Weekly Update: 06/25/2023

Some bits of news…

Please Sign up for Code Red

As most of you know by now, the Boil Water Notice for residents who get their water from Water District 54 is over. I received a text and a phone message about that from the King County Code Red Alert program. If you haven’t already signed up for Code Red, now is the perfect time to do it! When you sign up for Code Red you’ll be notified IMMEDIATELY when there is a possible health threat.

This Week

Tuesday: FAA Noise Policy Review with Congressman Adam Smith’s office. The idea is to provide more ‘feedback’ to the FAA for possible regulatory improvements. People occasionally ask me “Seriously, dude. What good are these things?”

I’ll let ya know. 😀

I kill me.

Look, I don’t want to confuse residents on this. I’ve made no secret of my absolute certainty that we should be working on all things ‘airport’ at the local level–and that it will take a new City Council to do that. Frankly, most of these Federal initiatives are well-meaning but go nowhere. Often times, they’re designed to go nowhere. But… you gotta keep talking to everyone you can–against the day when you can have a stab at policies that you feel more optimistic about. 🙂

Thursday: King County Public Health meeting. The purpose is to develop legislation possibilities for next year concerning the various health impacts of the airport.

Last Week

Monday: 11:00AM As per usual, I attended the Juneteenth celebration at the Northwest African American Museum in Seattle. I have a correction to make from last week, which I’ll put in the ¹footnotes below.

Thursday: 5:00PM Economic Development Committee Meeting (Agenda) (Video) Staff provided an overview of the draft Public Participation Plan, potential stakeholder groups and project timeline for the Committee input. The State recently passed several laws to speed permitting and encourage upzoning (ie. increase density.) Frankly, the City (and many of my colleagues) ares none too happy about it. Like most of us, we hate being told what to do–especially when it comes to something as touchy as ‘zoning’. I often refer to this area 30-40 years ago as ‘the Wild West’, ie. when it was still unincorporated King County. Development rules were often lax, which is why you have various ‘non-conforming’ bits of zoning scattered throughout the City. But starting in the 70’s we basically imposed a “no mix and match” approach. There is an “apartment” part of town and a “single family” part of town. My colleagues often accuse me of ‘hysteria’ but in this case, I can say the same about them. The new policies will not ruin the ‘character’ of the City. Just the opposite. It will make it easier to build accessory dwelling units and cottage housing–things that many people want in order to keep multi-generational families together.

Thursday: 6:00PM City Council Meeting (Agenda) (Video) Highlights below.

City Council Recap

Mayor Opening Statement

Water District 54

In another unusual move, the Mayor proposed a three point plan to address various problems surrounding the WD54 Boil Water Notice.

1. To have Cm Pennington liaise with the Water District. I guess to find out how the City could help? I was not quite sure.
2. To direct the City Manager to develop a business grant program
3. To hire an outside consultant (presumably a water quality engineer) to assess their system

My contribution to the chat was to break the proposal into three separate items, so I could vote ‘yes’ on #2 (pass 7-0) and ‘no’ on #1 (Pass 6-1) and #3 (Pass 4-3.)

First off, I object to the Mayor, any mayor, initiating legislation from the dais (see below.)

Second, items #1 and #3 are likely to be perceived in a negative light–and certainly not while the District was in the midst of dealing with the situaton. The City has zero authority over the WD. We should limit our activities to addressing the things we can do something about.

I also pointed out that our communication system is literally no better than it was in 2013. If we’d had the kind of emergency notification system I’ve been advocating for since my first month in office, we could have calmed a lot of nerves.

Ferry

The Mayor also read a statement regarding the ferry. I’ve gotten a number of messages along the lines of ‘now can we use some of that money for (x)?’ Not necessarily. The Council has voted to allocate the money for ‘a ferry program.’ The City’s statement seems to indicate that they have every intention of holding onto the money and trying again in the future. Obviously, I will advocate that it be removed from next year’s budget. Speaking broadly, a ferry may be a good idea–but only if some entity with pockets deep enough to manage it properly is backing it. As a City we have no business trying to bootstrap a system we cannot afford.

City Manager’s Report

Director of Finance Jeff Friend gave a presentation on our First Quarter results. My question concerned FileLocal, the software we use for businesses to pay taxes and permit fees on line. Let’s just say that businesses have mixed feelings about it. 😀 But it was interesting to me that our tax and red light revenues are up significantly this year due to collection improvements.

