City Council - Regular Meeting

At this time, I'd like to call the 03/26/2026 Des Moines City Council meeting to order, and I get to lead us in the pledge today. Please stand if you are able. Thank you. Okay. With that, please let the record show that all council members are present here in person. City clerk, do we have any correspondence from the public?

No, mayor.

Thank you. It's now time for comments from the public. There are no one signed up. No person signed up. Thank you. Moving right along. So as you know, we are currently running as a committee of the whole. However, council members do serve regionally on other committees. Do any council members have any items of interest to the public or the council? Seeing none, we're gonna move right along to the city manager's report.

Mayor and council, we have three items tonight. The first one that's on the agenda is the July 4, and then we have, like, two quick announcements. So assistant city manager, AJ Newton, will take it away.

Hi. Good evening, council and community. My name is AJ Johnson Newton, and I am here to provide a preview of what's coming up for the July 4. So we're hoping that you'll come and celebrate, with us. And so, we are hosting a daytime event down at the marina from 10AM to 3PM.

It's gonna be a family friendly event, and we're gonna have different activities sort of spread across between the marina and the beach park. And so I would think of it like a walking event so you can explore and enjoy hopefully really good weather. We've been in coordination with the farmers market because that will be happening that day. There's a park run which actually came from the cab, so that was an idea that they gave us. And so we are also looking at other opportunities to see if there's activities that are happening that that we could incorporate into our event.

We did meet with the CAB. Forgive me on the date, but it was at some point in March, and asked for, some feedback of things that they would like to see. And so that will show up in our, activities. So we know we're gonna have live music. We're gonna have food vendors. We're gonna have some interactive elements. We're gonna have a dunk tank. So we are looking for volunteers from the council. Okay.

So I will so I

will reach out. We did pencil in the city manager.

They had me down for the whole event. I was like, what? Yeah. Five hours. And Harry and I are not doing that for two and a half hours.

We'll have a pie eating contest. And so we're also looking at some other options to what we're calling enhanced attractions. So more to come on that. In terms of the budget, we are planning for significantly lower cost than we did have in 2025. I think it came to, like, 117,000 for lodging tax, so we are planning that it's gonna be less expensive than that. And, we have lots of quotes out. We're confirming our activities, our vendors, the layout, and, stay tuned. All of the, final event details and the marketing will be out in April. So mark your calendars. We do expect to see everyone down enjoying the fourth with us celebrating America's two hundred and fiftieth birthday. Thanks.

Alright. Any questions from the council about the event? Okay. Alright. This weekend, not quite as exciting as the July 4, but I have a pile in my garage, is the recycling collection event.

Can you pull that up real quick?

No. It is still in the South Parking Lot in the marina, so no change because of the construction. Residents would have been mailed a flyer in the mail that had everything listed you can bring, and you can also find this information. It'll be in tomorrow's city manager report, but, you know, plenty of junk to clear out your garage, so take care in that. And then the last thing is I was asked to reference the No Kings rally and let you all know that we have been notified about that event for this weekend, and our police department has been notified as they are typically in the past of this event.

The group that organizes it has typically done a a really good job managing the crowd to keep it a safe event that also allows traffic to flow, and so that's what we are expecting as well this weekend. So that concludes our city manager report. Okay. Thank you.

Will the clerk please read the consent agenda?

Item one, approval of vouchers. Item two, $10 car tab fee increase, second reading. Item three, salary commission ordinance, second reading. Item four, King County 2026 to 2027 waste reduction and recycling grant award, and that concludes the consent agenda, mayor.

Thank you. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as read? Council member Nutting.

Move to approve the consent agenda as read, mayor. Second.

Seconded by council member Steinmetz. Do any council members wish to pull any items? Council member Harris.

Items three and four, please.

Three and four. Okay. So we have three and four to be pulled, so we'll now be voting on consent agenda items one and two. Let's go ahead and vote. All in favor, raise your right hand and leave it up there until I say your name. Council member Oksicker, council member Simons, council member Harris, council member Desmoni, council member Nutting, council member Bloss, and myself. That's seven zero passes. Okay. Council member Harris, would you like to speak to item number three, the salary commission ordinance?

Thank you. I just wanted the opportunity to vote no on it, and, I understand the will of the council. So let's vote. Thank you.

Council member Nutting.

I move to enact draft ordinance number two six dash zero zero one, creating a salary commission for the city of Des Moines.

Seconded by council member Steinmetz. Any discussion? Alright. Let's raise your right hand. Thank you. Council member Oscar, council member Steinmetz, councilmember Desmoni, councilmember Netting, councilmember Bloss, and myself, all opposed? Councilmember Harris, that passes six one. Councilmember Harris for item number four, please.

Thank you. I am in no way opposed to this. I would just like to, encourage the city to provide an update on the costs. I am hearing left and right from residents about the increases in basically, you know, recology costs. And I it's been a while since we signed the contract, and I think it would be good to have sort of a short explainer on what the reasons are for that. They're understandable, but still, hear about it all the time. So that's all.

Yes.

Just a quick response. Tyler Wieckley, surface water manager, also managing the u Recology contract. We are tentatively scheduled to give a annual report from Recology in May.

Yeah. I'm gonna interrupt you for a second. I I wanna make sure that we're talking about two different things here. This grant is for King County solid waste.

No. I get that. I I I do get it. I just wanted to have this because I heard from residents who conflate the issues.

So that might be better for a new items for consideration.

I just got a responsive answer, so I think we're done. Thank you.

K.

Someone yes. Councilmember Netting.

I move to accept the twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven King County Solid Waste Division waste reduction and recycling grant and authorize the city manager to sign the grant document substantially in the form as attached. Second.

Second goes to councilmember Bloss. Okay. Thank you. Let's go ahead and vote. All in favor? Thank you. Councilmember Oksicker, councilmember Steinmetz, councilmember Nutting excuse me. Council member Dismone, council member Nutting, council member did I say Harris or Nutting? Sorry. I said Harris. Thank you. Thank you. Council member Harris, council member Dismone, council member Netting, council member Blossom, myself. That's seven zero. Thank you.

Okay. Let's talk about unfinished business. Item number one is the draft ordinance 26 dash zero zero nine, appointed committee code and citizens advisory code update, and we have a presentation by city prosecutor, miss Sarah Vaughan Tara Vaughan. Thank you.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you, counsel. Here to present first reading of draft ordinance two six zero zero nine. I'll try to be briefer than I was last time you guys saw me. At the study session in March, we did bring proposed changes to the appointed committee code and the citizen advisory board code.

There was some pretty thorough discussion, and counsel requested, some edits and additions. So today, we have we are presenting the first reading of this ordinance that includes those requested revisions. So under, these are what has changed since the last time you guys saw this. Under the appointed committee code, we lowered the minimum age, membership age to 18. We added the word geographic to the section on appointments regarding diversified membership.

We added a requirement that the meetings operate pursuant to Robert's rules, and we added language notifying the council of three or more absences so that a member may be removed. Under the citizen advisory board code, we added language that provides more structure to meetings, and we included language that requires written subcommittee reports that go to the CAB, and those must be submitted prior to the meetings. And before I get to the motion slide, I would just like to say that something actually got brought up at the CAB meeting last night. One of the members had a question about whether subcommittees would be subject to the OPMA under this, which led me actually to realize that the way it is currently written, they would be. And that is because we have included the the word subcommittee in the definition of appointive committee.

And the council wants the appointive committees to abide by the requirements of the OPMA. So but it is staff's understanding that council does not desire the subcommittees to abide have those requirements. So between now and if this moves to a second reading, we could add language that would exempt the CAB subcommittees from that requirement, which leads me to so there's a proposed motion that addresses that, and then there's just

council member Harris.

So, I'm sort of scrolling through it. It says under section 14, the Citizens Advisory Board shall meet at least three times per year. And, in watching last night, I was struck by it's kinda become a monthly sort of a deal.

Yeah.

