I'd like to call to order the city council study session of March 3rd, 2026.

Clerk, please call the roll.

Deputy Mayor Bushnell.

Present.

Councilmember Diaz.

Can you repeat that, Councilmember Diaz?

I'm here.

Thank you.

Councilmember Heinz.

Councilmember Palmer.

Here.

Councilmember Rumba.

Here.

Councilmember Sidalgay?

Here.

Councilmember Scott?

Here.

Councilmember Walker.

Here.

Mayor Ibsen.

Here.

All right.

Our first agenda item is our neighborhood and community services department overview.

I'd like to call on interim director of neighborhood and community services, Vicky McLaurin to begin the presentation.

Good afternoon and thank you.

Um, Mayor Ibsen, um Deputy Mayor Bushnell and Council members.

My name is Vicky McLaurin.

I currently serve as the interim director for neighborhood and community services.

Neighborhood and community services works to build healthy and successful neighborhoods and households through leading community problem solving, funding human services, and partnering with community members to facilitate safe, clean, and attractive neighborhoods.

I first would like to thank the staff of Neighborhood and Community Services for their tireless efforts in addressing the most critical issues in our community with compassion.

I would also like to thank our internal partners who are critical to the success of our department.

And last, I want to thank our provider community, with the exception of the homeless engagement alternative services team.

Our department does not do direct services.

We contract with 80 service providers performing 115 programs to address council priorities and to improve the lives of Tacoma residents.

Neighborhood and community services comprised of four distinct units Administration, resource management, HEAL, systems and strategy, where community wellness and homeless strategies services and systems and services are subdivisions.

Some of our most recent accomplishments include participation in the unified regional approach to homelessness.

In 2025, the HEL team helped 231 unhoused individuals in supportive services and sheltered throughout Tacoma, placing seven into detox.

Redesigning violence reduction and prevention priority, launching the building resilience against youth violence and exploitation, known as Brave.

Transition Senior Services formally to light formally from Lighthouse at Lighthouse and Beacon Activity Center to Parks Tacoma.

Redesign and implemented or designed and implemented the street medicine and sustained funding through June of 2027.

An initial work on dashboarding on contract data working towards public facing dashboards in 2026.

We responded quickly to address the impacts of food access system following a delay in federal funding in the fall of 2025.

This was accomplished through rapid deployment of funds as food partners had limited reserves and services and increased services.

You've seen this slide and other department presentations.

Neighborhood and community services priority areas support community safety and homelessness.

During the February 3rd study session, staff presented the homeless strategy.

We also presented the homeless strategy to community vitality and safety committee on February 12th with the intent to highlight objectives and goals set in 2022 and discuss if or what should be updated and how we could we can align with the unified regional approach.

We also presented to community vitality and safety, and we will also be can um presenting to the community vitality and safety the 27 and 28 issue statement for the competitive process and Brave on March 12th.

So council goals are supported in large part through contracted human services.

Each biennium, our department runs a competitive funding process that seeks to fund services that align with council priorities and department goals.

A review panel that includes human service commission is responsible for reviewing and rating the applications and making funding recommendations.

Each applicant is invited to an oral presentation where they can present their priority and answer questions from raiders related to the application.

Funding recommendations are presented to the community vitality and safety on and contracts over half a million are approved at the same time as the city's biennial budget.

Staff will review the recommendations prior to community vitality and safety with the mayor, city manager, and CVS chair.

Neighborhood and community services funds community programs that strengthen our community.

Funded programs support our efforts to community safety and homelessness, civic engagement, equity, and measurable outcomes to advance the Tacoma 2035 strategic plan.

Aging and disability improves the quality of life for seniors and individuals with disabilities throughout senior activities.

Food insecurity provides food access and options through physical food banks and pantries and delivers and delivery options.

Health and health care improves health outcomes and access to coma residents through focus on behavioral health.

Homelessness prioritizes an increase in access to resources through outreach while addressing public health and safety concerns.

Housing services prevent um violence prevention prevents violence across the social domains, including individual and interpersonal and community.

The next two slides we will review our current initiatives.

Homelessness is one is the unified regional approach, updating the homeless strategy, street medicine, expand Tacoma Rescue Mission Men's Shelter, and inclement weather.

Alternative response.

The intent of this work is to provide consistent processes and procedures for outreach practices and removing unauthorized encampments from City of Tacoma property and ride aways.

Refer individuals to various services, including shelter and detox, collaborating with Tacoma's co-responder teams such as HOPE and the designated crisis responders.

And violence production prevention is update the BRAVE strategy, domestic violence and exploitation support, and the community trauma response.

So for behavioral health, it's community engagement.

