Weekly Update: 05/14/2023

Last Week

Tuesday: Port of Seattle Commission (Agenda) From the City perspective, the Port discussed an Equity Index, which may sound like something ‘symbolic’ or ‘ideology’ at first. But these things can matter for us because the language requires the Port to start considering every project they undertake (at least in part) in terms of its effect on the surrounding area. Which means us. It’s a tool.

Thursday: Environment Committee (Agenda) (Video) The ‘highlight’ was a review of the property out behind the Engineering Building. Long story short, there were leaks from fuel storage that became something of a toxic cleanup job for many years. I had hoped that the report this year would indicate that it was (finally) getting close to being complete. Apparently a new problem has arisen. I’ve asked for a copy of the current report.

Thursday: City Council Meeting (Agenda) (Video) Highlights below…

May 11 City Council Meeting

City Manager’s Report

The City Manager’s Report contained several presentations.

• SR3 did a lengthy presentation. And I truly appreciate their work. Love seals. Love the concept. Not a fan of city subsidies. And at the risk of sounding a constant grouch, somebody has to say that because the whole argument of basically everything at the Marina has to do with ‘magnets’, things which draw people into the city to create an economic benefit. None of them do. None. Zero. We tell that ongoing series of white lies because a portion of the local public passionately enjoy them. Fair enough. But when you wonder why we can’t make the place a ‘destination’? That’s the reason. We keep spending time, energy and money on things we enjoy, but which do not bring people to visit. That does not mean I want any of the current stuff to ‘disappear’. I just want someone else to pay for it so we can spend our time/energy/money on the things that actually will bring people here to spend money. 🙂
• Staff unveiled a Downtown Storefront fund, which had been proposed under New Items For Consideration at the May 4 meeting. I objected to it being confined to ‘the downtown’ and for it not including my motion to include public safety improvements. And with all due respect to my colleagues, some crankypants notions:
  • I proposed this idea a good while ago–it’s based on a program already in place in other cities like Burien. It took that mini-crime wave in April for the City to get off the dime.
  • It is concerning that this is so blatantly downtown-centric. We have a lot of great businesses and restaurants not in that six block area and they almost never get love from the City. This was a chance to make a nod to changing that. The City developed a system that could have been offered everywhere at no additional cost.
  • The City said that speed was of the essence. But showed up with no crime stats, even though these are on the City’s computers.
  • Process matters. Former Mayor Pina instituted the “New Items For Consideration” section of the meeting, which did not exist, until I started complaining about it. But it was never formalised and I urged my colleagues to get it in writing. It was left to the current system where the Mayor makes it whatever he wants it to be. No paperwork. So, we have a system whereby you have a voice ‘vote’ for doing something, but the something is never written down, and often comes back as something different from what was discussed on the dais. But if you complain, “Hey, that isn’t what we agreed to!” it’s not like pro football where you can do an instant replay and get a ruling from the ref. What ‘happened’ is whatever the majority says happened. There should never be an action taken by the City Council that is not put down on paper.
• LEGISLATIVE UPDATE
  • Regarding ‘the Blake Decision Fix’. The State will go into Special Session next week to attempt to create a new standard for drug laws and he did not sound optimistic. As I’ve reported more than once, the one thing I’ve heard from electeds and police throughout the region is that, when it comes to drug possession, they want a standard law. People can disagree on what ‘the best’ law might be, but everyone agrees that having one law is waaaaaaaay better than each city doing its own thing. This matters: sometimes, uniformity is preferrable to having your city do something ‘better’, but unique.
  • We got $1MM to fix the Redondo Fishing Pier. Yay. We did not get the money to build a new restroom. Double yay. It was ridiculous spending $1.2MM on a restroom at the Marina in the wrong place, and it will be even more ridiculous spending $1.6MM on its twin in the wrong place at Redondo. The Council should open up the design of the boardwalk to include the entire community–including a plan to improve public safety, which is intrinsically tied to the boardwalk. Public Planning Commission. Public Planning Commission. Public Planning Commission.
  • He also spent a good deal of time talking about the airport. He’s a very nice guy but on these issues he is selling exactly the same bad medicine that has kept us from getting any relief on airport issues for forty years…
    • The idea that we are spending money lobbying to spend tax dollars on Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) is ridiculous. The Port and airlines are already lobbying the crap out of that. Also, the science is inconclusive. But even if it turns out to be legit, there is no way it benefits us for at least twenty years. The Port wants it, the airlines want it, because it takes the pressure off them to do anything real in the near term about climate or pollution. In fact, their current goal? Get to a whopping 10% adoption by 2029.
    • The idea that we are spending money lobbying for a Second Airport is just as bad. A second airport will never reduce flights around Sea-Tac. STOP SAYING THAT. It’s like talking about a flat earth theory–people just can’t seem to wrap their heads around this. Instead, if by some miracle, a new airport is built, we should be lobbying that it will automatically include mitigation funding for Des Moines.

In short, I love lobbying. But it costs$6,000 a month. And for that kind of money we should be lobbying for things that will actually help Des Moines, not helping the Port and the airlines avoid doing something positive.

