This special meeting of the Tacoma City Council was held on November 20, 2024, to discuss and vote on amendments to the 2025-2026 preliminary biennial budget. The meeting included public comment, a debrief on the budget public hearings, a presentation on budget risks and structural gaps, and consideration of multiple council-proposed amendments. After extensive debate, the council voted on a series of amendments, while a major proposal regarding fire department rover positions was withdrawn for further refinement.
I'd like to call to order the city council special meeting of November twenty, twenty twenty four. Clark, will you please call the role? Councilmember Bush now. Councilmember Daniels. Here. I'd like to call back to order the city council special meeting of November 20th, 2024. Moving on in our agenda, and thank you for your patience. Um we're going to um move on to public comment. On today's agenda, there's one opportunity for people to comment on the twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty twenty-five-twenty twenty-six biannual budget on proposed amendment. The forum is intended to give speakers the opportunity to share their viewpoints and feedback with the city council to aid in our decision making, and it's not meant to be a back and forth dialogue. Your remarks should be directed to the city council and not at individual staff members. If you want to speak under the public comment period, please press the raise your hand button near the bottom of your Zoom window or star nine on your phone now so we can see the number of people wishing to testify this morning. If you're speaking in person, please sign up in the back of the room if you have not done so already. Your name or the last four digits of your phone number will be called out when it is your turn to speak. Clerk, we please read. This is the time set aside for public comment. Speakers are asked to identify the specific legislation they wish to address. Uh to provide a comment period where people can feel respected while sharing a wide variety of viewpoints and clearly acknowledge that sometimes we may hear comments that conflict with our values. If you cannot remain on topic, you will be given two warnings. If you remain off topic, we will have to move on and we'll end your time. Okay, if you're if you're in the room and you'd like to speak, um, please come forward to the mic at this time. I am not Andrew Ray, lest there be any confusion. Um I thank you for allowing me to come and speak today on briefing item two four one two four five, the council budget amendments. Um last night, a lot of people testified um looking for something from the city. The great thing, and one of the reasons I love talking about economic development is because we are talking about growing the pie that helps pay for those things from the city. And so anytime we can invest in economic development, we know that that supports the city's bottom line by growing businesses and the tax base. There was a hope that that would be reinvested in economic development and support of the business community. Today that increase is added over 20 million dollars to the city's budget. Um but the investment economic development has not moved much. Um meanwhile, according to the city's budget book, the city has added 356 positions since 2022, or is proposing to add a total of 356 positions since 2022. That's a significant increase. I'm asking you to continue to support economic development. Um, in 2020, uh the city did eliminate funding for the retail advocate, um, and we had to cut the position back to match that. Um, as we look at the funding coming back in 2021, we were able to continue to support the businesses. This has allowed us to actually see an increase in the number of storefronts in downtown Tacoma that are failed compared to some of our peer downtowns. Please continue to support the economic development work, even if it's over the short term to give us a chance to do some transitioning. Thank you. Okay, thank you very much, David. All right, I'm gonna go to those who have their hand raised. Is there anybody else in the chambers wishing to testify? All right, seeing none, I'm gonna go to those who have their hand raised. Um, we have three people online, and we'll start with Patrick McEliott. Hello, American Council. Can you guys hear me? Yes. Yes, we can. Yes, we can. All right, so uh just kind of uh piggybacking on talks that we've been having uh over the last couple months, and I also would like to make some uh corrections. Uh last night it was said uh that uh we are uh driving around in uh engines from 1955. Uh that is not what we said.