We uh drafted a the response or the opiate settlement funding strategy, um supportive services for therapeutic mental health court in collaboration with Tacoma Municipal Court, NCS has provided contracted service supportive service to individuals with behavioral health diagnosis who are deemed mentally incompetent, who are homeless and become homeless during incarceration at the Pierce County Jail, and whose crimes are misdemeanors or gross misdemeanors who are low income.

Staff is working with the Tacoma Municipal Court on the type of services that we may need in 207-28 in order to include this in our competitive process.

And then last would be the improve the data tracking and reporting.

Um public facing dashboard aim to at least have one public facing dashboard and um for contracting data available in 2026, and improve our contracts' output outputs and outcomes.

NCS is continuing to improve our performance measures, including outcomes and outputs to measure change and quantify that the city's investment in human services, improvement include intentional work to increase a cohesive of measures.

Council can work with neighboring community services by contracting or contacting the city manager.

Our department supports community vitality and safety, three committees, boards, and commissions to include human service commission, human rights commission, commission on immigrant and refugee affairs, and nine neighborhood councils.

The public can find more information about this at Tacoma.gov and/or 311.

Opportunities to engage include council and study session presentation, community by community vitality and safety presentations, right along with heel, shelter tours, events, senior events at Parks Tacoma, individual briefings.

You may also contact me as your interim director, or you may contact our new director, Tony Asparza, after March 23rd.

NCS budget is comprised of general fund sales tax such as criminal justice, mental health and substance use disorder, and various grants and one-time revenues.

The general fund makes up approximately 49% of our budget, which is about 28 million dollars.

The majority of the NCS budget is related to staffing and external contracts, primarily for service providers.

Approximately 80% of our budget is external contracts.

This concludes my presentation, and I am available to answer any questions.

Thank you, Director McLaurin.

Thank you so much, Mayor.

And I just um I just have a few things to just say, like really positively about the amount of work that our staff as a city has done for the unified regional approach.

I just I don't think people here at this table knows how hard staff has worked, and I'm not even sure.

Could you quantify how many hours you've worked with the unified regional approach and your staff has?

I'm not sure I can quantify the amount of hours, but we do currently have four staff that have participated in the regional approach.

First with the um the task force, um, and then also as as staff, we put we assist with the elected uh meetings as well as we meet independently with the Pierce County provider.

Yeah, so thank you so much for sharing that, Vicki.

I just really think that um for people who aren't part of the unified regional approach, knowing how much our city is invested in this um process and what it means to our community.

I really I had to say that.

Um I'm wondering if I mean I'm really I I want to put like a pin in it, but I really am interested in the street medicine and what's what's going to happen with that over time.

If we it is there, where are we with that?

So the street medicine is an actual funded by the um Department of Commerce through a grant that we received.

We we received initially a million dollars to implement the the street medicine programming, and then we received funding um to continue it through 2027.

The original intent of the model was for it to be sustainable on its own, and so that the the state funds it, but the original intent was that it would be self-sustainable at some point.

Um the service provider that we have has the ability to bill Medicaid for services, and so the intent would be that we would not continue, we as the government would not continue the fund it.

Okay, so the city wouldn't be funding that we don't spend any general fund or mental health dollars towards street medicine.

Okay, that's great.

Um, thanks for sharing that.

I didn't have that information.

Um I really appreciate your work on the dashboards.

I think that that's really helpful because it's just like that outward facing for the community to see that's been really helpful.

Um I am interested in more.

We've talked about food access, it's something I'm really um working on.

And then um just to say uh I just want everyone to look that that there's a lot of things that CVS um actually like administer like is part our staff has to be a part of, and that's the neighborhood councils and human rights commission and I just and immigrant rights are um refugee and immigrant and then I just I just don't want people to think that we don't do anything on this commission.

It on this committee, it's a lot of work, and it's we're able to do this work because we have the staff, and um it's how much money are we going to be looking at and when we go to do our contracting?

So we are still under budget development and for 27 and 28, so it we're not clear of okay of how what that looks like considering that there'd be you know I'm putting in my largest ask that we are able to increase brave funding, that we're in able to still do our homeless services and um domestic violence work that we've been doing.

So um just gonna put that out there for our council to think about how important this work is, and thank you so much for this update.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Walker.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, thank you, Vicky.

This was really great.

And I know we've had recent conversations about like the URA and and other pieces of this, so um, it felt timely to sort of wrap it all in.

So really appreciate that.

Um my question is about the opioid dollars and sort of what the status is on that um funding strategy.

I think I saw it on either study session or committee coming forward.

And then how does that relate to the financials on slide 11?

Because you talked about grants, and I'm curious if the opioid um if that where does that land in this?

Thank you.

So um in 2025, staff completed a um a survey um with our provider community with police and fire on how these funds could be used.

We have finalized a report and and some recommendations.

