There’s no consensus on consensus
At their May 8, 2025 meeting, the Des Moines City Council heard a briefing from the City Manager and one Stakeholder Advisory Roundtable (StART) community member regarding the April 23 closed StART meeting – the first meeting closed to the public since 2019 after three cities temporarily left the group.
The stated goal of the meeting had been to determine the group’s future direction. But community member Joe Dusenberry reported to the Council that the bulk of the meeting had been about the group’s failure to address community concerns. However, when asked by the Council what the group had decided about its own future, apparently there is no consensus.
Background
StART was organized in 2018 by former airport director Lance Lyttle and local city administrators in response to community concerns over the SAMP. It was modeled partly on the FAA roundtable format and on the Highline Forum – a quarterly meeting of elected representatives and administrators from six airport cities, Highline Schools, and the Port of Seattle.
StART committee rules currently require 100% agreement to move forward on any issue – including changing its own operating procedures. The group is currently divided into four units:
- Legislative policy subcomittee – which creates the Port’s Shared Agenda,
- Noise subcommittee – which receives expert briefings on the issue but offers no opportunity for debate
- Steering subcommittee – which sets the group’s rules and is limited only to administrators.
- The the full committee, which is the only form the public can usually see.
The three subcommittees have never been open to the public – and only recently have the policy or noise subcommittees been open to all members.
In his report to the council, Mr. Dusenberry wondered aloud whether it is practical to require consensus among members with such disparate priorities.
Summary: The the agenda for all meetings is set by the steering commmittee – which is open only to administrators of member cities and the Port and it must be unanimous. No community members. No electeds.
Our take
StART was always a highly flawed thing and we advised against creating it from the beginning because it could never be what the most concerned community members want it to do. As specialists, we (STNI) find that StART occasionally provides useful information regarding Port planning – especially by comparing with other presentations where the information is often in a state of flux.
However, we have come to the conclusion that for members, the flaws now may outweigh its benefits. It not only confuses and divides stakeholders, it actively seduces them. It is meant to do that.
Lack of shared interests
From the beginning, the conceit of StART was that all members would have shared interests – primarily aircraft noise and flight paths. But although those are primary community concerns, they are not the only issues. However, they are issues the Port can say they have no control over. Framing StART in that way automatically shifts 95% of the conversation towards FAA regulations – which the Port can truthfully say it has no control over.
Remember this: the moment an aircraft starts moving, it becomes subject to FAA rules, not airport rules.
This has been a strategic get out of jail free for the Port. It enables the false narrative of ‘partnership’ (ie “We need to go to Washington DC and get new legislation passed!”) It is meant to make the FAA the bogie man and deflect attention away from help the Port could be providing to communities.
But the moment one moves past what the FAA controls, it becomes obvious that the six cities have never had many shared interests:
- The City of SeaTac has a highly beneficial Inter-Local Agreement with the Port which precludes them from taking positions contrary to those of the Port. They set the ceiling of what is possible.
- Normandy Park has stated on record, on numerous occasions, that they are very happy with StART and believe the current situation is as good as it gets.
- Tukwila also takes very little interest in the issue.
- Federal Way has a small, highly impacted neighborhood, but the majority of the City is simply too far away to have much interest in any issue beyond flight paths.
- That leaves Burien and Des Moines — the two cities at either end of the flight path — the two with the greatest number of potential mitigation opportunities. It is no accident that, except during the Third Runway era, these two communities have always been the most vocal.
Divide and Conquer
Although the StART was touted as a ‘community roundtable’, it is functionally controlled by administrators. There is no guarantee of transparency even within the group, let alone in reporting to cities.
Also, no electeds attend – and that includes the Port.
If you were to attend both a Highline Forum and the following StART meeting you might be confused as to which meeting you were attending. They often receive the same briefings. But there is no communication between the Highline Forum and StART and to our knowledge no electeds routinely report out to their city councils on airport issues. To be fair, the Highline Forum was never designed to address airport impacts – in fact, it was built to get past those types of conflicts and develop partnerships between the Port and member cities on economic development and community grant opportunities as an alternative to conflict.
Summary: electeds meet in one space. Community members in another. The only shared audience on airport issues are the administrators. Both city councils and the Port Commission are usually unaware of either.
You’re new here, right?
StART community members have an average shelf life of just a few years – as do most city administrators. At this meeting: Mr. Dusenberry has been on the committee for a year; the other Des Moines community member slot has been unfilled for almost a year. One Des Moines administrator has been on the job for less than a year and has no airport background. The City Manager has only been on the job for a few months and also has no airport background.
