Categories Weekly Updates

Weekly Update 03/09/2025

Posted on Last Updated:March 11th, 2025

Some bits of business…

Updated with new March 13, 2025 meeting agenda

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.

Important change: City Manager Caffrey has adopted a new format. Good news? Much more colourful! Bad news? Short-term.

Update: We just deep-sixed our standing committees. But for what it’s worth, each committee’s planning calendar here. 🙂

Water District 54 Open Commission

News Flash • Looking for Candidates for Vacant Commissioner

This is an unexpired position expiring in 2029. Individual must live within the District boundaries. Two monthly meeting a month are required. Meetings are held at the District Office at 922 So 219th St. in Des Moines at 4pm on the first and third Tuesdays of the month. Position is currently paying a per diem rate of $161.00

If you have questions regarding this position please call 206.878.7210. Please send letters of interest to patti.clayton@kcwd54.org before 3/14/2025.

Highline Schools District 5 Open Seat

HSD has re-opened applications for the School Board Director #5 position left open by the recent resignation of Azeb Hagos. This is a big deal for us as District #5 covers most of Des Moines. Please apply here by March 13, 2025!

https://www.highlineschools.org/about/school-board/school-board-vacancies

Call To Action: Port Packages!

The Governor’s proposed budget cuts the $1 million in funding that was secured last for fixing failed port packages, which were meant to insulate homes from airport noise but have deteriorated over time. Please mail key these legislators and let them know how important this funding is for our communities.

Call To Action: Save State Funding for Port Package Updates! – Sea-Tac Noise.Info

City Manager Stuff

City Manager’s Report March 07, 2025

In her most recent report Ms. Caffrey included a bit of history regarding the proper pronunciation of ‘Des Moines’. I used to think it was a bit of a joke that the City went through all the trouble to pass an ordinance making the ‘French’ pronunciation official. It is not a joke. I cannot stress how seriously some of my predecessors felt/feel about this. Coming from Ireland, where basically every place name has gotten butchered over time, here is the final word on how to properly pronounce Des Moines.

Mea Culpa

In my last Weekly Update, I stated incorrectly, that there was no recipe in Ms. Caffrey’s February 28 City Manager’s Report! For my sins, here is that recipe, 1in full, for what she claims are ‘the BEST chocolate chip cookies’. Bold statement. 😀

3Wea Culpa

I also got several messages last week following the (cough) ‘fit up’ cruise of the King County Water Taxi MV Sally Fox, covered in a video by the Waterland Blog. (Having used the Water Taxi system many times, I did not attend.) A couple of problems.

  • Our consultant was coaxed into implying that a passenger ferry might be docking in Des Moines in time for FIFA (June 2026). I do not think that was a great thing to say on camera, to a media company that relies on clicks, and especially given the obvious passions about the issue.
  • Members of the Council stated that the City had spent $1,000,000 of ARPA money on our previous pilot program. Not to be that guy, but I’m pretty sure we’ve spent $45,000 of federal dollars on anything ferry-adjacent.

But that does not mean we have not paid. According to the City our hard costs for the pilot program were $445,000. That’s too low, but whatever. One way or another it was all your money.

  • And no one talks about the original (cough) Ferry Demand Study or the consultant fees we’ve paid since 2020.  5If you total all our ‘ferry’ costs and bake for 10-14 minutes at 375 degrees until golden brown, I’m pretty sure it’s several hundred thousand more. 🙂

But why quibble over a few hundred grand? 😀 For me, the real question is this: regardless of where that money came from, did we need to spend anything? And the answer is: No. If you learn nothing else following this issue? It is that passenger ferries are something that the entire region has been pulling for – and for a very long time. When the conditions are right, it will come to us without these tactics, for the simple reason that we are a logical spot. In addition to working for us, Mr. Philips does regular (paid) regional conferences to promote ferries and we should encourage him to keep doing them.

But once and for all, we should admit that we were wrong and stop acting like we ever had to spend any of your money on this.

