I'd like to call to order the city council meeting of October 14th, 2025.

Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Councilmember Bushnell.

Present.

Deputy Mayor Daniels.

Absent Councilmember Diaz.

Here.

Councilmember Hines.

Councilmember Rumba.

Here.

Councilmember Sidalga?

Here.

Councilmember Scott?

Here.

Councilmember Walker?

Here.

Mayor Woodards?

Here.

Please join me in listening to the land acknowledgement and flag salute led by Councilmember Sidalgay, followed by a moment of silence.

We gratefully honor and acknowledge that we rest on the traditional lands of the Piala people where they make their home and speak the Lashut seed language.

Please stand for the flag salute and remain standing for a moment of moment of silence.

Are there any modifications to this evening's agenda?

Seeing none, we will move on to the consent agenda.

Councilmember Hines.

I move to adopt the consent agenda, including resolutions numbers 4175 and 4176.

Second.

Are there any questions, comments, or corrections?

Seeing none, all those in favor of adopting the consent agenda, please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

All those opposed, the consent agenda is declared adopted.

Moving on to proclamations, recognitions, presentations, and announcements, we have two ceremonials tonight.

And for the Thursday, October 16th, 2025 day as community conflict resolution, I'd like to invite Merylise Kwan, Executive Director, and Michael Transu, board chair of the Center for Dialogue and Resolution, to the podium as I read this proclamation.

Whereas nations, federal, state, regional, and local governments have an interest in promoting civility, understanding, improved communication, and conflict resolution via the use of facilitation, training, conciliation, and med and mediation.

And whereas the City of Tacoma promotes the use of and access to creative and productive community-based dispute resolution by highly qualified mediators.

And whereas anyone in the City of Tacoma has access to a community mediation center to resolve conflicts between family members, neighbors, tenants, landlords, merchants, consumers, employees, employers, civic organizations, and government agencies.

And whereas jurisdictions and the taxpayers in the state of Washington save significant resources that have been settled by community-based dispute resolution centers rather than court hearings.

And whereas the conflict resolution process and training increases the capacity of our community to turn conflict into productive resolutions, resulting in a higher quality of life for all residents.

And whereas the City of Tacoma commits to leading by example to promote conflict resolution by engaging in civil dialogue throughout its interactions with our own residents.

Now, therefore, I, Victoria R.

Woodards, mayor of the City of Tacoma, on behalf of the City Council, do hereby proclaim Thursday, October 16th, 2025, as Community Conflict Resolution Day in the City of Tacoma, and extend our deepest appreciation to the Center for Dialogue and Resolution for the vital services they perform and their exemplary duty to the community members they represent.

Please join me in a round of applause.

Mr.

Transou.

Well, thank you, Madam Mayor and members of the council for the record.

As noted, I'm Michael Transu, and I am the chair of the Center for Dialogue and Resolution Board of Directors.

As many of you know, we said goodbye to three board members and said hello to four new board members.

We spent that year updating our strategic plan and are ready to step up our services to our community.

Recognizing as the resolution or proclamation does that healthy community dialogue and is of the public interest and recognizes the need to learn how to disagree.

Your proclamation tonight emphasizes and manifests this need to your and our community, and for that we are true are we are sincerely grateful.

Thank you again for the proclamation tonight for us in the community, and we very much appreciate the recognition.

Thank you.

Great, thank you very much.

Mary Lise.

My name is Mary Lee Tudquan, and I'm the lucky person who gets to be the director of the center.

That our lifeblood is by volunteers, volunteers in our community who learn how to deal with conflict and return by mediating.

But I'm also here in front of you because I was here last year.

We celebrated our 30th anniversary.

And our commitment to you as the elected officials and to the community is to be able to offer some skills that go above and beyond two people in a room mediating.

And so this sat this Thursday, which is International Conflict Resolution Day, and here in Tacoma Conflict Resolution Day, we will have three different classes.

Two are already full in person at our center.

And the class, and then we'll have one online tonight or that night that is still open for room.

The class is called deescalation, turning conflict into connection.

And one of the hardest things is when our emotions are escalated, our passions are inflamed, our sense of righteousness is there.

How do we actually get to a point where we can get curious to hear about each other even though we're radically different perspectives?

So in two hours in a public training, how much are we going to offer?

What I'm excited to let you all know is we have seven more people who are learning how to do this kind of work and to be able to expand and offer that as a service.

So I appreciate that Tacoma has declared October 16th, our conflict resolution day in our community, and I challenge each and every one of us.

It's not easy work, but when you turn conflict into connection, we become a community and support one another.

Thank you for the attention tonight.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Um giving this proclamation.

And the reason I was reflecting on that is because I remember getting elected in November, and I remember my first meeting in January of 2018.

And at that point, the council prior to us had done away with, they taken a moratorium on public comment.

And we met and we talked about what what we heard from community, we talked about what we heard from prior council members.

And then we started a process together.

And I remember those beautiful um drawings that were on the on the wall that actually, how many of you were probably like I look out and see faces the people who are here then, right?

And and and there were there, they actually took notes, um, but they were in uh graphic a graphic a graphic note taker.

Um, and it really captured um what was said in the room, and then we went back at the end of the meeting, and you reminded us what we talked about.

Um, and I that was eight years ago.

Um, and we haven't stopped learning that, and we haven't stopped doing that.

And even though I look out tonight and there are the the chambers are crowded, um, I'm seeing people um that I haven't seen in a while and happy to see them.

Kyle, we've missed you.

Um, but um, but to think of of where we were then and where we are now as a community, and it was the Center for Conflict Resolution that helped us get to where we are today.

So, Mary Lise, I just want to say thank you to you and the work that you and your employees do every single day.

Um, this city is grateful for you, and not only have individuals in the city benefited from what you bring to this community, but the actual city council and the city chambers have benefited from what you did for us eight years ago.

And so I just want to express my deepest gratitude to you, and please um, if your staff isn't here, if they're watching, please let everybody know who who works there and who also volunteers to do this work, how much we truly appreciate um uh appreciate what they do for the city of Tacoma.

With that, please come forward to accept your uh proclamation and we'll do a round of applause.

No, right here, right in front.

Doesn't happen very often.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Okay.

For the 25th anniversary of the Environal Challenger program, I'd like to invite Jacqueline Fuller, who's the Environal Challenger lead, John Inch, and Gator LaFear, the environment, the Environ Challenger Educators from the City of Tacoma, and Chris Gleason, who came a really came a long way to be here.

She is the program founder and former City of Tacoma employee.

Um, thank you all for coming to the podium, and I love your outfits.

All right.

Whereas the City of Tacoma Environmental Services Department launched the Environ Challenger Program in 2000 to promote environmental stewardship and sustainability through dynamic hands-on education for students.

And whereas over the past 25 years, the Enviro Challenger program has grown to include four professional educators, reaching students of all grade levels in classrooms, online platforms, and community spaces, and has delivered tens of thousands of lessons since its creation.

And whereas the program has become a resource for teacher professional develop development, built a robust library of digital education resources, and supported engaging action projects for the residents of this city of all ages that extend environmental learning beyond the classroom.

And whereas the addition of the Enviro Challenger Arts Program, led by the dedicated arts educators, past and present, has elevated environmental education through creative expression, encouraging students to interpret and reflect on sustainability through the art.

And whereas the program has fostered strong partnerships with the Tacoma Public Schools, Pierce County Conservation District, Pierce County, Tacoma Public Utilities, and many teachers and community leaders.

And whereas, through 25 years of innovation, creativity, and collaboration, the Environal Challenger program has inspired generations of Tacoma's families to protect the environment, embrace sustainability practices, and work together to build a healthier, more resilient community.

Now, therefore, I, Victoria R.

Woodards, mayor of the City of Tacoma, on behalf of the over 225,000 residents of Tacoma, do hereby recognize the 25th anniversary of the Environal Challenger program and encourage all of all of those who live, work, and play in our community to celebrate and to embrace the lessons of the viral challenger program by taking everyday actions that protect our environment and expire and inspire the next generation of leaders.

Please join me in a round of applause.

Okay, Jacqueline, who's doing the talking?

I am and I just wanted to introduce myself again.

My name is Jacqueline Fuller.

I am the lead in the Environment Challenger program, but more importantly, I want to introduce and recognize my amazing team right here.

We have the creative and artistic Gator Landfair develops and teaches a highly sought-after art lessons.

And over here, we have my friend John Inch, the funny McGyver man of our program.

And just as a side note, John and I have been in this program for almost 20 years together.

Additionally, we have our visionary and creator of this program, Chris Gleason.

The program started with Chris teaching our environmental service messages in elementary lessons 25 years ago.

But over these 25 years, the programs grew into a four person intensive program that ranges from teaching elementary and middle school classrooms to high school internships, summer certificate programs connecting the underserved students to environmental services jobs and green jobs.

We also represent the environmental services in the community events throughout the city.

In 25 years, nearly 200,000 Tacoma students have participated in our lessons.

And a countless community members have come up to us and talked to us at our event tables.

What would be impossible to measure is the full impact of the program.

However, we know students who participate in the lessons, make behavior choices that preserve and protect our natural resources.

They share this knowledge with their family and friends, and we strongly believe that our community is a much healthier because of this.

One of my favorite stories about the Environment Challenger comes from John.

He was visiting an elementary classroom, and the teacher remembered him from the classroom when she was a student.

How old are we?

Okay.

Me.

Now that is a full circle moment of the best kind.

I think my team would wholeheartedly agree with me that we have the best job in the city.

And I want to thank you and I and show our appreciation that the city's investment in this program and the council's recognition.

And I just wanted to say thank you very much for this opportunity and the recognition.

And for my team.

Yes.

Yeah.

And Chris.

I remember seeing you all before I was even on the council out at Ethnic Fest and at other festivals.

I like the new, I like the new costumes.

They're an upgrade from what we've seen you in before.

But but really grateful again what you what you all do on behalf of the city is is remarkable and to do so much with so little.

But you keep going and we really appreciate that.

Chris Gleason, you are standing here.

Is it Australia?

New Zealand.

New Zealand.

Long way.

Either way, Chris, would you like to say just a few words?

I I I know, I know, and I think our team are really grateful for Jacqueline and her leadership, but you're here.

I guess what I'd like to say is for the city to make a decision to invest in the environment on behalf of our kids to say this is really important.

I there, I don't know how many other programs there are across the country, but I imagine very few that get this kind of education.

And for the city to put its stake in this message is just so cool.

And to be on the ground floor, that was really amazing.

And I'm going to tell a funny story because I think some of you know my boss at the time, Dan Vopell, and he he was so excited about this program, and he met with this artist and said, We have this meeting.

He's so excited.

We sat down over coffee, and this artist came up with some ideas for costumes like fuzzy costumes and things.

And we left the meeting and sat down, and he said, What do you think?

And I said, You have a choice.

You can either have the costume or you can have me, but you can't have both.

Thankfully, he chose me.

Um, but really it was about just this.

This is really important stuff for our kids to learn.

And for 25 years, they've been rooted in that.

And Tacoma, I just know Tacoma is a healthier place because of it.

So thank you for continuing to support this program and making sure that we are we are teaching our kids what they need to know to help our earth stay healthy for a long time.

Thank you.

Please join me in a round of applause and come forward to accept the proclamation.

Okay.

Yes, that that helps, Mayor.

Okay.

Okay, you guys ready?

Um, can I have council member left?

You guys all three can switch a little bit.

That's perfect.

Okay, ready?

One, two, three, one, two, three.

Thank you.

We just requested this.

All right.

Um, now we're gonna move on to public comment.

On tonight's agenda, there are two opportunities for people to comment.

Under public comment, you can speak about motions, resolutions, and ordinances on tonight's agenda.

Under community forum, which is held at the end of this meeting, you can speak about items over which the city council has jurisdiction.

These forums are intended to give speakers the opportunity to share their viewpoints and feedback with the city council to aid in our decision making, and is not meant to be a back and forth dialogue.

Your remarks should be directed to the city council and not to 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 evening.

If you're speaking in person and have not done so already, please make sure that you sign up in the back of the room.

Your name or the last four digits of your phone number will be called out when it is your turn to speak.

Clerk, will you please read?

This is a time set aside for public comment.

Speakers are asked to identify the specific legislation they wish to address.

All right, I would like to remind everyone to please keep your comments respectful, relevant, focused, and on topic.

We strive to provide a comment period where people can feel respected while sharing a wide variety of viewpoints and acknowledge that there may be times that we hear things that um conflict with our own values.

To ensure that all speakers can um express their First Amendment constitutional rights, we ask that you refrain from clapping, cheering, booing, or otherwise being disruptive.

You will have 90 seconds to make your remarks.

Please be mindful of the time frame.

And as always, you are not required to use all of your time to make your point.

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.

Clerk, have we received any written public comment for tonight's meeting?

We've received 24 regarding ordinance 29064.

Great, thank you very much.

All right, I'm gonna start.

Um I'm gonna start, I'm gonna go back and forth between those who are online and those who are here in person, and just reminding everybody that this public comment period is about things that are on tonight's agenda.

Um, so with that, um, I will start.

I'm gonna probably call five people who are here and five people online and go back and forth since we have so many people wishing to testify this evening.

Um, so we're gonna start with, and if you and if you would, because we do have, I think we have probably 15, 20 people online, and I have at this point uh 25 people who have signed up here in the chamber.

So if you would line up so that so that we can um make sure that everybody can make their testimony heard tonight, um, would really appreciate that.

And we'll start start with Rob Huff, Teresa Power Drudis, and Mickey Cowert.

Hello, council.

Uh, my name is Rob Huff, and I'm commenting on ordinance 29064.

I urge you to reject this camping ban expansion to focus on creating safe sites across our city that can finally provide a clear answer to the universal question of where people can go.

The current camping ban policy has been in place for three years.

And in that time, homelessness has increased in Tacoma.

There's no end in sight to the cycles of harassment and trash cleanup.

Even Tacomans who may be thankful that a tent that was once in their front home front of their home or business has moved away.

They recognize that the person is still likely homeless and now living a few blocks away away from where they used to be.

Our community needs to create safe places where people can stay for short periods of time and be reliably contacted by outreach workers where people can work on their issues.

We also need to build many more affordable homes so that we can stem the steady increase of households who become homeless for the first time each month.

And the idea that therapeutic courts will be helpful in this new policy fails to acknowledge that people will have to be cited and have a court record in order to be able to use those services.

Further criminalization of homelessness is not an answer.

Let's focus on solutions.

But then also I spent some years in Southern Africa, and there was a deep and crushing poverty in that area of the world when I was there.

People who lived in the city I lived in called the houses and businesses along the main street, they called them the window curtains.

Because when people came into town, they could come and see things being beautiful, they would shop, they would do their business.

Behind that one row, though, people were allowed to survive.

People could build their mud rendezvous, they could build metal shacks, they could make do with what they had.

That's the difference with what Tacoma is proposing and the level of survival that even the shred of human decency would demand of us.

We have to allow people to survive and be sheltered in whatever way they can.

Thank you.

My name is Mikey Court and I'm a constituent of John Hines, the author of The Cruel, Unnecessary and Wasteful Expansion of the Camping Ban.

I work part time providing desperately needed resources to our unhoused neighbors.

I'm here to ask the rest of the council which side are you on?

Are you on the side that supports arbitrary selection of sites and sweeps, uh sites to sweep and counts success in pounds of trash?

The trash that consists of blankets, sleeping bags, tents, tarps, family photos, identify identifying documents, the entire life of a human being living on the margins, or are you on the side of humanity recognizing that this trash consists of everything your neighbors own?

Are you on the side that pretends sweeps which cost Tacoma taxpayers a million dollars a month reduce homelessness that pretends to point humans who are treated like trash by the so-called heel team that celebrates uh to sorry it's a uh treat treats those people like trash, points them to shelters that are being closed instead of expanding those shelters.

Look around you, you can see the lie with your eyes, or are you on the side that tells you not to trust your lying eyes?

Are you on the side that creates and supports policies that kill every single month?

