City Council - Regular Meeting

At this time, I call the 01/08/2026 Des Moines Council meeting to order. I will lead us in the pledge, and please note that the flags are here on the dais behind you. I pledge allegiance to the flag

of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Let the record show that all council members are present. Also, the record show that council members Steinmetz, Oxinger, Blas, and Desmoni have formally been sworn in prior to tonight's meeting. However, we will be holding a ceremonial swearing in. Councilmember Steinmetz, will you come to the podium?

Please raise your right hand and repeat after me. I, Harry Steinmetz

I, Harry Steinmetz.

Having been duly elected

Having been duly elected.

To the office of.

To the office of.

City of Des Moines.

City of Des Moines.

Council position number one.

Council position number one.

Do solemnly swear or affirm.

Do solemnly swear or affirm.

That I will faithfully.

That I will faithfully

And impartially

And impartially

Discharge the duties

discharge the duties

of this office

Of this office

as prescribed by law

As prescribed by law.

And to the best

And to the best

of my ability

Of my ability.

And that I will

And that I will.

Support and maintain

Support and maintain

The constitution

The constitution.

Of the state of Washington

Of the state of Washington.

And of The United States Of Of America. America.

And of The United States Of America. Congratulations.

Thank you very much.

Position three, councilmember Oxinger. Will you please come to the podium?

I, Jean

I, Jean Auxiger.

Having been duly elected

Having been duly elected

To the office of To the office of

City Of Des Moines

City Of Des Moines.

Council position number three

Council position number three.

Do solemnly swear

Do solemnly swear affirm affirm

I will faithfully

I will faithfully

and impartially discharge the duties

Discharge the duties.

Of this office. Of this office.

As prescribed by law. As prescribed by law.

And to

the best of my ability. And to the best of my ability.

And that I will.

And that I will.

Support and maintain.

Support and maintain.

The constitution

the constitution

the state of Washington

the state of Washington

of The United States Of America

and The United States Of America.

Council position number five. Council member Bloss, will you come to the podium?

I, Keanan Bloss.

Haven't been duly elected.

Haven't been duly elected. To the office. To the office. Of. Of Des the Moines

City council position number five.

Council position number five.

Do solemnly swear

Do solemnly swear

That I will faithfully

that I will faithfully

And impartially

and impartially the duties Discharge the duties this office this office

as prescribed by law

as prescribed by law

to the best

and to the best of my ability that I will that I will

support and

maintain and maintain The constitution.

Of the state of Washington.

Of the state of Washington.

And of The United States Of America.

And of The United States Of America.

Position number seven, councilmember Desmone. Will you please come to the podium?

Hi. Robin

Hi. Robin Desimoni.

Having been duly elected

Having been duly elected.

To the office of the City Of Des Moines

To the office of the City Of Des Moines. Council position seven Council position seven.

Do solemnly swear or affirm

Do solemnly swear or affirm

that I will faithfully and imperatively

That I will faithfully and imperatively

Discharge the duties of the office

Discharge the duties of the office

As prescribed by law and to the best of my ability.

As prescribed by law and to the best of my ability.

And that I will support and maintain

And that I will support and maintain

The constitution of the of the state of Washington

The constitution of the state of Washington

And of The United States Of America.

And of The United States Of America.

At this time, I will accept nominations for the position of mayor for the twenty twenty six to twenty twenty seven term. Please keep your brief your statements brief. Do you have any nominations? Councilmember Netting?

I nominate councilmember Steinmetz for mayor.

I decline.

Do I have any other nominations? Council member Grace Matsui.

I nominate Gene Oxiger.

I decline.

Do I have any other nominations? Councilmember Harris?

I nominate myself, JC Harris.

Okay. And I assume you accept. Is there any other nominations? Councilmember Steinmetz?

I nominate councilmember Grace Matsui.

Council member Grace Matsui, do you accept?

Yes. I do.

Do I have any other nominations for mayor? Okay. Seeing none, I will close the nominations. When I call your name, please let me know which council member you are going to be voting for between council member Harris and council member Grace Matsui. Council member Ochsinger.

Council member Grace Matsui.

Council member Blass.

Council member Grace Matsui.

Council member Desmoni.

Council member Grace Matsui. Council member Grace Matsui. Council member Grace Matsui. Council member Harris. Council member Harris. Council member Nutting.

I abstain.

Council member Steinmetz.

Council member Grace Motzui.

For a vote from five to one and one abstain, congratulations, mayor Grace Motzui. I'll I'll turn the meeting over to you, and will you change spots and sit next to city manager Catherine Caffrey.

Thank you very much. At this time, I'll accept nominations for the position of deputy mayor for the twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven term. Council member Steinmetz.

I nominate council member Ochsinger.

Do you accept? Yes. Yes. I

nominate council member Steinmetz.

Thank you very much, but I decline.

Thank you. Are there any other nominations? Hearing none, if you could, start on that end and go down and say your votes.

Councilman Ochsager.

Abstain.

Abstain.

Councilmember Ochsager.

Council member Ochsager.

Council member Ochsager.

Congratulations, deputy mayor Jean Ochsager. As our usual procedures go, we're going to go right into the rest of the agenda. So at this time, I'd like to ask if there's any correspondence not previously received by the council. No, mayor. Thank you.

It's now time for comments from the public. Tonight, we also have one's public hearing. And so if you're here to make a comment on the public hearing item, you'll have the opportunity to do so later on in the meeting. We ask that you keep your comments respectful. When I call your name, please come to the podium, and you will have three minutes to speak. Please state your name and then your city of residence. First, I have on the list, Chris Della Rosa.

Hello again. My name is Chris Della Rosa. I live in Des Moines. This is my third time addressing the council about the dangers of the flock mass surveillance cameras. I have over twenty years of IT management and security. I have previously submitted technical proof and referenced legal cases proving why the flock cameras are a liability to the city. Tonight, I'm asking for more. I'm asking formally requesting a vote to decommission and shut down all 15 flock cameras. Two of them are Condor candor cameras. And I'd like to have that put on the the agenda for the next city council meeting.