However, with the budget conversation coming up, we um think that might be best a better approach rather than bringing it to committee because we do understand that council has an interest that we would bring it to back to council.

And so um I will be working with the city manager on when and who that would be.

Okay, great.

And that makes sense to me too that that's a full council discussion.

Um, and so and where does it fit into the the pie?

So it's not necessarily in in the pie um as it stands.

We have we did use, and I'm gonna uh you know, about a million in 25-26 might be a little bit more than a million.

We did use some of that money to offset or um for some programming.

Um it's but for the competitive process that we're currently doing, opioid dollars is not going to be considered unless council has asked us to actually compete the dollars.

Okay.

So you know council, we are looking for direction from council on how we would like to spend that money.

Like I said, we do have an assessment and a recommendation, but that would be determined by council of how we would like to spend it.

Great.

Um, and then the only other note just to say I know we had this conversation at the council retreat, but just um because not everybody was there or listening.

Um I am very interested in um continuing the conversation with the Brave Funding, and I know Councilmember Scott is leading that work, and I get to be on CVS to have that conversation, but I think there's so much so much important work that we are doing there and can be doing there, and I just want to highlight that any chance I get.

So thank you.

Um thank you for the presentation.

This was really helpful.

Councilmember Scott.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh thank you for the presentation, Vicki.

I sorry.

Um I will also speak to just one of the things that I am hoping to like get to in our with our budget is uh some more money in the Brave funding as well.

Um, but my question is around can you talk a little bit about like obviously we're not doing the direct service, but like the what are we doing in the DV exploitation um section of the work that you all are doing?

Yes, so thank uh thank you for that question.

We currently have an interlocal agreement with Crystal Jetson Family Justice Center to actually that with along with the county to provide um domestic violence services.

We do compete those additional dollars to support that effort.

Um I can't speak it directly on which pro which program those are, but we do um we do compete additional dollars on top of the interlocal agreement that we have with Crystal Judson.

Okay, and that's where like other agencies like our sisters house, YWCA and folks can kind of get in on that.

That's correct.

Okay, okay.

Um and then can you remind me what you said the total budget amount has been?

I I think you said it, but I can't remember the number.

So I'm rounding up.

That's so it's about general funds about 28 million.

Okay.

Um mineral health and substance use disorder is about 15 million.

Okay, and then of course, we have some grant funding with Department of Justice, which is roughly 169,000.

Um it's nominal, and then we also have community um criminal justice funding that we also it's a sales tax that we also spend, and that's about 412,000.

Okay, cool.

Thank you.

And then my last question, which might actually be for the city manager, um for the opioid dollars, uh, is that gonna be part of our budget discussion this year?

With a cadence of the budget, uh, Councilmember Scott, absolutely.

That's something that we will discuss and pull out if that's a consideration for you all.

And also it is your budget and how we deploy those dollars, it'll be part of the 27-28 biannual budget.

Thank you, and thank you again, Vicky.

Thank you, Councilmember Sidalgi.

Hi, thank you.

Um I don't really have a question, but I did want to start and thank you for your time as interim director.

Um I think you've done a phenomenal job uh because when I look at your presentation, I think I think what I would like to highlight to the public is that we here in Tacoma really do take a compassionate first approach to how we do all of the things we do, especially under NCS.

And I've seen that directly first hand.

Uh we I think we started working together really when I first was appointed um with the whole conversation around the senior center.

Um I've seen it in other uh ways in in write-alongs, and I think it's really important also to talk about the fact that we have employees, several of them who are here who embody that and it's something we should be proud of that we here in Tacoma invest in these types of programs when quite frankly very few jurisdictions in this state come close to even considering and despite our our limited funds, we we uh do the best we can in a variety of ways.

So uh I do also want to extend thanks to every single person who does this job day in and day out because they have a lot of micro touches with the community, and those micro touches are what increase trust and transparency and confidence um which is not in your presentation, but it is so important for how NCS operates.

So uh I just wanted to thank you.

Uh Director McCoy.

Oh, yes, Councilman Rumbach.

I'm sorry, Vicky.

Could you just remind us what what meeting CBS is talking about the OPI dollars, just so that um we are everyone that is here is what that date is.

Do you remember?

I don't have my calendar.

So tan up to Hidley was on the May calendar, however, we were gonna have a discussion later on whether it's more suited to be at the full council and um and if it should come actually from the city manager versus staff.

And so those are conversations that you and I, as well as the city manager will have in the in the next week or two.

Perfect.

Sounds great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And thank you so much for your presentation, uh, Director McLaurin.

I actually have a couple of follow-up questions.

Uh, one comment is uh for starters uh as someone who attends the or a as well on behalf of the city with my colleagues.

Um very pleased to see that we're taking on inclement weather.

That's one of the big three recommendations for 2026.

