I'd like to call to order the city council study session of October 7th, 2025.

Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Councilmember Bushnell.

Present.

Councilmember Daniels, or sorry, Deputy Mayor Daniels.

Abstent Councilmember Diaz.

Here.

Councilmember Hines.

Councilmember Rumba here.

Councilmember Sidalgay.

Here.

Councilmember Scott.

Here.

Councilmember Walker.

Here.

Mayor Witards.

Here.

The material is sent to you at 1215.

Thank you very much.

All right.

Our first agenda item today is the Historic Preservation Code Amendments.

And I would like to begin by calling on Planning and Development Services, Historic Preservation Office Officer, Ruben McKnight to begin the presentation.

Ruben, it's all yours.

Thank you, Madam Mayor and members of the council.

I'm Reuben McKnight, I'm the Historic Preservation Officer with Plan Development Services.

I'm here with Matt Davis with the Architectural Resources Group, who has been uh helping us with the uh code amendments that um are the subject of a public hearing tonight at City Council.

And so, let's see if this works.

Just give me a second here.

I'm not having any advance.

Okay, there you go.

So um the subject of uh the um presentation for study session today is really to provide an introduction to the um the planning commission's recommendation they made back on September 3rd to City Council.

Um and so in this presentation, I'm going to go through um kind of the broad overview of the recommendations and sort of the um policy guidance that we received that that guided our way through these um uh these recommendations and then uh Matt will be taking over and going through some of the different code sections that um are in the amendment package and um things that the council may hear at the public hearing tonight and the written commentary.

So really um the scope of this uh is uh amendments to the nomination process and criteria for local historic districts and individual city landmarks um and uh uh reducing some of the uh regulatory burdens on um uh properties within uh residential historic districts, the creation of a new community heritage register, uh the expansion of the existing special tax valuation incentive program, which council may be familiar with uh to include national register properties is currently limited to uh local landmarks and local historic districts, as well as changes that are driven by changes in state law, uh such as um owner consent requirements and then mitigation guidance into the demolition and review process.

So kind of a broad overview.

Um the the guidance that we've received um through the prior discussions uh with city council, with the planning commission, and with the landmarks commission over the past couple of years, um and also uh influenced by the direction we receive from the uh moratorium that currently exists on the consideration of local historic districts.

Um we kind of have uh an overall kind of framework we're working with.

And the first really was to work with the uh nomination process, especially for um local historic districts, but also for local landmarks.

And what you'll see in the code is um the addition of inclusive criteria for nomination processes, uh a clarification and cleanup of the historic district nomination process, especially the coordination between the planning commission and the landmarks commission, and then as I mentioned before, there's some changes at the state level that we had to incorporate.

So for the district nomination process, really um it's a zoning process, and what we have done and what our guidance was really was to make it consistent with the existing zoning area wide rezone process um that is in code and the landmarks commission is a process and the historic district process under the existing code differs slightly, um, especially um in the sense that the um the local historic districts are the only thing they don't move forward to city council if the planning commission doesn't recommend it forward.

Oops, sorry.

Um as I mentioned before, uh our direction was to consider ways to reduce barriers and burdens on uh um design review within local historic districts, and there's actually um we've had some comment on that at the planning commission level, and I'd expect that the comments that come into city council will also um uh reflect some some uh uh input on that.

And then the demolition review, we had some directors' rules or administrative rules to clarify the code, and then um things like uh compulsory nominations uh for landmarks that are considered for potential landmarks that are considered for demolition.

Um we we no longer are able to put those on a historic register um without the consent of the owner.

And so this is my last slide before I hand it off to Matt.

Um, just general to orient ourselves what the historic preservation program does.

Um so we have several functional areas.

We identify historic sites, uh we do that through historic surveys and inventories.

We administer the Tacoma Register of Historic Places, including local historic districts and that area-wide rezone process and the designation of landmarks to the individual Tacoma Register of Historic Places.

We do design review and also development review for cultural resources impacts, approval of historic incentives, as I mentioned, the special tax valuation program.

And then also we have events and outreach programming year-wide, but especially in historic preservation month.

And so that's kind of the scope that we're working with.

And in this in the present, you know, set of code amendments, really, we're working also with the with a very specific scope, this oriented towards the code.

There's other broader program areas and things like that that we'll be will be working on in the future as a part of the comprehensive plan amendment as we move forward.

So Matt, I'm gonna turn it over to you.

All right, thank you, Ruben.

Um so I just have eight slides that at a very high level walk uh council members through the code changes to give you a flavor of the recommendations.

For starters, the changes to the zoning code were really uh were largely procedural in nature.

Uh they were about you know clarifying that historic district requests are in fact zoning requests, um, clarifying the sequential review between the landmarks commission and the planning commission with the idea that the LPC is reviewing historic significance while the planning commission is reviewing compatibility with land use policy and framework.

And that finally that the recommendations of both those commissions come forward to you as the council, as is the case with other zoning uh recommendations.

The recommended changes uh include several important clarifications regarding historic design review, including exempting religious properties from historic review in keeping with state law, uh exempting ordinary maintenance and repairs, and exempting changes that uh some changes that are not on a prominent facade or located on a prominent parcel, and removing some outdated requirements that had been in the code regarding paper submittals.

The code recommendations also clarify eligibility for the Tacoma Register, in particular changing the minimum age for eligibility from 50 years to 40 years in keeping with recent changes to state law, and adding new eligibility criterion for culturally significant events, individuals and themes that are underrepresented in the existing register for both individual and districts.

The recommendations also include important clarifications regarding how properties can be nominated to the Tacoma Register, and that in particular adding the provision that owner consent is required for properties less than 125 years of age, again, in keeping with uh recent changes to state law, and we also cleaned up some of the language that previously referred to threshold criteria, which was a confusing term.

Many of the recommendations make, I mean, not surprisingly, uh many of the recommendations make important changes to the review process and submittal requirements for local historic district nominations.

Uh and again, a lot of this was about clarifying the relative roles of the landmarks commission and the planning commission, um, clarifying assessment and eligibility criteria for district, clarifying that zoning district applications are in fact uh zon the historic district nominations are in fact zoning applications, uh, and thereby you know tying it to the planning commission work plan, uh, and then finally also adding uh a requirement that district submittals require they include discussion of relevant social and indigenous history uh if applicable.

Okay.

The recommendations also include creation of a new Tacoma Community Heritage Register, which is intended for those properties that may not meet the uh eligibility requirements of the existing Tacoma Register of Historic Properties, but are still properties worthy of some form of recognition.

So again, this is more uh commemorative in purpose and and not regulatory.

The recommendations included a simple but important expansion of the special tax evaluation process, uh, in particular by expanding it to include national register listed properties, whereas before it had been limited to uh locally listed landmarks and historic districts.

And finally, the recommendations include several important changes to the demolition review process.

But uh part B of that uh section did fall under our purview, and so again, we carried through recent changes to state law around uh owner consent requirements for properties under 125 years of age, added some mitigation guidance and incorporated recent director's rule uh 04-2021, which requires discussion of feasibility.

So with that, I'll hand it back to Ruben to discuss the project schedule and wrap up our presentation.

Thank you.

So tonight, as I mentioned, uh there's a public hearing on on your agenda.

Um, and uh, and then following that uh next week on October 14th, uh we're scheduled to come back for a first reading of the ordinance amendment package, uh followed by a um uh final reading on the 21st uh with an effective date then at the beginning of November, which should bring us uh to a close uh um right um before the uh termination of the existing moratorium on local historic districts.

And that concludes the presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you both very much for the presentation.

Do we have any questions?

Councilmember Rumbah.

Thank you, Mayor, and I want to thank you both for like I thought you did a really great job explaining what the changes are.

I just have some questions sort of around how does this code impact an income limited residents need to update a window or some other part of their house that if they can't afford a historic option, is there a waiver option?

Uh thank you, Councilmember Rumbaugh.

So that's a great question.

Um the existing code um and which we are not planning at this point to make any changes to um within this scope, but there is economic hardship provisions in the code.

Um there's also economic hardship uh guidance within the um wedge and north slope design guidelines.

And so the the wedge guidelines are um are a little more general.

They talk about that the commission shall be um considerative, clearly documented cases of economic hardship when they're applying the guidelines and standards within there.

Um and really, I think as how how the landmarks commission operates generally is is the the overall scope of a project and and you know what the costs are and things like that are something the commission often considers the code itself, there is actually an economic hardship provision in the design review approval process, and so if there is uh a case of hardship that can be documented financially, the um commission can take that under consideration as part of this decision process.

Um, and then I'm also curious if we could just talk a little bit about the five-year waiting period.

I mean, I'm just looking at constituent concerns, and I under I if you could just talk a little bit about that because they're saying that that would keep us from establishing new city um historic districts.

Well, thank you, Councilmember.

So this is actually one that's received uh uh I think quite a bit of comment um at the planning commission level.

And uh so what the language says, and I think first of all, one of our our our guiding sort of um uh instructions was to um come up with some assessment criteria, kind of like what the planning commission uses for their zoning amendment process, you know, what do they consider when they're considering taking up an application for something?

And um, so the the question of when submittals are submitted, you know, repeat submittals uh come in, what kind of uh guidance is there for that?

Because in the existing code there isn't any.

So again, it repeats a middle.

So what does that mean?

A repeat submittal.

So a repeat submittal would be something that was submitted to the landmarks commission for consideration, and then for for whatever reason during the process, uh it didn't go through and wasn't enacted.

And so that five-year provision is really all it is is is guidance for the landmarks commission uh when they're considering whether it's appropriate for them to take on a uh an application that's they've already considered at some at some point in the past.

And so what the language says there is that the commission may, um, if it's been submitted within the last five years considered within the last five years, the commission may elect not to consider it again.

So that language is may, so they have a choice.

Okay, um, I appreciate that.

So I don't I I'm just trying to understand why they say that we're trying not to promote historic districts.

Like I don't think that that's not promoting historic districts.

I mean, it's just giving, I remember the case, which one we're talking about, and it was a lot of it was a lot of staff time, it was a lot of planning commission time and the landmarks commission.

It wasn't because I know they have a lot of things on their docket of things that they're hearing about, and it just I remember it taking a long time.

Um, yes, council member, that's correct.

And and and so it like it is guidance, and so it's not mandatory.

It's not like you submit the uh zoning application to the to the landmarks commission for historic district and then it gets denied or doesn't isn't passed, um, and then you submit it again.

It's not that you have to wait five years.

What is telling the landmarks commission is that if you're within that five year window, um they may consider whether or not they should consider it so soon, or if it should, you know, take a little more time or wait a little bit.

Um, but but they certainly could take it on and make their recommendation to the planning commission um, even if it is within five years if that's what they want to do.

And I really appreciate I really appreciate this conversation, and I just wanted to go on record that district two does have all of the historic districts, and I would love to see a historic district in some other part of our city.

So thank you so much.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Um let me call on Councilmember Bushnell.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, thank you, Ruben, and everybody else that helped make this uh possible.

I know that there's a lot of engagement that happened, and really excited to see we're kind of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel here.

Um, one of the questions I had in regards to the community heritage register, um, who who's maintaining that register?

Is it similar to like the historic register?

Um, and then my second question on that, and since it's non-regulatory in nature, does it still have to go through the same process?

And I don't maybe you said it and I just didn't catch it.

Uh thank you, Councilmember.

No, I I appreciate the question.

Um opportunity to clarify.

So the community heritage register, it is not regulatory, this first thing.

It's um it's something that's really designed to provide recognition and and uh and um you know in commemorative in nature.

So if something's placed in the community heritage register, there's not any sort of design review requirement that goes along with it.

Uh the process this described in code is very similar to the landmarks nomination process in which the landmarks commission reviews a proposal to put something on the community heritage register against the criteria that they have, and then they make a recommendation to the city council, and so it'd still be put on the on the heritage register by council resolution.

Um the as we were putting that together, we felt that the um the process of getting that recognition officially from the city was important, and so we retained that and um and and so the it just differs slightly, like the no requirements for design review, the age threshold is much lower, uh 25 years, but it doesn't restrict anything that you can do with the property, and it also is explicitly in the code does not obligate the city to maintain anything either.

So um, and in the future, for example, uh something ends up on the community heritage register, and it it could become historical in nature, is would it still have to go through the same process as the um if it wanted to be designated as historic, or is there kind of like a a different track that they can go down since it's been on the community register for so many years at this point by the time you know, you know, once 40 years, for example, is passed.

Thank you.

That's a good question.

Um, we we haven't um designed it to be a sort of a sequential or like you know a stage process.

I would say that probably in in practical terms, if something has been on the community heritage register been re recognized by the city, but then reaches that age threshold, and the the owner of the property supports putting it on the register.

I think we could probably facilitate that fairly easily if it meets the criteria for the historic register.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

I'm really excited to have the historic uh community heritage register because I think there's a lot of valuable um you know stories to tell all across the city that might not completely fit within the historic nature box, but it's something that is definitely worth telling.

So thank you for that.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Bushnell.

Do we have any other questions at this time?

Uh Deputy Mayor Oh, Councilmember Hines.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um one question I had, and just want to make sure, yes, it did.

Okay.

That it clarified one of the challenges I'd heard repeatedly, which is that the planning commission could be the uh the stop point for any of these, that this will allow things to move forward to the city council like money, other land use decisions, correct?

That is correct, council member.

Okay.

Uh I think that's my main question there.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

All right, Deputy Mayor Daniels.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, I just had a quick one that uh Councilmember Rumbaugh sparked, and that was about uh the waivers for financial um hardship.

