Good afternoon, everyone.

I'd like to call to order the city council study session of January thirteenth, twenty twenty six.

Clerk, please call the roll.

Deputy Mayor Bush now.

Present.

Councilmember Diaz.

Councilmember Heinz.

Here.

Councilmember Palmer.

Councilmember Rumba.

Here.

Councilmember Sidalga.

Here.

Councilmember Scott?

Here.

Councilmember Walker.

Here.

Mayor Ibsen.

Present.

We have one agenda modification to today's agenda.

We'll first be entering into a an executive session to discuss pending and potential litigation.

And I will entertain a motion to convene an executive session or uh per um RCW forty two.

Section I subsection I subsection I and two.

A lot of subsections.

To discuss potential and pretending litigation and excuse me, potential and pending litigation.

There we go.

Not to exceed thirty minutes.

So moved.

Second.

Move and second.

All's in favor uh to convene an executive session, please signify by saying I.

Motion is declared.

Adopted.

Like to reconvene study session.

The first item on our agenda is the Center for Strategic Priorities Department Overview.

I'd like to call on interim city manager Kim for opening remarks.

Thank you very much.

What we have before you for today is the first in a series of briefings by departments on their general operations, alignment to Tacoma twenty thirty-five, current work and challenges on the horizon, and just a great discourse.

And so good opportunity for you to discourse with our leadership from our departments.

As you know, we are preparing for a challenging budget development process for the 27-28 biennium.

Ahead of these discussions, we believe it is important that the community has a clear understanding of the work each department performs level setting.

How these services are funded and the range of programs and responsibilities within each service area.

Today's presentation is led by Jacques Clone, our director of office of strategy, as well as Peter Huffman, our director of planning and development services, uh, which should ground you in the key strategy uh documents that are foundational to the city's work and begin to warrant you to our city operations on an ongoing stage point.

With that, I will yield more time to Director Clone.

Thank you.

So to start off, the center is comprised of three offices.

As you can see here, it's the Office of Strategy, the Office of Environmental Policy and Sustainability, and the Office of Equity and Human Rights.

And in order to do that, the center provides guidance, consultation, reporting, research, facilitation, and training to help support all of the departments across the city in delivering high quality services to all members of Tacoma's community.

I guess before before I move on to recent accomplishments, I do want to add that when you see these three offices that together comprise the Center for Strategic Priorities.

What actually ties these three offices together?

Why are they hosted together as part of the Center for Strategic Priorities?

In short, these are three strategic functions that help us to identify what the city needs to do to advance our strategic priorities, and then figuring out how to advance those through living out our values of resilience, access opportunity and belonging, as well as making sure that we're doing things like understanding who is benefiting from those things in order to achieve those shared goals.

So again, all three of these offices are focused on really helping the city strategically advance these priorities while making sure we're doing so in alignment with our values as a city.

The recent accomplishments of the center include Tacoma 2035, which I recently presented to council in December, and as you can see here from this image has now been officially published.

In strategy, we help to align the strategies and plans of the organization.

That's both big picture through Tacoma 2035, but also aligning cross-departmental actions by issue or community outcome.

And so that would be things like the community safety action strategy, which takes actions from across each of our departments and really aligns them to what are the shared goals that they are helping to achieve together.

In addition to that, we also coordinate how these actions can be advanced with partners.

And so an example of that would be the Tacoma Anchor Network, a partnership of the 13 largest employers in Tacoma, really focused on how we can come together to create common goals and actions to achieve higher local purchasing, really making sure that we are investing in our local economy as much as possible, as well as local hiring.

Next, we have the Office of Equity and Human Rights, which is really focused on doing three things.

One, ensuring that we are very clear about our continued commitment to advancing access opportunity and belonging for all members of our community.

Two, continuing to highlight the progress that we have made as a city in advancing those and will continue to highlight that progress.

And then three, importantly, figuring out how to continue to move forward and build on that strong foundation.

In order to do that, we are producing guidance documents, including guidance on how to frame issues around access, opportunity and belonging, guidance around how to engage the community in a way that is ensuring that we are hearing the voices from all parts of the community, especially those that have not been involved in our processes in the past.

And then finally, consultation to continue advancing things like the use of our equity index and other tools that really help us identify how our programs, policies, and services can help to continue to advance these outcomes, not just on a large scale, but for each individual component of our community.

Then, third, you'll see that the Office of Environmental Policy and Sustainability includes the climate action plan.

So in the same way that the Community Safety Action Strategy took actions from all different departments and really organized them around common goals.

The Climate Action Plan is doing the same thing around our approach to climate mitigation and adaptation.

So really thinking about these are issues that are not going to be owned by one department.

How do we continue to have that kind of cross-departmental alignment and coordination that allows us to effectively and efficiently advance those priorities?

You'll see there a couple of grants.

Since that was installed in April, it has seen outstanding usage, so we are actually seeing the impacts of that playing out in real time.

The next is the ecology grant for e-bike rebates and air purifiers.

In this past year, through that grant, we were able to see more than 400 people in Tacoma redeem $300 or $1,200 rebates based on their income, that differential based on what your income is when you applied for that rebate.

And along with that rebate came safety gear as well as support such as learn to ride lessons.

In addition to that, we were able to distribute more than 200 air purifiers to families, specifically in our low opportunity areas as designated by our equity index.

What's not listed up here are the many other grants that OEPS has been involved in in the past year as well.

So just to name a few, there was a grant from DOE for $300,000 for energy efficiency and decarbonization.

We have a grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation that is for the Commencement Bay Restoration and Resilience Plan, which is a large partnership effort that we're undertaking looking at how we will adapt to the impacts of climate change specifically on Commencement Bay and along Ruston Way.

And then in addition to that, what I mentioned with the EV chargers and the air purifiers, and then a separate grant from Washington Department of Commerce for low-income heat pump retrofits.

So a lot of work in helping to advance our climate goals through these actions.

In total, just for OEPS, those grants total about 4.3 million dollars in the past three years.

So Tacoma 2020, Tacoma 2035 is the city's new 10-year strategic framework.

And as you can see here, it really is the organizing umbrella for the more than 40 plans and strategies that are currently being implemented across the city.

I mentioned Tacoma 2025 as the first thing out of my mouth when I opened this slide because Tacoma 2035 is born from Tacoma 2025.

The work of Tacoma 2025 led to the beginnings of Tacoma 2035, and then the engagement process that was done in partnership with PDS and others through the One Tacoma engagement process really helped us to refine and confirm what the direction of Tacoma 2035 would eventually be.

This plan established a new vision for the city, which reflects the six goal areas that you see here.

That vision is becoming a safe, connected, housed, working, sustainable, and thriving city.

And the mission that the city has in helping to achieve that vision is to continue to deliver high-quality municipal services, specifically to enhance the lives of all Tacoma community members.

There are four values in Tacoma 2035 that we will be talking about in future months, but those values are belief and trust, access opportunity and belonging, fiscal responsibility, as well as resilience.

The focus on these six key goal areas, as you can see here, is really important because those six goal areas reflect three things.

One, they reflect the community's vision for what they want to see in what they view as a thriving Tacoma or the Tacoma that they want to see in the future.

The second is it provides us jurisdictional role clarity.

In Tacoma 2025, you saw things that reflected the community's vision, such as parks, great school system, things that we know do comprise what the community wants, but we also know that the city's role does not necessarily overlap with those those components of the vision.

And so this framework really helps us to be clear about what is the role of the city of Tacoma in helping to achieve that community vision.

And then the third thing is operational feasibility.

The structure of Tacoma 2035 is really centered around these 40 plus strategies and plans that are already being implemented because those are the way in which the actions of the city are making these goals actionable in a feasible way.

Before I move further, I do want to just recognize that these are six outward-facing community goals, but it should be noted that all of the work happening at the city internally, IT, HR, finance, these critical components of internal services are needed for us to be able to actualize these six external facing goals.

And so I just want to make sure to note that as a really important foundational component of how we actually achieve these.

The last thing that I do want to mention is that this is a living document, and so these strategies and plans reflect the guidance that we have received from council, but as that guidance from you changes, so too will Tacoma 2035.

And so the hope is that you see this as a reflection of what is currently in motion, but also see this as an opportunity to take ownership of the direction that you want to continue to push the organization.

And what you will see moving forward, starting with planning and development services after me, but continuing into the other presentations, is that they will be framing their presentations in terms of how they are advancing these Tacoma 2035 goals for you in their presentations.

So, how we support council goals in achieving all of this is first by aligning organizational strategy.

As mentioned, we do that through Tacoma 2035 and aligning the plans and strategies in our organization, but also by helping to facilitate your conversations as a council through things like the council retreat to establish your council priorities.

The second thing that we do is we help to advance access, opportunity and belonging across our entire organization by supporting city departments with guidance, consultation, and reporting services.

And the other way that we do that is by interacting with CBCs, our committees, boards, and commissions.

So we do that in two ways.

The first is direct staffing, and the three committees, boards, and commissions that we staff are CPAC, the community's police advisory commission, the climate commission, and then TAC, the Tacoma Area Commission on Disabilities.

Separately from that, we also support CBC process improvements by doing things such as hosting quarterly CBC orientations for newly appointed members, streamlining and creating internal orientation with staff liaisons to CBCs, hosting monthly coordination meetings with CBC staffers to provide them with additional support in providing services to their CBCs, and then finally partnering with the city clerk to work on updating our standing committee process.

So working on all of those things simultaneously.

And then finally, we work to further climate action for the city, and we do this mainly by managing the implementation, you know, can managing the continued implementation of our climate action plan, as well as you heard from the grants that I listed off, continuing to advance key initiatives to reduce local emissions and mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change or other environmental impacts.

So our department priorities in summary, and just to orient you, this image is an image of the environmental indicators layer of our equity index.

Our department priorities are to help support you in confirming your priorities at the upcoming council retreat, which will happen on February 20th.

Continuing implementation of Tacoma 2035, including but certainly not limited to supporting that framework being incorporated into the 27-28 biannual budget process.

Supporting city departments in advancing access opportunity and belonging, and coordinating implementation of the climate action plan.

Through each of these and other functions, we'll continue to report to council on these key initiatives to make sure that you have the information that you need to continue to provide the guidance to the organization that you would like to.

In terms of current initiatives, in our Office of Strategy, we are planning for that February 20th Council retreat in support of identifying your council priorities for this year.

We continue the implementation of Tacoma 2035 as mentioned, and then the Tacoma Anchor Network continues to be brought together in advancing those shared goals around local purchasing and hiring that I mentioned, and that work will continue.

