I'd like to call to order the joint city council and Tacoma Public Library Board study session meeting of August 26, 2025.

Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Trustee Bowman.

Trustee Saxena.

Present.

Trustees Alstra.

Here.

Vice President Santiago.

Absent President Cobb.

Here.

Councilmember Bushnell.

Present.

Deputy Mayor Daniels.

Here.

Councilmember Diaz.

Councilmember Hines.

Councilmember Rumba.

Here.

Councilmember Sidalgay.

Absent.

Councilmember Scott.

Here.

Councilmember Walker.

Here.

Mayor Woodards.

Here.

The study session material sent to you at 11.

Wonderful.

At this time, I'd like to welcome Tacoma Public Library Board President, Andrea Cobb, and ask her to introduce the other board members who were present and make any opening remarks.

Am I on?

No, the red seems to be not on.

But is that on?

Oh, okay, hot.

That means hot.

Um, good afternoon, Mayor.

What are to members of the council?

Um, on behalf of the board of trustees, I just want to thank you again for having us and for engaging in this conversation with us.

Um, we were joined by four of the trustees.

Is it okay if they introduce themselves or do you want to?

No, you're well, I'll just the floor is.

Thank you.

Well, I'm Andrea Cov.

I've had the pleasure right now serving as president of the board.

I'm in my fourth year of service.

Um, I love Tacoma.

Previously served on the Tacoma School Board, and in my day job, I work at the Gates Foundation.

Uh, education across the life course is my all the time, and so serving on the library board is a pleasure and a privilege.

And I'll just go to the start from the far left of our team and let folks introduce themselves.

There you go.

Thank you.

Hello, thank you for having us.

I'm Elizabeth Bowman.

Uh, this is my second year on the board of trustees for the Tacoma Public Library System.

I am uh work part-time for an organization of California Community College Librarians, and it's um a pleasure to serve on this board.

Good afternoon, everybody.

I'm Priya Sixena.

This is my first year as a trustee with the library.

Um in my day job, I work at Tacoma Housing Authority as director of strategic initiatives, and I've served as a um lecturer at University of Washington Tacoma in their certified public manager program.

Thanks so much for having us.

Good afternoon, Joel Zlostra.

I'm the newest member of the board, about four months in, so um, still learning lots.

Um great to be with you today.

I work with Frank the Pierce Schools during the day.

This is our first day of school.

Students, we welcomed 7,000 students back this morning.

And uh so if my phone starts blowing up, that's probably why.

Thanks for having us.

Can I say one more thing before you jump in?

Because I think you're gonna take the floor from me.

Or I'll pass back to you.

But um, I just want to say uh you all are such great supporters of the library.

You've been along the journey with us for lots of exciting things this year, the opening of Maine.

Like it just feels like you all are always there, even in pictures, like to Tacoma Reeds, like all the things.

So I think with this presentation today and our conversation, we wanted to like to get a little bit more into the meat of some of our business, some of the things that we don't always talk to you about.

So hoping that in addition to the joys and all the successes that you'll go along with some of the things that we kind of struggle through in our meetings, the things that we're thinking about related to the future of the library and just where we fit in in the community and how like collective we we continue to make our institutions strong.

So looking forward to the conversation.

I'll pass it back to you, Mayor.

Oh, wait, no, quick introduction and then back to you.

No, I'm I'll introduce her.

Great.

Thank you very much, Chair Coppin.

Thank you so much for your leadership.

Um, I think you've been chair now.

This is your second or third year.

It's my second your second year.

Um, and so grateful for you leading this board.

Um, and and and in that gratefulness, um, grateful for the selection that you all made um earlier.

Is it it's not been a year yet, has it?

Almost a year, wow, almost a year ago, um, in the selection of the next person I get to introduce who I have found to be an incredible leader, and we wouldn't have her if it hadn't been for the work that you all did.

And so just want to thank you for your leadership in getting that done.

Um, at this time, um, I really want to call on our new Tacoma Public Library Director.

Is this your first council meeting as a in a joint session?

Wow.

So, for some of you who have not had the opportunity to meet our new library board director or new library director.

Um, this is our first time today, really looking forward to the presentation, and so I will turn it over to a lady that I've had the opportunity um to do some very close work with last year and Tacoma Reads and just over this past year, have had an opportunity to get to know her, and I'm really grateful for her service um to the library board once an assistant director, now the director of the library board.

And that's Amita Lone.

Low Nina.

Nope.

Excuse because I got stuck on a low Nino.

I can't say say your last name.

It's okay.

It's okay.

It's Loneal.

It's like Lone.

It's so easier.

It's like L'OL.

I know.

But everyone's Lone.

Yeah, got it.

Thank you.

I should know that, Amitha.

Thank you.

I'll turn it over to you.

Wow.

Good afternoon, Mayor.

Good afternoon, Council.

I'm so thrilled to be here.

Thank you for that incredibly warm introduction.

I think I'm kind of in my feelings of just sort of all the all the kindness and love that you all just showed me.

So thank you so much.

Andrea sort of already kind of teed up our agenda a little bit.

So you may recall, we typically come in, visit you at the beginning of the year, and we try to focus on our strategic plan, some of the things that we've accomplished, and some of the things that we're looking forward to.

We're kind of in a planning place right now, and we're coming to you at a little bit later in the year.

And so as President Cobb mentioned, we really wanted to help you to understand kind of what's happening in what I see as our main lines of service and business, which is namely our collections and our facilities and how that's really impacting how we're how we're planning for the future.

I did want to start us though, before we kind of drill into sort of all the data that that's kind of in this slide, I wanted to talk a little bit about the value of public libraries.

And the thing that's kind of tricky about libraries is it can actually be really hard to measure the impact of what it is that we do.

We do a lot of things for the community.

I mean, of course, we have our buildings, we have our collections, we have programs, we have computers, all of these things, but it can be really hard to figure out how is it that we measure the actual impact that we're having on the community across all of these opportunities that we offer.

So I'm really grateful when other places actually do a study of what the impact of libraries are because typically when you study a public library somewhere, it's gonna have some meaning and impact for any public library because we all kind of do the same thing.

So this year there was sort of a groundbreaking study that came out of New York Public Library.

New York Public Library is the largest public library system in the country.

And they partnered with the University of Pennsylvania's Positive Psychology Center.

Um and they did a study in 2023.

Um it was across, so it was um after uh COVID.

Um and what they had been doing for some time is trying to understand the impact of public and cultural institutions on communities.

So they were looking at places like art museums, community centers, this kind of a thing.

And then they actually decided to do a study specifically on public libraries and trying to address what are trying to uh capture what are the positive impacts that public libraries have not just on individuals, which we're used to sort of talking about, but actually on the community kind of as a whole.

Um, so their research is I'm I'm not a psychologist, obviously, um, but their their research, from what I understand, is built across sort of those dimensions in the second block that you see there, which is positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meeting and accomplishment.

And so in this study, sort of resoundingly, the results across all three of these um sort of dimensions show that libraries provide the preconditions necessary for well-being or flourishing to occur in a community.

Um, a direct quote from the survey is these findings are a testament to public libraries' contributions to the health of their communities, and that just as plants cannot flourish without supportive environments, individuals and communities cannot flourish without the physical and social infrastructure that public libraries provide to their communities.

So I know I'm preaching to the choir, you all are very strong library users and supporters, but you know, I think that when we think about sort of the value and and the impact of libraries, I think we have to go beyond this idea that we provide things for enjoyment or even just for learning.

Like we really are part of your public health ecosystem in so many ways, and I think increasingly with the issues that we're facing locally and nationally, I want to make sure you know how to talk about our work kind of from that lens.

So that's that's my nerdy, I'll bring you a study thing.

So now let's talk about let's talk about TPL.

Um, so every year we collect a whole bunch of um kind of standard outputs that are really collected by libraries across the state and across the country, and these measures really help us to know um how it is that we're doing in Tacoma.

Um so last year, keep in mind the main library was not yet open.

Uh we also had a seven-week closure of our Fern Hill Library.

Um, but uh despite those pieces, we saw nearly half a million people of the public come through our doors.

We had 50,000 over 50,000 attendees offered more than 2800 programs.

Um, and you know, despite people always saying, like, it's 2025.

We checked out one over 1.7 million items, defying that reasoning.

I think that just because we have the internet, we don't need libraries.

And one thing that's really interesting for us, and we'll kind of get into those like checkout numbers in a bit, but um, still two-thirds of our checkouts still happen to be in physical material.

So people coming into the library, checking out a book, checking out a video game, a hotspot.

Um, and then about um a third of our um checkouts are actually through our electronic book um collection.

Um I think all of you have heard me say this at some point, and I'll just kind of continue to say this.

Libraries are the original genius bar.

You can come in and ask us anything, and we will try to answer your question in whatever way we can.

So last year, our staff answered over 63,000 questions through our desk service, through our phone, through chat, um, and through outreach.

And these can be questions ranging from uh hey, I'm looking for my next book, or you know, my kiddos really into the series.

Can you help me find something?

Um, to doing uh resource navigation, right?

I'm looking for a place where I can get a free cell phone or you know, something like this, um, to um helping being that sort of partner in in research and whatnot.

Also, we continue to be that um really strong pillar for um the city in terms of digital access.

So all of our um libraries do offer um public uh computing labs.

We offered over 58,000 sessions through just our actual computers that are available in all of the locations, and we had an additional 45,000 people use our Wi-Fi network throughout the year.

So again, sort of that that critical access to sort of our digital, um our digital services.

Um, and I will also remind you that you know we did this all while being open only 40 hours a week, um, five days a week.

So this really does reflect that with that sort of what I don't think is an adequate level of service hours for the city, we are still sort of really meeting people's needs as much as we can within the the opportunities that we have.

Um let's see.

So to talk a little bit more about our collection.

So collection is like a very library industry term.

It basically means the stuff that we make available to people to check out.

Um so here you'll see that um throughout all eight of our locations, we have just a little bit over 400,000 items available, so that 1.1 million checkout from the previous slide reflects these 400,000 items that are available through um uh through the physical buildings.

Um our digital collection, which is a little bit harder to capture, but these are our ebooks, our e-audio books, um our streaming videos and music.

We have about 48,000 of those items available across a bunch of different um platforms.

You're probably most familiar with Libby, um, but we also have two platforms, Hoopla and Canopy that offer those resources.

Um, and then we also offer a number of online resources, 85, I guess to be exact.

So that's things like being able to access newspapers.

Um, one of our strongest partnerships is with Tacoma Public Schools.

We offer our pathway program.

So every student, when they enroll in Tacoma Public Schools, automatically gets a pathway card that gives them access to a number of research databases that are available to them free through the library, can also learn a language, you can look up consumer reports.

There's a whole, there's um we have two resources that offer um live virtual help.

We have a tutoring resource at After School, you get free live tutoring help through them, and then we also have a job resource that if you're looking for coaching or feedback on like resumes or interviewing, they're sort of available there.

Um from a numbers perspective, what I would point out here is that as I said before, about a third of our checkouts overall are trending towards those electronic resources.

But you will see here that our electronic resources do not make up a third of what it is that we have to offer.

Um, and really like many libraries, this is sort of a perennial struggle is figuring out how to kind of meet the demands of um of this growing interest.

Um, like so many libraries, our um ebook resources really started to grow dramatically in the pandemic.

There was a period of time where actually that was one of the only ways people could kind of get um get resources from the library, and year over year our ebook demands is is sort of growing.

Um but one of the challenges with that is kind of the marketplace, and I think this is maybe you all know something about this, but most people really don't.

So forgive me, I'm just gonna be a real librarian for like two slides, and then I'll try to move on from it.

Okay, I'm gonna nerd out.

Okay, so you are a reader, right?

So you go to the you go to King's Books or you go to Grit City Books and you go and buy a book and you buy it for 20 dollars, right?

That's great.

So for us, when we're buying print books, the most important thing that happens when we buy that print book, we can get it a little cheaper than your average consumer, not much, but a little bit.

But we own that book, right?

So we physically own it.

We can say we can check out this book until the pages are torn out, right?

We can um uh we can keep this on our shelves until we realize that people really aren't like checking it out anymore.

All of those decisions are ours because we physically own the book.

When it comes to ebooks, we don't own that content.

Oh no.

What do I do?

Okay.

Um I touched them.

Andy was just walking around to see.

Andy, did we lose TV too?

Nope, there we go.

Okay, we're back.

All right.

Thank you.

Yeah.

I was like, I didn't bring a copy.

I was like, I don't know how I'm gonna do this.

We all have them.

So with the ebooks, um, the the most important thing to sort of understand is we don't own that content.

We license it, right?

So we don't really have that same ownership over those materials.

And so even though when you maybe go to buy an ebook or an e-audio book, you're paying something like that $20, right for that content.

For us, we're paying a much larger licensing fee.

So where you're paying $17 for that popular book, we're paying like oftentimes three or four times that amount, and the publishers are determining sort of the the limits in which we can actually find that.

So they can say you can only check this out for the next three months, and then you have to buy this license again if you want to continue making it available.

Or they can say, after 20 checkouts, you have to buy this again.

So it's really um, it's just a really radically different um industry, and most people don't know that.

And I know people when they're looking at our ebooks, they're always like, why do I have to wait in line?

Why is it like the, you know, it's not what we want, but this is sort of how the industry is sort of shifting.

And and um every every library across the country is kind of grappling with the fact that this is, I mean, people deserve to have materials in the format that makes the most sense to them.

That is our job and our purview, but we're operating in a marketplace that isn't really friendly to the budgets that we have to sort of be able to provide that.

So what I will say is that this slide specifically comes from um a piece that KUOW did back in 2023.

Um, and the examples used in this slide in the next slide specifically come from Seattle Public Library, and they were looking at a um a popular book by Britney Spears at the time, which is sort of why that example is there.

Um the next slide also sort of explains just how expensive it is to sort of meet the demands that people have for things like popular materials.

So every library makes their decisions on how they buy their physical books or their electronic books based on something called a hold ratio, right?

We never want to have a single copy of a book that has like 200 holds on it.

So typically we'll say, okay, for every 10 holds, we're gonna go ahead and acquire another copy or another license, so that there will be a wait.

We can't typically every once in a while we can figure out a way for people not to have a wait.

But typically there's gonna be a weight, but we want that to be reasonable, um, sort of for people.

So looking um at this at this book for at the end of 2023, in order for um Seattle Public Library to keep up with that demand for a physical book, they would have to spend about $2,000 to buy the copies needed to meet up with um sort of that interest.

But once you start looking at those e-materials, you're looking at another $12,000 to make the e-license available again based on the terms and conditions of the publisher, um, and then possibly up to another 22,000 for e-audiobooks, which is just such an incredibly popular format.

Like increasingly, people really don't want to lug around those, you know, like the 25 CDs or whatever, right?

And most people don't even have CD players in their car anymore.

So e-audio um really is um it's it's an interest and it and it's a demand, but um the ability for us to be able to keep up with this demand, even with it just being about a third sort of of our checkouts is is a challenge.

Um the next slide sort of talks about how the library collection budget is sort of doing, um kind of faring in in these circumstances.

So really what I wanted to share with this slide is that generally speaking, the library's collection budget um has remained um relatively flat um over the last uh two decades.

Um it looks like we've returned to that previous level of service of the 1.5 million that we're setting aside for collections, um, that does reflect um a one-time infusion of 250,000 we received a few biennium ago in order to um uh bolster our world language materials collection.

So um it's not an unfamiliar story, right?

That we have the same amount of resources and we're being asked to be creative in sort of doing um kind of more and more kind of uh kind of within them.

Um every year we've been trying to set aside about a third of this budget specifically for our e resources.

It matches sort of like that demand of checkout.

But again, the market is a little vulnerable.

So last year we ended up spending well over 40% of our budget to keep up with the marketplace for ebooks.

And we're also starting to have to kind of actually look at some of our service delivery model.

I mentioned one of our platforms is Hoopla.

It's really popular because it's one of the only ones that's on demand.

So as soon as you want an item, you can check it out.

But this year we did make the decision to reduce the number of checkouts people can have on that platform per month from 10 to 5.

We got a lot of pushback because people really do value, you know, having access to those things, but we're trying to scale what it is that we can within our means to still try to provide some access, but sort of realizing that these are some runaway costs that are that are a challenge for us to kind of keep up with.

Okay.

Just other things to just think about when it comes to sort of our collection.

And the reason why I'm spending a lot of time on this, I usually talk about everything but the books, because it's like we're more than books, but really truly, when people think of libraries, books are always going to be the first thing they think of, right?

Like they are our bread and butter service.

And so we really do want to be those good caretakers and providers of the ways that people sort of want to engage with the library.

But you know, other things that we're noting is um legacy physical media like DVDs, CD audiobooks, they're really on the decline.

Um you may notice that in like retailers like Best Buy and Target, you don't see CDs anymore.

You don't see DVDs anymore.

And sometimes this can create a tension with the public because I think in some ways they want us to be like that last format archive of being like, oh, if I can't get it at Target, like I can get it at the library, but we aren't an archive or a public library, right?

And just like any place else, we have finite physical access, we have finite financial resources, and our responsibility in being good taxpayer you know, stewards is making sure that we're investing in things that our community really wants and not what they feel makes them sort of like feel good.

