I'm really well.

Good afternoon.

I'd like to call to order the City Council study session of April 21st, 2026.

Clerk, please call the roll.

Deputy Mayor Bushnell.

Councilmember Diaz.

Here.

Councilmember Heinz?

Councilmember Palmer?

Councilmember Rumba?

Here.

Councilmember Sidalgay?

Here.

Councilmember Scott?

Councilmember Walker?

Here.

Mayor Ibsen.

Here.

Our first agenda item is the 2026 FIFA World Cup fan zone.

How exciting.

I'd like to call on the Tacoma venues and event director Adam Cook to begin the presentation.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Mayor Ibsen, Deputy Mayor Bushnell, Council members.

Really appreciate the opportunity to come before you today and talk through the FIFA World Cup fan zone activation going on in our region.

Pleased to have joining me today Gary Westcott, the interim economic development director for Pierce County.

Unfortunately, we had two other slated who had uh family emergency and an illness come up.

Uh Dean Burke, our president and CEO of Visit Tacoma Pierce County, and Amy McFarland, who is the interim, or pardon me, who is the World Cup project director for the Puala tribe of Indians, our core partners on this project.

There we go.

Um so today, as we're going to talk through, we are going to just sort of set the stage what the World Cup means to the region and the area.

We're going to get into our fan zone activation, what that will mean.

We're going to talk through how Tacoma venues and events as well as the city as a whole are going to help leverage this opportunity for the area, and then how we as a community can really maximize and leverage this for our region past the World Cup.

Before I begin though, the number one thing I want to hit on, please.

Did I lose the mic somewhere?

Okay, I'm still on here.

All right, we'll keep rolling.

Uh the number one thing I want to hit on is is please absolutely stay flexible.

Everything we're going to talk about today is perishable.

Um we are living in a situation with the World Cup that is moment to moment, day-to-day, and sometimes often tweet to tweet, um, especially when it is coming out of our administration.

So we know the numbers as we see them now.

What they will look like tomorrow is anybody's guess.

So what is the World Cup?

Well, quite frankly, it is the largest sporting event in the world.

Um it will take place between June 11th and June 19th, with 48 teams playing 104 matches.

This is the largest World Cup in history.

They expanded it starting this year.

It will take place across three countries with 16 cities hosting games.

So both the largest geographic region that has ever played the World Cup, the largest number of teams, and the largest expected attendance with six million plus tickets, five billion plus global viewers for the games.

In the United States, that equates to 11 cities, 78 games, and roughly 4.7 million tickets sold, all being played across America's 250th birthday on the 4th of July as well.

Getting a little more local for Seattle, we are talking about six major games.

There are four group match games that you can see.

Um Belgium, Egypt, USA and Australia, Qatar versus Bosnia and Herzegovina, Egypt and Iran are all the confirmed group match games.

Then we will play a round of 32 July 1st and a round of 16 on July 6th.

If the US team is successful in moving forward through the round of 16, that game would most likely be played in Seattle as well.

So potential to have two USA home games.

Is they remove all branding and they get to put their own on.

And the Seattle host committee will host four fan parties across the downtown Seattle region.

Previously that was slated to be one fan fest, so a very large activation at Seattle Center.

They have chosen to sort of break that up and spread it out among the city to drive greater participation across the area.

So viewing parties across downtown Seattle.

As we talk about the real impact of the games, we're talking about folks coming to the region.

We're talking about lodging.

What we are seeing right now is a very, very slow pickup on that lodging.

So as we look, the original estimates were that there would be roughly 750,000 people visiting the downtown core in Seattle around that.

Original numbers started at about 150,000 visitors that were going to need lodging across multiple days.

That is now down 22% to about 117,000 visitors estimated.

On top of that, the average estimated number of nights a visitor would stay was four to five nights originally.

That has been estimated down to about 1.8 nights total.

So all of that combined means that the original estimate of 900,000 room nights that were going to be needed across the region is down to 210,000 room nights, a 77% reduction overall.

So the impact of these games is dramatically reducing, and that is not just in the Seattle market.

We are seeing that nationwide right now across the United States.

FIFA has just released all of their blocks over the last two weeks, dropping as much as uh 10,000 rooms in some markets and some jurisdictions.

We did hope to see a pickup on the average daily room rate, so the amount a person pays for a single room on any given night.

What we are actually seeing is something in the neighborhood of seven to eight percent pickup on that, so significantly smaller than we had hoped for.

