The Tacoma City Council held a study session on March 19, 2024, at 12:00 PM in the Council Chambers. The meeting focused on two major briefing items: a quarterly update on the city's alternative response programs (including HEAL, HOPE, Community Service Officers, and a new library pilot) and a debrief on the public hearing regarding a proposed moratorium on new local historic districts. Additionally, the council received a weekly report and set the agenda for the evening's regular meeting.
The City Manager, Elizabeth Pauli, opened by reiterating the goal of enhancing public safety by connecting people with the right resources at the right time, grounded in community feedback and prior studies. Updates were provided by several departments.
The City Manager announced recent funding successes: $1 million in the state operating budget for Tacoma's street medicine expansion (part of $3.7 million statewide) and a $963,000 federal earmark for the CSO program and designated responder programs.
I would like to call to order the city council study session of March 19th, 2024. Clerk, will you please call the roll? Councilmember Bushnell. Present. Councilmember Daniels. Here. Councilmember Diaz. Here. Deputy Mayor Hines. Here. Councilmember Rumba. Here. Councilmember Scott. Here. Councilmember Eshka. Absent. Councilmember Walker. Here. Mayor Woodards. Here. Mayor and Council members of study session materials sent to you at 11. All right. Thank you very much. We are going to move on to our first agenda item, which is the alternative response quarterly update. One of my favorite times here at the city. So I'd like to call on City Manager Polly to begin the presentation in person. Thank you, Mayor. Mayor and Council. I'm going to open our conversation on our the city's alternative response efforts with a few remarks and then turn it over to the departments for you to hear directly about the status of their programs. So next slide, please, D'Angelo. As always, just beginning with a reminder that the programs that you're going to be hearing updates on today were founded in community feedback, council direction and the recommendations of studies conducted on policing and alternative response. And ultimately, this work is also grounded in our commitment to systems transformation captured in resolution 40622. For more background information, anyone interested can link to the studies and recommendations at our website at CityofTacoma.org/slash community safety. Next slide. So since the initial studies that we've continued to evolve our approach and our understanding of alternative response based on what we're learning through research and practical application and conversations with the community and the council. So as with any new and enhanced service, we're continuing to adapt and apply what we learn as we go. In short, the goal of the alternative response programs is to enhance public perception of safety by connecting more people with the right resources at the right time. We're doing this through innovating, expanding, and enhancing three city services and different different programs. And those are shown on the next slide. So those include expanding and enhancing our homeless outreach services, creating our dedicated behavioral health response team, and providing our unarmed community service officers within TPD. And you're you're going to hear about the progress that staff's making in each in each of these program areas in more detail today. And in a similar spirit, we're also going to you're also you will also get an update today about the patron crisis and deescalation team that's being piloted by Tacoma Public Library. So hear about that today. Next slide, please. As we implement this work, we've been using this slide to give an overview of the expanded response types and services that are capable of addressing a wider range of situations with more specialized resources to meet community needs. And these are not limited to 911 access services and range from proactive outreach to emergency response. Next slide, please. This is the um from you'll recall from prior presentations. This is just a standing remire reminder that our public safety response is designed to address situations along a broad spectrum of risk. Again, from community engagement events, low calls, low-call risk for service, low risk calls for service, like responding to car prowls when no suspect is present on the scene, all the way to higher risk situations where there is a threat to persons or property.