The Tacoma City Council held a study session on October 7, 2025, to discuss five major items: historic preservation code amendments, Tacoma Creates ordinance amendments, 2025-2026 mid-biennium budget modifications, a council consideration request to amend camping and storage of personal belongings on public property, and property tax exemptions for multi-family housing. The session included presentations, council questions, and public input scheduled for the evening. No formal votes were taken during the study session; decisions and next steps were outlined for future meetings.
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.