Where we are seeing a bright spot is the USA versus Australia match.

That is going well.

Um but all of the others are just pacing farther behind.

As we talk to the fan zone activation and what's coming into our region.

Well, the fan zones were the brainchild of the Seattle Host Committee.

This is the first time this has ever been conducted in any World Cup, and we are the only state that is conducting these across this uh region.

So no World Cup uh before, no other cities in this World Cup are doing something like this.

This is where Seattle Host Committee is leveraging their broadcast rights and helping communities, so as the nine largest counties in the nine largest cities in those counties to host watch parties across the area.

Originally that was slated to be all six of the Seattle games at a minimum.

They have since revised that, and they are really just focusing in on the USA game for most of the jurisdictions.

What we are seeing is of the other eight jurisdictions, most are participating in one to three viewing parties.

So they are not activating across all of the games.

As it comes to Pierce County and Tacoma, we have a very different model down here.

Our partners with the Puallop tribe of Indians are what's c considered a legacy supporter.

So they are the first indigenous tribe to be a primary sponsor of any World Cup games throughout their history.

What that means is their sponsorship level is on akin to groups like Nike Adidas Coke at the national stage.

They're doing that for the local Seattle organizing committee.

It is a major win for the tribe.

It is a major win for our region to have them there.

So they are all in on these games, quite frankly, and they are hosting major activations to welcome the world to the Puallop tribe and to our region.

Their branding, as you can see, is Puala Welcome.

So all together.

How do we bring everybody in and create that significance and create that lasting impact?

They're focusing on five key metrics.

So they are looking at their legacy efforts, how they are contributing to the go forward.

They are looking at their World Cup pow-wow that they will be hosting, as well as a canoe journey in advance of the cup.

They are focused on community involvement.

So not just how are they bringing in folks from outside, but how are they engaging the community and their environmental sustainability and what this means going forward for them?

Those are their core pillars.

We are looking at all six watch parties, but on top of that, we are starting with a parade and an opening ceremony.

So kicking off on June 12th for the public.

We will have an opening parade coming down Portland Avenue from 38th to 30th.

That will go from 7:30 p.m.

to 845 p.m.

The opening ceremonies will start at 845 p.m.

and a fireworks display will launch at 10 p.m.

So a really large activation going on around the tribal grounds.

We'll be hosting a dignitary reception on June 11th in conjunction with the first game of the World Cup as well.

You'll see sprinkled throughout there all of the different viewing parties that will be going on.

Those will start taking place an hour before the game to an hour after each of the games.

And then in addition, you see the World Cup Coastal Protocol, which will take place July 18th as a lead-in to the World Cup powow that will be June 19th to June 21st.

We anticipate somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 to 10,000 people for the powwow per day.

Significant impact.

And then following that up the next weekend, June 26th to 28th, will be the World Cup stick games tournament or Bone Games.

This is a traditional Puallop tribe games for their people, and I cannot do it justice to describe what it is.

I encourage you to take a look.

We also can get some more information for you if you'd like.

But similarly, expecting probably five to seven thousand people per day for those games.

So not only are we hosting viewing parties, but we are hosting activations across all of the World Cup.

Those viewing parties themselves, all of everything I talked about will be on the tribal administrative grounds.

The viewing parties though will be beyond that.

There will also be viewing parties taking place at the Emerald Queen Casino in their sports book area.

Woven seafood and chop house in the parking lot will be activating a viewing party, and then Firecracker Alley in the CBC area will be activating a viewing party.

So really bringing this throughout Tacoma and throughout the region.

How are we supporting them?

Well, first and foremost, we're starting with the opening parade.

This has been designated as a citywide event, which means that they are eligible for significant support from the city to help with traffic and crowd control and public safety through complementary personnel, services, and equipment that we are able to provide.

We will be activating the Tacoma Dome as a primary transit and transportation hub.

So we will be offering complimentary parking in our back lot, G lot, throughout the run for every event.

And we are partnered up with our friends at Pierce Transit to provide shuttle bus service, both from the dome parking area as well as the Tacoma Dome station over to the tribal grounds and administrative headquarters.

So really excited to see that.

And then we will be working on promotional support throughout.

So presentations such as this as well as presentations to our community to really talk about the World Cup, what it means to the area, and how they can be engaged.

Digital marketing, amplifying the message of the tribe.

You'll notice the branding on this is not like some of your normal council presentation slides.

This is the tribe's branding.