Is that the intent, or is it I I'm just I'm trying to get a sense of because originally, it was more like four times a year, and it's gradually sort of expanded. So I'm not trying to put you in a but I just don't have a sense of what the it seems sort of self organizing in a way. And since we're going into all of this detail, I wanted to ask about

Well, the feedback, the CAB had given, the council members or the liaison as well as myself is that they really wanted to meet more often. So the work plan that they approved in December or January, I think has been meeting maybe 10 times a year. I think they I think they take something off for holidays and maybe something off in the summer, but they are headed in that direction. I don't know if council member Steinmetz as the chair wants to

Yeah. If I may, there there was a desire to meet more often. It is 10 times a year. Month of August is taken off in the month of December. It is, I believe, taken off. And so we do that. But, also, the the requirement that they meet a minimum of three times a year is not limiting. In other words, you can meet more than three times a year, and that's what the CAB has chosen to do, and I believe they have the wherewithal to do that. So Yeah. It there doesn't seem to be a conflict in the code here at all.

No. There's no conflict with the code with meeting more than three times.

That's all the questions I have.

Council mayor Simons.

Speaking of the CAB, the one thing that did come out of last night is the CAB did express a very strong preference not to call, the arts committee, the senior services committee, and the human services committee subcommittees. They are committees of the cap. And so is there a way to change it in the code so they're referred to as committees of the CAB without making them subject to the open public meetings law because they are not formal meetings of the whole body. They are committees designed to work on specific subjects and then bring that back to the cap.

Yeah. I I mean, we can I I think we could get that language to work with it being committees rather than subcommittees?

And it's committees of the CAB a good way to phrase that, I guess. That that would be my suggestion unless

Yeah. I I I'd

like you guys wordsmith it, but Yeah. That would be my something in that direction to to make it clear.

A point of order, are we in the discussion phase, or are we still in the questions phase?

Senior We're in the questions phase.

Okay. Yeah.

Council member Netting.

Yeah. I I'm just wondering. I haven't heard anything about moving away from the OPMA, in committees and subcommittees. I was just wondering where that's coming from. And

So, appointed committees are purely advisory bodies. They don't have they don't have decision making authority, and so they are not subject to the OPMA currently.

But Go ahead.

We would still have to if there was more than would we still have to notice the committee meeting if more than four count more than three council members were going to be in attendance to that meeting?

Let let me take this. So the you may recall, council member, that last year when we dealt with the new staff shortages, we were no longer able to staff arts, senior services, human services in the way they had been before. So part of that solution was to have them folded as committees of CAB. And so as part of that, those groups meet on their own, and then the transparency comes when at the CAB meetings, which are recorded, posted, there's minutes, they report out what those committees are doing. So that was sort of the workable solution because we did not have the capacity to staff and record all of those.

Does that answer your question? No. And council members don't typically go to those committee meetings. So it's just the appointed committee members.

I I guess my point is is I did serve on the senior services advisory board, and I I was always at those meetings. And several times, other council members were there as well. Yeah. So my question is is if more than three council members were going to be at those meetings, it's still part of the OPMA is that they would have to be noticed in the paper or three other places. So by canceling the LPMA, you're saying that four council members could be there.

Well, typically, we don't have council members going to those committee meetings. So if I was alerted that, you know, three or four council members wanted to go to that, that would be a really big change from what's been happening. But, yes, we would then need to adjust, then we would have to post, and that'd be a really different thing. I don't I don't know if anybody who's on cab wants to talk about how the committees have been working.

Council member Steinmetz.

Yeah. The committees have been, as as indicated, meeting on their own. The liaisons from the council to the CAB have generally not been going to the meetings and certainly not more than one. And they're only the they're the council members' only function is advisory to help understand the council city manager process and the advice that is coming that is bubbling up from the committees of the CAB to the CAB to the council. And it would I I my understanding of the OPMA, it is anytime there's four of us in a room, if we're gonna be talking about city business, it better have been noticed.

But that would be the only way that that would ever come up. And as it's been functioning over the last year, maybe two, that's never been an issue. I don't anticipate it being an issue. So

Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Let let me ask a quick question. In looking at, I'm on page number 46 of your packet, and it says, you know, under section two, point number three, a point of committee shall comply with the requirements of the Open Public Meetings Act. And you just acknowledge that we we they don't have to be. But I believe this was at the direction of the council the first time we went through this as a red line. That even though we are not required by law, it was the council's wish that committees would comply. So that's why this is here. Is that right?

That's correct. Yeah. And that's why it's written as, you must comply with the requirements of the OPMA. Why it's written like that. Right.

So other questions? Councilmember Desmoy.

I apologize. I've gotten lost in the sauce at some point here. Are we specifically speaking about CAB, or are we speaking about all of the groups with that specific note for CAB? Because I do have a question in there somewhere. Applies to all appointive committees. All appointive committees. So one of my questions was within the ordinance, it says that the committees will vote on their chair and vice chair, and it would be of the committee. Unfortunately, the CAB's chair, though, is a council member. So are we going for continuity? I believe with this ordinance, we wanted the groups to all operate similarly.

Yeah. So as it's currently written, there's no requirement that the, you know, elected chair or vice chair be a community member. But if that is what the council would like, we could, draft language to make that the case.

Well, so we actually the code section that you cited is the general for all appointive committees. But specifically in 4.6 o, which is later on in this ordinance, there's a provision specifically for the CAB that says that the mayor will select the presiding officer, which I believe So the mayor selects the presiding officer for the CAB, and the for other appointed committees, the members select the presiding officer.

That's that's where I got lost in the sauce, I believe. So the CAB is going to have a different

Exactly.

Bit of the ordinance, but the spirit of the ordinance is that the organizations work closer together so we can Yeah. Make it smoother. Okay.

And that was something that that the council had requested since the CAB is a little bit different and the presiding officer, you know, it's helpful that it's a council member.

And I wanna clarify that under section four, under appointment, it says, except as otherwise provided in the title, which is, like, the catch all to this applies to everything except the things that it doesn't apply to. Is that correct? Yeah. Yeah. Because, like, lodging tax advisory, the presiding officer is designated by state.

Right. So this does not apply to everything unless it's called out separately. Correct. So that's that catch all kind of language is on that section four four .24.040 appointment number one. I I wanted to check about the how much of a change because it seems to me that when we recruited and consolidated the members of the subcommittees to be a part of CAB, that it was done because of that time saving, and they would have a direct working assignments that they would do on they would do on CAB but still be a member of the total group.

So it seems to me that that is the definition of a subcommittee. They're part of a committee that has a specific role. And it this seems like it would be a pretty big change from the route that we've been going here, and now we're on the second reading.

I mean, it you know, they are sub within the cab. So, I mean, it it subcommittee would be appropriate, but, also, you know, it's it's really up to you guys if you wanna change it to committee. I don't think it's gonna change a whole lot.

How can you be a committee of a committee?

So they're a board now, and that's how they seem to fit it.

Yeah. Splitting up hairs on the words Mhmm. Was very important to the cap. Like, very important last night. And so, yes, I think we view them as subcommittees, but the members felt like that was extremely important feedback they wanted us to deliver tonight.

Are there other questions? Councilmember Des Mone.

I did wanna mention that in the many minutes we chewed on this language last night that it was determined that its council is the only one that can change this language. Mhmm. And so they were super cool with everything else except the word sub. So and that's up to us to decide if we'd like to change it.

Alright. Do I have a motion, or is that a question, council? Okay. Council member Harris. Thank you.

Yeah. So I'm kind of asking for feedback because I wasn't in the room, but I watched the meeting intently, and this was kind of a thing. Mhmm. I got a sense that there was one person who felt extremely passionate about it. I did not get the feeling that the 15 people in the room all had a strong feeling about and I'm just I'm like, I didn't get a sense it was a group decision.

I got a sense that it was like it was very important. And so I think that kinda matters, and I wish they had sort of taken a vote on something before. Because I'm just saying, watching the video, it didn't look like there were so I guess I'm asking, is this really what people thought?

Council member Simons, would you like to answer?

In fact, there was a vote, and it was unanimous. And there were many, many people in the room who were strongly advocating for calling them committees of the CAB, not calling them subcommittees. So it was very clear from those to those of us in the room and from the vote Mhmm. That this was a big deal. And that's the advice they have for the council and the only advice they had changing, this ordinance. So

Great. Thank you. Council member Netting.

I'd like to make the motion, mayor. Go for it. I move to exclude citizen advisory board subcommittees from the OPMA, Open Public Meetings Act requirements, and to call them committees of the CAB.

