I'd like to call to order the city council study session of June 17th, 2025.

Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Councilmember Bushnell.

Deputy Mayor Daniels.

Councilmember Diaz.

Councilmember Hines.

Absent Councilmember Rumba.

Here.

Councilmember Sidalgay.

Here.

Council Member Scott.

Here.

Councilmember Walker.

Here.

Mayor Woodards.

Here.

The study session material is sent to you at 11.

All right.

Our first agenda item today is a report on a regional fire authority.

And I'd like to call on Deputy Manager Hung Kim for introductions and to begin the presentation.

Thank you, Mayor Woodards, members of council, and just with uh with what's laid here, I'm gonna pass it right over to Chief Staling's Aleyama for presentation with Teresa Green, our finance manager in the fire department uh for presentation on a uh thorough uh start to the conversation in terms of a future state for the city of Tacoma.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Chief.

All right, good afternoon, Mayor, City Council.

Thank you for uh letting us join you today.

Um, like uh the deputy city manager uh stated that we're just gonna be doing an overview of what an RFA is.

So next slide.

So in our agenda, it's gonna take three seconds.

Yep.

All right, there we go.

So uh we're gonna go through some of the factors for uh a regional fire authority, like the definitions, formation process, and timeline, governance, funding, uh, and then also what a feasibility study will look like and get for us, and then also next steps.

So, what is an RFA?

Uh it's a municipal corporation that allows uh fire districts, municipalities, um, and tribal nations to join together for the provision of fire and emergency services.

Uh this was a tool that was uh adopted by the state legislature in 2004 and supplements other options for joining, such as mergers between fire districts, uh annexations of cities into fire districts, interlocal agreements, and then also contracting for services, which we currently do.

Uh RFAs have independent tax authority, and to implement an RFA, you must uh put it on a ballot and have it approved by voters.

And really the purpose, the the main purpose of an RFA is uh to improve the services that you're providing to your community while achieving cost efficiencies through combining resources from different jurisdictions.

So this chart compares fire departments and fire districts to an RFA.

So, first off, you'll notice that fire departments and fire districts are both just one entity.

However, a regional fire authority, the definition of regionalization is that you are combining resources.

So you have to have at least two entities to be able to pull off an RFA.

We couldn't do it just by just by ourselves.

Uh also the uh the coverage areas for all of the different um types of protection jurisdictions.

The city limits are for fire departments, um, but districts like you see in Gig Harbor can also have unincorporated areas.

So Gig Harbor is not only the city of Gig Harbor, but it also has uh a large portion of unincorporated Pierce County and regional fire authorities, depending on what jurisdictions are um are going to be included, um, it would be the the outskirts of all of their that the regional fire authority would just take on all of their current um fire fire service areas.

Governing bodies for fire department uh is obviously you all, city council uh for fire districts, it's a board of commissioners that are appointed, and then for a regional fire authority, um it's a governing board that that is made up of uh members from the participating uh entities.

Primary funding, as you can see, the majority of options for fire districts and regional fire authorities are similar to what we are already have access to, with the addition of the fire benefit charge.

And some of the examples that we have uh below for fire districts is West Pierce, Central Pierce, Gig Harbor, uh, and the regional or Puget Sound uh RFA is just north of us.

Uh and they actually have uh seven uh entities that make up their regional fire authority.

So here's a process and timeline.

Um and it doesn't have to look like this, but we were just trying to kind of outline what hopefully the timeline would look like if we decided to go this this route.

So a feasibility study can take anywhere from six to nine months, and the reason why it would take that long is because the the company or the consulting firm that is working on it is gonna need to meet with all the entities that are want to be involved and work with the their staff uh and the fire department to get a lot of uh a lot of different information.

If after that um they come to a conclusion that yes, this is a good option for this community, uh then at that point uh the jurisdictions would come together and form a governing uh a planning committee, and that would every jurisdiction that would be involved in that would have three seats on that planning committee.

So everybody would have a voice in creating the plan that really is the founding document for the RFA, and that's also what you would use if when it goes to a ballot.

So things that the planning committee would be deciding would be defining governance, what the governing board is gonna look like, how many seats each jurisdiction will have, um, service models, organizational structure, and all of those types of things.

That can take anywhere between nine and uh nine months to a year.

Once their plan uh is solidified and all the uh governing bodies approve the plan or all the other jurisdiction approve the plan, then it must go on the ballot at the same election for all jurisdictions that are involved.

So, as we all know, there's only there's not an election every month, right?

And so it can take six to nine months to get to to choose which election that ever that the RFA is gonna go on.

So then you would put it on the ballot.