This Week
Tuesday: ‘Missing Middle’ Housing Seminar. This is something I’m fairly passionate about. Over the past two decades there have been two trends in ‘housing’, the McMansion and the government subsidised apartments. There’s been an ongoing argument that the public only wants 3,000 ft. homes, which is simply not true. Most of Des Moines consists of homes like mine, under 2,000 sq ft. and they have always sold like hot cakes. Town Homes provide much greater opportunities for ownership and greatly increased density.
Wednesday: Des Moines Marina Association
Thursday: 4:00 Transportation Committee Meeting (Agenda) There will be a presentation from WSDOT on Stage 2 of the SR-509 project.
Thursday: 5:00 Environment Committee Meeting (Agenda)
Thursday: 6:00 City Council Meeting (Agenda) The City Manager has scheduled an update on Summer Events, which I assume includes announcing that the Fireworks are a go for July 4th at the Marina. As for my part of the show, there will be thirteen items on the Consent Agenda but nothing on New Business.
Now remember that the Consent Agenda is defined as “Items that are considered routine…” They are presented as a slate because they do not merit discussion or debate or amendment. Remember, the Mayor and City Manager set the Agenda, not the Council. The Agenda sends their message as to what is ‘routine’.
OK, the City Manager typically spends 20 minutes on his thing. And assuming it takes five minutes to read two proclamations. And assuming we voted on all that stuff without objection. Total elapsed time? 30 minutes. Now that is efficient government, my friend.
Here’s the list of items on that Consent Agenda…
- Approval of Vouchers: $5,757,623.05
- Approval of minutes from past three months
- Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan
- Disposal of two abandoned vessels (routine)
- Redondo Aquatic Lands Agreement
- Wesley Senior Services Contract
- Animal Control Officer outsource to Burien C.A.R.E.S.
- Farmers Market agreement + 20k grant
- Minor Home Repairs project
- 216th Street Undergrounding PSE payment $220,000
- Housing Plan Consultant contract $75,000
- LBGTQ Pride Month proclamation
- Juneteenth Proclamation
Do all those seem routine to you? And one last thing, concerning what should be the least controversial part of any Consent Agenda. We’re being asked to vote for $5.7M in spending. The Council gets this list (which is a public document, but which you don’t see, probably because it also includes people’s pay rates–which I edited out for this post.) Since we haven’t met for a long time, there are well over 400 items. I simply asked to see the invoices for about ten. And… it’s a fight.
If you can deny any Councilmember information as basic as the bills we are legally required to approve? We’re onto an entirely new level.
Friday: Mt. Rainier High School Graduation at ShoWare Center
Last Week
Wednesday: Highline School Board Meeting. I was there to witness the swearing in of District #5 Director Azeb Hagos.
“Welcome. My neighbour Ibrahim is from Addis and he was gonna join me, but at the last minute he had to take care of his kids. My point is: people care. A lot. They may not show up, but they do care. But it’s easy to forget that after a while when you work
in an empty room. Don’t.
–HSD has a -district- based board. None of our cities have district-based councils. The Port does not—and it’s an even larger government. Some very smart people made this choice very intentionally. In contrast, almost everything you vote on will be HSD-wide. Almost every staff presentation will talk about what is best for HSD as a whole. And of course, you always want to work with your colleagues. But…. you represent District 5.
–One of Ibrahim’s kids is at Midway. The other is at Bezos. A lot of families are like that. It’s not a closed system and I hope you will learn from all those experiences.
–Always return everybody’s phone call.
–Always read the entire packet. The front will have a staff summary and a recommendation, which is fine. But read the whole thing.
Congratulations
Thursday: Public Safety and Emergency Management Committee Meeting (Agenda) (Video) This ties into my comments about Thursday’s upcoming meeting.
All throughout the week:
Tree Tours! To help explain the upcoming expansion of SR-509 and the Sustainable Airport Master Plan (SAMP) I’ve developed a one hour walking/driving presentation.