So this year, for example, we did let go of our music CD collection because we noticed that we had a very small handful of users of that collection.

It took up a lot of footprint, and we also knew that there were other things that people wanted.

And so what we're trying to do is reallocate those resources to the things that people are asking for, whether they be video games, um, our Wi-Fi hotspots, which there's never one checked in.

We always have a wait list on that, um, things like Chromebooks.

The other thing that we're paying attention to when it comes to our physical collections, and this kind of helps segue to thinking about our facilities a little bit, is that you know, our libraries were mostly designs in the 80s, and at that time, you know, the library was it was just about the books, right?

And like really over the last many decades, we've become that community hub, we've become sort of that third space, but right now our books kind of get in the way of us being able to be the kind of civic and community space that people are looking for kind of in the community.

So figuring out how to manage that footprint of our physical collections while also being a place that people can spend the day with us, being that place that people can learn with us is kind of an ongoing, ongoing question for us as we plan for the future.

Um these are our facilities.

You all well know that we have eight um locations uh across the city.

All eight of those locations were built over the span of the 1900s, um, with the main library being the first library in Tacoma.

Um, and what you'll notice is is um two things.

One is that on average, outside, if you take Maine out, which is like a behemoth, um, our facilities are on average about uh less than 10,000 square feet that we offer sort of to the public.

So they're relatively small footprints across the city.

Um and you'll also notice that almost all of them were not have not been touched since the last bond measure of the 80s.

So across all eight of our locations, we have everything ranging from carpet tiles to air handlers that have not been replaced since that last bond measure.

So we're getting up on sort of about 40 years of time that has passed before uh this infrastructure has aged.

So many of you know that in 2024 the library participated in the facilities advisory committee, where a number of folks looked at a bunch of physical buildings across the city's portfolio for library, fire, police, um public works, um, etc.

But um despite um being a part of that process, we really did want to do our own facilities condition assessment because one thing that is a little bit different about us is that we see five almost 500,000 public visitors in our buildings.

It makes us a little bit more unique, I think, compared to those other to those other locations, and we really do need to have a master facilities plan in order to make sure that we can maintain the facilities that we have and continue providing the access that people sort of clearly want.

It's probably no surprise, you know, that what they came across was a ton of aging infrastructure, a lot of stuff that is nearing its end of life.

What they did is they looked at all eight locations.

They evaluated for vertical transportation, electrical plumbing, fire safety, the building envelope, mechanical issues, HVAC issues, and general site improvements.

And for each of our locations, they were given a rating based on those measures to determine whether they were in good, fair, poor, or critical condition.

And so this slide sort of shows where we are.

So keep in mind well, in some ways, so only three of the eight are in poor-to-critical condition.

So in some ways, like maybe the hope hopefulness here is that we've been doing a good job with what we have, you know.

So like that's great, right?

Like we are trying to take care of things to the best of our ability within our means, right?

That is what we are absolutely here to do.

But we do have three of our our buildings that are very much in critical to poor condition.

And again, this is not nice to have.

This is our fire panels need to be reevaluated.

This is um uh electrical panels that need to be replaced.

We have um at Mate and Kobatic, our HVAC units are past their end of life kind of a thing.

We have air handlers that, if not already, are past their end of life are coming up on that in the next year or two.

We have water heaters across all of the locations that need to be replaced.

I mean, this is sort of critical infrastructure to sort of keep people safe, right?

Um, when they when they come into our building, both the public kind of and and our staff.

Um so when McKinstree put together this study, uh, these this was done in 2024, these numbers do not have not been changed since then, so they don't reflect, they don't capture inflation, um, they don't capture any of the sort of changing market conditions, but we are very much looking at at least 10 million dollars in essential repairs across all of our locations over the next five to ten years that we need to be um we need to be planning for so we don't have um so that we don't have failures.

Um so it's a bit it's a bit urgent in that regard.

Uh let's see.

This is an example of some of the things that you'll see kind of in our branches.

So on the left there, that's the Mate Library in the McKinley neighborhood.

We have some substantial brickwork damage that may be a revealing of more foundational issues that we need to address.

On the far right is also the Mate Library, that's a small bullet that went through our window.

Um, so we um have a substantive repair there that we haven't been able to fix.

Um, several of our locations have roof leaks on a regular basis.

We have one at the main library right now.

We have a night a handler from 1988 that's leaking into one of our staff offices.

It's actually a lot worse when they leak onto our collection because that creates sort of other issues across all eight locations.

Um, our windows and our doors are desperately sort of outdated and actually starting to create some pretty unsafe conditions for the people who are coming into our buildings.

And then, of course, we have things like the damaged sign that you see there from the Fern Hill Library, and that sort of contributes to sort of another tricky bit for us.

I'm sure you're all familiar with like the broken window theory, which is like when you walk into some place and you see that it hasn't been taken care of, you're not gonna be inclined to take care of it or you know, sort of act in the way that um that is appropriate, sort of for that space.

And so, again, doing the best we can within within the means that we have, but we really have some substantive facilities issues that we're urgently gonna need to start addressing over the next over the next few years.

Um the other thing that we did when we did this facilities study is we actually included in it a level of service study.

So this was looking sort of even beyond sort of the you know the essential sort of physical needs of um sort of our buildings, but really trying to figure out as Tacoma grows, you know, every neighborhood is gonna grow a lot over the next 10 to 15 years.

Um, what is it that people are going to sort of need from their libraries from a level of service standpoint to be able to kind of meet those interests and demands.

So SHKS architects looked at uh the dimensions that you see on this slide.

So they looked at location, how is the floor layout planned, how are we doing in terms of accessibility technology, how is a visitor experience and safety, and they looked at national benchmarks, standards, and guidelines so that we can start planning for the level of service that people are really gonna need in order to for the libraries to kind of meet to meet where they are.

Um, and with that, they this is actually the study is very long, but I can send it to you if you really want to kind of nerd into it.

But I would say that I guess the um the key takeaways that um I thought were really interesting is outside of the main library, um, none of our libraries are sized to meet the demands that they need.

So they said what we and I will say this too, we had them scope just for the eight physical locations.

So this doesn't really kind of even address the gap in services that we have in some neighborhoods like the Hilltop and the East Side, but just across our existing portfolio of the eight locations, we really do need closer to about 177,000 square feet for the public to access, and right now we're offering about 115,000, which is about 65% of what a city our size kind of needs to have adequate library services for their community.

Um so generally speaking, we're kind of too small for all of the ways that people are using us or would use us kind of as we continue to grow.

Um we do have while we do um adhere to ADA standards and all that, we have a lot of accessibility needs, and we are not well positioned to provide universal access.

We have clearance issues, and we're not really well positioned to meet the needs of those who have hearing who are hearing or visually impaired.

Um, the other thing is is with being mostly built or last touched in the 80s is that our buildings lack climate resilience, right?

And as we all know, libraries are an important hub for community climate resilience, and many cities that we've seen disasters in, libraries should be the place that you can kind of direct people to in a disaster.

But our buildings have not been looked at recently enough for us to serve that, and they're not also most of our buildings were built before current seismic standards, um, also creating a significant level of risk should there be kind of a disaster here.

Um the other thing that this kind of let us know, and this is actually was inspired a little bit by the previous study sessions I've been a part of here when I was the deputy.

But I know that you know, whenever we survey the public, and I think whenever you all talk to your constituents, we know the public is asking for more hours, you know, like that's a pretty a pretty consistent demand, and we've we've heard that, but we haven't really been had the data to figure out well, what does that mean and what should that level of service really look like in a city, um, sort of like Tacoma, and now we actually, based on sort of what we know about how the libraries are used today, and based on what the projected growth patterns are in each of our neighborhoods through 2040, we now at least have a little bit of a better roadmap of where it is that we would want to start prioritizing potentially six-day a week service, seven-day-a-week service, and roughly how many additional staff that we would need to kind of get there.

I know that that's a question actually council member Heinz has asked me a few times, so that was in my mind when we were doing the study, really making sure that we start to have that data to kind of drive towards the level of service that we know that the city would like.

So, um, and this just didn't fit really clean, all the locations didn't fit cleanly on one slide, so that's why they're here across two.

Um shifting gears again, um, just thinking about planning for the future.

I think all of you know that we are in sort of a strategic planning refresh year.

So we last launched our plan in 2020.

Um, all of you, I think participated in that initial uh launch many years ago, and right now we're looking to update our community and operational goals for the next five years.

I'm I'm proud to say that the goals that we had identified in 2020, we have either launched or completed about 75% of the goals that we set out to do, which I think is remarkable considering there was a pandemic and a lot of things that we had to pivot around sort of these last few years.

But right now we're just sort of in a big data gathering place.

So we just closed our community survey, we got about 2,000 responses to that.

I'm doing interviews with about 25 different stakeholders across the city over this month and next month to hear from our partners and people even we don't partner with, like what are the most urgent things you're thinking about right now to figure out what are the places that the like what gaps can the library step into sort of in meaningful ways.

Uh we also did this really cute thing called book buddy ballots, so like the you know, the blobs, we call them the book buddies, and so we have these like voting stations in the library, so kids and teens and everyone could really sort of tell us like what is it that they're thinking about.

We got 15,000 um ballots like sort of submitted through that over the summer, which I think is really cool.

Um, and I'll hopefully be back sometime in the first part of next year to share with you what those kind of new goals are and our action plan for for kind of meeting um for meeting those needs.

Um, and then the last thing I just wanted to give you an update on because I knew you would ask about it, is just our foundation.

So just want to say I'm really really proud um of our foundation.

As you know, this kind of our foundation went dormant um for some time and it just kind of came back online um in 2021, but they are um really continuing to grow in their promise and the possibility of being the philanthropic partner that we need to meet some of the demands that um we uh and challenges that I kind of shared in this.

So right now um we have a really small but mighty all volunteer um board um that's that's working really hard to figure out how to how to build capacity.

Um this year has been a really um exciting year for them.

They held their first two in-person uh fundraising events, including an event um to launch the reopening of the main library.

They did a pickleball tournament called Literacy is a big deal, um, and then they continue to host um our awesome merchandise shop.

Um, we're gonna be dropping some new merch in uh the next month or two, so keep your eye out sort of for that.

But you know, we are as we are knowing that um resourcing the libraries is a it's a complex question, um, right?

But I think I want you all to know that we are working really hard to think about how it is that we can think about um sort of resourcing the library into the future to meet um sort of our needs.

And with that, I get to stop talking and hopefully turn it over to President Cobb to facilitate this next part of the discussion.

I don't know.

Thank you.

I don't I I think we would just love to hear any reactions and questions that you have.

I think we said a couple of questions ahead of time.

We did not know.

That's okay.

That's okay.

I'm sure you have questions.

Yeah, I'll say why don't we start with general questions about the presentation, and then we can come back to the questions that you have.

Okay, great.

I'm saying that and thinking about it all at the same time.

Yes, do we have any questions?

We'll start, Deputy Mayor Daniels.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for the presentation and um kind of giving us background on all the changes and things that are happening in modern uh library world.

Um question I had was that in the transition to um needing to license materials.

How does that subscription work?

Is it and have there been interruptions in the industry?

Like, so we're paying right, it sounds like we're paying right now for an individual um person to license every single time.

And I'm curious if there is like a subscription base where we get unlimited.

Okay, no, obviously that doesn't exist.

I would be dreaming.

We would have it.

Okay.

Um and then I guess the the question with that is are we having to um stock up on certain things, or do we pay as people order a certain thing?

So, like we don't have to like go and decide what people are getting and then like get a certain number of that, do we?

So, yeah, so let me see.

Um, let me see if I can explain this well.

Every publisher kind of has different rules for how they they license the materials, and I would say that this complexity of how they're licensing materials, it's changed over the years.

Like, I I actually remember being like a frontline librarian in Illinois and Harper Collins dropped the news that they were gonna, and they they um the Hunger Games was massive at the time, and they dropped the news that they were gonna start this model of after every 20 checkouts, you're gonna have to buy the license again to be able to offer um the material.

Yes, uh-huh.

And so those those terms have changed, and every publisher kind of has um different terms.

Um, we also work through what are essentially kind of brokers, you know, sort of sometimes to get sort of those licenses.

Um, every once in a while, we will make the decision to, for example, for Tacoma Reads, we want to make sure that those titles are available.

So we'll enter into a subscription model that allows that title to be available continuously, but we will pay for every, you know, sort of like download of that title, you know, kind of a thing.

So there's different arrangements depending on the publisher and the broker that we're working with and and whatnot.

So yeah, so it's it's a really massively complex market, and every every library system in the country is dealing with this.

You're actually starting to see some states try to take up legislation to try to put some amount of guardrails or regulations around what it is that they can do for public libraries that are you know defended, you know, depending on these public resources to make this available.

So it's it's tricky bits, I guess.

Um is that I feel like there was another part of your question, and I forgot it.

No, I think you got to.

I really was just trying to figure out if we had to like go pre-anticipate and purchase things and maybe have to get too much or too little or not have to not too much or too little, but like it sounds like it's a little bit in between, but like just the undertaking of purchasing is a or procurement is a whole thing, it sounds like it is complicated.

I see that industry being disrupted very soon because of the city.

Especially with AI, right?

I mean, like we don't even know exactly how it's gonna be disruptive.

I mean, there's yeah, it's it's already getting kind of complicated.

But I will say, in terms of purchasing, you know, we have a collection development policy, and that guides, you know, sort of like our decision making and how it is that we are.

So, for example, like I think like sometime in the last year, Prince Harry had a book that came out that everybody wanted, right?

So we know that, so we're gonna do our due diligence to make sure that we buy the copies that are gonna sort of like meet um kind of like the demands that are that are out there.

So we're using that as our guide to make sure, but we also have to do it within the resourcing um that that we have, you know.

Um to have equitable access to Prince Harry's.

We do, you take it for that work.

Absolutely, yeah.

That's all my questions, thank you.

Um, Council Member Scott.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you all for being here.

I always love updates from the library.

Um I have a couple questions that I think were answered in the slides, but I just want to make sure that I understand.

Uh so on the facilities condition assessment, it still puts the main library at fair, which was in 2024.

Would that be changed with the update, or is that still based on other things that weren't necessarily touched?

We have other things.

I mean, like I said, we have two air handlers from 1988 on our roof, and one of them is leaking into my colleague's office.

So we have we still that's a massive, massive building, and it's complicated with the Carnegie being married to the the newer structure.

It just um it's a beast.

I just wanted to make sure I figured that that if that wasn't the case, she would have pointed it out.

But I wanted to make sure it was was on the record so that you know if when you walk into the new library, you guys do a very good job of making it all look very great, but um, we don't I don't want people to confuse that with the fact that there's still lots of me.

Uh and then the other thing that I had a question on was on the service study.

Um, and so in the physical collections part, um, there's a thing that's like uh where are we at?

It says that there's existing like 19,000 plus uh and the recommended is 16,000.

Is that based on the current space available, or is that just based on like standard it's based on like really what you um what you want is about like there's a certain percentage of your public square footage that you want dedicated to collection, and so basically what that's telling us is with the square footage that we have, we're allocating far too much of it to collection based on all of the other ways in which people kind of want to be in the library.

I think it also indicates that I think we do our our shelving is very outdated, it's not friendly, it goes to the ceiling, it inhibits sight lines, and I think in some ways we could probably stand to reduce our collection footprint a little bit in our our buildings in order to make room for all of the services that people want.

And then uh lastly, what happens like so like when you got rid of the CDs and things like that when you are done with something, obviously, if the pages and stuff are falling out, there's you know, recycle and things like that.

But like with CDs, did you like you know, is there a thrift store that wants them?

Is there some art school that's like I want to make something with these pretty shiny things, or like what do you do with all that?

We try to be creative.

So um for general items that we're we're weeding.

If we can put them into our book sale, we do that because all the proceeds from the book sales support our summer programs, so that's always the first.

Um, we do have a contract with a vendor who will take the items that kind of can't be put into the book sale or are no longer like kind of workable.

Um, with the CDs that did pose an interesting collection.

We put some of our collection into the book sale because we did know that those folks who were really attached to CDs that they could have a chance to grab them.

And then I think we worked with partners like the remakery and others who might have like creative reuse for um for the CDs to get them uh in a good place.

Well, I think those were all my questions.

I just again want to say thank you guys.

I really love what libraries can and do for our communities.

So I just really appreciate that you guys spend your time doing it.

Councilmember Rumba.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you so much, Amitha and everyone who's here today, really appreciate.

I've had such great conversations with you.

Um, and I just want you to know you're missing out because Gen Z is really into the 90s, and now they're not gonna be able to go to the library to get a CD.

So you know, they're dying to like have that experience that I had where you had the five CD player that would like move all the music through.

Yeah, I didn't know.

So well, I was gonna say there's this really great article that just came out in the San Francisco Chronicle about the San Francisco public library that says that Gen Z is not going to bars, they are going to libraries, and they actually have this data of like how young people are kind of moving differently.

Um I just found that fascinating, but I just I wanted to go to your survey because you know I'm really you know how I am.