The public record show a significant gap in transparency. There was a dedicated town there was no dedicated town hall, no public safety committee hearing where we where we, the residents, were invited to discuss the privacy risk of this data. When chief Ken Thomas announced his retirement March 2023, effective June 30, it was noted that residents raised concern that a departing official was setting a twenty four month or longer technicality technical course of of the city that was not gonna have, he was not gonna manage it or be accountable for what was gonna be left behind. Instead, fly instead, the fly cameras contract was pushed through in months, leave leaving leading up to, chief Thomas' retirement, leaving the community with a mass surveillance network we never had a chance to formally bet or vote on. Following chief Thomas' rush to push through the contract, the city moved quickly to install these cameras, but they failed to obtain acquired electrical permits.

Under Washington law two nine six four six b zero nine, the systems were that generates use of electricity, even solar electricity, is subject to permits and inspection, specifically systems operating at 15 volts and above. Electric permit is mandated. The flock and counter cameras meet the that threshold. Yet, there are no records that the L and I electrical permit or city inspection for the ins installations have been received by the city. This is bypassed in the regulations the city has ignored the safety codes and strictly enforced on all residents.

And then top it off, Amazon Ring has partnered with Flock Safety. And now your Amazon Ring data is also in the Flock system. And one thing to know about the Amazon data, it doesn't disappear. And they also just implemented facial recognition on all flat cam cameras I mean, on all Amazon Ring cameras, interconnecting web of biometric tracking. Some may argue the city's already citizens already give up their data on platforms like Facebook or online shopping.

To counter that statement, I would say social media and Facebook, you can opt in. When you go into a store or going shopping, you can't opt out. Lastly, I'll say, I ask for a vote to shut these down. Do the right thing. Stand with your neighbors. Not against us. Thank you.

Thank you, Chris. Next

we have is it Judy Grand? Grande. Thank you.

Hi. My name is Judy Grande. Actually, I don't even know my own name sometimes, and I live in Des Moines. Welcome to the new city council members, and thank you to the current city council members. Earlier this week, I sent a public records request to the city of Des Moines for flock data.

The flock safety cameras use ALPR technology, automatic license plate recognition, but are also able to collect identifying information about vehicles like model, color, bumper stickers, and dents. I requested the data from the South 2 18th in between South 2 18th Street and South 219th Street on Marine View Drive. The, flock camera is on a tall black pole with a solar panel on top. There's also another flock camera on the at the front of Red Robin on a traffic pole light. You can recognize it by the solar panel on it.

You can also check out dfloc.me to find out more locations. There was an article recently in the Seattle Times about a state bill being proposed to limit the floc data to only being held for seventy two hours. This bill misses the point. Once the data is captured even for a short time, it exists and can be used. Currently, the data in Des Moines is held for thirty days.

But if that data is used in an investigation, the data may be on the city hardware for five to ten years. I want law enforcement to have good tools to solve crime. Is flock data a major or a minor player in solving crimes? Is it mostly used to recover stolen vehicles? My concern is that this data can be used to harm people, which is more important to me than recovering a stolen vehicle.

The police department does not always know who is accessing the data. There is evidence that FLAC has shared data with US Customs and Border Protection, CBP, and Homeland Security Investigations, HSI, without the knowledge or permission of the local police. I am requesting that the city council call for a vote in January to decommission the Des Moines flock safety cameras. Thank you.

Thank you. It is now time for the city manager's report. So I will turn it to city manager Catherine Kefrem.

Thank you. We have two quick items. The first item tonight, some more positive news. Many of you all were at the Burning Boat Festival, which was New Year's Eve. I see some people in our audience that were there as well. This was an event done in partnership with the Rotary Club. They will be here on the twenty second to present, as they like to say, the big check. Mhmm. I will say I spoke with them this morning. It's a really tremendous donation to our Parks and Rec scholarship program that I think will really set that program up for, you know, some really wonderful opportunities for those that need it in our community.

So the event was wildly successful, really terrific, and we huge thank you to them for the effort and all the volunteers and coordinators and people that helped. It was really successful. So just wanted to highlight that. Secondly, and this is really kind of for everybody's benefit. We'll be spreading the word as well, but we launched with the beginning of this meeting a new agenda software.

So for some of you that actually follow, like, when our agendas are posted and wanna look at council packets pretty regularly, those are in a different place now as we redo the website. So the new website will be launching probably early summer, but in the interim, we have this new software for where you can find agendas and packets. So for those of you that go to the website and have your ways of finding them, you'll now see it under the your government tab very clearly. Twenty twenty six agendas and that moving forward are there. All the old packets are at that other menu underneath it that says old.

It will take you to a new kind of page that will look a little different from how people previously find packets, but all of the information is there not only for the council meeting, but our other committees and commissions that'll all be in one central location. And you can download it as, like, a PDF, as a packet, plain text, however you like to read our packet at night to comfort you. It is available there in a variety of ways. But you could down there's different ways to get it that I think will be a little cleaner than how it's been previously. Last thing I'll mention is this will be the new central location for everything.

Forget I feel like I'm talking, like, the three people here who follow this. But for those three of you, now everything's centralized. So meeting files, presentations, backup items, the video of the meeting after the fact will all be on this one page. So it'll be a lot easier for you all to find items. So this is one step forward in us redoing the website, but we wanted to highlight it for, again, those three of you that are like, I gotta see that presentation. So it's right there. Thanks, mayor. That's all I have. Thank you.

Will the clerk please read the consent agenda? Item one, approval of vouchers. Item two, approval of minutes. Item three, South County Area Transportation Board agreement mode. And that concludes the consent agenda, mayor. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as read?

So moved.

Thank you. Do we have a second? Second. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Does any council member wish to pull any items? Hearing none. All those in favor of the consent agenda as read, please raise your right hand until I call your name. Council member Steinmetz, council member Nutting, council member Harris, council member Oxiger, council member member Damone, and council member Bloss. That is seven zero.

Thank you very much. Motion passes. Okay. Let's see. Next, we're moving right into a public hearing because we want to start out working very hard this year here in 2026. The purpose of this agenda item is for the city council to hold a public hearing to hold the first reading on unit lot subdivision, lot splitting, and substandard or nonconforming lot regulation updates. I will now open the public hearing. We'll begin with a staff presentation by planning and development services manager Laura Tacheco. Thank you.

Thank you. Yep. Good night or good evening. Laura Tacheco, mayors deputy mayor council. So the purpose of tonight's public hearing is to consider new and revised codes relating to unit lot subdivisions and lot splitting, which were included in the bills that came out of the 2025 state legislature.