Access opportunity and belonging, those that value, those concepts will continue to be incorporated into the work of the organization through our department consultation process.

We're currently working with the public works department and piloting some of that work, as well as the guidance documents that I mentioned to you before, including community engagement and the equity index, and then finally the CVC work that I just mentioned on the previous slide.

Initiatives from the sustainability side include the coordination of the climate action plan implementation as just discussed, the commencement Bay Restoration and Resilience Master Plan that was mentioned as part of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation grant, and then finally transportation and building electrification partnerships and support.

Current critical issues to address include continuing to use Tacoma 2035 and other vehicles to address the more than 40 strategies and plans being actively implemented across the city, which necessitates alignment.

There is the need for effectiveness in our approach to advancing strategic priorities through providing support, resources, and other kinds of support to allow for that continuing advancement.

And then cross-departmental coordination will continue to be an organizational issue that we continue to help address through our cross-departmental strategies and the work of bringing multiple departments together on these shared goals.

The work of the council prioritization as well as the work of incorporating Tacoma 2035 into our organization operations is really in service of helping to prioritize amongst many different goals and efforts with our limited budget.

As you all know, we have many priorities as an organization, and our opportunities to advance those priorities shift with depending on budget, time, and other contexts.

And so helping to support that over time remains a critical issue for us.

Maintaining momentum in our organization for advancing access opportunity and belonging for all community members will remain a critical issue.

Figuring out what kind of support staff need to continue to do that, whether it is tools like the equity index, framing like access opportunity and belonging guidance or other tools such as the community engagement framework, we will continue to work with departments to ensure that we are continuing to build on the progress that this city has demonstrated in the past.

And then finally, we know that the impacts of climate change are not lessening, and so as we move forward, we will continue to have to monitor and be strategic about how to address the continue the continually growing impacts of climate change to city operations in the city as a whole.

To work with us, I will just call out a few ways that you can.

The first and main one is of course, please contact the city manager.

The Center for Strategic Priorities is a part of the city manager's office, and so we only do this work in support of other departments as representatives of the guidance that the city manager is giving us and helping to achieve that for you.

As mentioned, we provide general support to CBCs, but also staff, those three particular CBCs mentioned: CPAC, TACED, and the Climate Commission.

And then for more information about any and all of these efforts, you and the public can find more information about us at those sites on Tacoma.gov.

In terms of opportunities for engagement moving forward in 2026, there are some resources that we would point you as counsel to, including Tacoma 2035, our initiative level strategies such as the Affordable Housing Action Strategy, the Community Safety Action Strategy, and the Climate Action Plan.

And then the Equity Index, in addition to being a tool that you can access from a purely data standpoint, there are also tools that we've put out in terms of case studies so that you can see how it has actually been used within the city and organized by categories, such as how we've allocated resources using the equity index and so on.

In terms of council interaction, as mentioned, we will be facilitating and supporting the development of council priorities through the council retreat and follow-up.

There will be, similar to this, study session presentations with updates on major plans.

We will also be coming to council committees for topical updates as needed.

And then the CBC staffing and interface that we mentioned is also one of the ways that we consistently interact with council.

And then finally, partnership on external facing engagement, such as 2035 and the climate action plan.

I will just finish finish this by saying there's never enough engagement, and the community is constantly evolving and their needs are constantly evolving.

So you, as council, as the intermediaries and the representatives of your constituents always have opportunities for us to engage with you and your constituents on how these strategies are or are not addressing their needs, so that we can continue to make sure that we're improving, refining, etc., to best meet their needs over time.

So with that, um, I will end with our financials.

The general fund provides 16% of the sort of the center's budget, which means that 84% of our center is funded by the internal service fund.

You can see the on the right-hand side that that chart shows that 84 to 16 relationship.

Things to know a large percentage of the budget in the past by AM was represented by grants, including the Washington here grant in the environmental policy and sustainability office.

And then the other things to know is that we have been looking over the past two years on ways for reducing any needs from the general fund over time to reduce uh reduce the strain on the general fund, knowing all of the ways in which those dollars need to be allocated.

And so just two quick examples.

We had been contracting in past years for the equity index to be hosted externally.

Um we have brought that equity index application internal now, so it is now hosted entirely by our system through IT, which is actually a really major hurdle that we've crossed.

So want to thank IT for their partnership and help in making that possible.

There's also benefits to that in terms of integration with our other city systems and data.

And then finally, the anchor network similarly had been funded exclusively by the city in the past.

We've moved to a shared funding model in the past year where all of the anchors are now contributing to the efforts of the anchor network together.

So that is no longer entirely on the city.

And with that, I will end my presentation and I am happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Jacques.

Great presentation.

Are there any council questions or comments?

Councilmember Walker.

Thank you, Mayor.

Just really briefly, because we've spent a lot of time on 2035.

Um, and you know how much I appreciate it and um the way that we're just organizing our work.

Um, but I did want to comment and thank your team on the figuring out a way, excuse me, to invest in the Tacoma Anchor Network.

And a big thank you to the anchors for contributing.

I know that was a lot of um work over the last year to make sure that that group sustains and um I believe so strongly in us getting our 2035 priorities completed with that group of people that are so dedicated to each of their organizations.

So very glad to see that.

And and um just in general, I think this is more for city manager.

Um I like the format of of sharing the financials of how this internally, how it operates, and and um the opportunities for engagement that was a nice way to end it.

So I know you're the guinea pig on these.

So appreciate that, and it's really helpful to know where you can use council support help or where we can show up.

So appreciate that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Walker, Council Mr Hines.

Uh thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Uh I guess this would be a question for first of all, thank you for the presentation, Jacques, and for all your work here.

Um, especially coming right off the heels of Tacoma 2035.

I my question, which may be answered by you, but I may then open it up to the rest of the council, would be the part on the fact that we have 40 strategies and plans being actively implemented across the city, and we have a retreat coming.

Um I have met.

I'm gonna imagine that part of that process is by which we say this is something that's law that's past its time, this is something that sunsets, this is something should be changed, this is something we should continue.

So is that I mean, is that currently how you were imagining this process when we go to the retreat?

The short answer is yes.

Um, the long answer is that I've just gotten feedback from OSAC as of Friday about the contents of the retreat, and so I'll be reflecting that feedback into the design of the activities.

But in short, council member, yes, we are going to be using that opportunity to help you refine what the small number of priorities that you want to move forward collectively as a council while still acknowledging um fully that as a city, we have a really diverse book of business with a lot of diverse um things that we do.

And so the idea that um we would be able to look at all of our operations and say the three things that we are going to do just to be realistic.

We we do so much, right?

And people have expectations about all of those things.

So we will continue to pick up garbage.

We will continue to respond to service calls for X, Y, and Z.

All of those things remain true, and we know that you as a council have a desire to be able to identify a smaller number of things that you want to continue to really push in advance as those priorities.

Uh maybe I'll I have another question, Jacques, but maybe I might just say if there's an OSAC member that wants to kind of describe what you all talked about at the committee for for me to understand.

Yeah.

Sure.

Um would you prefer to go into that now?

Uh we have a question from the deputy mayor.

Absolutely.

Sure.

Uh, why don't we proceed with the deputy mayor's question?

And uh there is actually gonna be an OSEC update at the end of this meeting.

Um then I'll then I'll ask my follow-up question, but then I'll make my final comment on that one.

No, um I totally agree with you.

We have a book of work that is expansive, and also that um I know that members of the public would like to see expand even more.

Um, but I do think one of the critical things for me as we're moving into this year is like what is it the thing, what are the things that are just out there that are I don't want to use the word zombies and use zombie, right?

These zombie kind of initiatives that maybe were something that a council voted on.

I mean, I use AHAS as an example, and now that the mayor's back.

Um we do now still have a council member who was part of the original formation of AHAS, but prior to that we didn't have one.

Um and so getting a touch point of coming back and saying, hey, the eight of the people here are brand new or are newer and we're not part of that process.

Is this still something we want to hold on to, or is this something people decided on in 2017 that we no longer think is is valid, or not val that was not the word waiting for no longer is um is focused on relevant on what we're doing right now.

So I think for me, I'm just I guess I'm wish casting into this, not looking for an answer, Jacques.

It's just I'd really like it to really tighten down on like here's stuff that's here of these 40 strategies, here's some things that were decided on back in 2017 that are no longer something we probably should be putting energy into.

Here are some things that have become even more emergent as you all have identified that I I'm thinking a lot about is part of that conversation.

Uh my question though, um my last question when we said um uh when I looked at your budget and we looked at you the funding across the whole organization, you know, um and you're being funded through this kind of ISF fund, kind of I don't want to say through interservice uh fund, is that paid for by every department in the city's portfolio, including our utilities, or is it just general fund uh or just uh general government funded organizations?

Yes, my understanding is that that is um paid for across our entire organization.

Great.

That answers my uh that's my question.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Thank you, Councilman Hines.

And uh I definitely uh am in agreement with the the need for looking at zombies or uh whatever walking dead metaphors you want to use for legislation.

We should always we should always evaluate things.

I know my Halloween costs for next year.

Uh Deputy Mayor Bushnell.

Uh thank you, Mayor, and um thank you, Jacques, for this great presentation.

I should kind of dov table off dovetail off of council member Heinz.

Um I think been thinking about a lot about our strategies as well, and you know, I think I've mentioned it to you like how do we find alignment, not just within the strategies themselves, but within the council's work plan as well as the the larger work plan of our different CBCs and how does that fit in with our strategies?

Are they are they do they know what our strategies are and as well as you know where where the different city departments are and what their place in these plans um and are we advancing policy goals that are in relation to these plans?

So it's kind of an alignment focus on on what these strategies and plans are and priorities, and so I just been thinking a lot about that because there's a lot of great ideas out there, but it is is it in like how we how can we tie those great ideas to these specific strategies and plans, and how can we make sure everybody's in alignment on that?

So that's that's kind of what I've been thinking about.

So just want to throw that out there.

Thank you.

Very good points and questions.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Councilmember Palmer.

Thanks, Jock, for the presentation.

Uh I had the opportunity to meet you uh in community when you were present when you know members of the community had asked about um if you could help us understand a little bit more about the uh community safety action strategy.

So I appreciate you making yourself available for that, and and for community members who have uh questions.

Um you're bringing up some of the the plans, and I so I guess I have two questions.

One of them is um when it comes to plans like the climate action plan and others, um, how are those monitored and like what are we measuring and how like how often do you present to us with the progress of those plans?

Yes, thank you for the the question, council member, and welcome officially.

Um so each of the plans has a different measurement um format, but in general, the the way that it works is for the climate action plan since you mentioned that there's a number of actions represented in that plan.