Two thirds of our residents have flipped since the Great Recession–which coincided with the opening of the Third Runway in 2008. So most of you do not understand what’s coming. You will see separate presentations from WSDOT on SR-509 and the Port of Seattle on the SAMP, and that will make these impacts seem far less significant than they are. The two are basically one massive regional plan.
The SAMP/SR-509 will have the same impact on air traffic as the Third Runway and it will re-shape northern Des Moines as dramatically as the Third Runway did Burien and the Second Runway did SeaTac.
The Tree Tour is a way to make this all simple by seeing what happened to Des Moines after the Second and Third runway projects and what’s coming next–from the ground level.
If you live in the area, if you care about things like tree canopy or airport issues in general, please get your friends together and let’s schedule a Tree Tour!
Port Package site visits: SeaTacNoise.Info keeps working on getting relief for home owners with Port Package Problems. If that’s you, please contact them, with your address and Parcel ID and schedule a visit.
Public Safety Committee Meeting
I struggled to not publish this. I ran for office in 2019 to improve transparency and reduce the rubber stamping. But after almost two and a half years, I gotta say, things may actually be getting worse. But this has become truly alarming. Perhaps my colleagues are simply unaware of how business is supposed to be conducted. I urge both the public, potential candidates, and my colleagues to attend other city meetings and judge for themselves. We have become true outliers.
Today’s Publice Safety/Emergency Management Committee Meeting was the first in-person Council meeting of any kind since 2020. So hopefully you can forgive whoever forgot to activate some of my colleagues’ microphones. Getting back to ‘normal’ takes some practice. (If you’re having trouble hearing, I added subtitles.)
Although committee meetings are probably more important to the decision making process than the full meetings, I don’t usually write about them in detail because it’s just too much detail for most people. (Eg. there was a very important discussion regarding Flock Cameras which will soon be deployed to constantly scan people’s license plates in key areas.) But the process for both the issues I’ll cover was terrible. I’ve had people tell me they do not understand exactly what I mean by that and why it matters. These are two issues people care about a lot so it seemed like a good way to make the idea of ‘bad process’ concrete.
Animal Control
Background
The City and Police Chief have wanted to move from an Animal Control Officer to outsourcing the process to Burien C.A.R.E.S. The public has been unaware of this, but the Chief has been selling this hard internally for at least two years. As my predecessor said, “it was always a luxury and one we can no longer afford.”
Another reason this has been so quiet is that the administration had asked the Council not to respond to public concerns about the proposal because it might impact contract negotiations with the Police Guild. Somehow. During the update w learned that had not turned out to be problematic after all.
Lucky break.
The Chief did brief the Council on the proposal at the last full meeting. He provided a Powerpoint of cost savings and benefits, but no supporting evidence. That’s the problem before the problem: He bypassed the committee and went straight to the Council. And the Committee let him. In a better world, any of the committee members would have moved to stop him and remand his presentation to the committee–where it belonged in the first place.
Mistake #1: Never bypass the committee.
Presentation
Speaking for the Police Department was not the Chief, but rather Commander Patti Richards. And that right there is politics. Our Council rarely gives leadership a hard time. But no elected wants to be ‘that guy’ and grill a subordinate. Which is why I object to anyone but the Chief or City Manager presenting anything that might be controversial.
Mistake #2: Never bypass the committee.
So the Committee asked some perfunctory questions, but did not address the much more substantial concerns I heard from residents. I’m not sure whether or not my colleagues heard those same concerns.
The Commander indicated that the City had already worked with Legal, PD and Burien C.A.R.E.S to prepare a draft contract, but did not have that contract for review. Instead, she assured the committee that all their concerns had been addressed. The draft contract would be sent to the full Council for approval.
Mistake #3: Never bypass the committee.
