Weekly Update: 12/17/2023

Some bits of business…

King Tide

I don’t want to overdo it, but if yer new to the area and live near the water, there is this thing called a King Tide, which has something to do with the moon and the ocean and, well, science and so on. 😀 But unless yer a sailor, what matters is that it tends to cause flooding events at the Marina, Beach Park, Woodmont, Redondo. It’s generally only a potential problem in years with bad weather and high winds. And, well… you’ve seen the bad weather the pas few weeks. For us, the biggest waves are this week, especially in the morning. You can monitor tides here and get forecasts on flooding here.

For the rest of us, this is the time of year where storm drains get clogged. If you aren’t comfortable clearing the storm drains, no prob. Just contact the City using either the Fix-It Form or Storm Water Management. 🙂

Construction

216th Bridge over Military Road

The 216th Bridge at Military Road is  down. That section of road will be reduced to a single lane off and on for the next year. Consider taking other routes.

SR 509 Stage II

Here is a set of SR 509 Stage II 160th to 24th Ave renderings, which will be coming to Blueberry Lane, Des Moines Memorial Drive and 200th starting in 2024. Unfortunately, the ‘public open house’ was in (wait for it) 2o22, so I’m hoping we can get a lot more community input on this soon. This will be a very big deal if you live in anywhere in the area.

This Week

Nothing. Nada. Nichts. Bupkis. Dada. 😀

So… give me a ring and let me know what you’d like to see the new City Council take on for 2024. (206) 878-0578. 🙂

Last Week

Tuesday 12:00pm Port of Seattle Commission (Agenda) (Video) This was the last meeting of the year and the highlights are the Port’s 2024 Legislative Agenda. For Des Moines, this is the first time in a decade, it contains basically nothing to address our concerns over noise or pollution. It is, instead, almost 100% ‘economic development’, which sounds just ducky until you recognise that the Port has never been a source of economic development for Des Moines. Frankly, this is as much a failure of the Des Moines City Council as the Port of Seattle. We stopped asking for the right things a very long time ago. And the most basic lesson of government is this: you only get what you ask for.

Wednesday 5:00pm: Sea-Tac Airport Roundtable StART Meeting (Agenda) The highlight was the discussion of the new Part 150 program. When I say ‘Part 150’ just think “Airplane Noise” and “Port Packages”. One reason I sound so snippy at the moment is that it most certainly means even more delay in providing sound insulation for residents. As faithful readers will note, when a government wants to look like they’re doing something, while actually avoiding doing anything, they routinely pursue a study. And a Part 150 program (which can take up to seven years) is the big daddy of delaying tactics.

By the way, this is a great opportunity to mention that the City is looking for two new residents to serve as community members of StART. Apply here.

Thursday, December 14 6:00pm City Council Meeting (Agenda) (Video)

December 14 City Council Meeting Recap

This City Council Meeting (Agenda) was our last of the year and the last for this Council. Councils adjourn and start over every two years with the election of a new mayor, which we will do at our next meeting January 4, 2024.

The meeting opened with the swearing in of newest Councilmember Yoshiko Grace Matsui. Apparently, this occurred because of a quirk in State law. Technically, she replaced an appointee (Vic Pennington.)

City Manager’s Report

• There will be a presentation at the second meeting of the year (11 January) concerning the City’s intended process for selecting a search firm to help select the next City Manager.

• There will be a community meeting on the Marina Steps project on Tuesday February 13, 2024.

• Unfortunately, the Third Quarter Financial Report was postponed into Febuary. So all that praise I heaped on last week for getting the info ahead of the meeting? ¹I TAKE IT ALL BACK! 😀

Consent Agenda

I wrote last week, this C/A had everything I hate about consent agendas. and it did not disappoint. I pulled the following two items. Item #4 was to hire a consultant to run a public engagement program,s required to accept Item #10, a State grant designed to promote ‘middle housing’, something I strongly support.

I voted no on most of this because of an interaction I had with the Interim City Manager, which the entire Council saw ahead of the meeting. So the pushback I received on the dais is a bit puzzling. 😉

Translation: The administration is saying they saw no reason to evaluate other choices for consultants to provide community outreach. And the grant we accepted  has clear target dates we cannot meet if we took the time to do an actual selection process.

This is awkward. Members of the public who have attended any of our various engagements with the firm in question commented on all the points I raised, including language support, convenient access, and quality of information. I attended most of those events, read their reports and agree with their concerns. And I stand by my evaluation.

OLD Business

The Council voted 7-0 to unwind the whole Event Planner business from last month. Note that I had no comment. 🙂 😀

New business

2023 Budget Amendments

We voted to approve several amendments to the 2023 Budget. Many of these were typos and the Finance Director gave a presentation explaning the cause and the steps his team was taking to prevent it from recurring–which I appreciated.

