Weekly Update: 04/09/2023

This Week

Thursday: Transportation Committee Meeting (Agenda)

A couple of times a year, committee members will receive this kind of progress report to show where the City is at with various projects in the master Capital Improvements Plan.

Thursday: Environment Committee Meeting (Agenda)

Thursday: City Council Meeting (Agenda)

April 13 Meeting highlights

If our April 6 meeting was ‘fat-free’, this meeting will be, in the words of our former President… “Huuuuuge”. There will be something of interest for everybody.

Whether you’re interested in:

• Fireworks
• Zoning along 216th and Central Des Moines
• The Citizens Advisory Committee
• The Marina Steps
• Redondo Fishing Pier
• Or your taxes?

You should definitely show up!

Consent Agenda

#6. We’ll be doing a Drone Show for July 4th; not fireworks. The packet reads,

“In 2023, Destination Des Moines did not identify that they would be hosting an event for the 4th of July in Des Moines. Staff began researching drone shows as a source of entertainment after hearing of successful displays in other cities and at the recommendation of members of City Council”

Well, Huh.

Could be great. And I’m certainly no fan of the neighbourhood fireworks. But to me, this is such a beloved tradition, it’s hard to understand why we would change it. Also, the money will come from our Lodging Tax

But more importantly, this is the kind of decision that should not be put on the Consent Agenda without plenty of notice and without the full Council and the public, seeing some sort of demo. Plus, it’s just sneaky. It puts the decision point into April, which means that (once again) if the Council were to say ‘no’, the City would come back and say, “The deadline is next week. You have to say ‘yes’ or no fireworks for you!”

Actually, this is the perfect use case for a Citizen’s Advisory Committee. It’s just different enough from what people are used to that we should get a sense of public opinion before we do it.

I did some ‘research’ from the vendor. The video below is for 150 drones. Our contract is for 100 drones, which is probably fine for a smaller scale. It’s $90,000–which seems a bit higher than fireworks (could be wrong, though) and the money will come from our Lodging Tax which I guess is OK, but I’d prefer be used for more direct marketing. I didn’t see anything about ‘music’, or security, though.

Public Hearing

DRAFT ORDINANCE NO: 23-021: PUBLIC HEARING ON
CONTINUING MORATORIUM FOR NEW DEVELOPMENT IN THE
BUSINESS PARK AREA AND ADOPTING FINDINGS OF FACT Staff Presentation by Community Development Director Denise Lathrop

If you recall, the City asked for an ’emergency’ moratorium on any permitting in the following area. This hearing is to extend that study period for another six months. If you live in or near the affected area I urge you to show up and demand an answer to a very simple reason: Why? Why do we need to put this one, specific spot on hold for a year. You have a right to a better answer than, “Well, studying is good, right?” 😀 Yes, studying is a fine thing. But in my experience, when the City targets a particular area, something is up. And the maddening thing about land use is that the rules often make the Council the last people to know.

New Business

• MARINA DOCK REPLACEMENT AND MARINA REDEVELOPMENT
  REIMBURSEMENT Staff Presentation by Finance Director Jeff Friend

The City is asking the Council’s permission to issue $25.1MM in bonds to cover the first dock replacement (L,M and N) and the Marina Steps and the Redondo Fishing Pier and Restroom, and an integrated parking system. All these bonds will be part of the Marina Enterprise Fund.

Not happy for several reasons:

• • We’re approving bonds ( your taxes–remember, this is a credit card that you have to pay interest on) for these projects before getting needed information. For example
    • I’ve been hearing about a new parking system literally since I’ve been on the Council. So far, no presentation.
    • Same thing with the Steps. We’ve literally received no design drawings or other planning documents. We’ve literally never had a chance to question the architect and the only information I have to go on is a single extremely vague windy path image from Skylab.
  • As I’ve written many times, I believe the Marina Steps should only be considered after the boat launch and dry stack storage are built. Boat storage brings in money. ‘Steps’ do not.
  • Conflating all these projects together is bad policy, bad management and bad faith. The boat launch, dry stack and parking are core functions of the Marina. They belong within the Enterprise Fund. The Steps project is most definitely not. It’s not part of the Marina business. I agree that the current Parking System and Redondo are important priorities, but they should be considered separately.
• MARINA STEPS PROJECT – DESIGN AND PERMITTING Staff Presentation by City Engineer Tommy Owen. As you know by now, I remain on the fence regarding the steps (that sounds weird, right?) But one thing I know I want is to build the dry stack boat storage first, ie before any ‘steps’. Why? M.o.n.e.y. Boat storage brings in money. Steps do not. The boat launch is currently out of service. If we build the dry stack in concert with the boat launch, we can start generating revenue to pay for the rest of this stuff, rather than asking the public to foot the bill until 2032.

