Weekly Update: 10/29/2023

This is a long one. Sorry. There are a ton of issues that tend to clump together at the end of the year. The Budget meeting is likely the most important of the year. Also, there was the Parking Gates, which I know many of you care about a lot. And the Port’s tax Levy. And, least but not last, there’s my campaigny stuff.

Campaigning

• You will notice that the home page on this here web site no longer points to the Weekly Updates. If you’re looking for the Weekly Updates, they’re on the… er… Weekly Updates page. Along with all the other articles on history and my top ten issues.
• Some of you reported that you received your ballot but not your King County 2023 Voters Pamphlet.
• Here is my coverage of the Wesley Candidate Forum: Four Pinocchios on Marina Hotel

Why change the home page?

The problem with running a positive campaign is that it only works if people know what’s going on. 😀 Many of you have not lived here very long. And according to research, you’re not following local events nearly as much as even a few years ago.  So if I don’t stop and tell you what’s what, including what I’ve accomplished, you won’t know.

Running a positive campaign

I’ve gotten like a dozen calls from supporters regarding my opponent’s negative campaigning–and asking me ‘what to say.’ The weird thing is that Rob Back is not new. This is actually his sixth campaign. 2001, 2003, 2005 (lost), 2015 (unopposed), 2019 (lost), 2023…

I wanted to run a positive campaign. I hadn’t intended on even mentioning Rob. (I didn’t really do that last time, either–different opponent, though.) I do push hard against the direction the City is going, but to my mind that is something different.

When you’re attacked as I’ve been during the past four years, and now during this campaign, it’s always a tough call as to how to respond. Especially to someone so familiar.

But the flyer I’ve seen, and the videos and public statements I’ve heard from Mr. Back contain just a ton of blather. Many are couched with some ¹factoid (a date or a reference to something official-sounding) that will make them seem plausible at first blush. But that’s how phishing attacks work in emails and web sites. People click before looking twice.

One thing in his flyer that’s representative of a lot of half truths: I do say, “Judge us by the way we vote.”  But that was never what I meant. The ‘vote’ is not just a ‘yes’ or ‘no’. And I’ve never beaten up on anyone on the Council like that. If yer doing yer job, every vote takes a good deal of time to consider.

I do vote ‘no’ sometimes. I ran explicitly to vote ‘no’ sometimes; not only on terrible ideas in 2023 (like the ferry), but also to push back on some ideas that sounded good when Rob was on the Council (like the parking gates) which someone in the room shoulda seen were gonna be trouble.

I count a lot on your knowledge to see what’s what. The new home page has links/citations to what’s really going on. If I missed something, please let me know or give me a call (206) 878-0578.

We’re about to find out how bright that is strategery-wise. 😀

This Week

Monday: Final training from Stay-Grounded (SG.) SG is a European environmental group that has had a lot more success in obtaining relief for airport communities than we have here. We’re trying to learn their system and then evangelise volunteers here. Synchronising meetings with people from Seattle to Vienna to Singapore is interesting.

Tuesday: Budget meeting with Finance Director. This is the annual one on one meeting to discuss the 2024 Budget. See the section below on the Budget First Reading.

Wednesday 11:30AM: Dia De Los Muertos Mariachi! at Des Moines Senior Center 2145 216th St.

Last Week

Tuesday: Port of Seattle Commission Meeting (Agenda) For us, the highlight was the discussion of the Tax Levy. For new people, about $88,000,000 of your property taxes go to the Port of Seattle. More than half of it always goes to lower their borrowing costs on major capital projects. In other words, your taxes make it cheaper for them to expand the airport. Another thing they use that money for is community grants. People often don’t believe me when I say this but every frickin’ dollar the Port provides to Des Moines for either economic or environmental benefit is actually your tax dollars being redistributed back to you. It’s weird to use the word ‘socialism’ in the same sentence as ‘Port of Seattle’ but that’s what it is. The simplest form of mitigation those commies (..er.. ‘the Port’ 😀 ) could provide the residents of Des Moines would be to rebate our portion of the Tax Levy.

Wednesday: StART Sea-Tac Airport Roundtable (Agenda)

Thursday: City Council Meeting (Agenda) (Video)

City Council Meeting Highlights

Street Vacation

Even roads need a day off. Am I right? 😀 Actually, this is one of those things which should take about one minute to allow the developer to begin expanding the existing Des Moines Creek Business Park west into what is now ‘Phase IV’ of a project that began with the FAA on 24th and currently extends north to 200th and west to this foresty bit. It’s not really a foresty bit. For new readers, actually, it used to be a neighbourhood.

You have to have a civil engineer make contact with all the utilities and surveyor and make sure there’s nothing weird going on. Why is something so mundane not on a Consent Agenda? Because ‘land’ is something the law takes seriously, bucko! You have to have a Public Hearing on anything involving LAND! regardless of how trivial.