We are very intentional about mimicking their message.

And then you'll also start to see some new uh light pole banners go out, go up throughout the dome district, uh, and potentially a flag flying on top of the building coming up at the dome later this year.

On top of that, we are still coordinating with all of our community events because the world does not stop for the World Cup.

Uh we have many other things going on in the region.

Most notably on June 12th, up against that viewing, or the activation will be the UWT graduation.

June 18th will be the Pierce College graduation.

The biggest impact is going to be June 19th.

We have the Juneteenth celebration, which this year is moving for the first time to LaMay Haub Field and the Tacoma Dome Lot A.

So we will have this on top of the World Cup Pow Wow on top of the Juneteenth USA versus Australia viewing party going on all in the Dome District region at that time.

We are very excited to see what that may look like and are hoping that it will be uh a smooth process for everybody.

We're coordinating well with our emergency management folks in advance.

Uh we do potentially have additional activation around that time from our federal delegates and federal administration that is looking at potentially coming to the region for the USA game and then potentially to the tribe as well to have some experiences there.

If that happens, it will definitely be a party in the region, I promise.

Um June 20th, we have the Senco Block Party, June 21st, up against the POW Wow still, we have the uh several parks events, and then July 18th and 19th will be Porchfest up against the gold and bronze medal games.

So uh significant activation throughout.

We have been messaging with these community events for more than a year now to get their equipment early, to get their services scheduled early, because we know that whatever isn't being used for the fan zone or in this region is going up the road to Seattle.

They are taking just about every piece of equipment they can to activate in that area.

When we talk the broader, how the city is able to activate and leverage this opportunity going forward.

Well, one of the first and biggest pieces we're doing is in partnership with our friends that visit Tacoma Pierce County, looking at ways that we can drive tourism throughout the region, both during the games, but then extending beyond.

So I brought with me today one of their little show pieces.

We have uh what are we calling?

Chunky shunks?

Chunky mines.

Chunky mines.

They're not a monkey shine, they're a shunky mine.

Um but our partners have been working with uh glass makers throughout the area to create these custom branded, and you can see the actual image up there on the center of the World Cup, and Mr.

Managins hand those around.

Um these will be there are a thousand pieces of these as well as a few uh soccer ball style pieces that will be hidden at key destinations throughout the region.

So think museums, larger parks, areas where we want to drive tourism and activation.

Um will be QR codes that are redeemable for prizes.

So somebody can find the uh shunky mine, they will take them to the tribal activation and the fan zone activation, redeem their prize, and they do get to keep the glass as well.

They will take them to the tribal activation and the fan zone activation, redeem their prize, and they do get to keep the glass as well.

So uh great opportunity for folks to engage and really get involved.

Thank you.

Uh additionally, we have a website through that visit Tacoma Pierce County called FanZone One.

We know we will be the biggest in the best fan zones, so they got that brand early.

Um that will have information about how folks can find hotels, find uh different activities throughout the region.

That supplements what the Seattle Host Committee has put together, which is called the C and Win app.

So this is an app, and you have the QR codes available there to scan in.

They are gamifying essentially tourism throughout the region.

So all of the host cities, all of the fan zones have been able to contribute to this and put in their core and key destinations so that folks can go visit them.

As they do, they gain points that will make them eligible to win prizes, such up to World Cup tickets.

So a great opportunity to engage there.

Additionally, um, the Seattle Host Committee in partnership with Seattle Chamber and several others has put together a series of playbooks for how businesses and community members can activate throughout the World Cup games.

The biggest and best of these is the small business playbook.

So, how can small businesses actually maximize and leverage the games for their benefit?

Um these were done through the Seattle Chamber.

They are available to anyone throughout the entire state and region.

They've also added in uh playbooks about branding, creating a watch party, or finding ways to drive diversity and inclusion in activations.

So really excited to see those coming out.

Um as well, you all I think have received along the way your scarves uh that our visit to Coma Pierce County friends have done, those will be hidden throughout the area as well.

Some for Juneteenth, we have the Make It Tacoma Scarf and coming soon.

I was hoping to have it today, but it's not quite ready yet.

There will be a scarf around the Pride match.

Um really excited to see that one come forward.

Additionally, as we talk leveraging the opportunity, really it's about amplifying the message.

Um, sending out the word for folks to come down to Tacoma to come down to Pierce County and recognize all that we have in the region.