Each of those actions is owned by a different department, and so the work that we do is to each year or um each quarter, depending on what the what the data point is.

But in the in the case of the climate action plan at the end of the year, um we collect all of the data from that past year from each department, put it all together, have one kind of report that we provide to you, and then the format for that can be either um both a written or in-person uh study session, and often it's both.

And so for the affordable housing, the affordable housing action strategy, we do it semi-annually.

So twice a year we provide you with a data update on what the progress is on those housing metrics across all of our different departments.

Um so I hope that answers your question, and then uh as council asks for updates, um, we we come and go and deliver them.

So we're if you were to ask for, for example, a Tacoma 2035 update on whatever cadence you wanted to, I would of course respond to that request.

Okay, fantastic.

Thank you.

I guess that's maybe something to consider is if the council wants to have a couple of topics that are just like like we are more of uh urgent topics for us to consider and stay more up to up to date on.

Um if that would be something where we're like, hey, can we get an update on this monthly or that sort of thing?

Um the other thing I wanted to, I I agree with my fellow council members about needing to update some of this stuff, but I just wanted to uh thank you two for the whole the list here of the current critical issues, and I'm I'm hoping that during the retreat we have time to talk about all of these and find um as much of a solution as possible.

Thank you, Councilmember Palmer, appreciate that.

Councilmember Romeau.

Thank you, Mayor.

And Jacques, thank you so much for all the work you did.

And I think you did a nice job talking about what where what your buckets are of things.

Um I guess the council member Heinz is constantly trying to like find a tomb for AHAS.

And I think AHAS has been a great tool.

I want to shout out to staff who worked on AHAS that I when I was on the Human Rights Commission, I was part of working on Home and Tacoma as part of the Human Rights Commission and a subgroup that was talking about anti-displacement.

I think that there, I think really it's really important to own that we have not done everything that's in AHAS.

There are things that we still I would love to see us see happen, and they might live somewhere else, but there should be a connection so we don't get rid of great things that we've worked on.

That has been a great tool.

I want to say home and Tacoma is part of AHAS, and we would never have gotten there if we hadn't done AHAS to begin with.

So we are what we have built, and things become helpful or you you grow off of it.

So someplace I think that there's a lot of things that we that aren't shown like we had these plans.

There are things in like planning where they have several different plans, like for the dome district.

Right.

Like we're not sure which one is the current update or what's happening with it.

I mean, I think more over a lot of these um dead plans are in planning.

So no offense, Peter, out there.

Love planning.

But yeah, I can ask him.

But I I I'm I'm comfortable opening up, but I I think what's really important to see what we still want to finish and some of the plans and figure out how how those things still happen.

Maybe it's not a full update, but if you could take anti-displacement and put it somewhere in out of AHA so that still could happens, I think that we all care a lot about anti-displacement.

It's part of you know everything we're talking about when we talk about anti anti-racism, and just I want to make sure that we don't lose that.

And that's my concern if you just say, bye, Ahaas, we're not gonna look at you anymore.

So thank you.

Thank you, Jacques, and thank you for your questions.

Um, I have a couple of my own.

So uh similar to Councilmember Heinz's uh concerns about which policies may or may not make sense or need revision just in the current context.

Um, something I myself would find really useful as we go into the strategic retreat next month is a review of Tacoma 2025 in terms of just how we've done because uh a strategic plan is of perhaps less utility if we can't judge ourselves based on how did we do?

Are we winning?

Uh did we not win so much on certain issues?

Uh so uh can you explain how that might be something that we might be able to delve into uh in the maybe a study session or two prior to the strategic retreat or whatever format would be of best preference to the council too.

Yes, thank you for the question, Mayor.

Um, so in terms of the format, I will leave that up to you and your colleagues in terms of how you would like this to happen.

Um, but in terms of the content, we are currently putting together a review of Tacoma 2025 that looks back at the past 10 years and the major indicators in Tacoma 2025 and does exactly that.

Kind of tells the story of what has happened in the past 10 years, why have we or haven't we made the progress that we were expecting in that area, and are there any numbers that we can point to for that score as you mentioned.

So we are putting that together right now, and we hope to have that ready certainly in advance of the retreat, um, hopefully by the end of this month or so.

And then if uh if after receiving that council would like more detail or um you know more information on any specific component of that, I'd be happy to follow up with you and make sure that you get that the information that you requested.

Thank you, Jacques.

If any council members have any preference for how to make that as digestible as possible, then feel free to follow up with staff.

Uh, my other question, uh Jacques, pertaining to anchors is um back when I was on council, and when we first started this conversation, the immediate, it's not so immediate now, it's years after the fact uh goal was a demonstration project of sorts.

Uh, this was back in 2017 or 2018, and could have been local hire or local procurement, but some sort of demonstration project, so that instead of just isolated individual anchors with their own local hire, their own local procurement, uh sort of like with the unified regional parts of homelessness.

The goal was uh a culture of collaboration towards a united goal rather than just disparate goals.

So, what is the status on the selection of a demonstration project?

So there have been demonstration projects, and we will continue to build on them.

I will give you a couple of examples.

Um, the THA product, uh the THA project Meadows Bridge that happened several years ago.

That was a project that THA brought to the anchors as a partnership opportunity, both in terms of siting but also in terms of programming and content at that site.

Um so that was that was a really interesting demonstration project.

On the more traditional kind of uh procurement and purchasing side, um, we are engaged in a project right now with UWT as the lead, which is really a data sharing project where we have data sharing agreements with each of the anchors.

Um they are now sharing their purchasing information with UWT, and we're looking to build a database that's hosted locally that allows us to then flip that based on type of purchase.

Um, that way we can see, for example, how much is every all of the anchor spending on one particular category, such as laundry or a particular kind of food, and then figuring out what opportunities we have for a secondary demonstration project that which would be more on the active purchasing side.

You're basically talking industrial symbiosis.

Yes.

Okay, cool.

And just selfishly, this is of extreme interest to my office.

So if you could maybe get in touch with my staff, I'd love to at least attend some of those meetings and learn more and integrate it.

Absolutely.

And council is welcome too.

And and I should thank uh council member Walker in particular for helping to uh provide executive support from the council side on the anchor network in the past.

So thank you.

Thank you for that support.

And to thank you for your contributions too, Councilman Walker.

All right, so unless there were final questions or comments on this topic, thank you, Jacques.

Thank you, Mayor.

Appreciate it.

Our second agenda item.

I see Peter coming up here, is a planning and development services department overview.

I'd like to call on the director of planning and development services, Peter Huffman, to begin the presentation.

Welcome, Peter.

All right.

Thanks, Mayor.

Members of the City Council, I'm Peter Huffman.

I'm the uh director of the city's Planning Development Services Department.

And I'm going to focus on life, not death, um, in my presentation.

Or unlife.

Or zombies or anything like that.

Um yeah, so we're gonna give a presentation of the department today.

Um, and I'm gonna figure out the clicker, and we're gonna go from there.

So, planning development services department is made up of primarily two divisions.

Um, one of them is the planning and services, which is got long-range planning, historic preservation, uh, that staff administers the planning commission and landmarks preservation commission.

And that staff is primarily funded by the general fund, which makes up about roughly the six or seven percent of the overall budget and staffing of the department.

Um, development services is got your building permit reviews, site development reviews, current planning, so land use permits, application services.

So, this is a group that you would apply to build something in the city pre-application services.

It's got building inspections, site inspections, as well as code compliance.

So, this is the operational side of the department.

It makes up about 90% of the staffing and um the funding, and it's funded by the permit enterprise fund.

So it's not general fund, it's uh funded by uh revenues that are generated by permit fee revenues.

And there's a there's a slide later in the presentation like jocks that get breaks that down into detail.

Um, as far as recent accomplishments, there's too many here to go through.

Uh, but you can see some of the big ones, obviously, home and to coma comes up a lot.

Uh council member Walker, thank you for your work on the sub-area plan.

That was a big accomplishment that we accomplished.

And then there's other uh accomplishments in here relative to housing.

What I really wanted to say on this slide is thank you.

Um thanks to the council, um, thanks to the city manager's office, thanks to all the work that the planning commission and the volunteers at landmarks and other um organizations have done to help us, but especially to the staff.

Many, many of these projects took a lot of heavy lifting from those departments.

Media communications office, a lot of a lot of press, a lot of public meetings, a lot of assistance from there, and then IT.

If you look at a lot of these projects, a lot of them like Home and Tacoma and some of the key projects that we'll be working on in 2026, really require IT to work with us in creating an Excel a software program that meets our customers' needs.

So Jock kind of covered this present this slide.

This is the umbrella or what I like to call the bumper shoot slide.

And so really what I want to focus on is what PDS does to move this forward, which I think was a question from a council member in the in the last presentation.

So here's some examples of some of the key work that we do that falls under the goals of the of 2035.

And excuse me if I call it 2025 because I was around when 2025 was 2015.

But so I might go back to that.

But anyway, other than the things that are listed here, I want to list some other things that we do that are relative to these areas.

Administration of the State Environment Policy Act, CEPA, is something that we do on project permitting to ensure that the city is complying not only with your policy goals relative to the environment, but also state and federal policy goals relative to protecting the environment.

We got residential permitting and code enforcement on housing and homelessness.

We do a lot of inspections.

We work really closely with the community on inspections.

We also do a lot of very expedient building permit work and land use permit on shelters, emergency shelters, stand-up shelters.

So a lot of that work goes to our department to make sure that those shelters get stood up and they get stood up in a safe and adequate way so that the folks who are using those shelters are safe.

On jobs and economy, we do permits.

And although we've always received, you know, we're always open for continuous improvement about permitting.

Permitting is often seen as one of the major factors in attracting investment.

And we pride ourselves on trying to be as customer service oriented and as transparent and as quick as we can.

We measure our levels of service, we compare those to other jurisdictions if we can find other jurisdictions data.

And what you'll notice in my conversations with you over the years and with my staff, we refer to permit applicants as customers.

So they are our customers.

We have an urban design studio.

We did a lot of other work with Jock's group and others on 25 minute neighborhoods to try to make the city's streetscape and environment as friendly and as walkable.

Mixed-use centers, if you look at mixed-use centers and a lot of the work that was done out in Lincoln and others, there's a lot of sort of you know, urban design work that's done to try to make our commercial areas.

We work with the community and economic development department on trying to make improvements like we've recently done in the McKinley neighborhood plan to try to make those spaces as inviting and comfortable so that people want to visit there, live there, work there, and invest there.

And then finally, on transportation mobility, not only do we have a lot of stuff in our municipal code relative to requiring stuff like bike lockers and bike parking, but you often hear a lot of this term called off-site improvements.