Okay. Is that a second? Okay. Moved in, seconded. Do you we are we gonna do that separate from the next motion? Okay. Great. Any discussion about that amended motion? Nope. Alright. Let's move to a vote. All those in favor? Councilmember Oksager, councilmember Steinmetz, councilmember Desmoni, councilmember Nutting, councilmember Bloss, and myself. All those opposed? Councilmember Harris, the vote passes six motion passes six to one. Council member Netting.

I move to pass draft ordinance two six dash zero zero nine as amended to the second reading on 04/09/2026.

Second. Second. Thank you. Can you have a motion and seconded motion by council member Nutting and seconded by council member Stymans. Any discussion? Council member Harris.

Yeah. I would like to amend, I guess, it's the meeting section 17, if memory serves, but, where it says at least three times, but no more than six. I, in watching it, I think that they do great work, but everything that can be accomplished by the full committee can be accomplished within six, and then that frees up staff time. I have watched the prosecutor in court, and her day job is not trivial. So I'm just saying and that that would free up the committees of the committees to they would continue to do their thing.

But the original impetus was four times a year, and six seems generous to me. So

Do we have a second? Is that a We have a second. Oh, okay. Discussion.

Point of information.

Yeah. Section

17 makes no reference to

Oh, I'm sorry. Meetings in the ordinance. Okay. Let's let's

It's section 14. I'm sorry. Don't mean to cut you off council member, but section 14.

Okay. Let me find it. But there's

a subparagraph on meetings. Correct? Yes. I I apologize to my colleagues. I would like to nevertheless, I would like to change that sec that sentence, please.

Page 11. Thank you. It's the first first sentence of the meeting's

portion. Here we go. Okay.

Council member Hurst, would you mind stating your motion again just so I have it correct?

Director and so forth. And I want so it's six in total. K. Thank you.

So section 14, page 11. I'm looking for the minimum, maximum.

So if you see the bolded meetings, it's first sentence.

I see. At least three, but to a maximum of six. Yeah. So at least three, but not more than six.

No. The amendment was to eliminate the three the minimum three, so there would be no minimum number.

Just a max.

Put a maximum to

Is that what we heard correctly?

I'm pretty sure I said a minimum of three and a maximum of six.

Well, I'm it's okay. I'm asking for clarification now. So councilmember Harris is making the motion. If you wanna just give us the sentence, it would read

Three and a maximum of six.

Thank you. That's very helpful. Okay. And I heard a second from councilmember Desmone. Okay. Discussion. Councilmember Simons.

There is absolutely no reason for this. It makes no sense at all. Why would you want to limit volunteer opportunities for people to give advice to the city? And that's essentially what what we're doing here. It is although I appreciate the staff time that might be involved in that, we're only talking about 10 meetings a year at the current pace, and it could go down to less than that if the cab is moving at a slower pace and decides they don't want to. There is no rationale behind this that makes any sense at all and certainly isn't obvious.

Councilmember Harris. Yeah. Well, yeah. It, makes sense to me. First of all, it opens up four slots to have other, committee meetings, which I favor.

But regardless, again, I have watched the cabinet, all of them, and I frankly I was really wanting to get more intelligence from each neighborhood. The original impetus was to have nine neighborhood people. At the meeting last night, if memory serves, again, I'm old, it looked like there were 10 at large members and only, like, four neighborhood members, maybe five. Consistently, the at large people swamp. We have not had a full roster of neighborhood members since, basically, almost since the beginning.

And I watch them because I'm trying to get insights into each neighborhood that I can't get otherwise without, like, walking and knocking on doors and stuff. I really wanna know what's happening at that neighborhood level. But when I watch the meetings, I am largely watching people talk about global ideas, which is great. But somehow, I'm I see people working on the three individual committees we used to have, but I'm not seeing that neighborhood level input, and that is what I had hoped to encourage. So that's it.

And I would like to bring back have staff time for at least one council committee, which I think is very important that we make time for in the coming year, especially with our budget woes. Thank you.

Deputy Mayor Oksager.

Yes. Thank you. Well, the one thing that that did happen last night was, for the first time, the count or the CAB started excusing members who were not there. So there I think there is a new emphasis in the CAB of if you're on the CAB, you better be there. So that would cause more, you know, neighborhood specific council members to be there.

Otherwise, they will be booted from the cab. And I second what council member Steinmetz was saying about this is a is a group of volunteers that, is enthusiastic and, has taken on some tasks, one of which being the, on the survey. They were instrumental in going out and doing on their own, encouraging people to participate in the survey process. I would hate to see us get to the point where take, for example, the budget. If, you know, we limit them to the number of meetings that they can have and they expend all of their meetings at the start of the year, there's no opportunity for the public to come back and speak.

I I really see no reason for for, limiting the number of meetings. Thank you.

Council member Dismone, your second time.

I will disagree, and I will defend my second. These they're not subcommittees anymore. I'm sorry. Meet groups of the what do we decide? I'm sorry.

What are they called? Committees of the CAB.

Committees of the CAB. Apologies. Committees of the CAB. We are not stifling their ability to get together and do what they're currently doing. We're not asking that to change. What we're asking is how many times they report back as a group, as a whole, to the CAB. They're all out in their smaller groups doing their work, doing all these things. I'm not trying to stifle energy. What I'm trying to do is consolidate and put more information in place less often so that we can get more done. That was my reason for the second.

Nothing keeps them from meeting and doing these things. What we're counting, the times that we get together and report back to the CAB. That's what my original second was to council member Harris.

Okay. Well, I think that it's important to recognize that one of the reasons we have the Citizens Advisory Board is so that they can do some advising to us. And for us to place an artificial limit on six times a year does not seem to make sense. They have determined that they went from four meetings to 10. We accommodated that.

And in the future, they might go back down to four. They might go down to six. But it's up for the people who are volunteers who have dedicated time in their schedule to let us know when they can come in and and how often they think they need to conduct business. So I really believe that this is a bit of an overreach to limit the number of meetings that they have. And I don't believe that it will result in bringing back another committee, which seems to be another motivation. So I'm gonna ask for a vote. I'm going to ask for a vote. You don't want people to speak twice? You, I think, had spoken twice. I'm sorry. I wrote your name down twice.

I made the motion, but then the discussion. So, I mean, that's

I I'm sorry. I I thought I had written it down that you had spoke twice. If I was incorrect, go ahead.

Thank you. So I would just note, miss Carey made a very salient point, and there were head nods. What's gonna happen is the the I I don't I honestly still don't know the right term. I'm I'm gonna have to work on that. But the, committee of committee thing, she used the word rubber stamp, and that's exactly correct.

People who work on the three committees are going to work very diligently and, you know, and then bring their work to the full group, and, nobody's gonna question that. It creates an unnecessary layer when it should just go straight to the council for anything especially involving spending. And thanks.

Do you have something new, substantial to add here?

I do. Okay. This amendment would not change that process in the least and has absolutely no impact on the committee of the CAB reporting to the CAB.

Alright. I'm gonna call for a vote here. All those in favor of the amendment to this motion that would limit, change the language, and limit the CAB meetings to six year maximum with a minimum of three. Please raise your right hand. I see council member Harris, council member Dismone. All those opposed? I see council member or deputy mayor Oksager, council member Steinmetz, council member Netting, and myself. That is four. And all those abstaining, council member Bloss. So the vote is four two one.

Is that correct? And the motion fails. Now let's move to a vote on the main motion, which is the pass the draft ordinance. Any further discussion, I don't think, is actually needed, and so let's go to a vote. All those in favor of the draft ordinance? I've raised your right hand. Thank you. Deputy mayor Oksager, deputy mayor Steinmetz or council member Steinmetz appointed. Yep. Council member Dussoni, council member Nutting, council member Blossom, myself. All those opposed? Council member Harris. Motion passes six one. Thank you. Thank you, miss Vaughn.

Let's see. We're on to new business. And our first item is going to be a presentation from FSE on the benchmark city analysis and development tax impact model. And I wanna say thank you very much to members of our planning commission who are here tonight to hear about this information that we were presented. Was it late last year that we got this information from FSC? And it really is points of data in your future considerations. So thank you very much for being here. I appreciate it. City manager, Caffrey.

