Weekly Update: 03/17/2024

Some bits of business…

City Manager Stuff

City Manager’s Report March 15, 2024

In breaking news, Interim City Manager George is already predicting the Mariners make it to the World Series. From your mouth to God’s ear, mein freund. Meanwhile, back on planet earth…

• The City is once again providing minor home repair services to low-income residents. Please contact Tina Hickey at thickey@desmoineswa.gov or 206-870-6535
• The City is also doing a design survey for an update to the Memorial Triangle Flag. Take The Survey.

Holidays

As some of you may know, ¹Naomh Pádraig did not chase snakes out of Ireland. In fifty words or less, he was a Brit who got kidnapped by Irish slave traders, escaped back to Britain, then God came to him in a dream and told him to go back to Ireland and spread the Gospel. When I was a boy, we were taught that his most notable achievement was to have ended slavery in Ireland–the first nation in Europe to do so. 🙂

Of far greater interest to me personally last week was…

Pi Day! (March 14th) Remember kids: friends come and go, stocks rise and fall, but πr²h will always yield the volume of a cylinder. Historically this formula is over-represented on SAT/ACT. You’re welcome. 😀

Paid Parking returns to the Marina April 1st

No fooling…

https://www.desmoinesmarina.com/paidparking.html

This Week

Most of this week will be spent on various airport environment-related meetings. There is a lot of broader regional interest in the Port Package update program. That’s not so much because of ‘sound insulation’, which relatively few people near the airport are eligible for, but because it really is the first useful legislation on any airport impacts in decades. So the question is, What’s next?

To answer that, just follow Sea-Tac Noise.Info

Wednesday: State Audit Exit Interview: The City receives a routine audit by the State every year (whether our budgets are prepared annual or biennial). This year we got what we’ve been told is a minor warning due to recently shifting from an accrual to cash-based system. My concern is not the warning, it’s that when I look at several years of budgets and try to determine how things are going, it’s harder than it should be when we change presentation every couple of years.

Last Week

Tuesday: Port of Seattle Commission Meeting (Agenda) Two things for us:

• The Commission had its first reading of the Land Stewardship Plan, which we heard about last month. It sounds like a wonderful set of standards to preserve and enhanced tree canopy. Unfortunately, it has all these bits of fine print, including the fact that it does not apply to properties that affect us (like the Des Moines Creek Business Park.) Commissioner Felleman was particularly cutting in his remarks on this. Way to go, Fred. 😀
• The Commission also heard about two airfield contracts. I talked a bit about the SAMP last week, but as a quick rule of thumb: whenever you hear that the airport is doing anything that makes flying passengers or air cargo a more pleasant experience? You should translate that to mean “more operations over Des Moines.” So when you hear stuff like:
  • New baggage handler? More flights.
  • Easier parking? More flights.
  • Faster TSA screening? More flights.

It’s hard to overstate this: if you are waiting for some ‘moment’ to oppose airport expansion, you need to get over that. Airport expansion is happening. It’s been happening. Now. There’s no ‘runway’ to build this time.

Thursday 4:00pm Transportation Committee Meeting (Agenda) (Video) Matt Mahoney was chosen as chair. The video is worth a look if you’re concerned about various big projects such as the new Light Rail Station and the absolute mess on 24th Ave. And, of greatest interest to moi, there was a discussion on SR-509 surplus land–which you may know of as ‘Barnes Creek Trail’, which was originally the path of the highway.

Thursday: 5:00pm Environment Committee Meeting (Agenda) (Video) Highlights were our NPDES Permit, which is as bureaucratic as it sounds. But given the large amount of ‘water’ around here, is extremely important.

“The National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) is a permit program first introduced as part of the Federal Clean Water Act in 1972. Public owners of stormwater drainage systems, like the City of Des Moines’, are considered dischargers.”

In meetings with our environmental team, I often struggle to curb my enthusiasm on these programs, because all the natural beauty of all that water we have makes for a very heavy lift for staff in a small city like Des Moines. Of course, we want to be great environmental stewards, but every time the State issues new rules it also means more work and often more unfunded mandates.

Thursday: City Council Meeting (Agenda) (Video) Recap below.

March 14, 2024 City Council Meeting Recap

Public Comments

There were two very thoughtful comments from members of the Redondo Community Association, one re. the property tax levy idea and biennial budgeting.

New  Business

City Manager recruiter selection

We chose SGR as the recruiter for our next City Manager. The next phase will be having them come here and talk to the Council.