Well, a lot of off-site improvements build that transportation infrastructure sidewalks, paved alleys, uh ADA ramps, all of those things that make the city more mobile, um, that make the city more of a non-motorized environment.

A lot of those improvements in partnership with public works and the development community come out of planning development services.

So our priorities we like to partner with the community to build a you know a livable, sustainable and safe city.

That's probably our highest priority.

Um like I said, we want to you know provide strategic, timely, predictable, and cost-effective planning development services.

Um, and that's not just only on the permitting side, that's also on the planning side.

Um, so I think uh a lot of people focus on the work that we do, primarily perhaps either on the legislative side, which is what the council gets involved in, and that's the planning commission, and the work that you see Varn Burday and his group come forward.

But there's also a lot of community engagement and a lot of discussion that occurs at the permitting level.

A few years ago, we implemented a program where we actually, when um building projects are being constructed out in a neighborhood, we noticed that we generated a lot of um feedback from the community about just the impacts of construction, whether it be noise, truck traffic, things like that.

And so we proactively go out and we uh meet with neighbors and folks when there's a big project going on.

I think I can name a few the Bridges Industrial Project, the Grand Pacific, some of the stuff that's gone on in some of the areas like Proctor and Stadium, where we actually go out and we engage the community and bring give them updates on a periodic basis on a regular basis, sometimes monthly, with the developers sometimes, if the developer is willing to do it, to let people know what's going on in their neighborhood, so so they know when the big crane's gonna show up.

They know when there's gonna be hammer going on and deliveries and things like that, and then we work via code compliance and other partners to make sure that the impacts of that construction don't adversely affect you know stormwater and things like that and and traffic and noise.

Um, and that's part of the community engagement and customer service.

We try to be creative.

Um we try to look at different ways of measuring our results, um, holding ourselves accountable, and then we're open for continuous improvement.

There really isn't I remember when I first uh became the director in 2013.

Uh, there was really sort of kind of a fear of looking at, well, you know, maybe we're not doing things as good as we could be doing them, maybe we're not doing things the best we could be doing.

It was a feel like somehow self-criticism was failure.

And we created a culture in planning development services where that's not what it is.

Really, what it is is continuous improvement, and so it's really falling forward and all those cliches.

Um, but you know, the pace of the development world and the pace now, especially with technology, is such that you can't really sit back and let things just happen.

We're always looking at benchmark cities, always looking at best practices and looking at ways to um improve.

And one of the benefits of having an enterprise fund is that we do set up the budget in such a way that we have resources, dedicated technology dedicated to certain um what we call special revenue funds, so that we can respond quickly in real time, the best you know we can respond in real time because there's obviously a lot of players and making decisions in the city to uh address the needs of our community.

So that gets to current initiatives, and so um, in response to community needs and council policy direction through the city manager's office.

There's some key initiatives that um we'll be working on in 2026 and going into a little bit into 2027, hopefully not too much, but we'll see how it goes.

So the middle housing streamline permitting program, um, that's an approach to really try to focus on uh implementing a key aspect of home and to coma, which home and to come is middle housing.

And what we like to consider middle housing is sort of that six units up to about 20 units, that middle housing, not the large multi-family project or not a duplex, triplex, fourplex, but that middle infill housing, which frankly um the nation and cities have not seen a lot of, but we recognize that's an important housing type to provide to people so they have a have a have have a choice in housing type.

And so we're working on um a permitting program that's focused on consolidating authorities.

I provided a presentation in October on this to the full council.

It launched just last week.

Um we're having a few pieces of interest.

We've worked really hard with MCO and we'll continue to try to get the word out.

But we'll be coming back to the council in June to provide you a full update on that and what we're seeing there.

And the key aspect of that is a consolidation of authority, um, which is just sort of a bureaucratic way of saying that there's so many different people who review so many different aspects of a permit.

How do we consolidate that under one authority, which would be in playing development services in partnership with environmental services, public works, and TPU to make sure that we're not missing any of the requirements, but we're doing it in such a way that's very efficient, and so that's gonna be a key aspect of that.

And so we've configured Excel to help us do that.

So we're gonna be able to come back to the council with some data in June and talk about that.

Home and Tacoma, need I say more.

Um we will continue to implement home and to come.

We're coming back to the council in like the April time frame to give you the uh one-year anniversary update on that.

It'll be one year since the code went into effect next month in February, and so we'll be coming back to the council with um what we're seeing, um what we're hearing from the from the community, um, what we're seeing as far as the type of development that's occurring.

And so we'll be coming back to the council with what we're seeing, what we're hearing from the from the community, what we're seeing as far as the type of development that's occurring.

And then there's going to be a discussion about next steps because there are some issues.

It's a big code, it's not perfect.

We're running into some stuff that we're addressing administratively, but there's also gonna be a conversation that we'll have to have with the city manager and the council about what timing do you want to do on maybe adjusting some of the key policy aspects of that code, and we'll be coming back to you in April to talk to that.

And we've been working with um primarily, frankly, I don't want to get ahead of myself.

Primarily, we've been hearing from the development community on concerns or topics of interest in Home and Tacoma.

Really haven't seen anything built or come out of the ground yet, so we don't really have any feedback from the neighbors, which you all know who participated in this effort for the last six years.

Was a lot of feedback from the neighbors.

So it will be an interesting conversation that Brian and his team will be leading with the council in April to determine how we proceed there.

Okay.

So we're working with uh environmental services and public works on a process to not only look at the uh land use code but other aspects of trees under council member Walker's uh leadership and other council members.

There's a pretty specific scope of work and time frame that's phased in the resolution.

So we're just following that along, and we'll be working through IPS on that process.

And hopefully, if we stick on that schedule, that will body of work will come to the full council if I remember correctly.

First quarter 2027, uh last quarter 2026.

So that's a big project that's um we're moving forward with code enforcement um update.

So it's been a year, uh last year code compliance and code enforcement came from NCS to planning development services, and in that one year time frame, we've learned quite a bit uh about code enforcement and some improvements that we can make.

So we've been working with CVS on doing that update, and uh, I've heard a lot of great feedback from many sitting at the table, some of the council members and your uh policy assistants.

So we'll be coming to CVS in February and start that conversation about not only how we currently operate uh code enforcement, but what other jurisdictions do in code enforcement and what are some policy choices that the council could take as far as changing that code and how we approach code enforcement in the city.

So that'll be an ongoing conversation with CVS.

We're hoping, but it'll depend on the CVS committee's comfort level.

We're hoping to get that to the full council for consideration in like the June time frame.

But there's more.

Um and we've got more, and so here are our projects.

If you look at this list, you can see a lot of these are coming from the state.

Um so uh we've got quite a few mandates that are from the state.

Um, and then we've got one from uh the council and the state, and so this is in addition to the list that I just provided you, and this is not an exhaustive list, but these are probably the most critical because the state's told us through Olympia that we've got to get these done next year or this year and into next year.

Um, and so we've got them in order when we hope that they'll be coming to the council, and you can see sort of the tentative dates here, the critical areas code update that'll be coming to the council first, second quarter.

That's a state mandate that we have a critical areas code that's been in place since 1991, and so that regulates wetlands, streams, steep slopes.

Um it's got a little bit of shoreline stuff in there, but the shoreline master program updates not on this list because that's gonna be probably 2027.

That's another state mandate, um, but I won't bore you with all the state mandates uh that we've got um, and that's why a lot of stuff never dies.

Um, but anyway, uh so uh we're gonna be complying with the state mandates, um, the special needs housing daycare uh that'll be coming to you second quarter, pitcher pack av, which has been in the works for some time.

That's a sub-area plan in response to some corridor planning with transit on Pacific Avenue and an EIS.

Um, the parking code amendments, those are coming from a state mandate.

Um the the idea here is that we'll probably be coming to you in second quarter, third quarter with a summary of all the state mandates, maybe sooner, just so um you get an understanding of what the context of those are because some of them the parking code amendments is probably gonna be rather um controversial with some community members because it's a rather dramatic reduction in the parking requirements or ability to have parking requirements, and if you recall those conversations that we had during home and Tacoma, it's more of an extension of that.

Because some of them, the parking code amendments, is probably going to be rather controversial with some community members because it's a rather dramatic reduction in the parking requirements or ability to have parking requirements.

And if you recall those conversations that we had during Home and Tacoma, it's more of an extension of that.

So we'll be coming to you with that conversation.

And then there's standard building code updates that we have to do to follow state law when they update the building code.

So how to work with us?

This is basically the same slide that Jock just shared with you.

Obviously, contact the city manager and work with the city manager's office.

As I mentioned, we also support landmarks.

We administer that group, and so there's definitely opportunities there to engage them.

The Urban Design Board and then the Building Board of Appeals, which is being reviewed right now.

That group.

So Tacoma Permits is the actual website that you would actually go get information on and how to pull a permit, but we're also then on Tacoma.gov and the website, and there's information on there about current activities, past activities, all those updates.

And then of course, opportunities of engagement council presentations.

You'll see there's a lot of council presentations, a lot of work through IPS and other other CVS and other committees.

Some of you around the table, and I offer this to uh councilmember Palmer and the mayor if you know interested, is we do uh optional monthly check-ins.

Um and sometimes it's monthly, sometimes it's quarterly.

That's up to you what the cadence is, and it's up to you whether you want to do that.

Um, but we certainly are open to have check-ins with you and you know, talk to you, talk, talk with you about what um your concerns are with your policy analyst and and have those conversations about keeping you up on the great state of planning in the world.

And then individual meetings as requested, we're always open for one-on-ones, and you know, we're here to serve you, so let us know.

Work through the city manager's office, work through uh your policy analyst and and let us know how you want to, you know, gauge.

If you have questions, feel free to do that.

And then obviously you can contact me.

It's you know, it's probably preferred to go through your policy analyst, but hey, you can send me an email and call me too.

So I'm available for you as well.

So um, but that's probably the best way to engage us is um those mechanisms there.

Obviously, start with the city manager's office.

That's always a good place to start.

And then financially, um, as I mentioned, the general fund covers about six and a half percent, seven percent um of the budget.

Uh 87% of the budget is funded by the permit enterprise fund, and those are funds that are generated by permit fees, and just things to kind of understand about that is the permit services fund, it's an enterprise fund.

Um, so it's restricted funds.

The the funding in the enterprise fund must be used to uh for activities that directly relate to the review of permits or um something related to permitting.

Um that being said, um those funds cannot be used for what we call general services funds.

So long-range planning, um, code enforcement, public disclosure requests, all those other things have to be funded by the general fund.

