I'd like to call to order the city council study session of September 15th, 2025.

Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Councilmember Bushnell.

Present.

Deputy Mayor Daniels.

Councilmember Diaz.

Absent councilmember Hines.

Yeah.

Oh, that was Diaz.

Councilmember Hines.

Absent.

Councilmember Rumba here.

Councilmember Sidalgay.

Councilmember Scott.

Absent councilmember Walker.

Sorry.

I'm here.

Okay.

Councilmember Walker.

Here.

Mayor Woodards.

Here.

The study session materials sent you at 11.

All right.

We have a very short agenda today.

So I'm gonna skip over items other items of interest, and I'll come back to that while Councilmember Heinz gets settled.

I'm gonna move on to item number two, which is agenda review and city manager's weekly report.

City manager.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, uh, members of council council, deputy mayor.

Um we have two ceremonials on tonight's agenda.

First being um a proclamation for September 15th through October 15th, 2025, as Hispanic and Latin Heritage Month, as well as uh the city council tonight will be recognizing the students of Lincoln and Stadium High Schools.

Um no changes as proposed for tonight's agenda and uh as of note for public comment, there will be one opportunity tonight under public comment period for the for the public to weigh in on matters pertaining to the agenda.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, City Manager.

All right, I'm gonna go back to other items in of interest, and I'm gonna call on um council member Hines, who has a council consideration, council consideration request on an ordinance to amend Tacoma Municipal Cold Chapter 6A.110 regarding property tax exempted exemptions for multifamily housing.

Councilmember Heinz.

Uh thank you, Madam Mayor.

So uh first of all, I just want to say thank you to all my government performance and finance committee members and all their work upon what brought us here today.

Let me move this microphone a little closer.

So uh as many of you know, uh multifamily tax exemption was something that government performance and finance took up back in 2021, and we made some um changes to the policy then, kind of was the first major update we'd had for quite a few years.

Um, you know, removing the eight-year multifamily tax exemption from the uh Proctor Point Rust in very high opportunity areas, expanding the 12-year to the areas that have since been designated mid scale, which was um I guess UR2 when it was finally adopted as part of home Tacoma phase two, and so expanding to that area and also expanding to our some of our neighborhood nodes, the 12-year MFTE.

We also authorized the 20-year MFTE at that point in time, and we lowered the affordability requirement from 80% of the area mean income to 78% of the area meaning income.

So those are the five major changes we made in 2021.

At that time, we also said that we were gonna come back and talk further about making changes and set kind of a uh three-year window by which we would reexamine the policy.

So we began that review back in 2024, and it's taken up until now, but uh I'm ready to kind of share out what our committee has discussed, and then I will also allow, I'm not allowing anyway.

I encourage my colleagues who are on the committee to um share some of their thoughts too as we get further.

So um as part of this review process, we've had three meetings at Government Performance and Finance to kind of talk through potential changes to the multifamily tax exemption.

Um I also hosted uh round table with some community stakeholders to kind of learn more about the multifamily tax exemption, some of the challenges, some of the benefits, some of the um you know where it's being utilized and not being utilized.

So those are some um pretty important uh good questions we got we got some feedback, and that helped guide the proposals before you here today.

So we at our la at our government performance and finance committee meeting uh in the last month, uh we moved forward a few um items for consideration for the full council.

Oh, so number one, uh we decided propose to increase the minimum number of units required for the year MFT from four units to 20 units per project.

So currently in our mixed use centers, uh if you are building a project anything more than four units, uh you could are eligible to either for either the eight-year MFT or the 12-year MFT.

And as for for background, um the 12-year MFT requires that 20% of the units that are produced are available at someone making 70% of the area median income.

And that's generated by HUD every year.

Uh it's based on kind of the Seattle uh Tacoma, the the numbers generated for the uh Seattle Tacoma metropolitan area.

Um but that is what the number we use.

We actually moved it to 70% of AMI, mostly because that gets us closer to kind of the 80% number in Pierce County because the number is generated for the entire region for the kind of Seattle Tacoma region.

So this project would mean that if you were going to be in a mixed use center, because the only place we still allow the eight-year MFTE is in our mixed use centers or downtown core area.

The eight year is kind of the pure economic development tool that exists versus the 12 year has an affordability component.

And the idea behind this was when we expanded the MFTE out into the mid scale areas or the UR2 areas, the idea was to incentivize some of this missing middle housing.