Dear Editor –

It is election time again and there is confusion in the craft. So many good people, all wanting to serve the community and in as many different ways, have stood up to the scrutiny of voters. From each candidate comes a word or two that they know voters really want to hear or read about. The voter’s pamphlet lays open on our table and it is eagerly analyzed but rarely fully understood. So when you evaluate each individual and come up empty or undecided, it is time to look at all of the issues confronting us today, this year, and onwards.

A few very important items glare up as you read, line by line, all of the propositions and positions taken by the candidates. It becomes a choice, not so much of which person to vote for, but what they stand for. Proceeding down the list of issues, we are made, painfully aware, that our little city of Des Moines is running on empty when it comes to finances and action must be forthcoming to bail us out. This immediately begs the question:

“How long did it take us to get to such a sad, sorry state, and how much is the recession actually responsible for this?”

Instead of looking backward to find causes and assign blame, we need to decide how to get back on our feet and return to the proud existence that was once enjoyed by our fellow citizens. We find that two major items before us are; the need to maintain a suitable police presence and preserving parks and recreation facilities, both nearly on equal footing. Now, realistically, you can deny the good judgment of our chief of police Roger Baker and start carrying a sidearm while looking over your shoulder or you can argue strongly for holding onto what we have. The first priority that a city has toward its citizens is a comprehensive blanket of security. All else becomes secondary, especially when you see graffiti on walls and fences declaring “territorial rights”.

I would like to share my thoughts about what I think would make Des Moines a better more attractive destination and tourist Mecca:

• At the first opportunity there would be a closure of Marine View Drive one or two weekends a year for street vendors, rerouting traffic through 7th Avenue but only during the events.
• A small seafood shop like Ivar’s would be encouraged to set up down on the northern end of the marina.
• There would be a large gazebo erected where the “Big Catch” plaza is now for occasional entertainers and kid things.
• Our city leaders would begin selling the sizzle of Des Moines instead of the steak. Why not partner with a little east coast village as a “sister city” such as Nantucket or Provincetown?
• In the process we could also encourage a casino to open nearer to the marina and add to our revenue base.
• In the summer it seems that a water taxi visiting and bringing tourists is an ideal goal.

Many of these things depend on a little more leeway on the part of our permit and building staff and the ability of the new council to present a much more friendly face to prospective residents and businesses. Oh and why not lease the Des Moines Cinema to the parks and recreation department such as the one in Auburn?

Our city of Des Moines has promise; you candidates and incumbents need to make some promises that you can keep.

- Pat Nardo

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Have something you'd like to say? Then email us a Letter to the Editor by clicking here, and pending our review, we'll most likely post it. You can also leave a Comment below...]

[EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is a Guest Editorial by Des Moines resident Greg Fox:]

by Greg Fox

With the recent public outcry that the city has no money and needs new development downtown, the question that many (including several councilmembers which is a bit puzzling) have asked is:

WHY IS THERE NO NEW DEVELOPMENT?

I believe there are a number of reasons why – let’s look at a few:

1. LACK OF WATER:
   Water District 54 supplies the water to the downtown area. After years of lying (as in not telling the truth) it was discovered that the water district has done no upgrades to its water system for some time. They have continually told the city and the fire department that water is not a problem (they still stand by that statement), but, in fact, there is a definite lack of water. The fire department has made the statement that if there were a major fire downtown, the fire department could possibly suck the water lines dry and collapse the system. Kind of scary if you really think about it. In order to build in the area, the buildings have to be a much higher fire rated construction (read that as more expensive-at least 50% more cost than if there were enough water). The city has known this for some time now (years). This was discussed by the council several times, but to no avail. It was put on the back burner before the last election and since there is no new development planned, it is not now an issue.
2. NO POWER:
   Puget Sound Energy supplies the electricity to the area. Much of the downtown area has only single phase power available. What this means is that the equipment (elevators, lights, heaters, air conditioners etc…) in the buildings is not as efficient (and costs more to operate) and the equipment is much more expensive (or not available) than if three phase power were there. PSE has said that it would cost approximately $100,000 to upgrade the electrical grid in the downtown area and they were not going to pay for it.
3. CITY REQUIREMENTS:
   The city zoning regulations allow for only a maximum of three stories above grade in the downtown area (a council person lives just above the downtown area and is insistent that the rules be enforced to the letter as he does not want his view of the sound impeded). The zoning code also requires that the buildings are to be mixed use (the bottom floor is commercial and the upper floors are residential with parking underground). Then there are those pesky noise reduction requirements (such as special sound reducing glass which is at least 50% more costly than normal glass) that the FAA requires and is strictly enforced by the building department.