So uh as much as we can amplify that fan zone message for the tribe and pull people in that way is going to benefit all of us across the long run.

And then as the tribe is really focused on that legacy effect, there are two pieces.

The first being the Unity Loop.

This is something in collaboration with the Seattle Host Committee to drive a walking foot loop throughout the Seattle region and a little bit even down into here into our region that will stay long after the game.

So this is basically a tourism walking loop of all the areas that are great to visit.

And then the last piece they are focused on is human trafficking, um the MMIWP effects and how we can combat that.

So there are also a series of toolkits available for hotels, first responders, small businesses to identify and recognize human trafficking and how to respond in those types of situations.

So excited to see that come forward.

And lastly, I won't do it justice, but um the story of Yahl.

So Yah is a Salish word, basically meaning let's go.

And so as we talk about the games, that has become sort of the moniker that we're using for this region, the moniker that the tribe is using to sort of launch everything, and it's yahoo.

Let's go and we will move forward.

So with that, I thank you, and we are happy to answer any questions.

Thank you so much for your presentation.

Any questions or comments from the city council?

Starting with Councilmember Palmer, then Councilmember Rumbaugh.

That councilman Moroma beat me.

Thank you for the presentation.

This is all super exciting.

Um a couple of questions about amplifying the message.

I don't know if there's you can speak a little bit more to kind of what we're doing.

Are we doing like billboards up in Seattle saying, hey, come to Tacoma?

What are we doing there?

Yeah, so um a couple of different ways.

So visit Tacoma Pierce County will be doing a full branding and marketing campaign attached with it.

Um beyond that, uh, the tribal activation is doing significant branding in Seattle.

So in addition to having their local activation, they will have um activations at the games themselves at the Seattle Stadium.

They will have activations in um what's not fanfest anymore, but areas around that in those fan zones up there, all geared towards bringing people down into this region.

Um from a local side, uh TVE will be amplifying through our almost 500,000 uh subscribers and database, pushing that message out.

Um, the city of Tacoma will be helping us with some of those key messages and amplifying as well.

So really just pushing it out broad base.

Um, and then a lot of it is going to be on uh the branding throughout the region.

How are we marketing that this is a World Cup destination?

That's great.

Um and then my question on the lodging.

Are we able to track is it mostly hotels and that are we also able to track like short-term rentals?

We've been tracking a little bit short-term rentals as best as we can.

Um they are notorious for delayed reporting, so we don't tend to see a lot of their numbers in real time in their information.

We tend to see it after the fact.

What we have seen is that the short-term rentals are getting significantly more of a pickup right now than um a lot of the hotels and and those markets.

So we're hopeful that that helps balance it out a little bit with short-term rental usage.

What we know right now is from the hotel side, um, occupancy is sitting at about 50%, which is down 22% year over year without the games.

So at any given year, this time we would expect to be sitting about 70 to 75% for the region.

So even that much downturn can't be picked up by the short-term rental market.

So even if they are seeing a little bit of an uptick, it's not a shift.

It's more an aggregate down across the board.

Okay, thank you.

And then my last question is there a cost to any of this for like folks that want to come to the fan zones?

So the fan zones are completely free across all of them.

Folks are welcome to participate.

The parking will be free, the shuttle will be free, uh, and then entry to the fan zone is free.

There will obviously be uh food and beverages to purchase on site, uh, you know, merchandise items like that, but anybody can enjoy them for free.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Councilmember Rumba.

Thank you.

Um thank you so much for all this information.

I'm really impressed with like the matter of work that's gone into this.

It's crazy.

Um could you tell do you have any idea how many tickets have been sold for the games?

Like where are we with that?

We do not get up to date numbers from uh Seattle Host Committee or from FIFA themselves.

They guard that pretty closely.

Um I can say I just saw another email push come out about new tickets available.

Um are these ones $7,000 apiece too?

They probably are pretty close.

Uh FIFA pricing is is significant, we will say.

Uming that there are still tickets available, uh I would say you know, the USA game we know is going to be a sellout.

Um that has been hugely popular.

Some of the other games may see less tickets going out, or they may see tickets distributed that get um non-redeemed.

Uh so we're not sure quite where that will fall yet.

Do we know if the um Egypt Iran game is still going on?

I'd heard that they might not be coming.

Yep.

So as of now, uh Egypt Iran is a game in Iran as a competitor in the World Cup as a whole is still scheduled to go forward.

Um Iran's foreign minister uh probably about a month ago now, maybe a little more, um, did declare that Iran would sit out the games uh and not participate this year.

