Weekly Update: 09/17/2023

Campaigning

I put out some signs. There will be more. Thanks to the people who have help me install them. Every sign I don’t have to schlep is more time talking to residents. I would be honoured if you would allow me to place one of my signs on your lawn/balcony. 🙂

Videos

My first video in years. Have the production values improved? Absolutely not! Watch it anyways.

Important: Look out for  traffic closures on Kent Des Moines Road at 10th Ave starting 9-15 and ending 9-24.

And while yer sitting in traffic, note that 216th near Military Road will be closing soon for the next year. One. Year. But in exchange, when it’s complete, you’ll get an entirely new bridge with bike lanes and everything. 🙂

Last Week

Monday: I did a private candidate forum for people in the Marina District. They did not want it recorded. But they shoulda allowed it to be recorded because the questions were so good.

Tuesday: The Des Moines Senior Services Advisory Committee held their meeting in public at Wesley. This was a welcome change. 🙂 I hope they take this to other areas of town because so many Seniors live all over Des Moines. New Police Chief Tim Gately gave a talk and took questions from the audience.

Wednesday: 5:00PM Ad Hoc Franchise Committee Meeting. (North Conference Room, No Agenda.) The discussion had to do with the ten year Recology contract we approved last Spring. It will need to be adjusted (small) when King County publishes an updated rate structure for putting solid waste in the landfills.

Thursday 11:00AM: I showed a trailer for the SeaTacNoise.Info movie Under The Flight Path at the Federal Way Historical Society. This was sponsored by SoCoCulture and I am extremely grateful because the trailer I showed is nowhere neeeeeear finished and I needed the practice. 🙂 Please sign up for the mailing list here.

Thursday 4:00PM: Transportation Committee Meeting (Agenda)(Video) The ‘highlight’ was the introduction of an item concerning a tax break to a particular developer for an early learning center. The Mayor used his ‘privilege’ to bring it to the Council 90 minutes later. See below.

Thursday 5:00PM: Environment Committee Meeting (Agenda)(Video) I was hoping for a report on the 223rd Green Streets deal, but nope.

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

9/14 City Council Meeting Recap

Out sick

Cm Achziger was absent for the second meeting in a row. Apparently there is COVID involved–which also hit Cm Pennington last month. For the love of Christ… GET THE NEW VACCINE, OK? Thanks. 🙂

Burning Boat Festival

The Mayor did another ‘personal privilege’ thing to bring back former Chief of Police Ken Thomas to talk up the Burning Boat event (which was very cool and I hope you can attend this year.)

Public Comment

Two public comments, and both were excellent. In fact, the quality of public comment has steadily increased since I’ve been on the Council. When I first started watching in 2008, it was more common than you might think for people to show up to make some fairly rando comments. A cynic might say that ‘the people who just wanna rant now stay home and do it on social media.’ 😀 But I don’t think so. And I want you to know that I appreciate it. 🙂

One came from Justin Taillon, head of the Highline College Hospitality and Tourism program, who announced he had assumed the role of president of Destination Des Moines.

Another unscheduled thing… tax break on day care development?

Back to the Transport Committee Meeting from above… Apparently, State law allows cities to offer this tax break to developers to encourage the building of day care centers–a noble goal. Burien did this a while back. But…

• This money is a key to our road funding, which, as you know, is already super-tight. As my colleagues like to say, a decade ago, we had trouble paying to fill pot holes–and I’m reluctant to go back to this days.
• This is a discount to developers, not to parents or to children.
• The Director said that that there was no evidence that a developer had canceled or might cancel a project if not granted that discount.

If the proposal had been to research the merits of the idea, that would be one thing. But the discussion did not include either the Burien ordinance used as the model, or even the State law which makes the idea possible. Yet even without that baseline of information, the discussion wasn’t about whether or not it was a good idea; the discussion was how much of a discount. And the cherry on top is that, with our new ‘Protocol Manual’ we might pass that discount in a single vote–rather than the good ol’ days, where we’d get two readings.

I’d prefer we keep the money in the roads budget–and then have another discussion on how we can help parents reduce their child care costs, which, as you know, are ridonculous. That’s the discussion I think we should be having.

City Manager’s Report

There was a report from South King County Housing and Homelessness Partners (SKHHP) We’ve been at this for over four years now and…

Total units built? across all eleven member cities? 109. The first Des Moines project is to upgrade (not build) 20 units and is scheduled to start in 2024.

And I’ve been asking since I got on the Council for an inventory–a list of properties and their condition, available for rent or Section 8 and so on. We have to know what we have to work with. And her reply was that they had completed it but it’s for internal use only.

When people talk of a ‘housing crisis’, it’s a cruel joke. This is nowhere near what we should be doing.

Consent Agenda

I pulled Item 3 (Redondo Grants).

• The first two motions were grants dedicated to fixing the Fishing Pier. Good.
• The third motion was to accept money to build a new restroom, and not in the current location, but across the street in the parking lot. Not good.

Pulling the item allowed me to vote ‘yes’ on Motion 1 and Motion 2–the money for the good  Fishing Pier, then vote ‘no’ on Motion 3–the money for the not good restroom.

Still with me? 😀

I have always had issues with the restroom proposals at both the Marina and Redondo. My colleagues know what they are and I simply wanted to vote ‘no’ and move on.  But doing so always provokes five responses, which try to (once again) make it look like they are all inter-connected. Which is rubbish. Last time I checked, a fishing pier is not a restroom.