Cecil Powell Park

We voted to approve new playground equipment for Cecil Powell Park, which after ten years, also makes me happy. I don’t wanna go all happy feet though because it’s a mini-park, it did take ten years, and the south end of town deserves a lot more. And also, it will likely be 4-6 more months before it’s actually done. But this is me sounding optimistic. How am I doing? 😀

I got a couple of chuckles by mentioning the low price–which was almost half the high bid. But I don’t think the public understands how little $160,000 buys these days when it comes to ‘playgrounds’.

Also, and I may be asking far too much here, but there is a power pedestal on the margin next to the park. And one could wish that it weren’t. I won’t belabour the point, but years ago we used to live next to a park and it’s surprising how often kids find ways to run into basically any nearby object.

New Items For Consideration

Land Stewardship Plan and Tree Replacement Standards | Port of Seattle (portseattle.org)

I asked the Council to direct the City Manager to invite the Port to present on their Land Stewardship Program. Call it a follow up to the Port’s Green Cities Partnership. Forterra Green Des Moines Presentation January 7, 2021

Board/Committee Reports/Comments

In my comments I mentioned the concept of a mitigation bank–which the Port is doing to defray the costs of environmental mitigation for their $5-6 billion construction projects over the next decade. Since people get mad at me when I “over-simplify”, maybe you’ll pay attention when these guys over-simplify: Understanding the Basics of Mitigation Banking 😀 I’ll come back to this as the Marina work get fleshed out but this is something we should also be looking at because we also will have huge capital costs, environmental costs, and permit fees.

Train keeps a rollin’…

In my comments from the dais, I mentioned two seemingly conflicting ideas. On one hand, I encourage the public to keep showing up and keep maintaining pressure to improve our community engagement. But on the other, I advocate for patience and against quick fixes.

The interim city manager expressed his intention to be restrained and avoid taking too many actions. I fully agree with this ‘caretaker’ approach. However, as the song goes, the ‘train keeps a rollin’. Not only does the city have a number of projects in the works, but at the same time there is the pent up public impatience for ‘engagement’.

But let’s look at the list of communication-oriented ‘stuff’ the Council has been working on and will be working on, before the next City Manager is even selected:

• Selecting firm to do City Manager search.
• Marina Steps Community Meeting
• Marina Draft Master Plan
• Consor ‘Communication’ Study results
• And then there is SR 509 Stage II along 200th and Blueberry Lane

Not to mention the fact that the progress I thought we were making towards getting more timely financials was premature.

Not to mention that neither the video or the presentations from the last meeting are available as this gets published, which is also a bit disappointing.

Not to mention that the the firm we just voted to engage to do community engagement on housing (supposedly the most important planning issue a city can undertake.) Apparently, it was so important we never bother to evaluate our vendors or offer the Council a voice in how they conduct their work.

I’m not beating on anyone. Taken in isolation, these are all small beer. But when people talk about ‘communication’ the thing I try to point out is that there isn’t one such thing. In fact, the City has a bajillion channels by which we engage with the public and the Council and they all need to run better and work together if we want to get where we need to go. From newsletters to the city manager’s new report, to police to marina staff to financials to adverts to the many consultants we use over and over and over. They all play important roles in communicating with the public (and the Council.) And at the moment, there is no standard concerning their processes, or any review as to their effectiveness. All I see is that whenever the City does anything vaguely ‘communication-y’, everyone starts ²throwing confetti  without noticing that, regardless of how good each one is by itself most of these are ad hoc efforts.

This may sound ironic, but I honestly cannot tell you the scope of work for the firm we’re paying $75,000 to provide recommendations on ‘communications.’

People who already live here rightly get exercised about the Marina or Redondo or other neighbourhoods. But what about constituencies that are not, or cannot get as organised? (In this case, the housing we have yet to build to serve people who can’t live here now.) We owe those people; people who need housing and will likely never show up to meetings, exactly the same consideration. In fact, we owe them even more consideration, precisely because they cannot advocate for themselves.

What I’m saying is that on many key issues, the ‘train keeps a rollin’ whether we address these communication and public outreach issues or not. I voted against the middle housing consultant because, at some point, I felt we must say ‘Stop. Do better.’ Otherwise, we’ll just do the same thing next year. And the year after that. Especially when there is no community group to object.

It’s challenging to tell everyone to hold off, initiate a reset, and establish some frickin’ standards. Especially when the community has felt so unheard for so long. But that’s kinda what I’m saying is the long game.

Previous Councils strongly resisted improvements to communication for many years. And finally last year, instead of implementing obviously needed reforms, chose to do a study–just like the Port of Seattle–the classic tactic to show one is taking something seriously, while delaying meaningful action.

That is why, in 2024 I will continue to push for a Public Planning Commission. And then, after we’ve chosen the right City Manager, have them hire the right Comms Director–someone with the authority to establish standards of public outreach for all our processes, both internal and external.

Until then, the task is to make certain that the next community meeting we have on February 13 is conducted about 1,000% better than the last community meeting. See above. Read the materials. Contact me with your questions and comments.

¹Keeeeeeeding. 🙂

²New Years reference. 🙂