Weekly Update 10/26/2025

Some bits of business…

Who is running?

You got your ballots? That’s not enough! Since I believe the airport and environment are the most important issue the City ever faces, here is a two-fer article from Sea-Tac Noise.Info, with their take on the races and a great survey from the Defenders of Highline Forest!

King County Council

For the first time in a dozen years, we will also choose a new KC District #5 Councilmember. People often get confused what the County Council does (zero control over police, Sea-Tac Airport, land, etc.), but this is a big deal! Their biggest impacts for us generally concern grants, usually parks, public health and human services. For example, they provided significant money for Midway Park and storm water upgrades. Watch this video to decide on Peter Kwon or Steffanie Fain.

City Manager Stuff

City Manager Report – October 24, 2025

Two down, one to go! The Marina dock replacement is on schedule! You can watch videos of progress in action here: https://www.youtube.com/@CityofDesMoinesMarina

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.

This Week

Monday

Our annual City Manager performance review is due. My form is sort of an ‘incomplete’, which may provoke a frowny-face from some. But it shouldn’t.

There is a lot of revisionist history going on now. If you read my colleagues’ reviews of Ms. Caffrey’s predecessor, they were all stellar. Until they weren’t. The majority members now telling you how much happier they are now would have been fine having Mr. Matthias continue onward.

Things are better now. The communication, in particular, is an order of magnitude better. But cutting expenses and catching up on service requests (basic management) is painful, difficult, but not particularly challenging. It’s just that we got so used to things being, well, not ideal, that anyone doing what is normal elsewhere would look like a rocket surgeon.

The real challenges, the ‘strategery’, will come next year. We’ve been a ‘small town’ with low expectations and no strategy (other than to be ‘the premiere waterfront yadada’) that it’s difficult to predict how things will go. Especially before November 5. 😀

Tuesday

Port of Seattle Commission Meeting. This is a biggee, concerning their plans for the SAMP at the State level next year. Details at STNI.

Last Week

Monday

Senator Tina Orwall convened her annual meeting to discuss airport policy for the next legislative agenda. This time it was at a taco joint in Burien. 🙂

Tuesday

Preserve Landmark On The Sound As you may have heard, a large group of citizens organised an appeal of the demolition permit. If you wish to learn more about that, go to: Preserve Landmark on the Sound. The hearing on their appeal was Monday and Tuesday. I tried to check in to see what was up, though the Council has no part in this process. Nevertheless, its over and now it’s simply a waiting game to hear the decision.

Wednesday

5:00pm StART, coverage from STNI.

5:30pm Airport issues Candidate Forum in Burien: Port of Seattle, 33rd LD, coverage from STNI.

Thursday

City Council Meeting: (Agenda) This was a biggee. Recap below…

October 23, 2025 City Council Meeting Recap

Regular Meeting – 23 Oct 2025 – Agenda – Updated

Public Comment

There was one comment praising the City’s improvements in ‘transparency’, from a member of our Citizens Advisory Board (good) but who has become a paid consultant for Harry Steinmetz’s campaign (not so good.) We have a rule against any ‘campaigning’ during public comment and I felt like this really got close to the edge. Maybe I’m wrong. Watch the video and let me know what you think.

Committee Reports

King County Metro Regional Transit Committee. We discussed their performance dashboard. Be still my beating heart. 😀 This has been something near and dear to me and I was pleased to see others now praising its usefulness.

Since nothing is ever good enough, I am now pushing for some metrics on shelter maintenance/upkeep. That sounds like a ‘detail’, but until now, all their public data focuses on riders and drivers. But many people (the majority) see Metro as they drive by. They’ll see a messy shelter, scream about it (along with 100 others) and not realise that it’s on a regular schedule. Some stops have more issues than others. But they are constantly working on it. Like everything, it comes down to funding.

City Manager Stuff

Burien Airport Noise Letter Discussion

The Council voted 6-1 (Mahoney against) to sign onto a letter the City of Burien recently sent to the Port of Seattle Commission expressing real unhappiness on the lack of progress on Port Package updates. Since this is an issue I’ve worked on for nine years with STNI, this is good news and I want to thank both the City of Burien and our own airport committee for their support.

Marina Steps Project

The Council voted 4-3 to move ahead with this, but it required seven individual motions. This created a lot of public confusion. The total cost is about $13M. But the $8.5M mentioned in the Waterland Blog was ‘only’ the bond money we have to repay. The rest consists of money we’re taking from other funds and a $1M State grant. Timeline: Construction begins January 2026, completion January 2027

There were two proposed amendments, both had speeches you should hear and both failed.

I kicked things off by saying I thought it should be held over until the next Council (January) but I’d vote for it if we removed the play area and spray pad — the two features I think are least helpful – and save $1.4M (enough to fund the boat storage which actually would bring in some money.)

Achziger followed up by explicitly asking to reschedule the vote for January. His argument was also that this was too consequential to be left to the last minute.

