This Week
Web meeting with Southside Seattle Chamber Of Commerce on small business grants in Des Moines. (See Last Week below).
Tuesday: Port Of Seattle General Meeting. A final vote to proceed with their long-term plan ‘Century Agenda’; a long term blueprint for growth. What I asked them to consider is that they hold off since there is no reasonable way to plan for either air or cruise travel until the dust settles. (The same was true after 9/11–it took Sea-Tac Airport nearly a decade to return to 2001 levels of operations–even with a shiny new third runway.)
Wednesday: Come have lunch with me at the Senior Center. Get an EATS voucher!
Thursday: City Council General Meeting (see recap below). (Agenda)
Last Week
Tuesday: Southside Seattle Chamber Of Commerce Web Meeting. Attended by City Of Des Moines Economic Planner Eric Lane, King County Councilmember Dave Upthegrove and Connor Talbott of the Des Moines/Normandy Park Rotary Club. The talk was the nuts and bolts of doing small business grants. There was also a very good discussion on the last mile–getting business owners engaged with translation and form-filling help as needed. Here is an example of how unincorporate King County is doing it.
Tuesday: Attended protest for George Floyd (more below).
Wednesday: Lunch at Senior Center. Got another EATS certificate. Woo hoo!
Wednesday: MRSC meeting on legislative updates and how the upcoming Special Session might affect Des Moines.
Friday: I had a meeting with long-time friend and restaurant management consultant Mat Mandeltort. Mat is something of a polymath: lawyer, MBA and for many years, a professional fine-dining chef. He is a restaurant management consulting in Chicago. He has generously offered to put together a program for restaurants in Des Moines to help them profitably adapt to the new post-COVID-19 reality. If you, or someone you know, runs a restaurant in Des Moines, please contact me. The systems he comes up are most beneficial for restaurants that work together, so the more owners that participate, the more money they will all benefit. Here are a couple of examples showing off the quality of his work:
Datassential Restaurant Analysis for Coronavirus
Black sheep restaurants COVID-19 operating procedures
1500 words about George Floyd
There is just to much to say about this issue to cram in here so I wrote a separate article which contains a very simple proposal which I believe would improve police accountability here in Des Moines.
*Unlike most posts I write, I did not crank this out in an hour. I considered what I wrote quite carefully. Even so, my concern is that, because it’s a long piece, people will not actually read the thing and just cherry pick the items they agree or disagree with. But as the kids say… what…. ehveeeeehr.
What can Des Moines learn from George Floyd?
*I just did something writing teachers tell you is completely weaselly, but… I did it anyway. Namely trying to shame you into reading something difficult because I’m afraid that otherwise you’ll just skim. Jerk move, right?