Yes.

Does that apply only to individuals or can that apply to also organizations if they are um in a space that is considered to be historic?

Thank you, um Deputy Mayor.

That's an interesting question.

I think that the I would call uh I guess the way I would I would view it is the applicant, right?

And so the applicant might be an organization that's proposing work or it might be the the you know the property owner or or whatever.

I don't think that it defines that specifically.

It's more if someone applies to make an alteration to a building and they have an economic you know hardship issue that they'd approach it as the applicant.

So I'd say an organization probably could do the same thing.

Got it.

So it's not written in a way of personal income, it can also be there's a way for them to qualify based on um.

I guess what I'm asking for is a way for them to qualify both ways, since organizations don't have a personal income.

Deputy Mayor, I think that I I I believe that's the case.

Um I I can uh provide a probably more detailed response to that after the meeting because I'm gonna look a little bit at what the code says about how we make those determinations and just make sure I'm accurate.

Okay, perfect, thank you.

Sorry, we got a little distracted.

There's a baby in the audience.

Is that your baby?

Huh?

I was like, I was like, there's a baby.

Patrick Pets, that's your baby.

Look, look, that for everybody that's so unprofessional, and I apologize for everybody who's at home watching.

Um Pat McElliott, who is the vice president of local 31R Firefighters Union is here with the brand new baby, and we heard it cry.

So um, so great, thank you.

All right, do we have any other questions?

All right, you are all done.

Thank you very much for the presentation.

Thank you.

All right.

I am going to um I'm gonna have to step out for a moment right around uh right around 10 minutes to two, and I'll be back around 2 30.

Um, but I'm gonna change the agenda very quickly because I want to be here to talk about Tacoma Creates.

And so um I will um I'm gonna move that agenda item up.

It's a fourth agenda item.

Um, and so I'm gonna move it up to right now.

So our fourth agenda item today is the Tacoma Creates ordinance amendments.

And so um I wanted to talk to you all about an amendment that the sponsors of um of the Tacoma Creates reauthorization um is bringing forward.

Come on down.

No, you can come to the table.

I'm sure they'll have questions.

You can oh, you're gonna you're gonna go right there instead of sit with us.

Okay.

Look, look, that's fine.

That's fine.

Well, you can sit down then so you don't have to stand up the whole time.

Okay.

All right.

Um, so um, Deputy Mayor Daniels, um, Councilmember Scott, Councilmember Walker, and I um really appreciate the feedback that you've shared um for the proposed updates for Tacoma Creates.

Um, we have all been working very hard with the Tacoma Creates Advisory Board, community members, and city staff to find a way forward that helps to align our vision.

Uh, we have done our best to take um on board your valuable feedback and merge it with our efforts to champion what we what we hear from community, and we are excited to walk you through our updated proposal.

Let me first say um it was sent out to you, unfortunately got out to you late this afternoon, and I apologize for that.

Um, so it is in your inbox now.

Um, and so let me tell you what we have done in partnership with um the Tacoma Creates Advisory Board and members of the reauthorization and a lot of members who have been talking to us about um their concerns about capital.

So um, so first we have increased the total for cultural organization funding to 78% instead of 76, which was um a rallying cry from the community.

Um, to do so, we have decreased we have decreased the capacity and administration funding buckets by one percent so that we could add the 2% to the cultural organization funding.

78% is precisely the amount that our organizations are requesting, and we are pleased to have found a way to meet their request.

Secondly, we are adjusting the description of the cultural organization funding to simply note that funding for capital expenditures is allowable.

We have removed the language about six percent from this section.

Um, this meets a request from organizations to keep this language as flexible as possible.

And the third change it is we are making is to add the administration section of the code um a limit of six percent on the amount of funding that can be provided for capital expenditures with an ability to roll over any unallocated portion of this funding to the next year, not to exceed 12% per two-year period.

Um we are making this change because we do not want to see a scenario, a scenario where the entire 78% of funding for cultural organizations goes only to capital expenditures without anything to support programming.

So this change helps us, this change helps us place important guardrails on the scope of this funding.

And then fourth, we have also included language that states all capital expenditures will be funded with fund balance above reserves as available, which means the maximum amount of money can go to programming, and if there are if there's actual fund balance available, then that money can be contributed to the capital fund um to the capital fund.

And if there are if there's actual fund balance available, then that money can be contributed to the capital fund to the capital fund.

So this means that the approved capital expenditures could be funded.

I just said that by the Tacoma Creates underspent dollars when it is possible to do so.

This change further means that there could be a delay, that there could be a delay of at least several years on top of the one-year delayed start before new revenue would be directly would be directed towards capital expenditures, which means keeping as much money focused on programming as possible and keeping flexibility.

Before we answer any questions and hear your feedback, I do want to take a moment and express my deep appreciation for all the community members that have shared their perspectives with us.

The co-sponsors and I are especially grateful for the input we received from the Tacoma Creates Advisory Board and the Tacoma Creates Reauthorization Committee.

We were able to meet last Friday with our arts department and with um and with the members of this Tacoma Creates Reauthorization and myself.

And we spent um an hour and a half going back and forth trying to find a solution for the entire community.

I do want to take uh an extra moment to thank Christine Kahn, who is not in the room right now, um, that I can see she's probably in the back where she always is.

Um Christine Christina was in that meeting with us, and as we were all talking and going back and forth, a light bulb went on in her head, and she proposed this.

Um, and we were able to present it to the committee.

Um, they were excited about it and now fully support this reauthorization.

So I I do want to thank each of each one of you as well for your commitment commitment to getting this update right.

Um, you have each you have all raised um important points and questions, and I'm grateful to work alongside such dedicated professionals.

I also feel especially indebted to my fellow co-sponsors for the incredible amount of time and energy they spent developing these updates.

Their passion for Tacoma Creates and their willingness to find a shared vis vision benefits all of us.

Um so thank you to all four to all three of you for working alongside um me.

So now we are happy to take any questions about this updated proposal, and staff has joined us here.

So council member Walker.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, I don't have any questions.

I just really think it is important and valuable to load on the thanks to Christina Kahn because she has been hours and hours and hours trying to interpret all of our uh feedback and make it work, and it's really um appreciate all the time, but especially this last week in getting us over the finish line.

So I just want to um load on the thanks for Christina.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Councilmember Bush now.

Thank you, Mayor.

I just want to also uh do my appreciation to everybody uh on the arts and culture and vitali department, as well as as everybody else in the arts community, Mary yourself, and everybody else, Councilmember Rambaugh, um, and uh also my staff person, Linda, who helped me kind of talk through uh a lot of the the challenges that everybody was facing, kind of try to come up with solution.

And speaking of which I I do plan on withdrawing my amendment here that I have highlighted.

Um I really am glad that um it was helpful in these discussions.

Um and I also do have one quick question on the unspent um above uh unallocated funds.

Uh-huh.

Um in my amendment, I kind of talked about it being kind of an it could go into capital.

It looks like in this one it clarifies that it will only go into capital, isn't that correct?

No, it it still could go into capital, but it does it does not have to.

The um Tacoma Creates Advisory Board is working on um and and we've talked about this.

We wanted to get the reauthorization done first, but they're working on a spending plan for the unallocated dollars.

And so um, when when we can, we will use we will use that funding.

Um, and they they're they're very open to that and like that idea.

Okay, great.

I I just wanted to clarify that I think having having flexibility in that uh depending on what's going on out in the community, it's it's gonna be essential.

I think capital obviously could be a part of that, but there's many other um things that might be beneficial to support.

So thank you, Mark.

Thank you very much.

Uh Councilmember Rumbah.

I just I want to thank you, Mayor, for actually like listening.

I really appreciate your skill set because you got those people in the room and heard what they were thinking, and I I appreciate all the sponsors of this and us getting to something that I think is a win for everybody.

Thank you.

I had one um motion I was gonna bring forward and I mentioned it to you yesterday but I'll just read really quickly it's just a simple motion that makes no changes to the proposal and as we all know staff will review code changes passed by council and work with the Tacoma Creates Advisory Board to create criteria for Tacoma Creates applications I'm just asking in this motion to direct the city manager to present that criteria to us at a study session meeting prior to implementation.

Okay thank you super super easy thank you Councilmember Romba thank you for bringing that forward I think everybody is really curious about their spending plan and how they how um and how they plan to authorize these dollars but I will also say this one thing that really impressed me in that meeting on Friday um with with that group was um they realized um that there were people who spoke at the council meeting and that we heard from that they're not aware of um that are doing arts programming in our community who aren't a part of of the group that they represent and are really um going to work um matter of fact uh kimberly keith from um hilltop artists volunteered but really want to work on a way to make sure that we engage everyone in the process and so they were talking about some outreach um potential opportunity but they really want to get in touch with some of those members and community who um who spoke um at the meeting and and who um sent us letters so really proud of them council member sedalgay um thank you mayor and thank you everyone that um worked on this I really like it I think this is what we were all talking about I mean as I said last week we were almost there we're 99.9% of the way there this achieves the goal that I've been trying to think about myself but I think this is a more eloquent way of putting it uh quite frankly which is to um celebrate and being intentional about uh uh the priority of cultural and heritage programming throughout all of this and capital to support that because we never disagreed on that so um I like the way this is put together thank you for bringing it forward I know I just got to read it but I liked everything I read thank you thank you very much Councilmember Sidaga and again I apologize for getting it to you all so late um so are there any other comments do you want to say something?

Yeah Deputy Mayor thank you mayor I just wanted to thank Christina as well and I will do that um later on tonight formally but I wanted to do that and then I also wanted to thank you for uh making sure that we got to where we needed to be and for working with the organizations and uh the community to really bring this together.

Thank you.

I'm working for a long time on this councilmember Scott thank you Deputy Mayor uh thank you mayor and I I won't keep us too much longer on the topic especially since we're all at a point of agreeing um I uh just yeah thank you thank you to you mayor for for bringing people together thank you to the co-sponsors just for all the hard work and thank you very much to all of our lovely staff and our ours organizations uh for coming together and all the folks in the community who took the time to really chime in and share and to the wonderful um you know just the the the wonderful skills of compartmentalization and bringing things together that Christina Kahn has is unmatched so being able to hear all of our our wild thoughts and and put them help us put them into something that's really impactful and I think is really going to be um something that continues to help the community in a in a lot of ways going forward was is yeah I just can't understand how appreciative I am so thank you.

Thank you and and I I do just I I we talked a lot about Christina but I'm sitting across from Rebecca and Lisa and um they've done a ton of work as well I should also acknowledge Makota who's not here um for doing a lot of the work on the front end um but really want to thank Rebecca and Lisa for being flexible um and and doing all the the coordinating and and coming up with ideas to help us get to this point.

So I also really want to thank the two of you for for all that you've done to get us to this point.

This is this is how this is how it works right this is how it works when you just keep listening and working and working sometimes you can actually get to a place um where everyone or or most people can agree um and this is one of those situations where I weren't sure we would get there but really grateful that we were able to and I'm sure you all have a few things to say about that too but but we are here and so really grateful to the two of you and look forward to seeing you carry out um this this new opportunity for us so with that I don't have anything else any any other questions do you all have anything you want to to share you're all good okay all right well then I will check that off and move back up on the agenda and I'm going to ask you guys may be excused I'm going to um ask our uh our interim city manager Kim to um come forward um and they're going to um present the 2025 2026 mid-biennium budget modifications this is that's what this is

Well, then I will check that off and move back up on the agenda.

And I'm going to ask you guys maybe excused.

I'm going to ask our uh our interim city manager Kim to um come forward.

Um, and they're going to um present the 2025-2026 mid-biannium budget modifications.

This is that's what this is.

And you have lots of paper in front of you concerning uh uh for this.

I just want to quickly say um none of us are 10.

And so my oh my I don't know if anybody can read this, but thanks for putting it all together.

Madam Mayor, did we not include the monocle for No, you no, we didn't get the monocle.

That's what's missing.

We're we're we're iterating.

So thank you for the really I honestly I was just kidding about not having 10-year-old eyes, but really appreciate um the detail um of the presentation.

So I will turn it over to you.

Thank you.

Um Madam Mayor, uh Deputy Mayor and members of council.

Um I just want to share first and foremost my deepest appreciation for uh the finance team, Jeff Epton, Upton and uh the OMB team, the budget office, as well as all of our departments, our directors, uh, for the hard work and dedication in getting to this point for a proposed mid modification uh budget for your consideration as we close out the second half of this biannium.

Um, and just with that, as well, um I'm gonna turn it over to our finance director Churillo to um start the presentation and then I'll be back for some questions as well as some conversations on our steady state and cost containment.

I'd like to close uh mid mod with that.

And so with that, I'll turn it over to Director Trillo.

I'll be right back.

Thank you, City Manager.

Uh thank you, City Manager.

Um, my name is Andy Trulo, Finance Director for the City.

It is good to be here today to talk about uh mid mod budget adjustments.

The uh agenda you have before you is pretty basic.

We're gonna again do a quick review of some context with current economic conditions, uh, year to date revenue and expenditures, a little update from when we were here a couple months ago.

We'll walk through uh the proposed MidMod uh budget uh proposal and then end with some key dates on our calendar.

You all have before you one, I guess the mayor said, a very big long sheet that summarizes all the proposals that are included in the mid-MOD uh budget modification.

Just to orient you to that sheet, um, it's arranged by department.

You can see reductions and additions.

Uh the reductions have parentheses around them as negative numbers, the additions are positive.