This Week

Tuesday: Port of Seattle Commission (Agenda) This is an important meeting for Port watchers. Anyone watching the City or contemplating a run for office should also take note in light of our strategic plan (see below.) All that aside, it also includes a summary of their FAA-funded sound insulation plan for the year. Which is, once again, nada for us.

Thursday: Transportation Committee – 13 Mar 2025 – Agenda – Pdf Highlight: Review of capital project progress.

Thursday: Environment Committee – 13 Mar 2025 – Agenda – Pdf Highlights: Review of our SWM and NPDES plans.

Recently, the City Manager quipped “We really take salmon seriously here.” 😀 Actually, we like the idea of salmon – which have been in a catastrophic decline for decades. It’s the reason we’re redeveloping the marina. The entire north half of the marina was all about fishing. If the salmon hadn’t gone away? We’d still have a sling launch and there’d have been no talk of ‘hotels’.

We spend an inordinate amount of money on various techniques that either do or do not help bring back salmon, depending on who you ask. But these requirements do provide substantial revenue opportunities, and responsibilities.

My interest is water. If you walk around Des Moines, there is water, water everywhere. Creeks, creeklets, creekletitos… 😀 You can’t go a block through most neighbourhoods without finding some body of water or active wetland we’ve built on or next to or underneath. Most of it comes from the airport plateau. All of it ends up in Puget Sound. Regardless, although you take it for granted, it costs a stonkin’ fortune to maintain – and that is why, if you look the balances of our Surface Water Enterprise Fund (which I oversee for six more days muwahahahaahaa!) look so massive.

So, our fishy friends really do drive an awful lot of decision making here. They connect with money, tribes, culture, land.

I had a talk with a Seattle Times reporter about this years ago. I was bemoaning the fact that you can get millions of dollars for fish culverts but it’s like pulling teeth to get even $10 to do anything about air pollution from airports. Her reply, “You need someone to do a study to prove that aircraft pollution is harmful to salmon.” 😀

Thursday: Regular Meeting – 13 Mar 2025 – Agenda – Updated Tuesday

Highlights:

  • A budget amendment which will add over a million dollars to the cost of the 24th Ave. project. ow, ow, ow, ow, Ow, OW!
  • We we also will discuss the structure of our upcoming airport committee.

There will be a notable update to the packet on two items on Tuesday. I will re-post this article with that update when it is released.

Last Week

Monday

SAO Audit Exit Conference. The State reported the results of its 2023 audit of our books. Obsessive watchers will note we’ve had a couple of ‘dings’ that I don’t get exercised about. What does annoy me, and I say the same when we do it, is when we gather for an ‘exit conference’ and some of the referenced materials are not ready to go.  The more obvious question is “Why are they still reviewing 2023?” To answer these burning questions, the SAO people will make a short presentation to the City Council. On the other hand, we just won a GFOA award for excellence in budgeting. Frankly, I don’t pay too much attention to that either. 😀 I know people want some sort of shorthand (good or bad) as to how well we’re managed. But it doesn’t work that way. If there was a shortcut, you wouldn’t need electeds. 🙂

Thursday

Washington Climate Action Plan Public Feedback Session

This is one of those long game things. Every year the Dept. of Ecology does a survey to help implement climate change into the planning documents it imposes on cities based (HB1181).  Here is the 2024 results. It took a looooong time to get the areas under the flight path recognised for what they are: among the most polluted and heavily impacted in the entire state. The next step is to convert that recognition into legislation that helps mitigate and compensate us for those harms. Bills like HB1303 (see below) move that even further.

Finance Committee (Cancelled)
Public Safety Committee

Public Safety_Emergency Management Committee. Several very interesting items you should check out, including crime stats and an overview of South King Fire.

2023-2024 Crime Stats Preview

South King Fire Overview

Although he’s still in his first year as Chief, Ted Boe’s data presentations to the Burien City Council were always excellent – and this presentation to our PSEM brought the same value.