So for some background, over the last couple of years, the state legislature and the city have passed a number of new bills and codes to encourage construction of a variety of affordable and market rate housing and homeownership types. The 2023 housing action plan and the 2025 comprehensive plan update set the foundation of goals and policies to to guide future updates to development regulations in the municipal code. This past summer, ordinances were passed that allow for middle housing, which housing includes housing types such as duplexes and cottage housing and additional dwelling units within zones that were primarily and previously focused on single family dwellings. So tonight's ordinance builds upon those previous code updates by addressing additional options for the ownership of the land beneath those dwelling units. So the first topic is unit lot subdivisions.

The 2025 house bill fifty five fifty nine amends the subdivision portion of the revised code of Washington or the RCW to add a process for unit lot subdivisions. This process allows what is called a parent lot that meets the minimum standards for the zone that's in things like lot area and lot width to be subdivided into smaller unit lots that would allow fee simple ownership of single, middle, and accessory housing units and the land beneath them. Many cities are in the drafting stage of this code as is Des Moines, and the proposed code is a mix of language from the bill, commerce's model ordinance, and some other city draft codes that are out there. So the areas that would apply to are the same residential zones that middle housing was identified, And these are single family zones and the lower density multifamily zones. And those specific zones are listed on the left hand side of this slide.

So this slide contains some examples of development sites or parent lots that could be divided through a unit lot subdivision to allow for separate ownership. So number one contains a single family home and a middle housing triplex, that one on the left. Number two is a middle housing cottage development that includes six cottages and a shared courtyard in the blue hashed area. Number three is a middle housing townhouse development. Those are four common wall townhousing units with a shared access tract on the right hand side.

And number four is a duplex with both an attached and a detached accessory dwelling unit. So while the individual units and lots may be smaller than allowed for the zone, the overall parent lot meets the development standards for things such as lot size, setbacks, and lot coverage. In some cases, there could be areas under common ownership for uses such as access, parking, and recreation, and those are the areas that are shown in blue on those right three scenarios. And this is a comparable process to what is currently done in the city's RA36 Hundred townhouse zone similar to the 2 16th townhomes project that was done along 2 16th that has a larger parent lot and smaller individually owned lots. So each of those townhomes can own their own land underneath them.

Lot splitting. The 2025 house bill ten ninety six amends portion of the ERCW as well as adds a new section relating to lot splitting. And this allows for a residential lot that is at least twice the minimum lot size and width of its zone to be split into two lots through a recorded survey process rather than a short subdivision that would have been previously required. And that recorded survey process is similar to what a lot line adjustment would go through now. This will can occur concurrently with the associated building permit reviews, and it will streamline and reduce review times for simpler projects in order to encourage additional infill development.

And as opposed to unit lot subdivisions, both of the resulting lots would meet the minimum lot size and other development standards. And finally, while not specifically required by recent legislation, revisions to the substandard, or nonconforming lots section are also proposed in order to provide greater equity for developing substandard lots, whether they are owned in common or separately. And these changes would also provide more consistency with the goal of increasing access to house and land ownership. So kind of the the primary sections of this which are being altered. So previously, this code did not allow a substandard lot, a lot less with less than the minimum lot area, to be developed if it had been previously owned jointly at any point within adjoining lot.

Over time, many of these lots were sold separately only for the new owners to be told that they were not developable. Given the proposed changes related to unit lot subdivisions that would allow for smaller unit lots in those same zones, allowing for limited additional infill on existing substandard lots would result in a similar appearance to the to other middle housing developments that would occur in that area. And this proposed language is adopted from a Snohomish County substandard lot code, adapted, specifically for Des Moines. So that's a very high overview. The complete ordinance is in the packet, and the motion for tonight is to pass this to a second reading on January 22.

Now it's time for, public comment on this portion of the public hearing. I'm I've heard from our staff here that no one has signed up. But in case there's anyone here who would like to speak on this who did not know they had to sign up, I'm gonna call for you to come forward. Is there anyone who didn't sign up to speak who wishes to speak? Second call, is there anyone who didn't sign up to speak who wishes to speak? Third and final call. Is there anyone who didn't sign up to speak who wishes to speak? K. Thank you. Now it's time for council questions.

Council, do you have any questions? Councilmember Netting.

Yeah. I just have one. We're amending this code to be in compliant with state code.

Correct.

K.

For the for the lot splitting and the unit lot subdivision sections.

Okay. Thank you.

Council member Harris.

Thank you. I'll just ask the same thing I asked last year. Is there any newly gained experience with other cities, having implemented this and just sort of pitfalls or lessons learned just in the last six months?

We're actually ahead of the curve. So, no, we're gonna be one of the first cities to actually implement this. Everyone's actually looking at ours and appreciating that we're doing this first and gonna take ours and move ahead.

I I I love it and sort of. But it's always great to beta test, I suppose. But so just broadly speaking, and I can ask offline, but I'm just thinking of some outlier cases where I've talked to residents that they're, like, on septic. And so is is this a silly question? But, basically, if they try to go duplex or do some kind of a thing like that, They haven't because they wanna do the right thing, but then they realize what the hookup fees are and so on. And I'm just does any of that kind of stuff change?

There is language built in here already that states that, these areas must also comply with county, health department requirements. So that is specifically referred to septic. So what how they split these up, they do need to still be able to comply with, you know, dimensional and other standards for septic field.

That's the right answer. Thank you.

Council, are there other questions? Council member Simons.

Yeah. And I understand this is not necessarily a function of our code, but the concept that came down from the legislature. It just seems to me that this is a lawyer's favorite thing. There's gonna be a lot of disputes. Has anybody suggested trying to put into the local code any kind of dispute resolution p pieces? Because you're gonna have people that own part of a lot fee simple, and they've got some common areas, and that's just a recipe for people disputing things. Has anybody suggested anything, looked at anything like that?

No. I think it's gonna come back to a standard association. I've been when people have asked, I've been calling this a condo plus when people have asked. You know, people have been dealing with condominiums for a long time and common areas. And so I've been calling you know, when peep trying to understand this concept, I've been calling it, you know, as similar to a condominium development plus you own the land underneath you. So that's I think people have figured out how to deal with that for a while and but there's that hasn't been discussion on that that I've heard. For those common areas,

they are required to have a homeowners association. So presumably, they would have rules that would, you know, kind of direct that also.