Uh can you also speak about the other two uh major priorities of the group, namely uh uh coordinated entry and just better data sharing collection where the city is currently on those things.

Thank you so much.

So HIMATH, which is the the county's um database center uh system, um the city is already using that.

We already require our shelter providers to use HIMATH, so that is something that we're already doing over the last year, probably should have taken put this on the list, but um our staff has already worked with the county on the inclement weather being in alignment with the inclement weather process, and so what that means is when the county will look at the uh a heat map and decide that because of the weather, the rain or or different things that they will um launch inclement weather.

What we do with that is we we um expand our shelter capacity when it's inclement weather, as well as we have um some HELTOL vouchers that we will also expand so that individuals we can get households off of the streets into hotels or additional shelter capacity.

There was one more that they were doing that I don't remember.

And that's really important.

That was actually something that I had heard uh on a couple of occasions from our partners in the URA was um how HIMAS is really helping with shelter point of entry for finding out where people are coming from because that's that's an important part of the regional conversation is that a lot of these people are not originally coming from Tacoma, it might be Lakewood, it might be Silicon, might be Oregon, right?

We don't we don't know.

So it's it's good that that's uh in the shelter.

One of the requests uh which I'd like to respective on is if there are additional places, not just simply through the homeless management system through the shelters, but for example, the heel team in the field, for example.

Uh, do you know if if there are any other mechanisms mechanisms we could use, whether it's heel or otherwise to identify origin in particular board inventory?

Yeah, thank you for that question.

So currently um the city's policy is if you spend one day in Tacoma, then you can go into our shelter or to into our system.

So heel is currently not gathering that data because obviously, if we are moving you, you've stayed one day here.

Um so we're not gathering that data, but that obviously as we're improving our data collection and the areas that we're doing, that is something that we can include in in our process.

Sure.

It was a request from a couple of of partners, so it might be worth at least having a conversation.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you, Director.

No other questions.

Thank you so much for your presentation.

All right, our second agenda item is uh department overview of human resources.

I'd like to call on human resources director Linia Jablonski to begin the presentation.

And welcome aboard too.

Good afternoon.

I'm Linnea Jablonski, the 21 Days in uh human resources director here at the City of Tacoma.

So thank you, Mayor, and members of the council for having me.

I'm just gonna go over a quick slideshow um with the about my department, um, and then hopefully answer any questions you have.

And if not, I said I have my emotional support human Ben here to help me with um any questions you guys might have at the end of this that I can't answer.

Uh so human resources is often behind the scenes, uh, but our work directly shapes who serves Tacoma, how well they serve Tacoma, and how long they stay.

What I'm sharing this afternoon is less about policies and charts and more about understanding how human resources work shows up in the community you hear from every day.

So I have a quick uh overview of the departments within human resources.

So we have administration is the operational backbone of human resources, ensuring personnel records, policies, contracts, and disclosures are accurate, compliant, and accessible.

This team manages personnel records, public disclosures, civil service board support, uh, so that workforce actions are timely, defensible, and transparent.

We have talent solutions.

Talent Solutions supports how the city hires, manages, and retains its workforce through employee relations and talent acquisitions.

This team ensures hiring the workplace decisions are fair, consistent, and legally defensible, while also supporting executive recruitments, ethics investigations, and executive performance evaluations.

They support supervisors in applying labor agreements, civil service rules, and personnel policies fairly and consistently to managing their teams, including performance management, discipline, and conflict resolution.

We have our comp and benefits team that ensures the city can attract and retain employees through fair market aligned pay, comprehensive benefits, and sustainable cost management.

This division manages job classifications and wage structures, health and welfare benefits, protected leave and accommodations, wellness program, and supports the commission on elected salaries.

This division directly affects recruitment success, retention, equity, and long-term cost control.

We also have equal employment opportunity, and this small but mighty team of two people with the EEO office investigates allegations of unlawful discrimination and provides education and resources that protect employees, supervisors, and the city.

They ensure issues are handled consistently, fairly and early, which contributes to a workplace that is equitable, inclusive, and discrimination free by ensuring that compliance with federal, state, and local civil rights laws.

We also have our continuous improvement group.

This division is made up of three teams that help departments deliver services to the community more effectively by improving systems, building leadership capabilities, and using data for informed decisions.

The innovation team leads process improvement efforts to help departments operate more effectively and help deliver the council priorities by taking on complex cross-cutting improvement and then the coordination structure and momentum to move the city forward.

The workforce data analytics manages our employees' data and provides analysis that inform policy decisions, drives internal equity, and enables workforce planning.

The citywide learning team guides employment, excuse me, employee development through citywide training, leadership development, and a scalable learning infrastructure.

Since implementing the city's first enterprise LMS, CI's learning has partnered with departments on specific solutions to enhance onboarding, compliance, safety, and leadership growth across the organization.