All I asked was to know how many man hours does the City take to do that review?  And the City Manager responded by asking me why I wanted to know. And I always respond in the same way. “Doesn’t matter why. I’m an elected. I wanna know.” So, he refused to answer, citing something called “Administrative Privilege.” 😀

My colleagues insist on using even the most mundane thing to go expansive. So then we got into a back and forth over the benefits of Des Moines Creek Business Park vs. retaining the area so we might develop it. The DMCBP has been a total loser for Des Moines over the past decade. I like trees. And I like ownership of !LAND! 😀

Budget First Reading

Passing a budget is one of only a very few functions of Cities which is explicitly written into State law.The headline is that it keeps our General Fund balance at a healthy level for 2024. But only for 2024. It leaves 2025, 2026, 2027 and 2028 to take care of themselves. And it achieves that healthiness in a couple of ways that do not kill me because they have echoes of ‘the bad time’ that even the staunchest supporters of the administration could not ignore. Some generals…

• Your property taxes will go up 3% rather than the usual 1%. For the first time since COVID, we are taking the annual 1% increase we’re allowed by law; and also adding in the ‘banked’ tax increases we did not take during those years. As I’ve tried to say each year, these were not freebies. There was always the strong possibility that they would be used when we needed to plug a gap. And we have a gap.
• Speaking of gaps, this budget uses not one, but two types of one-time money. And just to be clear, the General Fund is supposed to not rely on one-time money. We even have an ordinance to prevent it–passed by my colleagues in 2017 to prevent going back to those bad times. The G/F is supposed to be funded entirely by structural revenue, which for new listeners, means money that comes in over and over, primarily taxes. Why? Because the G/F is for salaries, payments that you need reliable revenue for year in and year out to avoid those pesky furloughs and layoffs we used to have.
  • Bad news? We’re using the last $1.2M of our ARPA money. That was not the intent of ARPA. I Dunno How To Feel About It News? According to the DF, since the amount of JoeBidenMoney we originally received was under $10M we now can basically use the dough however we want. Wha? 😀 Good News? If it takes money away from any more ferry nonsense? Count me in! 😀
  • It also takes money from our Development Fund, which was meant to set aside one-time money for… wait for it… our own development projects. Instead, we’re tapping it as sort of a rainy day fund?
  • It also uses one-time money to pay for the two police officers we added. But just to be clear, this is not even the goal we had back in 2017, which was five officers per shift. It simply keeps us at four officers, our 2019 level. And it’s nowhere neaaaaar where we were in 2007.
• Without that one-time money, the budget goes into the red in 2026. Which means that the next Council will continue to be highly incentivised to use one-time money from now on. We’ve gotten used to it. Just like those ‘bad’ Councils fifteen years ago. You keep doing it 4-5 years in a row and it just becomes what you do. (But remember what I said at the top? You haven’t lived here more than five years. So you don’t know why this is so upsetting.)
• There is no detail beyond 2024. As I said, this has been my beef since I got elected. You get grand totals out to 2028, but the specifics stop at 2024. In this case, the 2024 numbers are green, but the 2028 numbers red. Why can’t we see all the assumptions that go into that forecast? That is what I expect to see in the corporate financials I’ve looked at over the years. I used to write this kind of software. There should at least be footnotes, so investors know what your assumptions are. Otherwise, why should they have any confidence in your projections? Sorry. Not sorry.
• Also, we still can’t drill down into each category. For example, we have various, very significant services such as Animal Control or Wesley or whatever and there’s no way to get there from the high level statement. In other words, there’s no direct way to see where each of these spends come from. And I’ll give you a very practical example as to why this matters:
  • Cm Achziger mentioned that there is no money for ‘communications’, ie. web site, outreach, whatever. The reassurance from the City was “That’s what amendments are for.” 😀 Well, if you move, say $100,000 for a ‘communications budget’ it has to come from somewhere, right? OK, Mr. SchmahtyPants. Where? If all you have are departmental totals, how do you know where it’s cool to take the money from? At the moment, the City Manager and Finance Director know that. The full Council does not. And even if we meet one-on-one with the Finance Director and get some ‘suggestions’, that means that some members of the Council will know things that others do not. Not. Great. What you want is for everyone to have exactly the same access to those details before we reconvene. That way, if any Cm proposes an amendment, we all know what it means taking (x) to fund (y).
• There is also a new Enterprise Fund to control event planning. I am not averse to the idea, however as with so many things, this does not thrill me as it is not being run through committee first. No major idea like this should be enacted without a committee process. ²But for those keeping score, none of our committees have met more than three times this year. They are becoming almost pointless. Also, this is not a new hire, but an existing employee.
• And while I’m grousing, the numbers changed three times before the presentation. The original packet, an update to the Marina Fund page, and then a redo of a major summary page that was revealed only on-screen at the meeting. This kinda thing drives me nuts. It happens almost every year. Said it before, say it again: we need to lock down presentations when the packet is published.

Parking Gates

We voted to approve new parking systems for the Marina and Redondo. I asked for a second reading but did not get even one vote to discuss. Frankly, every decision like this deserves a second reading.

I wanted a second reading because, not kidding, I wanted to read the manual, which was not in the packet.  I wanted to see how the software works and how it can be tweaked to fit any number of scenarios I can imagine, not just for residents, but for events, groups, people with disabilities.

