Some bits of business…
Future Agendas
Future Agendas is the closest thing the City currently has to a calendar of upcoming City Council topics. It’s not dynamic, ie. you have to click it every time you want to see a new version. And it’s not always accurate. But until we develop a genuine calendar, this can be very useful if there is a particular issue you don’t want to miss.
The Financial Intelligence Tool
At the last City Council meeting, I got a somewhat puzzled look from the Finance Director when I asked about tools to compare our city with others–followed by several emails concerning the tool he recommend called FIT Tool which comes from the State Auditors Office. 3But I like it, too.
The challenge is that the numbers on their dashboard don’t match the ones the Council (or you) see at our meetings so it can be confusing. For example, the FIT Tool will say that we spend 36% of our budget on ‘public safety’ whereas we would say more like 55%. Both the City’s numbers and FIT are ‘correct’ using their respective methodologies. I just don’t want people ‘mixing and matching’. It’s taken me a good while to figure out why they’re different. If anyone wants me to explain? Send me a comment–with a 2gift card attachment. 😀
But with all that said, IMHO, FIT gives you a good way to check relative performance of each city. You can use it to run comparisons of Des Moines with SeaTac, Burien, etc. and you can learn a lot. For example, why Des Moines is rated ‘concerning’ and Burien and SeaTac are rated ‘good’. I wish people would look at these because I hear residents talk all the time about how our neighbour cities are going to hell and a hand basket and I think they’re confusing certain policies with financial performance. They are not the same.
City Manager Stuff
Interim City Manager George is on holiday. Disco Break! 😀
jk. However, he posted a City Manager’s report, the highlight of which is that we have hired Mike Slevin as our new Director of Public Works. The DPW has a very important job overseeing all our engineering projects. Mr. Slevin’s resume is extensive to say least. Welcome!
City Manager’s Report July 05, 2024
This Week
Tuesday: Port of Seattle Commission (Agenda) I will be testifying to pause the Port’s plan to buy the open space north of 216th that connects to the Des Moines Creek Trail. If they proceed, it will mean the west expansion of the Des Moines Creek Business Park West which has been great for the Port of Seattle and a disaster for the City of Des Moines.
Wednesday: Regional Transit Committee
Thursday: Environment Committee (Agenda)
Thursday: City Council Meeting (Agenda) Highlights:
- Introducing new Police Chief Ted Boe.
- Introducing new Director of Public Works Mike Slevin Environmental Services Executive Profile – City of Tacoma.
- We will vote to approve construction on a new $2,500,000 Redondo Restroom and I will vote ‘no’.
I first encountered this project in 2021 on the Transportation Committee. At the time it was supposed to be a ‘twinner’ of the Marina Restroom at $1,250,000. I had issues with both designs–including the fact that it was not created with community input. Then it was $1.35M. And $1.5M. Now $2.5M. Look, I get ‘COVID’. I get ‘inflation’. But… c’mon.
I am also slightly dis-chuffed not seeing any renderings or maps in the packet. I’m not sure people even know what it looks like or where it’s going.
I also never saw a proposal for rebuilding where it is now. But for this kind of money, and I mean on any project, the Council should at least receive a replacement alternative. It doesn’t have to be fully spec’d. But it should be provided.
In this case, I believe it makes more sense for pedestrian and traffic flows. I think we should keep pedestrians on the west side of the street as much as possible–rather than encouraging more crosswalk activity.
For those interested in ancient history, here is the last time I recall the item being discussed and I think this was too long ago. Municipal Facilities Committee Agenda — March 25, 2021
Last Week
Tuesday July 2 There was a special meeting of the City Council. The only item of business was an Executive Session to discuss the City Manager Recruitment. The public version is this…
Behind closed doors… we discussed the 29 applications we received. There’s no tea to spill (as the youth of America might say). We simply gave each contestant a score based on our real time reactions to completely surface information. If that sounds a lot like a beauty contest? You’re not wrong. The HR Director will prune our responses down to a smaller set of twelve semi-finalists who will then provide more detailed information. My only comment is, if this is a beauty contest, it sure seems like a lot of semi-finalists. (Think about it: When they used to choose Miss America, they didn’t go from 50 contestants to 25 semi-finalists.) The fact that our seven sets of scores didn’t organically yield 7-8 choices is simply a reflection of how all-over-the-map the current Council is.
Wednesday: There was (I guess?) a Citizens Advisory Committee meeting. In a first, this was conducted as a private Zoom. No link for ‘outsiders’. This may be a new low in transparency. Or not, depending on one’s POV. For me, the optics are terrible. Think about it: a Citizens Advisory Committee that isn’t open to the public?
We were the only City in the area that dropped support for Zoom at our meetings after COVID. Over and over we were told that there are ‘technical challenges’. Which was never true. Every meeting should be open to the public, recorded, and records kept. That is what normal cities do.
Thursday July 4th: Drone Show.
I did not attend, but saw the following video. This is $90,000 worth of show biz. On the plus side, it looks better than last year. And in my geeky way I’ll say it looks like a typical software update using the same hardware. 😀 The animation is definitely better.
