Weekly Update 08/04/2024

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.

Free Steering Wheel Locks!

As you’ll read below, the police are giving away free steering wheel locks. But… I got two. Checkmate! If you send me a note which demonstrates that you a) live in Des Moines and b) have a make/model of vehicle that is highly susceptible to theft (eg. in my case it’s been a Honda CRV and Ford F150 😮 ) I’ll happily deliver one to you.

Free Trees!

Many people do not know that residents -anywhere- in the City of Des Moines are entitled to FREE TREES from Sound Transit as part of the new Light Rail. What is new this year is that Sound Transit has created a more convenient pick up system. So… sign up now and get your trees in the fall when it’s planting time. The sign up form has more information, but here are your choices…
–Bitter Cherry (~30’ at maturity)
–Cascara (~30’ at maturity)
–Douglas Fir (~120’ at maturity)
–Pacific Crab Apple (~35’ at maturity)
–Vine Maple (~25’ at maturity)
–Western Red Cedar (~150’ at maturity)

https://bit.ly/treegiveaway2024

City Manager Stuff

City Manager’s Report August 02, 2024

Always good info.

Tax Levy Lid Lift Info

I’ve written several articles to rebut inaccuracies in the City’s informational presentations as well one stat I did not expect that challenges the entire argument.

• About that Tax Levy Lid Lift Pamphlet
• Did we, or did we not, have a dedicated fund for tax levy money in 2006?
• Police response times are improving!

Tribal Canoe Journey

This Week

Tuesday: National Night Out! Hope to see you at various block parties around the City, including Midway Park!

Thursday: Environment Committee – 08 Aug 2024 – Agenda. We will review the Des Moines Creek Basin Plan. The original plan came out of a recognition that the entire area (including the airport) is part of one highly interconnected water system. In fact, the original fight to stop the Third Runway was based on water. Though the lawsuits did not stop that project, they did lead to a massive cleanup which saved Des Moines Creek.

One major concern at the time was many bad septic systems. It’s still a problem and why you hear me talk about ‘poo’ so much.

Thursday: City Council Regular Meeting – 08 Aug 2024 – Agenda Highlight: There is a significant item on Consent concerning not one but two WSDOT very different projects: Barnes Creek wetlands from 220th south, and a road termination at Blueberry Lane (194th). If you live in either area, or are one of the people concerned about trees/wetlands and all that junk, you should read the packet. I will try to get the item remanded to Environment because that’s where all the tree/wetland junk belongs. 🙂

Last Week

Tuesday:National Night Out Preview Block party at Steven J. Underwood. I got two free steering wheel locks! And you can too!

FREEBIE! If you send me a note which demonstrates that you a) live in Des Moines and b) have a make/model of vehicle that is highly susceptible to theft (eg. in my case it’s been a Honda CRV and Ford F150 😮 ) I’ll happily deliver one to you.

Tuesday: Executive Session (City Manager Recruitment)  See below.

Wednesday: King County Flood District Advisory Committee. Gotta be honest here. I have no idea how I got back on this. 😀 But for some reason, I’m back. In years past, the County provided flood control grants for levees on big rivers. Recently, they’ve started providing grants for urban flooding, of which we get a fair share. I’m the only member from anywhere in the immediate area. But anything

Wednesday: Port Package Updates! Rep. Orwall, Sen. Keiser, and a cast of thousands from the Port of Seatle met to discuss the Port’s efforts. This is a tough one. On the one hand, the Port is doing more than what is ‘legally’ required in providing any second chance program. On the other hand, there’s legal and then there’s what is right. My immediate goal is to get every home that ever got a Port Package eligible for the program and not just the current one third of home owners in closest to the airport.

Thursday: Finance Committee This thing was so action packed it requires its own Recap below.

Thursday: City Council Study Session. Recap below.

July 30 Executive Session Recap

As many of you know, I was not exactly thrilled with the choice of our last City Manager. It’s not just that I wasn’t thrilled with the guy the previous Council chose, it’s that I thought the selection process was bad.

In 2016, there were four finalists. But then, after receiving his offer, the winner dropped out. As is typical for Des Moines, there was no explanation. But, instead of re-opening the process? The City Council selected the fourth-ranked choice, Economic Development Director Michael Matthias. How convenient.

Since then the remainder of the current City Council majority backed him to the hilt for eight years, with many raises and an extravagant severance package. Right up to the moment they didn’t. Again, with no explanation.