As Tim gets ready to go, we've got two presentations. The first part is new to everybody. But several months ago, we hired FCS to do what's called a benchmarking study, which is basically where they looked at we started with a very large list, Tim and I remember, of many, many cities that we were basically going to sort of compare Des Moines to, and it's for the purpose really of informing future policy decisions. So it's pretty frequent that the conversation comes up of, like, checking what other cities are doing on a particular policy issue or how they're approaching a particular problem. And so it's it is kind of a best practice to have a list of cities that you go to.

Tim will explain sort of the process we went through as well as share the information about the cities. Now let me be clear. Every city is similar and different. You know? So don't think these are a complete analogy.

They're just really meant to be, here are some communities that may have similarities we can look to for future data studying. The second part, as the mayor referenced, is a repeat of something some members of this council saw but new to others. It is really a tool that was developed to help council and essentially the planning commission as well look at land use through the lens of revenue and costs. It is not by any means meant to be the only deciding factor. It is also not a literal this is what will happen on this property. It is a high level tool to give you a sense of sort of the big order of magnitude of a direction of a particular land use. So, Tim, Thank you.

You, Katherine, and thank you, council and planning commission. Really exciting to be able to address two bodies tonight about both of these analyses. As Katherine mentioned, we the the first analysis we'll talk about is the new one. It's the benchmarking analysis. And effectively, this is, as as Catherine mentioned, just a tool to compare this city to other similar cities.

And the reason to do that is as you're considering new policy or new land use decisions or really any policy decision that this council and the planning commission take on, which cities should we consider as peers. And often that that differs between the the different policies that we're thinking about. It can help highlight where the city is overperforming and outperforming its peers, and it can highlight instances where the city is lagging. The idea is to use consistent data across the peer cities. So to the extent that we possibly can, we're using apples to apples data here.

Sometimes that's easier than others because different terminology exists with the ray with the way that cities refer to revenues and expenses and policies and utilities and that kind of thing. And the the other component of this is to just to help to set the goals and priorities for the council and and to identify instances where cities are doing things that that they we might wanna emulate. Are they reacting to state or regional or federal policy in a way that might be beneficial for us to consider? And will enacting a particular policy put this city at disadvantage or advantage relative to other cities? But why would we benchmark?

It just illustrates where you stand. And as you can see here in this example, not related at all to Des Moines this evening, but this is analysis we performed for the city of Tualatin, Oregon. And this is just one example of of the different ways that we might benchmark. You can see here, in this instance, we're looking at park utility fees, and our client, the city of Tualatin, is on the low end there. So in this instance, it's pretty obvious what this benchmark can tell you.

You've got some room to bump that up if you want to, and you wouldn't be totally out of whack with your peer jurisdictions. It just helps calibrate that policy discussion. So when the council is considering a particular motion, seeing what your peers are doing can can help you understand the implications of what you're gonna do. For this analysis, we took a four step methodology. As Catherine mentioned, we identified a big list of 16 cities to start with based basically on three factors, one of which was demographics, so looking at population similarities, one of which was more economic, which cities have a similar employment profile to Des Moines, and then finally, more geographic.

So which cities are close to us that we wanna make sure that we're comparing ourselves to, and then also from the perspective of which cities have similar characteristics. So waterfront cities, for instance, that have done a good job of engaging those waterfronts. The next step is to analyze, just to gather the the data and then analyze it. So our team at FCS gathered several different factors, including population, employment, budgets, and and the like, so kind of high level stuff to just vet whether or not this list was really a a good starting place. We then refined that list based on our findings.

So some cities in that list weren't great comparators. And that list of cities that we decided not to include were Bothell, Camas, Issaquah, Stanwood, Tigard and Tigard, Oregon, and Tigard, so they were included initially, but we ultimately bumped them off because they were maybe not the best comparisons that we thought that the other 10 that we found were better. And then we finalized the analysis by gathering new data, including land use, the share of different land use types within the city, the services provided by that city, and trends for demographics of looking back in time to see what's happened over the the last decade, say. So the cities that we did include here, you can see the map there. You you can notice we're we're pretty heavy on the Puget Sound region, but we do have a couple down there in the Portland Metropolitan Area.

So Berrien, Edmonds, Kenmore, Maple Valley, Muckaltillo, Poulsbo, Sea Tac, University Place, Washougal, and West Linn. So those last two, those are our our Portland metro comparators. And key distinction here is that you all have a a list of cities that you benchmark to compare your employee compensation. This is a separate list, so we're we're we're not conflating the two. So let's dive right in.

We'll start with population because that's kind of the first thing that you think about when you're thinking about benchmarking, and you can see here that we've got a pretty broad range. You're looking at 53,000 there in Burien and all the way down to 13,000 in Polsboro. So we've got a a broad, broad range of cities. But the Pier City average, when we average all of those other 10 cities, is about 30,000. So Des Moines is right there in the middle of that bell curve.

So we feel like this is a pretty good first cut here. And with respect to trend data, we look back to just before the pandemic, so 2020, and we we calculated annual growth rate for all of these cities. Des Moines is growing at about point 4% annually, while the comparable city average is point seven. So kinda right in the in the neighborhood there. Statewide, the the population is growing by 1.3% annually, but, of course, Washington is a big state with many markets, and so it's to be expected that there's gonna be some variability.

And since we've got so much concentration in the Puget Sound, we feel like that point 7% is probably more indicative of what your market is doing. Median age, and this is where this starts to get kind of exciting, at least for me. We've got, again, a broad range, although you wouldn't notice it from the graph necessarily. You can see Edmonds there is at 46.3 years old at a median age. That's our high end, and the low end there is Maple Valley at 36.5.

But you notice that Des Moines is 37.5 years old with the median age there. And I think that's great. I I think that's really great news. You're on the far low end of this, and I think the most exciting thing is looking back. In this instance, we look back to 2010 just to get a better sense of the long term growth.

And Des Moines has grown 2.4 years younger, and it's the only city in this group where you can say that, that that that they've grown younger at all. All the rest of these cities have grown older. In fact, the average is two years older, so all of these cities getting quite a bit older, and the statewide population also has aged by 1.2 years. So I think it's a great testament to the affordability of this this particular town, and and we'll get into some of that a little bit later on. But I I think that this is something that you should really celebrate.

With respect to employment, you can see, again, we've got a really big range, but you'll notice CEATEC there is the big outlier. I think we can all understand why that is. At 34,000 jobs, that's quite a few. The low end there is Kenmore at 3,700. So you've got about the biggest range of of outcomes here that that we have in this analysis.

Des Moines is on the closer to the middle there at at 6,200. So, you know, certainly getting there. But, again, the the growth rate over the last six years in this instance is close to 5% annually, which is the second highest growth rate among all these cities. Only Maple Valley has a higher growth rate at 6%, but still, I think that's a great trend, something really exciting. And you can see there that Pure Cities on average grew at 1.3% annually, so you're really outpacing them in terms of in terms of employment growth.

And it should be noted that these are jobs that are inside of city limits, not people in the city who are employed. So just a just a caveat there. Pure city average, by the way, is just under or just over 10,000. So being at 6,000, you're you're kinda close. And and especially with the with CTAC in there as an outlier, I I think we can probably say if we remove them, you'd be much closer to the to the center.

This is where it gets even more exciting, at least for me again, which is this is this breaks down employment by type. So this is just a share of employment in each of these cities by type. And we really have collapsed these employment categories down, but it it helps to illustrate, and I didn't wanna overwhelm you with, like, 15 different employment categories. Like most of these cities, this city is a primarily primarily a service economy, and that's true with most cities in the Pacific Northwest. Incidentally, the leader of that service category in Des Moines is health care.

I'm sure that's a shock to anybody, but still a cool little data point. The the rest of this, you know, it it it plays out pretty predictably. There are more many more industrial jobs in Mukilteo and CEATEC. Again, I think we can all sort of understand why that is. But the thing that I I do wanna point out and something that's gonna be a theme throughout this presentation is the retail share there, which is just the second component of the column, 6% pretty low relative to the rest of the peer cities.

And, of course, that's sort of a double edged sword. You know? You don't want to entirely base your economic development strategy on retail because it's a low paying type of job by and large, but it does drive sales tax revenue. And, again, we'll we'll see this theme a couple more times throughout the presentation, so, just something to consider.

Tim, I'm sorry to interrupt you. Before you leave that slide, can you go back real quick?

Yeah.

I've gotten a couple questions about the 6% public administration. Public administration is the term that includes really any government workers, including school teachers, administrators, city workers, postal workers. But what drives up ours a little bit is the FAA.

