Weekly Update 07/05/2026

Some bits of business…

Eating Your Own Apple-Flavored Dog Food

Long ago a tradition was established in various engineering disciplines known as “eat your own dog food”. Basically, the organization forces you to use the tools you sell and even beta-versions of the products you are developing. It was a dirty little secret that employees would often use products known to work rather than their own company’s.  This was understandable. But on the other hand,  if you don’t believe in the thing enough to use what you sell? Oy. And nothing concentrates the mind like having to take bug reports from hundreds of employees who are just trying to get their jobs done. 😀 It’s super-hard. But there are endless case studies of organizations who endured the punishment and came out the other side unstoppable. The most famous case being Excel and Word, which absolutely sucked until MS made everyone use the product internally. Anyone remember WordPerfect? Lotus 123? 😀

All of which is to say: I was given a ‘Mac’ computer a while back and I’ve been avoiding using it, like so many ugly sweaters one hides in the back of the closet hoping someday to ‘re-gift’. So to assuage the massive guilt of hiding such a lavish expression of affection, I am forcing myself to write this post on a Mac. And it is killing me. I may die. It does everything just different enough to qualify as Circle 1.65x of Hell! But on the positive side, it auto-corrects my Euro-‘misspellings’ — which some of you find as irritating as I am finding ‘the #$@&!*?! Apple Key’. So to get this thing out the door, there may be some ‘issues’ while I figure out the thousand ways Apple products are (cough) ‘better’ for me.

Four Years

Lawsuit alleges misuse of EB-5 funds at Point Ruston | Tacoma News Tribune

The gift that keeps on giving. Four years may as well be 400 in ‘council’ time. But for those of you who follow along, it was four years ago this week that the City was planning on developing a hotel on Parcel A (where the Marina Steps are now being built) using the same developer named in this article. Point Ruston was considered their showcase. Now, it looks like the guy will be in court for the rest of his life. You don’t get too many points for avoiding trouble, but if I accomplished nothing else in my tenure, at least I helped avoid this kind of trouble.

About The Cover: Sophie’s Choice

There will be a 20 minute item on two sets of comments on the SAMP. I think we’re being asked to sign off on Airport Advisory Committee? If so, I will refuse. Their comments are riddled with inaccuracies. It’s pretty shocking, actually. I’ve tried pointing them out discretely and gotten nowhere. On the other hand, the pro comments, at least from the slide deck, are good. Bog standard, but very important construction details we should be looking at.

When you boil it down, the SAMP is 31 construction projects and their associated permits. That’s how the law tends to treat it and that is how professional reviewers tend to look at it. Cumulative Impacts, Schmimpacts. But that doesn’t mean looking at each project isn’t a useful and correct approach. We should have someone on the airfield at every step of the construction (and demolition). I keep reminding people: the airport was a terrible water polluter until after the Third Runway was built. If people hadn’t looked into every detail of that engineering back then, there would be no creek system today.

You never want to be critical of residents–especially people who donate their time to a City-led committee. That is why I did not want an airport advisory committee. The material is simply too technical and the stakes are too high for any short term approach. So this has been a ‘Sophie’s Choice’ for me. I’ve tried very hard not to be vocal about the ongoing problems with this committee. But these comments areout of hand.

As with the article I opened with on the Marina Hotel fiasco, I got a lot of grief for pointing out when the numbers didn’t add up. But the airport is many times more consequential to the future of Des Moines. And if we aren’t all on the same page, we all lose. I am hoping they regroup and deliver a better set of comments that are both accurate and persuasive. I know they have the talent and passion to do so.

If you are interested in commenting on the SAMP, again, please follow ¹Sea-Tac Noise.Info

City Manager Stuff

City Manager Reports!  July, 2 2026

Highlights for moi include a list of summer events and a parking/road closure map for the Shark In The Park event

This Week

Tuesday

6:00 Planning Commission (Agenda)

Wednesday

Emergency Management Advisory Committee We’ll get an update on FIFA. This really was the big stress test for the downtown. Here are a couple of very quick notes. First, I dunno if it’s ‘Seattle’ or what, but things were remarkably chill. No post-apocalyptic chaos–or much chaos of any kind. In terms of transporation, Light Rail worked a lot better than a lot of people thought. b) Everything else was sketchy.

Thursday

4:00pm Port of Seattle Special Meeting (SAMP Listening)

6:00pm City Council Meeting. (Agenda) Highlights

Meeting Highlights

Presentations

• Update from South King Fire Chief Ryan Woodey
• 2027/2028 Budget Calendar Overview – 15 Minutes

Consent

• 3+1 Speed Cameras. I wrote about this last week. I support the concept. But I’m not thrilled with the three locations the City chose–which are revenue-driven at least as much as safety-driven. And I’m even less thrilled about turning a school zone (good) into a 24/7 zone (potentially confusing.) I wish we could place them where residents have complained and these are not it, so honestly don’t know how I will vote, but the rest of the Council seems excited.
• 24th Ave Suspension PSE Settlement Agreements: this is actually a big deal that you probably would not hear about if it did not require a Council vote. The entire 24th Ave project was a mess. One problem was work stoppages caused by Puget Sound Energy. This cost us a ton of money (well over a million dollars) and time and I complained a lot. According to the packet, we will recover 89% of the estimated loss. Not perfect, but much appreciated. Will it improve future partnerships? Suuuuure it will. 😀
• Lodging Tax Advisory Committee for the expenditure of Lodging Tax funds. Frankly, the Lodging Tax Committee was not great. It often did not publish its meetings or spending–so even having recorded meetings and votes and you know–‘government’ is an improvement. The item is a request to help fund the Parade, which is fine. But this merits a few words on the reason to have an LTAC. According to state law, the legal justification for charging a lodging tax to people who stay in hotels here is tourism. Get it? You charge people who stay here in order to promote more people to come and stay here. It’s not just a general purpose fee to put on fun events for locals.

New Business

• Establishment of Ad Hoc City Council Budget Engagement Committee – 20
  Minutes. I have no idea what this is about and as such will vote ‘no’.
• Sustainable Airport Master Plan (SAMP) Update (see About The Cover

Last Week

Nothing ‘official’ week. We entered the ‘summer’ period of local government–meetings become less frequent. Frankly, we’re getting a bit more summery with each passing year.

I was not here for the events and all the ‘dunking’ but I’m hoping we can get some stats. The list of daytime ‘stuff’ seemed good–it reminded me of a lot of the family-energy we had here back when we first arrived. You know… 1317. ²When everything was perfect. 😉

¹Full-disclosure: I am a founding principal at STNI.

²Old guy parent trigger warning. 😀