Uh the general fund is the third column from the right.

All the other funds are that next column, and then we add those both together for that last column on the right.

Um, again, we'll mostly be talking about things that impact the general fund.

Uh that will be the main focus of our presentation.

If you have questions that go beyond what's on the one-page summary sheet, we did also provide very detailed descriptions of all these proposals on a summary sheet that you can dig into and look at your leisure at all of those things.

And with that, we will jump into current economic conditions.

Um this slide is gonna look pretty familiar to the slide that we were here a few months ago with.

Um, some uh big things to point out on here.

Our labor market, there's some concerns again of a weakening labor market.

Um the federal government uh shutdown has impacted some of the data flowing out of Washington DC.

Last Friday was supposed to be a release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on their latest numbers on job growth and unemployment.

That did not happen.

Uh we did have a proxy in the private sector ADP company released some data they had on job growth that surprised the market a bit in the sense that it showed uh 30,000 job loss when people were expecting a job gain.

Um so we're flying a little bit in the dark, but again, it appears that signs are showing the labor market is weakening.

Uh why do we focus on the labor market again?

Uh jobs, 70% of uh our GDP, our economic activity is related to consumer spending.

When consumers have jobs, they're really good at spending when they don't have jobs.

Uh that doesn't help spending so much.

Inflation uh again is another thing that uh we're paying a lot of attention to uh the post-COVID high inflation rates.

Uh, we're on a steady downward trend that paused a few months ago, and they have been slightly ticking upward since then.

Um again, another thing to watch as uh price pressures continue to rise.

Interest rates and we're focusing here on mortgage rates are still above six percent and anticipated to remain around six percent in the next couple of years.

Um in the housing market, uh often it was thought of there was not enough supply, but as as homes have been being built and people are starting to want to move, uh there is for the 22nd straight month an increase in housing supply out there.

Um so it's apparent that some of the sluggishness in the market is related to price, and big chunk of that price is an interest rate.

Uh, at those interest rates, it's very expensive to purchase a house compared to the pandemic lows when interest rates were in the two to three percent range.

Um again, housing markets uh people that uh healthy housing market with people buying and selling homes spurs a lot of other economic activity uh with goods and services for moving companies and painters and people buying new furniture.

And when the housing markets slow, all those industries suffer.

Uh the headwinds we have looking at us again, just an overall uh level of uncertainty related to a lot of things going on.

We added a bullet here uh related to the federal government shutdown.

Um our federal lobbyist Jen Cavino gave a briefing last week that was very interesting, and again, she did say that the a short shutdown has very limited impact on anything.

The longer this goes, the greater the impacts will be.

So this is something to keep an eye on the length of this.

Uh the current administration's approach to the shutdown is a bit different historically as well.

They have talked about uh not furloughing people but firing them.

They've also talked about for those that are furloughed of potentially not paying back pay.

So this government shutdown as we've experienced lately, it may be atypical from past ones, which makes it a little harder to predict uh what's going on with it.

Uh continued questions related to the independence of the Federal Reserve.

Um they're a key foundational aspect of this economy that is usually pretty invisible, but has been in the spotlight lately.

Again, they have a dual mandate for price stability, which means keeping inflation low, and for keeping the lab labor market stable, which is on inflation low and job creation.

And as we can see in the top two bullets, doing both of those things uh is gonna get trickier for the Federal Reserve and questioning their independence and doing the hard decisions for the economy will not add to certainty in the world.

Uh the on again, off again, on again tariffs continue.

That pattern continues uh as news comes out with uh goods being tariffed or tariffed at different rates or not being tariffed, depending on what happens.

Again, that just gives an overall level of uncertainty to businesses on their supply chain and what the supplies that they build or use their goods with.

Again, the prices they need to charge.

Um we're seeing some of that uh in the inflation numbers of uh inflation related uptick in numbers.

Um inflation, just a side note on the inflation.

It's it's kind of fun when we talk about overall inflation.

Everyone has their personal inflation.

So if you drink coffee and eat a lot of tomatoes and avocados, you've seen huge price increases.

Some of that's related to weather, a lot of it's related to tariffs.

If you don't drink coffee and eat a lot of tomatoes and avocados, maybe your grocery bill isn't going up so much.

But you see a lot of variation in how that impacts any individual household depending on that mix of goods and services that household buys.

Um we still see a lot of geopolitical problems throughout the world, um, which again causes uncertainty related to a lot of different things, oil prices being a big one.

Um the federal grants, again, a lot of uncertainty related whether those programs will continue and federal grant funds will flow or not.

And that last bullet we talked a bit about last time is that specter of having both uh unemployment going up at the same time, inflation does, and the Federal Reserve does not have good tools to deal with both of those situations at the same time.

So there's a lot of uncertainty out there.

As far as uh general fund revenue collections, uh, this is an update from a couple of months ago.

So if you look at the bottom right-hand corner of your slide, you'll see uh overall we have a positive 2.1 million dollar number.

Uh, again, I'm gonna caveat that.

We do know that this is overstated by about a million and a half dollars.

So when you make that adjustment, the good news is uh we're on the plus side of zero this time around, uh last month or a couple months ago we were negative after this point, but we're in.

Again, the fear in this world here is when you look at our top uh four big revenues that fund the general fund, business tax, property tax, sales tax, and utility tax.

Three of those four are all negative and again continue to show weaknesses.

Uh our property taxes about spot on for where we are.

So um again, some concerning signs still in our revenue world as as we progress here.

Uh for expenditures.

Again, the bottom right hand corner, it shows a $5.2 million underspend.

So we're uh doing well on that front.

Uh again, I'm gonna caveat that.

We know in our neighborhood and community services line item, most of their underspend is actually committed.

It's just timing on when those contracts get out the door.

So when you remove that uh $2.6 million out of there, the underspend number drops about in half.

Uh but it's still on the positive side of things, so that's good.

Um again, a monitoring of that situation as the year progresses.

You'll do see the the fire department is a bit negative.

That's mostly related to their personnel costs and overtime, which is one thing we want to address uh here in the midmod proposals that are coming up.

So, in summary, again, I would say that we are about on projection given uh the adjustments we've kind of talked about and where we are on revenues and spending at this point in the year.

Um, 214 million dollars in, we have about uh two to three million dollar variance, which is a pretty small number on a 200 million dollar base, it's a little over one percent.

So I would count that as being about right on projection.

Our hope and goal would be at this point in the year, we have a little more breathing room than that.

Um, and then our fear comes in here as we we when we look at the economic kind of uncertainty.

We think that there's probably more headwinds or the potential for more headwinds to cause things to be worse than the potential for good things to cause things to be better, but again, no one knows, and we will see how that all looks.

To get into the mid-mod proposal, this is a summary sheet of what you're going to see again to orient you to this spreadsheet.

The green column is the general fund, the pinkish, purplish column is all the other funds, and then that blue column on the far right-hand side just totals all that together.

Most of our presentation is gonna again focus on general fund additions and reductions and spending.

So, as you can see in the general fund, the proposal we're gonna have is to add about 20.8 million dollars in the general fund, have reductions that totals uh $3.2 million, so a net addition to the general fund of about 17.6 million dollars.

Most of that is related to uh police and fire, so our public safety world.

And again, a lot of the proposals in there you have seen before, so it shouldn't be surprising.

Uh some of the dollars we're paying there.

Uh the other big areas of expenditures that Jeff will get into relate to our health care spending, um, our workers' compensation, and our third party liability fund.

Um, so I'm gonna turn this uh presentation over to Jeff Upton, our finance manager in our office of management and budget, and he will walk you through some more detailed of each of these things in the general fund.

Thanks, Andy.

Okay, so starting with public safety, um, this is on the next slide, and also starting at the top of the large printout.

So working down the printout and working through the slides together.

Um this package includes reduction in the fire department and the hope team.

That's the holistic outreach promoting engagement program by reducing vacant positions.

So you can see that that's about 650,000 reduction in the general fund.

And then the next four are additions in the fire, two of them are corrections, as well as uh an increase to the fire's overtime budget of two million dollars, and then also the purchase of two fire engines, which fire has already come here and discussed that.

So that's for the fire department, and then second and please public safety are the police.

Uh in the police department, the first three rows are reductions.

Each of one of these represents holding vacant one position for the remainder of the biennium in those various areas.

Um what follows are various additions, including the lateral and center program, um, which police has presented on separately here.

Also, this package includes an increase to police's overtime budget, 1.28 million there.

And finally, two increases in the budget for um tasers and technology and accountability systems, which are the body worn cameras and in-car videos.

So on the next slide.

The next item is for the an increase to the department of assigned council.

Um, I will note that on the large printout, this got slipped down under public works.

Um, if you're following along there.

But for the increase to the department of assigned council, that reflects adding two staff attorneys to the contract we hold with them for their provision of uh indigent legal defense services.

Next is our additions in the Office of Management and Budget.

So the first one there is an adjustment to the health care rate to reflect rising costs.

Mercer is our consultant who helps us forecast these health care costs, and they projected a 14% increase for 2026, and we only had an 8% increase in the budget.

So this adjustment moves us in that direction, and we think helps us be better poised to handle healthcare inflation moving into 2027-2028.

Also, under the office management budget area is an increase in the third party liability fund.

That fund has paid for three large settlements already this year, and more or less it's set up to accommodate about one large payment each year.

And finally, there's an adjustment to the workers' comp fund to respond as well to higher claims than expected so far this year.

So that takes us to really the end of the general fund additions.

And then I'll walk briefly through the rest of the proposals here where you'll see uh general fund reductions or adjustments to funds outside the general fund.

So next, in the city manager's office, there's two reductions, one correction as well as a budget increase for the Granicus contract.

Down in community and economic development, they have several proposals representing a net reduction to various maintenance and operations and program costs.

On the next slide is the finance department.

They have a reduction in software maintenance as well as an increase to their vacancy savings target in both the general fund and other funds, as well as $700,000 that can be transferred from the unclaimed property recovery fund and received as revenue in the general fund.

In neighborhood and community services, there's a $640,000 reduction in contract services.

This is in response to reduced shelter stand down costs.

And then in planning and development services, there's another vacancy savings target increase as well as the pre-approved plan expansion of the detached accessory dwelling unit program.

And finally, in public works on this slide, there's another vacancy savings target increase as well as 1.1 million for the negotiated contract increase for local 483 for signal and streetlight electricians, which is outside the general fund.

And moving down to the city attorney's office, these five proposals would add staff to provide support to various departments to the environmental services department, police, Tacoma Public Utilities, and the clerk's office.

In the environmental services department, there's several additions.

I'll just mention a few of them.

There's 1 million for watershed modeling to assess impacts of densification, 5 million to develop a wastewater facilities plan, and 3.5 million to expand legal services.

Human resources has a reduction of 70,000 to reflect with the success of Docebo and other online learning platforms.

They haven't needed to hire third-party health for that as much.

And for those last four departments on this slide, all the impacts are outside the general fund.

So the final slide here covers some grants and a few other revenues that were also including in this mid-biennium budget package.

So it starts with two grants received by the environmental services department, a therapeutic court grant from MuniCourt, $4.5 million from the state for sheltering in neighborhood and community services, as well as $100,000 from the state for street medicine.

In public works, there's two grants for facilities, $2 million for South Tacoma Fire Station Preconstruction, and $1.5 million for police headquarters decarbonization.

And rounding out this slide, we are budgeting the one-tenth of one percent sales tax for the transportation benefit district program, as well as as well as about 20 million in various capital project modifications.

I can uh add a little more detail on that last one.

Comprising that 20 million is mostly 18 million coming from Sound Transit for projects on South 58th and South Adams Streets, and then another 1.5 million from the Washington Department of Transportation for South Tecoma Way Vision Zero project.

So that's a quick review of a lot of proposals.

With that, I'll turn it back to you, Andy.

Okay, so again the summary.

The slide here shows you again uh just for refresher, it's about 17 million dollars in the general fund.

It's about 17 million dollars in our other funds for a total of around 35 million dollars of adjustments to the budget.

And then when we consider the grants and other revenues, that would be an additional 37.8 million dollars in adjustment there for the mid-biannium proposal.

Uh I'm just gonna note in here you will not see it in the detail because these numbers are relatively small, and we're still finding placement, the appropriate placement for them, but there is $14,000 in here uh for the Boys and Girls Club to support the mayor's youth commission.

There is a $25,000 in here for Tacoma Police Department to support community events uh like the recent backpack uh back to school event they had with um the community, $20,000 to aid Northwest to help support immigration related efforts and 20,000 to support high school students attending competitions, uh state competitions at the dome.

So those uh you won't see them in the detail, but we want to make sure you knew that they were in there.

And our last slide here is our calendar.

So uh and you look at the calendar, you'll see the first three things have happened, all that internal work with departments and our office of management buddy uh budget and the city manager's office working through the midmod proposals.

We are here today, October 7th with our uh presentation of the proposed mid mod changes here.

On the calendar is another uh study session or committee the whole on October 14th.

If you all desire to have more conversation about the mid-mod proposals.

Uh otherwise, we are marching toward having a public hearing and a first reading of the mid-biennium modifications on October 21st with a uh second uh reading and adoption on October 28th.

And with that, we are happy to answer any questions you might have about a lot of information.

All right.

Well, uh thank you, Andy, and thank you, team.

Uh, we're gonna start with questions and we're gonna end with Councilman Rumbaugh, followed by Councilmember Walker.

Um thank you for the gloom and doom.

I really appreciate it because I I know that sounds weird to say, but it's I think we all know it's here, and I really appreciate how clear and concise it is.