And so what the permit fund does do is it ebbs and flows.

So it is highly content uh dependent on the economy and the level of permitting that we have.

Um, as you will see as we get into the budget uh later this year, it's pretty healthy.

Um we've been we've been pretty pretty fortunate.

Um, although things are slowing down a little bit right now due to the economy, um we really didn't slow down um through COVID.

So from about 2018 to about last year, things were pretty robust as far as a development activity in the city of Tacoma.

So the funds are pretty healthy.

Um, and so we're always looking at long-term maintaining that financial stability, but also looking at our current needs to make sure that we're providing our customers the level of service that they need.

So there's always this balance about um you know spending money now, making sure that you have enough reserve in the future if the economy does tank, um, making sure you have adequate staffing levels and those types of things, and those will be conversations that we'll be having with the city manager as we move into the budget process with you later this year.

And so, with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Thank you for your presentation, Peter.

We have a question from Councilman Barumba.

Um thank you, Mayor.

And I Peter, I want to thank you for this update.

And um I just I also want to thank Councilmember Walker for all the work she's been doing at neighborhood councils, gathering information for the tree ordinance.

I guess I had a question.

So when we start looking at updating regulations and you know, one of the things I'm hearing a lot about is illegal tree removals that are taking place, and that doesn't mean that that's true.

But I'm just um like I know that that that regulation is gonna is it gonna live in code enforcement or is it gonna live?

How did where is it gonna live when we like where does it live now and what's the plan for it currently it currently lives in code enforcement, and so you know that'll be a conversation that um the council will have to have is and I'm not you know that familiar, well I'm familiar with it, but I don't know, I can't recall if that was that's gonna have to be an aspect of the of the urban forestry work as well.

Um so there's a little bit of timing there, but certainly it can be addressed through the code compliance update that CVS is considering, and then certainly any conversation that comes out of that can be updated as we move forward with the um the um urban forestry tree aspect because what that scope does is it expands it beyond the current scope.

Um and so when we start looking at conversations about how the city rethinks maintenance and um trees in the right-of-way, especially when we start talking about um trees on public prop private property, we're gonna have to look at how we enforce that, and so there's gonna be a need, regardless of what CVS decides to do to sort of look at how we do tree enforcement as part of the um the tree work.

Okay, it's just as long as things take longer to get done, it's just it seems to kind of be exacerbated some of the issues.

That if that makes sense.

Well, the the primary issues, council member that you're dealing with now, those can be addressed through CVS, which will be part of that update, which is more immediate than the urban forestry work.

Okay, I'll ask you about it.

Thank you.

Uh-huh.

Thank you, Councilmember Rumbaw.

Deputy Mayor Walker, excuse me.

Uh, Councilmember Walker.

Um, thank you, Peter.

Just a couple of questions.

Um, I guess I first wanted to say um thank you for listing off all the upcoming and current initiatives.

It's a ton of work.

Um, we do get an update um officially twice a year at IPS, and your staff is always wonderful to um check in with us outside of that.

Um, but I think it is worth um reminding all of us uh every time we come up with a great new idea, something gets kicked off the list because the planning commission can only do so much work.

So mostly just want to appreciate your team in like helping us figure that out.

Um, but also to my colleagues know that there's an opportunity if you do have items, we have that opportunity um to get new things on the list within reason.

Um, or maybe just a few future year, right?

Um wanted to check in on the current critical projects on slide nine.

Um, you talked about the critical areas preservation code update coming soon, and then you mentioned the shoreline in 2027.

My understanding is that those both are connected in somewhat to the Tide Flats sub-area plan or impact that area.

Um they're both state mandated and but have different timelines.

Can you just talk about how those do or don't integrate with the work we're already we've already passed and are implementing now?

Yeah, there's there's there's a yeah, Councilmember Walker, that's a that's a really good question, and that's sort of a sort of a strategy question on how we deal with these state mandates and the different timelines that the state gives us to meet their mandates.

So the critical areas mandate is um more critical, sorry, if you will, in timing than the shoreline management um update.

So, what my staff is doing right now is since we administer both of those, and we were the ones who obviously led the sub-area plan, there is an internal conversation going on that the CAPO update to meet that um state mandate that'll come before council this first or second quarter is not conflicting with any future shoreline updates or the sub-area plan work.

In fact, we've gotten comments from the port and other stakeholders regarding that.

So there's sort of this foreshadowing of future thinking about okay, if we adjust the critical areas ordinance to meet state guidelines because they're different guidelines, there are different geographies, sometimes they overlap, but they're also different guidelines.

So we have to follow Department of Ecology guidelines for the critical areas and make sure we hit those guidelines, and then we got to make sure that when we get to the shoreline master program update that we meet Department of Ecology guidelines there too.

They shouldn't conflict.

And frankly, another big piece of the critical areas ordinance relates to trees.

We call them biodiversity corridors.

And so there's gonna be a conversation that we're gonna have to look at okay, how does the critical areas ordinance update and how we treat biodiversity corridors relate to your future policy discussions about trees and urban canopy?

So there's sort of a sort of a scheduling nuance coordination internally to the department and stakeholders to make sure that we don't get wrapped around the axle on that.

Okay, great.

I'm glad that you're tracking that.

Um just a general question because I've heard this from the public.

If these are both state updates or state mandated updates, why do they have to go through the planning commission and the council?

Isn't it administrative?

They're not administrative.

They're state up their state mandates to change the municipal code and to change the municipal code.

They're they're legislative, they go through the planning commission.

The planning commission makes a recommendation to the council.

They're the mandates are that you have to meet the new guidelines within a certain time frame.

Okay, the guidelines are very they're just that they're guidelines, and they're based on this thing called best available science.

I'd be happy to sit down and have a conversation with you.

So they're not clear mandates, they're really guidelines to guide the legislative process for the council and the community on how you want to meet the guidelines.

They give you parameters, but they don't give you the details.

Great.

That's exactly what I was getting at.

Um, there's still decisions to be made.

There's a lot of decisions being made, yes.

Um, two more quick questions.

Home and Tacoma, you talked about the one year um review.

That as I understand it based on previews we've gotten later in 2025, is going to include recommendations to update the code, right?

To potentially or potentially update the code to meet some of the feedback from the first year.

Correct.

Well, we'll do what we'll do is we'll give you an update on what we've been hearing from stakeholders and what we've experienced from a staff level, and just to just give you sort of a quick thing that's been in the press and everything.

There's sort of three buckets that we're looking at.

There's administrative, um, so those are sort of just inadvertent scriveners' errors, if you will, that we've fixed administratively.

We're also issuing directors' rules and directors' rules are okay.

Well, this doesn't make sense for a lot of valid reasons, it's not a terribly important policy discussion because you can't really change the policy through a director's role, but we flag the director's role, and then there's a bucket of policy, and those are what we want to get feedback from the council on.

It's like, okay, here are some things that we're hearing primarily from the development community that are intentional, deliberate policy decisions that the council made through that process.

Do you do you want to touch it now?

If you do, what's the timing of that, or do you want to not open it up again?

That's the conversation we'll be having with the full council in a few months.

Great, thank you.

Um, and then my last one on slide 11.

You had opportunities for engagement.

Um, if I may add one, um, when you did home and Tacoma and also the comp plan update, you your team did a great job of inviting all of us to come to those public meetings, and those are really meaningful as we are could be there and hear directly from the public.

So I would love to suggest that um keep inviting us.

Those are meaningful on both sides, I think, for the public to see.

Absolutely appreciate your support for that too, yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Walker.

Deputy Mayor Bush.

No, uh, thank you, Mayor.

Um, and thank you for the update on here.

You got all hands full, all kinds of stuff going on all over the place.

Um, one of my questions around the code enforcement update.

Um, I know we've had multiple touch points on this over the last year or more, and um I was curious as to kind of the state.

I know CVS has been working on as well, and you guys have had a couple of different uh presentations on it.

Um it's my understanding you guys are are kind of doing really comprehensive update to include um kind of uh an international like code enforcement kind of model.

Um could you remind me of like where we are gonna make that decision on on the direction it sounded like June was the kind of the presentations to council as a body for that?

Yeah, it's a full body, yeah.

But it'll really depend on CVS's you know, work on that and what the timing is for it to come out of that committee.

Um, so I can't really speak to that timing.

Our hope would be since it is as councilmember Rumbaugh said, sort of there's some urgency in there, you know, to get it to the full council in the late spring, early summer time frame.

Um, but for those members of CVS, the the goal is in February next month is to come to you and have a pretty robust conversation about what the current code does, what we've heard as far as issues go.

Here are some policy choices that you might consider, and here's how other jurisdictions are dealing with those policy choices, so that we can really get that ball rolling and get it to the full council as soon as we can.

Right, thank you.

This is obviously a major interest to me.

I have a lot of community members that reach out to me on a consistent basis about um challenges that they experienced in their neighborhoods.

But I know it's not just relegated to my district.

I know it happens a lot on the east side as well as all over Tacoma.

Um, and so I I feel very urgent sense of urgency to get something done.

And I know that even once we get updates and changes to the policy, there's gonna be staff training, kind of realignment and and all kinds of things, and so I'm thinking about how long it's gonna take to actually implement any policy updates as well.

Do we know if there's anything like short of council um council approval that we can start working on so that way we can at least start transitioning to some more of these different code enforcement changes that we expect that might not necessarily be uh a policy change at this level, but more of an administrative change?

Well, I I would yeah, I mean, I would leave that up to the mayor and whether the mayor wants an update on where we're at on you know, right now we've been working through um there have been some administrative changes that we've done in the last year.

Um, and certainly we can provide that to you in um through the city manager's office, or you know, we can chat at one of our check-ins on that.

Sure.

Um, but there has been improvements that we have implemented that have been administrative over the last year, um, especially on the technology side, and so we can share those with you and and get those to you.

But what we're really talking about at CVS is actually changing the code.

Yeah.

Um, and you know, a big part of that would be just you know how quickly and aggressively do you get to you know um dealing with you know chronic nuisance properties, for example, and so um or tree illegal tree removal.

I mean, it's just so it's kind of just looking at the overall policy approach that the code currently sets up and the process in that, and just have a conversation with the council about changing that process.

Now, to council member walker's point, that does not need to go to the planning commission.

Yeah, I was just about to say it's not in Title 13 of the you know so Title 13 is what triggers when you mess with Title 13, which is land use regulatory code, that's what goes to the planning commission.

This is outside Title 13.

So this will go straight to council.

Okay, great.

Yeah, I'll be paying very close attention to that.

Really looking forward to seeing what the policy changes and recommendations out of CVS come through.