Hundreds of people have died on the streets since the original camping ban was implemented while their sleeping bags, hand warmers, warm clothing, and tents make their way to landfills.

A million dollars a month, hundreds of your fellow human beings dead.

I'm here to ask you which side are you on.

I urge you to vote no on the cruel and wasteful expansion of the camping ban.

I appreciate all of your enthusiasm.

Um, and I appreciate all of you taking your time to be here this evening.

Those of you who've been here before know what I'm about to say.

Those of you who are here for the first time will hear me say it this time.

Out of respect for everyone who has an opinion who's in this room tonight, and out of respect for someone's whose opinion may be different than yours, in order for them to feel comfortable to get up to the mic, I'm gonna ask you no clapping, no cheering, no booing, no snapping.

Please let everyone who comes up to this.

We just celebrated conflict, we're gonna celebrating conflict resolution um day on Thursday, which means you don't have to agree with what somebody else says, but you should respect them enough to allow them to share their viewpoint.

And in order for them to do that in this very crowded room, you have to be respectful to one another.

So I'm asking you, please.

No clapping, no cheering, no booing.

Let everybody have their say and take their seat, whether we agree with them or not.

I'm gonna call the next three people.

Jana Cook, Michelle Reich, and Sally Perkins.

Good evening.

Good evening.

I do not live in Tacoma, but I did live on the streets with people, uh, actually giving out uh supplies.

I know it is uh they suffer.

I know that they uh have very little.

And I don't know if you understand that Tacoma is the city of Pierce County.

And as you set a precedent, all these towns, municipalities and communities pay attention.

If you dish out inhumanity to these people that have nothing, they will follow your lead.

I beg to you tonight to consider and reconsider your ordinance.

We must be humane in today's world.

We cannot take away from these people that have nothing.

These sweeps completely take away every survival tool they have.

It is inhumane.

And I don't know if any of you have ever been without sleep for 72 hours.

If you have ever been without the ability to wash your hands or take care of your personal hygiene.

This is this is the little things that they have in their possession is to help them survive on the streets.

I beg you to have a different opinion, uh, form a different idea, and do not go forward with this ordinance.

Thank you.

Michelle Reich.

I gave the city council this morning a four-page template of how to take care of the problem directly, immediately on time with a social worker to get help.

Councilmember Sidalgi, you weren't here three years ago.

But three years ago, I presented to the city council.

This chart of how do the ban impacts the city.

Michelle, if you're not in front of the mic, they can't hear you on TV.

You're just pushing the problem out to other neighborhoods and things, kicking the can down the road.

You're not solving the problem.

This was a prepared three years ago for the city council, and they haven't took care of business.

And here we are again today.

You want to expand the ban to other neighborhoods.

The same thing that I presented three years ago, Councilmember Sidalgi, you aren't here.

But anyway, uh part of my proposal was enacting what you have here as your alternative to do a total ban.

At your October 8th meeting, adopt a citywide camping prohibition on public property.

That was your alternative to this proposal today.

And along with that, you need to do the ban on private property and hold the people accountable because you're just pushing the problem again if you only do public property.

And along with that, you need a no tolerance for drugs and Tacoma for public use.

All three of these need to work together to solve the issue.

Thank you.

Thank you, Michelle.

And as Sally's coming, Barb Church, Onita Arnold, and Ed Jacobs.

Sally Perkins, District 3, regarding ordinance 29064.

For the past three years, the city has carried out a policy of removal of homeless people from the streets where they have tried to survive.

This is not camping, it's surviving when there are no shelter spaces workable for their circumstances, only meager efforts to identify meaningful services, and the near total undercutting of all the other outreach efforts.

Your removal policy has failed in every way.

Even if your goal is to make homeless people go away, you have failed because there is nowhere for them to go.

There is no away.

Now, right before a new council takes office, some members of this council seek to tie their hands by rushing through an amped-up version of this failed policy.

Now is the time for solutions, not more harassment of homeless people.

Now is the time to look at innovative shelter options, more focused and tailored services and support, and emphasize the well-being of our homeless neighbors.

But you have to want to do these things, which this council does not seem to be ready to do.

Let the new council address real solutions.

Stop ordinance 29064.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sally.

I'm speaking on behalf of Bronwyn Clark who couldn't be here tonight.

I'm urging an emphatic no vote to the sick new camping ban that will make it exponentially harder to care for unhoused members, neighbors.

To vote yes on this updated camping ban is to say our libraries and our parks are no longer truly public places.

To vote yes is to deliberately divert funding from viable efforts, turning vacant public lots into sanctioned shelters, funding the Hope team or preventing evictions into a money for punishment.

To vote yes is to make our unhoused neighbors even more vulnerable to Trump's institutionalized order.

To vote yes is to make people without alternatives.

As a parks candidate and a social policy researcher, I want to state for the record that this policy will make it even harder to end homelessness.

It is not just sinister.

It's not smart.

It was it will siphon scarce sources towards traumatizing sweeps that push people around endlessly at best and at worst to push them in far more expensive jail facilities that put them down deeper and deeper in despair at taxpayers' expense.

Sponsors of this motion, I've talked to each one of you.

I know you are reasonable people who purport to care.

I also hear that your voice is demanding tough love, but expanding this camping ban is not love.

It's callous and careless.

Please do not support this camping ban.

Thank you, Barb.

You were before him, but we'll let him go first.

As many of you know, I continue to hold quarterly homeless memorials where we honor and remember people who have died while experiencing homelessness.

Mayor Woodards, John Hines is and the two of you have been on the council from 2021 for a couple of years.

Sarah Rumbaugh, you came on on 2022.

I remember speaking on the camping ban authored by John Hines and talking about the massive amount of stress verified by the homes race scale that this would put on the homeless population.

It was enacted, and the next year we had an increase in homeless deaths to the highest number ever recorded, 295.

Today you are seeking to expand the camping ban to further restrict areas in Tacoma and to put more pressure on the homeless.

In 2022, when I spoke to you about the camping man, you didn't believe me.

Please believe over the 930 people.

These are not God's words, these are mine.

Stop killing my people.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ed.

And after um Onita, uh Saul Ozuna, Rebecca Stith, and Gemini Null.

Good evening, Mirror Woodards and Council members.

My name is One Arnold.

I live in District Two.

I'm speaking in opposition to the camping ordinance.

And suddenly they are outside of the law, once again with nowhere to go.

Councilmember Hines' updated camping bans combined with his original bans makes being unhoused illegal in almost every part of the city.

Is that the goal?

Many things have changed since that first and successful and punitive ordinance in October 2022.

Several shelters have recently closed, leaving a significant deficit in places for unhoused people to go and to sleep.

Sweeping bans disrupt the little security that are uns that our unhoused community have tried to build for themselves.

Loss of community support and safety, loss of survival supplies, and loss of contact with the outreach workers who truly care about them.

Sweeping kills people, please don't vote for an ordinance that will promote this.

You said this means.

Good evening, Rebecca Stith District 2.

I went back and listened to the council's discussion three years ago in 2022.

And there were a lot of words of wisdom spoken then.

One of you said, Sarah Rombau said, I hope that we will come to a time when we will not be doing encampment clearing.

I just think that is so inhumane.

This is not the right thing to do.

And I agree with you, Councilmember.

Councilmember Bushnell said, in my heart, I do not support camping bans.

This ordinance to me represents an abject failure.

And I agree with you.

And I think a lot of people here do too.

And Councilmember Diaz, newly appointed, had just been on the council a short time.

And she said, I didn't apply to join this council to criminalize homelessness.

But all of you voted yes.

Why did you vote yes?

I think Mayor Woodards and Councilmember Walker explained the reasons.

Councilmember Walker said I would not have voted yes on this a year ago, but we're getting all these resources.

We have money.

There's so much possibility out there.

And maybe that made a lot of sense.

I know in your hearts you all care about this problem.

And Mayor Woodards, you said you would never ever support a camping ban, but now we finally have enough resources.

Well now we don't.

So I think you've all your word is your bond.

Now is the time to vote no.

And Chiara Daniels put it best.

You've got to listen to those who are houseless and those who work with the homeless.

And you didn't last time and you didn't this time either.

Thank you.

Thank you, Rebecca.

As Jim and I comes forward, Renee Korhoyer, Jay Fisher, and Tyrone Moore.

And you know, I've been coming to these city council meetings for a long time, and it it uh I have to ask the question, who is this camping ban for?

Right?

I I I ask you, have you ever had to sleep outside cold without blankets, without shelter, and make it through even one night like that, right?

I've had to do that once, and it it was awful, and that was just one night, right?

So I've got a lot of sympathy, I got a lot of empathy for the people out there who have to go through this day and month and and even years at a time.

And I ask, where is the sympathy?

Where is the empathy?

And I think I know where, because I've seen it in this council when people come up here and they say, I had to see a homeless person in front of my business.

I had to see somebody uh get uh people here might remember if someone got attacked by a by an axe outside outside of somebody's uh business, and and they were very upset that they had to see that, right?

Uh and when I see this camping ban coming out, a camping band that is going to kill more people, and we know that for a fact, because the first camping ban already has.

I say, where is your empathy?

And I think it's misplaced.

I think that that I like um like has already been said, you know, you know that this is wrong.

Side with the people, not with the prophet.

Uh you you can make this right, you can vote no.

Thank you.

Thank you, Gemini.

Renee.

Hi, um my name is Renee Cornwall, and I'm here also for Gloria Carpincho, who can't can't be here right now.

I rise to speak against ordinance two nine oh six four.

At the time the first camping ban was ordered, there were some shelters available to accommodate unhoused citizens.

Due to budget constraints, many shelters that were available then aren't available now.

We are already facing freezing overnight temperatures with no place to shelter and house citizens and from the elements.

Rather than restrict camping, the city should treat the situation as a health emergency.

People are going to freeze to death.

What this what the city should be doing is making government buildings available for the unhoused with the cooperation of the with the cooperation of the Tacoma Police Department to oversee operations for the safety of everyone.

It seems like this is an attempt to simply wave hands around, claiming that adequate shelter is available when it's not.

This is incredibly short-sighted and doesn't save their lives.

It's dripping with sick privilege and demonstrates that a solution is not contained therein.

What the city should do instead is identify vacant spaces where propane heating lamps can be installed for their use to stay alive this winter instead of camping bans.

We treat homeless pets with more care than we do people.

This is a shame and needs to be addressed.

Getting unhoused people out of our sight doesn't resolve the immediate problem.

It doesn't save their lives because it doesn't resolve the problem and will only serve to make it worse.

I beg of you to vote this down and a better solution introduced.

Overnight temperatures this week will reach freezing.

It's against city ordinances to allow pets to stay outside when temperatures drop below 45 degrees.

Why do we allow this for people?

I'm ashamed that I even need to talk about this.

Thank you.

Jay Fisher.

All right, Tyron, come on up.

Thank you.

My name is Tyron Moore.

I'm co-director of Tacoma for All.

A million dollars a month to clean up or remove and throw away people's possessions.

That's the amount of money that could fund 650 new tiny homes every year, according to estimates by Leha.

That's a third of the point in time count this last year could be housed in tiny homes for the amount of money that you're spending and an expanded amount of money that you're planning to spend if this policy passes.

It's an upside down policy that, as many people have said, are killing people.

70% more people died the year after the last one was passed, as others have said.

I cannot help but see this in a greater context.

A national context where we're increasingly dehumanizing and otherizing what growing swaths of our neighbors and our population.

Sweeps are obviously you're in line with what many cities are doing, with what the Supreme Court is saying is okay and passing an expanded sweep policy.

It's happening all across the country.

I'm well aware of that.

It doesn't make it more wrong.

In fact, it's part of the wider problem that you know, the right wing shift in this country that Trump rode to power on.

Our blue cities need to stand in the opposite direction.

We need to stand up for making this city more affordable, or we're gonna see more Trump's triumph, more right wing populists who make false promises triumph.

If our blue cities are pushing against things like the worker bill of rights, are trying to repeal tenant rights, are trying to remove, you know, sweep homeless people.

That's the exact opposite kind of politics that we need to turn this city and turn this country around.

And I ask you to vote no and shift your orientation.

Thank you very much.

All right.

I'm gonna now um I said I was gonna do five people, I just did 15.

I'm gonna go to some of those people who have their hands raised online.

So we'll start with Arrow, followed.

We'll start with Arrow.

Hello.

Hello, am I there?

We can hear you.

Uh hello, my name is Arrow, and uh I'm a member of About Face Veterans Against the War, and I'm here today to talk about some of our homeless veterans because as a lot of people know, majority of uh issues within the homeless communities do involve veterans.

20% of male uh homeless folks in the city of Tacoma, or I'm sorry, in the country, 20% of male homeless folks are veterans.

Uh, 51% of all uh homeless veterans are veterans with disabilities.

So this is a military town, and this is something that greatly impacts our communities.

And I wanted to talk more broadly about how the fact that, as Ty brought up, we're starting to see the militarization of ice that is sweeping our neighbors all across the country.

We're starting to see the militarization of the police all across the country, and our blue cities are saying that they're different, they're better.

Uh they're the they're the gonna combat this.

And yet when I look outside, I see more and more militarization of the police and coming at these camps, more people are dying every single winter.

Uh, I was told by numerous people that supported this camping ban that it would never result in police uh activity the way that it has, and of course, it has resulted exactly that way, and you want to expand it more and more.

And I'm gonna say the word because someone has to say it.

This is fascism.

This is the rise of fascism, and this is fascism to go after our houseless neighbors like this.

Thank you, Arrow.

Sarah Howe.

Webinar, don't capture button with all the data on your microphone board with the hold is basically a temporary movement.

Am I unmuted?

Yep.

Sarah, can you speak up just a little bit?

Hang on a second.

Speech on demand.

Can you hear me better now?

Can you hear me now?

Yeah, Sarah, we can.

Is there something playing in the background?

Oh, it was my computer, it was my screen reader.

I apologize.

Oh, nope, no, no problem.

Go ahead, Sarah.

Okay.

We talk about shelters.

I want to talk about um 29064.

I think I got that correct.

Um, we would talk about shelters, but there's a group of people who don't get shelters.

You know those veterans that gentleman was talking about, the ones that are disabled.

When they go to shelters and they can't transfer out of their wheelchairs, or they can't see to find their mat.

They're told, I'm sorry, we can't take you.

And they're turned away from shelters.

And whether somebody is a veteran or somebody is just a blind or disabled citizen, they get that rejection from every shelter.

Those who are blind and those who are in wheelchairs, those who have physical disabilities that limit them, they don't even have the choice of a shelter.

My concern is for them.

My concern is for a man who spent last winter in the hospital with pneumonia.

He didn't have to get pneumonia, but he didn't have he didn't have shelter.

And these kind of things happen.

Not only do we have physical disabilities, but we have autoimmune disabilities.

And we can't help it.

We didn't ask for this.

And I speak for all people with disabilities because I ask, please don't do this.

Please help our disabled citizens and not just them.

All of our unhoused citizens.

Because this isn't right.

This isn't right.

And that's no more I can say.

Thank you, Sarah.

Jonathan Pottle.

Hi, I'm Jonathan Pottle in District 2.

I'm speaking about ordinance 29064.

I've spoken to the council, both in these meetings and in one-on-one discussions with some of you about non-police mental health crisis response and tacoma.

And the number of you articulated to me over Zoom and in council chambers to everyone in attendance.

Your support for a more compassionate sort of care for people experiencing a crisis.

You even acted in accordance with that.

But how does that stated support square with expanding the camping ban?

An expanded camping ban will increase homeless people's stress and anxiety through increased sweeps and police contact at a time when there are not enough shelter beds when resources like Nativity House are gone.

To do this while also attempting to increase the homeless population of Tacoma by repealing tenants' rights.

How do you square all of this while carrying out your charge of serving the people of Tacoma, including our most vulnerable neighbors?

The camping ban is already cruel and inhumane.

Expanding the ban expands the stain on the council's record and on your souls.

Don't compound this wrong.

Don't pass this ordinance.

A better idea would be to repeal the original camping ban.