This this for me is like a reality check.

That we're not there's not we're just being really honest about where our where our money is and where we are as a city, and I really appreciate that.

And anybody listening should appreciate that we are being this way.

Um I have two questions.

One is when we add environmental services expanding legal service support.

Do we think we'll see any revenue from that?

Really good question again, and I might defer to our city attorney in this world, but again, my understanding of that is there's uh a lot of legal action right now related to the system and nutrients and new requirements from the state coming in, and this is my understanding and estimate to help them address current issues related to that.

Um, since these are ongoing things, I do believe that that is an initial number.

That number may grow depending on the complexity of the of the legal uh need in those worlds.

But so I don't think that's gonna generate a lot of revenues in the near term.

It's gonna be an expense.

Okay.

And then the other one was we were doing um some type of audit of residents to find out if they were being rented instead of um the owner living in it, and if we're missing business licenses, and I'm wondering if we have any data on that.

I didn't know where I would find that.

We can't we we certainly again that's a it's I know in our tax and license world we do tons of audits all the time related to businesses and making sure that uh we are fairly approaching all businesses and they're paying their fair share.

We can I don't have data specifically right now, but I can certainly get back to you and get you some data on the process.

Okay, I really appreciate it something that's come up.

Um, and so I'm just that would be great to have more information about that.

Thank you.

Councilmember Walker.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Um just I need to orient myself here for a second.

The slides on seven and fourteen.

They what is the difference?

Because they're labeled the same, and I guess I'm sure you are the same.

We were just being redundant saying, hey, we started it with the summary and we ended with the summary.

That's all great.

Thank you.

That helps a lot.

I don't think I have specific questions now.

I I made myself a lot of notes to ask you later.

I think most of this sort of tracks with the conversations we've had.

There's a lot of things that I wish we didn't have to spend more money on like the legal uh increased caseloads because of things that are coming from the federal government and but I think for now I'm gonna maybe send a couple questions but this is super super helpful in laying it all out in one place and I think I think I have delay of the land and I'll ask a few specifics in the next couple of days.

Thank you.

Councilmember Bush now.

Thank you Deputy Mary I appreciate the sobering mid mod here.

I think that there's a lot of economic uncertainty happening not just out in the community but obviously for the city as well and it impacts as our finances as well as our our neighboring jurisdictions and everybody else I've been seeing some reductions and in partner jurisdictions as well.

And I think the more that we can do to kind of lessen the pain here at the midmod point it sets us up for success in the next biennium where I'm sure we're gonna have a lot more tough conversations.

One of the questions I had is in regards to the um IT portion where it includes the radios um I know that there's some there is there any potential for any additional funds from like say South Sunday one because I've heard of other jurisdictions utilizing that for radio funds.

Is that possible for at least for emergency services?

That's very possible from a from a budgetary standpoint we're planning to expend dollars that we've been prudently charging our departments.

So we have the funds right now to replace our radios their end of life but there is a uh a broader conversation happening um out south side 901 with Pierce County and with with our agencies that are relying on our both our system both our system and for those folks that are listening to this meeting right now the city of Tacoma owns the 800 spec spectrum so we have our own radio system there's a conversation about upon which we have two other agencies that own another portion of another system on whether or not we're gonna do consolidate and for us Director Keys is in in there with our attorneys and we're having those conversations now I do expect that it would not be something we would see in 26 but it could be for something for the next biennium that we might be able to actually realize some dedicated funds that are already being charged that are not being received by the city of Tacoma.

And on top of that you know if these upgrades are happening we do use bulk purchases is there an opportunity to partner with other agencies that could potentially utilize these types of radio systems as well in order to uh have that cost benefit um obviously economies of scale things of that nature I think that's always something that we're always going to look at efficiencies and consolidations um for Pierce County Pierce County residents including Tacomans um we are right now operating under kind of this mesh network of three operators three owners of this uh telecom that provides the backbone for emergency communications um you're always gonna want to look at where there's duplication and having three radio shops that's a conversation um I I'm biased with Director Keys I'm sure who's in the audience we think we run our system really well and we're in a very good position on either working with the county to see benefits for our residents or the stand you know the status quo does work for us right now we are prudently putting money away great thank you for that I think it's really important that if there are ways for us to work together um that we find ways to you know save money doing those bulk purchases and things of that nature um and then just one thing I didn't quite see in here is kind of where our reserve funds are at I think given the economic uncertainty it's really important I think historically like if you look at the long history of Tacoma we haven't always had very robust reserve funds and I think we're in a kind of unique position in time but I I'd be curious of where we're at in in terms of that uh considering where we've been as a city in the past and when these economic downturns do inevitably occur uh really good question thank you council member bushnel so our reserve funds are fully funded uh this this proposal that doesn't rely on reserve funds whatsoever we've been really good at protecting our reserve funds knowing we have potentially some uh headwinds coming our way we can get you an exact breakdown of that uh I I but I do know last I looked we were around 84 million dollars in reserves on our three level of reserves as you may remember the city uh updated its reserve policy a few years ago and we have a a pretty strong and robust uh reserve policy now with uh different levels of of reserves and different buckets and and how we can spend them and the votes of council it takes to spend them and then how we refill them which is always a critical thing if you're gonna spend your reserves they gotta think about how you're getting money back in those pots so but we can get you a different spreadsheet that shows that.

We don't know how long this federal administration is gonna be shut down for.

Um we there's a lot of um you know economic headwinds that may be coming our way.

Uh and it could be short, it could be long.

We could have another pandemic around the corner on top of it all, right?

Um and so it's really important that we have these robust funds that we have the flexibility of the city to maintain services as best as possible for all of our residents.

And I think this is a position that the city um is uniquely in this point in time really poised for.

And historically, at least my understanding of the history of the city would not always been best prepared for things like this.

So I I just want to say I really appreciate um the forethought of folks that have put together and kept these funds uh together to really give us these opportunities uh for flexibility in the future if we need it.

Um and then also think about I also think about how um we can make sure to best set up the city in the future uh uh if these reserve funds are also needed uh due to catastrophe or other things of other nature.

So um thank you so much for that, and uh I will yield back the rest of my time.

Thank you, Council Member Bush.

Now uh council member uh Sadake.

Thank you.

Um back to slide seven, just to make sure I kind of understand lost my pen.

Um what I'm looking at here.

So in the general fund, the 17 million net net total, that's an increase in costs, correct?

Correct, yes.

Not an increase in like revenue or something.

No, that is another.

Um so I guess my question is if there's an increase in cost of 17 million, and you said we're not going into reserves, and we were right on target at within one and a half and two percent of our budget versus actuals.

Where is that coming from?

Very good question, council member.

So we ended last biennium and started this biennium with about 17 and a half million dollars of cash over our reserve level.

And so that is the funds, those are the funds we're using to pay for this mid-biennium adjustment right here.

Okay.

Um and how does that or does that, or is it too early to tell what that would translate then into uh next year when we start looking at uh a new biennium?

So next year's biennium again, typically as we progress through a biennium, we're always monitoring our revenues and expenditures.

Um right now we're about spot on.

It's a little early to tell.

Again, when we think about again the doom and the gloom, there's a lot of headwinds out there for us to think about of as you know, our is unemployment gonna peak up and we're gonna start seeing recessionary type levels of employment.

Is inflation gonna spike again that drives uh consumer spending changes somehow as the economy going to recession.

There's a lot of good news out there.

GDP had a really strong quarter last year.

I mean last quarter.

So um we see consumer spending.

The consumer in this country is just as resilient as they can be given all these headwinds, they keep spending money.

So there is some good news floating out there.

We just don't know which of those battles is gonna win.

Um consumers just keep spending or not.

Um our hope and goal, like I said, I we would love to be in a position where we have a little more cushion at this point in the biennium that says, hey, we we are floating five or ten or fifteen million over where we project to be.

We're just not quite there.

Our hope is it continues, but we're gonna monitor, and like we say, if tougher decisions come, we'll be back you back with you with adjustments that we would propose to this.

So if I think about it right, we have we had about 17 million-ish dollars, which is um doing it really fast in my head on the general fund, roughly two and a half to three percent uh was kind of left over.

We're kind of using that in these modifications here.

Currently uh going through August.

I'm adding the 2.1 and then the the it's you said it was really only two because NCS has committed funds that uh are just not showing up yet.

So we only have about four million dollars maybe of some cushion going into next year.

We are pretty tight right at this point in this year, yeah, compared to a year ago, a fourth of where we were.

So that already accentuates that point.

Uh I had another real quick question uh around the police, and um I think I know what the answer is here, but I want to double check.

Uh with the lateral incentive program that we authorized, there was some um assumption of a savings in overtime.

So I also see over here 1.28 million dollars in overtime.

My assumption is that is lower than it would have been had we not done the lateral.

So the lateral, again, a really good question.

The lateral incentive program, you know, the chief was here talking about that.

Chief's in the audience, so I I know that, but the intent wasn't to have instant savings in overtime.

First, we have to get up to the staffing level.

She needs to run that department, and we're not quite there yet, even with the lateral incentive.

And the lateral incentive is going to take some time, even though they're laterals, they still be safe for the other.

Okay.

So we didn't propose any reductions in overtime or anything.

We're we're marching along typically because we know we have to treat the.

Okay.

I just want to ensure um that we at least thought about it, and and that's what we're taking.

It's something we'll look at in 27-28, because if the program, the lateral incentive is successful and we do get the staff and the levels up where the chief needs them to be, that is something we'll look at.

To be honest with you, I'm asking this question because that's something the constituent is gonna ask, which is you've okayed a lateral expensive program and you're still doing overtime, but it is the correct thing to do in terms of planning until we get to that point where we actually see that realization.

So that makes perfect sense to me.

Thank you.

Councilmember Heinz.

Uh thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Uh I guess my question just clarify uh vacant positions for the hope team.

Can you just explain what we're talking about with that?

So um we received a proposal from the the fire department for um two vacant positions within the hope team right now.

As you know, we had um uh but up until this point last year we had to co-managers of that program.

We also had a uh health practitioner position that's making to I've taken that reduction and brought it to you for consideration, and it's gonna net out to we're hoping for a plan savings of $640,000.

Gotcha.

So these are currently open positions, they're open positions.

I think the takeaway, and I should have probably started with this.

Um, my messaging for the staff coming up after this uh session with you all is this is not a reduction in force of any field positions.

We're looking at every position that is currently vacant and seeing what departments can um I'd rather not say live with because at the end of the day we are tempering um operational capacity.

Um but this is one of those um areas that I have taken those uh reductions from the vacancies of holding that through as we and that and for the hope team for alt response, it's a greater conversation in the next 12 to 18 months about regionalization.

Okay, great.

Um my next question is with going to police, maintained technology and accountability systems 1.7.

So is this a new contract we're starting?

Is it increase in the current contract that we have?

It's it's both new and existing.

So our contracts with Taser and Axon, uh the service providers for body worn cameras as well as for tasers, um, those are things that we've had in place.

It's just it's end of life.

We should have picked this up in the budget.

This is one of those areas that you would not want to see in a mid mod to your question, uh, Councilmember Hines.

Uh and we're we're picking this up now.

It's tenure contracts.

Okay.

So they're new.

Will we with this contract will we land on a budget cycle in the future?

I can assure you that this will be this is be something that we won't forget even when those contracts are coming to an end that we'll plan for approving.

Okay.

Uh thank you for that.

I think my other question was looking at the health care rate adjustment and the workers' comp fund.

I see dollars coming out of the general fund, but I see other funds paying into it.

So what where are the other funds come from?

So again, how we allocate these dollars, it's really good question.

Is so again when you think about the number of workers in the general fund for you know, police and fire and those things.

We have tons of workers that live in other funds, our utility funds, power water, our ES funds.

So those funds pay their share of those increases.

That's why you'll see both the workers' comp and the health care uh split out between the various funds depending on again who's paying into it.

So great.

Um I'm very excited to see increased funding for pre-approved plans.

It's expansion six years, it's great to see that as part of the budget.

I think my last question, then I'll I'll take the rest of these offline, would be the adjust contribution for one percent of the arts program for environmental services.

So can you tell me what that's about?

Um yeah, Jeff, do you remember this one?

Sorry.

A lot of proposals.

We can certainly get you an answer on it.

I um but uh that leads to me to a further question.

So the one percent for arts programs for every capital project for general government does public works and environmental services.

It's not every, but it's most.

That's again it's the utilities count in that or two or no.

Uh I will find out more on that one for you.

Sounds like we need to have a conversation on the one percent for arts then.

We'll we'll get more data on the yeah, I mean we're having a core creates conversation, which is a great valuable resource, but the one percent for arts program for projects has also been a huge funding source for arts projects in our city's history.

Um I just be curious to know more about that.

Otherwise, uh thank you, Madam Mayor.

Those are all my questions.

Thank you for the presentation.

All right.

Oh, council member Scott.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, thank you all for this.

I have a lot of things going on in my head right now.

I just so I won't necessarily get into all of them.

I wanted to clarify on slide 13, um, where it looks at the grants.

So it says public works, and under that there's the um transportation benefit district program at 744,000 and some change, and then it's public works again.

The transportation benefit district program, and then it's five million.

Can you just kind of explain why that's on there twice?

Yeah, we split it, and again, that's a budget quirk that we do.

We look at ongoing revenues versus one-time revenue slightly differently, and so the 5.7 million is the ongoing portion, and the 700,000 is a one-time thing.

Got it.

So okay.

