PSA #1: Now that the Federal Way light rail construction is really beginning in earnest, you may want to sign up for email updates from Sound Transit. There will be many road closures over the next year or so.
PSA #2: Dude: you really gotta sign up for the Census. We’re getting down to the wire and DM is currently only at about 71% participation (Washington State is actually second best in the nation) BUT STILL NOT ENOUGH! 😀 We need every living body counted. Each person counted represents about $30,000 in State and Local funding!
RIP: I note and deeply mourn the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Just perusing her bio reminds me of how much the world has improved for women in my lifetime–and how much she did to make that happen. When I was in grad school, which wasn’t that long ago, there were fifty nine guys in my class and one woman. I distinctly remember the Dean making a statement about why there weren’t more women. “Possibly because most girls don’t want to be engineers.” Oof. Lots accomplished. Lots more still to do. Thank you for your service.
This Week
Tuesday: Port Of Seattle Regular Meeting and Audit Meetings (Agendas)
Wednesday: come have lunch with me at the Senior Center. Get an EATS voucher!
Wednesday: Highline Forum. This is a bi-monthly meeting hosted by the Port Of Seattle. It is attended by electeds from the six airport communities, plus Highline Schools. It was started years ago in the aftermath of the Third Runway conflicts. Do I sound bored yet? 😀 The communities wish it would be more like an ongoing negotiation but it really isn’t. There’s usually some presentation re. noise, pollution, construction. It’s worth attending to get up to speed and to get an idea of which communities are engaged and which are not.
Wednesday: Puget Sound Regional Council Aviation Baseline Study Open House Sign up to learn about progress on siting a second airport.
Thursday: Municipal Facilities Committee and Economic Development Committee meetings. These are public meetings so sign up to listen in and comment.
Thursday: City Council Meeting (Agenda) We’ll get an update on the G.R.O. business grant program. But the highlight (for me) will be the first reading of approving our first Comcast agreement in ten years. I am not on the Franchise Committee which oversees that. But considering Comcast is running neck and neck in terms of public hatred with the Port Of Seattle :D, I will be very interested to see if we have achieved any tangible improvements since the 2009 agreement. The answer to the obvious question is, “no we can’t lower your rates.” But there are possible improvements. I may sound snippy here, but based on previous meetings involving contract review I expect defensiveness–which I hate. I can never understand why there is tension. I’m supposed to ask tough questions of the staff negotiating this because I know this is one of the most visceral issues for you as residents. You feel ill-treated by Comcast, right? (OK, I do. 😀 ) Please read these notes from the last Franchise Committee Meeting for background and let the City Council know what you think!
Last Week
Tuesday: SCAtbd Meeting all that ‘transportation’ stuff–like
Tuesday: Burien Airport Committee (Agenda).
Wednesday: Reach Out Des Moines. I should remind people periodically that this is a King County-funded program that works to reduce youth violence and improve school attendance. It’s success has been dramatic over the past five years, thanks in part to Officer Tanya Seaberry. It shows that an extremely effective way to reduce crime and improve outcomes for students is with some pretty basic and low dollar programs. Give kids interesting things to do and some attention and good things happen. 🙂
Thursday: Puget Sound Regional Council Growth Management Board Meeting. This mattered partly because of this Aviation Baseline Study presentation. The bottom line is that almost no aviation planning includes a discussion of ‘externalities’… those pesky effects on us. This study has been ongoing for two years and literally no work has been done on the negative impacts on airport communities. As I keep trying to say, this is outrageous and simply would not happen in any other type of public project.
Thursday: Transportation Meeting 3:00pm (Agenda). What was great about this was that we had a member of the public attending a public meeting. 😀 (Thanks to Cory O’Brien for being a guinea pig.) I also learned that our Mayor and Deputy Mayor dislike roundabouts. Whereas the City Manager does not. I happen to believe in roundabouts because all the evidence says that they improve traffic flows dramatically–so much so that State law strongly encourages their adoption.
Thursday: Environment Committee. These are probably the most boringest of all committees (even for attendees), mainly because they are currently limited in scope to riveting topics like storm water. For the long term I’m interested that it should include broader topics like shore and off-shore water quality (spoiler alert: not good) and, of course, the airport.
Thursday (Thursday is quite a day, right?) : City Council General Meeting (Agenda). Recap below.
Saturday: Marina/Beach Cleanup organised by SR3 and Seattle Dive Tours. I spent an hour ostensibly looking for trash along the North seawall. Didn’t find much. But I’ll tell ya what I did find–a lot of the seawall. 😀 What I mean is that a surprising amount of it is now falling onto the beach and into Puget Sound and I wish we could pick up all that creosote-coated wood, but that’s a job on a different scale. I had an interesting conversation with the boss at Seattle Dive Tours and it got me thinking about our unique relationship to environmental issues with both the water and air.
Lobbyist Contract
Last Thursday’s City Council Meeting (video) was, like almost all meetings since the Declaration Of Emergency in March, basically a Consent Agenda. The only ‘excitement’ was that I pulled the item amending and enhancing our lobbyist’s contract. That led to (yet another) trolling by the City Manager.
Preamble: strategery
When you’re part of a group like a City Council, you will routinely come up against issues that are no-win. And this *contract enhancement was one of them. In these cases you can take the principled position, get attacked and lose or you can go along, not make waves and wait for a future opportunity to undo the thing you dislike.
Believe it or not, I choose Door #2 on most issues for several reasons: first of all, the City Manager should have the team he wants; I’m not here to micro-manage. Second of all, it’s generally a waste of time arguing over issues where I’ll lose. I only take the principled (aka ‘guy asking to be trolled’) stance when there is something going on.