Thanks.

Thank you, Jonathan.

Claire Sweringen.

Hi, can you hear me?

Sure can, Claire.

Go ahead.

All right.

I'm here to ask that you do not pass ordinance 29064, which expands areas where surviving outdoors is criminalized.

The ordinance language references the fact that Tacoma has lost many shelters and resources that our homeless residents need.

The point of emergency and transitional shelters is to help people out of desperate and inhumane situations and prevent them from dying on the street.

Not to allow the city to subject those same people to the violence of criminalization.

This ordinance treats shelters as tools for policing rather than necessary community services.

Well, it's wonderful that the city has invested in the heel team and therapeutic courts.

There is no need to criminalize people in order to offer those people services.

The ordinance language also boasts a 64% acceptance rate for services, meaning that 36% of the people who are subject to encampment sweeps are being traumatized and having their belongings and means of survival destroyed on taxpayer dollars, only to be pushed around the city without receiving help.

This ordinance is coming at a time when the housing market is creating a crisis of survivability and more and more people are losing access to housing.

Right now, rampant state violence is terrorizing our communities at the federal level.

And you would choose to expand that kind of violence to our most vulnerable community members.

At the same time, you're blocking democratic efforts to pass protections for workers in Tacoma and attempting to repeal democratically chosen tenant protections that protect people from experiencing homelessness in the first place.

Please listen to your consciences and not your campaign donors and do not pass this ordinance.

Thank you.

Thank you, Claire.

Says Lisa's iPhone.

Hi, good evening, Council members.

My name is Lisa Hunt, and I was born and raised right here in Tacoma.

And I'm here this evening to voice my supports for for the proposed camping ban ordinance amending Title VIII.

This issue hits very close to home for me.

My brother lived on the streets, and I saw how hard and dangerous that life can be.

But with structure, accountability, and support, he is now clean and sober and rebuilding his life.

That's what real compassion looks like.

Helping people move towards safety and stability.

Supporting this ordinance isn't about turning our backs on anyone.

It's about not leaving people in unsafe and unhealthy conditions, and about helping our community find balance, compassion with accountability.

Thank you for your time and for addressing this issue with both firmness and compassion.

Thank you.

Thank you, Lisa.

Alec Thomas.

Hello, sorry I was muted.

Can you hear me?

We can, Alex.

Thank you.

Great, great.

Thank you.

Um, I'm here in support of ordinance 29064.

Our company has created 200 new affordable housing units in the Dome District, rehabilitated 100 Section 8 units in the theater district, and have created both space and construction capital for 11 emerging small businesses, bringing over 50 permanent full-time jobs to Tacoma.

We're deeply invested in the city, both personally and financially, with our homes pledged as collateral for our loans.

The encampments are directly undermining our ability to operate and lease housing downtown.

In the last three months, things have deteriorated to a level that can only be described as unsafe and untenable.

Because of the continued allowances of camping near our buildings, we're now seeing over 75% of our prospective tenants who come for tours leave upon arrival.

This not only affects the ability to be solvent as an affordable housing company, but also affects the safety of both our staff and the public.

In just a 10-day window of time, we saw active harassment and assaults of our property management staff, weapons brandished at our staff, every vehicle with shattered windows in our parking lot, a stabbing, a homicide, and an attempted kidnapping.

We can't fill our housing even when priced affordably, if the surrounding environment signals danger.

Compassion is not letting someone camp on the sidewalk.

And I fear that businesses will continue to leave Tacoma if this measure is not introduced, reducing tax revenue and even further reducing the ability to provide services.

We need leadership.

Thank you.

Thank you, Alec.

Catherine Pick.

Yes, good evening, Mayor Woodards and Council members.

And talk to you as a friend, as a constituent and as a colleague.

And with all due respect, this expansion of the camping ban is unconscionable.

We are at a crossroads of urgency and decisiveness.

And we are wrestling with the same issues that we've been wrestling with for the last five, six, seven years.

And nothing is solved, and everything is getting worse.

Camping bans fix nothing.

It's a temporary band-aid on a situation that needs open heart surgery.

You cannot possibly with any type of credibility promote a DEI policy in one breath, and then in another breath say, but we're going to exclude our unhoused neighbors from this neighborhood, from that neighborhood, from this area, from that area.

And I would like to remind you of the words of one of my favorite musicals.

History has its eyes on you.

What are you going to show us?

Thank you, Catherine.

Um, the next speaker just says Zoom user.

Good evening.

Sorry, this is Kristen Wynne.

I'm here to speak in support of ordinance two nine zero six four.

Thank you so much to the council members who sponsored this important ordinance and taking on this complex, difficult issue.

As I said, I do support this ordinance.

Many here tonight have argued that the camping ban is what's harmful, harmful to those living on the street.

The truth is it's living on the street that is harmful, both to those living there and to the wider community.

Unfortunately, the frank truth is encampments are dangerous.

Those in the encampments are victimized by criminals.

And in addition, as we've just heard, those living near or working near the encampments are also victims and are unsafe.

Our goal should be to connect people with safer, more stable alternatives than life on the street, while also restoring public safety and order in public spaces.

This ordinance moves us closer to that goal.

These amendments will protect our children near schools, will help ensure public spaces remain safe and accessible for the public.

And the referral to therapeutic courts is an important amendment providing a vehicle to help people address the root cause of why they're on the street in the first place.

Thank you for your leadership and bringing this forward.

Thank you.

Moving on to Megan Capes.

Hi, my name is Megan Capes.

Um, it's good to virtually be with y'all tonight when I had a long school meeting, but I'm a teacher in Tacoma.

Um, I'm speaking also uh against um this ordinance.

Um before I was a teacher, um, I worked in unhoused services at the old day shelter um at Nativity House.

I actually was talking with a student about this today.

Um, so many of our unhoused neighbors, if you talk with them 100%, you'll pick up a pattern that living unhoused outside it takes so much time.

It takes time if you're living somewhere else to walk to the place to get services.

It takes more time to stay in line at those services.

It takes more time to even walk back.

It takes even more time if you have to pack up your stuff uh beforehand and find a new place, and then more time to set that back up.

Um I am against this camping ban because so many of our supports um for uh for unhouse folks are gonna get blocked, or even more time is gonna get wasted for them to get to them.

I remember a conversation with you, Mayor back in COVID about parks closing, about where where folks are gonna go to go to the bathroom and how us not offering free bathrooms is gonna mean that it's gonna cause crisis.

Megan, I think you muted yourself just as you were finishing.

Um, yeah.

So sorry to go ahead.

I thought it was quite thing and I was cutting myself off.

She muted herself again.

She said she cut herself off because she moved a telling us off.

Oh, oh, okay.

Okay, sorry about that.

All right, I'm gonna take one more person online and then I'm gonna come back and start calling um people in the chambers again, and we will go to um the person with the phone number ending in 2127.

Can you hear me?

Sure can go ahead.

Yes.

I'm speaking it.

I'm speaking in favor of the ordinance.

I'm a lifelong uh Tacoma.

And you've heard from I don't know, 15 or 20 people uh who clearly are activists, and I'd like to speak for the roughly other 220,000 people in the city.

I've got some inconvenient truths.

Number one, it's not compassionate to let people live on the street.

Number two, the vast majority of those who are offered services refuse the services.

Number three, this is a drug and mental health crisis in the guise of a housing crisis.

And number four, uh we've got a huge and homeless industrial complex that's been created with a vast majority being nonprofits who profit from solving the problem, which will ensure that the problem will never be solved.

Um we know that a vast majority of the homeless are not even from Tacoma.

So uh this is going to get us closer to where we need to be.

It's going to help people get connected to services.

It's going to make our community safer.

Um your job is not just to represent the the few unhoused people in Tacoma, it's to represent the entire city.

So thank you for the courage to move this forward.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, I'm gonna come back into the chambers.

Um, and I'm gonna call on Josiah Johnson, Caitlin Murphy, and Alex Scheele.

Hello.

I'm excited to talk to you today, not necessarily as an activist, but as a member of the community.

I'm excited to talk to you because as a member of the community, I have the privilege to be able to do this, and I appreciate that opportunity.

And there are so many people who don't have that opportunity, who don't have that privilege because they're worried about where they're gonna sleep tonight.

And adding to that stress doesn't help anybody.

I read recently in the Tacoma News Tribune that the heel team believed that part of how they knew they were doing a good job was because of a low visibility of homelessness.

And of course, we've heard there are still many people that are homeless.

And if we're judging doing a good job on what we don't see anymore, then our environment is also in a great state because we're burying the trash because we're making landfills.

A lack of visibility doesn't solve anything.

Hiding the problem doesn't fix the problem.

If the goal is to succeed by not having to look at it anymore, then you guys are well on your way.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Stop the sweeps.

The revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, quoting Ferdinand LaSalle, says that the foundational political action is to loudly say what is.

So here I am to say what is.

The Tacoma City Council is fundamentally an arm of the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Council.

This not only reveals them as a profoundly undemocratic body, but reveals the class of people they consider their constituents, a class of people that encompasses such extractive so-called professions as landlords, real estate agents, natural gas investors, people who have homes to put up for collateral.

The Tacoma City Council is thus a gross misnomer.

They do not serve you or me, the city or any of its vulnerable residents.

They served capital and as such require the wholesale extermination of you, me, and our neighbors.

Why should we let that happen?

What authority does the so-called council, let alone the single figure of John Hines have to direct the conditions of our lives?

I wonder if John Hines, the author of this latest gross inhumanity, will be present at any of the autopsies performed on our neighbors who will die because of this resolution, or whether he will mark their deaths with anything but satisfaction.

This man wants to be our mayor.

This man who is killing us wants to smile and gladhand and look out only for himself.

We must go further than stop the sweeps.

We must abolish the undemocratic city council.

Stop prioritizing the profit of Australian and Canadian investors over the people right outside this door.

No to LNG and stop the sweeps.

Thank you.

Hello.

My name's Alex Sheel.

I live in District 4.

Uh I'm uh on the steering committee of Tacoma DSA, and I'm also a founding member of South Sound about face.

Um when I got the army in 2014, I experienced homelessness numerous times, doing the right thing, trying to go to school.

Um, but because of my service connected disability and our horrible tenants' rights um at the time uh I was on the streets.

If this ban was in place when I was on the streets, I probably would be in jail or dead.

So thankfully it wasn't implemented then.

Uh Mayor, how was your trip to Israel?

I I always good.

I hope you learned a lot.

You know, they're doing a great genocide over there, clearing up for Trump properties.

Trump's doing a great job here, click cleaning up for some more properties.

Um and Heinz, you ready for some great properties?

You good Trump Democrat?

I thought Democrats are supposed to uh oppose Trump.

I want keep speaking, but please get back on subject.

This is the subject.

The subject is there's no plan for climate change.

You want to disappear people, you want to kill people, you want to murder people.

You don't want them in your face, you don't want to see them, John Hines.

I want you to go down there, take all the possessions, and throw them in the fucking trash yourself.

I want you to go to their funerals and tell them their their family, their their lovers, their their brothers and sisters, and and and tell them it was all worth it.

You ready to do that?

You ready to be mayor?

This is what it's like being mayor.

Right there with the end.

This is my third time.

I don't have respect for murders.

This let me let me be really clear here.

If you can't respect everybody's opportunity to speak, then we will then you will cause public comment to end.

Which means everybody who's been sitting here won't have an opportunity to speak.

I ask of only one thing.

Please come up, make your comments, and no and and and no clapping, cheering, booing, all of that.

That's that's the one request I have of you.

I respect you as you come to this mic no matter what you say.

Please respect everybody else who's in this room and online.

I will now call the next three people.

Catherine Lee, Karna Boykin, and Sean Arnt.

And also, please, no cursing.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

My name is Catherine Lee.

I'm a resident of District 5, and I want to speak against the expansion of the camping ban.

Um, at the mayoral forum hosted by Tacoma Burrall in July, um, Heinz had the opportunity to weigh in on his original camping ban and said that it was a relic of 2022, and that as his time on council, he would work to fix the issues.

Um, which would have meant repealing, not expanding the mistakes that we started in 2022 by harassing, destroying the property of, and in some cases, um, criminalizing the people who are living on the streets because they have no other options.

The premise of the original camping ban was patronizing then, and it's even more patronizing now to say that the reason that people are on the streets is that they need a firm hand.

They need some sort of punishment if they don't accept the services that are being offered to them.

However, they would already accept the services if they were adequate and appropriate.

The services that are being offered either are removing autonomy or physical possessions or relationships or in other ways, harming the people that you are trying to force into those services by removing their choice to say no or to stay in the streets where they have some community and some sense of personal choice.

So please do not expand the camping ban, repeal it.

Thank you, Catherine.

Hello, my name is Karina Boykin, and I'm a member of Tacoma for All as well as Tacoma DSA.

I'm speaking in regards to the proposed expansion on camping bans that Councilmember John Hines wants to push.

Let's talk about the justification for this being impacts to community safety.

I implore you to think about your messaging on who in Tacoma you consider to be part of that community safety while not recognizing the ways in which you're dehumanizing the most vulnerable of folks in our city by implementing camping bans to begin with.

You're wanting to expand and make it illegal for a camp and be within 10 blocks of shelters or temporary housing and five blocks of schools, parks, and libraries.

What you aren't saying is that is basically everywhere in the city of Tacoma.

What I like for you to comprehend that doesn't seem to ring true to you is not just how incredibly dangerous and volatile camping bans are, but also racist.

As electeds, you all should be spending time coming up with real and meaningful solutions and policies that don't endanger any community members' safety.

Please ensure that you all think about how the workers' Bill of Rights and the Landlord Fairness Code as the tenants' bill of rights are connected to these encampment bans and how you're failing to be here for our community and its safety.

Please do not rush this expansion, as it's not a true resolution and has life and death consequences.

Thank you very much for your comment, Sean.

Followed by Devin Ridale Kelly, Peter Taver, and Marilyn K Marilyn Kimmerley.

Good evening, Council.

My name is Sean Aaron, resident of the South End.

I'm speaking against the decision to expand the camping ban here in Tacoma.

This decision, disguised as a way to improve the lives of residents in our city, frankly hides its costs.

That is the costs of policing, encampment cleanups, anti-homeless architecture, ambulatory costs, and of course the cost of human lives.

We can estimate the financial costs of the current camping ban at over 12 million dollars since it's implementation for a policy that destabilizes homeless communities rather than solving the issue, the only way it can be solved by actually housing people.

Here is what's coming under our landlord and tree in chief Donald Trump.

Cuts the HUD, cuts to food stamps, more cuts to shelters, more brutalization of the homeless after overturning Boise V.

Johnson, the uninsured population, those without health coverage, expected to double.

This crisis is on track to worsen, so let's put forward real solutions.

Give people a safe designated place to camp.

Spend money on housing first, not sweeps.

Stop the renter to unhouse pipeline by defending tenants' rights.

Fight the fascists in the Oval Office.

And invest now in social housing, a system that doesn't hoard land and housing and ransom it back to the people that need it.

I know we're being starved of resources by the federal government, but our choice is to make do with what we have and direct the people to fight back, or we let them break us.

Thank you, Sean.

Devin Hello, everybody.

My name is Devin Ride O'Kelly.

I live in Hilltop, and I am the co-director of Tacoma for All.

Three years ago, the city passed John Hines' draconian camping ban at the same time as passing a modest budget supporting the Hope team.

Those were some of the most crowded council meetings I've encountered before tonight with sentiments largely the same.

Two years ago, many people in this room fought to pass an initiative creating the strongest tenant protections in the state, despite vocal opposition from Heinz, Sarah Rumba, and outside landlords dumping hundreds of thousands of dollars against us.

Now it's 2025.

You're trying to expand the camping band after spending 12 million dollars on fancy trash cleanup while the city plans to decimate funding for the Hope team, and both in Rehines and Rumba are trying to gut tenant protections and worker rights.

Even as shelters close, homeless deaths skyrocket, and ice is terrorizing all of us.

We are living in Trump's America.

We as called War War on the Poor, War on the Homeless, and War on Workers.