Thank you.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor, Council Hines.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

And Peter, you answered my question, which is what goes through the planning commission.

So Title 13, anything related to land use Title 13 goes to the planning commission.

Yep, anything that's related to land you see, anything that's a development regulation, and that's why the trees remember that conversation we had about the trees.

So anything that regulates private property through Title 13 goes to the Planning Commission.

Yes.

And the planning commission is a recommendation body for the entire council, correct?

They're an advisory body appointed by the city council required by state law.

Yes.

I you know, just throw it out there.

Um so but um, so I appreciate that.

I think one quick comment I was going to make, and I council member walker said this, which is one thing that's very important for us, and maybe I just bring this up for the whole body, for us to maybe share broadly as kind of the work plan for the planning commission.

Um we look at it IPS once a year, if not more, so we kind of have a clear idea of like here's all the things they're working on.

The list you provided was really good, but it's not comprehensive of everything that's on there.

Um, and I think that just is helpful for us as we're thinking about policies and new policies that you know, if we want to as council walkers, if we want to add something gotta pull something else off.

Um, and thinking something I'm hopeful we can talk about as a group is kind of maybe how we maybe stray away from Title 13 in some of these cases and try to address things for other parts of the code so that we don't end up kind of overwhelming the planning commission, some of these things because I think there are we've talked in the past about things we can handle outside of Title 13, correct?

So I think those are just that was my one question.

Otherwise, I appreciate all the work and looking forward to the um specifically the miss missing how housing streamlined permit program.

I think that'll be really good and hopefully a good um model for some future streamlining processes ahead.

Thank you, Ben.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Thank you, Councilmember Hines, Councilmember Palmer.

Thank you for this presentation.

This is super helpful.

Um, and I appreciate the invitation to meet further about other things.

Um I'm super excited to hear about the pre-approval for townhouse plan.

Um I'm a huge supporter of trying to um encourage and empower our like our single family homeowners to develop their own properties.

And along those lines, I guess I'm curious about two things.

One of those is I guess what is what's considered when we're coming up with those pre-approved plans.

Is there like who provides input into what they'd like to see included in those plans?

Um and then the second thing is when we're going through the home and Tacoma, the update.

I'm I'm hearing we're gonna get feedback from like maybe you know, major developers, but is there room also to get feedback from maybe our single family homeowners who've developed their properties and see how how that went as well.

Yeah, so uh councilmember Palmer to answer your first question.

So with the pre-approved plans, that's building on um a model that we um implemented last year for detached ADUs pre-approved plans.

Um we primarily worked through, I believe it was um IPS and government performance finance to come up with what that approach would be.

Uh ultimately, what we ended up doing is hiring a consultant to create those plans, and so as far as what the plans actually look like and are one, you know, we want to make sure that they're pre-approvable so that they meet the code, the building code, state energy code, fire code, um, electrical code, plumbing code, et cetera, et cetera.

Um, and then as far as like making sure what they might look like aesthetically from the outside, make sure they meet all the design you know requirements and guidelines of the code.

So they need to fit the code and meet the code, and so that's sort of the the goal of determining what they look like.

We we obviously talk with the committee in the council, but obviously stakeholders, um developers to make sure that what the pre-approved plans offer um are as shelf ready as they can be and and add some value.

So that's sort of the process for that.

It's just taking that um detached ADU and expanding it to townhouses as part of that plan.

And so there'll be conversation as we move forward with that process about exactly what that looks like.

Um as far as the the conversation with um uh the home builders, primarily it is uh our the primary um stakeholders that we hear from on Home and Tacoma are those smaller, those smaller developers through the primarily through the Master Builders Association of Tacoma Pierce County, who are single family duplex, triplex.

Um so it is smaller developers, not the large developers, large developers, like a lot a lot of the large, bigger ones that you see, like rush construction and those, they they don't they they build a big product and they just you know glide through the system.

It really is the smaller developer with the smaller project on an infill lot, which is aimed at home and Tacoma in that middle housing.

So that's who we've been engaging in a lot of that engagement.

We've been proactively talking to the MBA and having focus groups.

We've also been you know talking to the developers that are in the system and experiencing the system that a lot of them are small um developers, and then we've also been talking with Tacoma Permit Advisory Group and getting that feedback.

So that's how you'll be the feedback that we'll be getting is from that group that you just mentioned there.

Um again, and I don't want to get ahead of myself.

What you won't be what we have not been hearing, and we haven't really we're strategizing on how we go out to the community and say the neighborhood and say this project, these projects are coming out of the ground in your neighborhood.

What do you think?

Um and so that's that's kind of the the next step.

And I don't see that feedback really being really robust until later this summer because the code is new and people are testing it and they're in the system, they're learning it, and so once the comfort level with the code becomes higher with the development community, you'll start seeing more projects.

There's a lot of projects in for pre-application right now, and when those things start coming out of the ground, we're gonna hear from the community.

Okay, that that's helpful.

I I think I'm thinking about too like the the homeowners who are putting an ADU in their backyard, you know, how easy was the process to do that.

We've got that, yeah.

Yeah, we for ADUs, detached ADUs, we got a lot of feedback on that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Peter.

I have a few questions of my own too.

Sure.

So uh relating to pre-approved plans.

Um, how far in that direction do you see us moving?

Like, could there be pre-approved ideas for say single to multi-conversions, for example, condom minimization, things like that?

Uh that's a good question.

We're gonna take baby steps from the pre-approved plans.

Like I said, we've got the detached ADUs.

Um they're not utilized that much, but they're there.

Um, we're gonna try townhouses.

But you know, mayor, I think there's opportunities to look at you know how far we want to go with pre-approved plans, and we're we're willing to explore that.

Sure.

Uh now moving to sort of the same spirit as townhouses, which I would say is short plating, at least the builders that I've spoken to fairly recently.

That's that's still a fairly big pain point because you're looking at like a year and a half and not a small chunk of change for all the utility connections permits and other fees and so forth.

So for maybe the the benefit of people listening, what would you say are the main reasons why a short plot takes so long and are there things we can do to really cut that down?

Well, that's yeah, and we can talk offline on that because our data does not support that.

Okay.

Okay.

Our our data, our data shows that a short plot takes anywhere between 60 and 105 days.

Okay.

So not quite sure where the year year and a half is coming from.

Obviously, you know, every piece of property is a little bit different depending on you know whether there's a wetland there or a steep slope.

Um there, you know, we'll continue.

I think the middle housing um discussion, um, TPU is part of that partnership.

I think we'll have just to you know continue to work with them and see what their timeline is.

Um, but as far as our permit data goes, short plats are you know, basically, you know, two to three months.

And there might have been a miscommunication or different words, but we'll we'll definitely get clarification offline.

That'd be great.

Yeah.

Um AI.

Uh, there's increasingly a number of uh permitting authorities, uh, Bellevue, I think, is really run with it.

It's it's increasingly common in Canada with you know their housing issues.

Uh do you see any role for exploring that for speeding up some of the more routine functions of planning and permitting to help with turnaround?

Well, there's a there's a larger conversation going across the organization, and I would really defer to the city manager's you know office and the city attorney's office.

I know that the city manager, city attorney, and IT department having conversations about AI and how AI is used across the organization.

I believe IT is coming to government performance finance committee this year to talk about an AI policy.

Certainly if the organization is open to with whatever parameters that the city manager's office and city attorney's office have if as far as utilizing AI, I mean plan development services would be open to you know seeing how that would work and exploring that.

I I have heard about the Bellevue uh example.

I haven't had any chance to research that.

Um that came from the interns that have been working um with you, so I'm hoping that we can get some information there.

But I've also heard a lot of other examples from places such as Texas, and I'm not as comfortable with you know using Texas as an example of how to do land use planning and permitting in Washington State, they're kind of two different things, but certainly the Bell V one is worth exploring, and I look forward to the conversations that the city has about the use of AI across all city activities.

So more of a master plan throughout the organization coming to GPFC.

I know I would defer to the city manager um office on how they want to approach the conversation on AI.

Okay, certainly understood.

A couple questions, then we'll get to you, Councilmember Rumbell.

So uh, with regard to the building code and what's state mandated, uh, what is specifically content-wise state mandated, and are there other avenues since we are opening up the code to look at other things that might be more conducive to missing middle to multi-generational housing, affordability, lowering construction costs.

Uh, what other avenues do we have there?

Well, I we can we can give you a briefing on the state mandates of the building code itself, but the stuff that's state mandated through the building code is like the energy code.

Okay, so insulation standards, you know, fire code.

Um there's obviously stuff associated with the American Disabilities Act.

So those are sort of the the mandates that come from the state.

Um, and honestly, um there are some opportunities for departures from those, but uh I would rather just have a conversation with the building official and talk about those because they're very um nuanced and frankly um engineering-esque.

Sure, and last question, thank you for your answers here.

Um you'd mention off site improvements, and one of the other conversations just as the city begins to dip its toes into the impact fee conversation, right?

Is one of the pain points of offside improvements is is just simply the the time commitment involved, the lack of predictability seemingly, and so forth.

And one of the recurring things I keep hearing from that that world is why not just trend perhaps more in that fee and loo type of environment and just cut a check and then get building and then just appropriately find out what it would cost to cover for the infrastructure need.

Do you see more of that conversation happening, or is there an openness to that, or what can you talk about?

What's been discussed so far there?

Yeah, I certainly see a conversation occurring, especially with the impact fees and then the ongoing conversation on system development charges.

But I certainly see a conversation in partnership with public works and environmental services on how we deal with what we call off-site improvements and how the city can perhaps better partner with the limited resources that we have in making those improvements occur.

Um there are different mechanisms that we've explored in the past that you know frankly have to just pass up quite a few tests from the city attorney's office and others to make sure that they um meet this the city's needs.

But yeah, we're always like I said, we're always open for continuous improvement and rooms for improvement.

So I'm I'm not, you know, I'm always looking for something to improve the process and off site improvements.

I've been working with the master builders on off-site improvements for at least um 15 years now, so it's an ongoing issue.

Of course.

Thank you, Director Hoffman.

Councilmember Rumbo.

Thank you, Mayor.

And I just wanted to say um I appreciate that we're gonna have holistic talk about AI because there wasn't there is an issue in Bell Bellingham right now, and and Everett as well on how they've been using AI.

And so thank you for seeing that as something that we should talk to about as a whole system.

Look at that.

Okay, wonderful.

Any final questions?

Well, thank you for your presentation, Peter.

Other items of interest is our next agenda topic.

And uh we do have one additional item before we call on um Ben Thurgood.

We have um we have a presentation from Councilmember Saldaka.

Um thank you, Mayor.

