Weekly Update 07/27/2025

Some bits of business…

City Manager Stuff

The City Manager’s new weekly report format is viewable here. Before leaving for vacation, she dropped two bombshells! 😀 One on that report and one not.

• The Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) on the Masonic Home will be released on Thursday, July 31, 2025. The report will be posted on the City’s website. City staff will present the FEIS findings and implications to the City Council at its regular meeting, August 7 at 6 p.m. at City Hall. This is an informational presentation only. A community meeting is scheduled for August 21, 6:30-8:30 p.m. at the Beach Park auditorium.
• Marina Moorage rates are going up. To be clear, the City Council does not set rates. (We also do not set fuel prices.) I also think it’s important to note that less than 20% of tenants are now Des Moines residents. Still, this is a big change and I’ve asked to see the studies done to support this. When I first started using the Marina in the 90’s, sailing was a solidly middle-class pursuit. Although the Marina needs a serious amount of money to finance its much-needed upgrades, I don’t want boating (and especially sailing) to become a past time that can only be enjoyed by the wealthy.

City Manager Report – July 25, 2025

The 24th Ave Road Project is finally moving along! Repaving began on Monday July 21st. There have been issues with traffic and traffic lights. Probably best to avoid if possible. 🙂

Highline College Survey

The College has asked that everyone take this College Perception Survey survey to help them understand how they can better serve not only the students, but also residents of Des Moines.

Sounders Free Tickets!

If you haven’t been to a Sounders FC soccer game, your first ticket is totally free! The program is sponsored by the Rave Foundation (which has helped fund projects at Midway Park, among other things.)

Can we talk for a minute? Like many of you, I got (re)-interested in football when my kids started playing. In addition to the fun factor, I got hooked on Sounders games because they are just so convenient by transit. For me, I just hop on the 635 Shuttle Bus to the Angle Lake Station, get off at Union, and the Stadiums are two blocks away. That’s how transit is supposed to work.

SR-509 24th Ave and Veteran’s Drive are open and free!

Well, temporarily. 24th Ave and before you get to 200th, on your right (east side of the street) you’ll see a new exit onto the first mile of SR-509, which takes you directly to I-5.

There is also the new Veterans Memorial Drive near Military Road.

They will be tolled – but not yet! So take the next month and stick it to da man! WSDOT has free GoodToGo cards if you sign up, but before paying call 1-866-936-8246.

Metro Survey

As Link light rail gets ready to open here (maybe by end of 2025!) Metro invites you to learn more and take this survey by August 31.

Redondo Parking – get a pass!

However, Redondo Paid Parking is now live. So, get a sensibly priced annual pass by contacting the Marina. 🙂

Restaurants!

There have been more restaurant changes in town. So this is a good time to remind you of the local restaurant guide TakeOutDM.Com or TakeOutDesMoines.Com. There is a sign-up form which emails signees when various establishments are offering specials! If you are a new restaurant owner, you should also let them know when you are having said specials so they can spread the woid.

News Flash! After five years of being only ‘98198’, TakeOutDM is expanding its list to include establishments people think (or wish) were in Des Moines. For example, if you like Fr I really like Peyrassol West in Normandy Park across from the QFC.

This Week

Wednesday: King County Flood Control District Advisory Committee. The group has been meeting a lot to try to nail down multiple budgets. The City’s interest is in protecting money for urban flooding, a relatively new concept for the County. Unfortunately, that money is always in competition with more traditional river floods elsewhere. But as I try to point out Des Moines has so many pieces of ‘water’ to defend, they all cost money, and the goal is to keep every dollar available for us. 🙂

Last Week

Monday

Director of Public Works Mike Slevin was gracious enough to wander around the perimeter with me. Most people focus on the pea patch area, but if you look at an aerial, we own a lot of trees and wetlands from 16th to 20th, not just the bit you see in the front. There’s the Daisy Sonju Orchard in front, which still has some production apples, but in back, where you can’t go without spelunking, there is wide diversity of species which look like they were planted (or volunteered) somewhat randomly. They’re mature trees, but not exactly the 100-year models planted by the original land owners here.

Wednesday

2:30 Highline Forum at Highline College Bldg 8. See my comments below.

Thursday

6:00pm City Council Meeting Regular Meeting – 24 Jul 2025 – Agenda

Saturday

Tribal Canoe Journeys Saltwater State Park. OK, I missed the big arrival ceremony this year. Still it was pretty great – got to talk to a ton of of participants and their families. Here’s a photo gallery from last year’ ceremony: Tribal Canoe Journey at Saltwater State Park

Also, not to go off on a tangent, but I want to remind people that the Snack Shack is back! Thursday – Sunday. No rentals atm. But a Seattle Dog is a fine reason to your visit to our very own State Park. 🙂

July 24, 2025 City Council Meeting Recap

6:00pm City Council Meeting Regular Meeting – 24 Jul 2025 – Agenda Transcript

As expected, it was a very short. When the new City Manager was first on board she complained of all the meetings – to which I am sympathetic. I may have made a strategic error in pointing out that in previous years the Council basically met only twice a month and often took August off. 😀 Burien does this – as do many other cities. Having ‘summer vacation’ is a mistake, as you’ll see once again when the load for meetings accelerates and too many large issues get rammed through (Marina, Masonic Home, Budget, etc. etc. etc.) too quickly. One of the best things you could do to improve local government – I mean all of it, would be to balance meeting items more evenly. And… I could win the Lotto next week. 😀

Public Comment

There was a public comment, praising Chief Boe’s Immigration Policy memo, and encouraging the Council to oppose cooperation with ICE beyond the strict letter of the law. Agreed.