The City of SeaTac also attempted drones for less than half what we paid. I saw a demo–and it looked about as good as what we did. But sadly, I had no opportunity to gloat. 😀 Because…
Catastrophic failure!
But wait… a private club on Angle Lake raised money to shoot of real fireworks and saved the day! This is what $32,000 in pyrotechnics buys these days…
If you think about it, SeaTac made out like bandits. They were able to say they tried to be forward-thinking. They will almost certainly get a refund from the drone company. While at the same time, a private group paid for the show the majority of the public really wanted to see. 1Win. Win! 😀
One impetus for our fireworks at the Marina was sort of a social contract. People would be encouraged to stop doing the absolutely crappy home fireworks, and a private group (Destination Des Moines) would help put on a really big shoe at the Marina.
We now have, in my opinion, the worst of both worlds.
Pyrotechnics are going away. Within 5-8 years the drone tech will look like dynamite (see what I did there?) and for less dough. And the issue will solve itself. In that same time frame, this is hundreds of thousands of dollars we could be using to far greater benefit for the entire City. If for nothing else, oh I dunno, to pay our bills? 🙂
Friday: I met with Key To Change Studio, a local organisation that provides string instruction to underserved kids. Their students have gotten to play with every orchestra in the area (including the Seattle Symphony!) They will soon be opening a studio in Des Moines and I could not be happier. Said it before, say it again: learning music, playing in a band, is one of those things that every child should have access to.
Mea Culpa
I was taken to task for a sentence in my last article in bold.
“We built the Marina not just to be a fun amenity, but to make money. It is stocked with 80% tenants who do not live here, footing the bill for the rest of us to enjoy the space. That’s economic development. It can support some public uses. But time and again, we’ve taken more money than it generates and avoided developing its proper economic potential. And now all the taxpayers will foot the bill for rebuilding the docks via that $25M bond sale!
This person wanted me to know that, no, the Marina Enterprise Fund (ie. the people who pay for moorage, not taxpayers) will pay for the dock portion of the debt. Fair enough. That amount, as it stands today, would be 40% of that debt service. I regret the error.
I am always super-jazzed to get this kind of feedback.
And now the somewhat weaselly rebuttal
Financial mismanagement is complicated and boring and people in any city like Des Moines will assume that things are fine so long as the trash gets picked up and the Council is waving at the Farmer’s Market. Or at least… not having a food fight.
I was going for a short, easy to explain way to say something about some very longstanding shenanigans involving that bond, the Marina over time-and our finances writ large. And I failed. Like a drone, that started out so energetically, only to… 😀
I worded my mea culpa carefully for a reason. The ordinance providing that funding constraint is no more binding on a future Council than previous acts of the Council which have repeatedly moved (supposedly) constrained funds around basically whenever the City thought it appropriate–including Marina and Public Safety.
In my opinion, these practices felt as ‘absolutely necessary!’ at the time as these drone shows. But cumulatively they have kept the City from getting to anything approaching a stable position for the next generation, which is what ‘environmentalism’ really means, and I resent it bitterly.
Remember that ‘hotel’ thing? That was less than two years ago. It wasn’t just a ‘bad idea’. (For those of you not up on current events, the developer my colleagues chose is in soooooo much trouble. The bullet we dodged? Oy.) This bond sale and the Steps are all part of that same story. In a better world, everyone involved woulda been out on their ears; not getting paid to build version 2.0. I struggle to find ways to get this across. Especially as so many now seem happy enough (or at least resigned) to viewing these as separate events.
I blame the Des Moines News…
Wanna see something really great? Des Moines Historical Society President Richard Kennedy wrote this article regarding a 1973 attempt to make Seventh Ave. a one-way street to solve traffic congestion.
To make his points, he uses articles from the old Des Moines News, which published every two weeks and covered City Hall. (And they had not one but two reporters!) When I try to tell people about ‘real journalism’ people think I’m sniping at the Waterland Blog, which is untrue. What the WB does now is a completely different deal from what the Des Moines News did and I feel a bit like Marco Polo talking about something from an imaginary land.
In this case, people could read along, see what the City was trying, read reactions from residents, business, and electeds–a real beat. Something we took for granted happens so rarely today–even at the Seattle Times. And here’s the kicker: almost every address got the Des Moines News.
I’m pretty sure that if the Des Moines News were in business today, we not only would not have had that hotel kerfuffle, we would not have the Marina Steps as it is about to be built. I cannot overstate how much better it was to have that kind of oversight. And I appreciate Mr. Kennedy for putting that together–because I still hear people trot out that same one-way idea–not realising we (literally) went down that road before.
Anyhoo. That’s all I got until I learn how to explain things better 😀
1To be clear, none of the 55 lose drones fell on any person. I’m gonna hope/presume that the vendor will be held responsible for fishing them out of Angle Lake, so there’s no permanent environmental harm.
2Do not do that. 🙂
3No Irish Spring jokes, please.