Unfortunately, the only one who can really make that call and start adjusting the schedule is FIFA themselves as the organizator.

Uh so they have not made that decision yet.

If they were to accept that resignation and make that decision, the next team up who would fill that slot is Iraq.

Okay.

And then my and thank you so much.

And then the only thing I didn't hear us talk about was the airport was CTAC.

Do we have any idea what the um what extra kind of travel they're planning for at CTAC?

Yeah, the so thank you for that.

The latest information we have out of CTEC is they are not anticipating a significant uptick anymore.

They are anticipating pretty much uh business as usual summer without a significant international uptick.

There may be a little more back and forth as folks come and go between matches.

So what we know is, for example, Egypt is going to make their home base in Spokane.

Um, some teams may make their base in the region.

If they do, their supporters generally tend to stay in that same area, and then they will come back and forth to the games across the country with them.

That will be pretty minimal uptick though, from what we have seen.

Um a lot of what we're seeing from the hotel downside also equates to a travel downside because the international visitors are where that biggest gap is right now.

Okay, thank you so much.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Councilmember Walker.

Uh thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Councilmember Rumba, for asking that question about Iran.

I think that's top of mind for a lot of people, and um I'm sure we'll hear as soon as it happens.

Uh, I wanted to follow up on Councilmember Palmer's question, too.

So, like the stick games, are those free to the public as well?

Stick games are free to the public, Powow will be free, all of it is free to the public.

Cool.

Um I think those were my two questions.

I did want to just highlight um, I think everybody got an email from Sound Transit late last night or early this morning about the things that they're doing primarily in Seattle, but there's a lot of multi-language signage and things that we've we sound transit have added.

So and thank you to Pierce Transit too, as Adam mentioned about doing the shuttles here in Tacoma.

Is there a place for the council to lean in?

Like what is the vibe of the parade?

Like, is that something we should participate in as a group or is there anything like that that we should um show up for?

Yeah, so absolutely.

We uh definitively have June 11th.

Um that will be our dignitaries reception at Woven.

Um and so that will be all of the elected officials for the city, the county, and the tribe um participating in that.

Uh I will talk with our tribal counterparts about the parade on June 12th.

They are working through sort of that planning of what it looks like in partnership with the producers for the Daffodil Parade and the Seafair Parade Marshalls to make sure that it's um well run.

So we'll talk with them about that, and then I think a lot of it, and we will get you some sort of core talking points is going to be just amplifying that message and and bringing people into the community.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Hines.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Uh I think I have two specific questions I haven't heard yet, but this has been a great presentation for, and very excited.

I guess maybe for both the Adam or for Pierce County, how um how's this projection coming down impacting our overall economic impact projections?

I mean, are we thinking have we revised down what we think we're gonna generate from this?

I know I read the Seattle Times earlier this week and they talked about the city of Seattle really markedly revising down what they project it's gonna return to the city itself.

So have we started doing something like that, or we just I I saw your first slide about be flexible, and don't worry about things.

Uh but I just was curious.

Yes, uh, thank you for that question, Councilmember Hines.

We have uh been looking at the economic impact.

I will say probably since the start, we have been very, very cautious about estimating any actual uptick in economic impact, recognizing that even at its peak of 900,000 potential room nights, that capacity existed within the Seattle market and um east side market.

So there wasn't anticipating a lot of push.

What we were looking to see was um more of a compression factor, pushing out the general summer tourism into our market potentially with an increase in the average daily room rate.

So um we anticipate being slightly under the hotel motel impact that we were looking for in the region, um, especially from hotel motel taxes and some of those pieces.

Um, but not a significant global economic impact to our area and I from the county.

It's true, but I was thinking one of the benefits Adam alluded to is the tribal is the tribal impact with all the fan zones.

I think that's gonna be a big gain that we will get um that others won't.

Uh there they're again people from the East Coast, other tribes coming out for the stick games for the Pows, those things.

So that impact as well as the local active activations will will be a big help to kind of defer some of that loss of the other travel.

Yeah.

Okay.

Great.

Um well, actually, not great to hear we're revising down, but I I'm glad that we're we've thought about this and we have some some bright spots we can look at for as part of this conversation.

I think my second question was something I did not hear, at least a le a little bit, just kind of the public safety plan related to this.