Heinz and Rumba's law and order, political opportunism right before an election is right out of Donald Trump's playbook.

The rest of you have a choice.

Do you want to be with the people or do you want to be part of the war on the poor?

It's that simple.

I yield my time.

Thank you, Devin.

Marilyn.

Good evening, Council.

My name is Marilyn Kimmerling, and I'm in uh district one, John Hines' district.

And I'll be brief.

You probably all have seen the game of thrones.

You know the expression, winter is coming.

I am appalled that we can spend millions of dollars on giant rocks and trash cleanup when that money would be better spent on building tiny homes.

I understand that there are people that want to feel safe.

I want to feel safe.

But the problem of people being unhoused and being in front of businesses or in yards would not be happening if we provided adequate living spaces and adequate services.

Now we have the problem of places like Nativity House, which is closed for days, day use of houseless people.

That was one of the places where we could actually have different services congregate and they could help people there.

That's closing.

As Devin has said, and many people before you things are closing down.

We need to have compassion.

Um we need to go back to do you remember years ago when we first started the the ban on people sleeping in their cars?

Their screws have just been tighter and tighter, and people are dying.

We need to have compassion.

No camping ban expansion.

Thank you, Marilyn.

Peter.

Yes, uh my name is Peter Tower, and I live in District 4.

Um I have been homeless before in a city that had an urban camping ban, Denver, Colorado.

And um it was absolutely awful.

I I have one good friend of mine who lost both of his legs to frost spite during one winter, considering there were no places to go, not even hardly any warming shelters, and people weren't allowed to stay warm in any public transit centers or anything of the like.

So I I've had experience with the city with an urban camping ban, and just how cruel it was.

And um fortunately, I was able to get help out here through a program called Seattle Conservation Corps and get out of homelessness.

And I I have to wonder why Tacoma doesn't have anything like that.

They have it through Seattle Parks.

It's self-sustaining, self-funding, and they've been doing it since 1985.

And I'm very grateful for that because it was able to help me get uh training in vocational skills and get me out of homelessness.

Uh these home these sweeps, they they don't help.

They never helped me being ran off anywhere.

What I needed was was a hand up, and I was glad to get it through uh programs like the Conservation Corps.

There's also weld in Seattle.

Why why can't the city of Tacoma do any of this?

I I have to wonder, but this uh these sweeps, they don't help.

It's not a solution.

Thank you.

Thank you, Peter.

All right, Stacey Oaks, Kit Burns, and Dakota Santiago.

Good evening.

My name is Stacey Oaks, and I'm a community organizer with 350 Tacoma.

Recently, we just wrapped up a disaster resilience hub project with the Office of Emergency Management.

Resilience is how we prepare for emergencies, how we weather the storm during emergencies, and how we bounce back afterwards.

We were tasked with getting community feedback on what people would want in a resilience hub, which is ideally a building that could be a gathering space and also provide services during both what they call blue sky days, which is every day, and also during gray sky days, which is winter storms, which is you know, heat waves, which is earthquakes, things like that.

And so we got a lot of great feedback, um, and people had ideas of what should be there, like showers, free laundry and Wi-Fi, food pantries, hot meals, and also storage for supplies like sleeping cots, diapers, medicine, things that would be in high demand during extreme weather, and also after catastrophic events.

Then unfortunately, the second phase when our team was looking at what are the existing resources, it became woefully apparent that not only are we not ready for times where we need a lot more services, we're already not meeting demand.

We're going the wrong way, shelter beds are closing.

For all of you that would rather just sweep people to somewhere else.

I want to make sure that you know that you are just one long overdue earthquake away from being treated this way yourself.

You need to make decisions thinking that that is your family members that are going to be treated this way.

Thank you.

Thank you, Stacy.

Kit.

My name is Kit Burns.

I live in District 3.

I'm here to speak about the multifamily tax exemption.

Uh it's resolution 41778.

And I brought this up before.

The City Council still has not adopted the 60% rule, which is in one of the House bills for affordability.

I bring this up because I look at the numbers of all these projects.

You know, one of the ones I saw first, of course, was Proctor Station.

Proctor Station came before the city council.

Uh and it was a 20 million dollar project for 154 units.

It got a tax break of 2.7 million dollars, and then the city council gave them another 12-year extension where no taxes are collected.

And that amounts to 6.9 million dollars.

So the city needs to quit giving the money away and look at affordability.

Now I've looked at the numbers on the Stadium Way uh apartment.

Originally, according to your documents, it was 42 million dollars.

It received a 5.6 million dollar tax break, not for providing housing, just for being built.

Now, this proposal actually uh gives them another 6.4 million.

Now they give a little bit back, but they put under their pocket 3.6 million dollars.

You could actually provide housing at 50 percent, and they'd still come out ahead by at least a million dollars.

You need to look at the math.

Thank you.

Thank you, Kit.

Dakota, uh Santiago, followed by Courtney Love, followed by Amelia Escobedo.

Oh, does it start when I talk?

Okay.

Thanks.

Um, my name is Dakota Santiago.

Um I moved here in April.

I am a farm worker.

Um has had severe mental health issues since I was like 14.

Um it can be hard and scary for me and my dad to deal with.

Um, it has been that way for a long time.

I love my mom very, very, very, very deeply.

Um my mom has been homeless on and off for long parts of my life.

Um what I can say is that the moments that I have felt the most safe.

Um are moments when she is also safe, and those moments have been times where she's been connected to community resources and care that respect her choice and her own autonomy.

Um the displacement of that people are trying to speak to isn't just death, it's also incarceration, which does not help people in their situation.

Incarceration does not inherently connect people to care to fix their situation.

Um I would urge you to vote no on this expansion.

Uh, thank you for your time.

Thank you very much, Dakota.

Courtney.

Hello, council members.

I too come here not as an activist, but as somebody with lived experience of homelessness.

I have slept in a place without heating.

I've gotten chill banes.

I didn't even know you could still get chillbanes.

I thought it was something from old timey literature.

Um I can't even organize my thoughts, but I have some notes.

Um it is both cruel, it's cruel both to let people stay on the streets, it is also cruel to sweep them around the sweet streets, and I'm asking you not to compound the cruelty of just existing in poverty.

Uh in it's not just trash that's being hauled away, it's survival supplies that inevitably we've paid as taxpayers, we've paid for some of that.

So we're paying for the supplies, we're paying for the lost paperwork and the replacement paperwork that these people struggle to get and maintain in order to receive services.

We are paying to destroy the things we've paid to replace, and it's it's an endless cycle.

And you talk about money, and I need it spent effectively and responsibly, and I need sustainable solutions, and sustainable solutions include labor justice so we can afford housing, social housing so we can afford housing, single payer, universal health care, because 40% of people who are unhoused are there because of a medical emergency.

So put your money and your power where it can do the most good.

Thank you.

Thank you, Courtney.

Amelia, hello, my name is Amelia Escobito.

I don't live in Misent.

I mean, I don't live in Tacoma, but I do frequently here.

This is like my second home.

I live in Lakewood.

Lakewood is also a problem because we give y'all money to support houselessness, and obviously this is what's happening.

I like data and numbers.

So 2,955 homeless people were counted in Pierce County.

Approximately only 1,600 to 1700 homeless shelter beds are here in Pierce County.

Make that make sense.

Indigenous peoples have been transient on this land.

Being able to camp is a lifeline.

I have also lived out of my car with my two children and use shelters to go take showers in.

So I have lived this life also.

A lot of people don't know that because I don't like to talk about it.

You know, it's a part of my life that I'm like, wow.

But I had that assistance.

And it is important for all of you to understand that many of you have been a paycheck away from being houseless.

I'm pretty sure.

And if you haven't, then you have that privilege to be that person that didn't have to go through that.

But as an indigenous person, as a Chicana, y'all need to stand up for the people that are dying on your watch.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

I'm gonna uh finished up that sheet.

I'm gonna call a few more names um that are online, and we're gonna start with Z.

Can you hear me?

Sure can.

Go ahead.

Just need you to speak up a little bit.

Hi, um, my name is Zee.

I've been a resident of Tacoma for eight years, and when I first became a resident of Tacoma, I was homeless living in my van with my abusive partner.

Um, the thing that got me out of that situation was the connections that I made in this city that I now own a home in because I love Tacoma more than than any place, but um expanding the camping ban puts people in situations, keeps them disconnected from community in ways that they are never able to recover from.

The more you push people away from the services they need to deal with those problems, the more they are dying in the cold.

Um, I have been doing work since I left the streets myself with folks living on the streets, and year after year, we you know, raise an incredible amount of money from your constituents to buy supplies with their personal money to try and keep people from dying on the streets, and you keep making it harder.

Um things get destroyed, things are thrown away.

Um, and our idea of a sweep being helpful.

Um, when I was swept in Tacoma, my wheelchair was thrown away.

Um, so that's what the streeps are doing.

I've seen them throw away tents, seen them throw away everything.

So please reject this ordinance.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh Joy.

Hello, hello.

Can you hear me?

If you could speak up just a little bit.

Okay.

Um I would like to echo support of saying no to the extended camping ban.

Um, pretty much don't have anything new to add, but I'll just reiterate the city already spends 12 million a year on sweeps already when that money could be better well spent, getting people housed.

That money alone could be spent on 650 tiny homes and also a safe transitional shelter for a full quarter for our four-hour unhoused population, um, which would be super essential, especially since the nativity house um, as we've heard, uh has not been as active.

Um, I believe our taxpayer money could be spent actually creating housing stability for folks.

You know, we always do a land acknowledgement during city council at the beginning of these meetings, and I'm wondering how are we truly honoring and respecting indigenous people and these lands if we are criminalizing people for surviving on the street and taking away their belongings to survive?

As it was mentioned, more folks have died with this camping ban, and that will only increase with an extension of this.

Um, again, please vote no, an extension of this camping ban.

Thank you.

Thank you, Joy.

Right.

The next person has a phone number ending in 1689.

Hello.

Uh, my name is Caroline Swinehart.

Speaking against the proposal to expand the camping ban in Tacoma.

Do the authors of this proposal really have such confidence in Tacoma's approaches for preventing and addressing homelessness.

I don't.

I know a bit more than most.

In 2023, a local family of four stayed with my husband and I for seven months while they looked for a longer term place to stay.

We own a home in an affluent part of town.

We are well connected people.

We saw the advice they received.

Call 211.

Nothing.

Go to the day center to keep yourself in the system.

Nothing.

We asked someone we know on the heel team.

Nothing.

Catholic community services.

Nothing.

You get the picture.

You wonder why people, quote unquote, refuse services.

If you have a roof over your head that evening, the city doesn't count you as homeless.

Unless you're actively abusing drugs or a danger, you aren't a priority in the city's triage system.

If you're a family, you can't stay together in a shelter.

You can't work a swing shift in a shelter.

It goes on.

We helped them find a short-term rental through fundraising and personal connection.

Tacoma needs to do better, needs to get people places to go if it's gonna tell people they can't be outside.

This proposed policy is poor governance.

I also read the other alternative.

Only two.

I can imagine many more, and have heard others from folks in this room.

Here's one I'd love to see considered more social services in more affluent neighborhoods.

We can share the load.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Jennifer.

Hello.

I'm a district three resident.

I oppose the proposed expansion of ordinance two nine zero six four.

I believe it is an ill-conceived reactive attempt to appease a certain demographic of constituents instead of addressing the root causes of homelessness in our city.

We already saw that the original ordinance failed to make positive impact on our unhoused neighbors.

It only deepens their suffering and further criminalize poverty.

Continuing to pour tax dollars and resources into a policy that displaces people rather than helps them is not leadership.

It's performative politics.

Tacoma deserves better than reactionary policies that harm people who are already living through their worst times while we watch and judge them.

Thank you, Jennifer.

The next person is Charles.

Yep, go right ahead.

Hello.

My name is Denise Boos, and I'm speaking on behalf of myself and my husband Charles.

And I would urge the council to vote yes and support the ordinance to expand the ban encampments on public property as well as private property.

Um I would totally agree and couldn't say that taxpayer with the phone number ending 2127, including Alec and the Zoom user comments.

They couldn't have said it better.

I respect all activists who have spoken today and say I do have empathy for those on the street.

Matter of fact, my family has been impacted as well.

However, the longer we ignore the fact that the problem is not a lack of housing, but rather drug abuse, allowing people to encamp on public streets is not compassion and empathy.

It is enabling people to continue their downward spiral.

I taught my kids to try.

That means to take responsibility for themselves.

Hold these folks accountable for breaking laws, including doing drugs in public and in camping in the streets.

Make do with the housing resources the city has, house the homeless in public facilities, such as jail, where they may have the opportunity to be sober and see the value of their own lives and can think.

This will allow individuals to be a productive member of society.

I hereby request the council to support the ban and move forward expeditiously.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Moving on to Alyssa Torres.

Hello, uh, thank you, Mayor Water, and good evening, City Council.

My name is Alyssa Torres.

I am a City of Tacoma homeowner in District 4 and a business owner in the Hilltop upon MLK in the 11th.

And I'm just really disappointed that this amendment is being considered tonight.

Um, especially given the lack of shelter beds and um other resources that are currently available, especially as we get into this cold weather we're having.

Um, you know, you say it's this is the best way to mitigate the impacts of encampments in the community, but really the best way to do that is to house people.

And I know that the city has taken several steps to uh make affordable housing more accessible and easily easily built, but there's more to be done.

And I urge us to um be bold in the ways that we find solutions to this problem and um really address it at its root cause instead of treating symptoms with an ineffective band-aid.

Um, please don't make it harder for people to survive.

Um and I say this again as a as a business owner because I know that um businesses are often used as um kind of ammunition for these types of bands, and as a business owner, I know it's a challenge, but not all businesses think that this is the way to um to solve this problem, and I really just urge us to find other solutions to support people as best we can.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, Clarity Consulting Northwest.

Good evening, council.

This is Lori Arnold.

Um, I want to co-sign on everything that my fellow Tacoma residents have said in opposing the camping ban ordinance.

Um, we all know there's a housing crisis and homelessness and street camping are at an all-time high all over the country, not just in Tacoma.

The extreme high cost of housing put together with mental illness and addiction.

They're definitely a couple of the big culprits.

Um, but the economy is the is the biggest problem here.

People cannot earn enough.

Uh, there are not enough jobs in the first place.

Jobs certainly that pay a living wage.

Um, I mean, when you have a 4% 5% unemployment rate and even higher, um, that means some people are unemployed, always, all the time, constantly.

And the housing uh crisis has only gotten worse.

There's definitely a lot of evidence that housing first initiatives are the most effective means of reducing and and and maybe even eliminating street camping and providing the best foundation for people getting mental health and addiction treatment and the supports to get into permanent housing.

We should not continue to sweep people off the streets, which what we're actually doing is sweeping them onto some different streets, rinse and repeat at infinitum, and we we we hope to act like this is a solution.

This is not a solution.

Housing first, proper supports.

Thank you, Lori.

And then our final person online is uh Mark H.

Hello, can you guys hear me?

Sure can, Mark.

Go ahead.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes.

Yes, we can.

Sorry, can you guys hear me?

Okay.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council.

My name is Mark Haley.

I live in District 2 in downtown Tacoma on the Foss Waterway.

I am speaking in favor of the amendment to expand this ban in Tacoma.

Most of the people that are against the amendment don't live near encampments in the negative consequences or live in downtown like I do.

I'm speaking to let you know that the original camping ordinance has made a huge difference in keeping our neighborhoods so much cleaner and safer.

Recently, a big up tip can probes and break into our condo building encampments in our downtown neighborhood and everything negative associated with them.

I kindly ask the council to please consider voting for the new camping ban amendment to keep students, schools, parks, libraries, businesses, residents, and other public areas safe downtown with these five-block buffer zones.

This amendment connects the unhoused to shelter and essential services, which is crucial to helping them get out of homelessness and get into the keeps the unhoused safer from those that would prey on them and get them into a cycle of addiction.

We can't house everyone that comes from outside Tacoma.

