City Council - Regular Meeting

At this time, I'd like to call the 04/23/2026 Des Moines City Council meeting to order. We'll go to the pledge of allegiance. Council member JC Harris will lead us in the pledge. Please stand if you are able.

Thank

you. With that, please let the record show that all council members are present. And we're gonna start with the proclamation today, for our Southtown opening day voting proclamation. Is there a motion? Councilmember Nudding.

So moved,

mayor. And a second? Second. Council member assignments. All those in favor, please raise your right hand. Say aye. Aye. And that is unanimous. I'm gonna go ahead and read that into the record. Whereas the city of Des Moines wishes to recognize and celebrate the twenty twenty six South Sound opening day of boating season.

And whereas the Des Moines Yacht Club annually hosts the South Sound opening day of boating season ceremony, which gathers the many South Puget Sound yacht clubs along with Des Moines residents and their surrounding neighborhood communities to participate and enjoy this ceremony. And whereas this ceremony advocates for the safe enjoyment of boating and as such recognizes and supports the upcoming National Safe Boating Week, which is May 16 through the twenty second. And whereas this ceremony promotes the Des Moines waterfront amenities serving the Pacific Northwest boating community, now therefore, the Des Moines City Council hereby proclaims 05/09/2026 as this year's south sound opening day of boating season and urges all residents to join them in this recognition, safely. Signed this day at the 04/23/2026, Yoshiko Grace Monsui, Mayor. And I understand we have a guest speaker as well, Commodore Walstrom.

Thank you, mayor, city council. My name is Dan Walstrom. I'm the Commodore for the Des Moines Yacht Club, and just just wanted to thank you for that proclamation and for your support over the last many years. You know, we've been a staple here in the community really since 1957 we've been in existence. And we started out as a bag of bonder outdoor motor boat club, and we've really evolved since then.

I tell you that. But we're all about boating and bringing people together. We are a boating cruising club. We have roughly 300 household members, and, we attend a number of different things here throughout the, year. Last weekend, we were at the Daffodil, Marine Festival in Tacoma Yacht Club, and we're at 21 clubs there. And we're representing Des Moines in the club there as well. Next weekend, we'll be at the Seattle Yacht Club representing Des Moines Yacht Club there as well. And, of course, South Sound opening is coming up May the tenth, and everybody here is invited. It's a public event on Saturday. We'll have an opening ceremony and then a whole bunch of festivities throughout the weekend.

So once again, thank you for your support, and we look forward to seeing everybody at our event.

Thank you very much.

Thank

you.

Is there any correspondence received from the public that have not already been reviewed by counsel? No, mayor. Thank you. Now is time for comments from the public. We ask that you keep your comments respectful. When I call your name, please come up to the podium. You'll have three minutes to speak. State your name and city of residence. And I'm told that the amber light will come on when you have thirty seconds remaining, so please be aware of that. First, we have Richard Nagel.

My name is Rich Nagel. I'm from Redondo Beach, from that area. K. Thank you, mayor, council, and staff members for allowing me to speak. I'm here to convince you to include seniors' quality of life under the frequently stated safety umbrella.

And if you state that it already is, then action is necessary to address the problem facing Redondo community, which unlike other communities in Des Moines, is primarily an elderly community. So when safety dollars are allotted to Des Moines, I want to include the protection of our quality of life. Safety often should be defined by age groups because risk, judgment, stress vulnerability change significantly over the person's lifetime lifespan. I specifically want to focus on stress aspect of safety, particularly in the older adult. Chronic stress is a major safety issue for elderly adults acting as a catalyst for severe physical health problems, cognitive decline, and reduced immune response.

Cardiovascular events. Chronic stress can lead to heart attacks or strokes. Cognitive decline, high cortisone levels due to stress increase the risk of dementia and, Alzheimer's. Weakened immune system make elderly adults more vulnerable to infections and reduce the effectiveness of vaccines for flu and pneumonia, which are recommended we take. Severe sleep disturbances, stress induced insomnia prevents the body from repairing itself.

I moved to Redondo in the 2025 and quickly became aware of the illegal traffic problems of speeding cars with loud exhaust. I attempted to document the offenders in action by capturing numerous videos that include license plate numbers, and I quickly learned that some of the speeders' cars don't have license plates or have dark covering to obscure the plate number, both of which are illegal under Washington state law. I sent them to law enforcement hoping this would be an assistance to help law enforcement bring this under control. I stopped doing this since I got acknowledgments, but it didn't seem to reduce the activity. My frustration, I asked AI what other communities are doing to address speeders and loud, exhaust and street takeover.

Some of the answers are include police crackdown, tech enforcement, which is like noise cameras and speed cameras, and then harsher penalties. This is important. Harsher penalties for vehicles, impounding vehicles like they do in California, and by the way, in Pierce County, Tacoma under the RCWs. I've got the numbers here. I'll save my time and not read it. The documents that I sent to the city manager and members of the police department have some good suggestions. Under the current financial restraints, noise cameras and speed humps and impoundment seem to be viable options. Thank you so much.

You. Mister Dave Kaplan.

Madam mayor, council members, I'm here wearing two hats tonight. First, my work hat, with the Port of Seattle. Just wanna share. You should have received an email from, me yesterday regarding the, announced thirty day, advanced notice for release of the Sustainable Airport Master Plan draft SEPA EIS on May 22. There'll be a presentation to the city council excuse me, to the, port commission on Tuesday, May 26, and also at the Highline Forum on the twenty seventh.

I'll be approach approaching city manager and staff on scheduling a presentation for the city council as well if you would like that after the publication date. And we will have, we have a website up, sea-samp.com, where you can look up information there in terms of the timeline on when really, the publication will come out. Now wearing my personal hat, I noticed on the agenda tonight before I came here that there were three recognitions for city staff. And as a former council member or mayor and and as a resident, I wanna acknowledge, first that, I can't believe, assistant police chief Kevin Penny has been here twenty five years because I remember when he was an officer. So time flies, as they say.

Scott Wilkins, 30, and, the commitment by his family, both both he and Bonnie, to the city has just been amazing beyond belief. And, Scott, thank you for thirty years. The fact that he started here a year before I first got elected to office is kind of unnerving. And then I I can't say enough about Tanya Seabury and what she's meant to this community. Our community service officers, both of them, but particularly Tanya, in terms of what they have dedicated themselves in terms of making our community safer for everybody, whether it's been my synagogue and the things that we've had over the years, whether it's been my condominium, where I live, everything that she does in terms of engaging with the public.

She's one of the best faces, the best best faces for the city put forward in terms of public safety and engagement and responsiveness. And with that, I just wanna say it's a well deserved retirement. And I I can't believe it's taken this long, actually. But but I'm really happy for you, and I hope you get to enjoy it. And and for for all three of you, thank you for your decades decades of dedication to our community.

Thank you. Chris D.

Hello again. My name is Chris Della Rosa talking about flock cameras. SB 6,002 is now a new law. Exactly twenty four days today, it's a a legal reality. I have a direct question for the council. Is the Des Moines in in compliance with the flock laws? I don't think so. I think you're not in compliance with the law for a couple of reasons. Has the data been changed from thirty days to twenty one days? Has that been changed yet?

If not, you're in violation of the law. We have five cameras now that are in violation of the law. Last time I was here, I reported on four. I found another one. I haven't looked at all the bus routes yet, but I'm sure there's other cameras that are in violation of the law. What are we gonna do about it? You're in violation of the law. And, also, we need to verify to make sure the back doors and the side doors are totally cut off. There's other cities around here. They're shutting their stuff off because they're finding out that they're being compromised.

And then lastly, Tukwila, just I think it was Monday. They paused three of their cameras because they're not they're against the law. So they paused three of their cameras, and we have five. Did we pause them yet? Did we put a hood on them yet? I don't think so. I've been standing out in front of some of them the last couple days showing the community that they're being surveillance for twenty four by seven. Anytime they drive their car anywhere or even walk. They're out walking their dog. They're on camera.

They're being surveillance. Will Des Moines be the last city city standing and violating the state law? I asked you to immediately shut down the cameras. They're not safe for community. They're not safe for people that are high risk that are worried about not going to stores to get food, medicine. Daily activities are being compromised because of these flock cameras. Sure. You might find one car one stolen car, but there are family members being torn apart right now, being ripped apart, either their mom or dad not coming home because of these flock cameras. Do the right thing.

Thank you. Christie A.

Hello, and welcome. Thank you for this opportunity to speak. My name is Christy, and I have lived in Normandy Park in Des Moines my entire life. I bought my house in Des Moines twenty four years ago, and I built my life here and raised my son here as well. We've had we have an exceptional community in Des Moines. I love, love, love where we live. I felt very lucky to raise my son here as he's thrived in this richly diverse community. I've also worked for the Highline School District for nineteen years with the last eight years being at Des Moines Elementary. This year, I am blessed to have 21 beautiful children in my classroom. And yesterday, we celebrated Multicultural Day.

My class alone represented 10 different countries around the world, and 14 of my 21 students participated in the parade of nations to showcase their heritage. They were all so proud. The evening event is for families to come and share and learn about new cultures. Historically, this is a very well attended event. Of my 21 families, only five showed up this year. Our immigrant families are scared. They don't know who to trust. They don't know if someone in their family is going to be kidnapped. Simply put, having flock cameras surveilling Des Moines feels like a threat. Why are we doing this to our community?

Traffic like cameras photograph you after you have broken the law, and that is to give you a ticket because you broke the law. But flock cameras, they record and collect your personal information through invasive surveillance. That certainly does not make me feel any safer. The law also states that flock cameras cannot be near schools, religious meeting places, or medical facilities. Everyone should feel safe to go to the doctor regardless of sexual orientation.

Everyone should feel safe to attend their place of worship regardless of what they worship, and everyone should feel safe to go to school and attend their children's school. Demons, do you know where your cameras are? I know of at least three, potentially more, that are out of compliance. Please rectify this immediately. Our personal data is being extracted from our corrupt presidential administration and being used for nefarious reasons. Please be more like Linwood, Renton, and Tukwila and suspend flock cameras in Des Moines. The bottom line is we know better, so please do better.

Thank you. Judy Grande.

Hi. My name is Judy Grande. I live in Des Moines. I'm here to talk about the Washington senate bill six zero zero two and Des Moines flock safety cameras. I attended the Tuck Willis city council meeting last Monday. As individual as individual members were speaking about the bill, I realized they didn't seem to know where every flock safety camera was in their neighborhood in their city. How could they start to think about being in compliance with the new requirements if they didn't even know where the city where the cameras are? So my question to each city council member is, do you know where the 15 flock safety cameras are in Des Moines? Have you been have you been given a map of where they are? Have you found each of them while driving around?

Were you surprised when you realized how often you have driven by a camera and not knowing not knowing it was there? How did you feel when you realized that? Did you see what's in the surrounding area to see how we are in compliance or out of compliance? SB six zero zero two states automated license plate reader cameras cannot be near schools, places of worship, food bank courts food banks, courts, immigration services, or health care facilities. This new law is the one of the most restrictive in The US.

How can you be sure Des Moines is in compliance? Therefore, I'm requesting that you turn off the flock safety cameras. And then one more piece of data from the Des Moines Police Department flock transparency portal. If you wanna guess how many vehicles have been recorded in the last thirty days, 50,000, 100,000, Try 235,969 vehicles were recorded in the last thirty days. So I just wanted to say thank you also for this time to speak.

