The study session covered the city manager recruitment, council rules and procedures, a Seahawks flag raising resolution, a letter to the federal delegation, an update on the homelessness strategy, and a department overview of Tacoma Venues & Events.
Good afternoon. I'd like to call to order the city, council study session of February 3rd, 2026. Clerk, will you please call the roll? Deputy Mayor Bushnell. Present. Councilmember Diaz. Here. Councilmember Hines. Councilmember Palmer. Councilmember Rumba here. Councilmember Sidalga? Here. Councilmember Scott. Here. Councilmember Walker. Here. Mayor Ibsen. Here. All right. Well, um, study session materials were sent to you today at 1101 a.m. We have a pretty meaty agenda today. And um, you'll notice it's a little topsy turvy. That's just because I have a speaking engagement with uh one of our sister cities. So thank you for accommodating the uh a little bit of a different uh agenda here today. So our first item is going to be an update on the city manager recruitment and uh recommendation from the OSAC committee on community panelists, uh, just to give you some context. Uh we have a total of four panels for the um community um for the different stakeholders interviewing the finalists for the city manager position, um, two of which are going to be uh 10 person community panel uh groups that are representatives of different regions and different um different areas of specialization in the city. Uh we have one that's uh employees, uh department heads, and the fourth is just us, the city council. So um we decided in the interests of making sure that we had good representation as well as at the same time respecting the anonymity of people who were not selected and finding that right balance, uh, that the best way to do that was an open public meeting where we brought uh after consulting with the rest of our colleagues in the community, um, each member of the committee, four members uh brought five people, and we had a discussion about making sure that we had a good cross section there. So you'll see in your materials, um, where it says City of Tacoma City Manager Recruitment, OSAC recommended community interview panelists. Uh there is a list of under primary of the people that we selected. Uh these were found to be a good representation of socioeconomic diversity, regional diversity throughout the city in terms of council districts, because you know we've had recurring issues with uh appointments to various boards and commissions of, for example, too much uh uh representation from from one neighborhood versus the other and not enough in other places, uh, and also good professional uh diversity as well in terms of people from uh different walks of life, like the nonprofit sector, uh foundations, organized labor, small and large employers, uh, and so forth. So this this was the overall consensus. We also um, because it was a pretty large list. There are about 50 or 60 people total who applied. Um we also identified an alternate list of people if one or more uh cannot in fact attend. So uh this will be on tonight's agenda. Um happy to answer any questions, and and Cheryl Biddleman from HR is also available if folks have questions on the internal process. And if there are anyone uh any members of OSAC would like to chime in too, happy to accommodate that. Uh are there any c uh questions or comments from the council on this topic? Councilmember Palmer. Thank you, Mayor. Um I was just curious as far as um representation for like neighborhood councils. I'm not familiar with all of the names on the list, so I don't know if if that is included in in some of these names. Uh can I speak to neighborhood councils? Uh I know that uh Mr. Trevion Parrish was on the youth advisory uh committee. If and forgive me if I'm not naming that committee properly. Um I'm not quite sure. I I know that we did talk about um representation from different neighborhoods. Um Deputy Mayor looks like you want to say something.