The City Council held a study session on February 10, 2026, covering presentations from the Information Technology Department, a revenue strategy and budget forecast update, a joint proposal for system development charges (SDCs) from Environmental Services and Tacoma Water, and a council consideration request for HIV/STI self-testing at the OASIS Youth Center. The meeting concluded with an agenda review and a motion to convene an executive session.
The City Council study session of February 10th, 2026. Clerk, will you please call the roll? Deputy Mayor Bushnell. President. Councilmember Diaz. Councilmember Hines. Councilmember Palmer. Councilmember Rumba. Here. Councilmember Sidalgay. Here. Councilmember Scott. Here. Councilmember Walker. Here. Mayor Ibsen. Here. Welcome. Our first agenda item is the IT department overview. I'd like to call on Department of Information Technology, Daniel Key to begin the presentation. Welcome. Good afternoon. Thank you, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, and Council for this opportunity to present to you an overview of the Information Technology Department as part of your onboarding and prep for the budget this year. I do not have cool swag like you did last time, but I do like to point out that you have a lot of wonderful devices in your hands. And so whether that's a positive or negative, I'll leave to you about how we're doing with that. So next slide, please. So who you are, the information technology department is organized as a captive service provider for the broader city of Tacoma, including Tacoma Public Utilities. And we provide a range of shared services and operate a number, probably about two dozen different products on behalf of the business to increase uh operational effectiveness, uh capacity and ensure the value and resilience of our technology systems. Um we have extensive practices for both governance and decision making that help us stay in line with the rest of the city. And by the numbers, we're about 10,000 devices and over 100 million transactions every year, each of those throwing off interesting data for you to incorporate in your policy making and operation of city services. Next slide. Moving on to some recent accomplishments, uh, we have a very active technology portfolio. Uh, the city is really moving forward and increasing its operational effectiveness and transforming how we operate. Um, these things range from generational software application uh migrations to weekly security patching and everything in between. We typically manage about 20 to 30 named projects with project managers, scopes, schedules, and budgets, about three to four hundred new system features or capabilities every year, and 60 to 65,000 service desk tickets and requests for new items and service. So there's a lot of volume coming through the IT department. 2025 was a historically large year in investment as far as the number of things that finished. Not all these things started in 2025, but we had a lot of successes, including a migration of our city's enterprise resource planning system. This is the large software platform that tracks all your money, your people, and your assets and interfaces with about 150 other services. Originally implemented in 2003. Uh, we finished late last year with an on-time and on-budget migration to a new system that should support us out through 2040. Um, you've seen the new city website and the new city domain, giving us more security and trust and transparency under the Tacoma.gov domain, with that a new open data portal and access to maps, data, and applications for transparency and government, uh, increases in our internet bandwidth, including a 10x uh increase in our uh throughput, and including security uh capabilities around that, migration to Windows 11, permitting process improvements uh for both the home and Tacoma and utilities processes. Uh, we also operate the public safety radio system for police fire and others and coordinate with other providers in the region. And as you're all familiar with, uh, generative AI has been a topic, so there've been a lot of policy development, piloting, and exploration of those technologies just on our 2025 work plan. So, plenty going on. Next slide. So, where we fit into the bigger picture of Tacoma 2035 and the council and communities goals. Uh, as an internal service, uh, we're in the business of building capability and contributing to the operational excellence of the city. Some have referred to us as the handle on the umbrella, and I'm starting to warm up to that concept. Through partnership with other city departments, we do contribute to the full breadth of your strategies and goals.