This Week
Monday: Sound Cities Association meeting on helping businesses to re-open.
Tuesday: SCATbd Meeting. The cuts to King County Metro are looking to be pretty massive in the next two years. Unfortunately, I don’t have a Zoom link yet so check their web site if you want to comment. The drag is that this is exactly the moment we should be increasing transit options.
Tuesday: Burien Airport Committee Meeting (BAC). If you’re concerned about the noise and pollution, I urge you to attend this Zoom meeting. The problem we always have in managing Sea-Tac Airport is reactivity historically we only respond to their growth. The BAC is one of the only places where there is ongoing work to change that.
Wednesday: Come have lunch with me at the Senior Center. Get an EATS voucher!
Wednesday: Reach Out Des Moines. Over the past several years the group has made major improvements in attendance at our schools as well as juvenile crime reduction.
Last Week
Not one, but two web meeting with Southside Seattle Chamber Of Commerce on small business grants in Des Moines. There has been a bunch of talk on how to get more emergency aid to local businesses. There is help on the way. I know it’s taking forever, but a big part of this is that it’s right in the State Constitution that governments are not supposed to give ‘public gifts’ to private businesses (think of the possibilities for corruption.) That’s why grants almost always come with lots of strings attached. How do you do it fairly? Just give xxx dollars to every licensed business regardless of size? Do you make an application process based on ‘need’? How do you define that? The system just ain’t set up to do this quickly.
Tuesday: Port Of Seattle General Meeting. Speaking of grants, after two years, the commissioners finally voted to approve the South King County Fund–a program that was originally proposed to provide money for mitigation programs (noise and pollution). But in this? It was the cities who could not even agree on what they wanted to do. They kept pushing back saying, “We want sidewalks!” or “Parks!”. This is the maddening part of dealing with the impacts from Sea-Tac Airport. Even when the Port tries to do the right thing, the Cities can’t agree. Anyhoo… expect to see more Port grants to cities–but not more relief on noise or pollution.
Wednesday: Come have lunch with me at the Senior Center. Get an EATS voucher!
Thursday: City Council General Meeting (see recap below). (Agenda) (Video).
Meeting Recap
For openers, here is the coverage of the meeting in the Waterland Blog. And I have a question for you, Dear Reader. When I read their coverage I always wonder, “Is this the average viewer’s takeaway?” So, I’d be interested to get feedback from you as to what you think of their coverage. I obviously address what I consider most important, but I want to occasionally check in and make sure I’m also talking about what you care about.
The ever-expanding Consent Agenda
I’ve gotten a number of questions recently about how meetings work. There is a lot more confusion than usual because of (once again) that darned Consent Agenda. Remember: a Consent Agenda is a straight up or down vote on items that are supposed to be routine.
Now between all the kerfuffle in January and February in bringing on us noob councilmembers, Vic Pennington resigning and then being replaced by Luisa Bangs and now this pesky Pandemic, we’re five months behind schedule. So what we’re doing is cramming most definitely non-routine items onto the Consent Agenda. (and pretending like they’re routine.) Why? Because under our ‘State Of Emergency’ we’re not allowed to do much ‘new business’. So we re-brand new business as ‘routine’. Got all that? 😀
If it weren’t for COVID-19, we’d see a lot more discussion on many items. But even I, ‘the complainer’ am eager to move things along. You simply have to keep City busines moving. *So I’m actually being a lot more ‘go along’ than I would be if it weren’t a pandemic kind of world.
Sustained Airport Master Plan (SAMP)
The SAMP is one of those things the public isn’t engaged on and at some point I need to do an ‘explainer’ because like I keep saying, the airport is the single external threat to our city’s long term success. But not today. 😀
For now, the deal is that we have this Inter-Local Agreement (ILA) between Des Moines, Burien, SeaTac and Normandy Park to hire a shared team of consultants to help represent us on the possible environmental impacts of the impending expansion of the airport. SeaTac was administering that contract. We simply voted to transfer that bookkeeping function to DM. My motion was tangential. I just snuck in an opportunity to find out from our City Manager (CM) where things stand.
See the thing is: remember that the CM is the executive. So when there is official dialogue between the cities, it’s generally the City Managers doing it. So we’re in this weird parallel universe, where a small number of councilmembers who care about the issue do the day to day research and work with lawmakers. But it’s the City Managers who do the formal negotiating with the FAA or Port. It’s totally cockamamie. But that’s just the deal until the City Councils decide to take this more seriously.
Basically, the dais is the one place where I am guaranteed at least some kind of cooperation from the government. Which sucks for Des Moines. But, again, that’s an explainer for another day. 😀
Valley SWAT (VSWAT)
I tried (unsuccessfully) to delay this vote to formally join VSWAT until the next meeting because the City provided no stats as to the number of incidents or what they were about, cost per incident, or even the difference between ‘joining’ and not joining. There was not even a statement of the effects of not approving the motion (as is typical in most packets.) Yes, the Chief spoke to anecdotes (thank you, that’s helpful). But like I always say, I won’t vote for anything without data.
The funny thing is that this was a golden opportunity to address issues of proper use of force. Presenting some real stats as to the benefits of VSWAT would have allayed some valid concerns from the public. In fact, the very first purpose laid out in the mission statement in the packet was ‘crowd control’. If that ain’t bad timing, I dunno what is. And I think that was worth two weeks sending a message saying, “When you want something? Bring data. Thanks very much.”
I want a culture of data in decision-making. I want reports. You know: those things with numbers on them? That goes for all departments, but especially with policing where the public has concerns. Facts are the best remedy to public skepticism.
My public comment
COVID-19
We really need to mask up. Every State that has re-opened is showing a lot more cases. I try being patient with people who hate wearing masks, but I’m losing patience. We in Des Moines are super-vulnerable due to our senior citizen populations living in such concentration. So it’s my strong feeling that we need to be conservative in our approach and I ask for your help.
George Floyd
As I mentioned above with the VSWAT, we need more information on police activities. Yes, we’re a relatively small city, but we have the ability, right now, to make significant improvements in policing while spending almost nothing. The problem is that the entire conversation has (like all issues, right?) instantly become ‘all or nothing’. If you ask for more data, people immediately get defensive and accuse you of being ‘soft on crime’. It’s about transparency. You don’t have to choose. What’s telling to me in this moment is how many people are willing to talk about everything except: increasing basic accountability.
For example, all the studies show that something as trivial as having a Customer Comment form on the web site works. Just asking the public to submit comments on policing makes a difference.
And publishing complaint data also makes a big difference. Knowing that there were ‘x’ complaints every month (and what type) and having a clear and public policy makes a difference.
Finally, it’s telling that any sort of civilian oversight is not even in the discussion–even thought that has been shown to be the single most effective way to reduce police complaints. Not cameras, not town halls or changes in use of force procedures; just being more transparent. Here is a good article from MIT describing why so many high dollar interventions haven’t worked.
Redondo
Redondo. It was great to see a new resident: Karen Steinhaus and lifetime resident: Rick Johnson, both comment on problems at Redondo. It’s time that the City recognize that the noise and speeding have become chronic and come up with some long-term solutions. Redondo will only continue to grow in importance to the city so we must figure this out. I applaud their efforts to organize residents and help the City figure it out.
*On the other hand: Our meeting still clocked in at a sprinty 1:45, which is much faster than meetings in other cities. So maybe I’m going along a little too much? Who knows. I’m new on the job. 🙂