Thank you. Could I have Beth Cooper, please?

Hello. My name is Beth Cooper, and I live in West Seattle. What brings me here tonight is that my best friend lives in Des Moines, and she is an undocumented immigrant. Her two children are my godchildren, nine and 15 years old. This has been the hardest year they've ever had.

They can't sleep at night because they're terrified of what's gonna happen to their parents. These are hardworking people that have been in this country for twenty five years. They work three, four jobs just to get by. So please do not allow them to build, the government to build a facility in Des Moines to house undocumented people. Thank you. Thank you.

Can I have Karen Chardman?

Good evening, mayor, city council, city staff. Karen Sharpman, Des Moines, Washington. I'm here on behalf of the Redondo community this evening to speak about safety on our roads, speeding and extreme vehicle noise from modified exhaust systems. They're happening every night, and the issues are escalating. We actually had a serious incident in Rodando just today on Beach Drive, a speeding car crossed onto a sidewalk that is trafficked by pedestrians. Fortunately, no one was hit. Ran into plowed through a neighbor's yard. Perpetrator got out of the car, ran away, was picked up by a friend, is gone. Police were on it. Hopefully, that will be addressed.

It's a serious issue. I have three points this evening. Point one, traffic safety legislation must be must be prioritized. We must improve traffic safety enforcement. Speed camera enforcement needs to be strengthened, and noise cameras, noise detecting technology is needed. There are solutions out there to solve the problem. We're dealing with explosive gunshot like noise on a daily, nightly basis. It startles pedestrians, distracts drivers, and are increasingly leading to serious confrontations between residents and and the drivers. And we've had a number happen just in recent weeks. This is a public safety issue.

Point number two, camera enforcement is part of a solution to the budget challenges. Right now, related to modified exhaust systems, reckless driving patterns like speeding and cruising are being broken on a daily basis with little consequence. Using technology allows enforcement to be consistent, scalable, and cost effective. It improves safety and enables law enforcement to focus their time more effectively. Point three, these issues, speeding and noise, are the top two concerns in our community based on a recent survey.

Redondo is a highly trafficked destination. It's a heavily visited waterfront. We have a newly rebuilt pier opening. Thank you, council, very much, and thank you, city. And we hope soon, maybe, a restaurant will come back, and that will be wonderful. But if we do not address the issues now, we are scaling a critical safety problem rather than addressing it. In closing, we have two asks. First, include noise and speed enforcement legislation as a formal city lobbying priority for the next session and partner with state delegation to advance it. We are here to help. Second, continue short term actions using existing tools, including speed humps and targeted enforcement.

This is a known problem with a clear solution path. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Margo Lindsey. Oh, okay. Thank you very much.

Here you go. Here.

Well, let's talk a little bit about regional committee reports. We are currently running committee of the whole meetings. However, council members do rate serve regionally on other committees. Do any council members have any items of interest to the public or to the council? Council member Harris.

Thank you. The regional transit committee met in sort of a what do they call that crossover episode with the full King County Council to discuss FIFA. It's amazing how much energy everyone is putting into FIFA when FIFA itself has been somewhat indifferent. But the material thing I wanted to mention is that there is a certain amount of energy in creating ongoing wayfinding. The one reason that there's been sort of an indifference is that overwhelmingly, people who get their tickets from other countries, they're managing them by a phone app, and they are encouraged to map out their entire itinerary from hotel to venue to, suggested restaurants and recreational ideas, they're not they're encouraged to follow that rigidly rather than going out, you know, and wandering around and looking about other options and opportunities.

And that's coming from FIFA itself. So I think there is an energy on both sides, the SCA, other cities, and King County to think about ongoing as we expand light rail and transit in general, providing way finding, providing more signage, and more just advertising about when you come off of the airport, when you get on light rail. Here are things you can do that might not necessarily be on that formal itinerary. And I think that's a good thing. There's just very broad support for it because it hasn't happened now because of that notion of just using your phone and, you know, following that agenda.

So that's it.

Deputy mayor Oksager.

Yes. Thank you, mayor. I'm the council representative to the South King Area Transportation Board, and the group has been meeting. One of the big issues that's coming up right now is that Sound Transit is looking at how to trim a $35,000,000,000 shortfall budget. And one of the projects that they're looking to trim is the Boeing Access Road Station.

This was in the original proposal for Sound Transit when it was approved by the voters '90 back in '96, I believe. And in subsequent elections, it has also been on the docket. Now they're trying to remove it. And so this is important to Des Moines in particular because as we saw in the recent study with regard to passenger ferry and where the employment centers are, that Boeing Access Road Station is serving a lot of the people. It's estimated that there's 75,000 jobs in that area.

And it is right now, the way the system is set up, it's five miles between stations, between the Tukwila station and the I believe, the Phillips Street station. So this area is not being served, and it's it's an area that could greatly benefit our our workforce. The skateboard, we met yesterday to draft a letter that will be coming to the council soon, and they're asking for our support. And I'm hoping to get on the agenda that we can that the council can either support or decline to weigh in on whether or not we wanna speak to the Sound Transit Board as to

whether or

not they cut this project. Thank you.

Thank you. Alright. Moving on, we have our city manager report,

and I'm passing the meeting to our city manager, miss Catherine Cadry. We have a action packed city manager report tonight. We have some blasts from the past up there.

Holy smokes.

Our that's our son and his wife, Dane.

That's just how much we've aged him. Yeah. So so tonight, we have three employee recognitions. We're gonna start with Scott, and then we'll move over to assistant chief Penny and Tanya. And then at the end, we'll pause so the council will come down and take pictures. Okay. I had to write this out, Scott, because I wanted to get everything

just right.

Okay. It is truly an honor to recognize someone who represents the very best of public service, Scott Wilkins, as he celebrates thirty incredible years with the city of Des Moines. Scott started with us on 03/18/1996. I feel like that must be pretty close to then as a harbor attendant. Over the years, he worked his way up through harbor lead, maintenance manager, assistant harbor master, and in 2019, he became our harbor master.

That's a career path that says a lot about trust, leadership, and also about the fact that we clearly didn't let him go anywhere else. I had the chance to look at Scott's original application from 1996. It's not electronic, so HR had to really dig it up. His objective was seeking a challenging and growth oriented public works position for the city of Des Moines, which would enable me more community involvement. I'd say 30 later, mission accomplished.

I don't know though if you realize just how much community involvement he was really signing up for. To work with Scott is to work with a consummate professional. He leads with integrity, shows up every day with an incredible work ethic, and above all else, delivers exceptional customer service. If you've spent any time at the marina, you know exactly what I mean. Scott has the rare ability to solve a problem, answer a question, and make you feel welcome all at the same time.

And this comes from a genuine love of this community. Scott is a Des Moines native. He was born here, raised here, and has dedicated his entire career to serving this city. He and his wife Bonnie, who is also one of our legendary employees, have built their lives here along with their kids and their in laws, two of which are here, and now their grandkids. Des Moines isn't just where Scott works. It is who he is. Scott, your warmth, your dedication, and your steady presence have made a lasting impact on this organization and this community. And I can say personally, my career is better off for having had the chance to work with you. So congratulations. We are so proud.

You get the boat when you retire, so not anytime soon, okay? Scott loves to do public speaking. It's one of his very favorite things. So, do you wanna say something?

I don't wanna say. I just thank you all. Thank Catherine, everybody here.

Aw. You know, this is my favorite thing to do. So thank you. Aw. I'm so pleased. Now I'll go back. But

we're not done. So next up, we have a retirement and recognition of assistant chief Penny. And chief Beau is gonna handle those, but I'm gonna take a moment of personal privilege to recognize both of them. Where's look. There's Tanya. Okay. Was like, there's Kevin. I saw Tanya just a few minutes ago at her celebration we did at the police department. And, genuinely, when I am around in the community, I hear about a couple of employees. People be like, oh, you know so and so. You know so and so. I truly hear about Tanya Seabury and Scott Wilkins almost more than anybody else. So Tanya, and always in a good way. Always in a good way. Sorry.

I should have said that. So Tanya, I just can't thank you enough for, candidly, the program you've built here. You know, you made this program. So we are so grateful for you and who follows you. Like I told you, that was really big shoes to fill. And assistant chief Penny who's not going anywhere. So I'm like, listen. I get these mixed up, these two. What I love about Kevin is that you

are a real cop's cop.

Like, Kevin, I mean, he is like he tells you it exactly as it is, and he, like, doesn't mince words. And I really like that because I feel like you always know you're getting such, like, candid honesty from him. And I've also seen Kevin be, like, very genteel with some citizens. He doesn't always come off that way. But he and I went to a community meeting once and sat in these people's living room. And even though you were in this, like, very comfy chair getting covered with questions, Kevin didn't didn't lose his cool one, but he answered everyone with courtesy and professionalism. So we're super lucky to have you. So chief?

So ditto. So the next slide pictures of Tanya? There we go. We gotta have some pictures of Tanya up there. So I got here two years ago, about the same time as the city manager, actually. And everywhere I went, all of my due diligence in meeting the community, there was one universal thing everybody said was, whatever Tanya says, do it. Like, had it all figured out. Tanya was the source of all community connection. It was some of the best advice I ever got. I have gone to more events with Tanya, done more weird things.

I have been yelled at. I have gone to, like, some of the spiciest community meetings in the entire world, and she throws me under that bus. And on the other side, I've been to meetings, and she's like, man, you're just gonna read books to kids today, and it's fabulous. And, really, that's what it's all about. So much like the city manager, we went through all your old employee files. So I think it's important to know what her first performance evaluation had to say about her because we should always go back in the dawn of time.

I think I have this in here somewhere.

Actually, it's a it's testament to thirty years ago, somebody really seeing who you were. She seems to have a calming effect on people. CSO Seabury has on occasion had to deal with hostile, irrational people, mostly in the form of arrestees brought in by patrol officers for fingerprints or booking. CSO Seabury has a way of dealing with people in which she treats them with respect, courtesy, and a genuine calm. Even even the most hostile appreciate this quality very much.

I think it speaks well to her abilities and represents our department extremely well. She enhances everyone's officer safety. I think that's a powerful message to a thirty year career that thirty years later, I would write almost the identical words about you. Unfortunately, the evaluation goes on. And it later says, CSO C. Barry is very easy to supervise. And I would say that that part maybe might not be the same. Twenty five years later, I think she actually supervises me. So I think it's little bit of a reverse relationship. I really got thinking about some of, like, our profession and, like, modern policing and, like, Robert Peel really sets this.

What is community policing, and what is the relationship with the community? And you literally are the relationship with the community. I mean, you are somebody that, as a police chief, I look up to. And I think that's a very powerful thing when you walk in and and look up to people who work for you because of really things you can learn from them and take from them. I got thinking about, you know, looking for your placement and filling your shoes. I'm like, there's no way. Like, you can't you can't fill her shoes. There will never be another. Just it will never happen. I think you literally have done so much for this community and served with such honor that I personally am blessed to have a year and a half with you.

