At last Thursday’s Study Session, the Des Moines City Council took all of five seconds to approve a new airport committee with no start date, no mission and an as yet to be defined structure. (Airport Committee Pages from Study Session – 06 Feb 2025 Agenda)
The meeting opened with a passionate presentation from Beacon Hill activist Maria Batayola, comments from Burien Airport Committee member Karen Veloria and then a video from Quiet Skies Puget Sound spokesperson Steve Edmiston. But then, after a lengthy meeting featuring two other contentious issues, a tired Council heard a brief presentation, then voted, with no discussion, to approve a committee with no structure and no goals, literally with five seconds left on the meeting clock. (Des Moines meetings automatically end at 9 PM unless the Council decides to extend.) Instead of adding time to the meeting, they put off any substantive discussion until an undetermined date. By delaying the formation and organization or goals of this committee until after the FAA’s ruling, the Council has effectively ensured it will have no meaningful role in that crucial decision.
Our Take
The Council offered only vague abstractions like “we want people to feel heard” or “we want mitigation” with absolutely no understanding of what those might mean or how to achieve it. The committee might advise the Council to take action? Or will the Council provide direction to the committee? Who knows.
This demonstrates a troubling and ongoing pattern in how the city addresses community impacts from Sea-Tac Airport. In 2018, Des Moines created an airport committee that dissolved after just eighteen months with no productive results and no continuity. During that time, then-city manager Michael Matthias was supposedly working privately on a strategy with Burien and Federal Way. That turned out to be non-existent.
With no firm purpose, structure, or authority, the Council is hoping, as in 2018, to give the appearance of action — handing off a responsibility it does not want to residents who have neither the expertise or authority to act.
Five years later, the stakes are even higher. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will soon decide whether to approve Sea-Tac Airport’s environmental impact study and move forward with the largest airport expansion in history. Communities will have just sixty days to appeal that decision. Yet once again, your local electeds seem content with merely appearing to take action rather than achieving results. In this way, they are proving to be even less effective than the Port of Seattle.
At least the Port of Seattle can articulate its interests – they can argue that increasing flights creates more jobs and economic prosperity for King County, albeit at the expense of communities under the flight path. Des Moines can make no such good faith claims. All they can do is continue a pattern of inaction.
When the Sustainable Airport Master Plan Draft Environmental Assessment was released in October 2024, all cities feigned complete surprise — despite creating a four-city Interlocal Agreement (ILA) in 2018 to coordinate their response! Despite that, their contract was left for renewal until literally the last day, with no review by any governing bodies. This is a common technique in government – you don’t say no to something, you simply put it in a drawer until it’s too late to do anything about it. This is why we have not supported creating yet another airport committee. One of our founders, JC Harris, has been a member of the Des Moines City Council since 2020 and this year put forward the only constructive State legislative agenda under the flight path. Our agenda. Yet inexplicably, their Council would rather shift gears away from an approach that has shown the only productive results and at the worst possible moment. This action reinforces a pattern of ineffective governance.
It is laughable that we can achieve anything meaningful on these issues, on this timeline, by handing off these issues to a completely new advisory committee. Every productive advance on airport issues has been achieved through work with subject matter experts. Other than Harris, the City has none and has no plans to engage professionals any time soon. The only budget set aside is a $69,000 budget amendment proposed by Harris last year. Without budget, expertise or clear objectives, all such a committee can do is listen to people express their frustrations.
STNI was founded specifically to end this cycle of greenwashing and chronic hand waving. Every year we put forward concrete actions to help the community. That is what cities like Des Moines should do. We see no reason for any City to create another emotional support group. All that has done is to convince the community that resistance is futile. It is a lie.
It’s time for actual progress on airport impacts, not more distractions and delays that conveniently miss critical deadlines.
Instead, interested community members from Des Moines should advocate for a joint committee with the City of Burien — the only city with shared interests.
Discussion Transcript
[Mayor Buxton]: I feel like we’ve had a long meeting, but it’s important to start this because we had special guests come and talk to us. I want to honor the time and investment of public comment. Rebecca, thank you, we got the head nod. Okay, so a very brief… Oh my gosh, like this we talked about that.
So one slide about what staff are doing with the regional group. The purpose of this item is for Council to discuss the formation of an airport committee, which was recommended put forward [with] a 7-0 vote. This airport committee will advise the Council on matters requiring decisions and/or actions with regard to airport issues. I’m going to turn it over for presentation to Rebecca.
I’m just going to remind you what staff is doing on our four cities group and what we’ve been doing related to airport already. We have a four-city partnership that was formed originally in 2018. We have a contract with a consultant that was signed at the same time in 2018. We provided the latest comment letter on the NEPA in December.
We meet weekly with the four cities and the SEA officials and directors to talk about both consultant coordination. We talk about trying to get ahead of this and the SEA review time as that is expected to come out at the end of this year. We talk about Part 150 updates and people that are meeting between the four cities. We’re planning for the future and talking about what we’re expecting out of the final NEPA documents and when it’s coming out.
[Unknown Council Member]: How come who’s missing? Tukwila maybe?
[Rebecca]: The ILA is just the four cities.
[Mayor Buxton]: That was the presentation just so that we know that something’s going on, that our cities are working together. I sent all of you a request asking before we begin the discussion, as an overall overarching statement or sentence, what in one sentence encapsulates what the committee should do – its foundational goal or mission.
I did get one written in from Council Member Achziger: “To extract suitable relief from SEA International Airport operations revenues to mitigate the significant public health risks to its surrounding communities.”
[Deputy Mayor Steinmetz]: As an advisory body, I’m not quite sure how the airport committee gets to this, but I think we need clarity about what our overall strategy or approach to the airport is. It’s my personal opinion we need to engage on the many levels that the airport exists. We need to stay in the conversation and as the woman from Beacon Hill told us, make sure the stories are heard, the personal stories are heard by the airport committee, that the impacts the airport has on our communities are heard. I also think similar to what Council Member Achziger put out, we need to make sure we’re getting mitigation.
[Mayor Buxton]: Can you summarize that in a sentence real quickly?
[Deputy Mayor Steinmetz]: Engage and extract mitigation? Well, no, I’m not saying the airport committee needs to do it, that’s what the city should be doing. I think once we get to the idea we have a city strategy, we can task an advisory committee to advise us on how to implement that.
[Council Member Mahoney]: I used to attend the ones back when they were originally formed, just to listen in. I agree with some of the other things said, but just hear and reflect the various impacts of the airport. It’s kind of all-encompassing – there could be information about SAMP or could be reflecting stories about somebody’s backyard. It’s just to give that human element that I see always missing. I take us back to when we had the meeting here – one of the biggest things was it gave an opportunity for our residents to share their personal impact.
[Council Member Grace Matsui]: I move that the city council approve the formation of the airport advisory committee as outlined in the agenda item.
[Mayor Buxton]: All opposed? Council Member Harris is opposed. 6-1 motion passes to adjourn.