I ran to change things
I ran as a change candidate on at least two big issues. I said that we were not doing economic development well. And I said, especially, that we had not handled the negative impacts from Sea-Tac Airport well. Both those departments are run by Michael Matthias. Unlike other cities, he is not only our City Manager, he is also our Economic Development Director and our lead on all airport issues, including the upcoming SAMP. In other words, Mr. Matthias is not just an administrator, he is the policy driver on the two key issues IÂ ran to try and change. So it was inevitable that we would have disagreements. The question always came down to, would we be able to work together respectfully.
Why complain?
Once again, the City Manager made some disparaging comments about me from the dais which were, well, let’s just say, not 100% accurate. And I want to point out three things:
1. This has become something of a recurring deal with Mr. Matthias and our Mayor. If I disagree. If I question the wonderfulness of a policy? If I do anything they dislike? Attack. Make some claim that I’m doing something ‘inappropriate’ or even ‘dangerous’! If you watch City Council Meetings, or read the Waterland Blog you’ve seen a few of these admonitions. But at some point I’ll publish a full list of these beauties (which are part of the public record–I’m would never betray confidences.) I don’t want to be a tease, but they are truly ridiculous. And they will make the people who supported them look ridiculous.
2. The thing I truly do not get is that there is absolutely no need to do so. As usual, he/they have the votes, so why not just ignore me, especially when I make reasonable objections? Why be blatantly disrespectful? As always, I said nothing disparaging. But I did speak from research and personal experience.
3. Most troubling, once again my colleagues seem to find nothing out of the ordinary with this. Regardless of who you voted for you, it is not in your interest as a voter to allow the administration to ever publicly criticize an elected official. When that decorum breaks down, it should tell you something about what is going on ‘under the hood’.
New duties
To begin with, I asked for specifics as to what Mr. Hemstad would be doing for his raise and got no reply. That right there gets my antennae up. But here are my educated guesses.
Airport
For what it’s worth: I’ve had over a dozen chances to engage with Mr. Hemstad over the past two years. I had these opportunities because I was a part of SB5370 (siting a second airport) in 2018 and then I came up with the original plan that became legislation to expand Port Packages (HB2315 and HB1847) in 2019. I knew the extent of his knowledge on airport issues–which is similar to most lobbyists, and which was, to put it bluntly, none.
Mr. Matthias and Mr. Hemstad are now our representatives on the StART, which was designed to be a citizen-led group as part of an FAA mandate on community outreach. So what we’re now doing is sending the two highest paid people in the City to attend meetings that were better served by far more knowledgeable residents? Not my preferred plan.
Economic Development
That’s my personal research. As to the other selling points, as I said, I am not happy with the City’s current economic development strategy. I asked for specifics as to his new portfolio and got no reply. So I did some research. And what seems to be the case is that Mr. Hemstad and Mr. Matthias have worked together at least twice before in other cities. I believe that is why he was hired in the first place–which is fine, Mr. Matthias wanted people he knows and trusts. Great. But I examined those City’s economic development plans and I did not find them to be great roadmaps for Des Moines. So why would I support doubling down on more of the strategies I already think are bad for Des Moines future?
Added Value
And finally, there was much talk about ‘what a deal’ we were getting–that Mr. Hemstad combined best-in-class service with the lowest price one could find anywhere. The claims were just effusive. Mr. Hemstad gets $6,000 per month for non-exclusive services–meaning he can (and does) take on work for other clients. So I reached out to a long-time friend and Olympia lobbyist and to colleagues in five other cities. And I found that there are other similar-sized cities which pay the same or less for similarly effective services; some as little has half that amount. Some have larger staffs with greater resources and some have in-house, full-time lobbyists that provide exclusive services.
Overall grading
I am in no way disparaging the work that Mr. Hemstad does or the fees he has received. I’m sure he earns his money. I liked him personally when we collaborated before. His accomplishments are real and I appreciate everything he has done for Des Moines–so much so that I wanted him to keep doing exactly what he’s been doing! Just not all this new nonsense.
Two things to think about
I want residents to understand that if they voted for me they voted for change in our economic development and airport strategies. And that means pointing out when I believe we are headed in the wrong direction–even if it would tactically better to ‘go along’.
You as a resident will never have access to the petty ‘inside baseball’ that is behind most of these fights. But once again, I want to emphasize that I did not pick this fight. Again, it would have been better if the other side had let me have my say and just moved on. From the dais I made a subtle (probably too subtle) policy objection to this raise. The City Manager (and the Council) had a choice. They have the votes. They could simply listen to my objections, vote to approve, and move on. Simple. No arguments, no wasting time. But noooooooo. (Hear the John Belushi voice, there?) Apparently, winning the vote is not sufficient.
I suppose one can read this and think, “Jeez, what a whiner. The vote was 6-1 so you were obviously wrong. Move on.” But when one is attacked from the dais, one has to respond. You, the voter, should understand that their behavior is simply not appropriate and that my objections to this contract were fact-based and reasonable. Regardless of the tally, I am confident that I made the right call. And their bad behavior only reinforces that confidence.
I leave it to you to decide who is more credible.
*Despite what you may heard this is a raise, not just an ‘extension’ as was advertised, so to be generous I refer to it as an ‘enhancement’. The idea was sold that Mr. Hemstad is being paid simply to work more months of the year from home. But what those new tasks are–especially during the months when legislatures are not in session, was never spelled out. Don’t wanna call it a raise? Fine, call it a whole new consulting gig. But as a consultant myself, it is most definitely not ‘just an extension’.me.
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