You threatened to retire on day two and day four and day nine. But the reality is I is literally you've left such an amazing mark on this community, and it'll be here forever. Whoever comes in behind you will be somebody doing a job, but they will never fill your shoes. So, I just wanna share that, feedback from the council. I know you guys were at the party earlier. If anybody would, would like to say anything, I will be quiet now for a moment, if there's anything you guys wanted to say.

I'll go with JC Harris first. Councilmember Harris.

I can't say this about any other employee in the city, and this is no disrespect, but I'm a little nervous. Most of the comments about your impact on the community are abstractions, but I cannot think of a single imp person that I have known here in my thirty years that has had such a meaningful impact midway, reach out To Moines. I just dozens and dozens of parents, teachers at the schools. It's yeah. It's you know, I hate that word unquantifiable, but it's just unquantifiable.

And I I I cannot thank you enough. That's it. Yeah.

Council member Nutting.

Thank you, mayor. I just wanna recount that the first time I met Tanya Seabury was when we were still having block parties and shutting down streets. And it was at Water Tower Park, and I had just moved into the neighborhood twenty four years ago maybe. And she was at the community service table and got me basically started on my career path looking to be, a block watch captain, how I can help my community. And she's just an amazing person, and I've loved working with her over the last twelve plus years.

And and she has just made an impact on this community that, again, as chief said it, those shoes will never be filled. And thank you so much for your service.

Councilmember Simons.

Yeah. I'm gonna echo a lot what was being what's been said. But, you know, my wife and I raised our two boys here, and you've interacted them with them several times. I don't even know if you know that. But you have a way to reach out to the children of this community that is really rarely seen. And it really leaves a wonderful impression upon

them,

and I think it makes our community that much safer and warmer, the fact that you've been doing that. Additionally, you know, I've gotten to know you a lot through the block watch, national night out, and everything that you're doing to promote safety and community together as one thing. And you've done a wonderful job. You will really be missed. Thank you very much for your service.

And you do get a sale as the official retiree.

Hi. Hi,

Kevin. Now it's your turn. Assistant chief Penny told me he hates every minute of this, so I will make this as painless as I possibly can. We're here to celebrate twenty five years. That's an important accomplishment.

Not a lot of people in our profession actually make twenty five years with a single agency. In the time of bouncing around between agencies and chasing the next shiny object, you'd spent twenty five years here serving this community, and that means a lot. Your first day of work was 03/01/2021 as a lateral officer from Algona. You have promoted throughout this department and been here at basically every assignment within the city over the course of your time. You became a master police officer in 2003, a sergeant in 2018, a master sergeant in 2020.

In 2024, you became the assistant police chief. I did the same thing we've been doing with everybody and looked through all your old files and find some of your training records because that's always where some of the best material comes from. And it kind of is something the city manager said. There's a whole other side to Kevin that you don't see until you get to know him a little bit. There's a lot of layers.

Kinda like a kinda like Shrek. Kinda like an onion. Officer Penny will always offer to do that little extra to help out another officer. If he's talking to a citizen or in talking to a citizen that he's dealt with, they all have the same thing to say. He's done every single thing they expected and always just a little bit more.

That has been my experience since the day I came to the city as your police chief is he will always do anything you ask of him and a little bit more. There's no amount of hours, no amount of horrible projects I give him, that he will not deliver on. So in law enforcement military custom, we have coins made, challenge coins. And a challenge coin is a way of honoring a special moment or a special relationship or a special body of work from somebody. So in honor of twenty five years of service, we went ahead and had a special challenge coin made for for this moment. And in tradition, the way to do this is a proper handshake transfer.

Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir.

Appreciate you. Thank you. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you for the thank you for the time.

Alright. We're gonna do a quick photo op with everybody. Alright. Next up, just as amazing, but no sailboat or plaque will be given. Jeff Friend has our preliminary fourth quarter year end financial report.

You saw this in my email, and Jeff will talk about it a little bit. This is still preliminary because they're still doing year end closeout, but he'll talk a little bit about that.

Hi. Good evening, mayor. Good evening, council. Jeff Friend, finance director. Usually, the room clears out after I start speaking, not before. So so this is what we emphasize as a preliminary report based on data that was available on April 6. April 6 is because that's when I started working on the report. There's been a couple of questions, that have come up from various sources that I'd want to, discuss before we launch into the slides. And as I mentioned, this is based on data as of April 6. We plan to come back June 11 with final numbers after the annual financials are completed, and we'll have the final numbers.

And, historically, the reason that we're coming with a preliminary report, this is the first time we've done this, last year. The question was mentioned, brought up that, you know, we wait a long time to see the the financial numbers for the fourth quarter and for year end. I believe that was, June. So in response to the council's interest, seeing numbers earlier, we now have a preliminary report. So two of the questions, that I've gotten, one is how much will these numbers change?

And there's couple aspects to that. First is it's hard to say. We can have through the review process something unknown pop up like an error correction. And if that's material, that'll materially change, the report. But then there is also what is known. So what I can share that I know, that has happened since, we drafted this report is that I did run numbers yesterday. There was very little change. Then after I ran them, we posted an entry that moved a 150,000 of franchise fees from the payment fund into the general fund. So that did impact revenue. It went up about 150,000.

I'll note that in the presentation. We also today, recategorized $200,000 of cash from restricted to unrestricted, which is good because that helps our our reserve numbers. And then also, today, we were had moved from about 45,000, I think, in this report in the red to $212 dollars in the black. So, the takeaway really isn't what each individual number is, but in the preliminary report, we're gonna share issues and draw a general picture, which we think will be consistent throughout to when we present final numbers. The other question is, can we get these numbers earlier?

Even though we got them earlier, this year, why not earlier next year? So there's pieces to this as well. So there's a trade off. So historically, as I've mentioned, finance has leaned very heavily towards accuracy. The trade off would be between timeliness and accuracy.

So we've only presented final numbers. And because that's a 100% accurate, and that makes finance feel really good that we have very solid numbers we're bringing. When I started working here five years ago, we presented the fourth quarter report at the July, and we've gotten better every year. But then again, it's still a decent amount of time between the end of the year and, say, June when we have numbers. So we have to ease our judgment with that trade off.

So if we were to come earlier in the year than, say, right now, in this particular year, we wouldn't be bringing anything significant because the number's not stable, and we still have too much work to do. So the point being, there's a process when a year closes that we have to go through to close out the year. That involves a lot of review and also involves relying on some external tools, that the state craves for pensions and for other post employment benefits, and we have to wait for those to publish. And so one of those publishes at the January, the other one at the February. So by the time we wait for that, we're already in March.

And so it's it is a long process. So we need to decide when during that process to bring, you know, preliminary numbers that have actually some value, as far as the overall city's financial condition, to council. So having said that, we're bringing the report forward now because we feel we've done enough year end that we can come bring a report to council and to the public that says, here's some issues, and we've highlighted them in this report that give a consistent picture of what's going on despite if one number is up or down or whatever individually. But the overall story is consistent. So I just wanted to address those couple of questions because it was we got them from all different directions.

So having said that, we'll move into the report. So based on the data in the report, I think one of the main takeaways really is that things are very, very close to budget. So revenue here, the dark blue lines are the budget. The light blue lines are the actual. So revenue, you can see actually, both revenue and expenditures are about $26,800,000, budgeted.

And on revenue and expenditures, each are about 26,500,000, dollars each. So revenue came in under budget, and expenditures came in under budget. But if you compare, the actuals, the revenue to the expenditures, you can see that the expenditures exceed, the revenue by about, like I said, 40 some thousand dollars. So when you're looking at a budget of about 26 and a half million dollars or $26,800,000 and the difference is about 45,000, That's what we'd call immaterial. It's a very small amount.

So, really, takeaway is, like, things are very tight, and there's not much room for error, but we are our expenditures are under budget, and our revenue is slightly under the level of our expenditures. General fund revenue, this chart shows different revenue categories. The green means it's 0% and above, budget. The yellow dots on the right would be between, I guess, point 1% or whatever is below zero and, 5%. And if it's over 5%, then that would be a red dot.

So you can see there's a red dot on fees, charges, fines as they were a $194,000 under budget. We'll address that, in some following slides, but that is, primarily due to a decline in red light running camera revenue. And we're also gonna take a look. You see taxes are, like, about 340,000 under budget. As I mentioned, a 150 of that, was posted yesterday, so that actually cuts that in half.

But we do have a significant issue in related to property tax, which we will be discussing. So highlights. This graph, this graph, you wouldn't think would be startling, yet it is. So as you can see, this is our property tax revenue. The actuals are the green line.

The budget is the blue area behind it. And you can see the fourth quarter, the budget was 5,790,000, and we finished with, actual receipts of about $5,470,000. But this is property tax. This is our most stable, reliable revenue source. So being short, like, over $300,000 is not good.

That's not what we expect, and that is usually much tighter or much more accurate as far as budget to actual. So we had to look into this. Like, what happened? Why are we short on property tax? And this is a notable budget variance, and this will be, again, consistent through the final numbers.

So this is year end property tax delinquencies by year. So we got ahold of the county, and the county said, you had an unusually high amount of, delinquencies. Like, well, okay. Looking at it year by year, you can see 2021 through 2024, it kinda hovers around a $100,000. And then 2025, it is $256,000 of delinquencies.

So with, property tax, we tend to we collect that year's levy, but we also collect what wasn't collected in prior years. So we tend to end up right at budget. We didn't, last year in 2025, and we have a really high number of delinquencies. And it's unusual because the process for if you have delinquent taxes on your property, you're really inspired to not do that by the process the county has set up. So the day after your the due date for property tax, and if you haven't paid your property tax, it's considered delinquent.

And the process is you have delinquent taxes. It is declared by the county. They're gonna have a lien on your property. And in three years, if they're not paid, there's foreclosure. And I do wanna highlight the fact that the responsibility for collecting property tax is King County's. It's not the city's. The city does not collect property tax. We receive property tax from what the county collects. So then the question is, what happened? Why did this happen?

And to admit, be honest, my first thought was someone at the county must have retired who was good at collecting property taxes. But it could be also economics. The economy, we don't know. We have reached out to King County, to get a report, to get more information on who did not pay their property taxes. So or why weren't they paid?

And, ironically, they've been slow in getting us that information, because it's April, and they're busy collecting property taxes. I'm hoping to get information tomorrow, and we can take a look, because you can think, like, well, maybe it's people on fixed income. But then if we look at the properties that were unpaid, maybe it's commercial. We don't know. So, but we will be communicating, what we learn, because this impacts our budget going forward because it makes us feel like we can't rely on property tax as much as we have.

Is so this is a very significant issue, and we really strongly desire to get to the bottom of that issue. So, if we look at prior year, property tax receivables, this is, going back to 2019. You see that we have about 321,000 that we are due to receive from the county, and those are the amounts of those levies as of the 2025. So far through 2026, we've collected about 42,000 of that pool of money. 31,000, we have, they've collected of that 256 for last year.

So they do collect it, and it's you know, they do collect it. That's the important thing. So we have these receivable amounts, and the county collects it, and we have to wait. But it's just like I mentioned, usually not $256,000. The other issue that we saw on the revenue side was the red light running in fractions. You can see the data for last year going quarter by quarter. The first two quarters, we were on track with budget, and then it kinda drops off on the third and fourth quarter. We received 866,000. The budget was a million. This is the first year that we've collected less than a million dollars in red light running revenue.