What all of this means is that the cost of construction is much higher than in Seattle or other adjacent communities. The developers know this and go somewhere that is more builder friendly and less expensive to build. Thus no new development!

There is no easy or inexpensive or fast fix to this dilemma. What the city needs to do is take the water away from District 54 and give to another water district that will upgrade the system (this has been explored and another water system was willing and capable of upgrading the water lines). They also need to get PSE into action and install a new system capable of meeting future demands.

Also, ease up on the zoning requirements. Many developers have stated that one or two additional stories would make the difference between being economically viable or not.

Is the view more important? Or the loss of parks and rec and other city services?

You decide, it’s your city!

[EDITOR'S NOTE: The Waterland Blog strives to serve the community of Des Moines by posting frequently-updated, relevant news stories, events and other information, as well as serve as a Forum for civil discussion amongst its residents. It is in this spirit that we encourage our Readers to email us their own stories or "guest editorials," and as long as they meet our standards and are not libelous, we'll post them. Readers are also encouraged to leave Comments below each story. Thanks for your continued support!]

by Scott Schaefer
Publisher/Editor

Last Tuesday (Oct. 6th), we first broke the news that Des Moines City Manager Tony Piasecki was proposing the cutting of the entire Parks and Recreation Department for his 2010 budget.

Some people, including many city councilmembers, apparently claimed that this news was “false.”

“False“?

How is this breaking news “false”? If so, please enlighten us as to our mistakes and we’ll happily correct or retract it.

Even our local news media “competition” posted a story that called our report “misleading,” using the following language as a cutline to a photo:

“Residents flocked to a Des Moines Council meeting after a misleading blog posting implied that lawmakers were thinking of cutting all parks and recreation programs.”

Let the record show that we stand 100% behind our original posting, which we still believe to be 100% accurate. Of course, it’s easy to call something “false” or “misleading,” but seeing that nobody has yet come forward to correct us or tell us what the alleged “false” information is, we still believe we published the following truth:

That City Manager Tony Piasecki had drafted a proposal to cut the entire Des Moines’ Parks & Recreation Department and programs (excluding senior programs).

This website, while it contains the apparently-frightening term “blog” (oooh…run away – a website that actually allows users to interact!) in its title, is run by professional journalists, including yours truly, who has won several national awards for writing, along with many others who once worked for the competition. We post only accurate stories, and verify each one; this one was no exception as it was verified with numerous, well-placed sources within Des Moines city staff before it was posted.

The one analogy that comes to mind reminds me of two of my heroes – Woodward and Bernstein (you know, the guys who broke the Watergate story in the 70s?), and how they must’ve felt once the Nixon administration started denying the truth of their breaking news. So I actually take this as a good sign – that The Waterland Blog has the guts to actually report news first, before it receives and publishes an official press release (and don’t get me started on the laziness of other local media and how they basically just reprint press releases…).

Personally, I think it may boil down to the hurt egos of our local politicians. I believe they are upset because they learned about these proposed cuts from a “local blog,” which, in my humble opinion, is providing something this city hasn’t experienced in years:

ACTUAL JOURNALISM.

Thanks,

[EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is a Guest Editorial by Des Moines resident Leslie Newman:]

Des Moines Citizens, Residents, Business Owners, Neighbors, Voters, Tax Payers, and City Council Members;

It is my understanding that tonight (Thursday, Oct. 8th) at 7:00 PM in council chambers the Des Moines City Council will be meeting to discuss budget cuts. It is my understanding that the proposed budget cut is the ELIMINATION OF THE CITY OF DES MOINES PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT.

I am encouraging all of you to either please show up for this meeting on Thursday to let your voice be heard or, to email, call, or stop by city hall to express your concerns over this proposed cut.

