Some bits of business…
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.
Coho Update
The salmon fry at the Marina are doing well, growing fast, and their daily feeding has increased from five to six pounds.
The Future of Blake Island
Most boaters, and many, Many, tourists, know about Blake Island (the little island just across the Sound) and Tillicum Village. But as with so many things, a lot changed with COVID. Please read the following articles and survey on the Future of WA state park Blake Island and make your public comment known! Blake Island Master Plan- Alternatives Survey
eBike Rebate Lottery
Last year’s eBike Rebate program was so popular, the State will be offering a second round. In fact, it is a lottery-based approach, so sign up now! Hope you get chosen. Washington’s e-bike rebate program opening second application round March 30
About the Cover: Age in Des Moines
At our next meeting, we will get our second economic development presentation from FCS. I first encountered their work by watching other City Councils and I am grateful City Manager Caffrey hired them for one reason: validation. 😀 One data point I was glad to see day-lighted was the delta between the perception many people have as to our population and the demographics of the people who actually live here.
I think this is largely due to the people represented in civic life.
As a City, we do any number of things to benefit children–and we do those like a boss. We certainly have no shortage of community activities and representation by seniors. 🙂 For me, what has been falling away is ‘the middle’.
When I first moved here a fairly typical elected or member of a City committee was 30-50 and had kids in public school. Today, only Councilmember Blosse fits that demo. Of the two to three dozen members of our appointive committees, my guess is that only 1-2 are in that set. And despite having thousands of renters, since I’ve lived here, I can think of only one councilmember who lived in an apartment.
Thursday, we will vote to establish a salary commission for the Council. One argument I’ve heard in favour is that giving more pay will get more people to run for office. Maybe. But if that is true, where does that leave us in obtaining more people in that essential ‘middle’ to properly represent the entire City in other aspects of civic life?
In a city of 33,000 I think it’s ridiculous to demand any arbitrary mix of demographics as being essential to good government. But I also do not think we fully understand why this delta exists. Regardless, until a wider group of people do engage, I think we must choose people with the best CVs. However, if we really believe in this thing called ‘democracy’ the City must try harder to represent everyone in our City. And until we get there, I try to remember what my kids often tell me: younger people think differently. A big part of my job is trying to understand the needs of people we are not seeing at City Hall.
City Manager Stuff
City Manager Reports! March 20, 2026
This Week
Tuesday
Port of Seattle Commission (Agenda courtesy of STNI): This is kinda of a biggee. The Commission will vote to restructure their borrowing authority, making it even easier for them to pay for airport expansion–and likely more difficult to tease out money for cities to compensate for the harms. They will also add $1,000,000 to their SAMP consultant expense account–to make sure the permitting process goes smoothly. For them.
Wednesday
2:30pm Highline Forum: (Agenda courtesy of STNI) The discussion will centre on preparation for FIFA (We do not call it ‘world cup’ anymore! 🙂 )
6:00pm Citizens Advisory Board: (Agenda)
Thursday
6:00pm City Council Meeting (highlights below)
Saturday
9:00am – 3:00pm Spring Recycling Event at the Marina South Parking Lot!
March 26 City Council Meeting Highlights
March-26-2026-City-Council-Meeting-Agenda-Packet
- There will be an Executive Session on property acquisition. Oooh… ahhh. D
- There will be a discussion of using Lodging Tax money to pay for events throughout the year. On the surface, this is a more transparent use of those funds than in past years.
- Some ‘routine’ items on the consent agenda that I’ve been getting an earful on from residents are that salary commission. Folks, I tried. Got outvoted 1-6. 😀 And the car tab increase to $50? I supported that, but only because we’re broke. My hope is that the City Council gets the message and works harder to become less broke. Speaking of which…
- The big highlight is part two from the FCS analysts I mentioned above. They will review part one for our two new Cms, and then discuss the pluses and minuses of various forms of land use and economic development. This is something I’ve been yammering for since 2019 and it is just stunning to me that we haven’t done it before. Here are the slides from the presentation.
Although one cannot ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’ with data (it just is), the slides do seem to lead one towards a few conclusions with which I am not quite comfortable. First, the elephant not in that room is the airport. This blind spot, the continuing notion that ‘airport issues’ are somehow off to the side is insane and if I were King Of The Forest I would mandate that every report generated must include a section on airport impacts. The airport influences every possibility, not just noise and pollution. Everything.
As just one example: if you recall, the original ‘plan’ for the Marina, going back to 2016, was a for-profit development. And after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and doing an extensive RFP, not a single legit proposal came forward. We ended up ‘pivoting’ to what will be a $13,000,000 park (ie. ongoing borrowing cost because no one wanted to build on what we were told was the most desirable spot in town. We re-labeled it as ‘placemaking’. Perhaps. But if you can’t see how that failure connects to Sea-Tac Airport, I have some property in the Everglades I’d like to talk with you about. 🙂
As to the items I do see, there is a lot of very useful material. Well done. But also a bias towards one-time money–ie. choosing building strategies based on the ones that generate the most up front fees. The practical reason, the dirty little secret, is that a lot of current building, residential or commercial, ends up costing the City money over time. We’re slowly losing money with the current system of funding cities. This incentivises us strongly towards focusing on projects that yield us the largest amount of instant gratification, not based on long-term benefit to the residents.