So I want to actually first say that I appreciate what you chose to bring here today because it's really different than what we talked about before.

So this is really great, and I all of this information is just really interesting.

It made me think about like based on what deputy mayor was asking about the e like the e digital con you know content.

Um is there any opportunity to maybe work with all the other libraries to like create something that's a subscription thing that it's all together?

Like, so you just got involved with like Seattle and Tacoma and you know King County and Pierce County.

Nationally, there's been some work to sort of do this.

So, of course, um most people know the American Library Association, it's our largest association.

They've had um ebook uh uh content groups working on this across industries, right?

Because it isn't even just public libraries, academic libraries are impacted by the school library.

I mean, right?

Like this is not just an us kind of problem right now.

Um so they have um advocacy experts working on this.

There's also um other groups like OCLC that have really tried to figure out can we develop our own platform that would be sort of more reasonable to us, but we still have to, there's five main publishing houses, right?

That kind of put out the majority of books that people want, and it would require them to sort of want to play sort of in that market because if we just stood up um our own ebook platform, say with a bunch of indie publishers, which would be awesome, it's still not gonna be able to satisfy the demand for Prince Harry or Brittany Spears or you know, whatever it is that I'm my daughter owns that book.

Okay, okay.

So um one other question before I ask about your survey, and I forget.

Oh, um, when you say that it's a third or you spent 40% of your um of the library collection budget, what is that come to in numbers?

I don't want to publicly math like this, but um at one point, so if you look at that like one point uh two five um million, it's the the 40% of that.

All right, thank you so much for explaining that.

So when we when we talk about our investment in collections overall, like um, like we actually publish this like pie chart in our um annual report every year, and it says 20% of our budget is spent on collections, but that does take into account our collections department because you can't just have these things appear and be made available.

So, really um half of that is staff, and then the other half of that really does go towards um the actual materials that are made available to people.

Very cool.

Okay, thank you.

Um so on your survey, what kind of data were you collecting um that would be helpful for fundraising?

Well, the survey isn't for fundraising, the survey is for us to really think about kind of like the the future kind of of library services.

Um what we did is we adapted the survey that we did actually back in 2020.

We kind of shortened it to make it easy because we know folks are kind of over surveyed.

But I think for us, what we're trying to get at is what are the most important um services that people are looking for?

Is it the books?

Is it the ebooks?

Is it the facilities?

Is it the programs?

Is it um things for young people to do?

You know, so I think what we're really trying to figure out, particularly in this post-COVID moment, is what is it that people really need from their library, or what do they value the most about our library and how can we best position ourselves to prioritize that over the years?

That's kind of more the angle that that we took with it rather than thinking about it from like a fine.

I was just wondering if like because we had talked about fundraising and some of the people who want to give you money want to know who's using the library, right?

Like they want to know how many students from the Tacoma Public Schools are using, and I just um thought maybe the strategic plan would be an opportunity to to maybe glean some of that information.

Is there an um is there another way that you might have that you're thinking about collecting data on who uses the library?

Yeah, yeah.

I um I don't have an answer for that off the top of my head, but I do think that as we're thinking about how it is that we diversify our fundraising sources, I do know that we have to figure out how we can better tell that story of um who it is that that whose needs we're meeting.

So it's definitely top of mind as we go into this next kind of planning cycle with the strategic plan is what are those KPIs and how can we best capture those outputs and those outcomes.

So right, um, because this is all really great, and then I know like that the main library has lots of kids coming after school, and when we think about who needs um longer hours, I think like the main library needs longer hours, so parents can like drop their kid off, maybe if they're you know, they have something and they can't get them to school, you're like some kind of thing for chat, like as a place for them to be safe when um school's not in session.

Um so I just I just really appreciate what this means and what this resource means, and I think it's even more important as we start to see budget cuts that we think about how the library fills so many of those gaps for our community, and um, so that's sort of what I was thinking about.

So I'm just all I'm thinking about is like how can we help get the library more money?

So and I've had lots of people um approach me about like what is it look like?

And I've talked to other foundations and they want to help, they just need to know how to help.

Maybe just as a follow-up to that question, can you say a bit about the nature of collecting data about users in libraries?

I'm just thinking about the privacy elements and how we like might find the balance between telling the story of users, but then also protecting the privacy of what people are checking out and who's coming in that the nature of that.

For sure.

I feel like we're the last institution that really cares about user privacy, you know.

Like we live in this world where you kind of have to give up a lot of your data, but that's uh that's been a core value for libraries for um really time, but I think particularly we saw a resurgence of that at the beginning of 2000, 2001, um, where libraries really leaned in on this idea of like it is not our place to um share our our patrons information, and so sometimes that value and that commitment to protecting patron patron privacy does impede our ability, I think, to sometimes capture the kind of things that that tell um tell a better story.

I'm not sure if I said that as well as you wanted me to.

Would you add to that?

No, I think you did, but it just just I think it like there is a uh probably for the purpose of fundraising some balance to strike between being able to capture like who are the users and by location, so that's compelling, yeah, but then not give it away, like I know that you don't have to have a library card to come to the library.

It's like if you want to check something out, you have to have a library card, but you don't need to have a library card to go hang out at the library.

So that's really cool.

I think what I'm thinking is is there something available where you can press a button that says, I'm a TPS student.

I am a Tacoma Public School student if they want to.

You know, you're gonna get some people just touch it no matter what, but maybe it'll give you some kind of data so that we could get funding from organizations that support our Tacoma public schools.

I also think we could do a better job of just getting like census data.

Like, I think sometimes we get so caught up in the like we have to count every book that's been checked out, and I think like to what you're speaking of, like I think we can do a better job of like throughout the year, just sort of taking a census, like in the spring and being like, who's here, you know, with the library and what are they doing, right?

And like we can, I think, and that I think can help us extrapolate what it is that um how it is that we can actually observe people engaging with the library and what it is they seem to be coming in for.

So I hear you on the thank you.

I appreciate it.

Okay, uh Councilmember Bush now.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Um, and thank you so much for the presentation and everybody being here.

Um love all the questions, love the libraries and all you guys have been doing.

Um, one of the questions I had, and this might not actually be a question that you can answer.

Um, when we were talking about some of the capital needs, um, you had mentioned like you know, we utilize our libraries as like kind of climate resiliency locations, warming centers, cooling centers kind of situation.

Um, has there been any opportunities for us to find funding support through like the climate commitment act or anything like that to help with those capital facility needs?

I don't know if if we can or not, and so I don't know if we totally can.

Yeah, so if if that's the case, and like okay, what can we do as a what how how can you just let utilize that as a strategy to help meet some of those funding need uh capital needs, and especially when it comes to climate resiliency and things of that nature?

I'm not aware that we have done that, but I can maybe follow up with you to get some more information to see if what we can leverage.

I do know that we lean very heavily on actually our city partners who are really generous, um particularly neighborhood and community services.

They make sure that um throughout the summer we have uh water that we can distribute um to residents throughout the year.

They also help us in the winter.

You may or may not know we offer uh warming stations, so like we um when it gets really cold outside, we have tea, um uh snacks and things to give people just to make sure that we're um helping folks through all the the difficult weather, but it's really mostly been leaning on our other city friends, but maybe there's more opportunities there.

So I think I'll love to get back to the city.

I think that's certainly worth exploring and then where we might be able to partner and help with meeting some of those needs.

Um that's I I hear you loud and clear on the the facility needs, and you know, that's um you know, and then the challenges with the collection is very I'm hoping the the associations and all the organizations are able to come together and help address that uh as a team.

I think it working together on that issue is gonna be really important.

Right.

Thank you, Debbie Mayor.

Thank you, everybody.

You got it.

Um Councilmember Bush now uh just brought up a question for me, and then um one from Council Member Rumba brought up one.

Two things I'm thinking about.

Um, one is an actual question.

Do we do we who's responsible for doing the fundraising in terms of like doing the grant writing?

Is that uh is that the library or is that the foundation, or do you share in that responsibility?

And then maybe just explain, help help me understand kind of those how that breaks down.

For sure.

So keep in mind our foundation is nascent.

They came back online in 2021.

They have no staff.

Um so uh it's happened where there have been times where the library has sought out um grant funding.

Like one of our most notable grants was through the Institute for Museum and Library Services that launched our community archives that was written by our manager of the Northwestern that secured a 250,000 dollar grant for that.

Um when we were reopening um the main library, um the foundation um sought out um funds from local foundations and did those that the those grant writing opportunities to get things like the furnishings in our um in our children.

I'm looking at you because you were on the foundation when they were doing this.

Um but they they were the ones who wrote um sort of those um those grant applications and reports to get that funding.

So far it's been sort of a shared responsibility, but I think because the foundation doesn't have staff, we've been sort of better positioned as the library to write the grants that then come to us as the library, not necessarily come to the foundation.

Does that answer your question?

Yep, it does.

It absolutely does.

Um I was curious about um opportunities for partnership with uh private.

I I feel like I brought this up a few times, but I just was thinking about our ebooks and all of those things and opportunities for sponsorship, as I've seen other I don't know what other libraries are doing across the country, but I've seen um like when you go access free Wi-Fi, it's typically sponsored by a some private entity or whatever.

Um, and then that's just the cost of having free Wi-Fi is that you get to see Comcast or whatever, whoever it is, right?

Um providing that service, and I'm curious about um bigger conversations about that, but I know that that's probably for later, and I don't know if the the interrupt or the widget is there for that yet.

For sure.

And we don't have a grant writer at DPL, right?

So typically when we've gone out to secure some of these funds, it's been whoever the subject matter expert is on that, right?

So our Northwestern manager secured these funds for like archival purposes, right?

It's been pro programmatic folks who sought out like smaller funds to serve the, but we don't have that dedicated development person currently.

I see.

Okay.

And then the last question I had was on the facilities conditions.

Um the tenure capital needs.

Is this to get each um condition to the next step, or is it to get each condition to good?

So if it's in critical, the 628,000 gets critical to good or critical to poor or it's to get um the infrastructure that is um aging, or in fact fully outright dated.

Like it's it's to get like those electrical panels and the you know what I mean?

Like, so as far as like a comprehensive, does it get you to the next step?

I'm not sure, but it does address sort of the major systems.

The major systems that need to be repaired.

So probably the criticals will go to fair then.

Maybe, yeah.

I don't know how I'm not I'm not that technical expert on that FCI rating.

I'm not sure if it'll change that, but I know that that's what's needed to address outdated infrastructure.

I guess what I was really asking with that was is this the this if we add all these numbers together, does this get us like a state of the art?

Okay, no.

We're just getting to where we yeah, this isn't getting us new carpet, you know, necessarily new carpet, it's not getting us comfy chairs, it's getting us um an air handler that won't leak on our collection.

Got it, um, kind of a thing.

It's getting us um windows that don't have um things growing in them.

Got it.

Um that's yep, I just wanted to manage our expectations of these okay, perfect.

Um council member Heinz.

Uh thank you.

I was a little slow on my uh on my button here, uh so thank you for the presentation.

This is great.

I always love to see the library board here.

Um I think many of you know I started on the library board before I got here, so lots of stuff that I I really appreciate.

I thought you're good reminder about the cost of books, the school book versus digital book.

Do we still have like the overdrive system and then the well no it's not overdrive anymore, was it Libby?

Overdrive is Libby, they're one in the same, yeah.

Is it hoopla?

Do we still have hoopla?

And the differences between those were hooplaws on demand, so you pay per charge versus overdrive or Libby where we buy the actual physical product and we do it.

License the license product, yeah.

Um do we see any benefit to have we see the benefit of having both of those?

I think that was one of the questions that we had, which is you know, the benefit of a hooplaw system where you're just you're paying per download allows you to kind of it could if one really popular title gets on there, it could overwhelm you, but also it helps manage some of these long-term licensing costs.

Uh, do we still see so we have need to have both of them to kind of manage what we're looking at?

Yeah, because they offer different things, I guess.

So for example, um, like Overdrive doesn't offer any streaming services for video or music or anything like that, right?

So there are content differences and then uh or format differences, I would say, and then there's also content differences.

Like just because something is available as an ebook doesn't mean that we get to buy it in the product that we want it to.

So we know, for example, a lot of like graphic novels and comic books that are really popular are actually more readily available in something like Hoopla than they are through something like Overdrive.

So yeah, just because it exists digitally doesn't mean we can buy it through our preferred vendor or preferred um platform, if that makes any sense.

That's good to know.

I think one of the concerns of when I was on the board was talking about the now.

I'm getting very weedy for those people who don't care about libraries, but the hoop law system where you can just download, it's always available.

That those costs kind of could explode on you because of one, a couple popular types could eat up a lot of costs, and you'd be there's no the very limited cost control we have on that end.

But we're finding that they're rough they that they when we look at hoop law versus overdrive, roughly the same cost between the two, or we see one being a lot more expensive than the other.

We're using them in different ways, but that is one of the platforms that we just sort of scaled back um how much people can access it.

So for hoopla, we used to offer 10 checkouts per month, and now we're offering sort of those five checkouts.

So we're not off we're not paying, like overall, we most of our e-resources go into overdrive, which um provides Libby.

Um, but we do still find that there's a need for the content that's offered in hoopla that we can't offer through Overdrive.

Does that make sense?

I yeah, I know it does.

I think one other technical digital question, right?

So I can go, I get a free library card for Pierce County library, and I use that when I can't find a book on overdrive in the city or in Sitacoma, I can go over there and they have sometimes have them.

So are they but we have reciprocal agreements with other people outside of the city.

So that's also a cost we incur through those reciprocal agreements.

Is that just how it works?

Like they just we assume they're just shared.

I mean, to be honest, I think that Tacoma users really benefit from the fact that they get to access e-resources from Pierce County, and I don't think it's the other way around because truly they have much larger catalogs and resources for these things.

So I think that I think part of our numbers that most libraries are actually at a place where their e-content checkout matches their physical checkout.

It is unusual for a city of our size to not kind of be there.

I think there's I have curiosities around that, but I do think one of them is actually because our our collection is not as robust based on the resources that we have.

I know I use a lot of Pierce County um digital checkouts.

Um I won't make any commentary about what's available there versus what's available.

It's coming.

There's there's definitely something that's which uh I appreciate about our selection in many ways.

Um I think one of the questions I had, and I keep thinking about um do we have any age kind of breakdown on who uses digital books versus physical copy books?

Do we have any understanding of that?

That's a great question.

I think the best thing, the best way that we can get at that is probably through like what um like we track checkout based on like is it a youth material, is an adult material, adult a team material, so less so on the user end, but I think it can tell us like the the age range of the material.

Do we track pathway students separately from just normal to be able to do that?

Maybe that would be a way to look at it.

We do track, and they they're much heavier e-users and they are physical users for sure.

I mean, I would hate to like lean into the stereotype that older folks are gonna be using the physical copies and younger people are gonna be using digital copies, but maybe that is true, and I think that does also point out to a longer term conversation about not only costs associated with the library but the physical construction of the library.

I have a weird dystopia vision that it's gonna be nothing but screens on playing TikToks in libraries here in 20 or 30 years, but you know, hopefully that's not what we're looking at.

Um but I think that's just another thing I'm thinking about as we think about creating spaces for the 21st century library and what it looks like, especially if our younger people are expecting more of an interactive experience versus just kind of a stayed, you know, books on racks.

We've seen a lot of success at Maine with spaces like the makerspace and the team space that actually have no collection in them, right?

Like they really are meant to hang out, um, mess around, geek out, right?

The Himago collect you know, connected learning model.

Like that is really what people want when we make the space available in that way.

You know, I give I get you know two or three emails about people there's no more books in the library anymore, but I get way more uh tell them we have too many.

Yeah, I I thought I'll have to I'm gonna clip send this presentation to them.

But I will say, like my kids ask all the time to go to the main library now, which is really exciting, right?

Because of all the cool things that are down there, and they're 12 and 8, so you know, very excited to have the library users.

Um my last question is around facilities, which I really appreciate the level of service study.

Um, is the assumption?

So there's two questions I have here.

Uh one, when we look at the recommendation recommended amount of square footage, it's the square footage per branch.

But I this if we were to follow this, it would be that would meet the needs of the city, irrespective if we added another branch.

It would meet the needs of those neighborhoods to serve who's coming into them.

So it didn't really, we didn't ask them to contemplate how that level of service study looks in terms of um imagining like, for example, restored services to the Helltop and the East Side.

So those gaps would still exist, I think, in serving those communities, even if we increase the that physical infrastructure.

I mean, one way is we need to add 62,000 square feet to the current footprint.

The other one is like we could add, you know, four, 15,000 square feet.

I mean, yeah.

Let's not dream tubing here, but we could add four fifteen thousand square foot facilities, get the same one.

I think my last question would be um uh we actually have two.

Sorry, I'm with the library trustee boardwalker.

Uh is there been conversation about centralized like book facility?

So one of the things I'm noticing with libraries is you know that I the book doesn't have to be available to branch, I walk into, but we have a great system of redistributing them.

So is there a way to like have a centralized facility where books can sit and then they just ship in and out?

Is that something libraries are doing?

I don't think that would be the most efficient way um to do it.

I mean, I think I think we do do a great job of making sure that um all materials can travel um to sort of the location that they belong in.

