The Des Moines City Council met for the Committee of the Whole and Study Session on Thursday, April 3, 2025.

Local lawmakers addressed key issues impacting the city’s infrastructure, public safety, and housing landscape.

Discussions ranged from the implementation of a comprehensive traffic calming program designed to enhance residential street safety, to outsourcing of false alarm management for the police department to streamline operations, improve efficiency, and increase revenue.

The council reviewed updates to accessory dwelling unit (ADU) codes to align with state mandates aimed at increasing housing availability.

Finally, ongoing debates regarding the council’s protocol manual highlighted differing perspectives on procedural matters, setting the stage for continued discussions in future meetings.

Traffic Calming Program

The council heard a presentation on traffic calming measures that will be taken in Des Moines, employing techniques utilized successfully in other cities. The approach has three phases:

Public input to help determine the highest priority areas
Speed data tracking using magnetic strips on roads
Installation of traffic calming measures such as “speed humps” or roundabouts where appropriate.

It was explained that this program will only be looking at residential streets, not arterials. Due to the need for emergency vehicles to travel quickly along arterials, these busier roads are not being considered for speed bumps or roundabouts. Arterials can have other measures such as speed cameras, but current state law only allows speed cameras near schools and parks. Presenters did say that they receive the largest number of complaints about speeding along residential streets.

Several speed humps will be installed throughout the city at locations already determined by public feedback to be problem areas. Data from these pilot locations will help ascertain the effectiveness of the speed humps.

Police Outsourcing Alarm Management

Chief Ted Boe explained that false alarm management, and trying to get alarms properly registered and renewed, takes a significant portion of Des Moines Police Department staff time. In addition to being labor and cost intensive, he said they recoup less than 50% of the fines they bill for. He added that Des Moines police responded to over 1,000 false alarms in 2023 alone.

Chief Boe’s solution is to contract with professionals, whose entire service is based on getting alarms properly registered and collecting those fees. They will charge the city a 27% cut on billing, but from the sound of it, more fines will be collected and much police staff time will be saved, making this a win/win. The company Boe is working with has never had a data breach, and is a national leader in professional alarm system management.

The cost and structure of the fines will also be reexamined. Currently, there is no fee for the first or second false alarm. There is a $100 fine for the 3rd, and a $200 fine for all subsequent false alarms. In addition, there is a $200 fine for failing to register an alarm. According to documents, the fines were established in 2006, and have not been updated since. They barely cover the cost of DMPD staff processing and trying to collect them.

Councilmember Yoshiko Grace Matsui added that all the city’s fines should be evaluated on a regular schedule, since there are other fines that need to be updated to keep up with the cost of processing them.

Boe said there is an 8-week onboarding process with this company, and then the new system will be implemented over the next several months.

Accessory Dwelling Unit Updates

The city’s Accessory Dwelling Unit codes will be updated to meet state requirements to allow for more ADUs to be built. Washington State House Bill 1337 requires code compliance by June of this year, in order to provide more housing for a growing population.

ADUs in Des Moines will no longer require owner-occupancy on the property. The number of ADUs allowable on a property will jump from one to two. The maximum size of those ADUs will increase as well, from 800 square feet to 1,000 square feet. In addition, parking spots for these units are no longer required if they are within ½ mile of public transit.

Council Protocol Manual Discussion To Be Continued

The council will be going through the protocol manual line by line in 30-minute increments over the next several months. At this meeting they discussed several aspects of the manual, but did not reach agreement on much.

Councilmember Grace Matsui wanted to bring back automatic second readings of council decisions, something that the council recently voted to get rid of. Councilmembers JC Harris and Gene Achziger were in support of this. Councilmember Harris also suggested the council could do what is done in Burien, which is to automatically send items to the Consent Calendar of the next business meeting, rather than doing a full second reading.

Others on the council pointed out all the reasons they had gotten rid of automatic second readings in the first place. Deputy Mayor Harry Steinmetz said that the public never takes advantage of the second reading, and that anytime a councilmember requests a second reading on any topic, they do one. This discussion was one of several that was tabled.

Another discussion that was left undecided was whether to extend the official meeting end time to 10 p.m., rather than cutting it off at 9 and voting to extend as needed. Councilmembers hoping to keep to the 9 p.m. cutoff argued that the deadline helps people to be more concise and respectful of everyone’s time.