The Des Moines City Council convened for a Committee of the Whole and study session on Thursday, May 1, 2025.
They addressed several important municipal matters that will be voted on at regular council meetings.
Discussions included significant updates to the city’s policy on false alarms, involving a new fine structure with outsourced collection efforts.
The council also deliberated on implementing state-mandated Middle Housing requirements ahead of a looming deadline.
Additionally, after reviewing multiple designs, the council selected a new logo for the city.
False Alarm Rate Restructuring
During the Committee of the Whole, the council heard an update to the policy around alarm systems. This includes both residential and commercial alarms. The original policy was created in 2006 and had not been updated since. At a recent meeting the council approved Chief Ted Boe’s plan to outsource the collection of fines related to false alarms. In addition to that outsourcing, the city will have a new fine structure that better reflects the actual cost of responding to false alarms.
The new fee structure will maintain the original $25 annual registration fee, as well as keeping the first false alarm response free. However, the rate will jump to $100, $150, and then $200 for each consecutive false alarm. Chief Boe said that alarm registration in Des Moines is so low that last year there were more false alarm responses to unregistered alarms than to registered ones. The hope is that outsourcing the alarm fee collection will encourage a better registration rate, and a reduction in false alarms. Council will vote on the new rate at the next regular meeting.
Middle Housing Discussion
The council heard a presentation on how a new Middle Housing ordinance, House Bill 1110, will affect development in Des Moines. Every Washington city needs to pass updated legislation to accommodate the requirements of the bill by June. The council will discuss this further at a future meeting and vote before that June deadline.
It was explained that middle housing does not include tiny homes, ADUs, or mobile homes. Middle housing instead includes duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, fiveplexes, sixplexes, stacked flats, cottage homes, townhouses, and courtyard apartments. The bill requires cities to allow at least six of these nine types of middle housing. City staff recommend allowing duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, stacked flats, cottage homes, and townhouses, but not five- and sixplexes or courtyard apartments.
New City Logo Chosen
The council had many design options to choose from for a new city logo (see examples here).
After much discussion, they ended up in a split decision, favoring the following sailboat design in three shades of blue, in a 4–3 vote.
The council ultimately selected the new logo after reviewing several revised options that were brought forward late in the process and not included in the original meeting packet. While four fresh designs were introduced and debated at the end of the meeting, the one chosen most closely resembles the original Option 1 found in the packet (seen below), which will be finalized by a professional designer:
Mayor Traci Buxton, Deputy Mayor Harry Steinmetz, and Councilmember Gene Achziger were opposed to this particular design, though they all agreed on something that would include blue, a sailboat, and some water. Notably, Mayor Buxton expressed a strong dislike for the use of light blue in the design.
The city has so far spent $2,750 for logo redesign.