I do think we can look at having you know, looking at discrete like floating collection, so um making sure that maybe when you return a book somewhere, maybe it stays there instead of floating back to its sort of home collection, but that would again take a look at both workflow capacity to deliver materials and also making sure that we have enough space to to kind of manage a different system, but not necessarily putting it in like a closed deck um kind of in that way and just sending it out.

I don't think that would be the efficiency.

The book would be touched too many times, I think in that kind of a model.

But there are other things I think we can look at.

I just was is you know, as we think about reimagining the spaces where there doesn't, you know, each library branch doesn't need the exact same number of physical copies of the same book, right?

So if I walk into Swayze and it's not there, it can come from somewhere.

Correct.

Right.

So that's a way to lower the amount of books and of the physical space.

But I think you all do a wonderful job of distributing right now, just a question I had.

I think my only last comment, not question was just thinking about co-location services as we start thinking about moving forward, right?

Like one of the challenges we have is we have outdated buildings that are gonna require millions and millions of dollars of you know investment to get them up to where our community expects them to be.

So a question I've been thinking more and more about, and I know you have too is co-location of services.

Like, is there a way we could partner with a brand new building and be there versus being the owner and physical builder and maintainer of that said building?

Yeah, I think co-located if we get to if we get an opportunity to build new facilities.

I absolutely think that that would be the way, and I know that we have um we've learned a lot through our partnership with the fire department around like kind of what it is that we would want to look at in terms of sharing facilities.

But I know that in talking with our partners at parks or even like THA, you know, I think that if there were opportunities in the future, we would love to um take a hold of them.

But it will take a resource investment of being able to have the materials, the staff, um, and all of the things that would come along with um having another outlet, even if it's um a smaller outlet kind of a thing, it would still take some um some amount of ongoing operational resource to kind of get there.

I I was well trained by your predecessor and the one before that that it's you know not just opening the building, there's people working inside of it that make it go.

And so I I think that is a broader conversation that I'm excited to have.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Damn Mayor.

You got it.

What a wonderful pair of fire station in the library.

Now thinking about that.

Maybe it could be like a new grocery store kind of combo.

Um, thank you so much for the presentation today.

I think this has been super enlightening, and I think um we have many opportunities, and um we've got a ways to go, but we are also doing really well for our community.

So again, thank you for the work and for all my colleagues' wonderful comments and questions.

Um so for that, um, that will conclude the TPL uh board portion of this.

So thank you so much for coming.

I think they had some questions for.

Oh, do you have questions for us?

So as long as it's not money.

Just kidding.

Bring them on.

I might just I might have one questionslash comment.

Yeah.

And then I, as president, you always get to talk, so I don't want to like not let someone else on the board ask a question too.

But the one, like, just for uh it's great how you all react to this presentation because I think going into it, it's like we know that there's not an abundance of resources throughout the city, and like there are tough decisions that we all have to make about budget.

So we didn't want to come into this presentation sharing this kind of information with you all and have you all receive it as we think we're more important than anybody other institution in the city, because absolutely we don't.

We know that we're in this with all of you.

So I think though, as more time goes on, just the where this conversation was ending about um the current buildings versus new, as more time keeps passing, there's more and more deferred maintenance, more and more of those ratings become critical or poor.

And so right now we have lots of new data around levels of service, the comprehensive facilities assessment.

We're going to get all this feedback from the surveys about users' priorities for the library, what kinds of services we offer.

And we're not having really to grapple with the question yet around closing any facilities because they've gotten so poor, but 10 more years goes, and who knows.

So I think all this to say, as the all this data comes in, and we're working through our strategic plan, and you all are doing the 2030 plan vision too.

I think one of the things that would be great to stay in conversation about is like what are examples of other presentations like this, or what are the data that you all would need to help think about again, always we're like, how does the library fit into your vision?

How do we like get to clarity around levels of service?

And we try to push in that direction, or what are I guess we would love feedback from you all about how to continue to think about prior priorities in light of what the community wants because we know we can't do it all at once.

We know this is an evolving process that includes lots of other inputs from all other services too.

But just how do you how can we help like scaffold, I guess, your engagement with us around this prioritization work and where we start because we know we can't do it all.

But we have big visions for what we offer to the city.

So I'll just throw that out there.

And maybe if any of the rest of you have questions that you want to have them think about at the same time.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah, you can jump in.

I think that that was a really great question.

I think that we probably have a each have a different answer, so I'll let folks jump in on that one.

Uh Councilmember Walker and then Councilmember Hines.

Um, thank you, Deputy Mayor.

And I would just say this presentation is super helpful.

I think you know, we try in our budgeting um years to get presentations from every department, and it it becomes a lot all at once.

Um, and so this having these regular presentations is super important, starting with that um study about how and and framing this conversation around how libraries touches so many different things that we do, I think is super helpful.

Um, and then any daily data points as we um move forward, particularly around breaking out of silos, because that's what we're trying to do, and we have so many departments that are working together with so many other departments, but just reminding us how the the pieces all integrate because when it comes down to it, we have to develop a budget that does have line items that you know you can't unsilo a line.

Um, but we want to package things together, so I think this is the the best way we could have started this conversation.

Um, and then I know that our facilities team works really closely with your team on all of that work, and so us all having an awareness of how that fits in.

We have so many facilities at the city, um libraries being a super important part of that, but a part of a bigger picture.

So reminding us of that, I think is really valuable too because we have a line, a number of our facilities deficit across the city, and it's a huge number, and it's so big that we lose sight of what it means to the door frame that your customers are coming in every day and having to deal with, or your employees.

So really helpful to highlight those things.

So thank you.

Okay, um, council member Hines and then Scott.

Uh no, uh, something I did I this the great question was it was something I forgot to say on my comments, which would be I think what would be helpful for us, and I've asked to meet this many times, which is you know, first of all, paint us the picture of what the system you think is the best system looks like, which I think you all have done.

My next question is what is step one look like?

So is it one new branch?

Is it one expanded branch?

Is it one remodel of this older branch?

So the answer is everything's needed, right?

And I think about like an old house, right?

Like if it needs a new roof, a new plumbing, a new electrical, whatever thing, at some point you have to say, Well, what's first?

And we start shipping away.

So I think that would be really helpful if you were to say, hey, council, the the one thing we really need is this thing.

Okay, then we have a price tag for that thing, and then the question is, okay, we can come with X foundation probably has to come with this amount, state, and we start calling together.

I think just really my vision, or the thing that would be most helpful is for is the approach of this, like similar to how some of the nonprofits come to talk to us about things like hey, here's our project, here's what we want to do, here's what we need, here's what we think it's gonna cost.

We would like this much from the city, and here's how we're gonna cobble that together.

Um I'd rather you not have to go through all that process before.

So I mean if it's something that's within our realm of what we can do, or we can put it on a bond and get there.

But I think for me, it's what's the most important thing that needs to be done, you know, next.

And that I think um best meets the needs of all of our patrons here in the city, like the best that really serves the best needs is we can would be would be helpful for me as I'm thinking about this because I think you've painted a great picture so far.

Thanks, Councilmember Heinz.

Um Councilmember Scott, thank you, Debbie Mayor.

Um I think uh, you know, a a key piece of what you all have done here today with the presentation and just kind of sharing what you're working on and uh how you're looking at this is really telling that story.

I think a lot of people think about the library um as a separate entity from the city in a lot of ways, and so they don't necessarily think of it as one of our resources in the way that they think about our police or our fire or even the Hope team and uh and things like that.

And so I think, especially with the the increasingly like the library's role in the community has always been important, um, and it's becoming increasingly so.

And I think making sure that um not just us as policymakers that are here now, but folks who are gonna be here when we're all termed out and moved on.

Um, hopefully not moved out of the city, but just moved on from sitting at these tables.

Um, but like making it really clear to folks that there is an intrinsic connection between uh the city, our central services, and the library, and like you said, uh President Cobb, like it's not that you're more important, but I would argue that you are as important as the other essential services that we have in this community.

Um, just in the way that like uh, you know, having urgent cares and having the hope team uh kind of help ease that load on um, you know, the first responders who are going to the fires and the the really you know big big accidents that are happening and the the things that need the really big response.

The library also plays that role.

You have social workers, you have information that people need, you have things that are going to help lighten the load on um the system that we have of our services overall, and so I think a big key piece of this is going to be making sure that people understand uh not only just our story as the city, but specifically how the library plays into that and how you all are a key piece of what we do and how we offer um just how we offer uh like you said, you're that entryway into there, you're a good um barometer of how communities are thriving uh and what they need, and you're kind of one of those uh first touch points that people have, whether they've lived in the city for a long time, or if somebody's just stopping through the city uh as a visitor or anything like that.

So I think um one of the things that we can also help do as we're going through budget stuff, um, but also what you all can do is just you know, talking back and forth and communicating about how do we really make sure we're telling that story to the community in a way that helps them understand that your role in all of this is just as vital as a lot of the other essential services that we provide.

I'm really glad you hit on that because that's exactly what I was gonna say is like you guys know how we get things done around here, the squeaky wheel gets the oil, and um I while it's noble, you know, for you all to not have like we know that we aren't the very most important, but we do need some money, we do have things falling apart.

It is it's absolutely okay for you all to be the most important to y'all, and that like and and we almost like need you and we need the community to come in here with that same energy because it really is critical, and that's how we that's how you know small governments really do their prioritizing, is kind of on the this week start with the squeakiest wheel, and then we go there.

And this wheel is one that's been squeaky, but it's been quietly squeaky, and I think we probably got to change the way we think about that.

Um, if we are to think about these as critical services, and then the other thing I would say is like it's really easy for us to meet clear solutions with support.

So we it's hard for us to think about how do we solve this 10 million dollar problem that we have.

If you tell us what's the we have invested this much in solving this 10 million dollar problem, and we need you to meet us here, and here's how we're gonna get there, and we've invested in it.

Sounds like we need to put some money in this foundation team, right?

Like, I realize it's a we don't have enough staff to do other things, but that seems like a critical piece in getting us to this next level of being able to meet you where you want to be.

Um, that's just the easiest way to get us the answers, like because we are trying to do everything all at once, and so if you give us the solution, we can help get there.

And that's just from my short time being here, those are the things that I have observed that have been effective in trying to fundraise because everybody has got their thing, and we're our job is to manage all of the things.

So help us do that.

Be aggressive.

Okay, just remember when we squeak.

Yes, it's not directly.

Okay.

Okay, do you have any other comments or questions that you have for us?

Just thank you.

Thank you.

We appreciate the time.

Yeah.

Okay, so we'll give you guys about um a couple minutes if you want to.

Um do you want to hang out for the rest of the no, I'm just kidding.

Good budget update.

Okay, we're gonna go into our next uh portion, so I'll let you guys um rest of your day.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Oh, yeah.

Do you want the clicker?

I should have more than one television, but I don't.

And my water bottle and my copy.

Yeah.

You know, okay.

Our bye.

Our second agenda item is the budget update.

Hey Andy, start with the libraries.

So you guys were still in session.

Where is everybody?

Okay.

I wasn't a laboratory.

Oh, I was thinking I was gonna have a five hours, and I was like, Y'all ready?

Okay.

All right, so we're gonna do um our second agenda item is our budget update, and for that I'd like to call in Andy Churulo to begin the presentation.

And city manager.

Uh thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Uh, Deputy Mayor and Council, I'm Andy Trulo, the finance director for the city.

I'm here with our city manager.

Uh we are gonna give you all a budget update.

Um our agenda.

We'll walk through some uh current economic conditions to give you some context of this.

We'll walk through year-to-date revenues in the general fund, year-to-date expenditures, uh, some other things going on.

We'll talk a bit about our mid-biennium update.

So, uh current economic conditions.

Uh, the top three bullets up there, the labor market, inflation, and interest rates all impact consumers.

Um, that's why they're the top three bullets on there.

As you may know, consumer spending represents approximately 60 to 70 percent of all economic activity in our country.

So things that impact our consumers are something we pay attention to when we look at economic activity.

Uh, when we look at the labor market, uh, there was uh fairly significant provisions of data and the number of jobs being created uh last month.

Um it was revised downward um significantly, so there were a lot fewer jobs were being created than um previously thought.

Um there was some drama related to that too as well, as the messenger from the Bureau of Labor Standards uh was fired for delivering bad news in that world, which has created another thing we'll talk about later on on this slide.

Um but in general, the labor market again with fewer jobs being created is a scary kind of thing when we talk about consumers, consumers with jobs have paychecks, and they are really good at spending those paychecks and driving economic activity.

And when people lose their jobs, uh that spending ability is severely constrained.

The other thing going on in the labor market uh relates to the participants, and we already know we have a retirement wave from our baby boomers who are leaving en masse uh at this point.

It's been going on for a few years and will continue.

Uh new things that are impacting the participants are recently.

Um again, the the approach to immigration by the new administration has really cooled the number of immigrants coming into the country and staying in the country.

When we think of some of the jobs that are uh heavily um employed with immigrants, uh construction industry, the agriculture industry, housekeeping, landscaping.

Uh 30 to 50 percent of the workers in those fields uh tend to be immigrants.

Um so the cooling of approach to immigration in this country has had an impact on creating fewer participants in our labor force.

Uh the last thing to kind of talk about is AI.

It's not quite in yet, and there's a lot of talk about AI, but the anecdotal evidence is showing that AI may be having impact on new folks coming out of college with degrees and things like programming that used to be able to get a job relatively quickly.

Now it seems AI is stepping in and doing some of that work of programming things.

Again, this is anecdotal, but pressure on the labor force, the number of people participating.

So in general, when you look at the labor force, you want a healthy labor force where businesses are creating new jobs and hiring people, and there are people entering the labor force that want those jobs, and that is in relative balance.

So there's some concern on our labor market right now.

When we talk about inflation, again, we saw the peak in inflation post COVID when inflation went way up, the Federal Reserve stepped in and did uh part of their dual mandate and raised interest rates to cool the economy to drive inflation down.

It took a while, but their path worked.

Inflation fell.

That fall has paused, and we've seen a slight uptick in inflation recently.

Again, some of that is related to the tariff policies coming through.

Tariff is just a fancy word for a tax.

And again, when taxes go up on goods, people or businesses pay those things.

The other concerning kind of thing when we look at the inflation data, you look at CPI and it's hovering about 2.7.

So when you think of the Federal Reserves goal of about 2%, we're in a ballpark of that.

We're all used to looking at the consumer price index, the CPI, and because that's the we see that at the grocery store and we go buy a gallon of milk for $3, and next week it's $3.50.

We see that price influence.

Last month the producer price index came out, the PPI, and that's what people who make stuff pay for the goods that they use to make stuff.

That had almost a 1% increase.

So the businesses that make things saw a large uptick in the cost of things they need to make.

And as we know, when business costs go up, their kind of two choices are to eat into their profit margins and not pass it along, or to pass those costs along to consumers.

So there's still some fear that there's more headwinds for inflation and upward pressure in the future on inflation.

The last thing to kind of talk about as it relates to the consumer is interest rates.

Mortgage rates are still hovering well above 6%.

Just a few years ago, they were at historic lows in the two and three percent range.

It has put a real drag on the housing market.

The housing market had its slowest spring in 13 years this spring.

So the housing market has cooled.

Again, some people are locked into their mortgages that have mortgages at two or three percent and don't want to look for a new home and pay a six or seven percent mortgage.

Um housing prices are up.

Um part of the reason we talk about that interest rate and mortgage rates is again when we have a healthy housing market and people can move and do things, it spurs a lot of consumer activity.

You move into your new house and you want that new couch in your new living room.

You want to get your house painted or that bathroom fixed.

So it spurs a lot of other consumer-related activity.

So when we look at the top three bullets, the labor market inflation and interest rates, they're all of showing signs of weakness as it relates to consumers' ability to spend.

Um we think of the risks going forward, um, there is a really high level of uncertainty of what is going to happen.

We have the on-again, off again, on again tariff policies coming out of the administration, which uh leads to a lot of uncertainty in the business community of are they going to be paying more for the inputs?

Do they need to look at a different supply chain to get things from different places?

Um it leads to a lot of uncertainty for consumers.

Uh, should I buy a bunch of stuff now that I can stock up that's not perishable?

Should I wait?

Um, that is not helpful.

Again, recently there is a lot of uncertainty about the independence of the Federal Reserve.

Uh, one of the uh foundational principles in modern our modern country here is an independent central bank that makes tough decisions when tough decisions need to be made, that may not be politically popular, but are the right thing to do to make sure the economy is functioning.

Um again, there's uh some concern about the independence of the Federal Reserve going forward, which doesn't again help people trying to make decisions about things going forward.

Uh, there's concern about the independence accuracy and integrity of government data, given uh the example of killing the messenger when data is bad, you lose your job.

That is a foundation again of our country that you can rely on the data that is put out by the government agencies.

And so there is some concern on many people's parts business, Wall Street, academics about again what that means for the continued independence and accuracy of the data collected by the government, which again leads to that level of uncertainty.

As we know, there's a lot of geopolitical conflicts in the world.

We have a land war in Europe as we speak.

There is conflict in the Middle East.

