The Tacoma City Council held a study session on October 14, 2025, from 12:00 PM to discuss legislative agendas, a University of Washington street vacation fee waiver, the interim city manager's workplan, a camping ordinance amendment, and a schoolyard funding request. The session included presentations, councilmember questions, and feedback, but no formal votes were taken. Several items are scheduled for further discussion or action at upcoming meetings.
All right. I would like to call to order the city council study session of October 14th, 2025. Clerk, will you please call the role? Councilmember Bushnell. President. Deputy Mayor Daniels. Here. Councilmember Diaz. Councilmember Hines. Councilmember Rumba. Here. Councilmember Sidalgay. Here. Councilmember Scott. Absent. Councilmember Walker. Here. Mayor Woodards. Absent. Materials will sent to you at 1104. Thank you. All right. So the first item on our agenda today is the state and the legislative agendas. And for that, I would like to call the city manager's office, government affairs advisor Alex McBain to provide introductions and begin the presentation. Along with Alex, we've got Andrea Roper, our government affairs advisor, and not Jen Cavino, we've got Amina today. Welcome. Yes, uh, thank you, Deputy Mayor. Good afternoon. Um here to um talk about the R-ledge agenda and to introduce our government relations team. As you mentioned, uh Andrea Roper who will focus on mostly the federal and regional thing, myself, Alice McBain on the state. We have Amina Tiore with us, who's with from uh Gordon Thomas, sorry. Gordon Thomas Honeywell. Um and you all know um Brianna Murray, who's um unable to join us here today, but we'll be um getting back with any questions that we have. Um, and then Jen Cavino is with us remotely from uh Cavino Smith and Simon also and I'll hand it over to Andrea to get us started. Perfect. And just to give you a sense of the agenda for today's flow, um Alex will be presenting on the state agenda. He'll give a little preview of what to expect in the state session next year. He'll then kick it over to Jen Cavino who will give a brief update um on the 119th Congress, second session, and what to expect in the year ahead. Um, and then I will chat about our federal legislative priorities. We're happy to take questions at any time or hold them to the end, whatever works best for council. To give a sense of the schedule and just what to expect for the month plus ahead, we'll do a second preview of our legislative agendas, incorporating any feedback you may have today. We'll come back to a joint study session in later in October. We'll be joined with our counterparts at TPU for that discussion. And then after that, we'll return in November for council's consideration and ideally adoption of the final citywide state and federal legislative agenda. Our goal is to have this agenda um finalized ahead of the legislative delegation briefing in December, and information for that event is forthcoming. Um and then, of course, in January kicks off uh the second session of Congress as well as a short session for Alex. And just to orient you briefly to the materials that you have in front of you. So the government relations team uses two core documents. The first is our longer legislative priority or legislative positions document, and this is a comprehensive document that captures our values and positions on a wide variety of issues. Um it's really intended to serve as a guide to both Alex and I on how we engage on legislative issues both at the state and federal level.