactly clear how that process will be implemented, but since we weren’t talking about, say… demolishing a historic home, for example… I was willing to roll with it. But as I said in my comments, I fully support the idea. If we proclaim June as LGBTQ Pride Month, then we should find a way to mention that we do every year from now on. We have that obligation to the issue and to the community.
- She also wanted to add language from a State House bill still being negotiated to a current proclamation, but only if the bill passes. The sounded fine, but she didn’t bring a copy of the draft bill. I’m sure it’s fine, but that’s not the point. This is a matter of ‘good hygiene’. When you propose something, please provide the document. (And in fact, a rule change I will propose will allow councilmembers to have documents like that added into the packet ahead of time to insure that we (and the public!) can see what is being proposed.)
- Councilmember Steinmetz proposed having a meeting discussion about the web site. Which is great. He credited Councilmember Achziger for help with the idea but not me was a little weird. Not mentioning the one person on the Council who actually nagged about it for over a year? Who, you know, built commercial web sites? Who proposed a budget amendment to fix the thing? OK. 😀 I honestly don’t care about credit. As long as I get what I want. 🙂
- And I’m saying it just like that because I am a subject matter expert on this sort of thing. For all their great qualities, none of my colleagues besides CM Martinelli are particularly literate with digital media. It would be foolhardy for my colleagues to marginalise my input on this sort of issue. And frankly that is exactly what happened during the past two years. We’d have situations where CMs acted based on personal animus. I mean that literally: I agree with you on the issue, but because I cannot stand you, I’m not doing it. The web site was just such an example. Until now I had never experienced that kind of professional pettiness. Seriously. I had never had a case where my colleagues did not behave ethically based on how they felt about one another. You’ll know that the Council has turned a page towards civility if the web site turns out to be something special. If not? Dad-Mobile. 😀
- And by special, here’s one example. In my comments, I mentioned ‘phones’ and it’s been my mantra. Every resident of Des Moines now has a cell phone, not a computer. It’s the one universal that crosses all boundaries. We can educate, alert, market, improve public safety, provide better customer service. Â We improve our digital presence on phones and we instantly move the needle on equity, outreach and public engagement.
https://youtu.be/I02BxxD2M0E
Martin Luther King Jr. Day
I often tell people various anecdotes about the importance of Dr. King in Northern Ireland when I was a kid because I’m not sure Americans recognise how influential he was across the world. But rather than celebrate the “I have a dream” speech, I recommend the book Death Of A King by Tavis Smiley, because it documents his real life–especially that last year.
Because the uncomfortable truth is, both he and his message were deeply unpopular for the majority of his career. And I mean both with white and black people. After that famous speech and passage of the Civil Rights Bill(s) it was all downhill. And I mean way down.
I think it’s fair to say that he lost popularity for a couple of reasons:
1. Because people thought that once there were some laws, remaining problems of inequity would take care of themselves. ‘The battle’ was over and they did not particularly want to hear that a functional right to vote was just the beginning.
2. His message became about what we would now call ‘structural racism’. And that notion was as controversial then as it is now, both with blacks as well as whites. He was against the Vietnam War, in part because it was disproportionately hard on black people. Poverty? The poor were disproportionately black. Education? Environment? Business opportunities? All were disproportionately problematic for minorities. But not exclusively.
He stopped talking about issues that were exclusive to black people (like voting rights) and moved onto issues that potentially affected everybody, but mostly affected people of colour.
And what I find striking about that is how much it seemed to annoy everybody. Again, the idea of accepting responsibility for issues beyond voting rights was deeply offensive to whites. And failing to maintain focus on issues of immediate and specific to their needs was also not thrilling for many blacks.
Pressing that kind of approach, which so few people wanted to hear? That’s courage.
The next generation…
Dr. King’s entire agenda focused on goals that could not be achieved in his lifetime. It is an extremely challenging message. It’s one thing to tell constituents that you may not make it to the promised land, but telling them not to expect to get there? Good luck with that.
It was always about the next generation and time has proven him absolutely correct. And after his assassination, I’m sure many people found that thought comforting. Said no one, ever.