A couple of audience members seemed almost hungry to get this passed. And I recall that same hunger in 2017 when a previous Council (my opponent, btw) voted for the last system.

There seems to be some new thinking on how much total revenue the old gates brought in. I’m struggling to believe the numbers I’ve heard recently. But the fact is, they did not work correctly and the vendor did not have parts. After six years? So how do we know the new system will have parts in six years? Ten years?

I ask because these are subject to wind, rain, salt. Just like electrical systems on a boat. And I can go to a dealer or junkyard today and get parts for things going back 30-40 years. Even if these things are super-big moneymakers, they’ll make a lot more money if we have to replace them in twenty years, vs. ten.

Call me cranky. But taking another two weeks to read the manual wouldn’t hurt anything. And these things need to be perfect this time.

Closing Comments: Police Officers and Big Box Stores

My closing comments concerned testimonys on behalf of SeaTacNoise.Info at the Port’s Tax Levy meeting. The difficulty with change is in getting people to believe it is possible.

Cm Pennington makes a point of noting whenever a meeting ends with all ‘7-0’ votes–and it always gets a chuckle. Not quite. We were not in agreement on a second reading for the parking gates. But I don’t begrudge him that small gag. We agree the vast majority of the time. Any responsible Council will agree on over 90% of the votes because they are almost all common sense. But disagreeing less than 10% of the time should not be worth as much energy as we’ve had these past four years. The fact is, the ‘7-0 Club’ was never about quantity so much as it was/is about the direction of the Council and due diligence. Disagreement should lead to healthy compromises. And here’s hoping that will be the case in 2024.

In his closing comments, Cm Steinmetz made a reference to my proposal to fund more police officers, calling it ‘unrealistic’. There’s nothing unrealistic about it. It’s simply taking another look at what we used to have: a tiny property tax dedicated to public safety. He paid for it. I paid for it. Just like we have tiny dedicated taxes for firefighters and schools. Are those unrealistic? Ask any property owner if they’d be willing to pay $200/yr for more police? I voted for that in 2006. And I’d do it again today because I care about police about as much as I care about firefighters. And I think we should put it back on the ballot. Because that’s how taxes should work: you want more public safety? You vote for it. Why don’t we have it today? Because in 2012, voters chose not to renew it. Why? Looking back, it seems to me that back then we were still in a recession, and we had the lowest crime rates in 50 years. Today? No recession and the highest crime rates in a very long time. Let’s put it on the ballot and let you decide.

Deputy Mayor Buxton went out of her way to point out why we could never get that same sort of deal as the City of SeaTac; even though, again, it’s totally possible. She even sounded as though we didn’t deserve it as much as they do. I’ve always been struck by her passion about domestic violence–something I know a bit about. She tells people you can do it. Quite right. Because often the most difficult part of any change is convincing people that they can do things. You know, like getting $1.4M a year for us–which she seemed to be arguing against. That money is possible, for us. The tricky part is getting three other people on the Council to understand that we’ve been trapped in a bad relationship with the Port, for a very long time. 

Mayor Mahoney bemoaned the fact that there are no big box stores or car dealerships here. I’ve thought a lot about the lack of ‘big moneymakers’ for a long time.

Back in the early 2000’s, a prior Council considered what to do about the land now known as the Des Moines Creek Business Park. We were courted by two big box outfits. Wanna know what we ended up with? The FAA building. The FAA building is a safe, secure, very shiny looking building which brings in no moolah for the City; nothing like the big box store or car dealerships he seems to wish we had. At the time there was a lot of concern that having a big box store on 216th might attract riff raff and ruin the neighborhood. But on the other hand, the tax projections were north of $600,000 year. Frankly, I woulda taken the dough. Because $600,000 a year is six more police officers (see what I did there? 😀 )

Over the decades, every City Council says they want ‘economic development’. But in fact, at every turn of the road, and regardless of ideology, we seem to end up with any number of things that actually reduced our ability to grow. We spend money, that’s for sure–as the City Manager said, in  the past fifteen years we’ve built more than $40,000,000 in projects from the Redondo Boarkwalk to the DMCBP to the various Marina items. But honestly? They’re mostly  rebuilds and upgrades of existing things. And almost none brought in money. Which is fine–if you’re happy with things just as they are; if you’re not particularly concerned about the next generation–the one that needs more money to build that park or hire more cops, or ease zoning, or reduce noise and air pollution, or truly renovate the downtown.

But as I said during that budget discussion, I do think our job is to consider the next generation. And if I look at the decisions we’ve made over the decades, and even the fact that we don’t include firm numbers on our budget spreadsheet beyond 2024? It’s hard for me to believe that we ever sincerely think about the future.

But, boy we sure want to look like it.

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¹A factoid is a fact-like (ie. untrue) statement. As opposed to a factlet, which is a small, but true statement. 🙂

²When I was first censured, people would get two things wrong: a) they thought it was some ‘lifetime ban’ 😀 Actually it’s just for the year. b) Also, I would try to explain that the whole committee process was so weak that it probably would have no real impact for the Council. And sadly, it has proven thus. Here’s hoping next year goes better, committee-wise.