Weekly Update: 10/08/2023

Frankly, that’s a bit distressing–and it ain’t for lack of trying on my part. A couple of groups have done private interviews, which is fine but private doesn’t help the community. And other community organisations that previously have held fora simply opted out. I honestly don’t know what to do with that. Look folks, this is democracy. If you don’t provide avenues for candidates to speak on the record, in public, you’re screwing Des Moines (and yourselves) in at least three ways.

First, you think it’s better when you (and the candidates) speak in private, but it’s not. It just gives everyone a chance to avoid

Second, you should want the entire City to see each candidate as much as possible. It is to your benefit to have everyone see the candidates because no candidate gets elected from one neighbourhood.

Finally, and most important, candidates need practice. This is not like running for other offices where you get to give speeches and learn to interact with the public every day. Many candidates run unopposed. And most simply throw out some yard signs, do a couple of fundraisers and call it good. Almost nobody doorbells in any real way. That not only creates ignorance of what the City really is, it also fosters complacency. The successful candidate just shows up for the first meeting (there’s no ‘training’ to speak of) and ta da! they’re some instant expert. And, unlike a professional setting, where people actually have to have some demonstrable competence, you can’t tell electeds they have no idea what they’re talking about. And if you are friendly with a particular candidate, I can’t tell you that they don’t know what they’re talking about. (How dare you insult my friend after all they’ve done for blah, blah, blah!)

In other words, local elected office is unlike any other profession. The basic competency one obtains is through campaigning.

And if you don’t provide that avenue for candidates to learn to answer tough questions on the record, to study up when they don’t know something, what do you think happens when they get on the dais? They continue to rely on friendship to get over.

Last week I published a video about Sex Trafficking and what the City of Des Moines is doing about it, called An Externality.  In the video, I point out that the City of SeaTac receives $1.4 million a year for public safety from the airport to deal with the externalities (ie. crime) which comes from the airport–including sex trafficking. Every. Year.

The City of Des Moines gets zero money from the airport–and yet we experience exactly the same externalities—including crime and sex trafficking and violence against women which the police officer who presented acknowledged are endemic to airports.

What we do is spend $3,765 for a wonderful non-profit called Genesis Project–and show our ‘deep concern’. And then blow $1,000,000 on a money-losing ferry.

The $1.4MM a year SeaTac spends on the issue is deep concern for public safety. $3,765 seems more like a nice gesture to me.

Jesus made it clear that suffering is inevitable. But he never said to stop trying, or only to make token gestures. I ran for office to do something real. Not to make nice gestures so people can feel good about themselves–and then waste money on frivolous things like a ferry. All that does is to insure that the suffering will never end.

The fact is that the only reason the City of SeaTac gets that dough is because they negotiated for it. There is absolutely no legal constraint which ever precluded Des Moines from obtaining a similar agreement. We simply chose to do other things, including promises of economic development–which says something about our values.

If you watched the Navier Boat, you saw a whole bunch of extremely nice people, including a former Port Commissioner who now works for the Dept. Of Commerce and one of your State Reps take a very nice ride on a 6 passenger electric ferry which costs $550,000. I mention the passengers because your State Reps tend to apply for the grants we get,  the Dept. Of Commerce tends to be the source of all those grants, and the last time our City did a photo-op like that, the City Council budgeted about a million dollars to a ferry program. See how that works?

On top of that,every month we also pay $5,000 to a ‘ferry consultant’ to promote ‘ferries’; not to actually provide service, just to promote the concept. We pay that guy more every month than we do to help women rise out of human slavery every year. In fact, just his fees from the last four years would literally power our entire human services program for 2024.

So you will never see me in that kind of photo-op.

It’s not just that I don’t want the City to spend another dime on that ferry. It’s that I don’t want the State or any other agency to give us the money. Because the grants each City can receive are finite. We only can obtain (x) dollars from the State every year. So the $550,000 you get for (x) is the $550,000 you won’t get to do something else.

Would I like $550,000 from the State? Hell yeah! But I can think of about a dozen more worthy spends than an 6 person electric ferry without even trying. And regardless of your politics, so can you.

Our budget is not only your money, it’s our possibilities. When we waste money, it’s not just nonsense, it’s money we won’t have to deal with the real problems.

I like all the people on that boat. But I’m fed up. And if you care about doing something real about long standing problems like Pacific Highway, all of us need to think differently about this stuff.

For the past twenty years, DDM has been essentially the event planning organisation in Des Moines, including Fireworks, Waterland Parade, the upcoming Halloween event. In recent years, the City has started organising events–and this year took over the Fireworks (er… Drone Show), going so far as to propose creating a new Enterprise Fund dedicated to event planning. My hope is that, in the next few weeks, DDM and the City will come to an agreement as to who does what and where in order to take our events and business promotions to the next level.

I can tell you that my priority has always been to cover the entire City. It’s just a fact that historically most of our events have been centred around the Marina District and I’d like our City to find more ways to include businesses in North Hill, Pacific Highway, Highline, and Redondo. We have some great offerings in all those neighbourhoods and I think more of the rest of the world should get a chance to know about them. 🙂