One of the things that made me decide to run for office was hearing the Council of that time repeat over and over how lucky we got–we had the best City Manager in the State of Washington in the building all along!

My main goal in this process is to have that kind of thing from happening again. Take the personalities out of it as much as possible and as data-driven as possible. The hope being that we not only choose someone with different values, but that, if something does go wrong (again), we have a process that discourages us from taking the path of least resistance.

That’s been the classic Des Moines move: create an artificial ‘deadline’, then tell the public that we made the best choice ‘under the circumstances’.

This is the one choice that must be done totally by the book, regardless of time or cost. And to put my money where my mouth is, I’ve told the administration that I will make myself available every day and night until this thing is properly put to bed.

All that said, I am pleased to report that, in a one hour session, this City Council did excellent work. As I reported last week, the HR Director prepared a spreadsheet with thirty (30) questions to score the eleven (11) applicants. She collated our seven responses and four choices we all agree on clearly rose to the top. In fact, the main work of the meeting was done in ten minutes. That’s the power of data-driven decision making. When people try to change hearts and minds? Good luck. But if you can make a reasonably fair process, it takes all the personality jazz out of it.

The rest of the discussion was mainly the logistics of scheduling their interviews with us, and making sure that the public gets to meet them and that the Council gets your feedback before we make our decision.

I can’t tell you if we’ll pick the best person available because you can only choose from who applies. But I can assure you of three things:

• All four candidates are highly qualified and within the realm of reason.
• There are two obvious ‘types’ of ³candidates. You’ll see what I mean when you meet them.
• The process of public engagement we verbally agreed upon is much better than 2016. But since we have such a poor record on this, it’s the one area I will keep nagging on. Many of my colleagues simply don’t feel the same need I do to reach more people.

August 1 Finance Committee Recap

Ya know how you can tell something is working? Everyone starts taking ¹credit for it. 🙂 That’s the Finance Committee. It often covers so much ground that many meetings are as impactful as the full meeting.

Finance Committee 1 Aug 2024 – Agenda

²BOMBSHELL! The City put forward a broad strokes idea to consolidate Events Planning, Senior Activities and Field House ‘stuff’ together! and, And, AND… end its outsourcing of Senior Services with Wesley! Dogs and cats. Living together! I favoured this four years ago, so this puts me in a tough spot: It’s like telling people you hate that they threw you a surprise birthday party. But this has the potential to save the City a ton of money by consolidating staff from related, but separate departments that were already working together all the time.

The Finance Director put together a plan to change Business License fees. According to this, we already have some of the lowest fees in the region so that’s fine. Nobody’s going to not site here based on this small increase. And the increase will bring in an extra $100k. The one thing I noticed was that we don’t have a different tier for businesses with large headcounts. And I asked that we look into that because we actually have not one but two large grocery stores.

But wait, it gets better. The monthly General Fund report indicates we’re doing a lot better than expected. and, And, AND… whereas last month there were about zero construction projects on the books, now it looks as though there may be 4-5 coming on line in 2025-2026. One-time money saves the bacon once again! 😀

All kidding aside, the whole budget scrubbing thing (which you never hear me say, btw) is yielding improvements, not just ‘cuts’. The issue I raised, which I’ll come back to in the police update below is sustainability. We don’t want staff  doubling up on jobs and getting burnout.

August 1 City Council Study Session Recap

City Council Study Session – 01 Aug 2024 – Agenda

As seasoned readers know, a ‘Study Session’ is supposed to be limited to 1-2 big issues to be… er… ‘studied’, and no decidering. Unfortunately, the lines keep getting blurrier and blurrier over time (sigh). So this time there were actually six things discussed and two decisions.

Public Comment

There was one comment concerning Des Moines Creek Business Park West. According to our rules, which changed in 2023, public comment was limited to ‘items to be studied’. Unfortunately, the agenda keeps printing that old rule and it is wrong. There is no such limitation in our current Council Protocol Manual. If you wanna show up and talk about anything at a Study Session? You go, girl! 😀

Anyhoo, last I heard, a group spent $900 to file an appeal to the project. I sure hope those people are reading the permit documents for LUA2022-0044. 😀 Because frankly that is what the Hearings Examiner (and then the City Council) will decide on. I dunno how else to put it: You can get 10,000 petition signatures, but if you don’t read the SEPA comments and make legit arguments based on thems? You just donated $900 to the City of Des Moines. Thanks! 🙂

On the other hand, you may have no petition, but if you have one good argument on that SEPA checklist? You can change even a huge project.