We love the city, we love our friends, neighbors, and small businesses.

We really need a thriving downtown to be successful and grow as a city.

I hope everyone takes this issue seriously for residents and businesses who invested so much and believed in our recently revitalized downtown.

Thank you for listening, and please consider voting for this amendment.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for your comments tonight, Mark.

With that, we're gonna close online forum and head back to those who are in the room.

And first up, we have Marcus Bartlett.

Uh next, and after that, it's Ovenio X, Zev Cook, and Mary Mar Cres Castro.

Hello, uh, my name is Marcus Bartlett.

I live in uh Councilmember Rumbaugh's district.

Um I uh think that City Council has a duty to protect uh residents, especially those most vulnerable.

Uh, but we cannot solve homelessness by simply making it illegal.

Uh people cannot be pushed out of sight and out of mind.

We've heard it tonight already.

People are dying.

The camping ban makes clear the dividing lines in our society.

It only serves the interest of a landlord and business elite rather than the working class in society at large.

I want to live in a city where the political bodies work to make life uh work to make life better for everyone.

Uh thank you.

Thank you for your comments tonight.

Uh Marcus uh Ovanaya.

Now Ovinaya.

Good evening.

Uh, I am Ovan Ast of the Black Panther Party, and I am an anti-bully and a revolutionary, not an activist, just to be clear.

Uh I do have one question.

Uh, will my amendments be respected?

That's a serious question.

Blank stare, I'm gonna assume that it will be.

Um, I can respect all speakers and express my gratitude for the speakers whose messages I enjoy and remain silent during the ones I do not.

That is my first and fifth amendment.

Also, my bulletproof vest is what keeps me safe from the terrorist space with guns.

They love shooting people that look like me, and nobody even feels unsafe around me when I wear my vest.

So that was a funny comment to hear at a time when I wasn't here.

Uh, we're not safe, even in bed.

You could just ask Brianna Taylor or Fred Hampton Sr.

And for the record, I am not an activist, I am a revolutionary.

As a lifelong resident of Tacoma, I have been raising my son to be economically, politically, and human rights aware.

You're showing our future generations that you do not care about them, as well as separating the uh further the haves from the have nots.

I was houseless for nine months as a fresh-faced adult.

And nobody from the city leadership helped me.

I met an elderly man that kept me alive while I slept, and in return, I did the same for him.

I got the wood, he started and kept our heat alive.

Shelters wouldn't help us, and couldn't I couldn't just get a job.

It's not that easy, especially as a person of melanin.

We the Black Panther Party, with the help of other organizations, feed the people every other week on Saturdays.

Next time we'll be on at 621 Tacoma Avenue South at noon, October 18th.

We the people keep us safe.

We the people feed ourselves.

We the people outnumber the elected who continue to put our lives at risk simply for trying to survive.

The veterans, the people of addiction, the people that face mental health crisis, the disabled people, the chronically jobless, and others that fight for survival.

Ovenia.

We recognize that we have a mutual interwoven survival with the houseless, low-income, downtrodden, young adults, and others at risk communities in this capitalist imperialist colonial system.

I only have a few more words left.

Prison does not help heal, teach, or empower anyone.

It takes away the power.

It takes away their lives and the way that they survive.

Remove their tents and kill them.

Quit committing genocide, build tiny home villages, or give them the empty warehouses.

Give them dignity and let them flourish.

Quit killing your people.

All powers of the people by any means necessary.

Okay.

All right.

Good evening, council.

Uh, my name is Zev Cook, and I am stunningly an activist who lives near an encampment.

Council moving to expand the camping ban while also pushing to repeal renter protections as a recipe for making homelessness worse, not better in our community.

Across the board, an $100 increase in rent results in a 10% increase in homelessness.

And instead of providing affordable and transitional housing options, 12 million dollars a year is being spent on enforcing the camping ban, which is not only a travesty for human rights, attacking those with the least among us, but also, and speaking as a former social worker, this policy actively harms outreach efforts by making it harder to find clients and shifting the focus from finding housing solutions to replacing emergency supplies such as tents, medications, and other emergency needs.

Overall, we need to understand that homelessness is a policy choice, and it is time that we move in the direction of doing more to protect renters from skyrocketing rents and provide affordable and transitional housing options.

No more criminalizing poverty.

Vote no on 29064 and repeal the camping ban entirely.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments tonight, Zeb.

All right, Marcus, your turn.

Good afternoon.

My name is Mary Chris Castor, and I proudly serve as the Tacoma Sister Cities Davao Committee co-chairman.

In Sister Cities, we believe that every friendship begins with a conversation.

A conversation with heart.

Because we choose to listen to understand before we react.

That's where peace begins.

This community conflict resolution day reminds us that peace is not the absence of conflict.

It is the presence of courage, compassion, and connection.

It's about how we come together as neighbors, as nations, and as one human family.

Today our hearts are with our cover bayonet in Mindanao and Cebu, who are coming from the recent earthquakes.

As we practice peace here, may we also extend it across the ocean through relief, empathy, and solidarity.

This week we celebrate Filipino resilience and culture at the Wu High Exhibit and community night on Thursday at the Washington State History Museum and next weekend at Asia Pacific Cultural Center's Filipino Day Bayonihan Journey of the Philippine Spirit.

And as we look beyond, we must also remember that the nuclear arms reduction treaty between the United States and Russia is set to expire on February 26, 2026.

A sobering reminder that global peace is fragile and that demo diplomacy like dialogue requires constant renewal.

Whether here in Pierce County or across the Pacific in Davao, must malakastayokapagnak.

We are stronger when we are united.

We are stronger when we rise together through culture, through compassion, and through conversation.

And I also want to say that it took four hours and 21 contacts to nonprofits to try and find a mother and her two children, emergency housing when they were dumped on the street two weeks ago on Friday.

And we had I had to, one of my coworkers' older sisters held her and is still housing her, and we still don't have housing for her, so there's not enough housing and support.

So thank you.

Thank you, Marty Cass.

David Chandler, you're up next, followed by Jackie Aiello, and finally we'll have Gloria Bauman.

I'm David Chandler, regular citizen.

I live in McKinley Hill in District 4, and I'm here about ordinance 29064.

I emailed my council member Sendesh about this issue, and I'd like to address one point he provided that's apparently a mitigating point and is maybe helping to ease your consciousness.

The radius around the current locations will be shortened from 10 to 5 blocks.

How generous.

But this is crumbs and misdirection in service of a lie, and it makes me trust your judgment even less.

I want to share another number that's at the heart of what's being proposed, one that in normal cases we should be proud of.

129.

This ordinance makes our homeless neighbors avoid 129 specific locations, 60 parks, 60 public schools, nine libraries.

As members of city council in charge of these 129 facilities, how many of these can you name or place on a map?

Not only is this policy inhumane, it's dishonest and practically impossible to follow.

Think you're safe and lay your head down to finally rest.

Oops, there's a pocket park, two blocks away.

Move along.

This is absurd.

We need real solutions that deal with root causes, not more concentrated ghettos and even darker shadows.

Vote no on inhumanity in service of self-comfort.

And uh John Hines for regular citizen.

Thank you.

Okay, Jackie, you're up, and then Gloria will be our last person in the room.

Jackie, you're up, and then Gloria will be our last person in the room.

And I believe our last person to comment.

Hi, everyone.

Um, thank you all for being here today.

My name is Jackie Ayello, and I'm a renter in Proctor, an affordable housing designer, a regular volunteer for service providers throughout the Puget Sound, and an organizer with Tacoma for All.

My testimony today is against ordinance 29064 for my council member John Hines.

I hope you are aware of the very well known statistic that Zev said that with every 100 dollars of increase in rent, there is a 10% increase in homelessness.

If you did not know that, I want that burned into your brain.

Because you are fighting against increasing the minimum wage, where 48% of renters in this city are rent burdened as we speak.

You are touting at your various mayoral fundraisers about removing tenant protections that are literally saving lives that we voted on two years ago.

And now you have written this violent amendment to increase encampment bans all over the city while fully aware that shelters are shutting down due to your budget failures.

My question for you is why are you running for mayor?

Who are you planning to represent?

Because your platform proves you don't care about half of Tacoma residents.

Instead, you will be complicit in subjecting them to homelessness while providing them less services and forcibly displacing them from our city.

If all goes according to your plans and people die from winter exposure this year, it will be explicitly because of your malevolence.

And you should ask yourself if you can live with that lying on your conscience.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments tonight, Jackie.

We have one more commenter, Gloria Bauman.

Hi, my name is Gloria.

I live in District 5.

Um, I echo support for saying no to the camping ban extension.

I'm an activist, but I'm also a paraeducator.

I'm a member of the First United Methodist Church, and I also live near houseless camps.

Um we already lack sufficient shelter beds.

Expanding the camping ban today means pushing people into hiding without giving them a home tomorrow.

When the heel team makes two thousand three hundred plus contacts, and only eight percent are placed into shelter.

That means that our supply of safe options is far too small.

Tacoma is facing closures of 300 plus shelter beds, even as homelessness rises uh by double digits.

Banning camping without creating alternatives is cruel and counterproductive.

Peer-based outreach is one of the few trusted mechanisms available.

If we reach if we break that by law enforcement moving people, we'll lose our best path to engagement.

Real homelessness solutions comes from housing support and prevention, all of which is supported by the Tacoma Tenant Bill of Rights, not by displacement.

I think you've heard a lot of really compelling comments today, and I think you should listen to them.

Yeah.

Um I think you know that this isn't the real solution to the humanitarian crisis happening in Tacoma.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Gloria.

Okay.

Do you uh is that it's okay.

That's all we have signed up in the room.

And um, we have nobody else signed up, so I'm gonna declare the public comment period close.

I want to thank all of you for um for coming this evening and for sharing your thoughts and views with us.

I also want to thank you for being respectful.

Um I I really appreciate you all being here, and I really appreciate hearing.

Um, we all appreciate hearing from all of you.

All right, we're gonna now move on to the regular agenda.

Um, item five, Clerk, will you please read?

Resolution 41777, a resolution appointing individuals to the human rights commission.

I move to adopt resolution number four one seven seven seven.

Second.

All right, I'd like to call on Council Member Rumba.

I think I have it.

You have the people you're pointing to the commission.

Isn't that okay?

Thank you, Mayor.

At the September 25, 2025 Community Vitality and Safety Committee meeting, the committee conducted interviews and recommended the appointment of the following individuals to the Human Rights Commission.

Kyra Gomez Garcia, Rose Breckwo, Joy Tevis, Angela Moore, Josh Gannis, Jasmine Ramsey, Diana Royalty, and Destiny Molly Mulling.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Rumba.

Are there any additional council questions or comments?

All right.

Seeing none, all those in favor of adopting resolution number four one seven seven seven signify by saying I.

Oh, please stand up and be recognized.

Thank you to those to the person who is here and to everyone who is either here or online.

We really appreciate your service and the time that you will take out to be a part of this commission.

So thank you very much.

We got to the regular agenda, but I'm going to call for a ten minute um recess.

So we can all take a quick bathroom break, and we will be back in ten minutes.

We stand in recess,

All right, calling the c city council session back to meeting back to order.

We are gonna head straight into resolutions.

Um are you reading?

Oh, yes.

I move that's sorry, well on the next one.

Okay.

I got you.

Um moving right on into resolutions.

Um item six.

This item will have a PowerPoint present presentation.

Clerk, will you please read?

Resolution four one seven seven eight, a resolution authorizing the extension of a multifamily housing twelve year limited property tax exemption agreement with Stadium Apartments LLC for the extension of their original multifamily housing eight-year limited property tax exemption agreement located at one zero two North G Street for twelve additional years.

I move to adopt resolution number four one seven seven eight.

Second, all right.

I would like to call on Debbie Bingham uh to present this.

Good evening, Deputy Mayor and City Council.

I'm Debbie Bingham with this community and economic development department, and I will be presenting on resolution four one seven seven eight.

Oh okay.

Um the stadium apartments and its 172 units were completed in 2018 and are at the end of their eight-year exemption, which runs from 2019 to 2026.

Um they were originally approved under resolution three nine four four one.

They have applied to add twenty percent um you affordability at 70% AMI for the next year, which is for the next 12 years, which is 35 units by approving this resolution again.

Um when we look at this breakdown, the studios are approximately 25% less the regulated rate studios are will be renting for 25% less than the market rate.

The one bedrooms will be renting at 24% less, and the two bedrooms at 35% less, and that does not include the utility lounge, which is also on top of that.

The next um slide shows the location.

This is one oh two North G Street in the stadium district.

Um explains the fiscal implications, although it's a little complicated.

Um so the current assessed value of this project is fifty million uh two hundred and eighty-eight thousand dollars, but the current taxable value because it's under an MFTE is about three million dollars.

Two million nine hundred and some dollars.

Um because when we um subtract the total value from the taxable value, we get the property tax exempted by just by the city.

So when we divide those numbers by thirty-five units and trying to kind of get some proxy of what is it costing the city in taxes to keep a unit at 70% AMI, it's costing the city approximately 2900 per unit to keep it at that 70% AMI.

That's what this slide is showing.

And I am happy to answer any questions.

All right.

Do we have any council comments or questions?

Councilmember Rumba.

Um thank you, Deputy Mayor.

I think I remember Debbie on this project that they um they were able to do make more units there than you're allowed based on the height by doing some type of um trans.

They saved prop like farmland, I think.

Could you explain that?

Um so it's called the TDR, the transfer of development rights, correct?

So they're keeping land in another part of the city or county even green in order to get more height at this project.

Okay, thank you.

All right, are there any other council comments or questions?

All right, all those in favor of adopting resolution number 4178, signify by saying aye.

Aye.

All those opposed signify by saying nay.

The resolution is declared adopted.

Moving on to the first reading of ordinances, item seven.

This item will have a PowerPoint presentation.

And it will also cover item eight.

Clerk, will you please read?

Ordinance 29061 and ordinance vacating a portion of Court C between South 17th Street and Jefferson Avenue to allow for future growth and development of the University of Washington Tacoma campus.

All right, I would like to call on Troy Stevens uh to present this.

Good evening, members of the city council.

My name is Troy Stevens, and I'm here tonight to request that you approve the findings of the hearing examiner dated July 31st, 2025 for both ordinances number 29061 and 29062.

The city acquired the right-of-way shown in the presentation above on February 3rd, 1875.

As you can see, both court C and South 19th Streets are improved rights away that are currently part of our road system.

As part of the petition to vacate, University of Washington, Tacoma asked the city to waive.

The presentation isn't for it.

Thank you.

As part of the petition to vacate the University of Washington, Tacoma asked the city to waive the fees that are required by TMC 9.22.010, which states the city shall comp be compensated in an amount equal to the full appraised value, provided if the city council deems it to be in the best interest of the city, all or any portion of such compensation may be waived.

Based on the city's in-house valuation, the compensation for both street vacations is estimated at $2.93 million dollars in total.

Roughly $2.2 million for court C and $733,000 for South 19th Street.

Per TMC 9.22.010, half of the revenue received hereunder shall be devoted to the acquisition, improvement and maintenance of public open space land, and one half may be devoted to transportation projects and the management and maintenance of other city-owned lands and unimproved rights of way.

The compensation received would be utilized to fund extensive deferred repair and replacement needs of open space and other city-owned lands.

As study session today, the mayor asked staff if there was a history of fee waivers that had been granted to UWT as part of their previous street vacations.

And the answer is yes.

Since 2001, there have been five previous street vacations with the University of Washington Tacoma.

In three of the decisions, the city council waived half of the fee, and the remaining two city council waived the full fee.

In the early decisions, the fees were waived to support phase one development of the university.

In the last street vacation waiver decision, the fee was waived because of the mutual and offsetting benefit for the improvements made by UW Tacoma for Jefferson Avenue.

Thank you for your consideration of this resolution.

And we ask that the city decide city council decide whether or not they support the university's request for a fee waiver.

I am happy to answer any questions you may have.

Are there any questions or are there any council comments or questions on this item or item number eight?