The human resource department works to ensure the city has the right people in the right role while supporting with the support they need to serve the community effectively with minimal risk.

As you can see, we have a lot going on in human resources and to support our over 4,000 employees.

In the last few years, we have enhanced our workplace workforce analytics capabilities to provide meaningful data to decision makers and here you can see some of the key metrics that qualify some of the work that HR team has accomplished in 2025.

We can now show you with data where we're losing talent, where recruitment stall, and what it means for service delivery.

We've been hard at work administering over 8,400 personnel actions and helping over 600 individuals navigate their leaves and benefits.

We've strengthened our learning and development programs to allow staff to complete 60,000 trainings.

Our recently revamped affinity group program has reached over 600 employees throughout the organization.

We continue to improve and support the recruiting of our amazing employees throughout the organization, including helping departments process over 34,000 applications, resulting in 400 hires.

Let's look at some of the work that went into getting these numbers.

As you can see, human resources touches all parts of the employee experience.

Our previous employee survey results show a few areas where we've demonstrated a collective impact in our efforts.

Twelve employee surveys questions had significant improvement in 2024, and none of them declined, which is a great statistic.

They did increase in the benefits we offer employees meet their needs.

Staff would recommend others to work here, and staff are proud of the work that they do here at the city of Tacoma.

And we will be administering a new employee survey in the fall of 2026, will be the next round of that.

These aren't internal wins.

They've increased the capacity for the city.

We've launched several trainings to develop supervisors who manage people, which directly affects morale, retention, and public interactions.

We are consistently working to improve HR processes to better support the organization and employees' needs.

Since 2019, the city's workforce has become more diverse and more reflective of the Tacoma's population.

Female representation has grown by 1.5%.

And individuals historically coming from marginalized communities has increased by 5.5% since 2019.

We aren't there yet, but we're making consistent progress towards achieving our goals.

The largest gap in our workforce community representation are for females and those of Hispanic and Latino descent.

And again, I think this is the slide you guys have seen in everyone's presentation.

So Tacoma 35 is ultimately a people strategy, and HR is the engine behind that.

We don't own Tacoma 2035.

We enable the departments to deliver it.

HR takes care of the employees so that they can take care of the community.

We help minimize risk, avoid lawsuits that could impose a large cost to the city if not properly administered.

Essentially, the organization is really 4,000 people trying to get good work done.

When you when that many people working together, you might you must resolve conflict, make sure people are getting treated fairly in accordance with law and policy, and help them navigate personal challenges and ensure that we can show up to work as our authentic selves to do their best work.

We provide development opportunities that give them the skills they need and help comply with requirements to do their job.

To reinforce across the many services and human resources offers, some of the main ways we support council and your goals for the Tacoma 2035 are by developing talent, a talented workforce that reflects the community that we serve, providing staff the benefits and resources they knew they need to do their best work in support of the community, and directly supporting departments with implementing council priorities through continuous improvement initiatives.

These eight focus areas summarize our department departmental strategic plan.

Our mission is to serve as strategic business partners who provide people solutions that support organizational objectives in alignment with the city and council priorities.

We continually look at our HR processes and simplifying rules and procedures to better support operational departments delivering to the services of the community.

You'll see these folks in front of you in future council meetings, and I'm sure you're very familiar with their faces.

So this is a team that I have interacted with a lot in the last 21 days, and I really appreciate the work that they've done while this position was vacant.

So you will see CARE with initiatives such as the non-rep market refresh and the RFP for the self-insured medical providers, which helps us navigate the continued pressure on wages and benefits to improve uh workforce stability.

As you know, executive retirements and turnovers are at a high point right now.

And Cheryl will come before the council with updates on those recruitments and executive performance reviews.

You are very familiar with Ben for Council's OSAC committee, and you will see his team presentation on continuous improvement efforts in support of a variety of initiatives across the city.

As you have heard in prior presentations, please work with the city manager if there's anything that human resources can do to support you.

Additionally, we do engage with your committees, boards, and commissions on a regular basis.

We also happen to manage the most frequently visited website on Tacoma.gov, and we invite members of the community to go to Tacoma.gov forward slash jobs if they are interested in joining the City of the Tacoma team.

We do have some resources available if you aren't familiar with them.

You can access uh training online at learn.gov.

Uh the internal portal to the city's learning management system.

We also provide provide an array of benefits, and I would encourage all of you if you haven't taken a look at all of those wonderful things that we offer.

Um again, we look forward to working with you, and we'll see you across some of these common interactions.

Um then I think in closing, I just have some of the financial things.

HR is primal primarily an internal services.

Uh whether it's providing operational support or administering benefits and trust funds, department share the costs for our services in the internal service cost assessment model.