As to the data. It’s a complex picture. The cover story, that ‘overall crime is falling’ is too simple. Certain types of crime are increasing and these worry me because they seem to be of the kind you can’t ‘automate’ with cameras and tech. Those will require more officers to prevent and enforce. And as these much better presentations become more ‘the norm’, and if we can just add in that ‘human factor’, ie. the toll the workload takes on the force, I think the public will understand and be more willing to help us get there than during last year’s Prop #1 not-so-great-sales-pitch.

Study Session

Study Session – 06 Mar 2025 – Agenda – Updated These are some biggee items and I had some (cough) concerns. 😀

Discussion on Developing a Strategic Plan.

We’ve never had a strategic plan before. We do ‘goal setting’ every year but frankly it’s never been about much for the simple reason that we do not agree on a lot of things. This will take time to develop. And I sure hope we can put aside our differences enough to make it something we all agree on – otherwise it will be like so many previous wastes of consultant money.

(Sorry, the really tragic thing is that, down deep, we actually agree on a lot of things. We just don’t compromise well. There’s no reason we can’t make this a historic and productive project. 🙂 )

Anyhoo, the Council gave a bunch o’ feedback to the City Manager and I encourage everyone to watch this portion of the meeting carefully. My comments:

  • Start from the money we need and work backwards. I maintain that we currently need at least $5,000,000 every year more than we currently take in, to achieve the goals we talked about when I took my seat in 2020. If you think that’s wrong? Give me a number.
  • Don’t use a consultant we’ve worked with. We’ve tended to choose people who’ve had previous (and tenuous) connections with the City. Eg. the communications study we did in 2023 was $75,000 and was done by an engineering company.
  • If you can, choose a consultant who has worked with cities like ours. The examples chosen bear little resemblance to Des Moines. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Or maybe we can’t be that choosey. But if we have a chocie? We should choose a firm that knows about marinas and airports and our demographics.
  • Watch the Port of Seattle. They are so frickin’ complicated. So they take great pains to provide their electeds all sorts of ‘check-ins’. They don’t use an expensive ‘dashboard’. Instead, they follow the old sales maxim, “tell ’em what yer gonna tell ’em, tell ’em, then tell ’em what ya told ’em.” This Tuesday’s meeting is typical. It gives an outline of how all their committees did last year as a springboard into what they plan to do this year. The entire Commission is given a summary of how each committee did and what it plans to do. It’s relatively inexpensive, low-tech, and for such a complex beast it works surprisingly well. I think one reason our committees have languished is because we never created this kind of structure.
  • ChatGPT. Not. Kidding. $20 a month and some elbow grease can create our own model containing every City Council document going back to 1959. Use that as the starting place for everything. I know this may sound like ‘space magic’ to some, or ‘ya gotta walk before you can run’. However, this is tech that high schoolers are now fluent with. As I said last week, we have a ton of great planning info that would be impossible for someone other than moi to ingest without help. The Council has also had every discussion as to “Why the downtown is what it is?” you can ever hope to have. And I’m kinda sick of all the myths and rumours that get endlessly recycled. Get it? It’s that ‘fog’ – that wilful avoidance of all the things we’ve already tried – that allows each new City Council (and administration) to come in and avoid dealing reality.
Discussion on City Council Committees and Appointive Committees.

This is really two discussions that should have been separate. The first went very poorly. The second a lot better.

  • The end of Standing Council Committees in favour of a more ‘Burien’ style approach. Passed (2-5). We ended a system of committees that has been in place since 1959 on a single vote. I voted ‘no’ along with Councilmember Mahoney, who opined as to whether or not hell may be freezing over. 😀
    • Frankly, we’ve both spent a certain amount of time developing expertise on various issues. And I stand by my contention that Cms – especially new Cms, need committees, if for no other reason, than to learn at least some specific area.
    •  At a minimum, we should have had the City Manager consider our feedback and bring the item back for a second reading. For this reason alone, it was a mistake to end our two-readings policy in 2023.
  • Revisions to all the appointive (resident) committees. I moved that this be brought back for a second reading. And in this case, the Council agreed. That alone tells you something as to what the Council values.