Just wanted to make sure that and then was able to read the the fine print on the other page, so my other question was answered.

Um yeah, you know, I just wanted to slightly just flex a little bit there.

Uh you guys might not be able to read, but my eyes are still a little young.

Um, no, but I I was able to get my other like my other most immediate question answered by checking that out.

And so yes, I have I have a lot of questions, but I will follow up.

Yes, great.

Thank you.

Um council member Scott, Deputy Mayor Daniels.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, before I go on uh a round of questions, is today the day that we kind of go over the overall um budget with Andy and uh city manager, um, or if we have more questions for individual directors, is that a separate conversation that you'd like us to have?

Like, do you or is there gonna be another opportunity to have like broken down questions, or should we just ask them now?

Uh I I think well, there's there's obviously you could always you can ask questions anytime, right?

So you can ask them here, or you can if you've got uh I hate to make Andy sweat over.

No, well, but you could also you can also talk to this, you can also ask the city manager the questions in between the two of them, they can run them down.

And if that means putting you directly in contact with the department head to kind of explain it in more detail, that is absolutely possible.

Or if you got a question and they're here in the room, they can come to the table.

Okay, so this is the opportunity.

Yeah, this is yeah, I'm sorry.

You asked me one question, and I went all the way around the ball.

Um, I can there's some that I can say, but some that I uh feel like I need to have answered now.

So okay, um, because I see some folks here.

So the first question, I first of all, thank you.

This is so helpful to have them broken down three different ways with the summaries because majority of the questions that I had about the reductions and additions were answered in the summary in detail, so that saves a lot of time.

Um the question that I had about um, and maybe and I just didn't get to it yet.

Um, but on the neighborhood and community service reductions, it says reduce contract services budget.

I just haven't made it my way to that part of the summary.

What is that?

Um Deputy Mayor, if you would allow, um, I can have an offline um presentation for you or any other council members on running through that.

We do feel as though um reductions in um human service contracting.

Um, and as Jeff mentioned, the details are in relations to some of our shelter programs that we've um been ongoing and and bringing down.

There are some savings there, it's about 640,000.

I can give you more detailed and and Mayor Woodards.

We actually have um slated for the potential for another uh study session presentation next week.

Okay.

If you would like, we can come back and bring this one to the full body.

I think for sure I'd like that.

I know we have a bunch of services.

I um outside of the shelters that we've had to stand down.

I know that we have a lot of other contracting that goes on there that is um shelter adjacent, and I want to make sure that we are not cutting services to um beds for um supportive services or um anything like that.

We'll be back with Director McLaurin and uh NCS, they'll be back.

Okay, perfect.

That would be really great.

Um that was the big one.

Um I have questions about the watershed modeling.

Um it looks like we are spending quite a few dollars to um assess uh stormwater, and I wanted to understand a little bit more about um what that is gonna encompass um what that what what kind of study we're gonna do.

Um are we looking to support?

Are we looking to create opportunities for storm art retention, or are we looking to figure out different ways?

I I'm just curious about what that what that study is gonna entail.

Perfect.

How how in depth would you like that for next week?

Would you like a full pro forma on the remodeling and and um details or no?

It could just be a like a budget breakdown of or whatever high level of what that million dollars is gonna go to.

And then just so I understand, Andy, the the money that we have in environmental services is paid for by rates.

So environmental services dollars go straight to environmental services, they're not from correct.

Okay.

So when we add, I guess that's just helpful for me to know when we add larger things, we always have the dollars there because they come from they pay for themselves.

They do.

Okay.

Um that was the main one.

Um I did have, oh gosh, there's so much in here.

Um that is really good.

Uh when you guys come back, are you gonna add the council additions to that budget so we can understand and see where we are in comparison to other things that are gonna be deducted?

We can, and Andy just went through the four requests that I've received from the council.

We can bring that back to you where they would fit in the departments.

Yeah, I don't know.

But they're in here, it's just you can't see them because they're small and buried in a department, but that's why we wanted to highlight them.

But we can certainly bring more visibility to where they're gonna end up.

Yeah, I think that would be good.

I think it's important for us to be able to understand where we're asking our departments to um decrease and where what that means for us and what that means for the things that we're asking for.

Um I am hoping to have I I was hoping that we would have considered uh public safety tax by now so that we wouldn't have to be making this many cuts.

So it's unfortunate that we weren't able to get that done before now.

Um but I hope that that is something that we can see in our near future uh because these programs to these cuts to these programs, we have arts programs, we have some really critical um programs in here that are gonna be cut, and while it's not staff, I think uh continuously asking folks to run on a shoestring um is not is not a good way to do business, and it doesn't show that we are um that we have a whole um picture of of the importance of all of our services.

So um I think that's all my comments.

Thank you.

All right, are there any other comments or questions?

All right, I do not see any.

So thank you all for the presentation, and we'll see you next Tuesday.

All right, we're gonna move on to our um to other items of interest, our third agenda item, which is the council consider request council consideration request amending title eight of the Tacoma Municipal Code relating to camping and storage of personal belongings on public process public property, and I'd like to call on council member Hines to begin the presentation.

All right, uh thank you, Madam Mayor.

Um, and I just want to say thank you to my colleagues for this opportunity to take a moment and chat a little bit about our current 8.19 uh code around um uh prohibited camping and personal storage on public property.

Um and the reason I bring this forward right now is just because of a change that we've had in kind of um the parts of our city that are impacted by our current code um and where we are now.

So actually, if if you look at your packet on the um the back of the kind of CCR right here, there's a map that's in color, and it kind of lays out kind of two um pictures.

One is when we passed 8.19 um back in 2022, you can see the areas of the city that were covered by the buffer areas because they were within 10 blocks of an emergency shelter site.

And so you can see the the map right there.

And if you look below uh map number map B is kind of where we are today currently, and so we had um some shelter sites that uh closed as planned this past summer because of the funding that was used to operate them had run, was running down, was had concluded.

We also had some sites like the 30th Pacific site where the site was planned to be transitioned into housing, and so that site idled there.

We had um other sites where you know, 69th and Proctor, um if I'm looking at the old map here very back in 22, 69th and Proctor, um the village that was down off of uh the veterans village that was down off of um Pacific Avenue.

So you can see uh Brotherhood Rise, the Shiloh Baptists, Alzheimer's.

So you could see kind of the different changes are here.

A lot of those have since closed.

And so you get an idea of kind of what we're looking at.

And what we're finding, you know, we see is that the areas that are covered by the community buffers, it just looks dramatically different than it did in 2022, not because we had a conversation about whether or not we wanted buffer areas or parts of our city to be to not allow camping or storage public property, but just because there were changes in where our emergency shelter sites were.

And so this is kind of this is leading me to bring this conversation forward.

Now, it's one is a change in the map.

And two, what we're finding is in some of these areas where there used to be buffers, we're starting to see an increase in through in one requests, we're starting to see an increase in larger encampments returning that we had not seen since pre-2022.

And so the idea of bringing this back is just kind of talk through potential options for looking at areas where we would want to exclude kind of or prevent uh camping or storage public belongings on public property.

Um a couple things that I'm proposing here is the idea that we would take the when we did the map in 2022, one of the things we did, there was a conversation about should we include our permanent shelter sites?

And when you look at the map that's here, most of the permanent shelter sites that were in the city at that time or still in the city fell within the buffer areas that were established through the temporary shelters.

So at that point in time, we did not include permanent shelters as part of the code update.

So one of the part of the proposal that I'm bringing forward is the idea that we would include our permanent shelters with buffer areas around them.

The second part of the proposal is looking at buffers around specifically community uh properties, so public schools, public parks, and public libraries.

Um to look at potentially adding buffers around those areas, similar to the ones we did around the waterways in 2022, which was saying that camping or storage of public property encampments in those areas have an impact on people's ability to access those public facilities and utilize them to their full potential.

So let me just walk through a couple things here as I talk through kind of what we're what I'm thinking about here.

So first and foremost, if we go back to 2022, I think what we've seen is if we remember if I some of us were there and some weren't, but just to kind of go back, we had some pretty large encampments in parts of our city, very large ones.

Um we can talk about the one that was under 705, we talked to one around the public schools, um central administration building, hilltop, south of Hilltop, around the rescue, we had lots of large encampments that were kind of all over our city, um, and causing an issue for people trying to access our emergency shelters.

The one that popped into my mind initially was the one that was surrounding Alzheimer's church, down by the public library, where the encampment was right around the outside of the women and children's shelter.

And so bringing the proposal forward in 2022 was about the idea of saying where we're providing shelter, not having encampments within the within a 10-block area of that.

One, so that when we invited people into shelter, we can guarantee that it was safe and accessible to them.

It was to make sure that our outreach teams or people working out of those shelters could freely go back and forth between their facilities, and we just and to make sure that the community impacts that come with encampments weren't impacting some of the most vulnerable people in our city, which are people in the shelters.

Um with that in mind, that rationale that we had in 2022, I think applies, or I believe applies to our permanent shelters too.

So the idea that we have permanent shelters where we're having similar encampments right outside of them that are precluding people from accessing them safely, that are recruiting outreach from happening safely, and are making it so that some of these shelters are not as safe as they could be otherwise.

So the first part of this proposal is to take the buffer zone model that we applied in 2022 and applied to the permanent shelters.

Um I would just bring up, and just to kind of walk through at least a little bit of this is you know, I think so far we've seen the buffer zones have had some success in a couple of things.

And I'm always really cautious of talking about this, right?

But when we passed this in 2022, I spoke very clearly about the idea that the goal of the camping ordinance, the buffer areas was not to end homelessness.

Um the way we end homelessness through shelter and housing and our work at the regional with the county and the regional home uh uh the regional authority, it's our work with our nonprofits, that's our work with our shelter providers, it's our home and Tacoma plan, it's our investments in our housing trust fund, it's the millions of dollars we're spending to build more housing, it's the mil the hours and years we've spent redoing our zoning code to allow more housing, it's the partnerships with the state to be able to fund more shelters.

Um, that is kind of really how we end homelessness.

Um this proposal was meant to address the impacts of encampments, and I think it has.

If we look at the fact that back in 2022, we had large encampments that were uh fire prone, where fires were happening all the time, and our fire our fire department was responding often, if not every day, to fires and things that are happening there.

We had encampments that had a large amounts of human trafficking, assaults, homicides, all sorts of issues inside of some of these encampments that we don't see anymore.

Um we see that people inside the buffer zones are more likely to accept support and offers of service than we do to see people outside of the buffer areas.

So that contact that we're seeing between our outreach team, our heel team, and other folks inside the buffer areas seems to be helping encourage them to access the shelter and services we have.

Um in that mind, we're seeing less of the impacts of encampments and also seeing more people accept their office of shelter.

So it's really kind of addressed that thing that we had.

Um of the concerns that I did hear back then that I would want to just bring up was change uh that these encampments would just move themselves right out of the buffer areas out into areas that were not buffered.

And we didn't see that.

We did not see like the large encampments that we saw, say under 705 move just right outside buffer areas.

Um so it helped address kind of that big challenge we had there.

Um the second thing I want to just talk about, so that's the rationale or thinking around the buffers around the permanent shelters.

I'm also at would like us to discuss a little bit around the idea of adding in buffets around public facilities, public schools, public parks, and public libraries.

And this is really about trying to balance the idea that public spaces should be remained open to the public.

And while some people are not deterred by encampments right outside of some of these public facilities, I do hear from constituents often who do feel deterred by that, who feel like they cannot freely and safely access some of our parks, some of our libraries, or some of our schools where their kids go to school because of the presence of encampments.

And so, this idea would be to say that there'd be a buffer area around our schools, um, public schools, public parks, and public libraries so that we would keep those places open to the public so more people can access them safely.

Um, and I think coming back to this again is the idea that we spend millions of dollars every year on our public schools, our public libraries, and our public parks, so that they can benefit the public, and this is a way to kind of make sure that those spaces continue to remain open and accessible to the public.

So one part is adding in this crying baby in the background.

One part is adding in the permanent shelters along with the temporary shelters for the buffer areas, the other is public spaces.

Um I said earlier this is not gonna end homelessness.

I was very clear when I passed this in 2022 that that was not the it was not going to do that.

It was gonna address specifically the impacts of encampments on not only the people living inside of them but the shelters in which they were near and the communities in which they were located.

Um with that, what I really hope to do with my with you all today is talk a little bit about this proposal.

Um I have some maps here that I'll share in just a second that kind of lay out what it looks like, um, and I'll explain them all to you, but I wanted to talk through my talking points first before I put the map out because I was a high school teacher for a long time, and I know if you give people something, they will look at it and they will not listen.

And so I have holding, I'll give the maps out here in just a second, and we could take a minute to look through them.

Um, but what I really oh before I talk about the maps or the maps, one thing I did want to say that I'm really proud of that we're adding in this is we're actually writing the code so that we can divert people to our therapeutic courts, which is something that was not available to us in 2022.

Um we now have our community court and our therapeutic court and our behavioral health court up and running for the city, and that is a tool that we can utilize to get people towards the shelter services case management, things that they need to be able to kind of transition off this out of homelessness and on with their lives.

And so, this code, the code update actually says that where possible when qualified, the goal, the intent is to move people towards the therapeutic court system.

Okay.

Um I'm happy to take any questions from my colleagues and discuss this with you.

I just want to say a couple things though, um, because I I think there are some serious misconceptions about this that I want to clarify.

Um, first, uh, this proposal does not limit anyone's ability to use or visit public facilities.

All right, people are still able to freely access our parks, our libraries, if they have children or a reason to be there, our schools.