Yeah. I forgot this. I was here. So it is good that it's going down, as it's the result of, safer driving. But as our public works director would tell you, every traffic camera has that revenue trend of, declining over time. And then so, but, again, as I mentioned, it's the first time under a million dollars. Here's And a chart showing the last, five years. 2021 and 2022 is up by 1,200,000, and then starts declining, the next three years and then last year at 866,000. So, again, another issue that we're gonna have to, approach with the budget is, to realistically budget for this level of revenue. Expenditures.

Expenditures across the board, were $244,000 under budget. That's about point 9% under budget. Supplies, were over budget by 7.4%. That was basically a budgeting issue where, we did purchase some software for IT. The budgeting strategy was, thinking that the computer replacement fund could pay for those items. But then when we got into the actuals in in the year, finance decided, no. That's not a computer replacement. That fund shouldn't pay for that. We'll have to put it in the general fund. So that's why it's a little bit high, but overall, we are under budget by, 02/4000.

So in this report as of April 6, the operating income or loss was $45,891 of loss. So general fund fund balance and operating reserves, The municipal code states that the city manager is directed to establish expenditure policies that will result in the general fund unrestricted ending balance or operating reserve of no less than two months, amounting to 16.67% of the recurring operating expenditures for each fiscal year. The general fund unrestricted ending balance may not fall below the 16.67% of recurring operating expenditures unless authorized by the city council. So those are two, different metrics, unrestricted ending balance, which is referring to fund balance, and operating reserve, which is referring to cash. So one of those has to be above 16.67%.

So when we look at fund balance, fund balance includes cash and other assets, which tends to be a higher number than the cash reserve. So this we are at 16.7, percent. Fund balance was 4.3. The threshold was 4.28. It's actually $19,000, that separate those two.

So, again, we are very tight in our numbers. Cash was much lower at 8.9%. Like I mentioned earlier, we did move 200,000 to operating reserves today, so that number comes up. And as we prepare for the, annual, financial statements, we do expect, cash to probably increase a bit as a result of the adjustments that we have to make. K.

Other funds. We're looking at the development fund, Marina and Surface Water Management. The development fund came out ahead $429,000 when it was actually budgeted for a loss. Driver for that was they were significantly over budget on revenue from, planned checking fees and right of way fees. The Marina had operating income of, almost $1,100,000.

The significant issue for the Marina and their revenue in 2025 was the fact that they were doing the l, m, and n dock replacements, so they took a hit with their mortgage, revenue. And that also affected their fuel sales, because there weren't as many boats to fuel up. And then surface water management had an operating income of almost $2,900,000. So here's a look at the marina revenue. Finished about 2.7% under budget.

You'll see there's the fuel sales that were under budget because there was less fueling up than was expected. Marina expenditures, all under budget. So I like I always like to see a line of green dots up there. Surface water management, again, as I mentioned, about 2.9 in operating income for 2025. And that is the end of the presentation.

Council member Steinmetz.

Just a question. The delinquent property taxes, is that something that's unique to Des Moines, or has it happened with other cities around? And what have you done to find out the answer?

Yeah. That's what I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have to find that out. Sorry. My throat's getting dry. Yeah. I'm gonna reach out to other finance departments in our neighboring cities to see if they experience the same thing.

Okay. Yeah. Be it'd be good to know whether everybody Yeah. Seen that or whether there's something happening here in Illinois.

I agree.

Council member Des Moines.

I had a question about the red light, cameras income. I know it's not a bankable income. We've discussed that out loud before. But do we think that maybe this is a trend since we have a bit of a traffic pattern now with the express lanes for 509 and those things? Do we think maybe it's due to traffic flow, or are we eventually learning not to run the red light?

Let me answer that one because we're gonna have a presentation on May 14 all about cameras. But the last thing you said is what's correct. People learn where they are. I mean, the cameras are there even though we're including it in a financial presentation. They're actually for public safety purposes. Correct. So in a way, they're working when your revenue goes down. Right. Okay. But, yeah, that is to be expected over time.

Okay. Thanks.

Council member Harris.

Thank you. Just because I'm that guy, when I saw that property tax thing with the blue and the green, I wanted it to be red just because it looked pleasant. And then I actually read it. You know? I had the screen reader. And so I'm just like, whenever anything is bad news, I'm in favor. Anyway, can you give me an ex you mentioned recategorizing a particular account. Can you give me a sort of a what that means more?

So at the end of every year, one of the things we have to review, particularly before an audit, is, our cash and how we have our cash categorized. So you can have in the general fund in particular, you can have unrestricted cash. So let's say you get a sales tax. That's unrestricted. So that cash, which should be sitting in unrestricted cash, but you might have something like opioid funds from the settlements that can only be spent for those purposes of opiate opioid rehabilitation and whatnot.

So, that's restricted for a purpose, so we need to make sure those balances are correct. So one of the staff person today was doing that review and then did an adjustment to make sure that those balances are correct. And so there's funds that went out of restricted cash and into unrestricted cash.

Okay. I have a couple of, like, little other fun little report things that I'll send you offline. You know? But I I do have a question I wanna say in public is is since I've been doing this, I have noticed there's sort of an opacity regarding the we get the money from King County or the state or whatever, but it seems like then we spend a certain amount of effort investigating, like, why that is. What you just described has not been a unusual situation.

And is there a way to know are all states like this or counties? Or in other words, is there something we should be advocating for since we have our lobbyists here? We're no. I mean, this is a real question. Rather than you having to schlep and and say, hey. What's the source of this delinquency thing? I can imagine a report where they broke it down by escrow mortgages and people who don't. And so you could just have save some time.

Right. I would say that their reports don't drill down that far. And then, I guess, I would follow that by saying when we when it's determined what happened, if we can actually determine that, then we might know, like, if there's something to lobby about if there's you know, once we know what's going on.

Yeah. I just it's just like when the the business park opened, there was this notion of they we did, the mayor at the time did sort of this search because there was this notion that people were confusing Seattle with Des Moines. And, I I just wonder if all states are sort of this one way where you have to reach out to them.

Councilmember Harris, it sounds like, director Front did answer your question. So once we find some more information, he may be able to report back.

I please. I could just add. When I was in Tukwila and they were a little bit short on property tax, like, even the auditors were asking about it. So, I mean, that's, like, what a high profile number property tax is.

K. Thank you.

Councilmember Bloss.

Jeff, I've been bugging you for years to get the numbers earlier even before I was on the council. So thank you very much for doing that earlier this year. It's helpful for us and the council to know I I know they're not 100% correct, and maybe it'll change. But to know the general trend, to know if there's any potential big issues, I think the property tax is a potentially big issue. It's good for us to know ahead of time that's coming. And on that topic, it's worrisome to see. I worry that it could be the first sign of a potential housing crisis. People can't pay their tax bill first, and they can't pay their mortgage. Do you know if that's something we've seen back in 2008 in the state of Des Moines budget? I wasn't in the position in 2008 to know that. Are the records somewhere? I know they're not online.

But We

we can follow-up

on that. Alright. Yeah. And did you say we're $212 in the black for general fund as of today? Is that what you're seeing? Yeah.

On the report I ran today. Okay. That's great news. I had to tell a staff person I wasn't leaving the k off. It's actually $212. Thank

you. Thank you. Alright. Thanks.

Alright. Our next item is about downtown parking. This was done in regards to a request from a council member, and it was really just to talk about downtown parking. We didn't get more specifics than that. So, really, Alyssa's presentation is sort of to give you a baseline. What is the current state of things? And I think what we're looking to find out is, is there something the council wants us to study further, and what specifically is that?

And the total number was based off of how many marked parking spots do we have and how many unmarked, so that's where the wide shoulder area comes in. And alleys are not included. So stalls that are running north to south, there are a total of 270 approximately, and east to west, a 140 stalls available for public use. So this image downtown shows our restrictions. So the blue are all the available parking stalls that we have.

It's a little bit hard to see, but the green, you could see the posted two hour limit and how it's more focused in Marine View Drive, 2 23rd And 2 25th Street. That seems to be the high turnaround space within our downtown core. And some background on this. Back in 2013, the city had an interest on surface parking, which is and they took a look at the parcel north of Athens Pizza. You you're you're familiar with the empty spot.

We did draft some plans kinda exploring maybe a gravel lot to expand parking space, but nothing came about of that until 2017 when the parking demand evaluation thing popped up again, and the city hired Rick Williams Consulting to evaluate, do we have enough parking in our downtown? What they found was re for retail utilization,

it would

they were only using 40 purse 46% of the available parking supply. And for office spaces, only 57% of the total parking within those sectors were used. And the their study found that we are we had a surplus of parking and providing about 2.48 to 3.22 stalls per a thousand square feet of building space. So for the 2026 study, what we did was we used the same sectors that they established in 2017, and we kinda ensured that we had a direct data comparison. So we looked at the same areas.

Luckily, those businesses are still there. So we were able to compare how many parking spaces they have and how many we have now. What we used was the Institute of Transportation Engineer standards for the peak parking, and we observed it during the morning, midday, and afternoon during the midweekdays to create a baseline study. So our snapshots kind of captured 9AM, 12PM, and 3PM, and these were captured by a drone footage with the help of PD. And our analysis so how we did it was we manually counted every single stalls within those defined blocks from 2017 and compared it to what does that look like now.

And and then the following slides will show kinda like how that percentage looks like and a graph of how the difference. So here's a drone footage shot of what it looked like when we were looking at the available parking spaces. This is along Rainview Drive starting at 02:20 third, and 2 25th is right there. So as you can see, at 9AM, these are morning commuters, people that are just getting into the office. There's not a lot of demand for parking spaces at 9AM.

And within that same day, I also took snapshots of the same street, Marine View Drive and 2 25th since these are our high turnover areas. And as you can see, at 12PM, there's an increase of demand. People are going to lunch. There's a lot more traffic. But by 3PM, it's kinda slowed down, but it's still steady.

So on a different day, we see 12PM. Again, people are going for the lunch hour. These are peak demand times. And by 3PM, there is a little bit of a falloff there. And on this one, you can actually see the area that the city was looking at in 2013 of possibly using as a surface lot to expand parking within that downtown area.

So for 9AM, what did our study find? So 9AM, these are the workforce for early morning commuters, as I mentioned. And the different sectors they took a look at are the office spaces, restaurant, retail, and mixed use. And the yellow orange line above it is actually the 85% cap. This is like the Goldilocks zone of parking capacity of, hey.

This is the amount of parking we're kind of designing for. And you as you can see at 9AM, we're not exceeding that. We're seeing a lot of office and retail dominance at 9AM. Low restaurant use, obviously, since they peak at lunch, and there's a steady residential to retail transition. So at 12PM, so lunch rush, there's a demand for restaurant and retail services.

You could see those peak, and it actually exceeded 85% at least for Athens Pizza and also Edward Jones. There's also Dollar Tree that hit 67% by the middle of the day, but we're also seeing office stability of 45 load within office spaces. And at 3PM, we see it drop off. So this is typically normal. Lunch hour is done.

People go back to work. But Edward Jones, it seems like there's people that continue to enter space, and they actually exceeded a 125. So if you had seen the drone footage shot, there was cars parking in spaces where they probably shouldn't be. And that seems to be the only one that exceeded that. Everyone else, as you can see, it's well within their supply.