What this budget cut means:

• Closing of City Parks and Recreation Department
• Closing of the Des Moines Field House
• Elimination of all Parks and Rec Employees
• Elimination of all programs that our children and seniors participate in
• Elimination of after school programs
• Elimination of Camp Khaos

If this comes to fruition, this will have a huge impact on our Senior Citizens. Where will the seniors take their exercise classes with a closed field house? Where will our Senior Citizen softball league practice and play their games with closed ball fields? This means closing of Underwood Memorial Park, and closing of our ballfields.  The City of Des Moines recently received a $100,000 grant for upgrading of our grandstand (the original King County Park No. 1) at the field house.  The city has in place plans for the renovation of that much used field and has spent a portion of those grant funds.  If the city is to close the grandstands and ballpark at the field house, the city has to pay that grant back.

Do you really want this to happen?  This would mean that all of our parks would be closed, shut down, fences put around them.  (If you were not aware, this was proposed last year and in a last ditch effort, the parks and rec employees along with a few citizens begged and pleaded for this not to happen).  There were major cuts made to parks, rec, and senior services and several parks and rec employees lost their jobs or had their hours cut.

We cannot be apathetic.  It is no secret that the communities surrounding our city including the cities of Federal Way, Normandy Park, Burien, Seatac, Tukwila, Kent, continue to grow and thrive and make needed and necessary changes to growth, development, and community centers in their downtown cores.  If you have had opportunity to visit any of these surrounding cities you will see continued growth in spite of economic downturns, you will see new businesses opening, parks being maintained, added, community centers being built.  Have you seen the new YMCA in Seatac?  Have you seen the growth and development in downtown Burien?  Have you seen the activity in both Seatac and Tukwila along with the new proposed community center with new residential condominiums in Tukwila?  Have you seen or been stopped behind the new construction on 1st Avenue in Normandy Park? Have you seen the new ShoWare Center in Kent?

The City of Des Moines Police Budget is 65% of the cities overall budget.  The surrounding communities in the region have police budgets at 48% of their city budget.  Do we really want to be a police state?  Do you really want to have no services, fields, parks, rec programs available to our residents?  Police services are important but if we have no places or activities for our citizens to participate in, can you imagine how crime will rise?  Cities that do not have active rec programs for their citizens and do not have places for people to go and places for young people to hang out have higher crime rates than those cities whose focus is community activities and centers.

Studies and statistics show that those neighborhoods with focus on parks, recreation, strong schools, strong senior programs are the communities that people look to when choosing a place to move.  If you have had a chance to travel or visit other thriving cities in our area – Kirkland, Redmond, Renton, Kent, Edmonds, Bellevue, Bainbridge Island, Mercer Island, West Seattle, Tukwila, Seatac, Burien, Normandy Park you will see a huge community and city council focus on schools, parks, recreation, economic development, and growth and change.

There will be no growth in our city if we do not speak up and vote for change in the upcoming city council elections.  As a resident for the past 10 years in the City of Des Moines, I have seen little change in the downtown core.  I have seen many businesses open their doors only to have to close them due to lack of foot traffic.  The city needs to make major changes and have a whole new focus, vision, and plan if Des Moines is going to survive.  Many cities have faced budget cuts but those cities whose focus has remained on providing places and activities for people have been the cities that have thrived the most.

What will happen to your property values when the parks have fences put up around them?  We have seen problems with our property values because of increased air traffic from the airport and the third runway.  We have difficulty selling our homes because purchasers are more interested in the communities surrounding ours that seem to have more progressive minded leaders looking for ways to increase growth, economic development, and activities for the residents.

Please make your voice heard.  The candidates and incumbents for city council are speaking at different venues in the next several weeks. I would encourage you to attend and listen to their positions on growth, economic development, and change, or, if you prefer, the North Hill Community Club will be hosting the candidates on Tuesday October 13, 2009 at 7:00 pm.

- Leslie Newman
Owner/Managing Broker
RE/MAX All City (Burien, WA)
Des Moines Resident

[EDITOR'S NOTE: The Waterland Blog strives to serve the community of Des Moines by posting frequently-updated, relevant news stories, events and other information, as well as serve as a Forum for civil discussion amongst its residents. It is in this spirit that we encourage our Readers to email us their own stories or "guest editorials," and as long as they meet our standards and are not libelous, we'll post them. Readers are also encouraged to leave Comments below each story. Thanks for your continued support!]

by T.M. Sell, Ph.D.
Special to the Waterland Blog

On the eve of an important primary election in Des Moines, we should consider the question of economic development within the city.

Economic development is always a subject over which reasonable people can disagree, even in a city such as ours, where reasonable people sometimes appear to be in short supply.