Here’s the challenge: whatever permit/impact/sales tax money you get on the front end has to last for the entire life of the project. The chunk of change we got for the Des Moines Creek Business Park in 2016 came in mighty handy during that fiscal crisis. But to be truly meaningful for the sustainability of the City, it would have needed to be many times larger. Unfortunately, you swing the golden shovel, take the victory lap, and then leave a future Council to realise: Oops! Maybe we shoulda considered that Warehouse Tax. 😀
Last Week
Wednesday
King County Metro Regional Transit Committee 20260318-RTC-packet
There were three items of interest for Des Moines:
- Improvements to the Rider Dashboard, one of my fave topics 🙂 I keep pushing on this because it has gotten so much better! People who ride transit need to know not only the schedule, and not even, how timely are the buses running now, but also, what can I expect. We’ve come to expect this from auto route mapping and weather forecasts. For example, in planning my week, I want a sense of what to expect in advance, how timely/crowded, my route is likely to be.
- Metro is facing the same massive structural deficit problems everyone is. Because the County has a Strategic Climate Action Plan, every portion of their government is required to make climate change a real (not virtue signal) part of their budgeting. In this case, they have decided to meet the goal by adding service and pause electrification of the fleet. This sucks, but it is legit: the more people who take transit, the fewer auto trips.
- Speaking of money, the King County Transportation District.
The always helpful King County staff provided me with a useful piece of data, showing the tax contributions and populations of cities in King County. I despise using stuff like this, not because we don’t need every dime we can get, but because it is unfair. Even if we are able to claw back a piece of this, it still means that a city like SeaTac, which just happens to contain an airport, gets far more per road mile than Des Moines.
| City | Taxable Sales 2024 | Share | Population 2025 | % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seattle | $36,356,482,810.00 | 39.0% | 816,600 | 35.50 |
| Bellevue | $10,657,209,709.00 | 11.4% | 158,000 | 6.87 |
| Redmond | $5,575,926,284.00 | 6.0% | 82,380 | 3.58 |
| Renton | $4,414,894,672.00 | 4.7% | 109,700 | 4.77 |
| Kirkland | $3,998,796,896.00 | 4.3% | 97,850 | 4.25 |
| Unincorporated King County | $3,924,057,933.00 | 4.2% | 243,000 | 10.57 |
| Kent | $3,856,645,397.00 | 4.1% | 140,100 | 6.09 |
| Seatac | $2,905,166,569.00 | 3.1% | 32,990 | 1.43 |
| Tukwila | $2,715,006,411.00 | 2.9% | 22,960 | 1.00 |
| Auburn/king | $2,546,540,438.00 | 2.7% | 90,320 | 3.93 |
| Federal Way | $2,305,234,347.00 | 2.5% | 102,900 | 4.47 |
| Issaquah | $2,165,432,784.00 | 2.3% | 41,560 | 1.81 |
| Shoreline | $1,677,332,800.00 | 1.8% | 63,740 | 2.77 |
| Burien | $1,213,679,536.00 | 1.3% | 53,320 | 2.32 |
| Woodinville | $1,173,762,593.00 | 1.3% | 14,060 | 0.61 |
| Bothell/king | $1,108,485,524.00 | 1.2% | 51,760 | 2.25 |
| Sammamish | $882,356,827.00 | 0.9% | 68,480 | 2.98 |
| Mercer Island City | $754,329,571.00 | 0.8% | 25,850 | 1.12 |
| Covington | $730,798,397.00 | 0.8% | 22,160 | 0.96 |
| Maple Valley | $526,509,498.00 | 0.6% | 29,340 | 1.28 |
| Enumclaw | $518,654,396.00 | 0.6% | 13,400 | 0.58 |
| Des Moines | $468,794,736.00 | 0.5% | 33,540 | 1.46 |
| Kenmore | $428,269,827.00 | 0.5% | 24,520 | 1.07 |
| North Bend | $384,298,285.00 | 0.4% | 8,590 | 0.37 |
| Snoqualmie | $318,680,850.00 | 0.3% | 14,550 | 0.63 |
| Duvall | $227,977,044.00 | 0.2% | 8,810 | 0.38 |
| Medina | $225,147,358.00 | 0.2% | 2,915 | 0.13 |
| Newcastle | $223,838,659.00 | 0.2% | 13,880 | 0.60 |
| Lake Forest Park | $209,580,620.00 | 0.2% | 13,700 | 0.60 |
| Black Diamond | $160,499,987.00 | 0.2% | 7,435 | 0.32 |
| Normandy Park | $117,091,221.00 | 0.1% | 6,855 | 0.30 |
| Clyde Hill | $100,426,205.00 | 0.1% | 3,095 | 0.13 |
| Algona | $91,439,612.00 | 0.1% | 3,335 | 0.15 |
| Carnation | $86,197,918.00 | 0.1% | 2,320 | 0.10 |
| Pacific/king | $79,629,229.00 | 0.1% | 7,280 | 0.32 |
| Milton/king | $76,548,611.00 | 0.1% | 8,795 | 0.38 |
| Hunts Point | $57,913,006.00 | 0.1% | 455 | 0.02 |
| Yarrow Point | $44,964,045.00 | 0.0% | 1,130 | 0.05 |
| Beaux Arts Village | $14,116,227.00 | 0.0% | 310 | 0.01 |
| Skykomish | $11,410,938.00 | 0.0% | 165 | 0.01 |