Any

other questions?

Okay.

I will now close the public hearing. Is there a motion? Councilmember Nutting.

I move to pass draft ordinance 25 dash one one seven to second reading on 01/22/2026.

Second.

Thank you. Motion made by council member Nutting and seconded by council member Steinmetz. Any other discussion before we get to the vote? Not hearing any. All in all those in favor of passing draft ordinance 25 dash one one seven to a second reading on 01/22/2026, please raise your right hand until I call your name.

Councilmember Steinmetz, councilmember Nutting, councilmember Harris, councilmember Oscar, councilmember Desimone, councilmember Bloss. That is seven zero, and the motion passes. Thank you. I was reminded that now would be a really good time to take a break, five minutes here, now that the families have seen what kind of job they've signed up for. And so what I'm going to do is call for a recess, and we'll return at 06:39.

Thank you. Thank you. We're returning back to our city council agenda, and I think we're at new business. Now it's the time for new business, and our first item, item number one is the twenty twenty six city council calendar. Presentation by director of administration services, Bonnie Wilkins.

Welcome.

Thank you. Good evening. Mayor Grace Matsui, congratulations. Deputy mayor Jean Hoxager, congratulations. Newly elected council members, congratulations. Let's let 2026 begin. Super excited. I'm here to present to you a 2026 meeting calendar. And a little background. Pretty much, we've never had the council adopt a calendar before, so we thought what a good time to start that tradition.

So what does that mean? Historically, over the last several years, we've taken either the month of August or July off except for the one standard meeting that we need for vouchers and things of that nature. So what you could do is you could choose to modify the current I'll just put it up really quick here. Here is a proposed 2026 calendar. You'll see on the red it's kinda hard to see here. Sorry about that, but it's in your packet. Red indicates study sessions. The blue indicates regular meetings. And we have a council retreat, which is a different color in February, but you can't really tell. And then there's holidays both, observed from the city and just regular holidays.

And so what you can do is choose to keep the calendar as it is, modify it how you wish, and we can go from there. What approving a calendar does for staff is it helps us plan our and schedule our 2026. We have some items that come to council frequently or annually. Say, for instance, the TIP transportation improvement plan comes in June. And if you're going to modify the calendar anyway, we might need to move that up, a week or two depending on the dates of the council meetings to get that be passed in time to make sure we're hitting our commitments.

So it's really helpful for staff. I think it'll be helpful for council and the public to know when the meetings are happening and what type of meeting they're going to be. So with that, there is a proposed motion, and you may choose to discuss this wonderful looking calendar here.

Council, I'd like to have some questions here for Bonnie and then the motion, then we'll talk about any changes during the next discussion. So are there any questions at this time? Council member Harris.

So is it too early to know, like, will the new website have any improvements to the futures kind of a thing, or is that just gonna be the same sort of a deal?

If if the council

too early to

Futures has nothing to do with the website. That's just a separate document that we make. So if the council would like to handle futures differently, we can have that as kind of a different topic, but that doesn't really connect to the website.

Okay. So I guess my only yeah. I'm just my ongoing thing has been load balancing, just this notion of just trying to make sure that there is adequate time in advance just to so that the meetings don't become they've since I've lived here, they've been there are these long deserts, and then there are meetings where everything is just sort of packed into one thing. So that's my only input. Thank you.

Okay. Are there questions? It's time for questions. Okay. Let's see if there is a motion.

I move to approve the 2026 city council calendar as presented.

Thank you.

Second.

Second. I'm gonna give it to council member Vlas. The motion has been moved and seconded. So are there further points of discussion or dates that anyone would like to talk about? Councilmember Nutting.

Well, this is odd because councilmember Harris and I rarely agree on things, but I absolutely agree that the calendar has gotten longer in certain areas and been short in other areas. Mhmm. So balancing the calendar is an absolute must. Mhmm. Tired of taking it way long and then getting down here in twenty minutes. W City Council gets their stuff done in forty five minutes consistently.

Mhmm.

And it it's a point of contention. It has been for the last couple years with me. And absolutely agree with council member Harris that we need to balance out the calendar, not double stacking meetings, moving on. So that's all I have to say.

Council member Harris.

So I'm just asking if it would be possible to set aside five, ten minutes once every month or two, could be every couple of months, and just do a check-in on the calendars. And it council member noting this there's far too often there will be like, we gotta decide tonight because we're on day 29, and day thirty is the legal deadline. And I think with a bit of preparation, I'm mindful of staff time, but I just there have just been way too many decisions where it's not only that things get packed together, but that we have to decide tonight. And I think if there was some kind of check-in for, you know, every month, every two months, you could get a heads up on that and prevent that kind of last minute it is. Thank you.

Council member

Steinmetz. Yeah. I think these are all valid points about agendas. Mhmm. Not necessarily about the calendar. Mhmm. Calendar is just simply dates. Mhmm. And to that end, the last week full week of May Mhmm. Overlaps with Memorial Day. A lot of people take that off. I noticed we have a meeting set on the twenty eighth. I think it would behoove us to move that meeting back to the twenty first if we could, And so I am proposing that as an amendment to the motion.

To May 21?

To May, yes, the May 28 meeting back to the twenty first. And I have a vacation plan that week.

So Gotcha.

Be here. So Gotcha.

There is self interest just to make it clear.

Absolutely. So we have one sick motion here to move the May 28 meeting to May 21, and I'll take that as an amendment. Any second?

I'll second that.

Second by council member Desimone. I actually have a conflict as well on July 23, and so I would actually propose moving that to the thirtieth. But if we do indeed not need it, I would love to cancel it in the future. I'll also take a point here that I would like to work very closely with our city manager to talk about load balancing and to develop the agenda far out enough in advance so that we can address some of those issues. And I would rather have the meetings on the calendar and then not need them than to jam pack less number of meetings.

So, does anyone else want to either second that moving of the July 23?

I'll second.

Thank you. Seconded by council member Bloss. Any other changes, amendments? Council member Oksicker.

Given that we have such a heavy schedule dealing with the budget, and we do have, you know, requirements to, you know, wrap the budget up, early with the state, I would move that we do schedule a meeting for the November 19. We can always cancel it. But as as far as having three meetings that month, I think it could help with load balancing.