But what this means is that they cannot camp right next to them or within a certain distance of them.

So if people need to enjoy our parks, if they need a library because that's where they're warming themselves, accessing bathrooms, accessing services, if they're going to our parks to use the restroom to spend their day enjoying this one of the wonderful resources we have, they are still free and able to do that.

Um, it's just the they cannot you know have an erect a structure camp right next to them.

Um and so I think that's just something I really want to make sure clear because I've heard that said to me already that like you're gonna allow a lot of people to go to parks or libraries where their resources are or bathrooms, and that's not the intention here.

It's just to prevent the kind of encampments from being there.

Um happy to talk to you all and uh get feedback.

I'm going to pass out the maps here to you all.

Um this is important part of the discussion.

I'll describe what I am sharing here with you all here in a minute.

Who so once everybody has one kind of walk through?

Um because as I would be really clear, I really want this to be the beginning of a conversation amongst us.

Um I did bring a proposal forward, but I I am very very interested in your feedback and thoughts.

Um, because I think it's an important conversation for us to have.

Okay.

So on the first two pages.

So graphic A and graphic B.

And for members of the public, this will be available kind of after our conversation today at the conclusion of study session, but I really want my colleagues kind of feedback on this.

So in graphic A, you have a map.

The first graphic A shows you the current buffer areas as they exist.

So that's the Tacoma Emergency Micro Shelter site number three on Six and Orchard, the Stability Site, Bethland Baptist Church, and Aspen Court, and then you have kind of the parks, the schools, and the libraries, and permanent shelters listed or and park schools and libraries listed here with 10 block buffers around them.

It also includes the um 200 foot buffers around waterways, and then graphic B shows you that same map, the 10 block buffer five block buffers around these community uh facilities, and then the what the buffers used to look like.

So that's A and B.

So these are both five blocks.

If you do move to graphic C you can see the same map, but this is where I've reduced the buffer area down to two blocks.

Um you can kind of get an idea.

This one is the current buffer areas, and then uh two blocks around any public school, public park, or public library.

See that, and then graphic D is that same map, two blocks, but with the previous buffers that were passed in 2022.

And then if you go to graphic E, and I'm moving relatively quickly, but you all have this in front of you, so you can go through it on your own.

What you see on graphic E is what would it look like if we just had the 10 block buffers around our permanent and temporary shelters?

And so graphic E shows what that would look like.

That's the buffers are in yellow, and then that you have the current the the buffers we approved in 2022 right there.

What I would just draw people's attention to is if you look at just adding the buffer areas around our permanent shelters and temporary shelters, they look almost exactly the same as they did in 2022.

It's roughly the same area.

And then uh finally, graphic F is a combination of the two, uh, which is the two-block community buffer areas, and then the 10 blocks around our permanent and um temporary shelters.

So there you go.

And when we think about a permanent shelter, you're thinking about the rescue mission, the men's shelter, um, uh Nativity House, some of those that are here in downtown is kind of the main ones here.

So those are there are a lot of maps there to look at, a lot of things.

Um, but I'm kind of would love to uh I've been talking quite a bit, love to open up for conversation.

And uh Christina's here in the back.

She's taking um notes on what we have here, the wonderful Christina who's switching off from Tacoma Creates to talk about this.

Um I will do my best to answer questions from you all if there are questions that come up that I think those are better answered by staff.

Christina will write those down and we'll work to get staff answers for those.

Okay.

Okay, thank you, Councilmember Heinz.

Uh, do we have any questions for council member?

Councilmember Walker.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Um, thank you, Councilmember Heinz, for bringing this forward, and um the maps, the differences is really helpful to look at where we have been, where we are, where we're going.

Um, so really appreciate that.

Um, I I don't have a question.

I don't think I think you laid it out and it's pretty clear.

Um I'm interested in hearing our colleagues on the five black versus two block.

Um I'm just curious to have more discussion around that.

And um I also wanted to highlight what makes me interested in supporting this update is the work around that you added in here about the therapeutic court and the mental health court, community sorry, community court.

Um I think that's really really vital.

And then I think we also, as you've noted, can't really have this conversation without also talking about what we are doing in terms of keeping shelters open or opening new shelters.

And I'm wondering it because I know it's not the same thing.

This is a different policy, but I don't think that they go one without the other.

Um so is there a way that the next time we look at this, we could have just that little update because I know um we got it last week, but that grass or the chart of what's open now and what's opening, what's coming online, what dollars we have for it, because we got all that those dollars from the state so that we could keep shelters open.

To me, that's a super important part of this, and if we could just look at them next to each other, I think that makes me feel um good about where we're headed here.

So thank you.

Yes, happy to happy to provide that and uh Christina gave that to us.

Yeah.

Councilmember Satalke.

Um thank you.

I wanted to make a couple of comments on um the reasoning behind uh my sponsorship and support of something along this.

Um and this really is about starting a conversation that's really important that we have because it's a conversation that um I know in district four and across the city um has been loud and clear from people.

The tact that I went down in thinking about this very deeply was understanding that you know, we as a city, we we actually do a lot more than anyone in our region really around homeless services and homeless connection.

Uh, but it's still not enough, right?

It's it's not enough to meet the entire lead.

And I agree that this isn't about solving that problem, but it is about asking a really important question that we as really governors of the city constantly need to answer, and it's timely because we're talking about a budget, which is in a world where we don't have enough resources, where do we want to focus our attention and emphasize where we want um to get service uh services and connection to services out there and also in a world where today we have like you said therapeutic courts, we have alternate response teams, community service officers, um DCRs, uh CSOs, heel team, hope team, um we've made changes with home and tacoma, um therapeutic courts.

Um I think we're at a time where we should consider and and say that hey, places where we go with our children and where we go to enjoy um public facilities should be places that we emphasize uh for support.

That was kind of my impetus for supporting this.

I do think we get to a point where we come to a happy medium on radiuses around various uh areas or structures.

Um and in addition to this, um I'm committed to supporting uh finding ways of funding uh additional services, uh safe parking sites, even within my district.

Um, because when we have these sites where people can go to I mean, we had forging paths, and it went from people being very angry that it was coming there to very angry that we were getting closing it down as it was planned to be closed down.

Um I want to ensure that when we um implement this and as we go about it, that we do it in a compassionate manner, and I think the city's shown that in the last few years.

And so those were all the reasons why.

Um I would I agree to to sponsor this.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Stogue.

Councilmember Bushnell.

Uh thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Um, and thank you, Councilmember Heinz, for having all the different maps and bringing this proposal forward.

Um, I just have a few questions, and you might not be able to answer them right now.

Uh staff might um be able to help.

Um I think if I recall the last time we had kind of discussed this, there was um talk about potentially having private property owners uh volunteering their property in order to do tiny home villages.

Um I was curious if uh any private property owners had come forward since then uh to offer their properties for uh the availability of those locations.

Um that was a really big impetus for me supporting it last time.

And so I'm just curious if if that has occurred.

Um another question I had is in regards to um our ongoing conversations around the unified regional approach.

Um I think it's really important, uh, given that we're finally having these really robust conversations with neighboring jurisdictions that um I think it'd be essential for us as a leader in the city uh and in the region to find a way to um try to find a way to work with our neighboring jurisdictions to see if there's something that we can work on together uh so that there's some consistencies multi-jurisdictionally, uh so that way folks when they're when they are experiencing homelessness, they um have you know a rule set uh that they can expect and understand across the board that we could work together on.

Um so I you know I know that we're still kind of working on standing that up.

So um that's just a thought I had there.

Um another question I had is in regards to our current uh shelter capacity, and obviously these go hand in hand.

We're we're talking about uh the camps themselves and those impacts on neighborhoods, uh not necessarily the the shelters and the air, those in particular, but um uh one of the other impetuses for me of supporting it last time was the availability of a low barrier shelter site.

Um so I'm curious as to the status of low barrier shelter sites within the city um and the availability of that.

And um, yeah, so those are kind of the questions I have on this.

Um, and I'm happy to have additional conversations.

Thank you.

Okay.

Yes, uh, I will follow we'll follow up with staff for those specific answers.

Christina wrote them all down.

Okay, council member Diaz.

Thank you.

Um a comment, then a couple questions.

Um, I guess my comment is I want to particularly highlight how grateful I am that you're explicitly talking about this, not in terms of removing people's access to public restrooms, public um inclement weather shelters, places where folks go, like parks and libraries, um, to actually get in from outside.

Sometimes that's the only place where folks can go.

I like to think of libraries as one of the only places left in our society where people often can go and not spend money.

They don't want to, um, and just be.

So I think that's really important to highlight in this proposal or just in general kind of state of our latency as capitalism.

Um and then the I had a couple questions.

Um is I'm wondering if your maps department, maybe it's just Christina Khan.

Um if as you guys are um, I appreciate all the maps.

I think it's especially helpful to see map A, which terrifies me.

That is like the entire city, and I just for the sake of reacting to it, hate it.

Um and then as opposed to map F, which feels particularly better in comparison to map A.

But one of the things that I had, one of the issues I had when we passed the last round of this was the 10 block radius.

So I'm wondering if your map folks, or if I need to request my own map folks, to render something like map F, but with five blocks around permanent and temporary shelters versus 10.

Um, because I would like to see what that looks like to see if that's an amendment you would be amenable to, or if that's something I could propose.

Um, and I'm thinking maybe 10 or um three or five versus this 10.

Um, depending on what makes sense and what those look like.

Um, because I've always felt that those that 10 blocks is a little bit bigger than my comfort level, particularly now that there's less shelter.

Um and then another question I had was I'm wondering if you have talked at all with our heel team about how this kind of a map is gonna impact their capacity and their work.

Yes.

I'll let you answer if you have or haven't, or if that's more to come.

Yeah, no, uh had some conversations about this, and I think what will again probably closer with what Council Mr.

Dalga brought up, it all it becomes a conversation around priorization, right?

So what it does is for most part move so similarly to how we manage the waterways.

The waterways are done by kind of uh through one request purpose, so it's not we're not I guess we're not actively monitoring every one of the waterways at all points of time, it's just one three or one request come through, then they respond and they do outreach and do things like that.

So the what would happen is it would just kind of fall back into kind of a priorization, right?

Where quests would come through and the heel team would work through them as we're adding more areas, um would just depend on kind of how present it is in different places, but we're still have the same number of people to respond.

And then they're all there are responding to places outside of the buffer areas too, and so there is not we've not yet uh discussed kind of what the impact would look like on their capacity yet, because we haven't quite landed on exactly what it would look like just yet.

Okay.

I'm happy to follow up also maybe with the heel team because I think the other question I have might be for them rather than for you, but I will ask it, which is um in the last update, I asked about um who's doing cleanup um just in general around parks or different places where things are left behind, whether they be from folks who are unhoused or just general community members, um, and there still seems to be some gray there that folks are working out between heel and tidy up to coma.

But I'm also wondering if there is any place in this policy, or if it's perhaps a separate conversation, a separate policy we need to have around addressing the issue that was raised in that conversation of the heel team seeing more people in shelter or in encampments who are not unhoused.

Um I don't know if this is the place for that or if that's a separate conversation, but I just sort of asked that as we're kind of having a brain brainstorm here.

Because I think a lot of the it's concerning to me that there's folks who are causing trouble in encampments where folks are um already vulnerable who are not unhoused and they're just in there.

Yep.

Well, what we'll we'll definitely get to that conversation will add it to our list.

But I think that was um there was a recent article in the Seattle Times about some of their approaches in Seattle, and one of the comments that was made was that um from outreach that when you have a large encampment, it's often harder for people like that to be inside of those areas, cause problems, be you know, who maybe are not unhoused but are actually maybe preying upon them or victimizing those folks.

And so that is something that we won't want to talk about as we think about it.

Thank you.

Um I think that's all I have for this.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Scott.

Uh thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Um, I appreciate us having this conversation.

Um I have a lot of concerns in general.

I hear that this is not about solving homelessness, but uh houseless people are the main people mentioned in the like language of the policy.

And so I understand, I understand we need to have some um you know community code around how we utilize our public spaces.

Um it just I feel like the language of this, you know, I I'm appreciative that we have um therapeutic courts um for people to be to, you know, for diversion and things like that.

Um but I guess my concern is just that if this isn't about homelessness, why it mentions homelessness, um, and it's hard to feel like it's not about homelessness when the folks who are most often impacted by this code are homeless.

Um to be clear, like I mean, I know that there are some folks who are in these encampments.

We heard that uh, you know, earlier from a briefing just a couple weeks ago that there are people there who are not particularly they're not actually unhoused, they're there for various reasons, both personal and nefarious.

Um, but I would say the majority of folks who have a place to sleep are not just deciding to go like roast marshmallows next to the park.

Um, and are not gonna be the ones impacted by this.

So I guess I'm trying to figure out even before some of our shelter closings, and we had buffers that were that looked more like what we're you're trying to get back to now.

Um, you know, did this actually measurably reduce encampments, or did it just push them away from those spaces that we didn't want them at?

Because it feels like the encampments haven't reduced, and maybe it's because I'm in one of those neighborhoods where a lot of encampments got pushed to.

Um, that feels like there's even more of them.

And um, and it doesn't, and oftentimes, you know, I see them on one block, they get pushed to the next block, they get pushed to the next block.

So there's like it's I feel like it's kind of a a losing battle of you have to not be here, but there is no, but you can be here.

Um and so I just it's like there is a logical part of my brain that understands that this is to quote not about homelessness or solving homelessness necessarily, uh, but I think we have used it as like a mitigation strategy.