All of those things, depending on which way they move, add to uncertainty and shocks potentially for things.

We've talked a lot about federal grants and the change in this administration of their approach to federal grants and adding certain strings, cutting off certain grants for certain activities that aren't in alignment with their view.

So again, that creates uncertainty for us as a city.

Are we going to have the ability to gather the federal grants we used to get?

Can we live with the conditions that will be put upon them?

And the last bullet on here to talk about uncertainty is you may have heard some talk about uh the dreaded stagflation, uh, where you have both unemployment and inflation going up at the same time.

It has not happened in this country since the late 70s and early 80s.

But when you look at kind of the impacts on the labor market and labor hiring slowing and fewer jobs being created and fewer workers available for jobs, and you look at the pressure from tariffs on inflation.

Some folks are talking of potentially in the future, we may have stay uh stagflationary economy.

The problem with that is the Federal Reserve's tools to control both inflation and unemployment don't work well together.

Um, to lower inflation, they raise interest rates, which cools the economy, which tends to cool business spending, which tends to increase unemployment.

If you have both things going up, you don't necessarily want to do those things together.

So again, it presents really difficult choices for the Federal Reserve in that environment of how they approach their dual mandate to keep unemployment low and price stability in low inflation.

So in summary, a lot of uncertainty related to current economic conditions.

Switching our gears to our general fund, um, revenue collections year to date.

Um so we have six months of collections, so half of this year we have the collections in the book.

Uh down the left-hand side of this table, you can see the type of revenue uh you the next column is our projection, then the actual, and you see a variance column.

Um if you see red numbers in the variance column, that's a bad thing.

Uh you look down, you look down at the bottom of the table though, for context, and we basically projected 172 million in collections.

We basically got 172 million.

So, one view of this slide is hey, you're pretty good on your projections.

I will give you a yes and on this slide.

Uh Tacoma benefits greatly from having four main revenue sources business tax, property tax, sales tax, and utility tax.

We have four legs on our stool.

Uh a lot of other uh entities don't have that ability to have those four streams of revenue.

When you look at the top of this chart, all four of our legs of the stool are a bit shorter than we would like.

Collectively, when you add those numbers up, that's about three and a half million dollars off projections across our four big revenue sources.

Um the second yes and I'd love to give you on this one is when you look at our license and permits category, that is mostly our business license category.

We know that one is overstated by about a million and a half dollars of licenses we have billed for that we know businesses will not pay because they've either moved or closed or have decided not to pay their business license.

So that is overstated by about a million and a half.

So when you look at this slide in reality, you could say, hey, we're close, or we're about a million and a half below where we'd like to be at this point in the year.

Um the concern is again, all four of our major revenue sources are down a bit.

Our good news does not stop there though.

So when we look at year-to-date expenditures, again, this is January through June of this year, so half a year of expenditures.

Again, you have the department down the left-hand side, you have the budget, the actual, and again, if you see a red number with parentheses around it, it's a bad thing.

Um, but again, we expected to spend about 163 and a half million.

We spent 162.

So on the plus side, we're underspent by about a million three.

I'm gonna give you another yes and on this slide.

When you look at neighborhood and community services, um, you might think that they have underspent their budget by three and a half million dollars, and we know that is a timing issue, and that money will be spent.

So if you take that off of this slide, the number changes to about a negative two and a half million, which means we're kind of over budget at this point about two and a half million dollars.

So on top of that, good news for you all.

The summary you should really take away from this is again we're monitoring our revenues, they're running a bit below projections.

We hope that might change.

We're a little concerned given the economic uncertainty heading forward what that might mean for our revenue collections.

Um expenditures again.

Once you kind of adjust, we're a bit overspent right now.

A lot of that is a timing issue, so we're hoping that levels out as the year goes on.

Um but as we head into MidMod, um we wanted you guys to have this uh budget update on our revenues and our spending.

Um when we look at our Midmod Um MidMod exercise here.

Here are some uh what we look at it as things we know that we have to address during Midmod.

You may remember a couple months ago our fire chief came and talked about the opportunity the fire department had to get a couple of engines to add to service out of cycle uh that uh were available and ready to go.

Uh and you guys uh gave a thumbs up to that one.

That was a two million dollar uh a budget hit.

Uh that's about a million two fifty in the general fund.

Our police chief also talked about wanting to do an incentive program a couple months ago.

She's here right after us to give you an update and more details.

And again, uh a lateral incentive to get uh to help fill some of that uh 2025 officer vacancy hole they have at police.

Um we have had paid at this point one very large claim of five million dollars, a second very large claim of two million.

Um so when you kind of look at this as we head into mid mod, you add this up, and that's about 11 and a half million dollars of things that are on the table that we know about.

Um I'm gonna give you a yes and on this one.

We also know in addition to this, we have uh police and fire overtime that we typically have to address.

Um we don't not quite sure those numbers at this point, that's why they're not on this chart.

We have another settlement that just came in at 2.3 million dollars, so another very large settlement that came in.

Our workers' compensation fund is running a little light, and we think we need to adjust that and get a little bit more money into our workers' compensation fund.

And of course, based on all these settlements that are relatively large in a relatively short period of time, our third party liability fund will probably need some trueing up.

So when we talk about our mid-mai mid-budget modification thing, the direction from our city manager to all departments was a reduction exercise, kind of given the current state of our revenues and expenditures and the the mounting kind of priority needs that we have we know are coming.

It wasn't an across the board reduction.

Again, it was a target reduction based on departments and their activities.

Um that um will be what we're talking about when we talk about our mid-mod uh potentially of looking at uh some general reductions to help us pay for some of these other spending priorities as they come.

And the last slide we have for you is right now uh departments are working on their mid uh biennium modification budget proposals.

Uh they're due uh next week, by the end of next week.

That gives us some time in September and early October to kind of go through and look at them and verify numbers and talk with department heads about those things with the goal of coming back to you all October 14th for a study session to kind of talk about the proposed mid-mode on the 21st and a second reading on the 28th.

And with all that good news, I had to share with you.

I'm happy to answer any questions you all may have related to budgets or mid-model I was gonna make a joke and then and and and then I I thought better of it, but I guess I will just say so.

My I have one question when are we gonna um uh get those printing machines up and running so we can get enough money to get through this tough time.

Thank you, Andy.

I know that this is a really um really tough um news to um to bring, um, but I think that it is incredibly important that not only we as a council understand it, but that we continue to share this information with the general public and with the residents of Tacoma because I think it's important for them to understand where we are as a city.

Um I think if people look at their own personal budgets and how they're having to make these same kinds of decisions, community needs to understand that the city itself is going through that that same exercise.

I guess Andy, just for for my clarification, and then I've got a council, a couple of council members with their hands up.

Um you um you indicated from slide seven kind of what's already committed.

Um, and you you it's funny, I thought you were just listening to me inside of my head when you said police and fire overtime, um, because I said, well, that's not here, workers' comp, and then you talked about third-party liability fund.

Any idea, because I'm assuming that like police and fire overtime are not back on slide um on slide five in terms of budgeted, because I think in some of those instances we didn't budget enough.

Is that correct?

So typically with the overtime uh with police and fire, uh the police is a bit different, is they have a lot of vacancy savings.

So again, we look at their budget and say, how much did you have you say by not filling positions and can we use some of that extra to pay your overtime?

Okay.

So they're in a different kind of world, and right now, police, when you look at their budget is underspent on personnel, so they have a lot of vacancy savings that we can hopefully use to address some of that overtime need for them.

Fire's a little closer to that.

We know we typically have to bump them up with their overtime needs.

We just we're working uh again at refining what that number might look like six months through the year.

We know that typically it's in the two to four million dollar range when we true up um the fire overtime coming through.

So given we don't have to.

So given we don't know the exact numbers, that's why they're not on any charge, and we're working on on what that kind of looks like.

But again, we know we're gonna have to find money to pay that uh overtime.

Andy, do you have uh I and I guess uh um I did you mean pay overtime repay overtime?

What no, seriously, what did you mean?

No, we're gonna we need to pay the overtime, and we yeah, that's something we pay regularly in our payroll.

That's what that's what I thought.

I was like, well, we only have this biennium.

So then let me just because you kind of gave you kind of threw out a number, and I know that's kind of dangerous.

But if it's potentially two to four million for fire, any idea what you think police overtime might be?

Are we in the millions?

Do you okay?

Typically around there, really again depends on the vacancy savings, it depends on again how successful they are on hiring folks.

Um there's a lot of other issues that pop up in our public safety world.

Yeah, uh both police and fire very difficult on vehicles, which again they have tough jobs, they use their vehicles in ways, and so sometimes sometimes we have to true up their vehicle budget.

Yeah.

Andy, and you may not have it right now, which is fine, but can you just when you get a chance, or if you know it now, tell us, but if not when you get a chance, and you can send this to all of us, let us know what our police and fire overtime was for the last biennium.

Sure, yeah, we'll get you then.

So that kind of will give us a little bit some something to kind of think about that would be helpful for me.

And then you also mentioned workers car comp and third party liability fund.

Are we talking millions?

We are probably talking millions in both of those worlds.

Uh, like in our third party, the analogy I would give you is if you plan your household budget for the year and you're satin going and you have your hot water heater go out.

Right.

You might be able to adjust and say, okay, we need to fix that, and we'll gonna redirect some money, fix that.

And we're done.

If you have your hot water heater and your roof fail and your transmission fails on your car, and that all happens together, again, you're gonna have a much tougher choice in your budget because like wow, that all happened.

When we look at this series of very large settlements that have hit us very quickly in the last few months, again, we're probably gonna have to spend a few million to true up that fund because it was not built to cover 10 million dollars or so in expenditures within a three-month period.

Okay.

So again, and we're working on what that looks like as we go forward, but uh again, don't not exact numbers on either workers' comp or third party liability at this point.

So and I think we've gotten this before um in a closed set or in an executive session, but but city manager, I think what would also be helpful at at some point in the future is to ensure that we have an idea of what potential settlements could be on the horizon.

Yes, absolutely.

And Madam Mayor just joined um with what the finance director shared with you from a macroeconomic standpoint.

Um we are also monitoring the fact that um there are things that are happening that are um out of cycle, right?

From the standpoint of things that preceded the last recession or the last recession, those playbooks are out because we're seeing material weaknesses at the state level and at the county level.

Right.

Um notwithstanding the unreliability of our federal partners for funding on top of that.

I think the what we have transmitted to all the departments at this point is cost containment.

That's the thing that is in our control.

Um so this mid-mod is gonna be different.

We're asking departments essentially don't bring requests, and we're saying that purposefully.

Um those things that are um steady state from the standpoint of we have um need for personnel in public safety, that's why we have overtime, those things that we're anticipating, we really want.

And in the next presentation, I do want to set up a little bit of a layup for them because you'll see that in the things that the council has started even before this year, um, we do have a plan and path forward to getting back to not only addressing the today but the structural.

Um we have to, as a staff be able to bring you options so that you can actually enjoy our vision so that the public can see that too.

It is going to be tough.

We're gonna have a tough, I would say, at a minimum.

This is everything that Andy is sharing with you today.

We're not even seeing the material impacts to what happens here.

We are monitoring on a monthly basis the warrant notices for layoffs here in Tacoma.

Um we haven't even seen the hardship yet.

So we want to preserve what we can, cost contain where we can.

Um we have a hiring freeze for non-essential positions, we have a travel freeze, we have um contract reviews to say everything that's discretionary, we're gonna pause.

That seems and I'm reading the body language here, Mayor.

That's not great news.

But if we don't have the other side of that story, which is we have a plan, it probably is going to be something more in line with a 2029, 2020, 2030 uh idea.

We're gonna get back to abundance because that's what Tacoma's always done.

Um, and we are gonna get there.

So I just want to share that with you.

Okay, thank you very much.

All right, sorry, team, for jumping in.

Sometimes I go last.

Most of the time I go last, sometimes I like to jump in first.

All right, I'm gonna call on uh council member Rumbaugh then on council member walker.

Thank you, Mayor.

We had a lot of great qu great um questions.

I really appreciate everything you had to say.

Um, Andy, I want to thank you so much for your current economic conditions because I think you're right on, and I really appreciate all the honesty and integrity in these.

Like they're really thoughtful about the general uncertainty, and um they're a big picture and little picture, so I really appreciate that.

Um, and I actually actually I was thinking about Katie as we sat here and how Katie would have told us about the red.

So I appreciate that.

Um my questions were so this doesn't do anything, this isn't this is outside of the structural deficit that we still have.

Okay, and then the other part was there's no federal dollars included in the budget that we had, or is the budget include federal dollars as well?

It includes federal grants.

So that includes like the 70 million dollars that we're talking about.

So yeah, so there's a risk factor in there as well.

If again the federal government decides to pause or stop or put strings on grants that uh potentially the city's not willing to live up to, so there's still that risk factor adding to the uncertainty.

Okay, because that wasn't really there.

So okay, so really okay.

So this is just based on the idea that they might decide to give us the money that we've applied for or are supposed to get.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Right.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Thank you, Councilmember Rambach, Councilmember Walker.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, and I think that uh a few of these things have started to get answered.

Um I was looking for more detail on the things you talked about when we were looking at slide seven, so I think we got those coming to us um in terms of those other pieces just to be aware of.

So um on the key dates as we head into this, um it sounds like there's a lot of pieces like the things behind slide seven that are being worked out, and like Councilmember Rumba said, you know, the risk factor of federal grants.

That's all work that your offices are doing, and then everything comes to us on the 14th, and then we go right into first reading, second reading.

I'm just wondering if there's a midpoint there that we could see some more numbers, because I feel like there are some things that maybe you know that we don't know yet, but some things that nobody knows, right?

And we're trying to figure those out.

I just feel like I would feel good about like maybe a mid-September check-in, or even if it's not a public meeting, just getting that information.

Um, and then I heard you say, City manager, you're not asking for staff for proposals or pitches on ways to spend more money.

So just to be clear on that proposals, because I was gonna ask when do you get council proposals?

Do we get to weigh in at any point?

I just could come up with some of the things.

This isn't me being like for brevity's sake.

This is ultimately we respect from a staff perspective that this is your budget.

Um, that um even with those instructions that we transmitted to all the departments.

Um I I have to be cognizant in my place in supporting Andy and the and the city from a staff perspective that departments are gonna come through with requests because they're going to have you know some things that they just urgently need to get addressed from those standpoints.

We'll be bringing those along with um uh probably in breakout sessions, um, some briefings with you all.

Um, but if I'm hearing you correctly, council wants to get you know all the news is you know, as soon as possible, so you can have the time to ramp up those discussions because this is a prioritization exercise.

Yeah, yeah, and I think we all have a post it note we've been carrying around all year with some things that we want to you know at least put out there for discussion in a mid-MOD.

So can we throw those at you?

Absolutely.

So the sooner the better.

I I would probably reverse that.

The sooner the better from council.

If you have those things that you want to direct um the city to address in mid-mod, um, yeah, absolutely.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Diaz.

Thank you, Councilmember Walker.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, I kind of had a similar question to Walker around if there's other points where we can interject or get more information, because something that I see that I think is maybe missing or could just use more narrative around, is beyond the coming proposal next about um police recruiting incentive that would save us some overtime.

I'm wondering what other departments or entities in the city we have that could do with more staffing that would generate revenue.

Um, and I'm wondering um if we're gonna get another presentation around what revenue options we have councilmatically that we can be putting in to try to fill in some of these red holes, and if that is a presentation that is just not on this timeline.

So, Councilmember D, as I could answer that question.

So, again, this is just part of the point of this presentation to give you six months' worth of data in this year, right?

And it's not looking particularly great.

At this point, I wouldn't say it's like a critical thing.

It's a lot of this is timing, and we're hoping things pick up coming in.

Um, we know that in the past and historically as we have done in the city when we were presented with things like this, we come to you with options and solutions.

Not always the greatest, there are tough choices in your future about priorities, but we will come to you with options and solutions.

Some of those will again include revenue things when we're in the middle of a biennium like this, uh, doing some of like the revenue options and stuff become a bit trickier.

And again, soon starting in January, we're starting that next biennial budget process.

So most of our kind of revenue solutions will probably be geared toward the next biennial budget process as opposed to looking at this, and we will try to figure out how to piece this biennium together as best we can with uh again things that we can do.

But again, we will we've asked departments for their ideas both on uh spending reductions and revenue ideas if there are options out there to raise them.

So hopefully we'll get some of those in our mid-mod world.

But I guess I want to leave you all with the idea that as we always do in the budget office, that we will come with ideas and solutions and choices for you all, always not the best, some tough ones, but you know, we will find a way to balance the budget and get through what this needs to be.

So they don't all have to be good.

I'm just curious as to whether or not that's coming.

And I know uh I want to acknowledge that you're even your department is light on people right now.

So um, I just um I'm I guess I feel like there's a slide missing, and maybe that's just because that's not today's presentation.

Um because even in looking at next year's budget and our revenue options, I think there's also gonna have to be beyond some council matic choices we need to make.

We need to think about what what our narrative is and how we're coming to the public with different options.

So some of my thoughts are I think that's the only question I had.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um council member Diaz.

All right, I don't see any more questions.