First of all, both the Marina and Redondo restrooms are twins. They were both crazy expensive and crazy large. They are both partially grant funded, because the grant does not allow for spending on the ‘concession’ portion which was unnecessary in the first place and dramatically added to the cost. And, they are both in the wrong places.

Second, we should fix the Fishing Pier first. Every grant we apply for should go towards that. Scratch that, the first priority should’ve been getting the parking gates fixed–at both the Marina and Redondo. Many. Years. Ago.

Finally, on a related topic, as I wrote, I have always strenuously disagreed with moving the location of the restroom from the boardwalk to the parking lot. I know why the Mayor likes the idea. He has had a dream of diver-tourism for the area for a long time and finds it easier to prep/break down with the restroom in the parking lock. I am sympathetic to divers, but I’ve heard many more objections from  local residents, including HOAs nearby.

Residents to the east, guests to the west

But regardless, the main issue for me has always been pedestrian flow. It should be kept on the west side of the street (the boardwalk) as much as possible, both for tourism and more importantly, for safety. Creating a system which encourages people constantly crossing back and forth all day, is not a great idea.

Budget Retreat

We are told to expect the General Fund to go into the red over the next few years. The majority of the discussion was, in fact about how to begin addressing those expected shortfalls.

One way, was borrowing from our Storm Water Management (SWM) Fund in order to start a new Enterprise Fund for Events. Remember: an Enterprise Fund is basically a self-contained business inside a government (think US Postal Service.) It’s supposed to live and die on its own funds. The idea is that, by creating an EF dedicated to events, it will spur whoever runs it to maximise profits. The Marina is an Enterprise Fund, by the way.

Another way to cover the expected shortfalls would be to take advantage of the banked Property Tax. This takes some explaining.

Totally legit. Not saying anything hincky here at all. But… my guess is that if we do it, it will strike most people as unexpected.

And yet another strategy to cover shortfalls will be to re-purpose our ARPA Stimulus funds (I’ve lost track of how many times we’ve done this since our inital vote in 2021.) In my opinion this is not why the Federal government gave us $9,000,000 during COVID. Over my strong objections, the Council voted in September, 2021 to spend all of it at once, rather than taking time to consider where best to spend it for the long term benefit of residents. But apparently we ended up doing the same thing. Except that, more and more we keep using it to plug one-time budget holes.

And with all that, the Mayor insisted that he hopes to keep the $400,000 allocated to the passenger ferry idea for 2024. Seriously?

As you know, I was never a fan of the ferry and I do not think it was ever appropriate to use ARPA money to pay for it. And now, with the prospect of an unexpected rise in property taxes? Yet another reason to just say no.

Humility

During the presentation Cm Pennington used the word ‘inspiring’ to describe the budget presentation. I’m not so sure. If the budget discussion goes as hinted at, 2024 will be the fourth year in a row we are using one-time money to shore up our General Fund–something the current majority swore would never happen again after our financial troubles of the 2010’s.

Archaeology

As I’ve said before, at least two thirds of our population has turned since the Great Recession of 2007. So when I tell people ‘how things were’ I sometimes get ¹eyerolls.

But this City has changed. A lot. There was a business community until the 90’s–you can see the bones of old boat dealerships and long gone stores all over the place if you look. And then there wasn’t. And then in the 2000’s there was the triple shock of a massive change to the State tax system, the Third Runway and the Great Recession.

History rhymes…

Management from the era of the Great Recession gets much contempt from the current City Council and I think that is a bit unfair. In retrospect I disagreed with many of the strategies from back then. But I am not contemptuous because many people then did not realise that the entire world had changed–or that it would take many years to turn things around.

As they say, history may not repeat, but it surely rhymes. The 2024 Budget Retreat seems to be saying that the post-COVID world is also not bouncing back on schedule. But when we continue to rely on one-time money, we won’t be as foolhardy as prior governments. Uh huh.

2021 v. 2009…

As I wrote above, in 2021, the Federal government sent us a $9,000,000 check labeled ‘ARPA Stimulus’, to help us through the pandemic crisis. Which was pretty darned nice of them.

But the City Council of 2009 received no such bailout. So I’m struggling to imagine the budget cuts our current city council would have needed to make in 2021 if we had not received those ARPA funds to smooth over the rough patches.

That darned Black Swan…

If I’ve learned one thing about local government? One should always have a large dose of intellectual humility. Showing contempt for prior management was never a good look. And neither was/is heaping so much praise on current management.

The upcoming budget may be saying that it is possible that the strategies we’ve employed since 2016 have reached their productive limit. That’s not a wish or a slam. But it’s a possibility any decision maker should consider. In 2016 we got off the precipice through new management, but also via new taxes, the lowest crime rate in decades, and the luck of a rapidly growing economy. Great. But now we may need to do something different in order to get to the next level.

Or I could be dead wrong. 😀

But back in the 2010’s a former finance director said that we should plan for a ‘black swan event’ in Des Moines every ten years or so. Everyone chuckled, but I now believe she was probably right.

¹That’s one of the reasons I change out my Facebook piccie every week. I want a record of what this City looks like now, because when I tell people about the French Restaurant and the Wine Shop and all the other restaurants downtown, people are skeptical because there are almost no piccies of life on Marine View Drive from back then.