City Manager Reports

Port of Seattle Part 150 Update

A Part 150 is a study the airport does about every 10 years. Bottom line for you? it determines who gets sound insulation. You can learn more here

Part 150 for Dummies

City Manager Recruitment Update

In short, because the ES was so successful, this took like sixty seconds. 🙂

Police Department Community Update

Item 1c.  If you notice, the City has done more public outreach on the police department this year than basically ever. It could just be a complete coincidence that the levy lid lift is on the ballot. 😀 My hope is that this increased level of public engagement persists–whether the Levy Lid Lift passes or not. (Of course, management will say, “How can we afford all this ‘public outreach’ if the Levy Lid Lift does not pass?” Which is not the right answer. 😀 )

But here’s the wild thing? Despite all the talk of low officer to resident ratios? We’re actually staffed at the 2019 level–which is considered ‘fully staffed’.

And even more mind-blowing? Police response times have been improving! Averaging 3:13 for the most serious types of calls!

That’s amazingly good under any circumstances.

We’ve already seen that, when the pressure is on, the City has been able to make substantial process improvements–even with a transitional staff. When permanent leadership takes command, that’s when the bigger gains will be possible. And that is why we can and should wait before raising taxes. There’s something else on that below.

PRELIMINARY DISCUSSION OF 2025 CITY LEGISLATIVE PRIORITES

Our lobbyist put forward a preliminary outline. There were no questions because, well, it’s a preliminary outline. 🙂 One thing which bears discussion. He wants to put a lot of effort into getting the State to pay for an electric passenger ferry, to give to King County, so that they will run a service here. (Note that this is a 3D animation of the proposed design. Again: this thing has not been built.)

The ‘sweetener’? The fact that your Council just voted for the first off-shore electric charging platform in the United States.

To be clear, we will spend over $100,000 this year on lobbying fees to work on these ideas. So while neither the boat or the floating battery may not yet exist, the costs to us, this year, continue to be very real.

Did I mention that neither technology actually exists atm? Literally. There is no working boat; not even a prototype. There is no working floating battery; not even a prototype. (I refer to it as a floating battery because that is what it is: about 1.5 tons of lithium ion batteries. Floating in saltwater.  😮  There are safety rated LiOn marine batteries for personal use, and on-shore systems. But not floating on saltwater. I haven’t been able to find research on fire control. For that reason alone, it is a technology I do not want to be first in the nation on.

More State Public Safety Taxes: One other thing we will be lobbying for that I am not wild about: A lot of cities, including ours, continue to pitch hard for more tax revenue on two fronts. I am not wild about either:

• One plan is to allow for a sales tax increase to fund more police. Last year it died an early death.
• Another is a plea to raise the 1% annual property tax cap. This is such a chronic ask that, despite the fact that voters have made their feelings quite clear on the matter, sooner or later, it will pass.
• Also, we’ll have our first new Governor in a dozen years. And no matter who gets in they have both promised that there will be more public safety money in next year’s budget.

What I’m trying to say here is that somehow, someway, there is gonna be more money for public safety next year. Either from the State or out of your taxes. Hopefully the former.

NOVEMBER 05, 2024 PUBLIC SAFETY LEVY LID LIFT: PRO AND CON COMMITTEE APPOINTMENTS

The same two people who signed up for the August 6 election also signed up for the November election.

For those of you not following along, if the August 6 Levy Lid Lift fails, the City will put the same item on the November ballot. So, you get to vote on it again. Having it on the ballot twice was a key reason I voted against it. I felt strongly that if the voters say ‘no’, please take a breath and listen. Figure out why they said no before going at them again.

¹But it was my idea. 😉

²A ‘bombshell’ is whenever there is a Surprise! policy move put forward by the City with no notice. We just get a printed presentation at the meeting. I despise this. The Interim City Manager did not do this when he first took over, but now its becoming as bad as his predecessor. My sense is that it’s just easier for staff to work on stuff right up to the meeting, rather than discipline themselves to cut off work on items when the packet is sent out a week ahead of time. It’s terrible for decision making.

³The right choice, and the other two. 😀