Andy, I do what um did I see a timeline at the end of the presentation?

Okay, I that's I I had forgotten that that was that that was there when okay, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.

Okay, perfect.

Yes, Mayor, we're we're looking at um taking a lot of your bandwidth in October.

Um, and and even before to Councilmember Walker's point, you know, getting getting those things that are coming over the horizon sooner, um, so that you can have those uh discussions too.

Um and to just to strengthen what Andy was your takeaway, council from my perspective, is um you know, it is concerning.

It is disconcerning that we have most of our um, you know, we do have a diversified revenue source.

Um utility tax, I'll just call that out from the standpoint of what's happened.

Um you're looking at the the bold choices you made with the this biennual budget that you you launched last year.

Um wholesale trading, energy trading.

It's off.

It's uh the world has changed since January.

And um our utility department TPU has done a marvelous job of trading power at the wholesale level prudently, safeguarding uh the the patrons resource there, but that is off.

Natural gas prices have plummeted, um, so they are much more competitive than what we're doing on that.

So though even those things, that's kind of your takeaway, those four pillars between sales tax, um, business licensing, utility tax, and property tax, everything is off there on that standpoint.

We'll come to you with options and to strengthen what Andy also said was mid mod will not be over in December.

We will start the process to make the truly uh hard and prudent decisions next year.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you very much.

All right, we are going to move on to our next presentation, and I'm going to ask that uh police chief Patty Jackson come forward to uh begin the presentation, and we are going to have a presentation about the Tacoma Police Department um acceleration plan lateral incentive program.

Chief, you may have thought you wanted to go before Andy.

Right side.

Mike check.

Yeah, sorry.

I'm sorry.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Council.

Um again, my name is Patty Jackson.

I'm currently and very proudly serving as the interim chief of police for Tacoma Police Department.

And joining me today.

I'm Chris Carl.

I'm our administrative services chief, uh, hiring training, uh, recruiting all falls under my purview.

So we're here today.

Sorry.

Yes, hi, my name is Christina Kern.

Um, I'm officially with environmental services, and I support that department with Director Chavez and their rates and budget, but I'm going back to my time as a fellow in the city manager's office, leveraging that experience to support um police on this kind of special project.

I'm so glad you said that because I was gonna say, and she was a former management fellow.

That's great.

That's right.

So we're here today, as you've you've heard by several people, to present on TPD's proposal to accelerate our hiring.

We want to do this through the implementation of a lateral incentive program.

And you did first hear about this from us back in June, I think it was on the 17th.

And so today we're here to follow up on the details and really that plan on how to get that implement implementation going, uh, subject, of course, to council's final approval of the proposal.

So any time you know people come before you, you really want to know what the problem is, and then okay, how are you gonna solve it?

And so the agenda for today's presentation is split into those two primary parts.

And first, the problem.

And the problem states what we're experiencing is a chronic staffing shortfall.

Despite consistent efforts to reach our fully budgeted staffing levels, we continue to have significant vacancies.

Since I presented to you in June, our expected number of vacancies for this year has already increased.

We need to do something because the short staffing requires mandatory overtime, something we've all been talking about, which obviously has a financial impact.

But something else that I want to talk about is that impact that it has on our officers' well-being and their mental health, and ultimately then the level of service that we're able to provide to our community.

Our proposal is really something that is you know fast moving and will get us going towards a solution, and hopefully that ends up being a long-term solution, and one that's lasting, and that is uh for an in-state lateral incentive program.

What our goal is is to really attract currently uh officers currently serving Washington State law enforcement to join our department.

These uh lateral peace officers can be deployed faster than any entry-level officers because they have significantly shorter onboarding time.

So this slide that we're looking at now that we're sharing shows the short staffing trend that we've been talking about.

You can see that in 21 and 22 that we had a significant number of retirements or separations with our department, and even within then increase in hiring uh that that was we had in 2022, we are still continuing to make up for that loss of those officers for those years.

Right now, for the 2025 timing here, we are even in terms of the number of new officers that we've hired and retirements or separations, but at a minimum, we expect there to be a total of 18 separations by the end of this year, and we currently have 28 budgeted commission vacancies within our department.

So hiring new officers to fill our budgeted positions is a high priority for our department.

If we do nothing and hiring practices continue as they have for the past several years, we are projecting that it'll take to until at least at least 2029 to be fully staffed.

However, by instituting this lateral program that we're bringing forward, we believe that we're going to increase that rate of new hires, and we're asking to be able to fill 20 of those positions, which would with this lateral program while we're still continuing on the entry level.

This will get us fully staffed by 2027.

And we probably even sooner than that, but we wanted to be realistic.

So just taking a moment to explain why, even with the lateral program, it takes those two plus years.

Again, it's because we are still hiring new entry-level officers as well.

We want to be able to grow a force at the same time.

If you recall, back when we've talked about it, and we'll probably say it several more times, several more times today.

An entry-level officer takes about 12 months of onboarding and training and academy time before they can be deployed into the community.

And in all actuality, that that really comes up to about 18 months still off probation.

So we'd also like to note that although being fully staffed at our budgeted level be a significant improvement both on overtime expenditures.

I talk with my hands, I'm knocking people's things over, I apologize.

Based on overtime expenditures and on our officer well-being, there's still some challenges that we face.

Those are always going to be there.

That could be emergencies, it could be something that's officers are taking that protected leave, military leave, paid family medical leave, injuries on the job, things of that nature.

But the good news by being able to hire straightaway is that we have more officers sooner that'll help mitigate that additional challenge.

So this next slide really talks about understanding our overtime.

And so that you'll see how that says at the top of that slide, the sector coverage.

Overtime costs are another factor of consideration for taking the new approach on our short staffing issue.

But the number one driver in those costs is really our sector coverage or what we're paying daily to run our police agency.

And so the department has a targeted minimum staffing level for days, swings, and graveyard shifts.

And the annual the average annual cost of that sector coverage overtime in the 2024 or 20, excuse me, 2022 to 2024 time frame was more than 3.5 million, really averaging out to about 49% of the police general fund overtime expenditure.

So 49% just to run those day-to-day operations that are needed to provide our community the service that they deserve.

Through increasing staffing levels and patrol and allocating additional FTEs for each of the shifts, the sector coverage overtime will be reduced.

Overtime within the department will continue, but again, it'll be a reduced level that focuses on strategic or special emphasis operations, emergencies, and other situations of that sort.

We know that there's this little thing, FIFA's coming, right?

So we get to even determine what costs are associated.

But knowing that we're able to get officers up and running before that time frame is going to be significantly helpful.

So we're getting to that the we've talked about the background on the problem, and so now let's focus in on what we're bringing before you to solve that problem, or at the very least, again, mitigate that.

And so we want to move into our proposed solution, which is an in-state lateral incentive program.

This program applies to peace officers that are currently working in Washington State who are already commissioned by the criminal justice training commission.

Uh, and the reason for that is opposed to an entry-level officer is the time that they spend, but there's also about a $7400 cost right now to each officer that we send out there, and that's only 25% of what it's costing the state to actually train each of those officers.

Um we can say that we can tell you this, and we can tell you this with certainty.

We've told you that it takes you know that year to 18 months to get somebody up and going.

Uh the lateral uh individuals that come to us will be able to get up and going within about 60 days, and so that that is uh something that that is going to be very beneficial for our community and the members that we serve.

So just kind of breaking this down a little bit.

We talk about the uh we've talked about eligibility.

You have to already have been uh certified peace officer in the state of Washington for this program.

We'll still hire individuals that come from out of state, but but that for this program we need to do that.

Um then, as far as when we're getting into the incentive, we're looking at a $50,000 payment, and that staggered over a couple of years, and that would provide somebody with $25,000 upon hire, and then uh $12.5 and 12.5 as you see on the slide.

And so part of that is the lateral hire receives that, and then the payment does not or does include, excuse me, a clawback provision, so that they have to remain continuously employed for that first two years in order to continue to receive.

So that clawback is is something huge that you need to ask about.

So the other component to the program is the leave benefits.

When you ask somebody to come into you know our agency, they might be coming to us with onwards of 30, you know, years of experience.

When that happens, they have to leave behind their their accruals that they've built up, and we want to incentivize somebody to be able to take time with their family, right?

That that much needed time that they might have, and this is the that's the way that we can do that.

We're looking up to 125 120 hours of floating holidays, depending on the date of hire.

So we think with this approach, we're gonna see a significant increase in qualified and experienced laterals waiting to join our department.

The goal of this program again is to try and recruit the best of the best.

We are going to absolutely continue our rigorous rigorous and high standard for recruitment.

And initially, we're coming to you right now.

We've told you that we had the 28 vacancies, and we're hoping that you will give us that.

I'm gonna use a word that I learned from our city manager, the up and down, right, on this thing that that gets us moving to this.

Um, and I want to note that we understand the city reserves the right to end this program at any time, and I want to look at you and vow that we will be closely monitoring and continuously evaluating this this uh incentive program.

That moves us in the next uh slide of the value of laterals.

We've talked about the time, we've talked about bringing people over that have that experience.

I think again, just pointing out that the I've mentioned our laterals will still need to meet the standards that we've set forward.

If hired by our department, those laterals bring additional years of experience to our force, where right now I want to point out, and I hope that everybody hears this, 64% of our patrol officers are here five years or less.

That is a green department.

That then means that the individuals who are moving to supervise that cadre also have you know less years on the department.

Bringing laterals over helps balance that.

It helps what we've had in you know, in our time.

I never thought I'd be able to come before you and use that right in my day and age, right?

It helps it helps us, you know, really balance because some of their experience helps train those officers as well and keep them balanced and focused and providing the service that the citizens of Tacoma deserve.

So this slide is really what we're looking at to capture on this is the really the value we get from that faster deployment.

If you look at the first column of the slide, you can see that in the first year, an entry-level officer spends that first again 12 months onboarding, whether that's training at the academy with the field training officer, and that cost the city, each officer, each new entry cost right now, today's cost about 210, just uh north of 210,000.

And then if we do that for the next four years, the personal personnel costs once they're fully deployed, the community, you can see that their total cost comes just south of a million.

If we look at that local lateral officer that though who's already familiar with regional protocols, then that or onboarding time is reduced again to just those two months, and you can see that value that the two months on this this onboarding slide brings to us.

And the final 10 months of that first year, then they're already independently deployed and they're out there answering calls for service from our community.

That's huge.

If hired through the program, there are those addis costs, added costs, which are just about 62,000 per officer.

That's the value of both that 50,000 incentive and their leaves and the pension.

So that's how that that's how we came to that amount.

Uh we've also added that additional four years of personnel cost.

That brings a laterals total cost for five years to just over a million dollars.

The total cost uh cost difference over that five years is less, it's about $70,600.

So hiring a lateral officer through this program technically costs almost $71,000 more.

But the case we're trying to make is that the value of the lateral surplus surpasses that additional cost.

In year one of service, we must pay an officer's salary regardless.

So if you hire a new entry level, they're getting paid, they have to get paid while they're going to to the the academy, and then remember, since they're not out there for service yet, we're still paying in overtime for somebody to cover those calls until they are patrol car ready.

So even though laterals over a five-year span cost about 70,000 more, we would say that that value of deployment to the community and to the health and welfare of our officers more than doubles that additional cost.

Again, on this slide, we're really truly just painting a financial case for why laterals make more sense in this limited time of resources.

Moving into that next slide, the program cost again.

Um, in terms of actual dollars, the full implementation of this program is about 3.4 million dollars.

1.00 of that cost is directly related to the lateral incentive program and the additional leave benefit and the pension uh and other salary implications.

But if this program is successful, which we know it will be, it will cause a rapid increase in the number of hired officers within the Calm Police Department.

We need to adjust the budget, not just because we're hiring laterals, but because we're having a higher number of officers working within our department.

This 2.1 million in cost would include things like new officer equipment.

Also, we would need to purchase additional vehicles.

Part of this total cost does include 1.35 mil for 15 new vehicles, but I want to to note and strongly note highlight here that those vehicles are needed regardless of this incentive program.

So again, just being as transparent as possible.

We wanted to show both the direct cost associated with the program as well as other costs that would come from having higher staff.

Again, of that 3.4 total, 233,000 will come from TPD special revenue fund to cover officer equipment as one-time cost, and the remaining cost will be covered by the general fund, which is 3.1 million, and will be requested in the mid-byNia modification.

Our next staff obviously to today's study session that we're we're meeting, we asked to come before you uh, or we are scheduled to come before you on September 9 for our first and final reading.

Um, as you saw in the earlier slides, the projected vacancy rate for our department is nearing 30.

It'll be 31 by the end of this month if we're not moving forward in doing something.

So we hope for this program to be implemented as quickly as possible, which is why we're seeking that emergency ordinance as that uh so we get that immediate effective date.

Since we first began coming to this discussion and coming to you in June, we have seen our rate of applications increased and are up to 40.

That is unheard of.

This is something that that is very positive for for us as a police agency, and then also for the community we serve.

Their acceptance of hiring offers, should this pass our recruitment recruitment process is uh contingent upon the timely implementation of this program.

They want to come now, and now is the time to bring them on.

Um we'll then add the programs appropriation, the mid-biennium mod process in October, and now I'm sure you're tired of hearing me talks, so we are collectively happy to answer your questions.

Do I turn this off?

Yeah, well, probably need to leave it on because you're probably gonna get questions, but I'll ask if there are any questions, and if you know if people want to think about it, I've got a couple.

Um Chief, oh now a lot of lit up.

Um I'm gonna ask one question first.

Obviously, we just have the budget presentation, no surprise.

Um as we think about mid mod and and where we where we are.

I I I just any thoughts about either, and and sorry, Councilmember Walker, either a potential phase in not 50,000.

Can you just kind of give us give us give me some understanding about we I think we have 25 right now, right?

Is what we're still offering right now.

Is that what is that program completely expired?

Yes, so talk to me a little bit just about what's happening in the region, what other cities are doing, um, and why because this is double what we were offering.

So I'm just kind of want to understand why we think this is the right number.

Um given our budget, our our budget considerations and what other cities are doing, that would make us more competitive in in this particular uh field.

Yes, ma'am.

I can tell you that that why 50,000 is something that that is truly a must.

It's because we're asked to you know, really kind of grow the best agency.

And I I'm here to tell you with my experience and with you know, watching this agency and grow and kind of learn from you know, uh situations that we've we've seen in the past, we want to bring the best of the best.

Individuals right now that work for other agencies know that they're going to come to work for us and they're going to be uh, you know, kind of going through a one-year probationary period.

They're going to be trained by individuals sometimes that have 25 to you know 28 years less experience than they have on the job, and they're going to ask their family members to go back through starting a whole new thing, which might be come into graveyard the whole while.

They're not able to do anything to supplant their their income like they may have been doing while working for another agency and working overtime.

Um we are in line with uh large-scale uh you know agencies, Seattle Police is at 50,000 right now, Mercer Island is at 40, um State Patrol is at 20 with you know providing other you know incentives that uh cost that go along with that.

Um and Thurston County, which is you know, small, is at 25, and they give hours of combined sick leave and vacation leave.

Spokane is offering, uh, as will is Pierce County uh Sheriff's Office is hiring uh with a 25,000 hiring incentive and 160 hours of combined sick and vacation leave.

They're still all experiencing an incredibly high number of vacancies, and so we want to fill those vacancies in short order to provide solution as to some of the things that we've told you, and this is the way we're going to do it.

Chief, you make a really good point in terms of um in terms of the sacrifices that some officers will have to make based on their tenure.

Is there a program anywhere did we consider looking at incentives, but it basing those incentives not only just on lateral hires, but based on what they what they stand to lose.

So a five-year transfer is different than someone who's been in the game 20 years.

So did we consider that either for um vacation days or sick leave days?

Because some people will lose more than others, and so I'm just wondering, could that potentially be something we could look at in terms of again just the mere cost?

I'm in full support of making sure that we get our police department of defense staff and get rid of that over that overtime.

So let me just be super clear about that up front.

But I'm just wondering if if if you all thought about or could think about giving people more money based on what they stand to lose by making the switch.

Because if we get a two-year lateral officer, right, and they get the $50,000.

Again, that's different than somebody who comes with 15 years experience.

So right, it it is a little bit, right?

Because depending on where they're at in their pay scales, right?

Some of this is bargained when you talk about just giving somebody more money because we can't bring them in and give them more money than what our current staff is getting.

But I will tell you that where they come in at matters, right?

So we can go, we talked a little bit to we've got six different steps that we can pay up to.

So your officer that that has, I'm sorry if I hit you.

Their officer that has you know 30 years of experience, right?

They'll come in at our top step pay.

So pay is you know, something that that does it's it's going to come in at where they're coming in at, and based on their experience, we can do that.

And so maybe somebody that has two years might be at step five coming in, right?

And somebody's got 30 years might be at top step.

So that does, you know, help with that.

The other thing are opportunities, right?

And so some of which need to be bargained.

And I will tell you that that you know discussions have been had, and so you know, some of the things that are coming in here is really that support.

We want to make sure that we're not telling or sending a message to the men and women who have served the Tacoma Police Department that we feel that that bringing laterals in is more valuable than who you are to us who have been here the whole time.

