I'd like to call to order the city council study session of May 14th, 2024.

Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Councilmember Bushnell.

Councilmember Daniels.

Absent, Councilmember Diaz.

Here.

Deputy Mayor Hines.

Here.

Councilmember Ramba.

Here.

Councilmember Scott?

Here.

Councilmember Ashka.

Absent.

Councilmember Walker.

Here.

Mayor Winnard's here.

Mayor and Council members, the study session material sent to you at 11.06.

Great.

Thank you very much.

We have several presentations today.

And our first one, we're going to start with the Sound Transit Transportation Project updates.

And I'd now like to call on Sound Transit Interim CEO, Jarance Barman, to begin the presentation.

Welcome.

Thank you.

I'm very happy to be here.

And thank you for the gracious welcome.

Excuse me.

So obviously, as the new interim CEO, I have not had the opportunity to talk to the Tacoma City Council before.

So I'm very happy to be here today in what I hope would be one of many conversations going forward.

So I thought I would just give a few introductory comments, talking about the Sound Transit program, a little bit my role as the new interim CEO, and then see if the council members have any questions, and I'm, of course, would be happy to answer any of those.

And I know my staff team is here then to give you more detailed update on the many projects that are actually happening in Pierce County affecting or directly inside the city of Tacoma.

So very briefly, I took office about four months ago, and this is very loud in my ears.

I hope it's working for the council.

So I took office about four months ago.

I have a one-year contract as the interim CEO, so I have eight months left to go.

But I'm not counting.

So that really is what's guiding a lot of the work I'm doing.

A big part of that is making sure we accelerate and make fast decision making on product capital delivery.

And I would like to think that some of my background, which I want to share with you very briefly, would help in my assessment of how to make that happen.

But most of my career has been managing large transportation departments.

So obviously, I've been in the mix of how you execute and deliver large uh transportation infrastructure projects in a public environment for a long time.

The nice thing that I will share with the Tacoma City Council is that uh Sound Transit, we have a lot of very good, very dedicated staff.

So we have a very strong foundation to build on as we look for ways to execute on all the projects that will benefit the region, including Pierce County and City of Tacoma.

I want to emphasize that I take my responsibility of running a regional agency very seriously.

Something I've had on several occasions have had to explain to folks and stakeholders in King County, City of Seattle, and so forth.

No.

Sound transit, we are a regional agency, and our job is to execute on the whole program, including those that benefit Pierce County and Snowmark counties.

The opening of a Tacoma T Link last year.

And I know many of you probably have significant questions on how we progress on the other additional projects.

The large one being, of course, the Tacoma Dome Link Extension Project, where we expect the draft EIS to be released late this year.

And frankly, that's going to be a vehicle for really making sure we do good progress on how we connect Tacoma and South Pierce County to the rest of the regional system.

And as you also know the sounder system, which is of immense uh value to Pierce County and City of Tacoma is another key uh component of our regional mass transit system.

We are continuously looking for ways to improve that system, but you also know that we are dependent on our relationship with Burlington Northern in terms of how much service we can actually run through the sounder system.

So that's sort of some introduct introductory comments.

Uh, my emphasis on uh understanding that we have a regional agenda uh that we need to really execute on, and we will later in this presentation talk about each of the individual projects.

But I think I'll stop right there and see if uh the council members have any questions or comments aimed aimed my way before I pass the Gavin on.

No.

Thank you very much for being here.

Thank you for the introduction.