Public Comment

There were a couple of people from Redondo who, understandably, continue to complain about noise as the summer months begin. I was thinking about the speed camera which is scheduled to be deployed in August. I am fairly optimistic that the first one (north and south) will pay for itself. However, I am not certain that either camera will cure the complaints. Because frankly a lot of the complaints are not about ‘speed’ per se. However, if they do generate a significant amount of revenue, I will work to use that money to enable more of a police presence in the area–which, in my estimation, has always been the ultimate solution.

Consent Agenda

• I pulled an item to spend $145,000 from our Lodging Tax fund for the Fourth of July Drone Show. I only did so because the packet describes a full day of events–including some live bands. I had hoped the City would have had a promotional campaign ready to go. This was just (another) gentle reminder: Promote, promote, promote! If we’re gonna do these crazy expensive deals, the least we can do is get as many people to show up as possible!
• Speaking of crazy expensive, Cm Achziger pulled $525,000 Field House playground upgrades. In that case, he just wanted to make sure that the Legacy Foundation had been properly credited in the budgeting. My contribution was to ask when (or if) pricing on this sort of kit might moderate. The answer: mid-2024. Ish. 🙂

Old Business: The Protocol Manual

The balance of the meeting was taken up with our third meeting concerning our new rules of procedure, aka ‘The Protocol Manual’. This was crazy making for several reasons, not the least of which that it cancelled New Items For Consideration and Committee Reports for a third meeting in a row. As I complained, the Council spent seven meetings (four committee and three full body) on this thing. And that is time that could have been spent on any number of other things.

But here are the key portions covered this final go-round.

Rule 26a

Since 1959, we (like most cities) have required two readings for each ordinance. This was eliminated in the new version. I said that one important reason for a second reading was simply to give the public more information. Many people only hear about an agenda item after the first reading. Here is Cm Steinmetz’s response:

I could not disagree more strongly with those sentiments. And I’ll note that when he made those remarks, there were exactly two civilians remaining in the audience.

Dress Code

For me, the most disappointing thing about this section of the meeting  was yet another parliamentary gaffe. The discussion begins with DM Buxton wishing to make an amendment (a tweak) to the new sentence. Cm Nutting says that he simply wants the section removed–which I was about to second. Ironically, I explicitly ask that we process DM Buxton’s proposed amendment first, out of politeness and then come back to Cm Nutting’s concern. But after the vote on her amendment, the Mayor simply says that we’re done with that section and moves on.

It’s striking to me how many times people say “this is not personal”, while making some fairly personal remarks. 😃

The final vote was 5-2. And here is my statement of protest. (Normally, on any vote, only the vote count is recorded into the minutes. A Cm may enter a statement of protest into the official minutes to make sure that their reasoning is recorded.)

Executive Session

This was the bi-annual City Manager’s performance review. Even though this is required, this is the first time in my tenure that it has occurred.

It was uuuuuuuuuuuglyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. There were personal attacks, as there tend to be every time we do this. And I’m just telling you that because I often hear from residents that we should try to “work things out in private.” Bad idea. 😀 The only thing that keeps things ‘civil’ is the fact that the meetings are on camera. The moment the seven of us go into a room with the City Manager, where people know their words cannot be repeated, the discourse does not become more ‘elevated’. Quite the opposite.

If people really want a better City Council it will take more on the record interaction, not less.

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¹Last week, I wrote “My father-in-law often liked to share this fun fact from his childhood: In 1890 the number of black registered voters in Alabama was close to 200,000. By 1965 (when the Voting Rights Act was passed) it was less than 2,000.” I had a fairly hot discussion about those numbers. One current study mentions 90,000. This has nothing to do with ‘Des Moines’ but since we’re constantly talking about “mis-information” I think it’s worth a mention. But it also reminds me of the joke that the difference between a physicist and an engineer is that a physicist cares about ‘absolute accuracy’ and an engineer cares about ‘good enough to do the job.’ 😀 And I think this is an ‘engineer’ kind of stat. Even if the number of Black registered voters was closer to 90,000, that would still only be 10% of the Black population. If it took 100 years to go from zero to 10% or zero to 1%, I honestly don’t see a critical difference.