Do we have physical um printouts?

I just wanted to check.

Linda, do we have physical prints?

Okay.

Um thank you, Mayor.

Um, first I want to apologize.

We generally don't do walk-ons um and we try not to do walk-ons, but there is a uh time sensitivity to this uh based on um um current events, quite frankly.

Um we worked really really hard um these last few days uh to put something together for the consideration of the rest of the council.

Um there are two uh things um that are in front of you, and they are sponsored by my colleagues, uh Councilmember uh Palmer and Councilmember Diaz.

Um the first is a a statement that we spent a great deal of time in editing uh drafting um to be intentional uh about our thoughts and positions uh given the um the horrific incident that occurred in Minneapolis uh a week ago.

Um I would love um for the rest of you to please read it and give uh uh give us all feedback um uh on the statement.

I am looking for support and I am looking for uh all three of us are looking for um uh to put it on the agenda tonight so we can vote on it officially and and have that be a statement uh uh on behalf of the entire uh council.

Uh in addition to the statement, there is also a CAM also sponsored by Councilmember Palmer and Diaz uh and I um on at least a in an action, right?

So one of the the requests from community it are certain actions, some actions that are suggested or maybe not necessarily legally possible for us, but one action we can do, uh we do have a number of um uh web pages with uh information and some resources and links.

Um really what this is about is reaffirming our city's uh value and being a welcoming city and supporting all of our residents, and the action for um city manager would be to direct city manager to put together a single web page with information um uh condensed together that has information around work we've done um over the years around um the Northwest Detention Center, uh resources on estate, um local level, community partner level um around um uh uh uh services and and information uh for those affected, the immigrants in our community.

And in addition to that, to be intentional about ensuring that this information can get to the communities that are affected, because let's let's be very honest.

The communities that are that are affected by this are scared.

And it's really important that we're intentional about making sure we can um make uh have these uh individuals um get access to all the information that they could help them.

Um I want to be really honest because you know, there are a lot more words I wanted to say.

There were a lot more actions I wanted to take.

Um, but we have to be cognizant about what is within our legal authority, and quite frankly, I feel like we we're playing not to diminish it, we're playing a game where we are following rules and certain other entities or not.

We have to be real about what impacts they have on our resources and services.

Um whether our actions result in greater jeopardy to our neighbors.

So I I did intentionally take a lot of that into account, and so did my co-sponsors in what we were putting together here.

Um lastly, before I allow uh my co-sponsors to go ahead, I do really want to thank staff.

Um there was work we did on a weekend, there were people who were picking up uh phone calls.

Um I mean, a lot of this was was based on um calls that several of us were getting directly last week and through the weekend.

Uh and so that is also an impetus for why it was really important to put together uh a statement we can all uh uh uh get behind and at least an initial action we can uh support.

So um again, sorry that we're just putting it out there uh right now.

Do look forward to uh feedback from all of you.

Thank you.

Thank you for leading on this, Councilman Sidalgi.

Uh Councilmember Diaz.

Thank you.

Um I think Councilmember Sidalga covered most of the bases on the background and uh how we got here, and particularly the thanks to staff for all their hard work and the quick um timelines that we're we're looking at here, um, as well as navigating all the different um legal and community sensitivities around drafts and um and language.

Uh one of the things I wanted to make sure I highlight about the CAM and the urgency is that um not just people are asking us uh what resources there are since truly the beginning of this federal administration.

I've had people come um whisper to me or take me off to the side and say, hey, I'm worried where do I find legal counsel or where do I find resources, or who who do I contact if I see a federal agent who's gone rogue or is is doing something I don't see that is legal.

So I think having a dedicated web page where we can share some of those resources.

I think it's gonna be really helpful for people just as they're Googling.

But I think the other side of that is also there is a lot of community who I think actually chooses to be very well willfully ignorant around what the city has done and what the city tries to do, and um just general civic education about what our jurisdiction is, what we can and what we can't do.

And we are all as a council every day sort of dreaming, thinking, trying to come up with new policy ideas and angles as the um federal government frankly breaks rules, breaks the constitution, does whatever they want.

Um so as they're getting chaotically creative, I think we're also trying to meet that marker within the rules that we have.

But I think having a web page dedicated to some uh resources around just how we got here, what has been done to date, and what is actually within our control, I think is gonna be really helpful knowing that there's gonna be some flexibility on what's on the website or web page.

It could be updated um throughout time, um, and there's gonna be a lot of links to external partners who are more evergreen in the management of it.

So we're trying to balance not creating something that um MCO has to be updating every day because that's also unmanageable.

Um but I just think being um being that we're elected officials and that we have a duty to help educate the public.

I think that's one of the biggest things that I am trying to do as I talk with community members is helping them understand what we actually can do and what we have done, and really sort of dispelling some of the things that people wish we could do, and just because they wish it at us very loudly does not mean that we have the authority to do so.

Um despite sometimes those are things that I would also like to do.

So um I think that's what I wanted to add to the CAM and excited for folks to hopefully send on to this statement.

Um I think it is very Tacoma specific and helpful to lay the groundwork for what we're we all care about in this topic.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Diaz.

Councilmember Paul.

Yeah, hopefully I'll get a chance to expand a little bit and comment more on this tonight.

But um, I did want to take the opportunity to thank um my fellow council members.

This was something where you know, it's one of those moments when when this happened um in Minneapolis where you're like, what what can I do?

What what what's next?

And that coupled on top of me being new and you know um uh not quite up to date on the processes of getting all these things done.

Um putting a call in to uh council member Diaz and Council members to delegate, and they're like, Oh, we're on it.

That felt really good to know that and to get involved with that.

So thank you for that.

And also again for staff uh for taking the time to um complete this not easy and not light lift.

So um, yes, thank you.

And I hope you guys chime in on your opinions and what you'd like to see changed and all the things.

So looking forward to that too.

Thank you.

And I I too am in support of this.

Thank you very much to uh for your previous ongoing and and current uh work and leadership on this issue, and uh looking forward to discussing this at tonight's meeting.

Oh, Deputy Mayor Bruchnell.

Uh thank you, Mayor, and just want to appreciate uh each of you guys and your leadership on this.

Um obviously this is an emerging topic, and again, staff for for the work on uh putting this together.

I think it's really important that we have a joint statement as a council, really condemning these actions that have occurred and uh reaffirming uh through our previous resolutions and just reminding the folks in the public that where we stand on this and our values in the city of Tacoma.

And to your point, uh Councilmember Diaz, you know, there's a lot of things that we wish we could do.

Um, but you know, our authority, uh, we are a local jurisdiction uh and we have to work within the authority that we have.

Um, and obviously, you know, there are certain things that we're doing externally to try and uh to deal with uh federal overreach and things of that nature.

Um, and so there's there's more things that are happening, but I appreciate that we're doing this in a public way as well.

So thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

All right, with that, uh, we're gonna move on to our other topic for other items of interest.

We have our final additional item, which is an update on the city manager recruitment process update.

Uh this pertains to a topic that got brought up um last Friday at the OSAC committee meeting.

I'd like to call on human resources, continuous improvements officer Ben Thurgood to begin the presentation, and Cheryl Bideman is also available from Human Resources.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Council, for having us this afternoon.

Um begin with a brief overview of the OSAC committee and the work that the committee has been doing.

I am Ben Thurgood, the executive liaison to the OSAC committee, and have with me Cheryl Battleman with the details about the city manager recruitment process.

As a reminder, OSAC stands for the uh Operational Strategy and Administration Committee, and that is a committee of your council to look at your operations and help with your processes, procedures, and your interactions with the city manager's office.

Um the committee has been working on three initiatives lately, and one is providing oversight to the recruitment for the permanent city manager, and Cheryl will give you an additional update at the end of my report here.

Second, the committee has engaged in the initial planning for the city council retreat, which is anticipated to occur on February 20th.

Uh the committee has reviewed some logistics, location, food, and the goal to where your favorite Tacoma swag have all been established.

The committee will hear from the director of the Center for Strategic Priorities.

Third, the committee has been discussing council staffing in light of the 2024 Charter Amendment, which creates the opportunity for additional staffing for council members.

Um little update on that process in late 2025, council members were interviewed regarding their needs and priorities in relation to staff support, and these interviews are analyzed to identify core bodies of work where council members indicated additional capacity would help them better serve their community.

The committee then reviewed various options or alternatives for how staff could be organized and considered the timelines and costs of implementing those various models, and the committee agreed to revisit that conversation in alignment with the 27-28 biennial budget development process.

In the meantime, further research and analysis is being conducted by staff, including further research into other jurisdictions, engagement with existing council staff, and identifying opportunities for process improvement related to bottlenecks or pain points identified through the council member interviews and the OSAC Council staffing initiative process.

Looking forward to upcoming items.

The OSAC committee is anticipating work in the following areas.

Finalizing the direction for the city council retreat, a review of some of the templates and processes of the council, including council action memos, council contingency requests, and looking at the rules and procedures associated with administering council meetings.

Interim City Manager Kim will also be returning to OSAC with an update on his work plan that was presented to the city council in October.

And some items a bit further out on the timeline include improving council project alignment and the legislation sponsorship process.

With that, I'm happy to entertain any questions, or I'll turn it over to Cheryl Battleman for further details about the city manager recruitment process.

Thank you, Ben.

Any questions?

Councilman Hans.

Yeah.

Um thank you, Ben.

That's great presentation.

A lot of stuff happening there.

I guess my question to me, Mr.

Mayor, would be just kind of a conversation around.

There's a lot of things OSAC's doing, of which I am the alternate, but I do not watch every meeting.

I'm not following the conversation blow by blow.

Is there a more of a report out we can get on some of the things and some of the things that went into it?

I understand like Ben did interview all of us and say what do you want for council staffing?

But then it went out and someone processed and brought it back to you all.

And so I would really like to know like what did people say?

Um sometimes things get lost in translation.

I want to make sure they don't get lost.

So I guess that'd be a question for the OSAC committee members about what do you all see as the process by which some of this comes back or gets a kind of a broader conversation, maybe the accordion style thing.

Sure, we'll play more recordings.

You can do that.

Absolutely.

So the process for now is that um OSAC is the place to have the conversations, but they have made the decision to forward any larger decision by a motion out of OSAC to the full council.

So before any final decisions would be made about staffing or anything else, there would be a motion to move that forward to the whole city council, but we can also take that conversation to OSAC.

And we could literally do that as an OSAC item too as communication structure, which is sort of the purpose of the committee.

So very open to that.

Okay.