I think I have a question for the city manager.

So if we approve this tonight, we're not saying that we're for sure about waiving the whole fee or that we're gonna waive half.

It that hasn't been decided yet.

That's correct.

But first reading, you'll have an opportunity with second reading as well.

Okay, so when we say that we're supporting this, the findings, conclusions, and recommendations of the hearing examiner, it's just the idea that it's that it's a vacation that we're approving.

Correct.

Um the hearing examiner did recommend that the council take action.

Okay, so that's what we're okay.

Thank you for explaining that.

Thank you.

Okay, I'll take a motion.

I move to accept the findings, conclusions, and recommendations of the hearing exam or for ordinance number two nine zero six one.

Second.

All those in favor, please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

All those opposed signify by saying nay.

The motion is declared adopted.

This ordinance will be set over to a date to be determined.

All right, item eight.

Clark, will you please read ordinance two nine zero six two and ordinance vacating a portion of South 19th Street from Market Street to Jefferson Avenue to allow for the future growth and development of the University of Washington Tacoma campus?

All right, this item was just presented.

Are there any additional council comments or questions?

Okay, I'll take the motion on that.

I move to accept the findings, conclusions and recommendations of the hearing examiner for ordinance number two nine zero six two.

Second.

All those in favor, please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

All those opposed signify by saying nay.

The motion is declared adopted.

The ordinance will be set over to a date to be determined.

Okay.

All right, item nine.

This item will have a PowerPoint presentation.

Clerk, will you please read?

Ordinance 29063, an ordinance amending title 13 of the municipal code relating to the land use regulatory code by amending various chapters to support the revised goals, policies, and objectives related to historic preservation and the updated one to coma comprehensive plan and address priorities identified by stakeholders as recommended by the landmarks preservation and planning commissions.

All right, I would like to call on Reuben McKnight for this item.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor and members of the council.

I'm Reuben McKnight with Planning Development Services.

I'm the historic preservation officer.

And I'm gonna present a brief uh presentation tonight that is uh similar to ones that you have recently received.

I was here uh last week at steady session and also um uh for our public hearing.

And so just uh by way of background, I'm here to to present the planning commission's recommendation, which is in the council packet regarding the proposed code amendments and amendments to Title 13 relating to historic preservation.

Um, just as a sort of a real quick intro, um this uh is a limited scope uh code update that is designed to um or intended to address uh several of the um uh issues that became emergent during recent discussions about local historic districts and and other things, and so um this is uh based on the findings of recommendations from the historic district moratorium, the policies and regulate regulations uh that were in the recent comprehensive plan update, and then community workshops, feedback, commission feedback, director's rules, and legislative changes at the state level.

So um, in general, the overall scope of this is to revise the nomination processes, especially for local historic districts, um, and align those with other zoning changes or zoning amendments that also go through the the code review process, um, consider ways to reduce burdens or the difficulty difficulty of going through design review, and then uh changes to our demolition review codes.

And so the summary uh kind of overview of the scope is really the uh nomination process for local historic districts and individual landmarks.

Um we've made some changes to the criteria and the process that they go through.

Uh, certain projects uh are proposed for exemption within residential historic districts.

There's a new community heritage register, which is a non-regulatory register.

This design really more to focus on recognition of sites of community significance rather than having a protected you know landmark that goes through design review, the special tax valuation increase in the access to that, and then um, and then as I mentioned, uh changes to the demolition review code um to reflect uh um uh changes of state law.

So at the hearing last week, um, just really briefly, um the comments were were similar to the comments that were received by the planning commission at its uh um hearing back in August, uh, which were um received eight comments there, uh three comments last night.

Um the some of the key points there that there's general support, I think, for amending the process so the historic district proposals don't necessarily end with the planning commission, that whatever their recommendation is, it goes to the city council.

Um there has been some concern with the five-year waiting period, and I think it's important to um just state out loud and uh again the this is not a mandatory waiting period, you're not banned from resubmitting things for within a five-year period if it's been previously considered, but it's a guideline for the landmarks commission to determine whether or not they're gonna continue with review of something.

Um the planning commission actually spoke about this specifically during their deliberations and and because of the comments received and and elected to continue to recommend that the five-year waiting period be included.

Um and then we have some questions, of course, uh owing to recent history about the role of the planning commission within the historic district review process generally.

You know, it's historic districts are a land use tool, their land use regulation, and so it's it's believed or the city's uh position is that this is a proper channel to go through those zoning amendments.

Um we also did hear about concern with letting too much, you know, go under the um the regulatory threshold and design review um and some concerns with uh you know what that might mean and then language that encourages the landmarks commission to weigh impacts to the surrounding districts, both of those which are really intended to um to focus the the historic district review process less on you know some of the smaller individual things are more on the broader effects of of what's being proposed within districts.

And generally the special tax evaluation is also um supported.

Um so you know, we we we got kind of the mix, and and really I think that the planning commission heard all of these same things when they formally did the recommendation.

So the our schedule to date now is um our upcoming schedule is uh October 21st is the council second reading of the ordinance.

We're here on the 14th with the first reading, and that'll bring us to an effective date of November 2nd and uh or November 5th, or excuse me, November 2nd, and then moratorium terminates on November 5th.

And I would be happy to answer any questions from council.

Thank you.

All right, thanks, Reuben.

Uh, do we have any council comments or questions on this item?

All right, seeing none, this ordinance will be set over.

Uh oh.

All right, Councilmember Rumbaugh.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Um Ruben, what what kinds of buildings are exempt from the historic, like a historic district?

Thank you, Councilmember.

So there's there's a couple of ways to answer that question.

Um, we have building inventories within historic districts, and obviously there are some buildings that aren't historic within historic districts.

They're either built more recently outside of the period of significance, or they've been alterated to such alternate that's a long night.

Um, altered to such a degree that they're they no longer possess integrity, um, as well as um, and so those are our two kind of non-um, you know, non-contributing buildings is what we call them.

And then for other kinds of projects, uh, in some cases we have uh you know things that you can't see on the house uh or on the on the the building uh in a commercial district.

Um alterations either you know are on the roof set back so far that you don't see them or they're on elevations you don't see, and really those those are typically either exempt or handled by staff at the administrative level so they can go through the whole commission process.

Thank you.

Okay, do you have any other council comments or questions?

Seeing none, the ordinance will be set over for final reading next week.

Thank you.

Thanks, moving.

Item 10.

Clerk, will you please read?

Ordinance 29064 and ordinance amending Title VII of the municipal code related to public safety by amending various sections related to camping and storing personal belongings on property on public property.

All right, I would like to call on council member Hines.

Uh thank you, Madam Deputy Mayor, and uh thanking my colleagues.

Uh, part of this conversation we had a study session today, also along with um the conversation we had last week at study session.

So to this evening, I'm bringing forward uh an ordinance amending title eight uh to the council for consideration.

Uh, a couple things that are part of this that I want to make sure I'm highlighting is number one, um, we're changing the language so that when all when at all possible, if someone happens to be cited for violating this ordinance, they will be directed towards therapeutic court.

Well they've been connected to services through the therapy court system.

Um it's adding a new community buffer zone with uh two-block radius around public schools, public parks, public libraries.

Let me just be really clear.

I think one of the earlier drafts in the conversation we talked about, we talked about five blocks after discussing that with my colleagues.

Um this proposal is reducing that to a two-block buffer area around public schools, public parks, and public libraries.

Uh also due to my conversation with colleagues, uh, we in the past in 2022 we passed, we had a 10-block buffer around all of our emergency shelter sites.

So that includes things like Thames 3, which is right by my house, to the civilian site, to Bethlehem Baptist, to the Thames site down at 69th and Proctor.

Uh, what this proposal is doing is reducing the buffer areas around the um shelters that are outside of the downtown core from 10 blocks to five blocks.

So actually reducing the buffer size for those.

Um, in the downtown area, though, where we kind of have a concentration of uh shelter sites, we're adding in the permanent shelter sites, and we're maintaining the 10 block buffer area.

And so, and then finally, we're maintaining the protected um buffer around waterways, so no camping within 200 feet of waterways.

So, those are kind of what we're bringing.

That's the changes I'm proposing and bringing forward.

So, to kind of talk through a few of these things, thank you to all the public comment and people that have spoke here this evening.

I also want to thank all the people who have commented and talked to me online, through emails, through communications, and other than just this meeting, talking about kind of this proposal.

So I want to take a minute just to talk through some of my reasoning and thinking behind some of this.

First, uh, one of the things that we've seen is back in 2022 when we first put up the buffers, one of the impetus of the reasons why we were doing it, at least I stated at the time, was the idea that we did not want camping encampments right next to where people were getting shelter and services.

Right.

So we saw a couple of our temporary shelters in downtown or parts of our city where they're encampments just right outside.

And that posed a health and safety issue not only for the people coming into our shelters, for the people living in encampments.

Um, creating the buffer was to create space around our temporary shelters so that people could freely access them to receive shelter and services.

When we did that, there was a conversation with some of the permanent shelters to be included in the buffer areas, to have buffer areas around them.

We did not move forward that at the time because when we looked at the map, most of those uh permanent shelters were within buffer areas of some of the of the emergency of the temporary shelters.

So we didn't move forward with that designation.

What this is doing is just taking that designation because we've recognized that having people camping right next to shelters is not good for the people in the shelters or people trying to access them.

It's applying the same buffer to our per our permanent shelters.

And so that's the kind of major change that we're seeing as part of this.

Um of the challenges that we've seen is as some of these shelter sites have have drawn down, we're seeing the remove return of encampments into some of these areas where they were previously not allowed and causing real community impacts.

Um we're getting more calls from community members that are concerned about the impacts not only on their businesses, but their homes, their access to their parks, their access to their schools, um, who are worried about their ability to freely access these spaces.

And this community impact is real.

If we go back to 2022, the challenges we have with these large encampments that we had, 705, the ones around the school district building, um, issues around fires, around criminal activity, homicides, assaults, were really present and something we really wanted to address with these because we had these large encampments that cause these huge community impacts, not only for people outside, but especially the people inside the encampments that were living there.

What we've seen since we passed the previous ordinance is we're seeing fewer of the very large encampments, and we're seeing more smaller encampments that don't have quite the same health and safety risk for people living inside of them or in the community.

Um the second thing I'm bringing forward that I would bring to share this evening is I'm hearing from more and more constituents about their inability to access public spaces.

So the presence of people camping in front of, next to right by parks, public schools, public parks, and public libraries has impacted people's ability to freely access these spaces.

And we as a city have to balance our determination to serve people who are experiencing homelessness with keeping our public spaces open and accessible to the public.

It's a critical responsibility we have.

And so this is meant to look at both our permanent shelters, making sure the people in those shelters and the people working there and the people around them are safe from the community impacts of encampments, and also looking at our public spaces to keep them free and open to the public.

You know, one of the things I said really clearly back in 2022 that I think has been lost in the conversation is I said this policy is not designed to end homelessness.

Our policy to end homelessness is building shelter, building housing, changing our zoning code, investing our housing trust fund, and spending the millions of dollars we spend on addressing homelessness in our community by providing shelter and housing.

It's the millions of dollars we spend on our outreach and outreach efforts, not only our heel team, but other folks doing the work in our community.

Those are the ways that we end homelessness by getting people the shelter and housing they need.

Encampments, on the other hand, present a health and safety risk for people in our community, and actually some of the most vulnerable people in our community, the people who are living in the encampments.

And this is really meant to balance those two components.

How do we continue to address and end homelessness while maintaining a healthy and safe environment for everyone in our city?

I the so that was I'm just make sure I hit my high notes here.

Um there's been some talk and conversations around, you know, what is our plan in homelessness?

Affordable housing, uh affordable housing trust fund, the millions of dollars we invest in shelter and housing.

And I don't want us to come down to the fact that there's one thing that will solve homelessness, there is one thing that will end homelessness.

We have to do everything.

And we're doing lots of things the city to try to address and end homelessness.

This specifically is meant to how do we keep our public spaces open and accessible to the public.

Um I've been working on this issue since I joined the council.

As many of you brought up today.

I've been on the I've been the council representative on the Pierce County um select committee on homelessness.

I participated in the point in time count.

I've taken tours down to Austin, Texas, to Vancouver, Spokane.

Seen a lot of things, deeply researched what we do to try to address homelessness community.

I understand what people have said about rent going up and causing homelessness.

It's why I've been a champion of building more housing in our community.

It's why I've been a champion for more affordable housing in our community.

So I just would uh reiterate that uh this is meant to be seen as a conjunction of some of the other policies we're doing.

And with that, to my colleagues, I thank you very much, and I'm happy to answer any of your questions.

Okay.

We are gonna start with Council Member Rumbaugh.

And you still have your uh hang on, I assume you don't have a okay.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

I appreciate um the opportunity.

Um, I I just want to say that um the thing I'm talking about tonight is um I'm putting forward a motion to bring forward next week to ask our city manager to work with surrounding partners on low barrier site for our unhoused um community.

And one of the things I know works really well is low barrier sites.

We had one at 35th and Pacific, it was very successful when we first went there to put that in.

It was Pierce County land.

We were able to purchase it, and um we were able to take something that people had like issues with, and with an advisory council involved with the community, create a safe place for people to live and get the services that they needed.

And so I believe that that's something that we can do that would be a positive side to what council member Heinz is um presenting.

And so I I wanted to bring that forward tonight to let people know that we'll be bringing that forward next week at council.

Okay, any comments or questions for council member Hines or Rumba.

All right, the ordinance will be set over for final reading next week.

I would encourage you all, it's been a really long day for as we've been here for talking about the kind of same topics all day.

So if you want to hear our discussion on that, we had one of those earlier if you're curious about the different questions and different things that we've been asking.

Umfinished business.

Is there any unfinished business?

Okay, seeing none, we will move on to community forum.

Moving on to community forum, during which you may speak about items over which the city council has jurisdiction.

As a reminder, these forums are not intended to give speakers the opportunity to share their viewpoints and feedback with the city council to aid in our decision making, and is not meant to be a back and forth dialogue.

Your marks should be directed towards the city council and not an individual staff members.

At this time, I would like to ask attendees if you want to speak under community forum.

Please press the raise your hand button near the zoom near the bottom of your Zoom window or press star nine on your phone now so we can see the number of people wishing to testify this evening.

If you're speaking in person, please sign up at 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.

Clark Lee, please read.

The purpose of community forum is to assist the council in making policy decisions.

Items of discussion will be limited to matters over which the council has jurisdiction.

Arguments shall not be made in support of or opposition to any matter on this week's agenda, and each person may address the council only one time during this form.

All right, community form will be limited to a total of 60 minutes, and each speaker will have 90 seconds to make your remarks.

Please be mindful of the time frame.

As always, you are not required to use all of your time to make your point.

If you cannot remain on topic, you will be given two warnings.

If you will remain off topic, we will have to move on and end your time.

Clerk, have we received any written comment for community forum?

We've received 55 emails regarding tenant rights.

All right.

Okay, we will start with excuse me.

Did you want me to start?

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Um, there's been a lot of um questions about the LNG expansion that you've heard about at the port.

And I'm gonna read some information so that we can sort of set the record straight on what we know and what I've verified with the port and with PSE.

Our priority is fostering a healthy environment for our community.

The port is actively updating its clean air plan to prioritize cleaner renewable fuels.

And to be clear, the port has confirmed there is no plans for an LNG expansion.

The city's committed to working with its partners at the port to achieve our shared goals of a healthier environment and a stronger sustainable economy.

The port's clean air plan once updated is a step in the right direction.

So there's no expansion of the LNG facility planned at the port.

The port is proactively shifting to cleaner renewable energy.

And this city council has already taken strong action to limit fossil fuel infrastructure.

And people are saying that there'll be an expansion, and there is no planned LNG expansion.

And I want you to know as someone who lives in Northeast Tacoma and cares a lot about this issue.

I never supported the LNG plant.

I wasn't on council when that was approved.

I want you to know that I care about this issue and I stay on top of it.

And I am right here, am honestly telling you what I found out from PSE and the Port of the Port of Tacoma.