Sorry, Tim. And and thank you for interrupting. And, also, I would like to just say, if you've got questions as we go, please don't hesitate to interrupt me because we're gonna go through a lot of this, and I don't want it to get lost in the in the sauce. Household to jobs ratio. This this sort of reiterates some of what we've already seen here.

What this measures is the number of households occupied households in the city to the number of jobs. So the higher the number here, the more you are primarily a a a population center and not as much an employment center. So, you know, comparing those two numbers, the the population to the jobs that we have already looked at, not shocking that Des Moines is is close to two households per job in the city. And you can see we're we're sort of in the middle part here. The average among the peer cities is 1.4 households per job.

But, again, we've got CTAC is a pretty strong outlier there, so that that drives that number a little bit lower. Point nine households per job statewide, which, again, just as a comparison. But yes?

The the household per job is not house, but anything that represents a whole living space.

Correct. Right. And that's that's occupied living spaces too. So doesn't include your your vacant housing units, but just represents that there are you know?

Yes. While we're interrupting, is it 1.4 or 1.9?

So the city for Des Moines is 1.9 households per job. Okay. The average of the peer cities is 1.4. Sorry for the the lack of clarity there.

No. It's fine. Thank you.

Great. Any other questions on this slide? So just to kind of emphasize this point a little bit more, and and, again, this this sort of harkens back to that retail economy component. We have a we have a pretty high ratio here. So and and that does tend to drive up costs because more citizens, more costs, more jobs, you've got more revenue by and large, and we'll see that too in the second half of this presentation.

Another way to look at this is from the US Census Bureau. They they do what's called an inflow outflow analysis. So this is sort of an odd set of data here, so bear with me. But what we're looking at is that red bar there is the inflow, which is the number of people who come into the city to work. So you've got a relatively low level there. Not shocking because there's there's just fewer jobs here than there are in in most of the peer communities. The live and work folks, that's people who live here and work here, so relatively low percentage there. But, again, looking across all these cities, it's really not outside of the realm. And then your outflow, those are people who live here and work outside of the city. So relatively high share there.

We're not breaking any news with this because we've already covered what this says, but just another way to sort of couch that data. Moving on to land use and land area, and this is sort of a blunt force piece of data here, but gross acres. So just the size of the city. We're looking at the number of acres here. 4,015 here in the city compared to the Pure City average of 4,727.

We're right there. And, of course, again, you've got your outliers. But the more interesting data with respect to this is land by zone. So here, again, lot of data, so bear with me. But what you're seeing there is on the bottom part, that single family detached residential. So most of these cities are primarily single family detached. That's standard across all of the communities I've ever worked in. If it's not if it's below 60, it's kinda shocking to me. That second component there, parks and institutional. So think your parkland, golf courses, government land, schools, and, of course, in the case of SeaTac, the airport.

The the next column component there, multifamily and mixed use, so high density residential with some commercial components in there. And then at the top, commercial and industrial. So we we had to collapse those categories down because as you can see, it's kinda small. And to show that in in, you know, two broken out components there would be a little messy. In Des Moines, the that 5% is made up two percent of commercial and 3% of industrial, so pretty solid split there.

But, again, you'll see within the peer cities, especially there at the top end, we we do have a lower share of commercial and industrial, so less employment land inside of the city, again, harkening back to that theme that we've we've discussed. The next land use component is median home value. And when we're talking about the median age and the trends there, I remarked on the fact that this is a relatively affordable city, and you can see why here. You're certainly on the low end of this, and I think that that's really great. With housing as big of a point of emphasis as it is in this region right now, having an affordable housing economy is really quite remarkable, especially in the Puget Sound.

And you can see here, we've got just an enormous spread with SeaTac at 543,000 on the low end and then Kenmore all the way up at a million dollars per home there on the high end. And you have multiple cities there that are that are either there or they're knocking on the door of a million dollars per per unit. So I think that this is something that the city should be really proud of, you should emphasize, and and, you know, just find ways to continue to to pound that advantage in because I think it's I think it's pretty impressive. The average here, 747,000. So you're way below that, which I think, again, is great.

And this does include really any ownership homes. So you're talking about single family detached, but you're also probably talking about townhomes and and those kinds of things, condos. But still, that's true across all these communities, and and so it's it's really quite impressive. This is total property tax levy by by city. So, again, I'm I'm throwing a couple data points at you, so follow me here.

The low the the the bottom part of the column there, that's the city's property tax levy rate. So you're second from the bottom here, which, again, I think helps that affordability argument. But, unfortunately, your other districts are quite high, and it pushes the city up to being the second highest in total property tax mill rate. So this is the rate that's charged per $1,000 of assessed value. So you're you're in a bit of a conundrum in this case where your city rate is low, your other district rates are high, so it's it's sort of difficult to figure out what to what exactly to do with that, but I think you do have some room to run on your city rate.

Of course, over there on the right, I'll just acknowledge that West Linn is quite an outlier. It's an Oregon community. They don't have sales tax, so this is really the only way that they fund the city.

Yeah. The other district rates, so it's like the fire?

Like Fire, yeah, port, you know, county to the extent that you've got something like that, schools, that kind of thing. And, yeah, the average city rate is a dollar a dollar 24.5 per 1,000 assessed value. So, again, compare that to your 85¢ per 1,000, you're you're doing great. And we did exclude Westland from that.

Yes. Not to, but, offline, could you provide a complete list of the those other things that make up that number? Yes. Thank you.

And you want that for all cities or just for Des Moines?

Oh, just

for Okay.

Alright. Okay. That's a lot easier. We're starting to get now into more of the finances, so we're touching on on budget here. What we're looking at here is property tax revenue per acre.

So I wanted to normalize these figures to just recognize the fact that a bigger city is gonna have more property, is gonna have more property tax revenue. So, again, we're we're right there in the middle, and and that's a great place to be, I think. You do have pretty major outliers here in CTAC and Edmunds. I note that CTAC has, if we go back, quite a high mill rate there at $2.17. And then for Edmunds, they have a property an overall property value that is really, really high.

So that's the reason that those two are so so far out outside. And, of course, West Linn, again, we we don't have sales tax down in Oregon. So I think that this is, again, another argument for this being a pretty affordable city, and that's great. Now we get to sales tax revenue, which is this is sort of the culmination of that repeated line about retail employment and this kind of thing. You can see what I'm controlling with here is per capita, so per resident.

We're bringing in a 131 per resident in in Des Moines, and that's quite close to the bottom. It's well below the pure city average of $269 per resident. Again, this is this is reflective of that lack of retail employment in the city relative to your peers. When I controlled for retail and restaurant employment, the the drivers of this, it's it almost miraculous how it normalizes across all these cities, and it's it's effectively $2,500 per job for the city in terms of in terms of sales tax revenue. So something to consider as as we think more about land use and and our economic development strategy.

Again, don't wanna emphasize retail too awful much, but it does drive your revenue in a in a pretty significant way. Now we're looking at general fund expenses per residents. We are, again, below the pure city average of just about $1,100 per resident. The nuance here is that all of these cities provide different suites of services. And for those that have the larger general fund expenses per capita, we're talking about cities that just provide way more services for their residents like, you know, they provide police directly.

They provide fire directly, these kinds of things. So I think the takeaway here is not necessarily that that we we have room to run, more so that you've done a really good job of kind of consolidating city services in such a way that you've you've done well to keep your expenses low relative to your your peers. And another way to sort of illustrate that is city FTEs per 1,000 residents, which is what we're looking at here. We are relatively high. The average for peer cities being 4.7 FTE per 1,000 residents, and we're at 5.1 here.

But, again, you know, you've got some variability in terms of the services that are provided by each of these cities. So I I I think that that's important to emphasize. And then finally, with respect to the benchmarking, we've got the services that are provided by all these cities. So my table here shows if it's a white circle, they don't provide that service. If it's the orange circle, they do.

So here in Des Moines, we're obviously providing police. We don't provide fire, water, or sewer. And you can see that half of the cities don't provide any of those things. So we're doing a little more than than half of the pure cities, but you can see also that we've got four cities that provide police, water, and sewer. And you've got Mukilteo, which provides fire and police, which is sort of an outlier there.