So what did we see with these results? We saw consistency of demand. So 2026 data shows that our downtown parking occupancy remains below capacity and match the patterns observed in 2017. We do still have on street parking availability, and that has not decreased in the last ten years. The data shows that we have sufficient overall parking.

And as the years move forward, we have more development. We we you might not get the prime spots of Auntie Irene's and stuff. The most traveled area seems to be in that spot, but you can always park a block away, and we have the data to prove like, hey. There's always a spot for you, and it may just be a little bit short walk. And that kind of preps us for that 2028 state mandate that's coming out, which caps how much we can enforce parking spaces for businesses.

But this puts the city kinda like a at a good spot because we now we know that we have plenty of parking. And now as our city grows, there's no fear of, hey. We might have overparking with more residents coming in. So in summary, there's a supply of both public and on street and private off street parking, and we continue to exceed the measured demand. Open it for discussion.

Council member Steinmetz.

Yeah. I I I understand the nine, twelve, and three was the 2017 study, and we wanted to match that up. Any particular reason why you wouldn't have included a 6PM either back in 2017 or now? Is there some engineering standard that I don't know about?

Yeah. Great question. So I referenced the ITE. So they did for transportation engineers, they like to do studies during the midweek and during the peak hours, and that seems to be 9AM, noon, and 3PM midday. So you could see kinda, like, how the transitions falls within those time frames. And yeah.

Yeah. It just seems to me there's another sort of peak around dinnertime when people might wanna go out, get some food, get a drink. And so it would be nice to know what that looked like if we could even do those drone shots again and and even, you know, try to hand count it. That would give us some idea if that's an issue during that particular time frame.

Yeah. Absolutely.

I think that that would be helpful for evaluating. So, otherwise, it's a it's a good presentation that I think is a little eye opening. It's not what I expected, but, you know, I'm glad to know that we we do have plenty of parking. Thank you.

Council member Netting.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you for the presentation. Great presentation, and, I agree with council member Steinmetz. My, to to get some more data on the later hours, my my concern is is what has been taken into account for now that the theater is online with the 300 to 500 people that are seven seven hundred seven hundred guests available. What kind of study has been done with the parking availability for the influx of possibly 700 people that don't carpool? We're Americans. We love our cars, so we drive separately.

Yeah. The city doesn't have data currently that has studied that portion, but we know that the parking has not changed. They were required to add additional parking with the change of the space. But it seems like the parking within that area seems to be leveled off, but we can keep a watch.

We also haven't really had an opportunity to experience those events yet since there actually haven't been any that have had that number yet. So that can definitely be something that we will monitor over the next few months, but it's hard for us to predict until we actually see the theater open and, like, having events.

Understood. Thank you. Great presentation.

Councilmember Des Moines.

Yes. Thank you for the presentation. This is not new territory for me. I've had these discussions in other cities before. And my concern is always that in these inventories and reviews, we're not counting employee parking either. So I I'm wondering how we mitigate that. Is there just a variable number that we add in, or is there something where when the businesses come into town, there needs to be x amount of spots for employees.

Yeah. Let's have Rebecca actually answer that because she can talk about from a development standard how they calculate that.

Right.

Usually, when we planners, when we come up with those standards, yes, it does take into account usually both customers and employees. Different uses sometimes take into specifically employees. For instance, a hotel or motel specifically calls out number of employees. The other uses don't. It's based on square footage. That square footage is gonna take into account the employee space. However, we have a new bill coming that's going to reduce those requirements. Whether the legislature took into account employees or not, I couldn't say.

Okay. Thank you. And then I I did have another question. Moving forward, looking planning ahead for the future, do we have ideas or suggestions about thirty minute pickup spots or some timed areas that are not for for long parking just to get your business done and get back out? Do we have a math problem for that? Or

So as you all know, we recently, a few months ago, did two hour parking. I think it's nights and weekends, Alyssa. Is that right? On that strip, you know, along Rainview Drive. And we've gotten a lot of some feedback from the public that they do not love that.

So I'm reluctant to to mess with that more until we really know what's the problem we're trying to solve, and do we actually have the data to show that we have that problem. That would be my initial answer unless the council wants us to, like, specifically do a parking study, which would be something you know, Alyssa truly went above and beyond with the level of work for this presentation. Like, a lot of hours went into this. But if the council really wants to dive deeper, we need to hire a professional parking consultant to come in and look at that, and that has a cost that we would put into the budget.

I think I think I was referring to also what was being said of what what the rules are already. Is there something in there that states some type of load, unload thirty minute? I'm sorry.

What was So in the new bill that we'll be looking at in the next few years, we are allowed to regulate it says we're not prohibited from requiring temporary or time restricted parking so that we'll have to look at how that will build into the other, limitations that we are limited on regulating.

Councilmember Harris.

Yeah. Thank you. This is not exactly what I it's like it's more than I asked for, but it I never thought there was an capacity problem. Like, I was thinking just the total number of cells in my body. It's just they're just there are expectations.

You know you know, they'll be the person who's like, I must park right in front of that thing. And me being me, I just park across the street. In other cities that have, like, a central parking thing, I'm thinking, like, pulls I don't know why. But, you know, you'll have, a parking thing. And so that just creates the expectation that you're gonna park in the central facility, and then, you know, you're gonna schlep a block, and it's no big deal.

But the fact that we're so organized in like, you're in front of here, it psychologically, people just I'm trying to think of, like, is there something with signage or some kind of city thing where you could just encourage people to say, hey. This is all shared stuff. You know? We're all in this together. And I'm not saying by ordinance, but just by, if nothing else, just a a shared vibe amongst shop owners that we're all in this together some way, and you're maybe looking all puzzled. But

Yeah. I'm trying to I'm trying to think. I don't you know, in the times that I've been driving downtown, I haven't seen any I've I've experienced it in other cities where sign where business owners will put out, like, A frame signs to try and block street signage. I don't see that here. So I don't feel like our community is trying to block public parking for their business.

So if that was happening, I could see a campaign out there to try and, you know, be like, this isn't for your business. This is for the public. So I would have to try and figure out if we truly have that problem and how we could advertise it to make it clear that it's for everyone. You should get out of your car, walk, and whether there's something we can do to help promote that. Because I don't see it as an I've seen it as an extra problem in some communities, but I haven't seen that so much here.

Okay. Just literally every business, yeah, on that stretch from, you know, two twenty fifth and so on just and it's fascinating because their concerns are different, but they all have this kind of a thing that it would be better if there was some way that people could rotate those spots. But, again, their, you know, their reasoning is is different. It's just that there's this expectation that I actually agree with council member. It's a very American thing. It's like I want to be in front of that thing to refill my tanks or to get my

Every business wants the spots right in front of them for their customers.

And so I'm just wondering if there's some kind of thing that

Other

When you when you get that the theater, if there's just something we can do proactively. That was really the impetus for this.

Council member Bloss, and then I'll come back around.

Great presentation. Thank you. Thank you for going out and counting individual parking spots. I've often been asked by residents, what's the plan for parking? There's not enough parking downtown. What are we gonna do about it? Well, we have the data now to show there is enough parking. You may have to park a block away, but we have enough parking. I will echo the other council members' kind of questions about the theater opening up in in the evening, how we're gonna deal with that. And then with the two hour parking, I was wondering if we've talked to the businesses upfront, what they think of it. Do they like the two hour parking?

That was done at their request.

Okay. So they're happy that we've done it now?

I mean, Alyssa spent a lot of time talking to those businesses Yeah. Before, during, after, tweaking. They're getting different signs. But it was primarily done at the request of those businesses there because they were having the people that live in the residential Yeah. Just park there overnight.

So I don't know if

you've heard anything since they've gone up, Alyssa.

Not since they've gone up. It was definitely a mixed bag when I spoke to all of those business owners. Some wants, like, the thirty minute parking space right in front of their store, like coffee shop, for example. They want a quick turnaround. But looking at the whole strip of the parking spaces within that street, it might not be feasible for us or there's comments that from the public of, hey. We actually don't want this there.

Yeah. Thank you.

Council member Netting.

Thank you, mayor. And, I guess my question is and the city manager alluded to that there has been some pushback about the two hour parking. And I'd really like to know, I mean, how quantifiable that is because our already stretched police department usually does not have three people on patrol. They're dealing with stuff on a seven mile stretch of the city. Are are we really enforcing the two hour for parking?

We're not because of enforcement, which is why I think making additional regulations, it gets more complicated. Because right now, we're not enforcing it unless there's something truly egregious, and that waits for code enforcement. Thank you.

Councilmember Harris, your second time.

Thank you. Yeah, after the oncoming death. If people think there's a problem year after year, there's a problem. So in other words, I I never enjoyed proving to people, like, I have the data now. That is just not satisfying.

But just if there were some way on a practical level, because it's such a river of traffic up and down Marine View Drive and, you know, seventh at certain times of day, I a part of it is that people, this is another side of it, just they really struggle getting in and out. I'm not saying there's anything that can be done about it, but if you but you do go in for that quick errand, and then it's not entertaining. And so just, again, if we actually have the the theater thing doing a lot of work, I'm I I watch that river every day, and I wonder how could it be somehow better managed. That's it.

Council member Simons, your second time.

Yeah. Just one other question. Is is there are some private lots that are close to the theater that are pretty shut down by about 06:00 at night. Has there been any conversations about enforcing allowing people to park there, anything like that? Is is that even a conversation worth having?

It it is definitely a conversation worth having. The conversations I've had so far with the theater specifically have been more with the city's lots and discussions on whether they would ideas of busing people from the city's paid parking lot to the theater. My guess is since that's a paid parking, they probably are more likely to discuss with neighbors private parking first. But since it's not at that capacity, they've more looked at talking to us when they start having those bigger events. But until they start getting there, I don't think they were ready for that yet.

Yeah. It just seems to me that probably some creative people are going to say, oh, dark spot there. I bet they're not gonna tell me. You know? Because they in Downtown Seattle, there are lots of Mhmm.

Our code allows for agreements with private properties. And, obviously, if it's not in use, it's it's open for them to make those agreements. Thank you.

Thank you very much. I wanna again say thank you for all the time and effort you put into this. It looks like, again, the amount of parking and demand for parking has not significantly changed since the last study in 2017. We remain about 45% of demand. I think the the 9AM, 12PM, and 3PM also takes into account employee parking because if they're coming to work during those hours, they'll be counted in that inventory that you did.

So thank you for taking time away from the other engineering to talk about this issue. It is a good time to remind folks whether they see a posted sign or not that public parking on the street is public, and it's first come, first serve. And no one has a right to that specific spot in front of a certain business just like you're not entitled to the spot that's right in front of your house if it's public park public parking. And it's just a good reminder to say to folks gently, I know it feels like it should be yours, but it actually isn't. And we all live in this world together, so I appreciate it. Okay. I think it's time unless you had something else.

One super very quick item. I'm sorry. But we have our new fire chief from South King Fire. Chief Woody is here, and I wanna make sure chief Bo sees this. Look at this incredible thing I was brought to put in my office to recognize South King Fire. Slight gift. You know, I I don't think I have anything from PD yet, but this will definitely get hung up. Chief Woody is here. He joined South King Fire in January. He's originally from Federal Way, grew up there, so he is familiar with the South Sound, but joined South King Fire from the city of Kirkland. So I've invited him up to just give a brief introduction and bio as he meets you all and gets acclimated with the community.