At the end of the day, I understand why the City grouped these together – and what they get out of  it: more time for their daily tasks. Good. But there was no mention of how that balances with the benefits. The packet made it out like committees are mostly a pain that takes staff away from ‘the real work’. Not. Cool. And we will regret their passing.

Executive Session: Performance of a Public Employee RCW 42.30.110(1)(G) –30 Minutes

This was the second of a two-parter review of Ms. Caffrey’s first three months. Last week was 45 minutes of – I have no idea. But this one included Ms. Caffrey. I can’t divulge the contents without having to join the Foreign Legion, but after the councilmember comments, I asked Ms. Caffrey to take the floor. She was candid with us, and I hope this will become a regular part of her review process.

Don’t think I’m going soft here. If anything, this has been the 2honeymoon period. 😀 But she knows that. 🙂

If you sit in just the right spot in the audience, you’ll see the ‘Watch Your Step’ sign appears over the head of the City Manager. Me being me, I always found that slightly amusing.

I’m going to riff on something the current and recent interim city managers have both said to all of us. A colleague of mine in another City said something about her Council – which is just as divided as ours. “We disagree well.” That was smart. As I said above, and will continue to say, all seven of us actually agree on a lot of things. The problem is, we don’t compromise. The best we can do is vote cordially. But that is not compromise. People sometimes gag at the thought of being ‘transactional’. But in local government horse-trading is really just being productive. If all seven of us would simply give in 15% here and there, I can’t think of an issue we could not reach true agreement on. See that’s the thing – you can ‘win’ all these divided votes. But all that friction prevents genuine progress. If we had a ferry program, tax program, marina program, airport program, whatever program that all of us (grudgingly) were on board with? We’d get a lot more done. Look at all this bond stuff? By being so divisive, and having every vote be like pulling teeth for years it’s (literally) adding millions of extra dollars to those projects. When you can disagree well, reduce that friction, ie. compromise, you may have to swallow hard sometimes, but the net benefit to the City is massive.

Some bills passing through Olympia

As I wrote last week, this is lawmakin’ season in Olympia and there were/are a ton of bills that will affect us. Here are the ones I’m watching…

  • HB1334 Almost every city, including Des Moines, officially supports giving City Councils the ability to raise property taxes up to 3% without a public vote.
  • HB1380 is a ‘homelessness’ bill sponsored by our own Mia Gregerson. Basically, every City hates it. I share some of the same concerns. But the topic is so radioactive I dunno what I could say to convince you that, whether it passes or not, the sky will not fall. Read the amended bill summary. And show up at Highline College this Wednesday @ 11:00am to ask questions.
  • SB5757 would take 50% of the speed camera revenue back to the State. Ouch. If this does not thrill you, click that link and comment. 🙂 Ironically, it was proposed by a Spokane representative whose city benefits from them. His objection – and he has support, is this: It’s a fugazi. All these automated speed enforcement cameras are supposed to be about ‘safety’ but they’re really about cash. He’s not wrong, of course. Every agency testifying against spoke about the hole it would cut in local budgets. No one spoke about how it would devastate public safety. We’ve had the Redondo cams for a year and frankly, if we knew this might be a possibility, I’m not sure we would have bent over backwards to installe them. It is about the money.
  • SB7575 (no you don’t have dyslexia) is one of two bills that would enable the City to increase our local sales tax .1 cent without a vote specifically for the purpose of increasing public safety. It also allows the County to add a similar tax. Normally, I would not be thrilled for the same reasons I always give: I try to avoid tax increases without giving voters a choice. But this one has a twist. If the law passes and we change our ordinance before the County does? They have to credit us back the amount with no out of pocket to you, the voter. 🙂
  • HB1923 the Mosquito Fleet bill, ie. Passenger Ferries. The bill just passed the last hurdle (an amendment to avoid routes used by orcas) before getting a floor vote. So, it looks like smooth sailing. 😀  Does not mean we get a ferry right away. But it means the places that have the proper infrastructure and truly need passenger ferries will be able to get them. The thing I keep trying to say is this: Everyone wants a ferry.