Of course, those cities that don't provide fire and police, they're contracting with a fire district, a county. For the police, they're contracting with the sheriff's department. And then with respect to water and sewer, those are usually provided by districts, so as you know. So the conclusions from the benchmarking analysis are that this is a really good list of cities to start with depending on the subject because I think the the real use of this data is going to be to help inform those policy decisions as we talked about earlier. When we're looking at a particular decision, you might bring a couple of these data points to bear just to frame it up a little bit.

When you do that, you're probably this and probably more for staff than anything. You're gonna wanna make sure that you're looking at cities that are good comparables. And as we noted, Sea Tac, West Lin, and Washoeghel, they're sort of outliers in a lot of ways, and so maybe those are good examples of things that you wouldn't always include. Filtering by services is a really good way to start with that, especially when you're looking at adding more services for the city. The lack of retail employment shows up quite consistently here.

So as we transition into this land use discussion in the second half of the presentation, you're gonna notice some some more of that theme pop up. The ideally, this data will will transfer all of this to staff that they've got the database that we put together. And, hopefully, that gets maintained. It's added to as the years go on, and so those trends get longer and longer and kind of more substantial. And maybe other data points get added.

For instance, we really think that the King County urban growth capacity report is a great resource for cities in the Puget Sound, and and that can really help to inform, especially future looking decisions. But other components are vacant land data to the extent that that becomes available, utility rates just to compare where you stand relative to your peers, you know, impact fees to the extent that you've got those, and then long term growth trends as you go forward. So that's the end of the benchmarking analysis. Any questions from council or plaintiffs? Harris. Yeah.

So why Muckle Teo?

I think probably because for one, they're a waterfront community. And for two, they're they're just a they're a community in the Puget Sound, and and the population profile, I think, is kinda close.

No. I just I just as a part time Muckle Tony, and I just I was just curious as to why them as opposed to Mountlake Terrace. Or I'm I'm not trying to put you on

Oh, sure. Yeah. And I I like Muckletonian. That's fine.

And they have just spent decades trying to work with the Port Of Everett to do their waterfront, and and just be curious if like, if you had any kind of scoring. So it like, what made them stick out if you had any. I'll just the other thing is I was struck by the one slide where you mentioned CTEC as being, like, 49% institutional. Oh. And I was like, I don't think of the airport as well, it is an institution.

But but my my point is, and I've nagged the city manager, but they are very comparable except the 900,000 million pound no. But but my point is, I haven't figured it out, but there should be some way to tease out to make to normalize. And I don't know if it's parking revenue or if it's all of the restaurant dough or something, but there should be some way to tease out the airport impact such that and then look at them as a normal city about our size, similar demo, and so forth. Like, what they would be if they were us.

Yeah. In so many ways, there are like, in certain instances, you can see, oh, yeah. These are very comparable cities.

Yeah.

But then you see something like this or the employment graph, for instance, and you realize these couldn't be more different.

So I'm just I'm just if there was something in your spreadsheet where you could just, like, whatever the you know, you hip kids do a macro or something and just do something in ten minutes that made them look more like us. I I I think that would be interesting. If not, you know, that's it. I'll

do my best.

Thanks, man.

Any other benchmarking questions before we move on to the land use analysis? Okay. So this is a review for those of you who were on council last year, so forgive the redundancy. But we felt, especially dovetailing with this discussion around benchmarking, this is a good time to bring this back up and discuss the impacts of zoning discussions in the city, especially as it relates to downtown. So this this is the approach that we took.

We we started with our key objectives, which is to basically just model out at a 30,000 foot view the financial impact of different land use types on the city. And the the idea there is to just provide staff with a tool that can give you as policymakers a sense for the fiscal impacts of zoning or siding or approving land use within the downtown. What we did here is identify basically three separate typologies of development that we expect to see, you know, in downtowns throughout the Puget Sound, mixed use residential, multifamily with surface parking, and highway highway commercial is is sort of shorthand for more or less commercial in general retail type development. And then we also included single family detached in there just as a basis for comparison, of like the null case. And then we we identified eight catalyst sites inside of the city, And those are by no means the complete universe of sites that this tool can help analyze, but we started there just to get a sense for you know, to to prove the the tool's use.

I'm gonna stop you there for a second because I just wanna emphasize this to our planning commission and to our new council members. They're gonna be talking about examples of properties in our city, but we're not gonna drill into that specific property. That so those you'll see pictures of those specific properties, but we are talking about a model that could be applied to general properties like that. And so let's not dig into the particular history of that one plot. It's it's a model that we are using to talk about cost usage, etcetera. Thank you.

That's right. Yeah. Thank you. And so just some examples, just some visuals of these different development typologies there on the top left, you've got the more mixed use residential with retail on the bottom floor and and residential on the top. Top right there, we're looking at Surface Park multifamily style development.

Bottom left, I mean, probably the nicest highway retail I could think of, and then bottom right there, your single family detached. So our approach included to basically isolating some examples from within the city that exemplify these different development typologies. So we took Highline Place 2 as our mixed use residential example. It's a pretty aggressive mixed use residential example, but but I liked it a lot. We used Woodmont as our surface park multifamily.

We took both the Walgreens and then the Burger King Popeyes that I think both are on Pacific Highway as our highway commercial examples. We did two there just because they each sort of captured parts of it that we felt like were pretty indicative of of that development typology, and then we just took a sample of of various single family detached throughout the community. Then gathered other key data like population and average household size by types. So just to reflect the fact that single family detached is gonna have different occupy occupancy typologies than than multifamily, basically, just larger homes with more more people in them. Took a look at the housing action plan, gathered assessed value and and property tax rates from King County Assessor, and then looked at employment density using industry standards mostly taken from Puget Sound Regional Council.

And then finally, we took data from your budget, analyzing three years of budget over time, isolating down the revenues and the expenses that we think would be moved by different development types, and then accelerated them appropriately to reflect inflation over the course of several years, and then finally calculating average impact per employee and average impact per resident and then per assessed value increase. So the example that we'll talk about tonight last time we talked about two. I'm just gonna do one tonight to kind of illustrate the the use of this model. The seascape property down on 2 26th And Marine View, 24,000 square foot lot, so not a huge one. Currently zoned downtown commercial, which we sort of expect most of these properties to be zoned, and an existing property value of 642 or 24,000.

So, you know, appropriate for a vacant parcel. And just to point that out again for for those not familiar, the red square there, that's the one that that we're talking about. So we're gonna go through each of the different development typologies and talk about the fiscal impacts, both the expenses and the revenues. So we're gonna start with mixed use development. So this includes 49 new apartments and then 7,600 square feet of commercial.

Cost to serve is 841,000, so pretty high. That largely reflects the fact that we're adding so many new residents on such a small property. But then the revenue gained is 858,000, so, you know, we're we're making it breakeven, $17,000 over a ten year period of time, pretty much a wash. But I will note that the second table down there on the bottom is the one time revenues that we expect to see from this type type of development. So we're talking about construction, sales tax, and then traffic impact fees, close to half $1,000,000 there. So, you know, stick that into the that ten year forecast, and you're talking about a a pretty good windfall.

And this one, did wanna make a comment because I believe last time there was a lot of, like, surprise that, oh, we thought, you know, mixed use would do better. So a couple things to keep in mind on this. The pit is actually a pretty small parcel when you really think about it, and a development that only has 49 apartment units is much smaller than what we would typically see. So I think some of this is the scale makes those numbers maybe not as impressive as we'd hoped. So I just keep that in mind that the parcel itself is is pretty small, and the amount of retail it would be including at the 7,660 square feet is pretty pretty small as well. So that could change depending on the site.

Yeah. Is is there a way to sort of model this with more residential, more apartments, and how that might play out?

Yeah. Absolutely. The the the model scales based on the size of the parcel. So if we were talking about a one acre parcel, for instance, you'd see this, you know, substantially increase, I think.

But but that that wasn't what I was asking. A parcel this a parcel this size that went up higher and up for more apartments?

Yeah. It would just be a a matter of tweaking the the assumptions in the model. So Okay. Yeah. We could we could certainly do that.

I I think councilmember Bloss.