We want to make sure that that we are, you know, in parity.

So we are working really hard with that, and things that need to be bargained, that'll be with uh the the unions themselves.

Okay.

Okay, I will stop there and allow my council um colleagues to ask some questions, and we'll start with council member Bush Chanel.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, and thank you, Chief, and and everybody else to help uh put this program together for our consideration.

Uh it's definitely I know a lot that goes into it, a lot of talking with uh internally but also externally uh with with folks around the region as well.

Um one of the questions I had uh is um around the um the the training timelines in particular when we can get uh folks on patrol.

Um and I know when we initially had talked about this, we were kind of more focused on Pierce County specifically because they are very familiar with the area, and we could potentially shorten those training timelines because of that familiarity.

Um is that still applicable now, even though we're looking at a more of a statewide situation, like if we did get a lateral from Pierce County, would that um would that timeline speed up compared to like a state level uh uh someone coming from other parts outside of Pierce County in different parts of the state?

Yeah, so to answer your question.

So for the most most of the part, there's gonna be there could be a one-off in Pierce County lateral applicants, it'll be 30 days of pretty much onboarding and 30 days of a field training program.

And so if we hired somebody on October 1st, we could an essential have them on the roads by December 1st.

Um right now we're looking at I believe four uh in-state lateral applicants that have applied um outside of Pierce County.

One of them actually used used to work for us, and he's coming back, he's a great applicant.

But the other three, because they're experienced officers, yes, it'll be more than the 30 days uh out because they're outside of Pierce County, but they'll be also at a much accelerated rate than the entry-level officers.

So most of those usually lasts about 60 days of field training.

All right, thank you.

And then could you talk through obviously we want to get these folks uh out of patrols and and you know provide the service to a community as quickly as possible, but we also want to make sure that they have the best training uh available to them and that they're able to follow through with you know City of Tacoma policies and procedures.

Could you kind of walk through a little bit on make on how we're gonna be able to also accelerate that without necessarily degrading the quality of training uh and get them on on our out on patrol?

Yeah.

So uh whether they're entry level or laterals, uh entry level when they come back from the academy, they have two months of training uh with Tacoma Police training officers.

In addition, so when these laterals get on board, they'll have 30 days, and what we've been able to do with the blessing of the operations bureaus, we've able to put special people on special duty.

So we're bringing people that used to be in the training section, who whether they be are uh in patrol right now, we're actually to be able to bring back three officers right now on special duty to assist our training unit to make sure these officers are up and going to get all the adequate training they need in the next 30 days.

Right, thank you for that.

And then just on to the budgetary side, and you know, obviously a big a big reason why we want to um to make sure we're fully staffed is to address a lot of the overtime uh costs.

Um it sounds like because we are talking about this incentives that there's uh definitely interest with the 40 applications that you mentioned.

Um and so do we have uh an idea I I know it's there's no exact science to it, but but do we have an egg uh a pretty good idea of what a conversion rate of those applicants could be for a fully staffed at the fully staffed point.

And the reason why I ask is because you know, the longer we're having to do the mandatory overtime, the the costs increase over time as well.

And so if we're not able to bring people on as quickly as we'd like, uh maybe there's an excess there on increased costs.

That's right.

So that is really why we asked for this emergency ordinance to go and and push through, like I think I used the right word, emergency ordinance, right?

So that said, um, we we also recognize that, and we want to make sure that we tell you that that you know, our next step that we ask for was to come before you on the 9th of of October, September, September.

We're not waiting until I'm sorry, uh, the 9th of September.

And uh given that nod, I'm we'll be able to fill those straight away.

So we're we're ready to fill those.

And so, and again, the cost that you see before you is for 20 of those positions, and so I think that that's realistic.

I think that that is something that you know, 20 of those 28 vacancies that we talk about.

I think that's something that you'll be able to see tangibly in very short order, and like assistant chief Carl had already indicated that that by December 1, if we're on that timeline by December 1, we should have you know individual peace officers in patrol cars out answering calls for service.

Great, thank you, Chief.

And then just uh finally, as a comment, I just want to really appreciate all the men and women uh that are serving the police department serving our community.

Um, you know, it no one wants to have to be on pandatory over time, but it it is because um of the short staffing, it's consistently been a challenge for us uh for years at this point, and that does uh drag down on mental health, uh, the ability to provide the best service to our community.

Um, and so just really appreciate the service and sacrifice of everybody out there uh doing the good work.

Thank you.

And on behalf of our entire department, we graciously accept that.

Um, the men and women are seeing the support that you all are providing, and uh equally and sometimes more importantly, that they're seeing the support that the community is coming and meeting us halfway.

It's no longer an us problem, it's really becoming a we problem, and people are embracing that, and I know that's also in you know, part because of the support that we're getting from you all.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Councilmember Diaz.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um I was curious if you can tell me if if this plan were to pass, do we have something complimentary to also make sure we're continuing to hire new officers?

Yes, ma'am.

Uh we are absolutely still doing that.

So the way that you hire a new officer is you know, individuals take that first initial step and you know, applying and then taking a test through the public safety testing.

It's up to those individuals, and we're gonna continue recruiting because just like you don't want that green right less than five years, you also don't want uh an agency of people that are gonna be retiring and now you know setting is back.

And so we are going to continue to have a very robust recruiting efforts that are made out there.

And I will tell you that that when individuals, and I can speak for myself and I can speak for other people that have already talked to me and that have put applications in, when they see the investment going in to you know grow our agency, they're wanting to put their scores into us.

So we are still getting, you know, when people take the tests, they're releasing their scores to us, which then means that we can start the hiring process once we're certain that they meet our standards.

So I think that's maybe exactly where I'm struggling with this proposal.

Is I'm a little concerned that we're gonna bring in 20 folks who retire in three years.

Yeah.

And like at the end of the program, which I I actually really think we do need to help diversify the age range and the experience that we have in our force.

So I think that's helpful in the near term, but I'm concerned about what proposal we'll then get in three years at the next essentially mid-MOD.

Um and what what kind of a money amount amount that's gonna be.

Right, and I very much appreciate what you're saying.

So I want to just really highlight again the amount of work that it takes for somebody to you know decide, hey, and then talk to their family and say I do want to lateral over and start over at the very bottom again with an agency.

When we're talking about that individual that's coming over with 30 plus years, you might get somebody like that that wants to retire in five years.

They want to they want to get right, it's three years is not going to get them right vested.

They need to be at least five for that.

But of 20, right, you're not gonna, it's not gonna be all 20 of those are gonna be people that are of age to retire.

So you're just getting that balance, and so you're not going to see people wanting to come over after.

I mean, that the application process is incredibly um, it's it's tiring, right?

You have to go back so many years almost, you know, to to when people started right their career, and then putting everything down on paper, going th through that whole entire background check, going th through the the polygraph, the psych, right, uh the medical.

It's a lot of work to do to just come over for a three-year period.

And like I said, the reason we're looking at that $50,000 is because we want to entice the best of the best.

That $50,000, and especially will it spread over that amount of time, is not necessarily worth somebody saying, Well, I'm so close to retirement, I'm gonna leave the the agency that I came from.

So you do have a lot of built-in safeguards in that.

Okay.

Um, I mean, I do want to commend you on putting together such a well-thought-out proposal with lots of our questions answered in the proposal, um, because I think it is really important that we get our staffing level up, not just to get the amount we're spending in overtime down, but also to provide relief to the folks who are working all of that overtime.

I want officers out there who are well-rested and not needing to do all that overtime.

Um, so they're showing up as their best selves because we already know that we've hired some good folks.

Um, and I think it really gets us to a place where we can start building back some more of those special teams, some of the other things that folks like to see, and and we had had prior interplomep um with creativity and just the different ways that folks could do policing here.

Um, but I I still really feel like I'm struggling with hearing we have 40 applicants, and I don't understand why I need to pay them 50k if there are any applicants.

Can we just hire them?

I've never applied to be a police officer.

So, like please indulge me in in how we don't just hire them now and why I need to spend money in a budget that we don't have money.

That's right.

Uh to get the best.

I don't understand.

Right, that's a really good question.

I will tell you that that uh as with any thing in life, this thing got out in front of their skis.

The 40 applicants that are there are waiting for this up and down nod.

I can tell you right now that they're coming to us not only because of who we are as an agency, and just a little piece of humble, you know, uh kind of what they're seeing, right?

Call it what what it is, but but they're seeing the support, they're seeing a healthy, uh, you know, happy agency.

In the event that the incentive program is not approved, you are not gonna see those applications stay in place.

They will go to one of the other places that is for the very reasons that I told you.

It's a big ask to leave the agency that you're with, right?

But people do want to come to some place that they know that their health is being looked at, their you know, their family is being looked after.

What kind of benefits does Tacoma offer?

And then they'll take that leap.

And they're waiting, those applications that we have, and I'll I'll let you know uh assistant chief Carl to tell you this is unheard of.

Having 40 lateral applicants at the same time, how long have you been on?

Yeah, I've been here since 1998, and I think the most we've ever had is 12 or 15.

40 is unheard of.

I mean, in order for us to if we would use we uh are easily gonna fill those 20 openings of this ladder on setup packages accepted.

I guess maybe I'll just leave with this maybe last comment.

I think we have the best police chief in the region, right?

Clear you put together something incredible here, you've got 40 folks waiting to want to apply.

If the only reason they're waiting to apply is 50k, I have a hard time with that being that being a police officer is something that I think people are called to do.

You know, just wake up one day and put yourself through all that and the wear and tear that it puts on your body and your family to not want to do it in the place where you want to do it.

So to hear that if I don't approve this, all 40 people are gonna go work in Mercer Island to spoke hand feels ludicrous to me.

Well, uh I'm trying so the kind of example I'll use.

If I've been a cop for 20 years in Pierce County, and I'm going to leave the opportunity to pick the shift that I've been on for 20 years because I'm a senior person.

I'm not gonna be able to work any overtime anymore for the next year.

I'm gonna put an extreme financial drain on my family because I can't work those overtime anymore.

And now Tacoma's offering me this lateral incentive package, which helps compensate, make my other half happy at home.

Um, and I'm gonna be going work in graveyards now, which is a complete change of our family life.

It's a way for us to compensate these people to come here and work for us.

Um, it's not only the $50,000, but it is also the the lifestyle that you're giving up.

Thank you.

And if I could just add to that, I don't I I want to make sure that I'm being clear that that's not the only reason that is the carrot, right?

That is the hey, we do.

We think that we've got a great agency, and I I thank you so much for you know, I I do think that um the ability for me to lead and let the leadership team that you already have in place stand out.

I mean, we've got a phenomenal agency.

Uh we do want people, but we do want the best, and we want to say you are valuable to us and you are worthy to us.

And you know, it might seem a lot, but but I mean, I when you go look for a car, you go and you look for the best place that you're gonna get it for the best deal that you're going to do, and you still need a new car, right?

We need new shoes, we can't afford them, but this is when we have to most buy them.

We need new shoes, we can't afford them, but this is when we have to most buy them, and I'm ready to do that, and I'm ready to to, you know, I'm I'm again privileged to serve as the chief for as long as you'll have me.

That said, um, you know, if this is my legacy and we're able to build uh an agency that that is safe and providing the community members of uh you know our city the service that they provide, I'm ready.

Thank you, Councilmember Diaz, Deputy Mayor Daniels.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um I I can appreciate council member uh Diaz's question because I feel like I had the exact same one and it felt really silly and it didn't actually occur to me to ask in any of the conversations that we had about this.

If we have all these people in the hopper, it seems like they already just want to be here.

So um, and I saw I appreciate you kind of explaining that.

I think um I would be remiss if I didn't maybe offer or ask again how we chose, and maybe it's not a question, more of a common, and just kind of thinking about the layers and layers of which we think about our budget.

I think it's incumbent upon us to always ask how we got to our number.

And I heard you say earlier that uh some folks are offering 20, and then I think our um competitors up north who have significantly more money than us are offering um 50, and I think what would what would naturally make sense to me would be like at the 35 mark, which is kind of where we are in terms of like um our kind of um comparisons and budget, but I know that you're trying to meet also a need of these officers, and I and I wanna just I think my fear is just maybe sometimes we're overshooting or over or starting a trend that we might not be able to keep up with in the future, and if we're starting at 50, then is that what the precedence is gonna be for the you know for any time we need or want anything, and I just want to make sure that we're not starting at the top and we're starting at um a responsible place where we can also still incentivize folks to come here.

Right.

If you remember, uh, in the not too distant past, there were much higher numbers that were out there than 50, right?

And you know, there's still the vacancies, and you might you know indicate Seattle's got a lot of money, they also have a lot of vacancies.

We have uh we're we're asking for what I feel is a very reasonable cap, you know, getting that that 20 in there.

Uh we have the ability to re-evaluate and the sunsets, and so that is something that you have to evaluate, and you have to you don't want to take off more than you can chew, like you said, and so um I do believe that um you know I'm I'm hopeful that I'm trusted with you know, I'm I am bringing the very best package forward to get the very best officers, and you know, we've yeah, it is a lot of money, but but we've also capped it so that we can say that we are being responsible.

I will tell you firsthand in working with the team that's at Tacoma, you know, from you know, the the chief, the deputy chief's position, you know, our assistant chiefs, and all the way down.

Our leadership team does a phenomenal job of what I like to call minding the store, right?

They're coming to me and they're saying, Hey, you know, if an emergency comes up, you know, let's look at it, let's sit from back here, let's figure out where we're at.

Everybody that's working on the agency is really diligently looking to see how we're best spending right the money in our checkbook, but also how we're balancing that to ensure that that the officers that are working for us are well taken care of.

And I I do believe that and I get it where you're you're talking about $50,000 is a lot of money.

But when you look at big picture and you look at value and you look at what we're asking, right, to for these uh individuals to come for, I think that it's well worth it.

I would not come up with that amount if I thought that it was doable at hey, let's look at 35.

Or I mean, we looked at every every you know, point, and so uh, and I have I looked back over, you know, any since incentives you know began, right?

I've I've looked at those costs, and um I will tell you that I firmly believe and I trust in our hiring and our recruiting that this is going to take all of our vacancy away, and so we may even get to a spot where we're able to to really say, Hey, we're gonna be able to stop this for a little bit and then just be hiring in single digits versus the the double digits that we're at too.

I really appreciate that, and I think one of the things that we're probably all struggling with is kind of what you alluded to earlier when you said we have the best chief in the region, right?

Is that we feel like I I'll just speak for myself.

I feel like we have one of the best places to work, and so like I feel like I I would come here for 40 dollars, right?

Like we really have a good place to work, and um it's hard for us to maybe stomach that it costs so much to that we're begging people to want to work in a really great place, and so um I think that's the struggle that you're hearing here.

But I fully get it.

Um, and I know that we need to do what we need to do, and I'm really excited to have um a potentially fully staffed police force.

I don't even know what that even looks like.

So um, yeah, I'd love to to be the first to have that.

Right, and and that is, I mean, that's a huge legacy.

And you know, I've told every single person that's interested in coming over, you're not coming over for the chief, right?

That could change any day, right?

See it's change, but what we want to do is make sure that we're growing our agency so that when you are looking, you know, for promotions, people that are doing things that we can do that from within.

We can reward the men and women for the hard work that they've done so that they don't go look for another agency.

We want to keep them working for the Tacoma Police Department, and I'd like to to just add to that comment.

It is a great job.

It's a phenomenal job.

We get along well, it it is amazing.

But remember, it's the career in itself that people are not coming to, right?

So, yes, Tacoma is phenomenal.

We're great, you know.

We have if nothing else, the funniest police chief, I can tell you that right now.

So and a police chief who can dance, as I determined on Saturday.

Oh, we had to we had to wobble there.

Okay.

So that said, I will definitely say that that um I'm I'm proud.

This is not an act.

This is something that that I live and breathe.

I will never embarrass you.

I didn't know this judge.

Hey man, if the if the dance shoes fit, sometimes you gotta show off the moves.

That's all I got to say.

Before I call on on council member Heinz.

I I I too just wanna I I want you to know that at least I and I I think I can say this on behalf of the whole coup of the whole council.

Um the digging in and the questions are not don't have anything to do with our confidence in you and and and the fact that you're gonna bring us the best and you're gonna work hard and you're gonna make sure we get the right officers.

That I don't think that's a question among everybody.

I think in the face of what the overall city is facing.

Um the police department and the fire department obviously, if we if we look at where we spend our budget, we know where our first commitment is, right?

Our our first commitment to this community is public safety.

There's no doubt about that.

Nobody can argue that based on the budget alone, over 70% of our or almost 70% of our budget goes to police and fire.

So it is not, I don't think it has anything to do with the confidence of in you or the respect um and appreciation we have for our police department.

It is just a mere we are in a budget deficit.

And how do we how do we get comfortable with making that deficit even bigger in light of what we just learned about where we are in revenue and expenses?

Um in light of the fact that while police and while police are is are one of our number one commits, public safety is our number one commitment.

Um there are other things that contribute to keeping the city safe.

And we have to also make sure that we're continuing to fund those things.

We gotta make sure that traffic light works so we have less accidents.