Sorry, Ted. I didn't mean to that it it was not intended to do that. Good evening, council, mayor, deputy mayor, and city manager. My name is Ryan Woody, as the city manager stated, and I have the privilege of serving as your community fire chief. So I didn't come prepared to speak to you or present, although I did commit to the mayor beforehand that I am more than happy to come and do a presentation on what your fire department's doing.

I will touch on a couple items for you. Do I have time? Okay. One being we're putting a new administration building into service in the city of Federal Way to create more capacity. You have one of the busiest fire departments per firefighter in the state, maybe the busiest. So we're looking to add capacity for more responders, and we are also looking to do that within the city of Des Moines. And I'm working right now in labor negotiations and with contracts and budget to get bolster our staffing in the north end of our district. And I would welcome any questions you might have for me.

I think we'll be more prepared the next time you come in, and I definitely would like to hear more about that increase potential increase in staffing. Thank you very much for visiting with us.

Yeah. You're welcome. And we will try to have staff more present at meetings, and so we're happy to to be involved in in the community any way we can. So thank you.

Thank you. Okay. And now will the clerk please read the consent agenda?

Item one, approval of vouchers. Item two, approval of minutes. Item three, Tyler Technology permit software service agreement. Item four, King County twenty twenty six twenty twenty seven hazardous waste management program grant award. Item five, Midway Park final design. Item six, fifth and two twelve pipe replacement project. And that concludes the consent agenda, mayor.

Is Motion to approve the consent agenda as read. Council member, nothing.

I move to approve the, consent calendar as read, mayor. Second.

I see a second by, council member Stimus. Does any council member wish to pull an item? Seeing none, all those in favor of the consent agenda as read, please raise your right hand until I call your name. Deputy mayor Oksager, council member Steinmetz, council member Harris, council member Desmoni, council member Nutting, council member Bloss, and myself, that passes seven zero. Alright. We're on to some new business, I believe, and I've got it right this time, that we'll be talking about midway soccer field design, with our civil engineer, mister Alex Johnson.

Thank you, mayor. Hi, council, deputy mayor, city manager, and my esteemed colleagues. Last time I was here, I talked about Midway Park, and everyone was very excited, but there were a few comments about what about soccer. So I come back to you with soccer. In the area shaded in red is a, part of PSC's lot that we currently, lease from them for just to keep as an open field, as kind of a a lawn addition to Midway Park.

And here is a slightly better than napkin, drawing of, an outline of how we would, utilize the field for, either u 12 or u eight, we found were the best utilizations of the space, getting maximum square footage of field, given the, geometry of, the lot available to us. Here is a much better looking napkin of how the soccer field layout, would play in with the proposed, redesign, and improvements to Midway Park. So as you can see, it's on the far side. And that's all I wanted to highlight. Are there any questions or comments on the soccer field?

Council member assignments.

Yeah. Can you explain? U 12 and u eight, what what does that mean?

Under, it's an age range. So those are just, I'm I'm not with FIFA, so I can't get into too much of the detail of it. But it there are certain regulations for those levels, of, like, age ranges and, of soccer play. So

Design of a soccer field meant for

Career. Yeah. It's specific dimensions for that. You know, think of it like a a little league baseball diamond as opposed to the major leagues.

Perfect. That's what I thought. But thank you. I think that's helpful to know. I like what you've done here, by the way. That's the best napkin drawings I've seen in

a long time. Thank you.

It was absolutely all me. No one helped. Thanks.

Councilmember Harris.

Napkin wise, what's the thingy off on the left? Like, you know, it's sort of a it's not a rectangle. It's got this little, like, Oklahoma in our whatever it

is. That

is, just an area of, this Lee's property that you can see is, blocked by, like, the large growth older trees. And so we are, not proposing, clearing trees to try and, like, maximize that space. So that is currently being used, for we're going to put down a small concrete pad for a storage shed for equipment to go in, and then otherwise, it's just going to be a lawn.

And the other thing is thank you. So, you know, you go back a little bit further off of the picture, and then you've got the cul de sac, and then you'd run into I 5. Is there any kind of budget or something involved for, you know, either parking or just is that what is there any plan for that strip? I guess because it's kind of you know, it's dirt at the moment.

Yeah. So, in this one, you can see that we have a sidewalk going, from Midway all the way up past the soccer field. And what's not shown here is that, we would connect to the cul de sac. So the intent, is that between, both Midway Park and the soccer field projects that we would have continuous, French improvements, for sidewalk and provisions for parking, along that whole

It's all gonna be finished. I just because the last people, they focus more on the Western Side, and so I just have to that's

it. Yeah.

Thanks. So between the two projects, the intent is to go from, the first cross Street, 26, I believe, all the way to the cul de sac.

Okay. Super cool. Thanks.

Deputy Mayor Oksager?

Yes. Can you tell me

how much the lease is for that land? And, also, what is the stability of it? Can that somebody should try and put in a data center or something, and we and Puget Sound Energy needs to to, you know, both bolster their facilities there.

That I cannot speak to. I will say my past experience in engineering and working with PSC is that, they like their property, and they like their property accessible. So I doubt that we would ever get a data center dropped on the soccer field, but, looks like my director has a couple words to say on your question.

Councilmember Ossinger, when I spoke with PSC about the property, itself is their primary use for this and the reason why they were unwilling to do a transaction for us to acquire it, which would have made grant funding a lot easier, is in case there's a driver that would require them to expand that, substation. They have no plans and do not anticipate needing that, but PSC plans a hundred years ahead. So twenty years, ten years, five years from now, they could very well say they wanna do that, and that's they wanna maintain that property right. But they are fine with us right now, making these improvements, for the soccer field to use them now. But there is this one of the one of the issues with the project is is that there's no guarantee, going forward.

But they don't believe that they have the need requirements at this time in this region to expand that. It's not in their twenty year plan or their thirty year plan at this time.

K. Yeah. I appreciate that. The the concern you're hearing is about soccer fields, and yet we're putting the soccer fields on leased land. So that was my concern. Mhmm. Checking

to see if there are others who haven't had a chance to ask a question. Alright. Back to council member Simons.

Yeah. This is does anybody know the length of the lease for those soccer fields? I mean, that would at least give us some sense.

It it's because it's a utility, it's actually the term they use as permitted. So it's a permit to use the space, And it's and they can it's revocable at any time.

Alright. Thank you. I think that's what we're trying to understand. Thanks.

Council member Harris.

Thank you. Before I forget, I know you wanted to work on park stuff and well done. This is just really great. It's something that the community has just talked. You have no idea how many people at Waterford and stuff who go elsewhere to play football, and this is just fabulous.

My other question is, is there any chance just because of the noise, there's, you know, the noise wall and everything. But if any just a comment more than a question. If anything could be done to somehow mitigate the noise along the Eastern side a little bit better, just I don't think about it now because it's been vacant, but, you know, anything in the design or whatever that could trees, I don't know what, but that could tone it down a little bit, that would be most welcome. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you very much. Let's go ahead and transition here. We have our item number two, our twenty twenty six legislative session recap. No. I'm sorry. This is a new business, and I don't have that presentation here. Hold on just one moment.

Okay.

Yes. Councilmember Nutting. Thank you.

I'd like to make the motion, mayor.

Okay.

I move to approve task assignment 2026Dash02 with Somos attachment one to provide complete design and permitting services for the Midway Park Soccer Field project in the amount of $49,924 and further authorize the city manager to sign the said task agreement substantially in the form submitted.

I'm gonna give it to council member Bloss. Any discussion? Alright. All those in favor, if you could raise your hand until I say your name. Deputy mayor Oksicker, council member Steinmetz, council member Harris, council member Desmoni, council member Nutting, council member Bloss, and myself. Motion passes seven zero. Thank you. Okay. Sorry about that. Mister Anthony Halstead, come on up, and thank you for coming back to talk to us about our legislative session recap.

Thank you, mayor. Jeff, so so you don't feel bad about so many citizens walking out right before your presentation. I I also represent South King Fire, and my client walked out before my my presentation. So okay. But good evening.

Anthony Hempstead, legislative advocate for the city of Des Moines, and some others, but city of Des Moines is who who we love, of course. Just just going to do a quick recap of, the 2026 legislative session, and, we will then also look ahead to 2027. But first, I wanna highlight, the the extremely good looking counselor in the middle here. I counselor Ochinger came down to for the AWC's city action days, the the this this legislative session, and that that's with the mayor of Olympia as well. And we would encourage, counselors to to take part in that, next year as well.

And this was a very tough year for local governments overall. And we're looking at next year already. It's looking like it's gonna be a tough year as well. And so I think it will be important for the city to engage, of course, with your lobbyists, and legislators, but also with SEA and AWC, because we're we're looking at at a tough year ahead. First off, the the big picture of what was happening this year, again, as you know, I that make up the legislature heavily dominated by the Democrats, supermajorities in in both houses.

And within the caucus, that makeup is is also changing quickly. On on both caucuses, moderates are becoming a relatively rare breed. And and so that that that produces legislation that is very different than the type of legislation we saw just a few years ago. Also, we were looking at a multibillion dollar deficit to enter this session, and and that that overhung everything that was being discussed during this year. And and we we did end up seeing both very substantial tax increases and a lot of other programs were frozen or or cut.

This this is an election year, and and that's a that colored what happened this year as well. I so the entire house, as you know, is is up every two years and one half of the senate. For Des Moines, both of our senators are up for reelection, this year as well. Interestingly, unusually, for the Supreme Court, there's going to be five seats up, this year. Okay.

I by far, the the biggest piece of legislation that that passed this year and what, 2026 is going to be remembered for, for legislative action was the millionaires tax. This is a a fundamentally different, type of of tax than Washington State has had before. It is, without question, it is going to be challenged, via the initiative process, and and so it it could be on the ballot, as early as this year, this November. If not this year, it will be next year, but, but I expect it it will be on on this year's ballot. Also, it's already been announced that that there is going to be a legal challenge, because taxes similar to this have, have been overturned by the Supreme Court, before.

And that makes these five Supreme Court positions that are up this year it makes them extremely important. And and and there's there's going to be small fortunes going into these Supreme Court races, is something different than than you usually see with with, with those races. We won't spend a lot of time on the millionaires tax because there's there are at least two real shots that it may disappear before it actually comes into, into effect in 2029. But I for local government, it isn't good, right now because we we would actually take a a net hit. It would be a net negative financially for local governments.

However, there will be legislation that will, will revisit, what was just passed. They're they're already talking about perfecting legislation in 2027 that will will address a a variety of of the the issues that that have arisen in this legislation. That is a a challenge in a sixty day session where where this legislation came in or a sixty day session, where this legislation came in late into the session as well and then was pushed through, drafted very quickly, a very controversial issue. So still lots of issues to be be worked out. Okay.