Discussion, or what are you

Just a point of and I don't have an answer to this. Do we know when Thanksgiving is?

November 26.

Twenty sixth, twenty seventh. The colors on there, you Colors are really

The twenty sixth of seventh are marked holidays. Mhmm.

Then I'd second the proposal.

Okay. So adding an additional date of November 19. Nineteenth. Anything else before I'm sorry.

Also in that frame of, like, holidays, we do have, and it's hard to tell because the colors, July 2 Mhmm. Study session. Mhmm. That is leading into the July 4. Yeah. Wanna check-in to make sure that's when the council would like to do that study session.

Oh, sounds like we're in agreement so far. So I have three amendments, which I hope we can bundle together and take all at the same time, and I'll recap that real quickly. Moving the May 28 meeting to May 21, moving the July 30 meeting to July 20 no. July 30 to July 23. Thank you. And then adding Okay.

The other way.

Oh, I'm sorry. The other way around. Moving the twenty third, that was my idea, to July 30. Thank you. And then adding another meeting in November on the nineteenth. I'm gonna ask for some votes. So if you could raise your hand. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't see you. Thank you.

I did want to just touch on what the other council members said about push the button. I did wanna just mention what the other council members talked about. Do we get it? Okay. There. About stacking the meetings and packing all the information and loading all of that in. I agree. I will hit mental overload sometimes. There's just too many things. But I also do have to mention that a better run meeting Mhmm.

A more informed counsel, everyone ready with their questions, everything like that will help facilitate, but council member Nutting is discussing a meeting that lasts only forty five minutes. I think if we all we all can try to get our questions ahead of time and we can be prepared, I think that will also help that if the meeting does have a lot of thickness to it, that we'd be able to cut through it a little bit better. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. With one another. Oh, I'm sorry. I need to look up. Council member Harris for your second time.

I have a question, and, I just I have trouble seeing it, but there are two meetings scheduled for August or just one?

There are. There are three. Oh, in a study session.

There are three? Mhmm.

Ah, okay. This is I thought there was this thing about taking August off. But okay. Very good. Thank you. The proposed calendar keeps the study session and two council meetings for virtually every month with the exception now of December.

Alright. Any other discussion? One more. Oksicker.

Just on February 26 and the twenty seventh for the council retreat, are those counted as full council

meetings? For when oh, I mean, it's a retreat. It will be held off-site at the

dining hall. It's open to the public. And so it's Yeah.

I mean, it'll be posted to

the public. It will not so

the so the fifth will be

a study session. The twelfth will be a regular business meeting. The twenty sixth and twenty seventh will be a facilitated retreat for the strategic plan. It will be posted and open to the public, but it will not function like a typical council meeting.

Okay. Thank you.

Oh, okay. Thank you. So let's vote on those amendments first. I had recapped those three. All in favor, please raise your right hand, and I'll call your name. Council member assignments, council member Nutting, council member Harris, deputy mayor Oxiger, council member Des Mone, and council member Boss, and myself. That is seven zero. Thank you very much. And now the main motion.

So would I have to make another motion? I'm sorry. Point of order.

Yes. Mhmm.

Would I have to make another motion? Repeat that not as presented, but as amended. K.

Yes. Thank you.

I move to approve the 2026 city council calendar as amended.

Second? Second. Thank you. Council member assignments. Alright. So let us go to a vote. All in favor, raise your right hand. Council member Simons, council member Nutting, council member Harris, deputy mayor Oksager, council member Desimone, council member Las, and myself. Thank you. Appreciate that. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Bonnie. Okay. Item number two, we're gonna hear about the planning commission appointment process and a staff presentation by community development director Rebecca Deming.

Thank you, mayor. Council. Oh, jumped back. There we go. Council approved, the planning commission ordinance back in December.

There is sixty days until it is effective. The council chose to go with a city council appointment versus the mayoral appointment and council confirmation. The membership includes, five members that are to be qualified by experience or interest with one could be a business owner. Therefore, that leaves one kind of at large option left, but it they're kind of leaves basically seven members, obviously. And then of those, the residents are should be there one year in the city, and same with the business owner should have one year business owner.

And they shouldn't have be in any other standing commission or committee. Staff is asking you how you wanna go about this council appointment. We have put together some options, and so we're looking for direction. These are the four options that we have put together. One option is for each council member to make a recommendation, and that would basically would give you kind of they would be your contact.

So position one would recommend position one for the planning commissioner. And then each option two would be each provide seven, and I'll kind of go through that. I have an example in the PowerPoint on how that would work. The other option would be kind of creating a committee to discuss and then make a recommendation. And then option four is that you would just make the nomination individually and vote as a whole.

So with option one, it would as I mentioned, in these examples, there's kind of, like, 12 applicants is what I did. So motion the first position would be the commissioner position one, and say you would like applicant two, and so you would vote for them to be the commissioner position one. And so the second council member who holds position position two would vote for who they would like to be on the commissioner position two. And so I kinda put together how option two would work, And so you would we would go through how you which seven you would want. So council member position one would say, hey.

Out of these 12 applicants, these are the seven I would like. Council member two would say, oh, that was weird. The seven members I would like, and we'd kinda go through until we tallied them up. And, oh, look. We didn't have seven, so we just knocked out the two lowest. And we do this again until we picked the seven. Look. We finally have seven. And then you'd make a motion. And so that's how I came to that, how that would work.

So I tried to show how that would work. So I'll go back to the four it'd take a while to go back and do that math. So those are the four options. I tried to come up with different ways to make it work. I tried to make it as simple as possible to come up with these ideas, but it's really up to you on how you want to appoint the planning commissioners.

If you have other ideas, I'm open to them. As of right now, we have 10 applicants, but they're coming in fast and quick. So and we are looking for any other outreach opportunities. So all of you out there, please tell your friends and neighbors to apply. So I'm here to answer any questions and looking for staff direction.

Council, are there any questions? Council member Simons.

Creative suggestions. Are these coming how do other cities do it, or is this reflective of what other cities are doing?

Most cities do do the as we mentioned when we went through the ordinance, most cities do the mayoral appointment with council confirmation, but council chose in the ordinance to do the full council appointment. So we tried to get creative with this direction that council gave us. Other

questions? Deputy Mayor Oksager.