Your increased revenue, does that take into account the new residents are gonna

be shopping to the shops, the restaurants? No? You're way ahead of me. I was I was gonna mention the fact that, you know, with all these new residential development types, it's really difficult to quantify in a, you know, in a responsible way second order impacts like that. But you could imagine that 49 new apartments that bring probably close to a 100 new people to downtown, those people will all patronize businesses downtown. And so you're gonna have second order impacts on sales tax, for instance, and, you know, patronization of local businesses. So I

think it's important to keep in mind cause that makes this number much better than it looks right now. Absolutely true.

Yes. Councilmember Harris.

This may be a Tommy question, but when is there a is there a standard industry standard for, like, when you collect traffic impact fees, how long are they designed to last? Like, the life of the road surface? Or you see where I'm getting? Because you kinda have to amortize it over because you only get the money once.

I I mean, unless Tommy has a magic answer, I think we'd wanna get back to you.

Okay. Okay. No. I just thought you had some kind of you know? Thank you. That's it.

Council member Des Moines.

I did wanna ask about the ideas of parking when we're describing these different projects. Are we assuming it's side street, on the street, or is there some type of magical algebra for in the structure?

Certainly, that would be development by development. In this instance, we assume underground parking. Okay. Any other questions about mixed use? Okay.

So we'll move on to surface parked multifamily developments. And in this instance, because it's surface parked, you're only adding 17 apartments relative to that that 49 that we were seeing earlier. So fewer dwelling units added, but you'll notice that the net fiscal impact to the city is has gone negative here. The cost to serve this is 209,000. The the the new revenue generated from it is 151,000 over ten years for a net negative impact of $58,000.

That just reflects the fact that, again, it costs more to serve residents than it does jobs. And that there is no sales tax impact for this type of development because there's there's no there's no retail component to it. Of course, to your point, there would be second order effects, but, again, difficult to quantify that. We do have a $150,000 worth of onetime revenues, but that's much lower than the the mixed use largely due to the fact that we're just adding fewer units. And then highway commercial, again, probably better to just call this commercial because it's not on a highway.

But in this case, we're adding only 3,300 square feet of new business. That's about half of what the mixed use assumed, again, because of parking. But in this case, we're we're net positive by quite a large amount, just under a $100,000 to serve it over ten years and $225,000 worth of revenue over ten years for a net impact of a $129,000. This really underscores the the importance of that retail sales tax. I I I feel like I'm I'm being evangelical about it, but but this does sort of underscore that.

And, again, we're looking at about a $150,000 worth of onetime revenues here, so similar to that that surface parked multifamily. And then our our sort of null case, single family detached, adding four units, not shocking there. And net negative impact, although, again, we're we're kind of at that wash. It's the same impact only on the other side of the ledger from the mixed use development. $64,000 to serve versus $47,000 worth of new revenue over ten years for a net impact of $17,000, and only $48,820 in onetime revenue.

So, again, this is not really meant to be, you know, one of the recommendations. It's it's just to show relative to to other types of land use. So the findings from this are that mixed use and commercial uses often are going to be more net positive for the city. You're just you're adding more units with mixed use. You're adding much more revenue with commercial.

I will note that dense residential development does fuel downtown commercial. So difficult to to quantify that impact, but important to note and and shouldn't be overlooked or discounted. Just difficult to illustrate that in this model. Employment uses just help the city's bottom line. I think that that at that at this point, we've we've probably gone over that enough.

Surface park multifamily and single family detached are net negatives, although they're, you know, they're they're still important to the to the ecosystem of the city. One time revenues shouldn't be discounted, and they're pretty significant. So something to really consider and and keep in mind when we're looking at this type of stuff. And this model is just a tool, not a set of land use recommendations or or anything like that, but but just something to illustrate to decision makers the the impacts of their decisions. Any questions overall? Council member Harris.

So getting back to that second order thing, has any work been done that can provide guidance on, like, radius to downtown? Or because we have done some things, like we built a hotel and we built a business park, and one of my predecessors bet me a lunch that all the FAA people would head down the hill. But it turns out they can actually also turn left as opposed to turn right. And so I'm just I'm not I'm just asking, is there, like, existing work that sort of gives us some sense of how close you have to be to a particular area before that kind of thing starts to kick in? Because I can tell you a mile is probably too far given past experience.

And I'm sorry if that sounded but but if that sounded a bit snippy, but there must be some kind of way to understand how close you have to be to the action.

I'll find you something. My instinct is quarter mile because it's gotta be walkable for people. But that's just off the top of my head.

No. I love, I love that kind of thing. Thank you.

Any other questions? Thank you very much. Thank you. Always a pleasure to to get to to see you all, and, hope you have a great rest of your meeting.

Thank you.

Alright. Our second item is gonna be a lodging tax overview process funding approach update from assistant city manager, AJ Johnson Newton.

Thank you, mayor. My name is AJ Johnson Newton, and I am back up here again to talk about lodging excise tax, provide a lodging excise tax overview to get you briefed on the process and to talk about a a funding approach that we will be taking back to the LTAC. So as I mentioned, tonight, we're gonna look at the lodging tax requirements, the process, review how the funds have been used to date for signature events, and then outline our thoughts on next steps. As a reminder, this is basically like lodging tax one zero one. It's collected on overnight stays in the city and hotels and short term rentals.

Collection rate is going to be point 8% beginning in April 2026. It used to be 1%. As you can imagine, the revenues fluctuate based on what's happening with travel and and, you know, and lodging. The fund use is restricted by an RCW, and, the simplified version of that just says that the funds may only be used to support tourism, promotion, and community events. And the eligible entities, ones that could apply for the fundings, is cities, towns, counties, convention, visitor bureaus, nonprofits, and public facility districts.

The lodging tax, in order to have consideration for funding, has to go through the lodging tax advisory committee. And so the way that that kit committee is comprised is there's two members that represent lodging businesses that collect tax. So, traditionally, a member of Four Points has served on the board. There's, two members that represent organizations that are eligible to receive funding, And right now, that is, Mackenzie Myers from the quarterdeck and Doug Myers from Edward Jones. And then one council member who serves as the chair, and that is our mayor.

And we have one staff liaison assigned to the committee, which is our, Ed Armijo, which is our grants management analyst. And so the process would be if someone was interested in applying for funds is that they would submit an application. The LTAC would review the request in a public meeting, and then the LTAC would make the funding recommendation, but ultimately, the city council makes the final decision on approval of funds. And so, that little icon to the left is a is a plug. We are currently have two vacancies for representatives from lodging businesses, and so, we have been doing outreach.

We've sent out letters. We're calling. So just wanted to mention that if there are applicable lodging businesses that are interested in applying, we do have vacancies. So on February 5, I came to the council to talk about our signature events and asked the council essentially if there was interest in us, moving the bulk of the funding that we typically ask for from the lodging tax to one signature event and sort of spreading that over multiple events. And the council said that, yes, there was interest in that.

And so that is what basically brought me up here tonight. So as I mentioned, right now, funding decisions are currently made on a case by case basis. So if LTEC gets the application, again, and they, determine if that the application meets the criteria for the funding, and then they make a recommendation, and we bring it back to council. Funding historically has supported city led tourism activities, and there's really no defined allocation framework for distributing funds. And so what we're looking for is trying to develop a more balanced funding approach given that there is interest in the city, doing more multiple signature events that we are looking to work with the LTAC to decide if they would be interested in looking at designating a portion of lodging tax funding to support city activities and then designating a portion of lodging tax funding for other entities that might be interested.

So for an example, without getting ahead of the work that the LTAC needs to do, The way that we would approach this is if there was a $100,000 and the council was interested and they said, you know, 60% of the funding that's in the lodging tax fund the city could apply for, not guarantee funding, but that the city could apply for. So that would help us on our end with budgeting and planning. And then we would like to allocate 40% of whatever is collected for other entities to be able to apply for. So, again, this just really allows us to designate a portion of the fund. It's not intended to guarantee any of the funding because we regardless of the group that's applying for the funds, they would still need to meet the criteria.

And the other thing is that that's really important to us is even though historically the city has been utilizing the funding to support our tourism activities, there's lots of other entities out there that are are doing that same work. And so this would also give them an ability to go after some funding to help support attracting visitors to the city. So it sort of shares the work between the city and other entities that are interested. So next steps is we'll go back to work with the LTAC to develop a proposed funding allocation model, and then we will bring that LTAC's recommendation back to counsel for further direction. And that concludes my presentation. Thank you.

Time for questions. Council member Simons.