Economic inequality has only increased since Dr. King’s time. Schools in Des Moines are performing worse than when I moved here. We face environmental challenges that we have not begun to address seriously as a City. And despite the fact that we’re now a younger and very diverse community, participation in civic life remains overwhelmingly older and white.
In a way, these are tougher problems to solve than voting rights. In 1964 discrimination was so overt it made interventions a fairly simple matter.
The challenges we face today are so longstanding and so entrenched that many people truly no longer can see them. Others have become so cynical they just shrug and accept them as ‘life in the real world.’Â But those are exactly the kinds of structural issues Dr. King would be working on had he lived.
Soaring oratory…
If you listen to any of his speeches beyond a few sound bites, it’s pretty amazing that the guy even got as far as he did. He’s giving sermons. But these are not feel-good affairs by any stretch of the imagination. He often begins by telling you that the road ahead is going to be painful. OK, with ya so far. But then he goes on to scolding and being bossy as hell. I don’t mean just about white people. He’s often telling his own audience: you need to change, you need to do more and you need to do a. b. and c. or else none of this is going to work. I assume the soaring oratory helped, but even so, this must have been a tough message.
Apart from the difficulty of organising people on any major public issue, can you imagine anyone be successful in 2022 by scolding? I don’t care how eloquent one may be, that would take some doing. (When was the last time you heard any politician get very far saying “ask not what your country can do for you”?)
Back here in Des Moines…
I’m gonna break it down for ya by telling you something that every group organiser wants to tell you, but is simply too nice to tell you.
1. Not enough people volunteer. For anything.
2. And when they do, they also tend to volunteer for the same stuff. It’s all good stuff. But it’s the same stuff. People know what they know.
3. Not to put too fine a point on it, but, well… people tend to wanna do what they wanna do and often not what the group actually needs. And if you try to redirect? They don’t return. So group leaders are constantly having to calibrate their aspirations based not on factors such as money, but by the fact that, sadly… this is not the military.
4. It’s also much easier to get volunteers for programs involving something they can see and concerning now. And if it seems like it directly benefits them? Even better. The toughest job is getting people to work towards improvements for the next generation.
A bigger picture…
There is a tendency these days to thank ‘saints’ like Dr. King for their service and assume that all the heavy lifting has already been done. And if it hasn’t? Well, I’m sure we gave it our best.
But next time you walk Des Moines Creek Trail ask yourself if that sort of project could be completed today. You’ll likely answer ‘yes’. But the honest answer is ‘no’. Something so beloved now was not something our City leadership was united on. And that was as recent as 12 years ago. There is a tendency to believe that projects we see and love now were inevitable then. Most definitely not.
You don’t think that has to do with Martin Luther King, Jr? Maybe you haven’t visited the Beach Park or walked the trail recently. That’s where you find diversity in Des Moines. That series of projects benefited the environment, created sustainable revenue for the City and preserved a sense of shared history. I do not find it coincidental that it is one of the few projects in our history enjoyed equally by the entire community.
Dr. King (literally) gave his life for the future. His famous quote “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice” was not his and misinterpret it as sort of a free pass. *Actually he injected that as a sort of momentary bit of relief in a much longer and scolding passage which I’ll summarise like this, Yes, the arc bends, but not unless you help bend it. The short term wins give us hope that we can succeed. But the future does not take care of itself.
Action items…
I get that we’re past an age where you can motivate people by scolding or guilt. But seriously… would it kill you to…. 😀
Please vote. Don’t ask your neighbour to vote. You wanna change the world, find one person in a precinct where people do not vote and nag the living crap out of them until they do. You get one person to become a habitual voter and you’ve done something.
Volunteer. But when you decide how to invest your precious time? Look, I can’t argue with donating blood or the Food Bank and so on. Helping people with immediate needs? Always a good idea. But remember that projects like the Des Moines Creek Trail and the Beach Park took decades to achieve, look better than any commercial development, build community, and will provide equal enjoyment for all here. Forever.
The future does not take care of itself.
*In one of the most controversial choices in the history of history, after his death the King family decided not to place Dr. King’s speeches in the public domain. But instead aggressively marketed them in order to fund further activism. I became familiar with his work because of an underground network of bootlegs. I’d travel home several times a year and bring dozens of cassettes with me because that was the only way to get his complete speeches in Ireland.