Tacoma City Council Study Session: South Tacoma Neighborhood Plan and Comp Plan Update - May 13, 2025
STREAMING COPY IN PREPARATION — RECORDING AVAILABLE FROM THE ORIGINAL SOURCE
Tacoma City Council Study Session: South Tacoma Neighborhood Plan and Comp Plan Update - May 13, 2025
The Tacoma City Council held a study session on May 13, 2025, at 12:00 PM to receive briefings on two major planning initiatives: the South Tacoma Neighborhood Plan and the One Tacoma Comprehensive Plan Update. The session also included the city manager's weekly report and motions to convene executive and closed sessions. Council members expressed strong support for both plans and discussed implementation, funding, and community engagement.
South Tacoma Neighborhood Plan
- Principal Planner Lauren Hoogkamer and Senior Planner Anneka Olson presented the South Tacoma Neighborhood Plan, noting that the Neighborhood Planning Program will sunset at the end of June 2025. The plan is the result of over 1,300 community engagements, including work with language ambassadors and trauma-informed practices.
- Steering group members Felicity Waldron (new resident) and Catherine Raz (owner of Fernseed, a plant and flower shop) shared their positive experiences with the planning process. Waldron highlighted learning about the equity index and environmental justice; Raz called the process a transformative blueprint for community engagement.
- The plan includes a $50,000 booster grant for two community-selected projects: tree planting (in partnership with Urban Forestry and Tacoma Tree Foundation) and family-friendly community events (in partnership with Parks Tacoma).
- Key actions include a road safety audit for South Tacoma Way, with a potential lane reduction from two lanes to one in each direction. Councilmember Bushnell noted speeding issues and concerns about construction impacts on businesses, but Raz expressed support for traffic calming.
- Councilmembers praised the program, expressed sadness at its sunset, and emphasized the need for continued implementation. Councilmember Walker encouraged advocates to use the plan as a tool for future requests.
One Tacoma Comprehensive Plan Update
- Principal Planner Stephen Atkinson and Principal Transportation Services Analyst Carrie Wilhelm presented the draft One Tacoma Comprehensive Plan update (2050 vision). The plan incorporates state Growth Management Act requirements, Vision 2050, and collaboration with the Puyallup Tribe of Indians.
- The plan centers on the concept of 15-minute neighborhoods, ensuring residents have safe access to daily essentials like groceries, schools, parks, and healthcare within a short walk, roll, bike, or transit ride.
- Key policy updates include improved land use/transportation integration, housing goals (following Home in Tacoma adoption), economic development focus on South Tacoma’s manufacturing/industrial center, parks level-of-service standards with walk-distance metrics, a 30% tree canopy goal for all neighborhoods, and stronger climate action connections.
- The plan includes specific actions, such as developing a parks strategy for underserved areas, tree canopy/landscaping standard updates, and sub-area planning for the economic green zone. The Transportation and Mobility Plan (TMP) introduces multimodal level of service, performance metrics (e.g., reducing severe crashes, increasing sidewalk/bike lane miles), and project prioritization criteria.
- Councilmember Bushnell announced a motion to add an electric fence code amendment to the public hearing process (to be voted on later that evening). The amendment would remove decorative fencing requirements for alleys or non-public-facing areas.
- Discussion topics included fiscal impacts of plan actions, coordination with Parks Tacoma, light rail alignment on 19th Street (added to the transit map as a future light rail connection), and the timeline for historic preservation code updates.
- Councilmember Daniels and Scott requested a committee-of-the-whole meeting to allow deeper council involvement before final adoption.
Key Outcomes
- The council will consider a resolution at the evening council meeting to set a public hearing for the One Tacoma Comprehensive Plan update (tentatively June 3, 2025). The motion also includes an additional item on electric fence code changes.
- Final adoption of the comprehensive plan is tentatively scheduled for June 17, 2025, subject to council amendments following public testimony.
- The council unanimously voted to convene an executive session (litigation, 15 minutes) and a closed session (labor strategy, 60 minutes) after the study session adjourned.
Meeting Transcript
I'd like to call study session to order of May for May 13th, 2025. Clerk, will you please call the roll? Councilmember Bushnell. Present. Deputy Mayor Daniels. Councilmember Diaz. Councilmember Hines. Absent. Councilmember Rumba. Absent. Councilmember Sidalgay. Here. Councilmember Scott. Councilmember Walker. Here. Mayor Woodards. Here. The study session material was sent to you at 11.06. All right. Our first agenda item today is a presentation of the South Tacoma Neighborhood Plan. And I like to call on Planning and Development Services Principal Planner, Lauren Who Camer to begin the presentation. Lauren, I'll turn it over to you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, members. I'm Lauren Who Camer, Principal Planner with the Neighborhood Planning Program, and we're here to present the South Tacoma Neighborhood Plan. I'm here with Annika Olsen, senior planner, and two members of our steering group, Felicity and Kat, who will share their experiences. There we go. So this presentation is going to be a little bit different because, as you know, this program is sunsetting at the end of June. So we're going to take a quick moment just to give you a program update and update you on the status of the other two plans as well. Okay. So as I mentioned, the program will be sunsetting at the end of June, and this staff will be reassigned to be working on communications and engagement for the department. So we will not be able to staff this program anymore. But we wanted to start this with some of the lessons learned that really informed our planning process as we went into South Tacoma, which was really a unique experience. So first of all, we really learned to meet community where they are. This community had a lot of things going on, they were really busy and really diverse. We also had to do a lot of alignment and collaboration. As you know, many, many things were happening over the past year. We had the comprehensive plan update, the South Tacoma Groundwater Protection District update, the Transportation Mobility Plan update. So all of those things we worked with to align our engagement and also our actions and their planning process. Key to this plan was equitable engagement, language access, and in-person outreach. We worked closely with our language ambassadors and then many members of our community to reach diverse groups. We went out to schools and did some youth engagement as well. This community was really great because they really held us accountable. They asked us to become trauma informed for this process. And so two of our staff are in the process of getting the certification for trauma informed engagement, which was really great to bring that framework into this planning process. And so you will see in this plan that there's a lot more attention to that and social justice. So just going back a little bit, we want to give you a quick update about McKinley. You adopted this plan in March of 23. These are some of the things that were accomplished through the planning process. Some of them are still ongoing.
openpublica.com