HR operates budget is divided up by percentage of FTEs.

For our administration and benefits and trust funds, we are largely pass through departments pay actual premiums for employees, fully funded plans and the city set rates for our self-insured plans.

Only about a quarter of our budget is funded by the general fund.

This structure incentivizes efficiency when we do recall reduce costs, everyone benefits.

And in closing, we are excited to work with the council as partners and building a strong representative and resilient workforce.

And if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer those.

And uh thank you, uh Director Jamalski.

We are excited to work with you as well.

So with that, are there any questions?

We have one from Councilmember Rumbaugh.

Lenny, I want to thank you so much for your presentation.

I know this was your first one.

So I did great, good job.

Thanks, Ben.

We appreciate you.

Um I just wanted to say I actually use your wellness program and I love it, and it's tied to my my Fitbit, which is a Google watch now.

And somebody in our city like told me about this 30% off, so I got this, and I didn't have one before, and that way it connects right with the wellness program, and I'm able to get money back on my um the amount of money I pay for my um health care every month.

And so I just really appreciate that opportunity for our city to be as well as possible, especially the person who's sitting here at the council who gets a lot of that.

And then I I just had a quick question for you.

Um, what part does the council play um in guidelines for when we set um how many years of experience people need to have and things like that for certain certain positions when we go out?

What part does the city does the council have in that?

Is that just something through the city manager?

I'm just curious.

I don't know the answer.

So I think if Cara was here, she would probably have a better answer.

But in my experience, um, since you are uh based on civil service rules, most of the time that's all interconnected that way.

I would have to look specifically at what the city of Tacoma does, and I would happy to give you a more specific answer, but most of the time it has to do with those civil service rules and okay.

Because I just I just want to really um we've lost some really great talent to Pierce County, which is great.

Um but um I also just really want to think about when we go out to hire what it looks like to miss people that had like a lot of experience at our city, and we we weren't able to um find a way to keep them.

So I just I'm just that's uh that's something I was just thinking about, and I'd love to know more about that.

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, thank you.

Council Walker.

Thank you.

Um, and thank you for the presentation.

I think um you said it at the end, you know, mostly internal, but everything that you all do well means the city is successful, so appreciate that.

I love the slide on the third slide on the by the numbers, both visually and just because it it illustrates how much you all do.

And I just wanted to highlight and thank you for the um the increase in affinity group participation.

I think that makes such a difference, and we have heard from some of them because they come to council for various proclamations and things.

Um, but I know how from those presentations how much people appreciate that and um in terms of making sure we keep good people and um keep people engaged in the city and happy employees that are are doing great work.

I think that makes a huge difference.

So I just wanted to thank you and highlight that because I know that that's been a big um push over the um last couple years, at least since I've been here.

So appreciate that.

And also I love the reminder that we have access to all those learning opportunities too.

I think we sometimes see ourselves the nine of us outside of the city, but appreciate having those opportunities as well.

So thank you to your team for all they do.

Thank you so much.

Deputy Mayor.

Uh thank you, Mayor.

Um, and thank you for the presentation.

I'm really excited uh for you and the work that you're doing in the team.

Um I just really wanted to highlight um the team's accomplishments around um building a workforce that reflects our community.

I have seen uh the HR team out there intentionally trying to reach folks that historically have not been reached out to.

And I really appreciate that, especially as we try to make sure that our community is our workforce is reflective of our community.

And so I just wanted to shout that out and highlight.

And we still have a lot more work to do, but I see the intentionality behind all of it, and I'm really looking forward to more work in that area.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Palmer.

That's me.

Thank you for the presentation and welcome.

You're new with me, so that's very special.

Um I had a question about as far as like HR's, I guess, strategic plan.

And is there is that something that obviously you guys are internal mostly, but is that something that public can access, or is that something we can access to understand kind of your game plan to um meet some of these um are these does it say goals on here?

It doesn't say goals on here, right?

Just trying to reach the community, um, reflecting the community that we serve.

Um I I'm hearing that you're out in community and and reaching out.

Um if there's not a plan, is there other things that uh we're planning to do to try and reach those goals?

Yes, so I believe everything's accessible on the website.

So our strategic plan vision mission, all the things, and that's available to the public, or yeah, at our internal link.

Um again, as you mentioned, being new, I'll have to kind of check with my team, but um to see kind of exactly what we have identified for those goals and how we're working through that, and I'm happy to maybe set up some time to chat with you and go through that until we can get a little more familiar with both ends of it.

So, yes, yes.

Awesome.

Thank you.

All right, thank you.

Councilmember Hines.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor, and thank you, Linnae, for the presentation.

It's great.

Um, the question, and this is I usually ask this over and over again.

I really like the building a workforce that reflects community that we serve.