So if you have questions, please reach out.

I'd love to answer those later, but I wanted to let the community forum know this.

Thank you.

All right, thank you, Councilmember Ramba.

Michelle Reich, you're um Michelle, I'm actually gonna go to give me a second here.

I'm gonna go, Michelle.

Michelle.

I only got a few online.

I'm gonna go to them first and then we'll go to everybody in the room, okay?

Michelle.

Michelle, can you hear me?

Michelle.

I'm gonna go to the three that are online.

And then we'll do um everybody in the room.

Okay, okay.

I know I did.

Sorry about that.

Okay.

We're gonna start with Kath, uh Kathy.

Yes, Calvin.

Kathy, you're probably gonna have to mute something.

I don't know if you've got two things going at once, but it sounds like it's creating feedback for you.

Can you hear me still?

Do you want to try again?

If the clock starts, then you can hear me.

Okay.

All right, you're good now.

Um, hi.

You know, when you talk about the public, people, unhealthy people are members of the public.

By the way, who are most frequently victims of crime, and who many, in fact that I personally met, were frankly these kids.

Um, you know, at some point wasn't up enough.

It is very fascist.

Speaking of fashion, FPI Management Inc.

is continuing to defraud disabled seniors at the Alberta Canada apartment.

I have spoken time and again about them, even though they are under indictment by the state attorney general.

I would appreciate it if the council would take some interest because it used to say the city of Tacoma on the tax decision thing, even though we know it's 99% owned, you know, by used to be a Dutch corporation.

Who knows these days?

Um, but one that was favored by BlackRock, I think we should add.

Um stop.

So um I would have to do something about that, write a letter, do something, um, get them off our back.

Um, write a letter to the general, encourage them to keep up with the lawsuit to include the Alberta Canada Park because we got very low-income disabled seniors, and we've been through hell with that for over.

Thank you for your time tonight, Kathy.

Uh Teresa E.

Hello, Deputy Mayor.

Thank you for uh allowing me to speak.

Hello, Council.

This is Teresa E, Teresa Evans.

Um tonight is definitely a reminder for me.

Um, on January 26, 2022, I walked down McKinley Hill from my house about a half mile to attend a political demonstration for those experiencing homeless to be able to camp in Tacoma.

And I was going to attend for about 15 minutes, the peaceful demonstration and sit across the street on the bank to Tudor from my phone.

And I woke up about almost a full day later in the hospital, but I called you guys, you know, I'm your city council and talk to city council, and I cheated from my bed too.

And you guys are reading that ordinance 29064.

So I'm I'm just keeping track of it a little bit there.

So I'm working on my recovery, both my my bum and my head.

And I like to say I walk outside every day.

I'll Ira libre camino todos los dias.

And I heard a couple of Spanish things, so I was happy to have a wonderful night.

Thank you so much for your comments tonight, Teresa.

Lastly online, we've got Megan Capes.

Hey all, um, Megan Capes.

I'm a teacher in Tacoma and actually a resident in Parkland.

I wanted to stay on tonight because I can't comment next week because I'm bringing in 45 plus uh students from Mount Tahoma to do student government day.

Um, and because of that can't do public comment, but I wanted to just name a couple things.

So um before a lot of y'all's time, um, I think Heinz might have been on council.

Um I shifted into becoming a teacher, and because I had that availability of doing a student teaching program, interviewed a lot of people on the streets about why they were living in People's Park when they were about to sweep.

Um, and that just made me think about like listening to all these accounts about um how is the city listening to unhoused folks, especially about the impacts of this past led legislation on like their ability to survive, but also what should they see as being needs that they need in their regular life.

Um, thank you so much.

Thank you for your comments tonight.

Uh Jamie C, I see you just put your hand up.

Um, you can go, but that will be our last one from online.

Hi, council.

This is Jamie.

Um, I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to make community forum, um, but I did in the nick of time.

Um, we're not believing that the port is not uh expanding PSE.

It has reclassified that facility as part of their infrastructure last year.

So now that's a partner of expansion.

Um so you know, you can try and act, you know, treat us like we're stupid, treat us like we don't know anything.

Um, we are also doing our own research and own investigation into this.

Um, and ours shows otherwise from what you said, Councilmember Rumba.

So also like your credibility isn't that great as someone to believe on council.

Sorry to say it, but that's what your actions have shown.

And so, yeah, I'm I'm gonna let the rest of uh my uh comrades in the chambers take it from here.

Um, but the people are not stupid.

What has been shown tonight is that we do our research.

We are connected with the lived experts, the people directly impacted by these genocidal eugenic policies that you keep pushing through.

Knock it off.

Okay, thank you for your comments tonight.

We are going to move to those in the room.

Michelle, you're up first.

Thank you so much for being flexible.

Okay, this is one point one big can't be ban.

A um partial ban is half-stepping.

And you city council members that are military, you know what I'm talking about.

On your city council action memorandum of uh October 8th, a complete ban would be less complex under a citywide prohibition.

So you're already saying that a complete ban would be less complex.

Your proposed ban with a hundred and some sites is like a Swiss cheese.

And you will not be able to effectively enforce it there.

And so, what's the purpose of doing it?

And if I don't live in a yellow, orange, purple or blue area, and I'm a citizen of Tacoma, and you're exposing me to where you move into camping uh encampments too.

That's not right either.

The citizens of Tacoma do not want that.

They want a solution, a permanent solution, not a band-aid, not a temporary picks.

They want something done that's uh taking care of the problem, not moving it around to another neighborhood.

And uh in your memorandum here, you had another thing.

Lations in the city could be priorities and have a reduced community impact from encampments.

So am I gonna have a more impact or reduced impact depending on where I live?

That's not right either.

It needs to be uniform across the city, and no drugs too.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments tonight, Michelle.

Um, up next, we've got uh Barb Church, followed by Barb will be Steve Storms.

Yeah, Steve Storms.

Thank you, Council Barb Church from Northeast Tacoma.

And the Port Commissioner's August meeting during their clean air implementation plan update.

They want to explore opportunities related to increased use of LNG by global flip shipping fleet.

This is a flat red flag for us.

Because of the public outcry around permitting LNG natural gas refinery, the city of Tacoma Planning and Services Department Director Peter Huffman made a comment to community to ensure protection through environmental review and public participation.

If Fujitsan Energy ever sought to expand its fueling to other vessels or bunker barges.

Yet in November 23, they broke that promise by approving expansion through a shoreline permit revision, which allowed the city to bypass public review.

Then in early 24, Puget Sun Energy applied for a permit again through the U.S.

Army Corps of Engineers requesting the same project approval.

Between November 21 and May 24, Puget Sound Energy's LNG frack gas refinery received 19 notices of violation from the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency for permit violations, which involved uncontrolled release of unburnt gases from the flares such as methane and other volatile organic compounds into the atmosphere.

We would like LNG expansion removed from the Port of Tacoma's clean air implementation plan as one of the port's strategies for achieving cleaner air in our community.

Thank you for your comments tonight, Barb.

Steve Houssif.

Steve Storms.

Chemical engineers, I'm sure the ones that design plants like the LNG plant, but it concerned me so much I moved.

I could overwhelm you with facts and figures that only a chemical engineer could understand.

But tonight, uh gonna speak from my heart.

Does anyone here actually believe that pumping more CO2 or methane into the atmosphere is beneficial?

No, no.

My guess is that only because it is profitable, the damage can be ignored.

How do people live with themselves, knowing that they are slowly killing the planet?

It has reached a point that it is no longer slowly dying, but now tipping points are being breached.

Things that cannot be reversed.

This is so much CO2 in the atmosphere right now that the 1.5 degree centigrade target that we were trying to prevent cannot be prevented.

Uh worst case scenario, the 2.0 is probably going to be exceeded.

We or you are creating a world that if we survived, we will not like it.

We or you are creating this man-made hell by using more fossil fuel.

Please don't allow them to expand or to remodel or do anything down there.

Thank you.

Bye.

Thank you for your comments tonight, Steve Steve.

Um, I just want to make sure that I just help organize this correctly.

So Jim and I actually have you up next.

Are you guys going one after the other?

No stopping in between.

We we changed the order and okay.

I just need to know.

I just need to know how many is it, and then I take your comment.

No, no, you're right.

You're how many?

Karen.

So I have one, two, three, four, five, three, seven, and nine.

Starting with Jim and I and ending at Samuel.

Yeah, it's just me and Sam switch spots.

Okay.

Yeah.

Karen Karen's gonna go first.

Okay, so we don't need to stop we're just gonna do time continuing.

Yeah.

Um, hello.

Um, my name is Karen Conrad.

I am reading this for our wonderful um Moon, who's been part of CAS since its inception.

This is our mission statement.

Excuse me.

We stand in solidarity with the Puallop, Nisqually, Coast, and Salish, and all indigenous people who have stewarded these lands since the beginning of time.

Their lands, not ours.

And to continue to do so today, we uplift indigenous voices.

We within our community, we support national development for indigenous people.

We honor the multitudes of indigenous identity, including queer, two spirit, brown and black people.

Many of their ancestors were abducted and enslaved by a system that continues to this day.

Under the 13th Amendment, we demand an end to the ongoing genocides.

We demand the return of land and natural resources.

We cannot revitalize ecosystems worldwide without indigenous sovereignty and climate justice from the Puala to Palestine.

Thank you.

All right.

And so here goes.

I honestly don't know what you know, but this is what we know.

The Port of Tacoma has placed LNG expansion in its clear air clean air plan.

While Puget LNG's permit with the Army Corps still hangs in the background.

If the port votes for that plan, as it is written, the city will find itself as the lead SIPA agent in the process again.

This means Tacoma will have to decide whether it will defend its people or repeat its mistake.

We know the Medicine Creek Treaty still stands.

The Supreme Court's Bolt decision still stands.

The terms of the land claim settlement still stand.

Those responsibilities do not expire.

In our original fight, we were told it was too late to stop it.

So we are here now before the next one begins, while it is still just an idea.

It has been a long time for us.

We have carried this fight for years, and we are still here.

We were then, we are now, and we will always be.

No LNG in the 253.

No LNG in the 253.

This should be an easy win for us all here.

Thank you.

Hello, it's me, Sean again.

Uh the methane plant is in a Lahar zone, which hopefully you are aware of.

Uh it is on the water and on a fault line.

In the event of a natural disaster, it would have catastrophic impacts.

It is negligent and irresponsible for the city and the port to permit eight million gallons of liquid methane to sit in a disaster zone.

It is a bomb waiting to go off.

One too many mistakes, one spark, and we'll be the next East Palestine.

A national tragedy.

The methane plant is built close to the water.

Mount Tahoma has never been so brown in the summer.

The glaciers that feed us and give us water are melting, and we've built a bomb at the water's edge.

In case of Mount Tahoma's inevitable explosion, the LNG facility is in the Lahar zone.

In the event of a tectonic shift, the LNG is built on the fault.

We need to design society based on best available science.

The LNG spits in the face of this.

And it is not what the Spoyaloph wanted.

Hi, my name is Livia.

I'm from District 4.

Uh, Councilmember Rumbaugh, thank you for saying that you're against this expansion.

We will remember that comment.

Um I want to talk about the detention center, a facility that we like to pretend doesn't exist.

What does it have to do with the camping ban?

What does it have to do with the expansion of the liquid natural gas facility?

What they have in common is that it is the same people who will be suffering the consequences of your horrible decision making.

The detention center isn't full of wealthy people.

It isn't full of white people.

The people who suffer and will continue to suffer the most under both of these expansions are poor working people, indigenous tribal members, and migrants.

These are people who can't afford to pay the high price for legal recourse and justice.

They can't afford to just live in less polluted areas like many of you probably can.

And maybe they're living on the streets and exposed to the elements and to pollution.

Whether it's from expansion of the camping ban or an expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure, you are choosing to commit violence against our most vulnerable citizens, and pollution is violence.

What would happen if an earthquake hit an eight million gallons of methane poured into the port into the detention center?

There is no evacuation plan for those people detained.

People will die.

And what happens at the detention center is a reflection of what happens in the entire city of Tacoma.

The violence we allow to happen against our most vulnerable citizens is violence against each and every one of us.

You may be able to ignore it, but all of us here are wondering what is going to happen.

And we are responsible for the protection of our air against pollution, no matter who's breathing it, we're responsible for the protection of all of our neighbors and especially the most vulnerable who you are all attacking with these expansions.

Thank you.

Hola, mi nombre Sol Jesusuna.

Don't worry, this one will be in English.

I'm here with Climate Alliance South Sound to speak against the expansion of the for-profit Puget Sound Energy Liquefied Natural Gas Pl.

Let me start off by acknowledging that while the greenhouse effect is essential for our planet, we're given a completely false narrative that the human-generated production of liquidified natural gas is a greener, better option.

These white lies aren't so little and carry huge repercussions for the land it's built on, the individuals who work there, the people and wildlife that live in the surrounding area, and Mother Gaia.

We're already experiencing the result of overproduction liquefied natural gas, which has caused severity in the climate crisis.

We see ourselves in.

It is a number one contribute contributor to global warming.

The LNG may cause harm during its production, processing, and transport.

It's not only talking about, I'm not only talking about a big explosion occurring.

Methane and volatile organic compounds are able to leak at any of these stages, making the air unsafe.

Once again, that can occur during production, processing, and transport.

What are some health issues that can occur from overexposure?

Heart and respiratory issues, neurological damage, permanent brain damage, death.

These concerns are not just limited to airborne situations.

Methane can travel on and through water.

This flam flammable vapor will continue to travel or build up explosive or explosive levels causing harm to marine life and lead and lead to ocean acidification.

Let me remind you that the location of the LNG plant is right at the port of Tacoma.

Much like its ability to displace oxygen from air and water, methane can affect the chemistry of soil, causing an impact on vegetation.

Vegetation is vital to humanity and wildlife because this is how we're able to uh it provides us with oxygen, the food we eat, and what gives us the continued ability to use these materials for shelter and clothing.

We say no to the LNG expansion, people overprofit always.

Hi, I'm Sarah and I live in District 5.

Um, I just kind of want to echo what um my comrades are saying.

Um, not everyone is equally impacted by climate change, and our most vulnerable communities are hit the hardest.

The PSD LNG project affects our Puallop tribe and the workers on the port, making their health at an even higher risk.

The pollution created by the LNG facility and its expansion will cause the air quality in already at risk communities to worsen.

It is not a stretch to say that the LNG expansion project is a product and perpetrator of environmental racism.

Hello, counsel.

My name is Claire.

I'm a student and community member here in Tacoma, and I'm here to say that our outrage about the LNG facility is not a new it's not a new phenomenon.

Whether it's the camping ban or whether it's climate related, y'all have blatantly shown us that you do not care about your constituents' safety or well-being.

For years we have stood up against this toxic, polluting, racist, frack gas facility that threatens the lives of Tacoma residents.

And we will always continue to do so.

When the decision is left in y'all's hands, profit always comes over us, the people.

Just now I watch all of you sit here and look bored while form former homeless people tell y'all that if you go through with this camping ban, the blood of homeless people of Tacoma will be on your hands.

We have a right to safe and livable spaces to work and exist and live, and we always will fight for that right.

Do what is right, listen to us when we tell you we do not want an LG facility here in our city.

Thank you.

When we come together like this, we're at our strongest collective power to make change.

Us in this room, right here, right now.

Um it's too often our community is bombarded with terrible policy.

Like tonight we're faced with an expansion of the camping ban, known to kill our neighbors, as well as the expansion of the Puget Sound Energy's fracked liquefied natural gas facility, which has the capacity for mass destruction of our city.

Um to be honest, this is an escalation of the class war against working people.

This is another example of how the city always puts profit over the people.

The camping ban means being poor is illegal.

The LNG expansion means corporate wealth is more important to the council than human health.

And you you want to say don't worry about it, there's no permit.

It was built in the first place, unpermitted, illegally built.

What are you saying?

But in the face of this, us the people are coming together to push against this.

This is wrong.