But the bottom line is that since the end of the car-tab equalization fund, which propped up the budgets of cash-poor cities such as Des Moines, the city has been chronically short of cash, all the while carrying a frankly deserved reputation as a very difficult place to do business.

One school of thought is that Des Moines is fine the way it is, and anybody who wants to do business here should:

A. Pay heavily for the privilege

B. Not impact the (non-existent) parking problem (if you don’t have any businesses, how is there a parking problem?)

C. Not disrupt anybody’s view of the water.

This school of thought argues that a planned development in the Pacific Ridge area between Pacific Highway South and Interstate 5 should not have been given any tax breaks, which the City Council approved earlier this year.

So great was the outcry from the losing side in this debate that they went out and recruited a slate of candidates to take out the evil people responsible for this travesty of justice.

Opponents of the development argue that the tax breaks will push the taxes onto the rest of us. Even so, they are quite happy to ask you to raise your property taxes to maintain a swimming pool that the city can’t afford to operate.

The city should have the pool – a lot of people use it. It should have after-school programs for kids; it should have open and well-maintained parks; it should have enough employees to do all the things a city is supposed to do.

The reason it can’t is because Des Moines has a woefully inadequate tax base. Statewide statistics show that Des Moines has the lowest per capita sales tax receipts of any city over 20,000 in the entire state, and the second lowest above 10,000. We also rank low in property tax receipts.

So Des Moines needs some business. Downtown right now is an attractive mix of nail salons, espresso stands and vacant lots; Pacific Ridge meanwhile leads the city in police calls. Shopping in Des Moines largely means driving to Burien or Federal Way.

And the city is tough to do business with, to the point where I don’t think hardly anybody on the council understands. For example, some city council members thought that as a condition of giving Highline College (my employer) a building permit for redeveloping the Marine Science and Technology Center in Redondo, the college should have to build a parking garage.

Now there is a parking problem in Redondo, but it’s on nights and weekends, when the college facility typically isn’t open. One council member thought the college should build a bridge from the MaST to Salty’s. Apparently, the college is sitting on a vast pot of money which we are free to use to solve the city’s problems.

A couple of years ago when the college was building its new Instructional Computing Center, a city engineer proceeded to demand that the college put in a sidewalk on a street off campus that had no relation to the college or the computing center. I approached a city councilman about this ridiculous request, which violated state law, and his only response was “He’s a good city employee.”

The college is a large institution and we can look out for ourselves. And we do our part. Over the last decade, millions of dollars in building fees from the college have helped the city balance its budget.

But we’re not building anything right now, and the city is going to have to look elsewhere for funds. The cash cow is out to pasture.

Which brings us back to Pacific Ridge. The 11-acre parcel where the development would go right now generates little revenue for the city – it’s a mobile home park and other underused properties. I know that sounds cold – the people who are there are as important as anyone in the city – but we don’t have enough money to be as comforting to everyone as we might like.

So the notion that tax breaks for an area that isn’t generating much revenue now will somehow cost us money is simply untrue.

Furthermore, as it is unlikely that everything will be built at once, the tax breaks won’t all come at once, further spreading out whatever tax burden might marginally occur from the development.

And let’s face it – nobody’s going to build up there without some inducement. And the size of this inducement isn’t going to bankrupt the city any faster than it’s already going bankrupt. And it is.

Opponents of the development point to the difficulties that similar mixed-use projects are having in Burien, Tacoma and Bellevue. Hello? We’re in a recession. Everybody’s having problems. Do you think that’s going to last forever? At worst, if the market is so bad there’s no money to be made, the developer won’t build and the tax break will never accrue.

The line of logic used in opposing this kind of project is not NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) – it’s BANANAs (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone).

Somewhat understandably, there’s a group of people within the city who like it the way it is: A relatively quiet bedroom community without much going on.

The problem with that model is that it doesn’t work. The city cannot afford to be what it has been, a city with a pathetic tax base, a city that has as many vacant lots and empty storefronts as it has actually operating businesses. We can’t afford to provide the services people say they want without some businesses in town that pay taxes (and maybe even employ people).

In actually trying to get some new development in Des Moines, the City Council majority is not selling Des Moines by the pound. They’re saving it by the dollar.

Whoever you vote for, in the primary and the general election, ask them this:

How are you going to make Des Moines a city that can support itself again?
Because right now, it can’t.

(T.M. Sell, Ph.D., is professor of political economy at Highline College and has lived in Des Moines for more than 20 years.)