Happy Trails…

We keep getting money from WSDOT for something called ‘Barnes Creek Trail’ which is kind of confusing and it’s one of those things that the City really should do a good map on. But why bother when you can slap something totally rough together in 3 minutes, right? 😀

When you (or in this case WSDOT) build a major public project you often have to do ‘mitigations’. But the funny thing is that the mitigation can be ¹somewhere else. So in our case, over the years WSDOT has given us all sorts of grants with the ultimate goal of creating a trail system throughout Des Moines that ultimately connects with a regional bike trail system.

(If you want to see  ‘the dream’ you can currently get on yer bike at Golden Gardens Shilshole and bike all the way through Fremont, UW, up Lake Washington to Woodinville.)

If you fly over Des Moines you see what looks like two (cough) ‘forests’. These are the remains of what were going to be alternate routes for SR-509. (In fact, First Avenue technically still is SR-509.)

What I did here is a totally half-assed stick figure quality overview of our dream. Over the past few years we’ve gotten several State grants, including this year, to make the actual Barnes Creek more of a functional wetland and to build out those trails. The current funding will go to that southern most bit (green) from Highline College down 240th St. to the Marina and then connect to the back end of Des Moines Creek Trail.

But what I think of as ‘Barnes Creek Trail’ is the bit you likely don’t know about that starts around 15th Ave and KDM and snakes around to 223rd. Then stops. Then re-starts at 220th as a bunch of wood chips and goes to 216th. Then stops. Then re-starts across 216th and has a back entrance onto the proper Des Moines Creek Trail, which goes up to 200th and 15th Ave in SeaTac.

See the magenta bit at the north? That’s the Lake To Sound Trail (C), also being built by WSDOT. That crosses Port property, then parallels Des Moines Memorial Drive, and eventually will follow the new SR-509 north.

So the ‘dream’ would be to build out and connect all of that stuff in a manner similar to Des Moines Creek Trail such that residents could walk or ride their bike from Highline College or Des Moines Creek Elementary to the Des Moines Creek Trail, to the Lake To Sound Trail and the rest of the King County Trail System.

Why haven’t you heard about this? 😀 Public Planning Commission. Public Planning Commission. Public Planning Commission.

Again, again, I support any and all bike trails. But in terms of usability, you want to encourage these trails going north/south (flat) versus east/west (too hilly for many cyclists.)

Consent Agenda

I pulled Item #3, which concerned the “Des Moines Creek Estuary”, in order to make two amendments. This item will be a re-design of the mouth of the creek, including removal of 500 ft. of armouring. Long story, short, this could dramatically change the look of, you know, the spot that has created a thousand totally epic snapshots?

The first amendment was to insist that the Council (and the public be given images of the design alternatives as soon as they’re available, which is at 10% Design. (Regular readers will note that each ‘percentage’ on capital projects has a specific meaning.)

The fact that there was no support, after the lack of transparency on the hotel thing, means that my colleagues have learned no lessons. Or can’t visualise it. Which is why we need the images. 🙂

But “de-armoring” means “getting rid of man-made retaining walls”, ie. the bits in red that look ‘natural’ but which are totally not and which you take for granted. I’m not sure exactly which bits of retaining wall would be removed. But again, again, that’s why we need the images. 🙂 🙂

Public. Planning. Commission.

The second amendment was to include “sea level rise” in the approval process at some point. And my colleagues kept saying that the packet item only covered “10% Design”. Not. True. They obfuscated my first amendment with this item. And again, this is why process matters, because we did not have the language of the agenda item available.

Currently, we engineer projects (like the sea wall) using ‘100 year models’, ie. Using the past to predict the future. I don’t wanna sound snippy about it, but the era when civil engineers could use ‘100 year patterns’ as the baseline for any design is over. (Which is to say, we did not use climate in building our new sea wall. Awkward. 😀 )

New Business

There was no new business.

New Items For Consideration

I made a motion to rescind Ordinance #1539. My hope is that the City will do exactly that because it’s a) the right thing to do, and b) the least amount of work for the City Attorney. It’s literally one line. So, wtf is “Ordinance #1539”? 😀

Ya know how every year there is a new study about “red wine”. One year it prevents cancer, the next year it causes cancer? 😀 Yeah, noise exposure ain’t like that. Noise is more like high blood pressure or diabetes. You don’t even know that something is ‘wrong’. But it’s constantly wearing on key systems. Cardiovascular. Brain function. It’s taking years off yer life. It’s lowering yer kids’ IQ (no kidding).

There has been study after study since the early 70’s and with every single one, the news only gets worse. Unlike red wine, there is never a noise study that says that there’s less to worry about. Every study only adds some likely new harm.

Sound insulation is far from perfect. But, it’s the one thing we can do immediately that not only helps people in a living space, it helps every person who will ever live in that same space, forever.

¹One of the main environmental mitigations of the Third Runway was to ‘move’ a series of wetlands (now buried under Mount Sea-Tac) over to Auburn. I say ‘move’ rather than ‘re-create’, because the Port expended a certain amount of effort attempting to wrangle the various critters (including raptors) and sending them to new homes over there.