There was a presentation from Legacy vice president Pierre Blosse thanking the City for their support for the parades last week. Mr. Blosse is a candidate for City Council and if he is successful that will mean at least three members of the Council will be past/present board members of Legacy — a big turn-around in the group’s fortunes.

Presentation from KC Metro

As you may have heard, the two new Link Light Rail stations will soon be opening – maybe even by the end of this year!

The Metro presenters, they seemed surprised that I was so complimentary of their current dashboard software – which tracks ridership. I was harsh about it once, but they fixed it. And now I’m lavish about how good it is. People always seem to get stuck on ‘criticism’. You’re not criticizing to criticize. You’re just telling people something is wrong so they fix it. And then everybody’s happy. That’s how government is supposed to work.

Consent Agenda

• ANTI-CRUISING ORDINANCE – 2nd Reading Motion: To approve Draft Ordinance No. 25-065 prohibiting cruising. As I wrote last week, I oppose this until it has staffing. Creating yet another largely unenforceable law will only frustrate residents. This one also leaves a loophole for future automation – ie. surveillance.
• TELECOMMUNICATIONS FRANCHISE AGREEMENT WITH HYPERFIBER – 2nd Reading. Much more high speed internet seems to be coming to Des Moines. But look carefully at the map. See all the areas that are not covered? I never got a straight answer as to why they were not committing to wire the entirety of the City.

NEW BUSINESS

• CITIZEN’S ADVISORY BOARD RE-ORGANIZATION. As I explained last week, I voted no. According to the language, the Mayor chooses all twenty three (23) members. The CAB presiding officer (the Mayor, or someone chosen by the Mayor) chooses all subcommittee assignments. But those Subcommittee members recommend grant funding which will not be reported directly to the Council. And with up to eleven at-large members (more than neighbourhood reps) it’s entirely possible for the Mayor to choose people so that one or two neighbourhoods completely box out everyone else. Since the group’s inception, the City has done absolutely zero work to reach out to a wider audience and that is creating exactly the opposite of sincere and broader representation for all 33,000 residents.

More, sir

Being such a short meeting, most of the Council felt comfortable expressing themselves a bit. It’s worth watching to give you a sense of the personality of the Council at the moment. Several colleagues were extremely appreciative of the parades – I was there for the Children’s Parade on Friday, and it definitely was an upgrade from recent years.

I found several comments (read the transcript) telling on a couple of issues and it’s an awkward discussion. For example, the Mayor said – and you know, she may have just been winging it, but words to the effect that “It doesn’t matter if the committee or an ordinance is good or not. It’s something to try.”  Fair enough, sometimes it’s good to experiment. But if you want to talk about finance and having the money to do various things, we have to take various things a bit more seriously.

In my closing comments, I talked about the Highline Forum. Councilmember Mahoney, our official rep., failed to mention how candid everyone is on how little we can expect from FIFA in 2026. Having attended all the Club games last month, I can vouch for that completely. No matter how many people travel to Seattle it is highly unlikely that it will make much of a difference for us. And if there aren’t opportunities to benefit Des Moines, we gotta stop talking about it as if there are. We do a lot of that. Putting a lot of effort into fun things, which is great, but spending as if they will make money, which they don’t.

Government isn’t supposed to be like Oliver Twist – you know, just be thankful for what you get. Sometimes what you get is not enough. (Do people even read Dickens anymore? 😀 )

The City of SeaTac reported that it is going forward with building a new civic campus. $40 million just for the land. But it’s more than that. Not only will the final cost be well of $100 million, they’re also sacrificing lucrative parking fees out of production. Forever.

They are also working to obtain North SeaTac Park for another $20 million. And then working out a deal with the Port of Seattle to help them finance it.

That isn’t an accident of geography or just fate. The fact is, the negative impacts of the airport are more severe in many ways in Des Moines than in SeaTac. But if you don’t take it seriously enough to embark on a program to get compensated, how can you change it?

There was also a report from Tukwila. Apparently, Southcenter Mall is experiencing something of a renaissance. Despite how much we hear about how malls dying, they are seeing improvements and if you walk around the area — away from Strander – the ‘bones’ of a really great, walkable downtown are in place.

Now the thing I wanted to bring home is that I think people have been sold a bill of goods that the airport is like living next to a highway. Tukwila – but without Southcenter. There’s nothing you can do about it.

But it’s not like that. You can’t begrudge Tukwila economic benefits from Southcenter, because the moment you leave the area, all the negative impacts go away. They get the pluses and the minuses. We get neither. That seems fair.

But Sea-Tac Airport airport is fundamentally different. You can be many miles away and it can be just as bad for your health, your city finances, education, crime, etc. as if you are right next door. That’s always been the inequity. It should not be the case that all the benefits accrue to one group, while all the negative impacts damage everyone else.

It’s not like living next to a freeway. Not at all.

But at some point, we bought into it – like Oliver Twist. Just be happy with what you get. But unlike Oliver we took it to the next level. We forgot what to even ask for.

It’s great to point out when we do events that are as nice as the Waterland Parade. But at some point, you know, if you want to solve the financial problems, you have to be able to have the courage to think about that differently.