Weekly Update 05/18/2025

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.

We’re doing a six month trial without standing committees, instead doing a monthly committee of the whole. Unfortunately, as the year goes on, items for consideration are veering away from each committee’s planning calendar. But for what it’s worth, each committee’s planning calendar here. 🙂

UW AAA study for kids with asthma – free indoor air filters!

The University of Washington is conducting an Asthma, air quality & airports fon children living near Sea-Tac Airport. This is a great opportunity to help improve the air quality for your child and help with important research! Learn more and sign up here.

Puget Sound Gateway Toll-Rate Setting Online Open House

Yes, tolling is coming to SR-509. I keep posting this because it’s only taken 50 years, so you can be forgiven for being a bit skeptical. But as you drive down 24th Ave you’ll notice that the exit onto I-5 is nearing completion. This is happening. Learn more here:

Puget Sound Gateway Toll-Rate Setting – WSTC Online Open House – Washington State Transportation Commission

City Manager Stuff

City Manager Report 05.16.2025 In addition to a recipe for Baked Crab Dip, there is an announcement that Redondo Paid Parking is finally on the way.

Restaurants!

There have been more restaurant ³changes in town. So this is a good time to remind you of the local restaurant guide TakeOutDM.Com or TakeOutDesMoines.Com. There is a sign-up form which emails signees when various establishments are offering specials! If you are a new restaurant owner, you should also let them know when you are having said specials so they can spread the woid.

This Week

Thursday

City Council Meeting Regular Meeting – 22 May 2025 – Agenda – Pdf. If you have a sense of deja vu all over again, you’re not wrong. 🙂 We will once again be re-visiting several items discussed at the May 8, 2022 meeting I previously went over.

There will be two significant City Manager Presentations.

I can’t stand wasting word count with ‘nice’ disclaimers. 😀 But fair is fair: Ms. Caffrey has been so much better about keeping the Council informed than her predecessor, there’s no comparison. It used to be the case that the Council would routinely get new information for an immediate decision at our desks. No notice.

However, these City Manager Presentations with no background, are much the same. One can say that it doesn’t matter unless there is a Council decision to be made. But a lot of the time, these presentations do provoke a discussion, and often some form of Council direction. Not having that information ahead of time tends to lead to the same kinds of snap decisions that were not a great feature of previous Councils. Staff will always prefer the flexibility to work on their PPTs until 5:55pm (I know I did! 😀 ) But the gold standard should be: “Unless it’s a real emergency, all presentations will be in the agenda packet.”

Pet licensing program. This was something Chief Boe talked about at the May 1, Committee of the Whole deal. The money will be useful for improving Animal Control. No, it’s not all the money we will need, but it’s money we’ve been leaving on the table for a long time. My concern is more that the software work smoothly with whatever new web site we get later in the year. This has been a chronic problem. Either we get the wrong software, or we get the right software and it’s a ton of work, or the various pieces don’t talk to one another. When people go to our phone app (fingers crossed!) it should be a one-button affair to pay for basically everything the City charges for. 🙂
Capital projects update. This is a biggee. We’ll hear about Marina Steps, Redondo pier and Flag Triangle. And there will be decisions! I don’t think any decisions on projects this big should be made without the public seeing the options ahead of time.

Some other highlights…

Citizens Advisory Committee Re-Org. If you read last week, the City offered two big options for consolidating all our various ‘citizen’ committees. The Council voted (4-3) for Option A – what I called the Soviet Option. 😀

At least partly in response to my concerns over participation, the packet reads:

At the May 8 City Council meeting, the Council emphasized the importance of broadening outreach efforts to encourage new applicants and ensure diverse community representation on the committee.

In response, staff plan to take the following steps:

Promote the application process on the City’s website and social media platforms
Share information through local Facebook community groups
Send an email blast to the email addresses on the City’s subscription list (almost 7,000 email addresses)
Provide application materials in both English and Spanish
Streamline the online application to make it easy and accessible
Distribute flyers with a QR code linking to the application at the Activity Center, Field House, and Beach Park
Install temporary yard signs with QR codes at City parks
Reach out to local organizations—including the Rotary Club, Marina District Association, Redondo Community Association, North Hill, and others—to help share the application through their mailing lists

Here is my “I am choosing to believe that this will work” emoji —-> 🙂

Lakehaven Water District Franchise Agreement. This is the second reading on an agreement to lock in a six percent franchise fee for rate payers until 2041. I will probably vote ‘no’. Not to be difficult, but because the City is proposing a six percent fee and I have no idea what the proper franchise fee should be.

If memory serves, the City originally got into the ‘SPD franchise’ business years ago because it actually wanted to enact a utility tax – in order to raise revenue during a previous fiscal crisis – and the State courts had not yet ruled if that was constitutional or not. So, we enacted franchise fees. Potayto, potahto. Regardless, legal-wise, franchise fees are supposed to have something to do with cost recovery. And thus far, I’ve never seen us discuss why we charge (x) fee for any of our franchisees – Comcast, Centurylink, SPDs. And I believe we should. The only discussion I’ve ever heard is that “it’s what everyone else does.” I don’t think that’s good enough anymore.

One could go down the road of a franchise agreement and no fees. Although we do need some form of legal agreement to work with SPDs, there’s nothing that states that any fee should be charged. Again, not saying that’s the right thing, not even close. But the goal should be to understand the real financial impacts (plus and minus) of all these relationships.

Council Protocol Manual Update. We’re plowing through a long list of changes to our Council meeting rules. We got through a few on May 1st and now we’re moving down the list. These are rules that govern how meetings work. They aren’t exactly ‘laws’ but they matter a lot because, to paraphrase Michael Matthias, “He who controls the agenda, controls the meeting.” They cover everything from the Mayor’s authority, to what kinds of information the City is required to provide to councilmembers, to how long meetings last, to whether or not it takes one or two readings to pass an ordinance. Back in the day, they were mostly governed by social norms.

The biggest change in Des Moines government since I’ve lived here has been a gradual change in the office of ‘mayor’. It used to be ceremonial and as the Council has changed its rules, over time it has morphed towards something more like an ‘executive’. It wasn’t supposed to be like that in Council-Manager Government. It’s basically supposed to be ‘seven equals’. In Des Moines, the City Manager performs the functions of ‘mayor’ in cities like Kent and Federal Way – which have an elected mayor form of government. I know we both have ‘mayors’ but it’s very different. But when you call someone ‘mayor’, the public assumes that whoever is mayor here has the same authority as Dana Ralph in Kent or Jim Ferrell in Federal Way. It’s hard to fix — like that rule in the US Senate where it takes sixty votes to pass any bill now. It totally sucks, but electeds like it too much to seriously consider doing anything about it.

Executive Session. POTENTIAL LITIGATION RCW 42.30.110 (1)(i) – 20 Minutes.

Last Week

Tuesday: Port of Seattle Commission (Agenda). Their staff discussed their accomplishments in environmental sustainability, including sound insulation and other airport mitigations. To give you a sense of how well we’re doing, here’s a summary of sound insulation for 2024:

“Completed or made progress in insulating three single-family homes, 9 apartment buildings, and 3 places of worship.”

All of those were first-time installs – mandated as part of the Third Runway agreement from 1996. Zero progress on anything new. Full coverage at STNI

Friday

6:00pm Mt. Rainier High School Art Fest! 6pm – 9pm. Big Band Jazz! Mariachis! Art! This was the third year band director Ashley La has been doing this and it was the biggest crowd so far. I also saw the Mayor and Cm Achziger there, so the woid is spreading!