It's been a priority we've talked about for many years on the council since I've been here.

But um, and this is good for like a steady state.

I would love for few, maybe for myself or a future reference the the over time, like comparison over time, that how it's evolved over time.

And I think some of our presentations last couple years when we've done our transformation presentations have shown that because it's one thing to show.

I think it's important for us to see kind of where we are and how our population reflects our our um our city's demographics, but I know we've made really large jumps over time, and when we see gaps here, I think it doesn't acknowledge it.

Sometimes it doesn't acknowledge all the work that's been done.

So that was just one uh thing that I would probably would love to see kind of in the future, because I think we've definitely made some I you can already see 2019 2025, but it would be good to see kind of year by year.

Um was just one question I had.

The other one was um I just appreciate all the work that we're doing around trying to attract retire and retain, you know, the the workers we have here.

I think it's important, you know, our greatest asset is our employees.

I mean, when you look at where our budget if if a budget is a uh what's the word I'm looking for?

If the but the corum, if a budget is a moral document, then one thing we are morally committed to is paying and employing folks, right?

We our biggest part of our our budget is to employing high quality city employees, and so um I appreciate the continued effort to keep that work going.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Sidalga.

Uh thank you.

Uh my only question was when I looked at this, uh I realized the 4,059 average monthly head count includes TPU.

Yes.

So I would love to see the disaggregation of TPU versus general government because they have different um probably uh barriers to how we can get to uh uh uh a workforce that that serves our community, quite frankly, because we may be better on one side than the other, and we also have to deal with a separate board and a separate director, and and and that would be a separate work plan potentially.

Um and then the comments I had were you know uh human resources absolutely essential because most of our resources are to our people.

Um and as we get into this age where we have the silver tsunami and everything growing and retaining um the individuals we have, I think is really important.

So that uh focus is is absolutely essential and should be a focus for us on the policy level too for the rest of the council because it's important that we navigate these next roughly half to full decade as we go through the demographic um kind of world that we're going through.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for your presentation for comments from council.

Thank you so much.

Moving along to item number three, our third agenda item is a council consideration request.

This is from uh Councilmember Heinz, uh, pertaining to the True Vine Community Church of God in Christ, uh, fifth annual block party sponsorship.

Council Mr.

Hines.

Yes.

There we go.

I make sure I had the right talking points.

We're not talking about animal humane restraint of animals, so that's a whole separate thing.

Uh good evening.

Or good afternoon, man.

Good afternoon.

Uh thank you all for letting me come back here.

I was here last I brought this forward last week.

Um I had to leave early for uh a family event, and so I wasn't able to present it, so thank you to my colleagues for letting me bring this back today uh for study session.

I'll keep this really short.

Um the uh True Vine Community Church had reached out to me about a year ago when they did their fourth annual community block party, which was kind of a smaller event at their church.

It's off of um 37th and uh Pearl Street in District One, and it was a great event, really trying to bring the community together and really focused on a free family-friendly event of connecting people to resources that are available to them in the community.

Um it's been a lot of fun.

I went to last year, they had food, live music, face painting and a bouncy house.

And after I went to the event, the fourth um annual event, I talked to him and said, This is great.

Like, how do we what can we do here?

What you know, can we take this and make this even bigger?

And so this is why I'm bringing this forward here today.

Um they are looking to really take this to a new level, and they're gonna look they're proposing to move their event from their church to Cheney Stadium.

Um the event, their goal of the event is to connect thousands of community members to critical support systems, including healthcare enrollment, housing support, utility assistance, employment services, and educational opportunities.

Um they've talked they're focusing on uh is kind of the back to school time in August, so distributing free backpacks and supplies to local youth, um, spreading awareness about the great resources offered by agencies in the city and in the area.

Um and I think that's something we've talked a lot about on the council with many of you, which is the idea of how do we promote better what the city's doing, right?

The city does a lot, the city provides lots of services.

I don't know how many times I can count that someone said, hey, the city should do something about this, only for me to talk to staff and figure out that the city actually already does that, and just connecting people and connecting the dots around those things.

Um in return for this event, which I think really fits kind of our strategic goals around including perceptions of community safety, improving kind of the functions and the abilities of the city and what we're doing to kind of meet community needs and meet the community where they are.

Um City logo will be kind of top tier placement on all the major signage and the promotional materials.

So all the work we've done to brand the city to make sure people know who's paying for some of these things and what the sport is, it would be our new brand.

We'd be all over kind of the event itself.

Uh city members and staff members also have options to host resource tables and be a part of the event, too, to share information.

Um this proposal is for $25,000.

A lot of that is is really predicated on them being able to kind of secure the facility for this big event.

They are doing um external fundraising to find other sponsors to help pay for this because uh they have a very big vision for what this is gonna be.