Burien has had an airport committee since late 2017, however, the tenure of committee members has averaged less than three years. Des Moines had an airport committee, which was disbanded in 2019, and is now in the process of reforming. Frankly, both committees have struggled to field members.
This state of affairs is repeated in almost every city – both for community members, electeds and administrators.
On the other side of the table? Each of the Port’s representatives are subject matter experts, many with over two decades of experience in our local governments.
Remember this: the only airport city with ongoing access to the Port, both administrative and electeds, is the City of SeaTac – by virtue of their ILA. But again, that prevents them from advocating strenuously on issues contrary to the interests of the Port.
The nicest possible recipe – for failure
Our communities don’t have a shortage of ways to raise concerns, we have several. The problem is that they are all terrible. It’s time to recognize that they are all designed to be terrible. Taken together they represent a Potemkin Village – cosmetic facades built to mask what is really going on – by those who want to avoid useful change.
Progress is possible. However….
- Airport issues requires specialists with institutional expertise regarding the issues that we can do something about, not just FAA issues which we largely cannot control.
- However, around Sea-Tac, each group (administrators, electeds, community members) are highly segregated from one another.
- And all those stakeholders are chronically inexperienced.
This system is designed to prevent any space for shared information, shared accountability, or developing the expertise necessary to reach useful solutions. Instead it actively promotes ongoing misinformation, disguised as ‘opportunities for learning’.
What we found interesting: In hearing community feedback on the meeting, we heard a familiar theme: the reason the meeting turned out as it did was because it was private. Decade after decade, community members say they do not feel comfortable speaking candidly on the record. Some out of personal discomfort, some because they think that where the real conversation happens. This only adds to the insanity.
The only continuity, the only institutional expertise, the only people who are truly on the same page are the Port of Seattle – and to a lesser degree, the City of SeaTac. That is why they are more successful.
The lack of shared interests and experience are the factors that have always created the sense of futility. When we add in the host of divided conversations, we create ongoing superspreaders of misinformation and dilute our effectiveness
Put another way: with this kind of system how could anyone expect any other outcomes?
Call to action
Write your City Council. Tell them you support an open StART, one where there are no closed meetings and no separate steering committee where administrators meet in private.
That may or may not be tolerable for the Port – or your city. But regardless, the status quo – with so many subcommittees and no open dialogue – is far worse. The lack of information sharing between all stakeholders (no pun intended) cannot help but create divided interests.
This is a machine-generated transcript generated on the fly by Google/Youtube/AI. Accuracy totally not guaranteed. Provided only as a convenience and to help people with disabilities. Caveat lector!
City Manager Katherine Caffrey:
The first item we have is Joe Dusenberry, one of our representatives on StART, who I almost didn’t see here because he’s back at the staff table. We recently attended a meeting at the SeaTac airport regarding StART, which is the Stakeholder Advisory Round Table Committee. It’s cities, community members, representatives from the airlines, and the port itself who get together to talk about various airport issues. This was an unusual meeting in the sense that it was really about goal setting. It was a closed meeting as well, so we wanted to report out what happened at the meeting. Joe has some thoughts also about the path forward, so I’ll turn it over to him.
Joe Dusenberry:
I’d like to start by thanking you for my appointment to the SeaTac Area Round Table, known as StART. I’ve completed one year now, and it has been interesting learning about how the airport works and, more importantly, how it’s regulated by various agencies like the Federal Aviation Agency.As you know, each of the six cities surrounding SeaTac send two community representatives appointed by their councils and two staff members to StART. There are two working committees: one for noise and airport operations, and the other for federal and state policy. StART also has a steering committee composed of city staff members and airport staff. The steering committee sets the agenda for the meetings.As the City Manager said, at the last full StART meeting, the only agenda item was a discussion about what the members thought about the structure of the meetings and the usefulness of the information presented, with the follow-up question: what changes would you make going forward? That started a long and somewhat contentious discussion.At this point, I’ve got a couple of things I’d like to tell you about. When I’m talking to my friends and neighbors, I usually try to tell them what is my opinion and what is actual factual data that I get from the report when we’re at the meeting. So largely what follows is my opinions.There are two parts of the discussion I’d like to tell you about. First, though, the qualifier: the information that the staff brings to StART about the operation expansion plans at the airport is interesting and has some valuable information, but the presentations are information only. There’s no part where they say, “Hey, what would you like? What would your community like to see?” If we ask why or could this be different, or why are you doing it this way, we’re quickly answered by reference to some long FAA regulation.There were some comments about the disconnect between the steering committee and the community members. The community members felt that they only heard what the steering committee really wanted to bring to the full meetings. Frankly, I agree with that, but I think this disconnect is as much on our end here in the community as it is at the StART.Outside of a small circle of friends and neighbors who are probably tired of hearing about this now, I don’t really interact with the community. I know that Council has authorized the formation of a Community Airport Committee. I would suggest that the Council seek out members for the committee who would be willing to go out into the community to the service clubs, the condo associations, the community clubs, and tell them about StART and the operations at the airport.