Yeah. Is historically, what has the distribution of those funds? Has it always gone to the city? Has it gone to private? Is there a split? Do we have a clear sense of that, or is it just is it varied all over the place?

For the period of time that I looked was about five years. It looked like it was primarily, been the city that has applied for the funds and received it.

Thanks. Council member Harris.

I don't know how to frame this, but see, it's a lodging tax thing. And what has always been, I guess, since your community enrichment, it's like we have an events planner, and then we have a lodging tax thing. And I

it

seems to me that then we're basically saying that the LTAC is functionally speaking sort of the event central for you you you understand? You're essentially a nexus for money for events throughout the city versus because what I've what I've always noticed and it just one more second is just there have always been a number of different conduits by which events, food food trucks, different things get planned. And I have always thought it might be a good idea to somehow centralize them. And I'm just how does what you're doing sort of connect with the with this group connect with other events planning kind of things that we might do.

So, AJ, can you talk a little bit about examples of community events that we just fund out of the general fund because they don't have a regional draw? And then distinguish that from the type of events that do bring in a regional draw, which is a tourism generating event?

So I think a real easy example is the egg extravaganza. Right? That is something that's really designed for our residents. We're anticipating necessarily that that would draw visitors from outside of the city into that event. So those types of activities would not likely meet the criteria for us to be able to apply for lodging tax because the idea is that you are not only put using the funds for something for residents, but that you're drawing people outside of the city into your city for tourism related activities.

Versus, like, the July 4, particularly when we had the drones, The idea was that the drones were a draw. We know that lots of other cities are not necessarily doing fourth of July activities, so that may be of interest from someone from Tacoma or someone from SeaTac coming into the city, Des Moines specifically, to to watch the Fourth of July show. So when we're, when I'm up here talking about us going after or applying for LTAC funds for events specifically, it doesn't have to just be for events. It's tourism related activities. But when I'm referring to it about events, what I'm talking about is signature events intentionally designed to not only, accommodate our residents, but events that would attract people from outside of the city to come.

No. I'm I'm I'm just thinking about if I were an another organization or whatever, I'm just it just seems like I don't know. Somehow this somehow this needs to be somewhat centralized, integrated. I don't know the right word. But I apologize, and that's it.

Other questions? Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Right. It looks like we have arrived for new agenda items for considerations. Now is the time for the purpose of proposing new business items for discussion on a future agenda. Any recommendation will simply need a hand raise from three council members. Do we have any council members who have a new business item they would like to propose?

Alright.

I'm gonna take that as a no. Now it's time for our council member reports, which are limited to four minutes. And I've been told that we might be using a timer today, and the tone that you get is a thirty second warning. So let's go ahead and start with council member Steinmetz.

Great. As my computer is updating, but who knows when that'll end? I did have the pleasure of attending the Des Moines City or Chamber of Commerce board meeting the other night where they were reviewing a lot of what they have planned. They're getting a lot of good response. I found it to be a well run meeting with lots of good input around it and a pretty big board.

So they've got a lot of people who are interested in helping, and they are getting, you know, really focused on how it is that a chamber can operate successfully in the city of Des Moines and what they can deliver to their to their members. So that was very positive. That's about it, though.

Thank you. Council member Harris.

Thank you. And just in my day job with STNI, I attended the Port of Seattle's annual audit session, and in a minor win, the port is adding their grant system to their August auditing agenda. And I have been talking about basically freeing up more money from that institution for quite some time, so I am hopeful it is I think it's people would be very surprised that the number of organizations throughout this city, throughout the area that benefit and should benefit from that largesse. Let's see. And two small things.

The state of Washington is, for the second year, offering an ebike rebate. It's a lottery system, but the, rebate is really sweet. So I urge everybody just search ebike ecology rebate. And, if you haven't ridden a bike for a while, an ebike is transformational. It's like a microwave.

You don't think you need it, and then you get it, and it's like, wee. And the other thing is, I was reminded we get requests about HEPA filters. If you are a family in Des Moines, you can get a free HEPA filter through the University of Washington, d e o h s, right now. Just, again, search UW d e o h s, healthy kids, healthy schools. They have the grant money. So, go get them. And, with that, let's see. I think it's gonna be Passover and Easter, soon, and, happy, both of the above to all who celebrate. Thank you.

Council member Desmonia.

Thank you. I was a speaker on a Zoom meeting today for the LEAD Learning Collaboration group. There was over 20 people on this Zoom meeting, and we were discussing how LEAD can help with the businesses and with neighborhoods. I am very familiar with LEAD. I believe chief Bo also is familiar with LEAD, and it is a program that I believe Des Moines will be participating in.

We will have we will have a representative for Des Moines. I'm tripping over my words. Anyway, so I did speak today about the experience that I've had with in the past and the experience I'm looking forward to with having LEAD in the future. And, these people were from all over the state, Colorado, Chicago, New Orleans. We were all sharing our perspective of how we've worked with LEAD in the past, how the LEAD has helped us, and what we're looking for with working with LEAD in the future. So I see this as a positive, and I'll be sure to keep everyone informed on how that program is working and when it gets to be implemented here in Des Moines. Thank you.

Councilmember Netting.

No report. Thank you.

Councilmember Voss.

Nothing to report.

Alright. I'll go to deputy mayor Gene Oxiger.

Thank you, mayor. Excuse me. Just wanna remind everybody again, the city manager did touch on it earlier, but the organizing group for Indivisible, which is organizing the No Kings rally on Saturday, they're expecting their biggest crowd ever. They're they've to date, they they generally have people on Breedview Drive, but this time, they're expecting it to be so large that it will also include 7th. So anybody driving through town, please be careful.

And I'm it's truly amazing how, you know, organized Indivisible is. They've got they've got it down pretty much pat as to, you know, how they're gonna handle things and hope things go well. Oh, yes. The time, it is Saturday. It is this Saturday, the twenty eighth, and it's gonna be from noon until 2PM. Thank you.

Thank you. I attended a couple of of meetings. I'll just highlight a few. One was a Highline Forum organized by the Port Of Seattle, which centered much around our preparations around regionally for the FIFA World Cup. And there are many activities that are gonna be hosted, including several from our neighbors in Burien and Sea Tac, but I also want to make sure that folks know that we're offering a free event for The USA versus Australia game on June 19 over at the Des Moines Theater.

I'm looking forward to it. And then you can head right over into all the things that will be happening in July this year as well. I'm hoping that this will become more of a regular event, but I am hosting coffee, chat, breakfast type items with the mayor on Monday morning, the thirtieth. And the first one is gonna be at 9AM at Elena's Cafe. So if you'd like to come by, please do.

I'll be there from nine to eleven. And I will also be holding some other sessions at various times, whether it'll be an afternoon, evening, or a weekend to accommodate people's working schedules and, their daily lives. And so please, keep that in mind. Information will go out in the city manager's report. I believe it might even go out in the next day occurrence.

We'll see about that. But I do hope that you come out and tell us more about what concerns you and or or things that you want to congratulate the city on. And, I hope to see you on Monday. I wanna say thanks again to all of the folks who, are here tonight because they're volunteering and giving back to their city and serving in a capacity that is, I'm sure going to be exceptionally glamorous. But it's just a testament to how much commitment you all have because it's probably not gonna be glamorous, but it's necessary.

And I think that if you're like me and you think code revision is lots of fun, I love code cleanup, then it's a good time. But more importantly, I I just appreciate your initiative and commitment to giving to this place that we all live because I think that's something that we all share no matter what neighborhood you're in or no matter what phase of life you're in. I can I won't personally it it's not me personally, but I can say my block contributed to the lowering of the, average and median age group Just this month, my neighbor gave birth to a second child? So we're all very excited about that. Right now, we're gonna head into an executive session.

The purpose of this executive session is to discuss property acquisition under RCW 42 dot 30 dot one one zero one b. This executive session is expected to last twenty minutes, and that means we'll be here until no. Eight? No. Yes.

08:05. Thank you. No formal action will be taken at the end. Who have waited so patiently for all of us. We are at the end of our meeting.

Our next meeting will be a city council county count no. County. City council committee of the whole and study session, which is going to be on April 2 starting at 05:00 in 2026. Is there a motion to adjourn? Oh, I get to do it. No. I move that we adjourn. Second. Alright. All those in favor? Aye. Thank you very much. Have a great night.