The parenthetical statement on one, the recommended commission would be their commissioner contact. What exactly are you

It would it it just creates a if someone had if a commissioner had a question, they had a contact with the council member. It was it's I've seen it done in some other areas that instead of, you know sometimes there's a representative council member to like, now sometimes there's a a council member that has that represents the committee. Instead of having one council member represent the whole commission, they would just be their representative for one commissioner. And so they could work together with their commissioner if they if they wanted to reach out and and have a conversation, and they have a connection to the to the council member directly. So position one would represent position one.

And so each time if when their term was up, then that commission council member would make the next recommendation for that position.

K. Thank you.

Council member Harris.

You said 10, and I was thinking, wow. That's great. And they've all sort of passed the baseline qualification?

We have not reviewed them yet for making sure they meet all of the qualifications or whether we have all of them yet. I've just counted how many applications we've received so far.

Okay. And this is, maybe this is for the city attorney. Or is there anything precluding us from reviewing the applications and providing just our input into a spreadsheet ahead of time?

I'd like to take that on. It sounds like I would love to make sure that we come up with a a recommendation here, and then it will be my suggestion that we come up with some sort of suggestions for screening in case we have thirty, forty folks who apply. So I I would like to hold that over to the next part of our conversation if that meets your needs. Sure. Thank you. Other questions? Okay. Let's see here. We're gonna, there's lots to discuss here. There's four different, questions, suggestions.

So I'm gonna go ahead and ask for a motion, which will allow us to discuss it. Is there a motion? Council member assignments.

I move to direct the staff to proceed with option two, for the appointment of planning commissioners. Second that.

Okay. It's been moved and seconded for option number two, which I would describe as sort of a ranked choice style of of voting. Let's go to any sort of discussion. Council member Simons.

Yeah. As complicated as it as it looks, and it probably is, I think that sort of creates some balance, and everybody on the council gets to move gets to see people that they would like to see on that as we tally sort of condense everything down to the seven that actually make it. And so I kind of think that that probably is the best way to look at it since we're already over seven. There are gonna be some people that have to be eliminated, and that's a process through which I think we can make well thought out eliminations until we get down to the number that we need. And so I just think it's it's a fair way for everybody on the council to get representation, everybody on the council in the city to get good people through.

So that's that's why I favored option number two.

Thank you. Other points of discussion? Councilmember Harris.

Well, I still wanna go back to the, original thing. Is it is it acceptable to do some kind of, prescoring ahead of the meeting to have a matrix of our preferences to make the discussion more efficient.

Well, this is your process. So at the moment, we're trying to figure out how they're gonna be selected. Once we figure that out, like the mayor said, you can decide on the process of how you wanna rank people and and what you wanna provide and when you wanna look at stuff. So but, certainly, it's the council council's process, so the council can agree

to do it how they'd like. Okay.

In advance of which meeting, like, the selection

that you

want to review.

Yeah. Is it possible to just have a spreadsheet and say, if you did have 30 applicants, could you prefill a spreadsheet and say, okay. This these seven people scored the highest?

You could. I mean, I imagine we're gonna provide the council with the applications well before the meeting. So you will have that information. If you'd like to make a spreadsheet, you can.

Okay. No. I'm just, you know, wondering if it's just something that you know, because typically we vote on things just out in public, and I just didn't wanna have the you know, create the appearance that there had been this preselection out of the public eye. That's my only point. Thank you.

Thank you. Council member Des Mone.

I'm I apologize. That actually made it worse for me. So it sounds a little bit like what councilmember Harris is describing is more like choice number three, that we have a group that decides, and then we prescreen, and then we do another. And so are we ahead of what we're discussing right now?

That's a that's a good question, but the the motion is only for two. So I think the the number three would be forming a subcommittee.

Right. But he he would like us to discuss it before we actually do what we're actually trying to vote on. I got lost on that. I'm sorry.

That's not what I heard. I think I heard you we would get the applications, and then you would be able to make a matrix in reviewing the applications, but we wouldn't be doing that as a group. We'd be doing it individually. Is that correct? Individually. Okay. I apologize.

Of order, I I did not What's your point? I did my point was she is I just wanna make sure what I'm proposing is is characterized accurately. I was just saying, is it acceptable to have a spreadsheet of each of our preferences before the discussion. Thank you.

Well, I imagine that we'll need to receive all the applications that we're going to review. And then when we come together to make our ranked choice, we will need to have that organized in some way. But the timing of that, I think, is is depends on I believe the applications are open till January 31? Correct. Okay. Any other questions? Yes. Councilmember Boss.

Well, not a question, but I do like option two as well. It gives us all equal power here to, choose the the next commissioners. And at the end, the body of the commissioners will be the most the one that we're most agreement with. So that's my that would be my choice.

Alright. Well, let's see, if we can go ahead and see if this one is, most favorable. So if since we have a motion and it was seconded, let's go ahead and call the vote. All those in favor of directing staff to proceed with option number two, please raise your right hand until I call your name. Council member Simons, council member Nutting, council member Harris, council or deputy mayor Oxiger, council member Desmone, council member Bloss, and myself, that's seven zero.

So that will be your direction. Thank you very much. Alright. Item number three, business license model ordinance update, the first reading. And here, we will hear a presentation from assistant city attorney Matt Hutchins.

Thank you, mayor. Council mayor, Matthew Hutchins, assistant city attorney with the draft with the staff presentation of draft ordinance twenty five dash one two four amending the city's business license code. Excuse me. The legislature has empowered cities to require that anyone doing business within their city acquire a license and pay a fee for the privilege of doing so. The city has had such a business license code since, 1960.

Our code basically lays out a definition of what it means to conduct business within the city, requires anyone doing so, with a few exceptions, to get a license, imposes a fee that's set by the council, provides a mechanism for revoking or suspending a license under certain circumstances, and, provides exemptions for certain, types of entities and certain business activities such as governments, nonprofits, or, someone who's not a professional salesperson just doing a one time sale of, you know, used used furniture or something like that. The and our code can currently be found at, Des Moines Municipal Code chapter five zero four. The thing about powers granted by the legislature is that they can put conditions or limitations on them as they wish, and they with respect to business licenses, that's exactly what they did with engrossed house bill two thousand five and two thousand '17. What that bill did was it directed the Association of Washington Cities to come up with a model business ordinance that was going to make, business license codes more uniform, among all the cities, and it was going to be mandatory for all cities with the business license code to adopt the provisions.