Back to the legislative agenda that we passed as the city of Des Moines and what happened, to those issues this year. We're focusing on public safety and really being in a in a somewhat defensive position trying trying to protect the $100,000,000 that was set aside for for public safety in the last session. That that did make it through. And and there's also a lot of attention on with h b twenty fifteen that did pass last year with with a $100,100,000,000, of of actually pushing to to get the money out because no money has actually been distributed yet. And and that's that's been very frustrating for for many cities, in include including Des Moines, on this.

But it progress is being made, but it's very, very slow. And and that is frustrating. We're also specifically looking to to see if we could change how traffic camera revenue was used, and so it was more flexible, than it is today. As we've heard, there was traffic camera legislation, this year, but, but not on the financial side of it. The the legislation that did did pass was controversial.

You know, in public comment, you heard both sides on on traffic cameras today. I and there there was some discussion about finances with with cameras this year, but it would have have been much worse for cities rather than making things more flexible. It would have been taking funds away from cities. The chairman of the transportation committee in the senate, feels very strongly about this, in trying to get more local transportation or camera revenue for the state. So that's, we may be a lot on the defensive again, next session, on trying to trying to protect that.

We will do what we can to try to expand it and, working with with counselors and and different different legislators to to try to get something introduced. But this is an uphill fight, in in in that the the sentiment with key legislators is opposite of what we we would like to be doing. But, but still worth trying, but it it it is not a slam dunk by any means. Airport issues, I again, we we were looking to to do a variety of things. There, several pieces of of, legislation were introduced, and we looked at a potential budget proviso.

Those did not go forward this year. I I I've all already had multiple meetings with, senator Orwell, looking ahead to 2027 on, on strategy and and what we're going to try to put forth. Again, I I think we will be in better better position for 2027, but that but there there will be groups that that are actively working, having different views on the this as well. So that's something that will be very active during the the interim period between now and and next session. Historic preservation, I I there are several state projects or funds that help with preservation.

Those at least did not get cut. So we we'll take that as a moral victory, this year. Also, with the Mosquito Fleet Act, I that made it all the way to the finish line. And on the on the last day, it's, it sank. But I I again, the chairman of the senate senate transportation committee, I there there are issues between him and the sponsor, but it will likely come back in a different form, next year.

And funding, funding in general for local government was, again, a very tough year, in the legislature. I I in in that the state was trying to maximize state re resources and not necessarily help helping out local governments very much. There was one bill that passed that that that made some things more flexible, on on REIT and allowing us to put a local option housing tax, on the ballot. Also, levy lift lifts have extended. And and so that all those things are helpful, but, but not as hopefully as we would like.

The public works trust fund, again, was swept. Somewhat backlog backfilled, but but only only partially. And, again, knowing what a difficult year this was going

to be, for the

first time that that I've worked with the city, we we didn't actually ask for funding, knowing that it was sometimes it's good good not to ask. And so we we didn't we didn't pursue funds this year. So, looking ahead, we've already talked about the millionaires tax, and the Supreme Court races. There's about 15 legislative seats, established legislators who've who've already said that they are not going to be running again for office, and and a few more are expected not to run. And and they will they will make that clear between now and filing period next month.

So there there will be new faces, in in key places of interest for for the city of Des Moines is the current chair of the appropriations committee in the house is not running for reelection. And why that's of interest is Mia Gregerson. Mia Gregerson, who who, is is one of our representatives, is the vice chair of that committee. It's not a foregone conclusion that the vice chair just becomes the chair, but I I but that would be one of the most influential positions, in the house. And I it would it would clearly be a good thing to have one of our our representatives in that in that position.

Currently, we're expecting all of our senators and representatives to to run for reelection. But there there can be surprises. It will be a hundred and five day session. I I and it'll be right on biannual budget. But already, it's looking, challenging that that they're that we're expecting, again, that they will be looking at at deficits.

Education, lots of problems there. And so that's ex the education sector is expected to come in with with a big ask for more money, which is tough in a time when there's already deficits. And, of course, there are lots of federal issues as well. I as as I believe you've heard, we one good thing from the feds, we we did get $850,000 for Midway Park, I I from, from an earmark request that we worked with our our US senators and, congressman Adam Smith. And and so that that that was one good thing, that did happen.

And next spring, we may wanna pursue another federal earmark. Okay. Other things we should think about, since it will be the start of a of a two year bi annual budget, even though it's going to be a a a tough year, there will be a capital budget. So we we probably wanna be thinking about what what would be good to ask for in that budget. It should probably be a relatively small ask, but, but I I think we we should come in with a ask this year, unlike, what we did in the last session.

We're already working on new airport legislation, and we'll we'll work closely with, with Catherine with city manager, Caffrey, and and the council as we develop that. And we may want to be looking at at traffic camera issues as well and and other new local government revenue issues. So with that, happy to discuss anything that that has been brought up or any other issues because there were another approximately two two hundred sixty seven bills that passed the session and a couple thousand that were introduced and died. So there's no no shortage of issues. Yeah.

Yes. Oh.

Council member Des Mone.

Thank you. Thank you for your presentation. I did have a question about house bill twenty fifteen with Monica Alexander retiring and with the state audit coming out about the CJTC. My concerns are the public safety tax that every city is allowed to implement based on the police department qualifying. I don't believe it was addressed. I believe the deadline was simply extended. Is there any information on that new information about how we're gonna get our tax?

We My my close friend

We're actually nearing the finish line on resubmitting. So can you give that update?

Yeah. So we've been working with CJTC on our application. We have the last pieces of it all in place, and they're doing the final submission tomorrow. So it'll be in CJT's hands for approval. They have given almost every agency a punch list of of some finishing items. But, transparently, we we bless some other agencies with what do we call it? When you copy everybody else's work. Yes. That's the way we did most of it. So most of the stuff we know has already been approved, so we expect our punch list to be fairly small.

And they think they have

a hundred and eighty days to respond. I it's a fairly long window they have to respond, but we can continue to collect the tax in the meantime as long as we submit on our timeline and the tax collections go without penalty.

Okay. Thanks. Yes, ma'am.

Council member Steinmetz.

Chief, both before you get too far. Just to just to follow-up, The tax is being collected. It's sitting in an account somewhere. And where is that interest gonna go? Has there been any discussion on that?

We're actually receiving the funding already. We're receiving the funding already. Oh. I mean, because we got the January. I mean, that was in my, I think, my email to y'all last week. We've received the January funds because, you know, rents two months behind. Mhmm. So we are receiving that money right now.

So it's in our account? Mhmm. We get the interest on it?

Well, we're spending it, but if it was sitting there, yes. We I guess, get interest on it.

Okay. Great. That's it. Anthony, one of the thanks, chief. One of the questions I had is the public defense funding. The the caseload standards are still there. There still is no money going to the cities to try to meet these caseload standards. Is there any kind of a work group that's forming to advocate for for this in the

tough session? I not one officially set up by the legislature. And I there there was talk of of that being either a budget proviso or or added to a bill. Even that did not make it through, though. I and and there there were bills.

I I also early version of the millionaires tax had a $150,000,000 that would go to local governments to to help with this. That got stripped out. I I again, this was a brutal year for local governments. And legislators know that this is a big issue, and it is going to have to be dealt with. I I think in the end, in a sixty day session with so many big issues, the decision was made.

Let's punt this to next session when we have a hundred and five days and can look at it in in more detail. I AWC is looking at it, and I I think the counties are looking at it as well, but that isn't a an official legislative work group.

And then lastly, it apparently, it came out there was a study came out today that Washington State ranks fiftieth, dead last in reserves. And that will likely result in the lowering of our bond rating, which will make the state borrowing money more expensive, and it tends to do a snowball, and that'll get pushed down, you know, in there'll just be less money available for local governments. How do you see that particular aspect playing out in the 2026 in the next year's budget?

No. It it's problematic. I and I I right before I put on my own shingle and became HAMSA consultant again, I I spent two years as a senior adviser to the state treasurer where we spent a lot of time on on these issues and making sure that, the ratings agencies had rated, Washington as as as high as you could. But you're correct. Moody's, came out the other day and gave a warning that if Washington State doesn't change its ways, they will downgrade the state.

And, yes, we aren't fiftieth right now, but we are expected to become fiftieth of of 50 as as far as spending down. And, you know, from from a treasurer's perspective, there are lots of issues with this budget where you look at and say, well, that's not how you should actually put a budget together. And so short term fixes that using onetime money to to put into ongoing expenses. And as you know, and and Jeff will tell you, don't do that. But but we have billions in this, this current budget that is that way.

And and that, of course, sets up an even bigger challenge for Biden the next budget. So it's an issue. I and and the budget writers so we would love it if Mia Gregerson becomes chair of of appropriations. That will be a thankless job next, next session too, though.

I guess I think I saw council member Harris first.

Since I am that pandering low rent, politician, this is just the council had a an extremely lengthy, discussion regarding noise cameras back in 2021. And I I just there is this ongoing interest in every year, you're asked to, you know, like, think about the the exhaust thing, the modified, and so on. And I just because one of my clients actually made those gizmos, I I would just I don't know. I think I'm fairly happening up on tech, but has there been any progress in and maybe there's a chief thing, but, in that actually being a technology that we can realistically advocate for? Because we had pilot programs

Right.

And they didn't work. But that was 2021, and there was no appetite for the exhaust thing in the legislature at that at that point. So is that some are those realistic?

Kinda things? To city attorney Tim George. Very good. Thanks, Anthony. Yeah.

At our meeting, May 14, we're gonna have representatives from Vera at the meeting. Vera is the company that does the our red light cameras. They actually do have noise cameras, and they have them they use them in Hawaii where they're authorized by the legislature there. And so their representative can talk about them, and I think we might even have a a demonstration at that meeting. Cool. So, again, they're not authorized here.

No. And and but and the muffler thing, that is just I just hear every year that there's no appetite, but I'm just asking. Is that something

Yeah. And there there had been a a pilot program, for a a handful of locations on the noise cameras. And and so so that that's a precursor to to hopefully being able to expand that and and for all cities to be able to take

Okay. The the the other thing just since you've been talking about the airport deal, I

Yeah.

Had a conversation with a couple of people, founders of Earth Day, and they told me a little fact with, the reason that the opposition to that motka, the the a v Right.

The legislature

intentionally shifted to using that aviation fuel tax in 2016 because it was the only fuel that was increasing. In other words, people are switching to EVs and so forth and but people are gonna keep flying and so on. And so they intentionally, you you know, wanted to pick on something that was gonna increase. My point is that the mocha thing, the toxic thing, that was used for water cleanup all over the place. And so you had this situation where nobody involved in environmentalism wants that yanked away for airport communities.

Okay? And so and and I agree. So I'm just saying if you come up with some kind of airport funding, I don't think it's a great idea taking it from an existing other environmental account. I know that's kind of getting into the weeds here, but I'll just send you a little note on it. It shouldn't be that you yank away from some very worthy public purpose

to Right. I I but there I there there are concerns on the the proper use of the aviation fuel tax. And and

Oh, the whole thing may be rendered. I'm I'm I'm just saying. I'm just trying to just maybe find something else that isn't so constantly fraught. And Right. That's just my only comment about this.

And and we we expect that there will be action on the aviation fuel tax because there there has to be or or there there's concern that the feds are going to come in and and and hit the state with with major fines on on yeah. That is being spent in ways that we can

easily for the community. I just want you to get it from something where you know? Yeah. Take it away from school kids. There you go. That'll really work great. Thank you so much.