We gotta make sure that you know that we have um we have uh programs like in neighborhood and community services for before and after school and summer late nights that help keep crime down, right?

So we we've got to make sure that we do these other things that complement the work of the police department.

So I just want to be super clear that none of these questions and even to our officers who may be live listening, none of these comments and questions are critical of the police department.

It's just trying to wrap our head around how we do public safety and do all of the other things that folks expect the city to do.

So I guess um I I'm gonna I council member Hines, I'll turn to you.

Thank you.

Uh a couple this has been good to clarify a couple questions I had.

So when someone transferred letters over, they're not allowed to work any overtime for an extended period of time.

They're allowed to work city overtime, um, shift extensions, patrol shortage, stuff along those lines.

They're not uh under contract allowed to work any off-duty security, construction jobs, securities, those type of venues.

Gotcha.

Do we have any idea what the average Tacoma police officer makes in those amounts?

Like what they tend to earn.

No, it varies because some officers work more, some officers will only work it during the holidays, or if they got a trip coming up, so I don't have a uh dollar amount for you.

Okay.

This is I think that also frames some of this conversation too, right?

Which is if if if we have an officer that's making a hundred thousand dollars a year in overtime, which I think we do have a few of them uh close to that amount, um, that when they can't do that for an entire year, it's a pretty large financial hit that it has to be a consideration.

Um, I think my second question was I I guess I'm surprised because I mean I'm a teacher by background, right?

And I changed districts, it didn't mean I went to the bottom of the pile, but in the police contract, if I was to move um jurisdictions, I would move to the at the bottom seniority-wise, that how it's written.

That's not unique.

That's okay.

Yeah, that's across the nation.

Okay.

I mean, I think that was also a uh a question I have.

I had too, right?

Because I um it I think that is a good point to be made that um I would really consider if I was working day shifts with if I had young kids and I was working day shifts or something that would accommodate me to be around my children if I was to change, and all of a sudden I'm working grave shifts.

And that there's somebody who's been there maybe four years that's not working grace anymore.

Um it would be I could see that being a consideration that would be in someone's mind.

So this is good to for me to help understand this.

Um I think my my other question was do we still have the retention bonus that we authorized a few years ago?

Like were with people near retirement to get them to stay on.

Does that still exist, or is that also sunset?

Oh, sorry, sunset.

Okay.

So I think that's just something else to think that I have been thinking about too is if the current retention bonus is now no longer with us and the the or sorry, the retention bonus is not with us, and the recruitment bonus is not with us, then you know what is where does this fit into all of that?

Um it looks relatively in line with what other cities are doing.

Um so I mean, I think it makes sense to me.

Uh my last question was if we are authorizing this for 20.

There's 40 applicants, how do we determine who gets those 20 spots?

Well, and just like with civil service, it comes in that the order that those applications were were you know sent in and received and the completion of everything that goes with that, right?

So once they get their application in and then they have the opportunity to fill out the paperwork that comes with that, that is their personal history statement that goes over the time I think that they learn to walk pretty much, and so it's it's getting in there in the time they come in.

I mean, I I asked that question.

And then they stay on a list.

I'm sorry.

Well, you know, I asked the question because if there were 20 30 available spots and five people applied, you're not able to maybe deal with the candid quality quite at the same level if there's 20 spots and there's 40 people.

So I think it actually lends credence to the idea that this is going to bring us people who are right for the organization, and that we have some selectivity about who we're deciding should be to call police officers.

That's right.

So uh no, I don't have any further questions.

Thank you, Chief.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, my mayor.

Great.

Um, do we have any other questions at this time?

So I have a few more, but Chief, I'm gonna we have executive session, closed session still.

I'm gonna take them offline with you.

Um, just because I think when I kind of asked my question around um, you know, what if we what if we did it in a way that one to five years was one, you know, based on experience, plus that they also get to come in at a higher rate of pay.

So they're not necessarily they could potentially be gaining annual salary in addition to this.

So I just want to kind of talk that through with you so I can get comfortable and maybe maybe think about um proposing something that might be in that way, but I can just talk with you about that offline um and then maybe get that out in an email to the rest of the council if that's something that you're that you're open to maybe thinking about and looking at.

Um, but again, super excited about the fact that you're bringing this forward.

I don't think in my 15 years at the city, seven is a council member and almost eight as a mayor.

I don't think I um have ever sat here when we had a fully staffed police department.

Um so that that that's that that's it would be great to feel that, even if only for a few days um to see us at that level.

So um I think this is a great idea.

Just just trying again to wrap wrap our heads around the numbers and and what that means for everything we do as a city.

So thank you all so much for all this hard work and and look forward to continued conversations before we see you back at the council meeting on the ninth.

Thank you very much.

Great, thank you for your time and support.

Thank you.

Thank you, Christina, for all your hard work.

All right.

So um we're gonna now move on to other items of interest, and I'm gonna start by calling on Council Member Diaz to present a CCR for the advocates for immigrants and detention northwest support.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um I am bringing forward a CCR for $20,000 for content in council contingency funds to support advocates for immigrants in detention Northwest or aid Northwest of as um those of us who are familiar with the organization have known to call them.

Uh less than the cost of one lateral police officer for what it's worth, despite being a completely different fund of money.

This funding would go be split between $8,000 for the Aid Northwest phone call fund, which uh for those of us who are on council last time I brought this request forward is a phone call fund where Aid Northwest puts money on individuals' cards so folks can call their lawyers, can call family.

None of those kinds of calls are covered because the detention center is a private facility, and so this is a way for folks to get access to justice when they're already seeing a lot of lack of due process in society and how they even came to be in the detention center.

So that is an ongoing need, and to address anyone who might have this question.

Nothing in the last CCR we passed said that we couldn't do that kind of funding again.

So just to note that um the other pot of money of the 20K would be 12k for support for the welcoming center that Aid Northwest runs right outside of the detention center.

It fills a really critical gap for folks who are leaving the detention center in the event that folks are able to actually get through the process and are released and are not being um deported straight away.

They are just literally put outside the gates in the tide flats, and so folks are often just left with whatever they went into detention with.

So usually a dead phone and whatever clothes they had that were from, whatever season it was that they were taken.

Um we know that folks are spending on average way longer in the facility than they have in the past as part of ICES and Geo Group's current tactics.

So we have a really critical service that Aid Northwest provides through the welcome center.

Just a couple weeks ago, they reached out to our office about someone who was being released that day, or I believe the next day, who was in a wheelchair and had an oxygen tank, and they were looking for a way to get that person um transit um options to where they were meeting, I think, with folks to actually just get to their next destination.

And so, had they not had that welcome center there fully staffed with the resources to reach out to us, that person would just be literally just rolling in the tide flats until who knows when to no good end outcome there.

So we know that this money will be going towards really important critical work.

Um for context as well.

I wanted to add that in the last time that we did the call center fund, uh, the detention center was about half capacity.

Their capacity is about 1,500 seven uh uh thousand five hundred and seventy-five technical spaces.

Um they used to be at about 700 people as of August 1 per council member or Congresswoman Randall's office, they were at about uh thousand five hundred and sixty-two, so they're fluctuating right up to their capacity, and so the need for folks is growing both for the phone fund and for folks out um coming out as they're sort of revolving folks over.

Um, those are some of the high levels I wanted to hit around this request and the urgent need.

I was able to go down to the detention center and talk to some detainees with a couple colleagues a month or two ago and just see firsthand and hear some of this personal stories, and it has been really hard to know what folks are going through inside, and so I'm really grateful to Aid Nordobluss and the work and the provide that they're providing to folks as a resource, both upon exit and in just conversating with folks, helping connect people with lawyers who are not predatory, all those kinds of things.

And so I'm um hoping that colleagues will consider this request and um welcome any questions folks might have.

All right, thank you, council member.

Um, I'm gonna start with council member Walker, who looks like she's first.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Um, just wanted to say thank you, Councilmember Diaz, for your leadership on this.

Happy to be a sponsor of it.

Um, and thank you to Aid Northwest for all the good work they do in a tough situation.

Um, really, as you said, Councilmember Diaz, um, a key piece of the um as detainees are released and getting them back to their families.

So really appreciate the work that they do.

I just wanted to add because we often get asked, you know, it's ridiculous that they have the detainees have to have a phone um card to make phone calls.

We agree, and this continues to be part of our legislative asks and um very specific letters to our federal legislators to change or put pressure on them to change the rules on phone calls and other things um related to the detention center, but we don't have control of that decision, so I feel like this is an important um thing we can do in in the context of the situation we're in.

So appreciate that, and we will continue to do that legislative work.

Thank you.

Councilmember Bumba.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

And I want to um just echo what council member Walker had to say.

But I was at commission um the commission for immigrant and refugee affairs last night, and they brought up this issue about people wanting to reach out to their lawyers, and they don't have the money to make the call.

And so I really appreciate when I came in today that you had a fix for it.

And I actually read it last night on my um because actually prepare for meetings, and um I want to thank you so much for leading on this.

Um, you know, I I too went on a tour of the detention center and um listening to people really basically talk about how the government is just using these people as a way to make money is just horrid that they're paying for things like a two dollars for a bottle of water at the commissary, and it's six dollars for a phone call card that has 52 minutes on it, and it's just ridiculous.

And so I really appreciate finding a way to help people and support them while they're sitting here in this prison that's down in our tide flats.

So thank you so much for the work you're doing.

Also, um, just so people know Aid Northwest, they also provide like a backpack to people with basic food because they don't even have food when they get out, um, a bus pass to get where they need to go.

Um, sometimes they're leaving to go to leave our country and they don't have any money to get where they need to go.

So I really appreciate the work they do.

Um, they have a safe house for people.

Um, they just are such a great organization, and I'm glad that they're located in our city and we have such caring people.

So thank you.

Okay.

Um back up.

Yeah, no, I just was waiting in case there's other questions.

Oh, do you have more to say though?

Uh no, just thank you.

Okay.

Um, I don't think I have any questions.

I was just gonna thank you for putting this together.

I think if I I think the questions I have in general about, I think you kind of answered in the beginning about kind of redoing things like this.

I feel like um my question would be to any nonprofit that we see twice is like what is the overall fundraising plan?

Because this feels like something that would be um a great time to get local community support and dollars for these exact things.

Um, and I wonder what the landscape for that is and if there is a way that we can support them in either any any of our other ongoing operating budgets or like if there's an opportunity to apply there, I don't know if they fit in the things that we do there.

Um, but like how do we make sure that they can do this ongoing and that it's not like a continuous thing that you have to keep asking for.

Thank you.

Um that question actually came up as I was talking with the CCR with um co-sponsors as well.

So um to address sort of two different things there.

One is that this uh this council contingency request is not um like the whole of their budget for the year.

They do get other grants and other fundraising that they aid Northwest does to fund this work.

Uh they only have one staffer, all the rest is all board volunteer work and hours and donations for folks for the backpacks, all those kinds of things.

Um, and there is no, to my knowledge, existing standing pot of money, say through CBS or through our other programs um that they can apply for through the city.

So that I'm sure that there's other opportunities for towards general nonprofits that they're in competition for, but nothing from the city.

So if we wanted to look at that sort of on a structural level, maybe at I don't know if it's at Midmod or the next biennial budget to how we could create some sort of a competitive pot for folks who have different needs that they're filling with immigrant populations.

We can look at that um going forward.

I think I don't know where that work would go if that's just directing the city manager, but we don't have something currently to send them towards, which is why there was no cap last time to say they couldn't come back again.

But to your point, we should probably figure out where that where that lives.

Yeah, and I don't know that if I don't I don't know that it like would be us.

I don't know if that would be county, um, because I feels like this feels like a county kind of program because I know they have all of the kind of programs that we don't do on the operation side, it feels like they kind of have that abundance of of dollars for that.

But I know that those are on a different timeline, and so um, yeah, that's not really a question.

That's just more of a like this seems like a really opportune time to like get like again.

This is the same thing we're facing with the library of like we have volunteers here, but we don't have the infrastructure to create these permanent funding um sources, and it just seems to be a competing need, and then it just falls back on us, and we are stretched.

So just you know, something I'm thinking about.

But I appreciate you bringing this forward.

So thank you.

You got it.

Um if there okay, council member Bushnell.

Thank you.

I just wanted to chime in.

I I had a chance to talk with Councilmember Diaz about this very specific uh topic as well, and and thank you for uh for your leadership on this.

I'm really happy to be able to co-sponsor it.

Um I know a few years ago, uh Councilmember Blocker had helped put together like a uh a portal for uh folks to donate to.

I don't know if that's still, I don't know if that's still uh active currently, but maybe that's something that we could potentially revisit um in order to help maybe go into something like this or other needs that uh our community has down there.

Um so I I maybe look to the city manager to see what the state of that is.

I it's my understanding when when it first came up, uh it had gotten some donations, but it didn't nearly pick up as much as we were hoping it would.

Um, and I think a lot of it was directed towards specifically um uh legal defense funding.

Um so maybe there's a way we can talk about it.

And and again, I think I think um uh to your point earlier, um, this is not just a Tacoma issue, it's a regional facility.

And so I think beyond even just county, we should be looking at state to help support uh the city and helping to address uh the concerns that the community has here.

So and I think that based on everything that's happening federally, we could potentially get that support.

Yep.

Councilmember Walker.

I was just gonna say, I believe that is set up specifically for legal funds, but just to make that an official request, city manager, that we get a report on that.

Thanks.

Okay.

All right.

Um, this is not mine, but I will uh present it on behalf of the mayor.

Um it says today I want to provide a brief update from our most recent OSAC meeting from last Friday.

First, OSAC reached consensus to move forward with the with Profman as our executive recruiting firm.

I'm supposed to be going through this one.

Okay.

We're deep down.

And we also confirm the eight competencies that will guide the recruitment process based on the card sort HR led for us.

On the position description, OSAC will be reviewing the edited document and final job posting recruiting recruitment brochure.

Staff will return with a proposed timeline that aligns the executive recruitment process, community engagement efforts, and city council's role.

We will also be scheduling a meeting with OSAC and Profman to finalize the plan and timeline.

Following that, uh, we will identify a future presentation to the full council, likely after Profman has identified a pool of candidates.

On a community engagement, there's a strong consensus on the general approach.

We will explore partnerships with community groups to host engagement sessions, ensure opportunities for community members to submit questions and view discussions on demand and make sure our process allows the community to feel heard and engaged.

We'll also draw on the results from our past community survey and other feedback to honor what has already been shared.

Finally, before recruitment begins, we discussed hosting a pre-recruitment engagement pre-recruitment engagement sessions with the community focused on the question what is a city manager to help frame our search and set expectations for the role before the more uh in-depth outreach.

Um I am not gonna ask for questions at this time because I don't have any answers.

Um but are there any other items to share?

Oh can I see something?

Is this a question?

No, I'm gonna.

Oh, yeah.

Okay, um, Deputy Mayor, I just wanted to um chime in a little bit about one of those ideas.

Um, was I was talking with the mayor about the recruitment, and I said it would be great if we could have some past or some other city managers like give some information about what it is to be a city manager, not to say that we don't know what it is to be a city manager, but to get more information about other cities and how their city manager has worked at that city, so we have more information.

So maybe city managers that have um a mayor that is chosen from within the city council, and then maybe a city manager that works at a city where they don't have term limits and things like that.

So just people who have been city managers, that kind of thing.

So and meeting with the community.

So thank you.

Um are there any other comments from the group that was there?

No.

Okay.

Any committee reports to just another item of interest, it's not on the notes.

Okay.

Um, just very quickly, um, so last week uh during our last study session, staff led a South Tacoma Groundwater Protection District uh code update public hearing debrief uh in their present presentation.

Uh code update public hearing debrief in their present presentation identified four suggested edits to the STGPD proposal, uh which included adding language for non-conforming uses, existing underground storage tanks may be replaced, provided their replacement tanks meet the standards for a new tank, removing waiver language, referencing the various processes as well, uh clarify clarification for split parcels and other minor code updates uh based on public comments.

Um so um I am planning on bringing these suggested edits for a vote on the second reading of the ordinance on Tuesday, September ninth, so just want to give you all a heads up.

So it's all those staff recommendations that they're looking to to clean up.

Um council member Scott is going to be working with me on those as well.

So just wanted to give everybody else up.

Um we have one ceremony tonight recognizing Animal Stevens as honorary chief for the day.

And uh no changes to the agenda as proposed, and we have two opportunities for the public to comment tonight, public comment as well as form.

You got it.

Okay.

Um I will entertain a motion to convene to to an executive session.

RCW four two point three zero point one I I and I I to discuss potential litigation not to exceed thirty minutes.

So moved.

Second.

All right, all those in favor to convene to an executive session signify by saying I.

All those opposed signify by saying nay.

The motion is declared adopted.

Um got a labor strategy also, but do you want to do that now or do we want to do come back?

Okay.

I will take um I'll entertain another motion to commit to a closed session pursuant RCW four two point three zero point one four oh four A and B to discuss labor strategy.

So move.

Second.

All right, all those in favor signify by saying aye.

All those opposed signify by saying nay.

The motion is declared adopted.

The closed session will be conducted once the study session executive session has adjourned.

Um so with that there will be no other business other than to attend the meeting.