So there were two things that that the legislature required to be included. One was a standard definition for conducting business. So one kind of business activity, if it is conducting business in Aberdeen, it's also business, conducting business in Bellevue. Anywhere you go in the state, it's predictable, whether a business license, applies to you. The second thing, that was included in the bill was, AWC was supposed to set a floor for how much business activity you conduct in a city.

A min or a minimum before the city could, require you to get a business license and, pay a fee for the privilege. So a AWC, did make the the definition, but it also set this for at $2,000 for, businesses that do not have a physical location within your city. So a store, an office, a workshop. But businesses that come in under this number, a city could still require if they wanted to to make people register with the city, but there could be no fee for it. So in response, to these requirements, the city did, adopt an ordinance that that amended our code.

We took the required, definition for engaging in business, so we are now par with everyone else in the state. And the city council decided to take the suggested threshold of 2,000, where we could start requiring business licenses. So how it works is if you have a business with a location in the city, you have to get a business license in any case, and pay the fee for it. If you are an out of city business, you don't have a location in the city, but you come into the city and do business. If you make more than $2,000 doing business in the city, you you also need to get a business license to pay the fee.

But if you come in under the $2,000 threshold, we do require you to register with the city, but there is no fee for that. So, as as was anticipated in the original, bill from from the legislature, AWC does periodic updates. And last year, they made one change. And, basically, the $2,000 has been increased to $4,000. And they have added on a provision that four years from now and every four years after that, the floor will be adjusted upwards based on CPI.

So, like the original amendments we made to our code, these are mandatory. We have to make these if we have a business license code. But the good news is that, I talked to finance department, and we anticipate that there could be very few businesses, where it's gonna make a difference. Out of city businesses, that would make more than $2,000 but less than $4,000, it's probably just gonna be a handful, and the impact on revenue is gonna be at most, a couple thousand dollars. So up on the screen is a suggested motion. That, concludes my presentation. Are there any questions?

Here, we'll take some questions. Councilmember and Desmonet.

Could you give me Mhmm. Could you give

me an example of a business that would be within that threshold?

A common, situation where this occurs and possibly the most common is, with contractors that come from outside the city. Just a homeowner with a small plumbing job, electrical job, they don't do a lot of job, business in the city, planning just to do one or two jobs, and it's a couple $100, maybe a thousand, $2,000, and they don't anticipate they're gonna be coming back, they could just get the the registration and not pay the fee. If they do end up getting more jobs, and that pushes them over to 4,000, at that point, they'd have to get a license.

Thank you. Other questions? Councilmember Steinmetz.

How does this impact the vendors at the farmers market, particularly some of the smaller, more artisan vendors that might be somewhere in that range. I don't know.

Regarding that specifically, we have an agreement with the Farmers Market where they get the business license and then the vendors operate underneath that. So this would not apply to them.

Great. Thank you. Any other questions? No. Thank you very much. Is there a motion? Oh, I'm sorry. Was that a question?

No. I have the motion.

Oh, yeah. I have the motion. Thank you. Go ahead.

I move to pass draft ordinance 25 dash one two four to a second reading on the next available regular council meeting agenda.

K. Council member Simons.

I second.

Thank you. Any other further discussion? Alright. All those in favor of passing draft ordinance 25 dash one two four to a second reading at the next available regular council meeting, please raise your right hand until I call your name. Council member Steinmetz, council member Nutting, council member Harris, deputy mayor Oxiger, council member Desimone, council member Voss, and myself.

That's seven zero. Motion passes. Thank you very much. I believe that comes to the very end of our regular meeting agenda except for council member reports. And I forget which order. We go down the line here that we start with. Oh, the mayor would just decide. We'll start at the end. Council member assignments, would you like to begin?

Certainly. It was a a very busy, very active December and early January. I, you know, with a couple members from the council, ran the hot chocolate and coffee and handed out some ores at the Burning Boat festival, which was just an incredible success. And I think it has a lot of room to expand. I don't know.

I have not seen any of the final numbers, but I think there was a significant amount raised for scholarships in the parks and rec program from that. So I I think we should all be really happy, and I'd like to see that just keep going. And it was it was really kind of a fun night and a very community focused night, which was really nice. I I think that just the other thing that I wanna say to everybody is that, you know, we're all one of a group of seven, and we need to work to get along. We need to work to talk to each other.

We need to make sure that if we're feeling like we're not being spoken to, we pick up the phone and talk to somebody about it up here on the dais. You know, we we just need to come together and be functional as a group. And, you know, sometimes people feel like they're not getting heard, and that's that's unfortunate because there is room for that for everybody. And I hope to we can make an improvement in that with this new council so that everybody gets a chance. Everybody gets a chance to ask questions outside of the dais.

Not that we can ask any for more than three. Gotta gotta pay attention to the open public meetings law. But, you know, people will have a chance to talk to one another. And so I know I'll be on the phone with people, and and I hope everybody feels that they can pick up the phone and talk to me. And let's work through some of this stuff so that we better serve the citizens of Des Moines.

Because I do think even with people I might disagree with on a regular basis up here that the motive, everybody's individual motive, is to do what they think is best for the city. And I and I think that's a good thing, and I think we've gotta remember that is the piece that drives us to come here every Thursday or seemingly every Thursday and spend time running for office and seeing our, you know, things said about us on Facebook and getting frustrated and you know? It's fun. When you actually get to the point that you're accomplishing something and you're feeling like, wow. This is why I'm doing this.

This is what feels good about it. You know? That's what we need to focus on. And don't don't let the negative drive things. Let the positive drive things. So thank you. Glad to be back.

Thank you. Councilmember Nutting.

Thank you, mayor. We didn't have a spot on this agenda to add something to another agenda, and there's something that I'd like to add to an agenda. Is it okay if I do that right now?

It's a bit unusual for us to do that during council reports.

But it's a bit unusual, mayor. Excuse me. That there wasn't a spot to do it in the meeting itself.

Yes. Proceed.