• Item 3. CITIZENS ADVISORY COMMITTEE APPOINTMENTS

Congratulations to all. The following is not a critique of any individual, but rather the selection process for all advisory committee appointments, which in my opinion has been broken for a very long time.

1. You get what you get. I haven’t dived deep into the totals but there was one district with only a single applicant and more than one with only two. Not. Good. Our first task should be to develop much better outreach.
2. The process just begs to be highly politicised. The Mayor sees the apps, makes his choices, the choices go public before the Council gets a peek. Who wants to be the cranky CM who criticises any of the choices from the dais?
3. Applicants tend to skew very AARP and very pale and thus very empty-nester–if you know what I’m sayin’. Our CAC should represent the diversity of the City whenever possible.
4. I don’t think applicants should be allowed to serve on two advisory committees at once.

And just to be clear, these issues apply to all advisory committees. They are all ‘black boxes’. The selection process is sketchy and the work product they generate is only seen or discussed by the Council once a year–and again, who wants to be ‘that guy’ and say anything but “Great Work!”

Said it before, say it again: For programs like this? Lottery–like Jury Duty. That’s how it’s done in many places and it provides much better results. Why? Because people who apply are generally pre-qualified. Think about it: most people who apply for a community position are very sincere and most are qualified. So, if you simply pull names out of a hat, you take the politics and bias (on all sides) out of the equation. The real trick? Getting more people to apply.

Last Week

Wednesday: SeaTacNoise.Info we sent out our quarterly Port Package Update letter. (Big deal, right? 😀 ) I only mention it periodically because, as hard as it may be to believe, some of you are still not aware of STNI’s ongoing work to get bad sound insulation systems fixed! If you have a Port Package which is falling apart and mold and haven’t gotten the memo, please read this before you start calling window replacement shops.

Thursday 5:00: Public Safety/Emergency Management Committee Meeting (Agenda) (Video). There will be an update on the Redondo ‘speed camera’. The agenda was updated. The new agenda concerned:

• Police Accreditation, which the Chief reiterated at the main meeting. We passed with flying colours.
• There was a presentation on Ham Radio which was good. And I gotta be honest, I hope we’re taking the subject seriously. When The Big One hits, there’s a fair chance that those devices will be the only two-way communications that function, and Des Moines probably will be a key location.
• I honestly could not hear the Emergency Management portion so I urge you to look at the video transcript. I think there are upcoming courses on CERT and building a home air filter. Both very good things. 🙂

Thursday 6:00: City Council Study Session (Agenda). (Video). No one showed up for public comment. Highlights below.

Saturday: COHO Pen Release! I apologise for not publicising this, but I got work from Trout Unlimited that, for some unknown reason, there had been a high number of dead fry during the daily feedings. The concern was that there was some ‘problem’ within the net and they didn’t want any unpleasant surprises during the release. Fortunately, it was uneventful and tens of thousands of adolescent salmon are now free, Free, FREE! Hope to see them back here in a couple of years. 🙂

April 6, 2023 City Council Study Session

The meeting opened with the City Manager honouring three members of the staff.

Then an intro of the two new communications consultants at Consor. As I’ve written before, I’ve met Mr. Hoffmann before in his role with WSDOT and he was great to work with. However, I did not vote for a ‘communications consultant’, I simply wanted a better website. But if you look at this move, plus the recent Rules of Procedure proposals, the entire discussion of improving engagement and transparency is being transmogrified into its exact opposite.

We then moved into the ‘goals’ part, with an intro by the City Manager. To give you a sense of how things have changed, the entire meeting lasted about 1:15. In contrast, a typical ‘planning retreat’ back in the 2010’s might last three hours. They tended to be long meetings because the Council really was trying to hammer out policy goals with all the department heads.

Also, ahead of this meeting, the Council received the following email.

 

That’s the kind of letter that really makes a guy want to propose something. 😀  So… this meeting consisted of one round of ‘questions’ from each CM, followed by a response from the City Manager to each. The Mayor then asked each CM for some ‘closing remarks’. We were not informed of this format, but I kinda expected something like it. But I don’t think the two new members did and that’s reason #327 why we need new leadership–and in fact a whole new type of City Council. Because, whether or not CMs are willing to object in public, it’s simply wrong to constantly walk into a meeting with no clear sense of what is about to happen.

It’s the Mayor’s fault for not providing structure ahead of time, and it’s the Council’s fault for enabling it. The true believers love it because they’re only input is ‘full speed ahead’. But it also puts new members in the uncomfortable position of being labeled ‘difficult’ or keeping quiet and then (in a few years!) having a chance to change things–which never happens. 🙂

Closing Comments and Stand-up Comedy…

In my closing comments I mention the term ‘gravity’, how we spend so much time and energy on the same few areas of the City–at the expense of the majority of Des Moines, and in particular the young families that were the reason I (and my friends) moved here. I also reiterated my belief that we should build boat storage and focus on revenue generation at the Marina before we spend public money on any ‘Steps’ project. By way of reply the City Manager said:

Councilmember I’m confused. If you could clarify. You say to emphasize the south end and then you say the first project should be in the marina.