The vote was 5-1-1, with Cm Achziger ‘no’ and me ‘abstain’. I told my colleagues ahead of time that I would not block any majority choice, because, as I said from the dais, I honestly don’t think the recruiter matters all that much. I also don’t think ‘cost’ was worth considering since it’s a once in a blue moon choice. Seriously, if we spent $50,000 and it yielded someone who ran this city great for 10 years? I’d consider that a bahgain. But if we spent $5,000 and we got someone not great, how many people would look back and say, “Well, at least we didn’t overpay!” 😀

But since my vote was irrelevant, I abstained not because SGR’s presentation was poor (it was fine) but because they are the firm we used for our last City Manager. Call me superstitious. And apart from the choice of city manager? It was the process I saw in 2016, as an outsider, which did not strike me as exactly great.

And here’s the even more ‘superstitious’ part. So far as I can tell, we have been and will continue to follow exactly the same process, including public engagement, as then. Want to see some of my current nightmare fuel?

If I thought it would help, I woulda proposed what a few people wrote me last week: Hire someone to conduct a truly useful public outreach. Then move ahead. Why didn’t I?  Because we just spent one year and $75,000 on a communications study. And I’m sick of talking about how we need to communicate better. (See what I did there?)

Biennial budgeting

Last week the Finance Committee recommended that the City move forward to preparing a budget every two years, rather than annually. The public interest has been both surprising and… heartwarming. Psyche! 😀

I’ve been pushing for various types of improved financial oversight (including this) since 2019 and literally, nobody cared. Obviously that was because many people thought (and think) previous management was great and nothing needed reforming. But now, others will (rightly) wonder “Won’t having a review process every two years provide even less oversight?”

I’ll grant you: my colleagues and I have so routinely disagreed on issues of governance that at times like this, I do start questioning my higher cognitive functions. I honestly do not know why my colleagues want this–except perhaps that they are going along with the finance team’s recommendation. But I do know why I wanted it. It’s a Hail Mary.

Let’s be logical. Almost every nearby city, regardless of size or structure already does it. We’ve had annual budgeting for years. We’ve bought new software. We’ve hired consultants. It’s made no difference.

Whether my colleagues recognise it or not, we currently do not have the kind of reporting we have needed to make good decisions. We simply followed recommendations.

If the Council sees this opportunity for what it’s worth and takes it? It’ll be extremely useful for all future councils. If not? It won’t. But regardless, it will not be ‘annual vs. biennial’ that determines the quality of our controls or our strategy. It will be the Council.

Public Safety Property Tax Lid Lift

As with the biennial budget, this is something I campaigned on in 2019. And again, my colleagues seem to be on board now, but for very different reasons.

My colleagues say we need the money because of what our last city manager often called ‘exogenous forces’, which I think was a fancy way of saying, ²“stuff beyond your control”. I tire of these excuses, not because there are not real challenges (like inflation and poor treatment from the State) to address but because I’ve heard them since I’ve lived here. And in the immortal words of Roseanne Rosanadana, It’s always something. Every other city has those same beefs. And as a percentage of G/F we got a larger stimulus check than most other cities. So somehow we either find ways to rise above or just decide that ‘this is as good as it gets.’

People want more public safety. And I believe you will support this–if we are totally up front about what we need it for. How are we doing so far? Frankly, the jury is still out. The City brought forward the tax proposal (good), but not the benefit statement, ie. what we’re going to use the money for (bad.) They could have just as easily put both together at the same time.

We have had a longstanding habit of asking the Council to vote for money before we tell people how it will be used. And that, like our financial reporting standards, need to change.

Cm Achziger Resigns From Mt. Rainier Pool

In his closing comments, Gene Achziger announced that he was resigning from his position on the Mt. Rainier Pool Board. Over the years, he had been one of the (if not the most) ardent supporters of the pool, including campaigning to establish an independent Pool District in 2009.

In keeping with today’s theme, holding two elected offices had been problematic for many members of the Council, including moi, albeit for very different reasons. However, regardless of how one feels about the concept of holding multiple offices, Cm Achziger was willing to go to court over it and the conflict seemed as politically motivated as my censure last year and Martinelli’s resignation the year before that. Some may object to grouping these all together, but to my mind they’re all different flavours of the same crap we need to find a way to get past if we are ever to make this city more successful.

I applauded Mr. Achziger because whether you see it or not, sooner or later, this job takes an unexpected toll on almost every person who does it. And whether or not we agree on anything else, I believe we should (occasionally) acknowledge that.

¹‘In Ireland, we know St. Patrick’ as Naomh Pádraigh (pronounced ‘Neev Pawrick’). A little story in Irish to get a sense of the sound of the language.

²Gotta be honest here. My only reference to ‘exogenous forces’ was from physics, where it is often used to mean ‘forces external to the system.’