I would like to call to order the City Council study session of June 3rd, 2025.

Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Councilmember Bushnell.

Deputy Mayor Daniels.

Here.

Councilmember Diaz.

Here.

Councilmember Hines.

Absent.

Councilmember Rumba here.

Councilmember Sidalgay?

Here.

Councilmember Scott.

Here.

Councilmember Walker.

Here.

Mayor Woodards.

Absent the study session material sent to you at 11.

Thank you so much, Clerk.

Our first agenda item today is going to be a presentation on the opioid settlement funding.

And for that, I would like to call on neighborhood and community services, interim director Katie Johnston to begin the presentation.

Hi, Deputy Mayor and City Council.

Thank you for having neighborhood and community services here today to give you an update on the opioid settlement funding.

I'm joined by Caleb Carbone and Sarah Bridgeford.

And I wanted to start just by talking about why you're hearing from us today.

So the City of Tacoma has received funding from opioid legal settlements with pharmaceutical companies.

But these are one-time dollars.

As we went into the 2025-26 biannual budget period, you'll recall that our mental health and substance use disorder fund had a budget gap that the general fund was filling.

As part of your discussions in January of this year, the council had a conversation about using some of these opioid settlement dollars to actually fund some of the city's work in terms of opioid treatment and housing service related housing services as well.

And what we did by when we made that funding decision to move those services to be funded by opioid settlement funds, is we helped reduce the impact of the city's general fund, right?

And we helped address a gap in the mental health and substance use disorder fund.

So that triggered for the city council a desire to have a conversation about the opioid settlement funds.

Previously, council had been having some of those conversations in our community vitality and safety committee over the past year.

We had been working in partnership with Pierce County and others on potential pooling, and I want to thank the Office of Strategy for their work kind of on the opioid settlement funds over the last several years.

But then after council's discussion in January, the team and NCS started putting together what a process would look like to develop a uh funding strategy and ultimately a funding recommendation for the city council to consider.

So because our last conversations were around budget and with the entire city council, we wanted to make sure we came back here to have these conversations.

So I'd like to uh turn it over to uh to my team and NCS.

Thanks, Katie.

Um good afternoon, Deputy Mayor and Council.

Uh Caleb Carbone and I serve as the homeless strategy systems and service manager with neighborhood and community services.

Um I'll start the presentation by walking us through the first half of the presentation and talk about kind of overview of funding, a brief update on the opioid abatement council and programming, and then I will pass the presentation off to Sarah, who will be walking council through the remaining presentation regarding kind of opioid over overdose, the next steps for planning and making recommendations to address the issue and how we intend to work with our community and partners moving forward.

Katie mentioned a little bit just reminding council that we have already utilized some of our funds in the adopted 2526 biennium budget to address some critical programming for our community, and we'll provide a little bit more information on the program later on in this presentation.

Um additionally, though, we do appreciate council's work on the issue and your commitment to serving our community and uh and how we can best utilize these funds to make the greatest impact.

Next slide.

So we wanted to start by taking this opportunity to brief uh briefly overview um with the full council uh since we have not had that opportunity to brief council yet.

Our last presentation with was with CVS.

Um the opioid settlement funds originated from a national uh legal settlement uh for pharmaceutical manufacturers, uh distributors, and retailers.

These lawsuits were brought in response to a widespread evidence that their practices contributed to an over-prescription and distribution of opioids, which fueled a nationwide uh public health crisis as part of that resolution.

Funds were being distributed to state and local governments, including the city of Tacoma.

The purpose of these funds is to support opioid remediation, including response efforts that address the consequences of the epidemic in our community.

And Tacoma is expecting to receive approximately 14.7 million in total, depending on future settlements, and we have already received a total of 5.2 million, and then the 9.5 will be paid out over the next 14 years.

Next slide.

Support treatment and addressing the whole person mentally, physically, and behavioral health, targeting those with opioid use disorder.

Supporting, we can support comprehensive care coordination and services to ensure individuals move smoothly between detox and treatment, recovery housing, and ongoing support.

We can support justice-involved populations since many individuals struggle with addiction and are in or existing in criminal justice systems, and then direct funding can also help break cycle of incarceration and addiction.

And then prioritizing vulnerable groups to ensure access to specialized stigma-free treatment programming that addresses the entire household.

The middle section is focusing on prevention, which reduces harm before it happens by either preventing over-prescribing and utilizing funds to train providers on safe prescribing practices and alternatives to opioid and pain management.

Educating the community and providing outreach to influence behavior change and reduce future misuse, providing access to naloxone and other overdose reversal tools to prevent unnecessary deaths and addressing stigma to invest in community awareness.

And then the bottom section also shows we can invest in other strategies for system level solutions.

We can invest training, we can invest funding and training and equipping first responders to respond to overdose overdose safely and effectively.