I believe the benefits would be more information in the community about specific things like how the flight paths work, how to access the noise complaint system, keeping the community informed on the scope and pace of SeaTac’s expansion plans (which are large), and providing realistic answers to questions like “When will the airport reach maximum capacity?” and “When and where will another airport be built?” Also, providing updates on where air quality monitoring is and the progress of another important study for us – the FAA’s reassessment of the noise boundary, what they call the DNL65 or their Part 150 study – and to get inputs from citizens.
StART and the airport staff have an ample collection of PowerPoints – we’ve seen literally dozens of them – that are available for that kind of outreach.
The second part of the discussion I want to tell you about is the disappointing start to the project to repair failed port sound packages. The Port Commission authorized $5 million to do extensive surveying to see how many failed installations there are and to set up a pilot program for the repairs. I believe their intention – staff’s intention, commission’s intention, or hope – was to find enough failed packages to qualify to turn on the FAA spigot and get some FAA money.
The net result of this expensive effort, funded by King County taxpayers – this was all taxpayer money – they found five houses, actually three of them had been found in an earlier study, that would qualify for sound package repairs. The biggest hurdle is that the FAA rules – extensive rules regarding what repairs are allowed – and their absurd noise levels that are required to even trip qualifying for the repairs just make it impractical. It’s kind of a wasted effort in my opinion.
The Council should engage with the Port Commission, elected to elected, and advocate for an ongoing local program that addresses noise reduction issues in the airport communities – a program that does not rely on federal funding. No one following what is happening in Olympia or Washington can reasonably expect that we’re going to get money for something like airport packages. Meanwhile, the problem persists and gets worse – the packages keep failing.
If the Port can allocate $5 million for a study, surely they can find some sum – million dollars, $2 million a year – to fund an ongoing program to just go and fix some of these problems.
Finally, during the discussion, a community member representing Burien reminded the group about a study commissioned by the State Department of Commerce in March 2018 and completed and delivered in June 2020. I know most of you have seen this. The title of the report is “Study of the Current and Ongoing Effects of the Operation of the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.” It is not an anti-airport document. Even though I have just started reading it, it appears to be an extensive look at SeaTac and the surrounding communities. The study appears to be a guide or a plan, the goal being to maintain the efficient operation of the airport while protecting the airport communities’ ability to provide the same social and economic opportunities that the rest of the county enjoys.
The study examines several areas related to environmental and socioeconomic impacts and includes over 60 specific recommendations, any one of which could have been an interesting or productive discussion item for StART. But in the year I’ve been there, this is the first I’ve heard of this. This is a good example of what StART is and isn’t. It’s a good venue for the airport staff to tell the communities about the how, why, and when of ongoing operations. I believe that we should keep this communication channel open – I think it’s an important indication of our goodwill towards the airport.
But what it is not is a vehicle to get concrete action on specific problems. That is going to be a political effort on our part that may or may not involve the rest of the airport communities. Hopefully, the Airport Community that you’re thinking about creating will be a catalyst or a resource for all of you and maybe a catalyst to help get this whole process started. I’d be happy to answer any questions if you have any.
Councilmember JC Harris:
I don’t want to be that guy, but when you said the goal of the meeting was kind of about what would happen going forward, was there any consensus on that?
Joe Dusenberry:
No, there was actually quite a discussion about consensus, and as you know, one of the main tenets of StART is “Hey, we all have to agree,” and there were several people in the room that said if that is the way it’s going to be going forward, nothing is going to happen.
Councilmember Harris:
So you’re saying regarding the actual body itself, there’s no consensus on consensus?
Joe Dusenberry:
That’s what I’m saying. Yes.
Councilmember Harris:
So like, what – is it just, you know, next meeting we’ll go back to it again?
Joe Dusenberry:
Frankly, and the City Manager may have some comments on this too, I think it was much more of a discussion than the airport staff was expecting.
City Manager Katherine Caffrey:
The consultants that they use that facilitate the meetings have reached out to the city managers at each of the cities, so I have a call with them tomorrow that I think is sort of a recap and figuring out next steps. It was like opening up Pandora’s box of some real big issues, and then it was 7:30 – time to be done.
Councilmember Harris:
Because I just looked at the agenda, and it had all these things about refreshments afterwards, and I was expecting some kind of ceremonial – okay.