Um and I just I don't know that it's done that.

And so I think that the language here, like it confuses me, and I think it confuses people in the community.

I think it upsets people in the community.

There are people who want to see folks helped, housed, provided services.

Um there are some folks who just don't want to see people being homeless or they would like to not see them.

Um, and there are some people who want to solve the problem.

Uh, and I just I guess I'm just trying to figure out how we talk about this in a way that doesn't create that, like, because we're saying sorry, and I know I'm kind of like giving you a kind of a stream of consciousness here and like uh sprinkling in some questions, and you don't have to answer them all now.

I just kind of want to get like since we're having the conversation, I want to uh put a lot of this out there, but um I guess I'm just concerned that there is no real objective evidence that separates this from like a home like between a uh public use of uh use of public property like ordinance and a like homelessness management ordinance.

And um, and I you know, I know that we spend a lot of money mitigating these sites, not only by you know uh the staffing of like the hill team and stuff going out, talking to folks, um, providing and offering services, but also the cleanup of these sites, the you know, the mitigation with like putting down the rocks and things like that.

Um, and I don't yeah, I just I like I I think that this has caused us problems.

Um there are already problems, and I think this has added additional problems, and I guess I just wonder if there is a considering that like we're like, oh, you know, how many people have been like arrested for this, like maybe two in this whole time three?

Um I know that folks have received services, I know that sometimes it takes people multiple times of being offered services to to accept those services.

Um it just makes me wonder if it wouldn't be better to put more money into the outreach of this and getting more people out there to offer these services, um of having places where people can go and being clear about it, um and just I don't know, like it just feels very like I said, I I get that I'm kind of asking some broad questions, some specific questions.

I'm kind of just you know, sharing my my overall thoughts, but I think um how do we make sure that we're not further exacerbating our problem and how do we um of you know trying to solve the homelessness crisis?

How like are we making it harder for ourselves to do that by shuffling people around and by adding these buffer zones in or you know, expanding them?

Um does it just push push encampments into different neighborhoods and are we and again like are we pre what are we prepared to do there?

And so I I guess like yeah, I think I I will stop at that part, and again, anything you want to respond to, you can.

I'm not necessarily expecting you to have like any definite answers in the moment because a lot of that was like I said, some stream of consciousness, but I just yeah, I just have a lot of concern and questions about this.

I one thing that you brought up that I I think is really important, and I and I have to be cautious of it, right?

Because uh as someone who's been kind of doing policy like this for five years, uh the first thing people ask me is, hey John, how's this gonna solve homelessness, right?

And your point is the right one.

This is not really a homelessness policy, it's about public private use of public spaces policy.

So if the Girl Scouts set up tents outside the park, they couldn't do that either, we'd shuffle them along too.

Or if I decided that um my garage was too full of stuff and I piled it a block away from the lot the school and just left it there, um, the city would come in and tell me to move my stuff too.

So I think that you make a very good point, Council Scott, that this is more about storing a private property on in public spaces.

Now the conflation comes from the the port around more likely than not, so these folks are homeless, right?

So they come together, and then the conversation of like where the pushback comes into is like well, how is this helping that situation?

And I I to answer the question, mine is is more in that space of this is about private use of public spaces, right?

And so doesn't probably doesn't it doesn't even need to report homelessness in some level, it could just be about you can't that keep preventing people from taking those spaces for private uses.

Um I think this is a good one.

I think the other question that in this, and I'm just we're having a conversation, which first of all, I really appreciate this because we haven't really had gone through this one.

The one that um that I keep kind of mulling over is kind of the and this is not respect, and this is part of your question, but also I think broader one that I hear in the public is what happens if we take it to the logical other extreme of the conversation, where a few months ago we didn't remove a group of folks, and we have business owners from business history come in here and talk about all of the impacts that came from it.

And I don't think that by leaving those folks in place for an extended period of time, one increased their likelihood of taking services, but did increase the impacts on the public on the private the people who lived in that area, and I think that's the the delicate balance we have to strike, which is how do we best get services to people while also making sure that it doesn't impact some of our other residents?

And a question I've often asked that I I think about is well, how long would I need we need to leave folks in place before we would see the return on increased uptake in shelter and services?

Um I don't know.

I haven't had that, I haven't that hasn't been something that's been articulated to me.

Like, oh, if we left from there for three years, at some point everybody there would be able to would take the shelter and services we have.

So I think that's just the question that I keep coming come back to again and again, which is how do we kind of balance these two things?

Um but to your other questions, there were some good, there were some ones in there that I'll have Christina kind of follow up on.

This is give me lots of good things to think about.

Um yeah, and to your other point, what we are finding is one of the concerns in 2022 was that say the 705 encampment, which had anywhere in the neighborhood from 80 to 100 folks at one point in time.

Um when we passed the ordinance, we did not see just that 80 to 100 folks reset themselves up just right outside of the buffer area.

What we saw is the encampments became much more dispersed, right?

That they were smaller, which from our what we look what we have believed is makes it easier for outreach because there are smaller groups to get contact with.

Um, but they are it's not that the large encampments really were taken care of by this.

We still have small kind of ones, twos, threes, you know, fives.

Um so that is a that is a kind of a trade-off that was made in the policy that was something we have to think about.

Like, is it is it better to have smaller groups that we can do route reach to that may be more diffuse, or is it better to have larger kind of encampments that um are in one place and relatively stable?

And that's an I think that's an ongoing conversation we keep coming back to.

So, yeah.

Councilmember Walker.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Um, Councilmember Hines, your comment and council member Scott's comments about um use of public right-of-way um spurred a question around enforcement, and I think um along those same lines, we spent a lot of time talking about enforcing the camping part of this.

Is there an element of this about enforcing the stuff like your example of cleaning out your garage?

A lot of people park in the public right away, they park on the sidewalk.

It is a huge problem for people trying to get around.

Um is that part of this?

Is there an enforcement element or is that something we can bring forward for discussion next time?

I mean, that would be something that would be something of kind of further discussion specifically.

I mean, it would, I mean, if someone who was housed meet the met the criteria by which they were storing their belongings on the right-of-way that it would it would fall into that category, Councilmember Rumbaugh.

Um thank you, Deputy Mayor.

I think my question is for the city manager.

Um, I want to understand how we support new development or new housing, um, especially downtown when they come in to our city and they're um you know, they're dealing with issues um around um unhoused populations and a difficulty renting their or leasing their facilities.

I'm just wondering how like the conflict between trying to build up a downtown so that we get that the bustle we want to get business to locate and how how we how we deal with this issue.

I apologize.

We're having some technical difficulties on the back dais with microphones, that's why I came down.

Um Councilman Rumbah, I think it's that's ultimately a balance test from a staff perspective.

We follow your lead as a policy-making body as far as threading that threading that balance as far as being responsive to our development community that's trying to provide more housing options at the same time offering services to those most vulnerable in our community.

Um and then on balance um being responsive through TMC 8.19, um you have uh allowed the city manager's office to have some carve-outs for those um responsive uh activities that we have to do even outside of the camping ban.

Um we're still doing that.

Um, and then so it's that balanced us.

I I hope that's a fair way I could it's just a lot of these issues.

Um, and I'm not I am on the unified regional approach to homelessness, and I believe we're gonna get there.

Um it's just not gonna be till April or even longer.

And at the same time, I see these new multifamily projects that are supposed to be providing housing unable to house people because no one wants to move into that building once they drive by.

And so I'm just curious if we if we don't do something like this, how we will help the downtown area create the vitality that we're trying to get to.

And and I see us like we have a lot of multifamily projects that are in the works, and I would hate for someone who's put one up and have this experience, then decide not to put the low-income housing project in that they're trying to put in because they decide this is not a good investment because the other building they have to go into default because they aren't able to rent the units.

And I I and I see this happening, and so I'm just I just don't know how to the balance.

I'm not sure how to talk to that developer, how to support them, you know, and what what we can do, and that's why I'm supporting what council member Heinz brought forward, because it has a part where we're using our therapeutic courts, which is what I supported in 2022 when we brought this forward was the idea of trying other things that might help people get services.

Um, and if you look at therapeutic court, it has a lot of the things that I think can help people.

Um, but I'm but if we don't do something like this, I'm not sure what we do as a city and how how to direct you as the city manager to come up with a solution to help people be able to rent their facilities when there's an encampment right outside.

Yeah, yeah.

I I would say more than being, you know, uh more than a response to to what you just stated here from I let me echo the words of our staff that came to you last week for the alternative response uh report out from the course quarterly report.

You heard from our Hill Team members where they are seeing a better throughput in terms of uh individuals accepting help when we can make contact.

Um we're not making as much contact because that zone has actually opened up with some of our shelters that have closed down.

Um additionally, on the other side, I would say this is probably a little anecdotal.

Uh, our public works RUCO team who that enforces our parking.

This is just an example.

This is not um concentrated to what you're discussing for homelessness or for responsiveness or for affordability housing.

Um, our Ruco team with very few staff members, um, they are seeing better enforcement when they're able to talk to individuals with no parking or limited parking or permit parking.

And so you've seen that grow in the city, um, and that's also a balance because at the end of the day, when we have more of those zones for enforcement, um, it takes away it or that perception that it takes away.

So this is an ongoing conversation that um from a staff perspective, as your interim city manager, I welcome this conversation because um we will walk aside of you all as you balance this out from a policy standpoint of and I do appreciate you all talking about enforcement as well.

What is the throughput to enforce uh what could be more depending on where you go with this?

So thanks.

Thanks, Councilmember Ava Rumba and uh City Manager.

Um there aren't any questions, I'll take my turn now.

Um Councilmember Heinz, I appreciate um your persistence and trying to find solutions to this issue.

I was here when you proposed this the first time and I wasn't in support of it for the reasons that I think that I have questions of now.

Um, but I have some general questions and just kind of um thoughts just about the way in which we're trying to solve this issue, what this is, what it's not, um, and overall, like what we are planning to do as a city.

Um, and one of the things that I'm curious or concerned about in creating a policy and expanding the one that we have now in general is that we haven't quite done the feedback loops and study of what we have accomplished or not accomplished.

Um, and I think that takes an external body to come in and help us see what we have and have not done, and um, in comparison to what we have spent and what um what we have invested in this in this policy.

Um I know it's not intended to be our homeless strategy, but when we get our homelessness updates, we get updates on this ordinance.

And so for me, if we don't have a very clear homeless strategy or way that we are going to support our community long term, we don't have a strategy, and this is the strategy, and that isn't good enough.

And I think we can do better for the city of Tacoma in that.

And for that, I wish you would have reached out to the council members whose districts are most impacted in this, because I feel like the elephant in the room is that your district is least impacted by this in encampment ways and in all of the ways.

And one of the things that you said in the beginning was that you wanted to have that this would inspire higher equity neighborhoods to want to get more shelter because then there would be buffer zones around those shelters.

And a question that I have for you is do we see an increase in shelters in our higher equity neighborhoods?

How many more do we have there?

Overall, I know that we have less in the city of Tacoma in shelters.

I know that we have one on Sixth Avenue, but where are the the other ones?

My largest concern was that we were going to start banning folks from different places, and that we would be shuffling around people in lower income neighborhoods, and that's an equity issue.

That's problematic for me that we haven't yet solved that, and we haven't quite asked the right questions about how to solve that before deciding to expand this.

Some questions that I have for you that I know that are gonna be in the weeds, so you don't have to answer them today.

Um the cost per year to enforce this.

I know that we spend 11 years, 11 million dollars uh biennium to enforce this, and that wasn't noted on the fiscal note when you put this together originally.

We didn't have a real cost, but now we know.

And I guess the question that I'm I'm trying to I'm challenged by the fact that we are asking the state for nine million dollars a year and support for our shelters.

Um, and I just wonder if this isn't the answer to homelessness, is it supporting or helping what we can do as far as really taking care of this issue and providing real places for people to be?

That's the fiscal question that I have.

Um the practical kind of questions I have.

I really appreciate the therapeutic courts.

I feel like that's an underused um addition that we have and or underused piece of Tacoma that we have.

Um I have some technical questions about um just the number the sheer number of folks that we have that are unhoused that would be um that could be having to go to therapeutic courts.

I know that we just got a presentation on that.

I know we're not prepared for that number.

How would we staff up and how would we budget for something like that in this next biennium?

Because it seems like it might be an addition that we would need.

Then I've got another question about the how they would get there in terms of in order to get to court, you've got to have an offense.

Where do you go in the meantime?

If we don't have space for you in jail, I don't like what is that process look like, and what is that flow look like for someone who is um not ready to receive shelter?

The last question that I have is, and this one you can answer.

Um that you probably do know all these questions already, but um, or you probably know this one already.

I I just want to talk to you, or I just want to understand your process about what it was like for you to engage, who did you engage with to solve this, and how you worked with council members in the districts that are most impacted by this and community members who are most impacted by this.

And was this what we said we was this the was this the request from those council members?

Good questions.

Uh some of them I'll have Christina kind of follow up on.

Um to the question around encouraging shelters non in other areas of the city that are in higher opportunity areas.

I you know, I could speak clearly to the fact that this ordinance has made it so that no one in my district, which is the one in the high operator's ever asked me, like why is the shelter still here?

Um, all of them ask me why can it stay longer?

Why is it only here for two years?

I've had other neighbor other people in my council district churches reach out and say, we'd love to host a shelter too.

Um I think the critical challenge, but that is just the funding component of it.