 

Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies

The BEST chocolate chip cookies
Okay, okay—I know—that is a big statement to make…but these
really are the best. They have a crunchy outside and chewy inside…
and are perfectly round. I also got a question about how you make
cookies that aren’t flat—I swear by fresh baking soda and fresh
baking powder, and 4good butter at the right temp. The butter
should be at room temp, but not insanely soft…or then the cookie
won’t rise

Ingredients
  • 1¾ cups all-purpose flour
  • ½ teaspoon baking soda
  • 14 tablespoons unsalted butter (1¾ sticks)
  • ½ cup granulated sugar
  • ¾ cups packed dark brown sugar (adds more flavor)
    • Use fresh, moist brown sugar instead of hardened brown sugar, which will make the cookies dry
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 large egg yolk
  • 1 bag (10-ounces) of chocolate chips or chunks (preferably 60% cacao)
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper.
  2. Whisk 1¾ cups flour and ½ teaspoon baking soda together in a medium bowl and set aside.
  3. Whisk the ½ cup sugar, the ¾ cup brown sugar and the teaspoon salt together in small bowl and set aside.
  4. Divide up the butter, put 10 tablespoons into a 10-inch skillet.
    • Note: Avoid using a non-stick skillet to brown the butter; the dark color of the nonstick coating makes it difficult to gauge when the butter is browned.
  5. Put the remaining 4 tablespoons butter into a large heatproof bowl.
  6. Heat the 10 tablespoons butter over medium-high heat until melted, about 2 minutes. Continue cooking, swirling pan constantly until butter is dark golden brown and has a nutty aroma, 1 to 3 minutes.
  7. Remove skillet from heat and, using heatproof spatula, transfer browned butter to the heatproof bowl that holds the 4 tablespoons of butter. Stir the butter together until completely melted.
  8. Add the sugar and salt mixture plus the 2 teaspoons vanilla to the bowl with butter and whisk until fully incorporated.
  9. Add in the egg and the yolk and whisk until mixture is smooth with no sugar lumps remaining, about 30 seconds. Let mixture stand 3 minutes, then whisk for 30 seconds. Repeat process of resting and whisking 2-3 more times until mixture is thick, smooth and shiny.
    • NOTE: This whisking and waiting time is an important step and really makes a difference with the texture of the cookies.
  10. Using rubber spatula or whisk, stir in the flour mixture until just combined.
  11. Stir in the chocolate chips, giving the dough a final stir to ensure no flour pockets remain.
  12. At this point, put the batter into the refrigerator for about 5 minutes, as it can sometimes be too soft to handle.
  13. Divide dough into 8 portions per cookie sheet. If you want to add a bit of Maldon or flaky sea salt crystals to the tops of the cookies, you can do so at this point. Just sprinkle a bit on the top of each dough ball.
  14. Bake cookies 1 tray at a time (or both trays if you have a double oven) until cookies are golden brown and still puffy, and edges have begun to set but centers are still soft, 10 to 14 minutes. Rotate the baking sheets halfway through baking (after 5 minutes).

1She’s far too young to remember, but back in the day, even a recipe for Beef Wellington would be like six sentences in cookbooks. 😀 It stuns me that anyone ever got any decent results with an any of those Joy Of Cooking books.

2Which is like taking yer honeymoon at Niagara Falls. Back when people used to go over in a barrel.

3Yes, it’s Nostra Culpa. I went for the cheap Catholic School gag. 😀 But the Brothers would have me hide for not putting in this footnote.

4Now see if she were really ‘Irish’ she’d insist that the real secret is: Kerrygold.

5It also does not include the $160k grant we’ve got for more ferry economic impact studies and another $1,000,000 for some sort of electric battery dock. You can call those ‘free money’, but… said it before, say it again… every grant you get for fluff, is money that could have gone for something worthwhile. We get (x) amount of grant money every year. But let’s say that the battery dock does get used five years from now? Is that really what we most needed in 2024?

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