And I resented some of my colleagues asking the City to weigh in on whether or not it was a good idea. It puts staff in an awkward position. I was also not thrilled that the City provided an option to exclude those two items I mentioned. But then failed to even provide a picture! Why? Because it was not the recommended option. Leading the witness, yer honour! Not. Cool. And eerily reminiscent of the previous regime. Staff should really try to stay out of these discussions. Questions only, not opinons!

2026 Property Tax Levy

(Public Hearing): $5.92M total levy. This is something of a non-event. Every city is allowed 1%. And everyone takes it. 🙂 I asked the City to put up the one slide I think matters: The new cost to the average taxpayer will be a whopping $13.

Ferry Study

I’ve begun called this issue Ferry Krueger. Get it? Because no matter how many times you think the nightmare is over… he’s back.

The Council voted unanimously to approve helping King County conduct a study of ferry service between Des Moines and Seattle. Since it’s grant funded, I guess it’s OK? The scope of the study sounds far more legit than the obviously rigged private study we did in 2019 which kicked off the whole $700,000 waste of money known as the Pilot Program.

But we’ll see. As with the Marina Steps, my trust level on any of this has been below zero for a long time. Certain people will always think that doing something, anything is a win. And since they won’t have to pay for it, of course they’re right. 😀

New Utility Taxes

The Council voted 6-1 (Grace-Matsui against) to create an ad hoc committee to renegotiate franchise agreements with three utility providers (Highline Water, SW Suburban Sewer, Midway Sewer) or allow 5-year extensions.

Increasing the current 6% franchise payment even 1% generates $150k additional revenue per SPD. You are over-taxed, but this isn’t one of them. We’re at the low end of the spectrum–well, on this at least.

Regardless, I hate these agreements. And here’s something you don’t often hear me say: I agreed with former Mayor Dave Kaplan who wanted to convert each agreement to one unified utility tax years ago. He got screamed at back then, and I was one of the screamers, because, as with the property tax levy last year, the City proposal made people think rates could potentially increase to 16%. And without trust, residents automatically assumed the worst. Nevertheless, having one modest, uniform, utility tax, rather than five separate agreements is the only fair way to go. Will we do that? Of course not. 😀 Because even after all these years the same trust problems have not been addressed. (sigh)

8.08F

As the months have passed, I have heard increasing grumbles concerning Councilmember Nutting’s presence only by Zoom for almost the entire year. He has mentioned, it in passing, to the rest of the Council, but has not indicated when he will be back ‘live’. As a group I have heard no objection.

This goes back to our new Council Protocol Manual and there’s a bit of a story here. However, from 1959-2023 the Council had essentially one set of rules that got tweaked every year or two. As far back as I can recall, it limited remote participation to one telephone meeting per year.

In 2023, a committee chaired by Buxton, with Steinmetz and Mahoney, was appointed to re-write those rules entirely. I felt then, as now, that the entire process was unethical. One of the changes concerned remote participation (Rule 8.08F.)

As I read it, the language has some loopholes. We may disagree on ‘unanticipated’, but I see no actual limit</em on remote attendance–only on whether or not the Cm will be paid (which is up to the discretion of the presiding officer?) I don’t think the rule is clear. And considering that one of the committee members is a lawyer, this does not thrill me.

Needless to say, I objected to the entire process. It’s sprinkled with dozens of things like that. And at the risk of sounding whatever, of the 1-2 rules like this that people notice, there will be dozens of others you won’t. That is why I grouse so much about trust.  Because every meeting agenda is like 300 pages of this kind of detailed ‘stuff’.

And what gets on each agenda — including when and how we change those rules — is chosen by the Mayor. Eg. we recently did have a ‘two-year update’. The Mayor chose to limit each Cm to five items for consideration. This wasn’t even in my top five. Discuss. 😀 Also, there is no such limitation in the rules. She just chose that limit. Also something new.

Politics is politics is politics. There are rules like this at every level of government. But complaining is usually a fool’s errand. These are so ‘in the weeds’ the public never notices. Until they do. 🙂

I just want to make it clear that I find the current language in Rule 8.08 ambiguous. I honestly do not know if the Council could remove anyone at the moment, simply for abusing remote attendance. And I do think the ambiguity should have been addressed.

But I have no idea what Councilmember Nutting’s situation is. Should he have voluntarily mentioned it to the Council? I think so. Zoom is fine once in a while–especially for committees. But he isn’t required to. Again, this comes down to social norms.

However, it was a moot point until recently because we had no remote access. 😃 Get it? The Council chose to dump Zoom as soon as the pandemic was over. It is interesting to me, however, that it began ‘working’ reliably when it became useful to the majority.

I’ll leave it here. Who wants to be the elected to make a stink about it? Besides, almost every time I’ve watched our Council try to shame a fellow elected, it’s been for truly awful reasons. I do not want to add to that nonsense.

Even if I had–and by some miracle the Council chose to act–nothing would have happened until after this election. Get it? The Council polices itself. And unless or until you have a majority (or are willing to compromise) addressing stuff like this reasonably will remain nigh on impossible.

But as the saying goes, elections have consequences. We’ll see what happens in January. But understand that there is more to everything than just how it ‘looks’.