We've heard from several citizens lately about the flock cameras, being that I've been on a ride along where it's become useful. And I've spoke to Cheap Bo about this that I'd like a a presentation, kinda going over, brushing over what citizens have said and what the actuals are. I'm not saying the citizens are wrong. I'm just saying that there's there's somewhere in between. So I'd like to see that on an, a future council meeting.

Oh, well, thank you. Do I have, two other folks who would like to raise their hands and join nothing? Absolutely. It looks like it's actually unanimous. Thank you. I appreciate it. Would you like would you like other comments?

I have no more comments.

Okay. Thank

you very much. Councilmember Harris.

Thank you. Congratulations to our new mayor and deputy mayor. Well done. I was I did not want to appear flip, but, to the, to mister Hutchins, in terms of meeting efficiency, I was just struck by how our the number of votes that I've taken where basically we have no choice but to just vote for it. And you could save a certain amount of time simply by not having to dispose of that stuff.

I never understand why we have to do these perfunctory things. I do support some kind of, review of the flock program, mainly statistical. I would like to have an understanding of the actual benefits because the fact is that once the pictures are taken, they are on a server somewhere. And the moment anything goes on to a server anywhere, it's basically there forever for somebody. And so it's just something to think about.

I spent a certain amount of time over the holidays on air 40 stuff, and this is the year of the Samp. And their senator Orwell will be proposing legislation, and I this is a unique opportunity for the city. But what has happened traditionally is that effort gets split into, like, five different directions, and there is a dilution of benefit because you just have needs, wants, and desires from all across King County, and it ends up it's never turned out good for Des Moines. But I am, you know, remain hopeful that we can consolidate our efforts as council member Steinmetz said because, there are gonna be these multiple tracks that the city needs to speak with a singular voice on if this is a negotiation, not a partnership. And we really the the cities that have a clear task will do better than those that do not.

And with that, happy new oh, yeah. One last just I thought 2025 was the longest year in the history of the universe. And we're already we're only eight days into January, and I'm like, I was wrong. And I hope that we can put, basically, put focus on the city and not all the other distractions which are manifold, because this is a big year for us. Thank you.

Thank you. Deputy mayor Oksager.

Thank you, mayor. Yes. I agree with council member Harris. This is going to be a momentous year. I would simply remind everybody of the African proverb that if you wanna go fast, go alone.

If you wanna go far, go together. And I think that's what we need to do is there's seven of us. We have seven distinct voices, and the city benefits from all of us collaborating and, you know, coming forward with a with a course that that, you know, heads us in the right direction. Again, this is going to be a momentous year. It's for the country, it's the big two five o. For the city of Des Moines, it's six seven. Thank you.

Council member Des Mone.

He actually just did that. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited for the new momentum. I'm excited for the new year, and I'm excited for the idea of seven. Seven is great. And together, we will move forward from here. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Bloss.

I've been a council member all of one week, so I don't have much to report to the council today. But I will take this opportunity to thank some people. First of all, I wanna thank the voters of this city. I wanna thank all my supporters that I see in the audience. And out there, it was a long campaign, but thank you for your trust in me, and I hope to earn the trust of all the voters going forward.

There's so much to learn in this city. The city does way more than I even thought before, and so I I don't think I can be an effective council member until I understand the city, how the city functions better. To that end, I really wanna thank the city staff, the city manager for taking time away from your busy schedule to try to teach us things about the city. Tomorrow, we have an on another all day training with a lot of department heads, and we can hear from them, hear what the issues are, and understand what they do. So thank you.

And, also, thank you for my colleagues here on the dais. You've been very welcoming, and you've been very available to answer my question and teach me things. So I look forward to working with all of you in the next few years. And, thank you, everyone, and I will do my best to be a good council member.

Thank you very much. Welcome to twenty twenty six. This is quite a moment for me. I wanna say thank you very much for your trust, and I agree that we are one team, one body, whichever metaphor you would like to use to signify that we really are working together. And I would like to echo many of the things that council member Steinmetz said about us having the same motivation, really being here for the same reasons.

I know that I am here to ensure the public safety of our citizens and our residents to really look at the city's financial outlook and try and make those improvements so that we can have a secure future and make this really a great place to live, raise a family, or open a business. I know that we have different opinions to echo you again, council member Steinmetz. We have different policy positions, projects that we champion, and, I choose to believe that if you peel back those, we have a lot more in common than first appears. So whether we disagree because of methodology or because of ideology, we all chose to be here to make that positive impact on our community. Some of us have been contributing to Des Moines for over fifty years.

Some of us moved here during COVID, and, we have to remember that we have that shared purpose. And I will continue to use a deliberative decision making on things like capital projects, public policies, strategic partnerships. Does it benefit the residents of Des Moines in the short and the long term, and is it a wise investment of our limited resources? On another note, I did attend the burning boat, and it is a great opportunity. And I wanna say thanks to the rotary for putting that on.

And I think we acknowledged a lot of the volunteers that were there, but we didn't acknowledge the city staff, the harbor master, other folks who were there, Bonnie Wilkins. And I'm leaving out a bunch of you, but I appreciate all the work that you went into in supporting that event. There are lots of ways that folks can get involved. You heard that we have a planning commission that's forming, which I think will be a really meaty and meaningful way to get involved in our city. But as you can see, a lot of these very large events are put on purely by volunteers.

People who just wanna see fun, nice things happening in their community. And so if you're one of those folks who are like, you know what? Maybe my New Year's resolution is to get more involved. There are lots of volunteer opportunities and ways to get involved in the city, and there may be some boards and commissions that are open to you as well. So thank you very, very much.

We do have an executive session on our calendar, and we're gonna move into that now. So it is a property acquisition under RCW 42 dot three zero dot one one zero one B, and we will be at it for about ten minutes. It's 07:30 now. And so we will retreat back and be back at 07:40. Thank you.

Yep.

Hold on just a second. Okay. We are back. Most of us are back from executive session. Just I left this out, so I just wanted to remind folks that there is no formal action to be taken as a result of that executive session. So we are back to our open session. We're at the end of our meeting. Our next meeting will be a regular city council meeting on 01/22/2026. Is there a motion to adjourn?

So moved, mayor.

Thank you. Second. Second by council member Steinmetz. All those in favor, please raise your right hand and say aye.

Aye.

Motion passes. We are adjourned.