Council member Bloss.

Thanks, Anthony. Why is there such a severe budget shortfall at the state level? There's no recession. Economy is doing pretty well. If there were to be a recession in future, we'd be even in worse shape. What's going on at the state level? Yeah. That's simple

question. Really Yeah. Long, complicated answer, and a lot of people will disagree with. But in short, a variety of of programs were started, and and they grow quickly or more more quickly than was anticipated. Also, revenues were coming in at a we we had very substantial new new taxes put on in the last session.

Some were more complicate more complicated to collect than anticipated. And and with with new revenue sources, they were estimating it was going to come in here. It came in at a much lower rate. Excise tax, where where the the the tax on capital gains has shown to be or proven to be an extremely volatile tax source. When Jeff Bezos left, basically, it cut in half.

And and it's challenging in that the legislature budget something, for increases in,

what,

paying employees or state employees is going to be, but they don't negotiate that. The governor negotiates that. I and and I there was there was an agreement that the governor came up with that was more expensive than the legislature was, anticipating. And and that's a huge part of the overall cost of government.

Good. Thank you. Yep.

Okay. Thank you very much. I was just writing a note, and I hope to have you back soon so that we could get an early jump on talking about legislative priorities. Counsel, you may recall that in previous years, sometimes we've waited up until November to talk about those, and I'm really hoping that we can have more touch points on it and a more robust discussion far before those sessions starts. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Alright. I think I'm on the right track to be on item number three, new agenda items for consideration. So now is 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 any council members have any new business that they would like to propose? Alright. Moving on to council member reports. These are limited to four minutes, and we'll kick off with council member Harris.

Thank you. I, attended an Earth Day celebration, I guess you'd call it, yesterday. And years ago, I interviewed Dennis Hayes, the founder of founder organizer of Earth Day, and he noted that it's hard to express because I just look at administration, How terrible the environment was in 1970. And it and how quickly it got so much progress was. I we talked about this thing called ozone that anybody under 50 doesn't even remember, but it was like a huge, massive deal.

But at the time, regardless of political issue, you could do things in a dramatic fashion very quickly. Even, like, the auto unions were totally on board. And I am struck by the fact that we just sort of feel like job done or got to a point where job done. Most of the aircraft that fly here, they use tech that's 50 years old. That's why they are what they are.

There's been no new pollutant or standard for improving the situation on so many chemicals since, yeah, in forty years. It's it's just stunning to me how we just there be there has developed this divide of you're either, you know, you're either a tree hugger or you're just a job killer, and things are moving backwards in that regard. I don't know what to do with it when we've reached a point where this is getting into the weeds. But, a state program meant to do water cleanup, which was just a amazingly big problem here in 2004 is now, up for grabs. It's it's it's just it's stunning.

The the notion was to have polluters pay, and now it's yeah. I I I I don't quite know what to do with that at the moment. But, you know, we'll we'll keep we'll keep working on it. It's yeah. It it just can't be the case that this is as good as it gets.

We things should be improving a little bit every year, and they're not. They're going backwards. It's just the fact that even though the, you know, the planes don't emit just black smoke anymore, the water looks good, I it's created a sense of complacency, and it doesn't help us to make our city more desirable to the public if we don't attack that more aggressively. Thank you.

Councilmember Desmone. Councilmember Nutting.

Thank you, mayor. All I've got for tonight is I want to thank assistant chief Penny for his years of service. I've had several interactions with him, and he is a great guy and and well deserved with all the comments. And I also wanna thank my good friend Scott Wilkins for his years of service, and, the city of Des Moines is just better off with you here. So I really appreciate you. I appreciate your friendship and what you do for the city. So congratulations. That's

all, mayor.

Thank you. Councilmember Voss.

Couple weeks ago, I attended the SR three annual fundraising gala. SR three is our Marion Animal Hospital at the Marina. I was it was sold out of then. I was surprised that they raised over $200,000 in a couple hours. I realized then that it's not it seems like it's a Des Moines institution, but they're in Des Moines. But their support is regional, and they have very wealthy donors. And it's good for us to keep in mind that they are well supported, and they've chosen Des Moines to to base their operations. Thank you, mayor.

Councilmember Simons.

Yeah. I've got several things. Thanks for mentioning SR three. That was a that's a great event. It's amazing how breadth, how wide their their reach is certainly with that.

Last week, last Wednesday, I attended what's known as the Good Eggs Breakfast. Councilman county councilman Von Reichbauer sponsors this breakfast every every month for elected officials and community business leaders to get together. We heard from the president of Columbia Bank, which has grown tremendously in the last few years. And as the banking industry has consolidated, this has sort of emerged as a regional bank of quite some power. And so and I even mentioned, you know, we don't have a branch in Des Moines.

Are you guys interested? But we have a lot of it. We have a lot of other banks too. So I also had a a very nice meeting with council member Bloss. So we talked about a whole lot of stuff and and really a wide ranging conversation.

I appreciated that very much. On the twentieth, I attended the board of directors meeting of Des Moines Chamber of Commerce. They're really going great guns. They have a lot more local businesses that have joined them than had previously been part of the South Sound chamber and by about double. So I think that people are really seeing the value of a local chamber of commerce.

And then they had a very nice happy hour at Via Marina the following night, which was very well attended, maybe forty, fifty people there. And let's see. This weekend, there are just all kinds of events going going on. There is a crawl that has been organized for people that wanna join by miss Carrie, who is sitting in the audience tonight. That is going to be supportive of local restaurants, and there are gonna be several of these.

I think that's a kind of a wonderful idea. Also, and very conflicting for me is that my my buddy, Curtis Roy Moore, is playing at

the quarter deck for the first

time this year on Friday night. And so he he's just absolutely one of my favorites. On Saturday, council member Von Reichbauer has invited people to the Gorafina cultural celebration. It's a heritage month celebration. It's going to be in in Federal Way. And then let's see what else is going on. And then I'm meeting with the mayor next Monday. So we'll have a chance. I know she's making an effort to sit down and talk to each one of us, and that's very much appreciated. Thank you.

I think it's really good to keep those one on one conversations going. And then next week, before we have our a meeting on the twenty ninth, we have the Citizens Advisory Board, and we are looking for members. We have lost one of our business members, so hopefully, we have people applying for that. And we still need members from Hackbridge and Woodmont. We've had people who have gotten off and because they've joined other volunteer positions.

And so, anyway, if anybody's interested, it's it's a really good group. It's a lot of good discussion. They've done some very good things in the community, and I would strongly encourage anybody that's interested in getting involved to go to the city website and look at how to apply. And I think that's my beep, so I will stop talking now. Thank you.

Deputy mayor Oxiger.

Yes. Thank you, mayor. As we heard tonight, we've got the opening day of, boating season for South Sound, opening, but that's not quite the first event that we've got going on to kick off a jam packed summer full of events. This Saturday is International Sculpture Day, and it's going to be from Saturday it'll be on Saturday from one to 4PM at Inkfish Studios down on 7th, and all kinds of art projects available for the kids. And it's become quite the quite the event, over the last couple of years.

And, also, the Waterloo Walkers will be having a, walk, visiting all of the public art that, is in the city now. So that's all happening this weekend. And I understand now that tickets are on sale for the Legacy Foundation's Bayside Diamond Ball, which will be June 6, which is raising money for kids, seniors, and the arts. And so that's gonna be at the yacht club, and quite the annual event. So that's it. Thank you.

Thank you. I had a couple of things I wanted to echo. One, I know that council member Simons encourage folks to get involved. There's more things that you could possibly join that you have never thought you might be interested in. So along with the Citizens Advisory Board, you could consider joining the lodging tax advisory group.

We have some positions open there. I know an announcement went out about the salary commission, and I feel like we've gotten at least one submission, but we're looking for more because I believe there are five open positions on that. A great way to get to know a little bit more about how the city works, a little bit about budgeting, and a lot about how much salary is the right number of salary. I have, along with some of my one on one meetings that we're having with council this year, we are also hosting another chat with the mayor. And I believe, I'm looking across the room, that that is gonna be this Saturday from four to 6PM at Tandore Slice.

And if you have not been to Tandore Slice, I we should maybe call it slice with the mayor, but not golf, actual slices. And please come by and and bring your agenda items that you'd like to talk to me about up there on the highway. It's a great little business, and I'm happy to be supporting them as well. And I believe the next one's gonna be coming up quite soon down closer to the Southern end of Des Moines. We'll be talking about there.

One of the events that I got to go to, and it's the first time, and so I feel like I'm just catching up on how amazing this experience is, but I was able to go with deputy mayor Oxiger to one of SR three's releases of a a younger juvenile seal harbor seal. Is that right? I think it was a harbor seal. I don't wanna get my mammals mixed up here. And there were probably 30 to 40 people, including families, volunteers, members of the public, who went down to Dash Point Park to help release this very inquisitive and dangerously cute, just so cute, animal back into the wild.

And Casey McLean, our executive director of SR three, explained to me that they do these about sometimes 40 to 50 times a year because that's the number of SEALs that sometimes get injured or orphaned or abandoned by their parent. And it's a good idea to remember to leave them alone because oftentimes the parent was gonna come back and help them. Please keep your dog leashed on the beach and so they are not harassing the small little mammals. And if you have an opportunity to go to SR three's open house in the next week or so, I would highly encourage you to do so and learn more about the very important work they do as one of the very few marine mammal hospitals here in the state of Washington. Let's see.

I also wanna join in and saying thank you so much to Scott Wilkins and his thirty years here at the city of Des Moines. It's it's that picture was really amazing, and it really shows. I know the mullet is back, but thank you for your service. I really appreciate that. Tanya Seaberry, I couldn't say enough. And thank you to all those who shared their personal stories and and interactions with Tanya. Really an institution, and I hope that while there may not be a person who can fill her exact shoes, I'm hoping that our new community service officer will sew their own shoes. Yes. Peace. Cobble.

Thank you. Cobble together their own shoes and and continue on with that legacy of being involved and that such a supportive role in our community. Thank you to assistant chief Penny. I appreciate that. It's one of those things that you said that longevity is becoming an issue in this field. Never used to be in the past. It really was one of those things that once you were hired into a law enforcement agency that you really stayed there for life. And it's very telling that in the last few years when folks have had opportunities to go, they have chosen to stay. And thank you so much for your continued service to the Des Moines Police Department. With that, we're not gonna go anywhere because we have an executive session.

We are going to talk about a pending acquisition and disposition of real property pursuant to RCW 42 dot 30 dot 1101 b and c. This executive session is expected to last thirty minutes, and that will be until 09:01. No formal action will be taken at the executive session. Thank you. At this time, the executive session will be extended fifteen minutes, and we plan on returning at 09:16.

Thank you. We are going to be extending our executive session for another fifteen minutes and aim to be back. We will be back on record at 09:31. I know. I know.

Pull the fire alarm. Next time.

Yeah. Before

Let let me make sure that we are at the end of our meeting. We're back from executive session. No action was taken. Our next meeting is not gonna be next week. It's gonna be a city council committee whole of the whole and study session on May 7. I think there's enough of us here. Is that right? Ken and I have a motion to adjourn.

Move to adjourn. Second.

All those in favor? Aye. Okay. Thank you very much.