In past years, the Committee would normally see that draft contract, provide notes, which the City Attorney would take back for polishing, come back for final committee approval and then send it fully baked to the Council for a vote. Despite their obvious differences, Councilmembers Bangs and Martinelli did just that on at least two PSEM ordinances in 2021.
Towing Ordinance
The committee spent a few minutes talking over Councilmember Steinmetz’s concerns over the recent 72 Hour Towing Ordinance. I voted against that ordinance for that reason and because it lacked a zoning provision which would have offered a good revenue stream and safety on certain streets. These tweaks could have easily been added and done right the first time.
Mistake #1: There is almost nothing that can’t wait a couple of weeks.
Instead, CM Steinmetz voted for it and *afterwards met privately with the Asst. City Attorney, hoping to work out some new language.
Mistake #2: Get it in writing. It’s a public process. If you want the committee to consider your idea, have an actual amendment. And print copies for the audience while yer at it. 🙂
But at the committee meeting, City Attorney Tim George told the committee that in his mind, the ordinance the Council approved was fine as is. And the other members of the committee agreed. Chair Traci Buxton suggested that we should wait and see if there is a public outcry and then it would surely be easy to fix.
Mistake #3: Nothing in government is easy to fix.
Measure twice, cut once…
Governments rarely re-visit legislation unless something is really wrong. Nor should they. It’s always onto the next thing. Think about it: we get a couple of hours twice a month. And this year? We’re four months behind schedule.
That is why I never vote to invoke 2Rule 26a and approve any ordinance in one night.
You wanna make sure it’s right the first time for at least two reasons:
- Assuming everyone is willing to stop and re-visit your pet issue again, you’re creating more work for everybody than doing it proper the first time.
- We owe it to future Councils to leave things as tidy as possible for them. Because they will surely have plenty of their own messes to deal with.
If we had simply waited two weeks until the next meeting, we could have made the tweaks both CM Steinmetz and I wanted and we’d never have to worry about it again. It would be done. And in fact the ‘urgency’ is almost always artificial. We’d waited years without an ordinance, what was two more weeks?
Takeaways…
Council
This is the second time this year that the PSEM has allowed the administration to take an ordinance directly to the full Council. And both times have been a mistake. Other cities do not take these shortcuts. And in previous years, neither did we.
The whole point of having committees is to provide the hard review (and yes oversight) so that legislation is fully baked before it goes to the full Council. It is not supposed to be a rubber stamp before another rubber stamp.
Public
Over the past several months I’ve spoken to about a dozen residents who told me passionately how very much wanted to retain our own Animal Control Officer (ACO). I gave them my thoughts on how to make it happen and, as usual, they listened politely and then did something else. 😀
I love you Des Moines, but you also have to stop trying to do things in private. It’s a PITA, but you gotta start speaking up. Because every time you yell at me and then act so ‘chill’ to the majority, you send a message to the Council that they can listen to your polite complaints, do whatever they want and pay no price. And you’re making me not want to listen to your complaining either frankly. 😀
City
These committee meetings are OPMA public meetings. First the Council was told the meetings would be in the North Conference Room. (The Agenda says so.) Then we’re told it’s via Zoom, but I see no public notice. Then I get an email saying it’s in the Council Chambers and on Channel 21. But it’s not. I did find it on Youtube but it took a day for it to appear without a deep search. Then I watch it and find the mics aren’t on and there are no captions for our large number of hearing impaired residents. Come on.
Postscript
I’m sorry, but this strikes me as pretend government at the moment. We’re all so used to ‘just working things out’, we can’t even run a meeting as if it matters. Because frankly? It doesn’t.
Luke 16:10
*Something I am not permitted to do, by the way. Also known as straight up corruption.
2Ordinances are required two separate readings (votes) in order to become law. Rule 26a is a motion that can be used to override that and pass a law in one vote. I never vote for it, not only for the above reason, but also because it gives the public almost no chance to engage on the issue.