Two other really quick things, and again, hate to be that guy, but when you say the FAA allowing sound insulation, you use the word “allow,” and I just always have to hop on people. The Port is legally allowed to pay for any sound insulation or HVAC stuff that it wants to repair on any system that it previously installed.
I’m trying not to get too rhetorical, but we were just talking to lawyers, and it’s like you’re in a room with lawyers for one side of a negotiation, and their entire position has been about reimbursement. They don’t portray it that way. In other words, they don’t want to pay for things without assurance that they will be reimbursed, but that is not the same thing as the ability to do so.
If I could just convey that going forward, people should talk about what they can do given their incredibly deep pockets versus what they would like to be reimbursed for down the road. And with that, thank you so much, sir.
Deputy Mayor Steinmetz:
Joe, thank you for your candor. It’s appreciated. I just kind of wanted to follow up your suggestion of an annual amount with the Port – the Port putting it forward without trying for the sound insulation replacements. Is that coming just from you? Was there any discussion about that? Was there any indication that maybe the Port could use this as a pretty good way to help their identity in the community?
Joe Dusenberry:
Apparently, I heard about it – apparently, the San Francisco International Airport has a program like that. At the social hour afterwards, I talked to the two people that were in charge of the airport’s program as it is to date, and I brought that up. They said, “Well, it’s a matter of funding,” and one person appeared to be quite knowledgeable. He said, “Yeah, they fund that with revenue from their concessions.”
Council Member Harris knows much more about how their various revenue streams all add up to a little over a billion dollars a year, but some of them are quite restrictive on what they can do with that money. But again, going back to it, it’s hard to imagine that somewhere in there they couldn’t come up with some sum of money and just have people get on a list and just take the first 10 every year and go fix what is wrong with their sound packages.
The problem is, and this is where the FAA comes in, that the most common failure when they did the survey was in the sound windows. As you all know, we all have double windows; some people have triple windows now. Over time those seals fail, the windows fog up, and the program considers that a warranty issue: “We’re not going to pay for that; it’s a warranty issue.”
Another thing that really helps sound in new construction or even retrofitting old construction is storm doors, but if your storm door is broken and you just want to get that replaced, now that’s a warranty issue. So by restricting what they will actually fix – like Council Member Harris said, it’s ventilation fans and the ventilation system and things like that – they’re taking out of the equation the things that most often fail.
Councilmember Harris:
Well, just to be clear, they totally can replace doors and stuff like that. The City of San Francisco – San Francisco County – they just, it doesn’t matter whether it comes from snack machines, parking rentals, whatever – they find the money, and every year they just put some money into a fund. That was the hope with the state legislation last year. The 2020 study you mentioned – just, I very well understand, noted – but frankly, the people, the staff people that come to StART are not going to do that for us.
I get it. What I appreciate about your participation is that willingness and eagerness to provide this information, because frankly, there’s always this information asymmetry. Without you, without someone like you, it’s even more challenging to get anything out into the community about what’s possible. So if I haven’t been gracious enough – thank you, thank you, thank you.
Mayor:
Right, looks like we’re good. Thank you so much, Joe. Appreciate you being here. Looks like there’s another question for you, sir.
Councilmember Achziger:
When you said that the StART committee, do they – they’re expecting consensus or unanimity?
Joe Dusenberry:
Well, let me – because I was the one that initially said I thought having 100% consensus was unrealistic. Apparently, in the StART guiding documents, they only move an issue forward if 100% of the committee agrees. So I was the one that, I think, sort of raised the point that that sounds nice but is kind of ridiculous. I mean, inherently the Port and the cities are not going to agree on lots of stuff, so then those issues never get to move forward. We raised that – it did kind of open up, I think, more discussion than the Port staff was ready for, and there was no resolution on that.
Councilmember Achziger:
But the determinant of whether or not the degree of agreement is with the Port, or is it with the FAA?
Joe Dusenberry:
It’s with everybody in the StART group, which includes airlines, Port representatives. I just use the Port because I think that’s really the crux of the conflict.
Councilmember Achziger:
Well, that’s a recipe for divide and conquer. I mean, that’s – you know, is this something that you – you had mentioned electeds-to-electeds discussion. Is this something that there would be a value in taking this up with the Port Commission potentially?
City Manager Katherine Caffrey:
I think during our social hour, I talked to some of the Port staff about sort of what’s the future of StART given Lance’s departure as the managing director of the airport because my understanding is this was really kind of his brainchild. The staff are pretty open on – they don’t even know what the future of the group is. So I think before electeds talk to Port electeds, it’d be good to sort of see what’s going to happen with this committee. But there may be a time where that’s helpful.
Mayor:
All right, thank you so much, Joe.