That is not what I said. 🙂

Really good politicians almost always have a snappy, but outwardly friendly sounding reply to these sorts of things. I don’t. Believe it or not, I don’t walk into these meetings like a stand-up comedian expecting heckling. Would that one could, right? 😀 I walk into every meeting with 100% sincerity. So it takes  a few seconds to switch into ‘politician-mode’–having to do that is such a waste of CPU cycles.

We need a completely new environment, where you show up and the decision making actually occurs on the dais. Where people are actually encouraged to speak their minds and nobody gets defensive. Where people can feel genuinely safe.

A guy can dream, right? 😀

My suggestions…

Before the meeting, I responded to the City Manager by sending in a list of my small ball suggestions. And let’s just say that the responses were not exactly warm. The interactions are a matter of public record for this who really want them, but two quick examples. I wrote:

The web site. We budgeted money for Marina presentations (September 2021) that were never used. Take it and provide the resources to start implementing some of the ideas I’ve mentioned many, many times. Especially SMS access. We need to move to mobile-based apps.

The reply from the City…

ARPA funds can be expended through 2026.

And…

We should have neighbourhood based police reports. That seems a natural fit for the new Citizens Advisory Committee. The only thing we have now conflates the Marina -and- Redondo which does not seem useful.

The reply from the City…

Individual Councilmembers will not dictate the agenda for the Citizens Advisory Committee.    

I keep beating this drum because the entire city knows these are good ideas. The entire Council knows these are good ideas. It’s just ridiculous.

My small ball idea list…

But, fwiw, here is a partial list of the ideas I submitted to the City Manager and that should have been on the table in a for realz ‘goal setting’ meeting (as we used to have):

• Public Planning Commission. Every other city has one–and until 2013, so did we. It’s time to bring it back to make certain that residents have a voice in the growth of our City.
• Web site. There’s so much wrong, there’s almost no way to say it, except that the City manager mentioned misgivings about making our site mobile-first. And I don’t know what to do with that. The world is mobile devices. People who use desktops and ’email’ are the minority.
• But here’s one thing:
  • Here is the DMPD’s March Police Report. You’re welcome.
  • Now, here’s the link on the City web site:

    https://desmoineswa.hosted.civiclive.com/common/pages/DownloadFileByUrl.aspx?key=M80hkjI65LGUlc8d%2BVHylQbgz7AzA7hLDyAVjy8Bi27%2BlgZxusX1cJBygmTuwxhoJtjLL6ULUrwcOvaylOT5L6HjAWdPr9ONjpemyrZM%2Fd%2BuGTLR8Sw%2Bv%2BchOVILZqZPqX%2FU92MeYukiX%2BOQx6idEl48ZSlzazKUI442q277N4XS%2FZCs9BSGW7EceNOqb7oGCuoTBA%3D%3D

    Now what you want, is to be able to type “March Police Report” into the Search Box, or even better, just say “Hey, Siri, show me the DMPD’s March Police Report!” into yer phone.

    And, I kid you not, making that happen is about as tough for a web developer as clearing a drain is for a plumber. The problem is not the task. The problem is that anyone still thinks that such things are tantamount to ‘space magic’.

• Better reporting. The City has spent a lot of money over the past few years on new accounting software. We’re paying an ongoing consultant to provide training. It’s time to start seeing the results.
  • Sales tax by neighbourhood. Asking for this caused a big kerfuffle last year, when I was told it was ‘impossible’. Apparently, other cities like Poulsbo didn’t get that memo. We should know how each street is doing.
  • Crime stats by neighbourhood. We currently provide no regular reporting by neighbourhood, even though officers are required to key that info (and lots of other good stuff) into every call. The closest we get is a combination of the Marina and Redondo–which makes no sense to me.
• Remote access (Zoom) for meetings–both for the Council and the public. Again, we had it and dumped it. But every other city kept it going and there’s nothing left to say about it.
• Grants. After you’re on the Council for a while, you’ll start to hear about grant opportunities that other cities are taking advantage of. We could be getting
  • Urban flooding. The County has money, previous set aside for flooding along rivers, which can be assigned for storm water updates–something we desperately need throughout the City.
  • Trees. Our tree cover continues to decline. (29% and falling at last count.) The good news is that there are many opportunities for us to obtain free trees from any number of sources.
  • Clean-ups. We have resident-heroes who regularly do clean-ups on specific streets. Well done. But the State also offers money to hire people to pick up trash and organise community-wide clean-up events.