Um, you know, I think there are ways we could look at some of our funding structures later if we wanted to bring more shelters to district one to do that.

But I've had have had a few other churches in my council district reach out to me and talk to me about expanding some of the opportunities we have here.

Um so I think it has done that, and I'll look to staff to see if there's other private property owners to Councillor Bushnell's point if we're interested in taking one of these on.

Again, the challenge comes back to kind of the funding of these things um to try to find um the dollars to match the two.

Um the CCR has kind of an updated fiscal note in it for what we think the cost will be.

I your point though is a is one that I would just um make sure that I I pause on for a moment.

The cost enforcement, the number, I think there's a one of the challenges is that is the cost for removing debris and trash related to people camping on the streets.

So even if we stop moving people tomorrow, that number wouldn't go to zero, right?

Because we'd still be paying millions of dollars to pick up debris and trash around these places.

So I just want to that is something I hear from folks, not just mayor, but from the public, like we'll just zero that out and take that money and put it someplace else.

Well, the answer is we can't zero it because we'll be spending millions of dollars to pick up debris and trash related to camping, um, even if we don't move another person to the city again.

Um, because there's a lot of trash is generated, and usually that leads into a conversation, why aren't we putting out uh dumpsters and things like that for folks?

And that is a longer conversation than I won't have right now, related to kind of some of the experiments we made during during COVID about setting out dumpsters around places and some of the challenges that came with that.

So I think that's a really good question.

Wolf Hulp C CR.

Um the question about who do you outreach with?

I'm uh Council Rumbaugh, who has a lot of the shelters and services in her district, and why I work very closely.

Um I've talked to a lot of shelter providers, outreach employees, part of the point in town count, part of the Pierce County regional um homelessness, uh, or what was the select committee on homelessness at Pierce County.

Um and really having being in a lot of the lights conversations for the last three years and trying to understand.

Um to council member Scott, who represents the Hilltop, which I think is one you're referring to in Council Bushnell, um, you know, uh trying to understand kind of what the challenges are that they're hearing from their constituents and really paying attention to those as much as I can.

Um, I'm happy to talk with them further about what they think is the um appropriate level of response in their council district.

This was just kind of me putting an idea out here to see.

Um, but I am sensitive to the fact that what you brought up is something that I've been thinking about for a long time, which is encampments that have community impacts, seem to have seem to often happen in these lower opportunity areas.

And so the inverse of the policy of just like just not doing anything and just leaving encampments for an extended period of time, actually, I think has a real impact in very low opportunity areas that is also like there's a balance we have to strike between the two.

Um because um there are parts when we look at the previous map, there were parts of the city that there was no camping ordinance or no ban at all, and they are pretty much the higher opportunity areas of the city.

Um, but when we ban camping, folks did not go out into those areas where there was no camping ordinance.

Um they stayed pretty concentrated in some of these areas here.

And I think that's a longer question around um a bigger question around how we balance the two.

Because I I think that's the we see kind of one end if we don't move, if we if we don't do any removals, the impacts it has, and on the other end, um if we are just moving people constantly, we see some of the impacts.

So there's a way to strike, we need to strike a balance there.

So that's something I think about a lot.

Um what we do, how we do that.

Yeah.

And and I'm happy to have Christina follow up with the questions that I wasn't able to answer.

I think I have additional questions, but I'm happy to have a conversation offline and I'm happy to um help strategize uh what this could look like in the future.

But I I feel like this is not um quite there yet in terms of what we need for the city of Tacoma, and there's just a couple of things that if we were to put a strategy like this together, um, the cost to therapeutic courts and the impact on um our enforcement team, whoever that is, if we are decreasing funding in heel or increasing funding in heel, what does that look like if we are to add all of these areas?

Um and then what does ongoing research look like uh to actually get to our shelter?

We talked we just talked about the number between zero and eleven million dollars.

Um is there more that we can do on the sheltering side?

Is that the right number?

Um, should we have more of a balance in um what we're doing to be able to increase the number of shelters we have rather than decrease um and then what is our overall strategy?

This is not for you, but what is our overall strategy that lives outside of the regional homeless homelessness strategy that really speaks to what we are where we are going here in the city of Tacoma.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Are there any other questions?

Council or Councilmember Hines.

Do you want to just wrap up the conversation?

Perfect.

Uh well, first of all, thank you to all of my colleagues um for this conversation.

I think again, this is just the beginning.

And I I would just be really honest.

Um that in 2022, when we conducted kind of concluded the last one, one of the things I said was I really hope this inspires a further conversation around what we do to kind of move homelessness forward.

And it re and what really often feels like happened was it passed and everybody kind of walked it with the conversation moved into folks, you know.

I don't like where we're at right now, and we never really kind of continue to have this conversation.

So Deputy Daniels, I agree like that's a conversation we need to have.

Um, I think for the next presentation, Christina, maybe bringing the city's plan for homelessness that we we review to kind of have that as part of our conversation too.

Um, because you're right that this is not our only plan or can't be.

We have to have a broader one, so we'll bring that one and maybe even the county's plan too, um, just to kind of make sure we're grounded in those conversations.

So, what I'm gonna do, Madam Mayor, is take this.

Um, I'll talk to my colleagues about this.

That gave a lot of options today about what it looks like.

Uh Councilman Diaz brought up different maps and what so that could look like.

Um, so that is great.

I will just be uh take a minute, Alicia Radshaw is that the name I wanted to say.

Yes, I want to thank Alicia Bradsaw and the IT department for putting all these maps together.

I definitely had her cut about 12 different maps and was like that one doesn't work, can we do this?

Can we do that?

Um, so I was just want to thank her for all of our help on that to try to get to something.

Um at the end of the day, right?

Um I think we broadly agree here that we need more, we need shelter, we need housing, and we need a long-term plan and homelessness that doesn't involve um constantly talking about encampments.

At the same time, I just think that what I'm trying what I what I'm hoping to accomplish is how do we strike the balance with the fact that we also do need to make sure that we manage the community impacts of encampments, and we do need to make sure that um public spaces are open, accessible, and safe to the public.

And uh I look forward to working with this group on this in the weeks ahead.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Heinz for the presentation, and thank you to all of my colleagues for the rich discussion.

All right, we're gonna move on to our fifth agenda item.

I just want to remind you we have a fifth agenda item, and we still have a um executive session.

So moving on to our fifth agenda item, I'd like to call on council member Sidalga.

I ain't gonna lie, I I kind of forgot that I had to do this one, but I I know it.

Um I have a modification to my original uh motion and ordinance from last week on the MFTE.

Uh thank you to uh councilmember Hines for uh the robust discussion and being a co-sponsor uh this week on that.

Um and effectively it is uh, you know, we had a really good discussion on the importance of housing and and uh being able to be uh uh flexible in allowing it.

So the change um is uh that the eight-year MFT would be uh available to all developments of 20 plus, like the original um uh written um ordinance, and then for units of four to nineteen, it would be limited to home ownership uh occupancy.

Um there's also a couple of technical changes that were suggested by staff.

Uh one is a best practice to uh not just require a title note on the home occupancy portion, but um to all MFTEs, and this is actually in anticipation of some state changes that will be coming in.

Um, because there were instances of people being surprised by property taxes changing dramatically uh and not being aware that there were uh MFTEs involved in those.

Um, and this is just a way when uh properties uh sells to be aware that those exists.

So um happy to take any questions on that.

Thank you, Councilmember Sidalge.

Um we'll start with Councilmember Hines, followed by Deputy Mayor Dan.

No, I just want to thank Council Ms.

Algay for um taking the time to chat with me about his amendments and kind of working in some of my uh addressing some of my concerns I brought up last week.

I and I appreciate him as well as to let me sign on.

Um I'm in some full support of this, so thank you.

Thank you very much, Deputy Mayor Daniels.

Thank you, madam mayor.

Um, and I appreciate you bringing uh forward an amendment and your commitment to home ownership um and being able to be flexible and uh making sure that if we're doing eight years that it is either providing home ownership or that it is providing the density that we need in the community.

Um and I'm wondering um if one of the things that I brought up last time uh you brought this forward or the original version of bringing this forward was if there was particularly in the lower numbers where we are gonna continue the eight-year, is if they're um are if we are incentivized incentivizing any affordability, or are we um is there any cap at all on what we are giving a tax break on?

So the eight-year currently doesn't have any affordability um component to it, and that will stay because the 12 and 20 are the vehicles uh that were designed for affordability.

Um but I will say that as they are multi-family condo units, they will tend to be uh more on the affordable size, but you could also do that same one, and if you provide uh affordability, you get the 12 or the 20 because you can use any one of them, sorry, excuse me, um, in the uh MUCs.

Can you talk more about how about the they tend to be more affordable if they are on the because they're multifamily their condo units uh not single family separated houses?

These are all in the mixed-use centers, so these would all be buildings and um smaller condo units together because it's four plus.

Can you talk about how they might be more affordable?

Like how they might tend to naturally be more affordable.

Sorry, I meant that they wouldn't cost the same as uh like a separate single-family detached home rather than um.

Do you have any examples of where uh builder has used this on the eight-year, particularly under 20 units, and it has been for an affordable or anything near affordable?

Uh I believe if a builder builds affordable, they they choose the 12 or 12 20-year option.

So that's how they were designed.

So with this, we are incentivizing or we are paying the city is paying for to no limit any kind of homeownership opportunity available over extended beyond 200% AMI.

Just for any so they could be building a condo unit for $500,000 and we would be we would be paying for we would be giving them a tax break to do so.

Uh for eight years, and currently we give a tax break for eight years for technically it's either because that's both allowed today.

Right.

Right.

So it's still exactly what we would do today, but we would just say that if you want uh the eight-year would again, the eight year has no affordability, the 12 and 20 are the vehicles for that.

Um if you do it as a rental, it'd be 20 plus.

If you do it as a home uh sorry, a a owner occupant home ownership, not selling it to like a corporation that could then turn it into potentially a rental, uh the person would have to live there, then we would still give you that eight year now for four to nineteen.

I really appreciate that, and I think the removal of the eight years and going up to 20 was the trying to provide the city with um something from the eight year, right?

It's it's keeping the eight year because we are able to get density, and so now if we're able to get home ownership, that's great, but I don't I'm not really quite sure if I can support um home ownership or if we should be paying for 500,000, 600,000 condos.

If we should be taking a if we should be giving a tax break for those uh those tax breaks would be given to the individual that would be purchasing it.

Um it would increase uh it it may increase the supply of housing uh for purchase and purchase housing leads to uh you know home equity and potential generational wealth.

So that's the public good.

Um that I'm trying to incentivize over here.

This is also um in line with uh state policy that's trying to encourage smaller condo developments because there were changes that were done on the state level.

So this was a a method for me to dovetail with those same policy guidelines on a state level.

Are you amendable to a affordability cap of at 120, 150 percent?

Sure, we can talk about that if you have time right after this.

Okay, that sounds good.

All right, are there any other questions for council member Sidalga?

Councilmember Walker.

Um, just a logistical question.

This is we're voting on this tonight, right?

So any changes have to happen.

Would have to happen ASAP.

And then you put forward substitute number two.

Does that mean substitute number one is off the table?

I need I need to phone a friend on that one.

I mean, that's how I read it.

Yeah, yeah.

I think that's I'm looking, I'm looking over at Chris, and I think the answer is very much yes.

Councilmember Walker, would you repeat the request?

Are we just looking at substitute number two now?

And substitute number one is gone.

The substitute two is an updated version of substitute one.

Is that true?

Or is it hit the other side?

It's the other side, hit the other right side.

There you go, Chris.

I might have to phone a friend too, because I didn't look at the last draft.

It's a substitute, it's an amendment to the substitute.

And so that's the one.

So item number two is the amount.

Council member Heinz.

I let Council know very late that I was wanting to be a co-sponsor, so I think that only substantive change between one and two is I am added as a co-sponsor.

Oh I mean, even on the first page, it's different.

Oh, well, maybe there's more than that.

Okay.

The sponsors are different on substitute for the substitute.

But there's also other.

But it sounds like nobody's bringing this one forward.

Is somebody bringing it?

The original one, it should not be.

No, but I wasn't it is okay.

Then that would answer.

Yeah, that that's that's I think that is we'll we'll we'll get with the clerk and make sure we've got that straightened out.

Thank you for the question, Councilmember Walker.

All right, any other comments.

All right, seeing none, we will move on to item number eight six, agenda review and city managers weekly report.

City manager.

Tonight we have three ceremonials on tonight's agenda.

First, proclaiming Saturday, October 11th as Arbor Day and Green Tacoma Day.

Uh proclaiming Monday, October 13th as indigenous indigenous people's day, and proclaiming October 5th through 11th as freedom to read week.

Um tonight we have several modifications to the agenda.

There may be a motion to set ordinance numbers 29061 and 29062 over to a future meeting.

These are the two ordinances pertaining to uh the street vacations for court C and 19th Street.

Two opportunities for the public to comment, public comment as well as public hearing for what you received today in presentation.

Which is which is their job, but I feel so bad because everything is in the packet, and then after our conversations, we decide which things will go forward and which things won't, but they all still have to be in the packet for the discussion just in case.

So thanks to staff always for doing all that work.

All right.

Seeing um seeing no further questions for the city manager, um, I will entertain a motion to convene to an executive session pursuant to RCW forty two.

And I I to discuss potential and pending litigation not to exceed fifteen minutes.

All those in favor signify by saying aye.

All those opposed, the eyes have it.

There will be no further business conducted um after the executive session except to adjourn the meeting.

We stand in recession.