Um I want to thank my co-sponsors, Councilmember Scott and Councilmember Palmer.

And um, this will be on the agenda tonight for the council meeting, but I would love to answer any questions um that people might have for me at this time.

Thank you, Councilmember Scott.

Um very burning question for you, Councilmember Hines.

Did you last year participate in the bouncy house?

And if not, are you going to jump in?

Oh.

I did not.

My daughter did.

Um does not okay.

My family my household participated in the bouncy house.

No.

Um, I'm very excited.

I did not, but my kids had a lot of fun, and it should be exciting this year.

Awesome.

Um, I appreciate it uh uh for you bringing this forward, and I'm happy to be a co-sponsor, so thank you for including me.

Yeah.

And I would just thank you, Council Scott.

And to council to something Council Palmer brought up to me, which I I have communicated to the host is you know, uh, we have a lot of backpack giveaways here in Tacoma already.

And so I've talked to him about you know, think about other things that would be really valuable for young people and families as they think about going back to school and what's going on in other resources.

So I want to thank Council Mr.

Palmer for that suggestion.

Thank you.

Any other comments?

All right, and I I too will be supporting this.

So thank you very much, Councilmember Hans, for bringing this forward.

It definitely seems in alignment with our goals, and it's it's just a way to do more good for more people.

So nothing wrong with that.

Yeah.

All right, wonderful.

With that, um, this will be on tonight's agenda.

And we are going to move on to committee reports.

And boy, do we have a big one.

Uh, this one I have um uh to flag for council a couple of items relating to the council rules discussion uh that OSAC is advancing ahead of our meeting on the 13th.

Uh first, I plan to bring forward a conversation next Tuesday focused on community forum, uh revising its purpose and exploring how we can thoughtfully evolve the format to better support council deliberations of remaining responsive and accessible to the public.

Um I hope is this discussion will help inform OSAC's work next week and allow us to return with a cohesive set of recommendations on council rules, including community forum as scheduled for late March, with the goal of adopting updated rules by the end of April.

Secondly, I will ask staff to prepare a motion for next Tuesday to temporarily adjust our community forum rules through May.

This short-term adjustment would streamline the number of forums during the rule update period to once per month and remove the one-hour speaking limit for the uh remaining forum, ensuring that all who wish to speak have the opportunity to do so.

Are there any uh committee reports for share or are there any comments or questions on this matter?

Council Walker.

Um, just briefly I want to say um we had a really good conversation about this at OSAC and um I think there I I guess I want to thank the rest of the council for weighing in ahead of that because that really helped us um move the conversation forward.

Um I'm really eager to get some things on paper and get it in front of everybody because I think we're we're almost there in terms of having something to react to, but um just it's taken a number of conversations to get to this point, and I think um, as mayor said, you know, we want to have one more OSAC conversation, but the comments that you all gave us, either formally or informally ahead of that conversation really helped.

Um we're really trying to reach this goal of having a better space for dialogue and more conversation with the public.

Um and I I was really happy with the the place we got to at the end of the conversation, and I don't think um to your point, Mayor, we want to move forward until we really know we've we've got it right.

Um so I think taking the space for this has been really good.

Um and we're getting close.

So I appreciate it.

Thank you, Councilmember Walker.

Excuse me, and to reiterate one of the other really important points of that conversation, which I too found very helpful, is that this isn't even about changing or taking anything away, it's about responding to shared frustration.

That that's the entire basis of this conversation is frustration on the part of the public with how community forum and other public meetings are uh conducted, what happens, what doesn't happen, uh, and just ensuring that we're being as responsive while also realistic, and also other uh important stakeholders who matter just as much too, like our staff, for instance.

So thank you to everyone for your participation.

Keep it up if there's any uh additional um thoughts or questions that you have, and we look forward to further this along.

So with that, we're gonna move on, so seeing as there are no further council comments to item number four.

I'd like to call on interim city manager Hyun Kim to begin our city manager's weekly report and agenda review.

Thank you, Mayor Epson.

Um council tonight.

We have two ceremonials, uh, both proclaiming March 2026 as um American Red Cross month as well as March for Women's History Month.

Uh no changes as proposed for the agenda and for note for the council and the public.

There will be one opportunity for public comment uh under public comment period for motions and matters before the council.

Thank you, Mayor Gibson.

Thank you.

All right, so our next motion is uh I'm going to entertain a motion to convene to an executive session per RCW 42.30 point one one zero section one G and R CW42.30 point one one zero section one I to discuss the qualifications of an applicant for public employment and pending litigation.

Those are two separate things, uh, not to exceed 30 minutes.

So moved.

Second.

Move and second, all those in favor say aye.

I was supposed to say no.

We're going to execut the

Thank you all.

Have a great day.

We stand adjourned.