I would love by which just articulate a process which I could talk to one of the OSAC members or have a communication where I could share with you all and say, here's what I'm thinking, and you all could tell me what you're working on, and then I could tell you what I thought about that and whether that needs to happen in the community of the whole or through an email chain or something.

I know we don't want to sort that all out here, but I would just love some more around that.

My other question was with the retreat coming up, and this may be for Ben or the mayor.

What's the process by which, if I have ideas about what I want to see as part of the retreat, would that be best shared?

I I think Jacques would be the point of contact for that, wouldn't he?

Yeah.

So right now where we're at in the process is that we have reviewed the big categories of uh agenda items that would be included in that um in that event, and Jacques and his team are working on preparing that draft agenda.

And so I think that might be an opportunity, like you said, to get with one of your peers who are in OSAC and talk about what is on that draft agenda.

Okay.

Uh those are my questions.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

Great questions.

Any others?

Okay, and that was basically a committee report, but any other committee reports.

Oh, uh, Councilmember Dials, I'm sorry.

Not to belabor the point, but I don't know that I was clear.

So is there a designated person from OSAC that we should go bother?

Do we just reach out to Jacques and he will find us one?

I'm also not on OSAC, so I don't know.

I'm unclear.

Excellent question.

Um so for now, Mayor is the chair of OSAC.

So if you have concerns about OSAC and what's on the agenda, I'd encourage you to get those to him, and then he and I can work together on next steps.

Sounds good to me.

Perfect.

And then we also leave.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yeah, looking forward to it.

Councilmember Walker.

Uh no, I just wanted to flag that there's another part of this um presentation before we moved on.

Okay.

All right.

Well, thank you, Ben.

Uh, so I'm Cheryl Bidelman, Assistant Director of Human Resources.

Welcome to our new council member.

As you know, um, Human Resources has been working closely with OSAC to plan the recruitment for the city manager position.

The city has also engaged the executive recruiting firm Profman to assist with sourcing and evaluating candidates.

The recruitment resulted in 71 applications, and of those, 17 appear to meet the minimum qualifications, and they were interviewed by Profman.

And Profession is currently in the process of preparing candidate summaries and recommendations for council's consideration.

Council can expect to receive applicant materials by late next week with virtual interviews anticipated to take place the first two weeks of February.

We're in the process of reaching out to staff to get on your calendars.

At this point, we don't know how many candidates Profman will be recommending, so we're just being flexible to uh see how many you know interview slots that we'll we'll need.

But we're working on that part.

Um, in-person interviews are planned for late February.

Interview panels will include council members, city leadership, and we'll have two community panels.

Um in addition, uh the community will have an opportunity to hear presentations from the finalists and provide feedback prior to council's selection of a final candidate.

Staff plan to return to the January 27th council meeting to provide more detailed overview of the interview process and to offer opportunity for public comment.

In the meantime, those who want information about the recruiting plans can go to Tacoma.gov slash cm recruitment.

And or you can scan the QR codes that are on the little advertisement boards out in the lobby.

Thank you for the update.

Any questions?

Councilman Walker.

Thank you, Mayor.

And that your team has done that there was a video posted, kind of what does the city manager do that I think was really helpful.

It got a lot of views, but I don't know that everyone has seen that.

But if you want to share that in newsletters and things like that, I think it's helpful public resource.

And then Cheryl, you mentioned the public being able to give more input.

We spent a ton of time talking about this, uh, the last two OSAC meetings, and the intention is to do it on a Tuesday when staff and council are here, but kind of separate it a little bit in the meeting so that public comment about the city manager recruitment process can be separated out from regular public comment.

So it's sort of a hybrid of not creating a whole separate meeting but creating some separate space.

And so just wanted to indicate we spent a ton of time going back and forth and working through that, and I think that that really makes sense in terms of resources and giving the public an opportunity to weigh in.

Um and then also we're working through and discussing the panels of community members, and um my understanding is that if any council members want to add to that, um I think Keith sent us all an email.

But um my concern as we work through who's going to be on those panels is that we're not up here having a discussion about people who didn't apply for anything.

We just threw their name on a list that we're not saying oh, we like that person, we don't like that person.

So there's there's a lengthy list now.

I think we'll need to um uh shorten that a little bit internally before we put that out publicly.

But the intention obviously is that it's really a diverse group of um people in age, gender, race, but also um sectors um and interests in the community um so that we have that public piece of it as well.

So just wanted to add some color commentary to what we discussed, and just um indicate again that we had lengthy discussions about all of those pieces.

So I'm happy to hear any feedback from everybody if they have them, and that was certainly the intention as Ben said earlier that any of these items um we spend some time hashing them out at OSAC, but we're not the final decision makers.

We're just hoping to do a little bit of that legwork for everybody so we can get to a spot for feedback.

So, Councilmember Walker, Councilmember Hines.

Thank you.

Um, Councilmember Walker and Mr.

Mayor.

Uh, do we have a number of how many applicants we're gonna move forward for these panels?

Like are we is there a number that's targeted?

We haven't targeted a specific number.

We're waiting to see what Prothman's recommendations are based on the interviews that they conducted.

Okay, so it could be 17 or it could be two could be, but I think it's really unlikely to be 17 based on what I've been hearing.

Uh I wouldn't venture a guess at this point.

Okay.

I just just thinking capacity time-wise exactly.

It it would I'm trying to get my head around exactly how many people we might be interviewing.

So um thank you.

And uh and thank you for all the work both stacked to get us here.

Appreciate the updates.

Oh, Councilmember Rumbo.

Thanks, Mayor.

It just seems like OSAC's doing a lot of work and it feels a little bit like we're being left out if you're not on it.

So I just want you to know that's how it feels, and that may not be true.

Um, but it would be good if we could figure out a way for that information to get disseminated quicker than just coming to City Count to a meeting here at study session and finding out.

So if there's a way that possibly the different members on the committee, because there's several of you, could find a couple council members and just be maybe like share that information, that would be helpful just so we know what's happening since you're moving quite quickly, and I feel really left out right now.

So understood.

Councilmember Scott.

Um it's the process is moving quickly because it's just the the process that we kind of set as a council in general.

Um I would say like it's the conversations happen, but the meetings are open and they are recorded, and that's probably the best way to get that information.

Um I think that like it's we can definitely try, but it's not like it's unknown that we're working on hiring a city manager.

So also instead of waiting for us to come to you with this information if you have those questions.

I think it's more preferred that you just reach out and ask.

All right, thank you, Councilmember Scott.

Councilmember Diaz.

Thanks.

Um, I apologize if y'all mentioned it.

I was wondering if you can tell me when the application was open or when the recruit was happening.

I just don't remember the date range if that is of at all.

When did it close?

I feel like it was months, but I don't recall.

It um opened on uh November 14th, and um we waited five weeks before we started screening applicants.

It's technically still open, but we do that in the event that if the pool wasn't sufficient, then we would go back.

Okay, but yeah, so it was a five-week window.

So someone was to be interested, they could still technically apply and they could, but we might review their planning.

Correct.

Okay.

Um helpful.

And then my other question was about something Councilmember Walker brought up around Keith emailing us about different members to be on this community um HR panel.

Um I I looked it up really quickly because I didn't remember the email and I saw that it was on October 29th.

So I know I did not send any people.

I imagine um Councilmember Palmer did not, and probably the mayor, but I don't know.

Um, since y'all weren't here.

I'm just wondering if you all still want those, if that time has gone.

Was that a call for me to do so now?

Keith sent an updated email requesting a second time, and I'm I can't quite remember when the the window closed, but I would say if you have panelists that you want to recommend if you do it quickly.

We can still consider them.

We have a large pool at this point.

We need about 20.

I'd say no more than 20, and I think we have something like 60 right now.

So you all are gonna have to um we're gonna do a survey for you all to figure out who will be on the panels.

Is there a way to see the list so that I can see if a certain community is represented or not in that?

I believe so.

Yeah, I do okay, great.

Thank you.

Okay, Councilmember Palmer.

Thanks for that question.

I had the same one.

Um, and then just kind of expanding, I guess, on what you had mentioned, Councilmember Walker about the um feedback from community.

Could you say maybe a little bit more about the timing?

Are we saying like these folks will like interview and then community will be able to provide feedback or the names will be out and community will be able to provide feedback?

So both.

So um we've been continuing to say, you know, send us feedback if you have um thoughts on who the next city manager could should be.

We did a survey in the fall for general.

Um and the but the panels are to help us interview, so the the panelists would actually be community members that are interviewing the the candidates very publicly.

Um, and then you all can remind me of the date that we decided to do on the Tuesday, where people are welcome to give feedback on the process and what they want to see in the next city manager.

So it's both and okay.

I'm just I I can add a little bit more to that as well.

Um so the interviews will be closed session.

I'm looking at city attorney making sure I have this right.

But the plan is the the before the candidates go into these interviews, we will know their names.

The interviews will be just for the interview panelists and the candidates, but then on that same day that they get interviewed later in the day, they'll each make public presentations, and then um council will have the opportunity to ask them additional questions in in this public forum, and then we'll move into more of a casual meet and greet um type of situation where community members can approach the candidates, ask them questions, look at their bio, and then give feedback on the candidates in that session as well.

Okay, that's super helpful.

I just I think it's important that there's like a period of time where if there are any candidates who have um some history that we're not aware of that community members have a chance to speak up about that.

So it sounds like we have that covered, so thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for your questions and uh thank you for your presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

With that, we're going to move on to committee reports.

Any any other committee reports.

Seeing none, we're gonna move on to the agenda review and city manager's weekly report.

There's a call to committer vote.

Sorry, I skipped ahead, Mayor.

I apologize.

Uh there are two ceremonials on tonight's agenda.

One proclaiming Monday, January 19th, 2026 as Dr.

Martin Luther King Junior Day, and a presentation from the associated students of the University of Washington Tacoma.

So that will be your presentations and proclamations this evening.

Uh there will be two modifications to tonight's agenda.

One removing ordinance 29091, an ordinance amending chapter 12.10 of the municipal code relating to water regulations and rates from your agenda, and then one adding a resolution on the proposal that was discussed earlier in today's session.

Um there are two opportunities for public comment this evening.

The first is under regular public comment regarding motions, resolutions, and ordinances on tonight's agenda.

The second opportunity is under community forum regarding items over which the city council has jurisdiction.

It'll be our first community forum of the year.

Uh and then please let me know if there's any questions related to tonight's agenda so that we can be prepared uh and respond accordingly.

And for your review attached to the study session agenda was the city manager's weekly report to council.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Allison.

Before we move on, are there any final questions or comments from the council?

See none, is there a motion to adjourn?

Move to adjourn.

Second.

Move and second.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

All supposed to say no, we are adjourned.