And thank you, everyone here in the chamber tonight for coming out and speaking.

What you have to say matters.

These council members aren't listening.

I am.

We are.

We care about what you have to say.

Thank you for showing up tonight.

Thank you.

Anybody in this room, uh, anybody who lives, works, or plays in this city should know, and many of us do know that an illegally built, dangerous and needless facility should not be expanded.

It should be shut down.

That's why we need a strong climate commission that can stand up against the cre the greedy corporate profiteers who live safely outside the blast zone of the PSELNG.

We have a climate commission right now that's powerless to stop this and has been powerless to stop this.

We need the opposite.

We need a strong climate commission to put people over profit.

The people who have lived on and stewarded these lands since time immemorial should have full say in what gets built on their land.

Puala people and all indigenous people need full sovereignty now.

This demands at a minimum to stop the PSE LNG expansion.

Climate justice needs racial justice, and we need a city that is actually able to achieve that.

We need no PSE LNG.

We need indigenous sovereignty.

We need a strong climate commission.

And we've seen time and time again that if we need anything, we are going to have to fight for it.

We will be at the next Poor Commission meeting.

Join us.

Join us to come tell the poor commission, the people who have the power to shut this down, that we are not gonna take this.

It is next Tuesday, the 21st.

We got flyers.

Uh I hope to see you there.

And I'll let you guys know I appreciate you speaking out against the PSC L and G.

Uh, Rumba, remember that you said you opposed that.

And uh, we'll be back.

Liberate the people!

Literate the planet.

Okay, thank you for your comments tonight.

I think we got everybody.

No, no, no, I'm sorry, just from the group that came together.

I just wanted to make sure.

Uh Janine, you can't.

Ma'am.

So if someone speaks, it's it's kind to look at that.

Not the very hours straight today.

There's we have we have not had a break.

What are you gonna do?

All right.

If you guys want to end community forum, we can do that.

We don't have to do this.

All right, Janine, go ahead and come up.

Kyle, um, I see you on the list, but you were in the middle of that, so I want to make sure you had an opportunity.

So if you still want to speak, you can go up after Janine.

Okay, I'm ready.

Hello, I'm Janine, and I'm in Sarah Rama's district.

Um, you know, I have learned that at least one, if not more of the city council members working on the amendments to the tenants bill of rights are landlords.

This is a conflict of interest that concerns me.

As a city council, there is an expectation that you utilize best practices.

And conflict of interest is one of those best practices.

Uh, I look to Mayor Woodard's or Deputy Mayor to ensure that best practices are applied to any conflict of interest.

City Council members who are landlords should be recused from any process that is working on weakening the rights of tenants, and they should not be allowed to vote on any proposed changes.

Already the city council has shown a bias against strong tenants' rights.

I am not saying that the tenant bill of rights that were passed in 2023 is perfect, but it was an important and necessary step due to the lack of adequate protection and advocacy for tenants for many years in Tacoma.

For now, please leave the tenant bill of rights alone.

Instead, create an advisory committee made up of tenants with lived experience and landlords with good reputations to look over this bill and make recommendations that the community can vote on.

This would be democracy at its finest.

Thank you very much.

Long night.

All right, thank you for your comments tonight, Janine.

Kyle, did you want to come?

After Kyle will be Judith Anderson and then Sean Arente.

All right.

My name's Kyle Jolly Boys.

I live two blocks from here.

I want to say some facts about addiction.

I wasn't going to talk about it, but 12% of people in recovery die sober.

12%.

This is my 30 year coin.

I made it a commitment to be in that 12%.

And I don't see Tacoma helping that at all.

There's three there's three sides to this.

Service.

Recovery.

Community.

You guys have to start taking care of your community.

Because you said 10 years ago, I didn't have gray hair.

I've been fighting this LNG a long time.

And there were other faces here.

And they're gone now, and they don't give a damn what we're doing here.

But you guys do.

This is your legacy.

We were told it was 3.5 mile radius.

It's 15 mile radius.

I'm 2.2 miles and I can see it out my window.

And you guys want to expand on water?

What about the Lahar?

What about the 200 earthquakes on Mount Rainier?

What about an attack in our port?

Because that's what the Ukrainians have been doing, attacking their oil fields.

If that if our oil fields ever get blown, we're gone.

And we know where the military gets their fuel from.

It's piped from the port of Tacoma.

The port of Tacoma is sinking.

And you put an 8 million gallon LNG plant there, and you want to expand.

Kyle, I don't want to cut you off by the time has expired.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for your comments tonight.

Okay.

Um, Judith, are you still here?

Sean, you can come up.

Uh PSC has applied for an Army Corps of Engineering permit to expand the LNG facility.

I really wouldn't be here otherwise.

I'd rather be home.

Um but I got an old beef here.

Um when I was in my early 20s, I worked at Husky Terminal in the Port of Tacoma for a small security company.

Um, this job gave me the security I needed to feed myself and house myself and put myself through college.

And um I watched BSC build this facility uh with or without permits while I was there.

Um I started speaking up here.

And when a fire broke out next to the LNG facility, I published photos on social media and was come down on with a vengeance.

I lost my job and was threatened with legal action.

I wouldn't be silent then, and I'm not gonna be silent now.

Fossil fuel-driven climate change threatens the world and the ecosystems that I personally are working to restore.

By 2050, it is estimated that we will lose all our freshwater glaciers.

That's the Green River, that's Tacoma Water.

By 2100 sea level rise retinas threatens to swallow the whole tide flats.

The Trump administration has canceled the Pacific Northwest hydrogen hub, a real path to renewable fuels, and it's opening the Arctic to drilling.

They want to keep us hooked on fossil fuels and do anything to realize their profits.

We need to fight fossil fuel expansion with everything we got.

Please work to oppose PSC's expansion, looking on this permit and join us.

Thank you for your comments tonight, Sean.

Marilyn, followed by Stacy.

I just want to make sure Judith isn't here.

Okay.

Come on up, Marilyn.

Well, here I am again.

I've been here for many years.

I've been fighting the LNG project, the obscenity of that ever since we first heard about it.

Councilman Rumba, I'm glad that you're against the uh the expansion of the LNG and the LNG plant.

But as Sean said, we know that the PSE went to the Army Corps of Engineers and has them working to do this.

So you may not be fully informed, or they may not be straight with you when you ask your questions.

The LNG refineries slash storage facility is incredibly dangerous to the people that work down there because a blast would make it very hard for them to get out of the bottleneck that we know is down there.

We know that PSC originally told us that magically the fire and the toxins would stop at the chain link fence.

We know that's not true.

In my case that I had to pursue for civil disobedience, I learned that the LNG facilities all over the world explode with horrific consequences.

So do not, when it comes before you approve this LNG expansion and close the damn thing down.

It's a danger in every possible way.

Thank you for your comments tonight, Marilyn.

Uh Stacy, you're up.

Uh after Stacy will be Gloria.

Then Amelia.

Good evening again.

My name is Stacy Oaks, and again, I'm a community organizer with 350 Tacoma.

And I can tell you we're really happy that you did look into trying to get some statements from PSE and the port that is more than was done during the previous LNG fight.

So thank you.

Unfortunately, they pretty much lied to your face.

You can go back to an August port commission meeting and watch the video, and I will send that to you tomorrow, where they specifically talk about the Tacoma LNG facility and its underutilized capacity.

And in that clean air plan, it specifically says that they want to quote explore opportunities related to increased use of LNG by global ship fleet.

So in some way, they are trying to deceive you.

And you do not need to wait until it's before this body in the permit process to stand up for this.

Every single one of you can contact the Port of Tacoma and Port of Seattle commissioners and just let them know that you do not personally want LNG included in the clean air strategy.

They get to vote on that within the next month and a half to two months.

We can remove that from the plan.

We can avoid all of us coming in here for months and years to bug you during another permit fight.

If you can get that removed from the plan, then there's that much less reasoning for them to continue to move forward, and you can change the reputation that this city council has of not listening to the community by taking proactive actions like that.

So thank you.

Thank you for your comments tonight, Stacy.

Uh Gloria.

After Gloria again, we'll be Amelia and then Marcus.

Hi, I'm Gloria.

I was here, I was up here earlier.

Um, I didn't, I'm a member of CAS.

And I just, even though I didn't really prepare something to say, I did want to still come up and and show that there's a lot of us.

There's a lot of people who are against this, and there's gonna be more and more.

It starts, it started long before I even knew anything about the LNG facility.

It started with people who have been fighting it for years, and it's growing, and people don't want things that are gonna harm the planet when what we see in our news every single day is how our planet is actually dying.

So you really need to think about that.

This isn't just about, oh, we need we need this, oh, we need this money.

This is about something bigger than that.

It's about something bigger than every single one of us.

So when you think about the LNG, everyone needs to think about what this really means in the long run for the generations to come.

This is not okay that we're building something that can endanger people in the detention center, in the community.

We can't be playing with people's lives.

That's all.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments tonight, Gloria.

Umilia, are you still here?

Okay.

Marcus, you're up.

Uh hello again.

Um my name is Marcus Parlo Ivan, uh, council member Roman's district.

Uh, I would like uh again to reiterate what everyone's speaking uh uh against, and that's uh the expansion of the LNG plant.

Um I think it should be dismantled.

Um it is a uh threat uh not only to the immediate environment but to the global environment.

Uh the uh emissions of greenhouse gases is the uh cause of uh global climate change and um I want to see uh future generations uh in a thriving planet.

Um and uh I I want to address something uh else um something council member Heinz had said um that there's no one solution to uh uh ending homelessness, and I'm afraid there is, and that's uh uh providing uh affordable housing.

Thank you for your comments tonight, Marcus.

Um we're gonna go to Dakota and then Dylan, and then we will finish uh in person with Obanaya.

Um hi, thanks for your time again.

Um I also wanted to um respond to uh and I yeah, uh a quote public safety.

The expanded camping ban is to address public safety and access, not addressing solving all of the issues of homelessness and the things that cause that.

And I think um the people here today have been harping on the issue of homelessness because people are asking for public safety and access to be addressed via increasing both the amount and quality of social services to homeless people, not increasing policing or increasing the spaces where it's not okay for them to be.

Um that's all I have.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments tonight, Dakota.

All right, Dylan.

Hello.

Um I'm here as part of uh the Philippine US Solidarity Organization and the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines.

Um, and I'm also a Tacoma community member.

Um, and I'm here to speak out against the expansion of the PSE LG Liquid National Natural Gas Project.

Um we heard today about our sister city Divao in the Philippines and uh the catastrophe that it is facing right now.

Um I've been there and I've seen firsthand how energy projects like this and the government that places profits for those corporations above the people displace and harm indigenous communities and um other communities.

I spoke to an indigenous family facing intense surveillance, harassment at gunpoint, uh health impacts and loss of crop yields, which was their livelihood.

Countless families facing the same fascism have no option but to flee the country to places like Tacoma.

Um where they often end up in the Northwest Detention Center, which is here.

Um I had the privilege of meeting a Tacoma resident that had to leave the Philippines, lived in Tacoma for over 30 years, um, was detained recently at the Northwest Detention Center, um, and uh was unfortunately deported a little over a month ago.

Um Tacoma has a long history of poisoning our community, um, indigenous communities, and uh um in particular for this, the Northwest Detention Center, all for the sake of profit.

So let's make sure that we end our complicity.

Thank you for your comments tonight, Dylan.

All right, Ovaniel.

I want to thank you for your comments earlier.

I appreciate the respect that you gave us.

I just want to be mindful of the time, particularly because I do have another person after you.

We still got that one minute, 30 seconds, but and I let you go earlier.

I just um I I'm trying to be respectful.

I'm trying to make sure that we meet.

Okay.

If you don't get to finish, you can send the rest to the clerk.

I gotta be respect respectful to everybody.

Is that okay?

It's only about five minutes.

We no, we can't do that.

I'm sorry.

Okay.

And I'm talking again about the multifamily tax uh exemption.

And it's something that I brought up before, but one of the things that's a concern to me is the amount of money the city is giving away to developers.

Take for example, an example.

I'll use uh the issue that passed tonight.

The amount of money that that one project received uh in tax breaks affects the whole community.

The amount of money that they received is 12 million dollars, according to my calculations.

That means that the schools lost uh 4.8 million dollars.

The city of Tacoma lost 2.4 million dollars.

And um the park department lost uh 1.2 million dollars.

We can't keep giving them money away, and that's just for this one project.

So uh I also want to bring up related to that is if we're gonna provide housing and say we're providing affordable housing.

I want to see future projects if there are any that come out that affordable is 50 percent or 60 percent, but not 70 percent.

70 percent is rent burdened.

So that's the thing I would like to see you, all of you from the city council, uh, take charge of that and do that.

The other thing is accessibility, but I'll take that up on another night.

Good night.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments tonight, Kit.

Overnight, I'm serious.

One minute thirty seconds, that's all we got.

That's what it is.

Um we're gonna cut your mic at the end.

I'm letting them know now.

Oh, that's fine.

At that point, then it wouldn't be for y'all, it'd be for the people.

Uh, but I do need y'all to keep your eyes up, guys.

See a lot of y'all which faces down.

So eyes up, counsel.

We're speaking to you.

Pay attention.

Uh happy anniversary, Black Panther Party.

Tomorrow's the 59th anniversary of fighting for the liberation of black indigenous and all affected people of colonialism.

All power to the people.

Um, but did you know that yesterday was Indigenous People's Day?

Yeah, the Indigenous People's Aid to All First Nation people.

Did you also know that Seattle actually fought back against the Orange Terrorists, making an ordinance to make October 13th an officially recognized holiday for the Indigenous people of Seattle?

And yet, though you marked it in City Ordinance Resolution 4012 in 2018, you surrounded that day with Italian History Month, knowing that Cristobolo Colombo committed genocide to steal the land for Spanish and Italian colonial terrorism and expansion.

Blood on your hands, indigenous sovereignty now.

And I find it quite fascinating how your city officials keep their interest in money over people when they forget that we elected them.

They accept ACAP money, I'm sorry, APAC money uh from the Israeli government and target grassroots candidates with smaller campaigns like that of Zev Cook on behalf of Joe Bushnell.

Um that's about 12,000 plus.

Uh the mayor's fully funded trip to Israel also shows that you're all owned by Zionists.

Uh we have an interwoven struggle for survival and justice in Tacoma and globally.

Uh the contemporary sociopolitical landscape of Tacoma is defined by an interwoven movement that connects black liberation, indigenous sovereignty, climate action, and fundamental human and workers' rights.

But focusing on special local policy battles, you'll see a community fighting for a just and equitable future.

Your time is blocking LNG forever will be a victory rooted in indigenous sovereignty and black justice.

We're gonna take a 10-minute recess.

All right.

All right, calling the city council meeting back to order.

Um the community forum closed and move on to the reports by the city manager.

Thank you for the opportunity, Debbie.

I do not have a report.

It's community forum night, so thank you.

All right.

Thank you.

All right.

Uh, moving on to comments and committee reports of the city council.

I would like to call on Council Member Heinz, Chair of the Government Performance and Finance Committee to give us a report out.

Very quick one.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Mayor.

The government force committee is convened once since my last update.

The first update was from Chair Hansen, Chair of the Civil Service Board, presenting an informational briefing on potential proposal on a potential proposal for new and amended civil service board rules.

The next GPFC meeting is scheduled for October 21st at ten A.

M.

in room two forty eight of the Chacoma missile.

The agenda for this meeting will include an overview of the city's insurance policies related to risk exposure and two telecommunications franchise agreements with Fat Beam LLC and Forged Fiber 37 LLC.

I don't know where they come up with these names.

Madam Deputy Mayor, those conclude my report.

All right.

Thank you for your report this evening.

Are there any final council comments?

Seeing none, as a reminder of the transportation, as a reminder, the transportation benefit district governing board special meeting will take place immediately after we adjourn this meeting.

If I don't have any other council comments, I will take the final motion.

Move to adjourn.

Second.

All right.

All those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

All those opposed signify by saying nay.

The motion is declared adopted.

We stand adjourned.