So some of my earlier conversations when I went out to Seattle with kind of the Seattle group, you know, a critical component of that was we're bringing hundreds of thousands of people together from across the world, you know, this one confined space, the city of Seattle, and now we're bringing those people into our region.

Um public safety's got to be a part of that conversation.

You know, how do we keep people safe?

I mean, I saw the part about human trafficking.

Anything else do you all want to talk about?

What our plan is in this area, coordination among agencies, isn't it?

Absolutely.

So I can say um Tacoma PD, Pierce County Sheriffs, uh Emergency Management, Tacoma Fire, um all of the local regional jurisdictions have a regular stand-in call.

Um I can't necessarily speak directly into their operations and what they're doing.

Um happy to get the two chiefs to sort of contribute and we can respond there uh afterwards.

But really focused on that broader holistic approach.

So we're talking right now through the parade, the fan zone, what those activations look like, but they're also in communications with Seattle and um the regional sort of broader ecosystem and what support may be needed.

Recognizing that we have significant needs down here, so we may not be able to contribute up to Seattle as much.

Um they are pulling in though jurisdictions from across the board for that area.

No, I think uh probably not for right now, Adam, but maybe I guess for future reference, I'd be interested in getting me a follow-up, just like what is kind of the broader plan, especially when I thought it was really good that you laid out all the other things that are still happening, that the world absolute is not stopping here for World of World Cup, though parts of the world are probably stopping for certain times of the events.

But we have lots of other events happening where I do usually see a large public safety presence as part of those things.

And so, how do we balance those and best meet the needs of both this event, which is kind of a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and our community.

So thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Those are my questions.

Thank you, Councilmember Hines, and thank you so much for all of your hard work on this.

Look forward to continuing to support this to our best extent possible, and we'll look forward to further conversation.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

All right, I appreciate it.

Alright, our second agenda item is our continuation of the community forum conversation.

So I'm going to begin this conversation and we'll get the PowerPoint put onto the screen in just a moment.

So before we get started here, let's just kind of give a little bit of a recap about how we got to this conversation and what the point of this even is.

So to begin with, we already have and we will continue to have robust opportunities at our regular business meetings for public comment.

There are public hearings for really big ticket items like the budget, uh major land use decisions, and technically any time that there is an amendment on the floor, that's something that triggers public comment as well.

And none of those things are going away.

What we are specifically talking about is making changes to one of the many avenues of making public comment at City Council meetings, which is community forum, which we've had since the 1990s.

And so what really began this conversation after consultation with members of the council and the community is not about taking away any particular thing, but changing one of these venues to make it more relevant and impactful based on really identified pain points from the public.

So primarily this proposal is about making civic engagement more accessible to people, about the folks who aren't showing up to community forums necessarily, and by making these things more action oriented.

So it's not just simply people talking at us, but having the opportunity for real dialogue and above all real follow-through and what people are identifying.

The interest in having more of a neighborhood focus means meeting people where they are, like working folks who don't necessarily have the privilege of being able to show up at a downtown meeting at a at a given date and time, but maybe areas and venues that are more accessible, um having local food, child care options, for example, to make things more accessible, and maybe more of a less formal environment.

That's one of the factors.

The other thing to keep in mind is that having more of a focus on action and follow-up means that there's uh more of an emphasis on accountability and action rather than just talking.

And that's probably one of the biggest recurring pain points that we hear from the public about community forum is that people just talk at us and then nothing happens.

And then the takeaway for a lot of members of the public, especially those for whom it might be the first time, even going to a community meeting at all, is that we just talk at you and you don't listen or nothing happens.

And so having a direct uh connection between a real action item, a follow-through, uh maybe access to a city service, uh having access for translators or the appropriate staff to help people then and there uh really might um have that needed structure to build trust.

And then the uh the biggest thing to also keep in mind is that this is the beginning of a conversation.

This is a proposal for city council conversation, by all means not a final draft, but uh something that's more of a framework rather than a final mandate.

So whatever that looks like, very open-minded.

This is just something that's been through committee.

Uh this is basically revisiting uh the study session conversation, having taken in uh people's feedback.

And uh with that, that's just the context and the background before we begin the presentation.

So I want to move on to the first slide.

So the first is um being really sensitive to one of the key questions that came from the council, which is what is the purpose of community forum?

Uh that's the older definition on the top, uh, which our own uh handbook says the current purpose is.

Uh the proposed purpose, and I'm not going to read it verbatim, but the proposed purpose is instead of just focusing on people talking at us about policy decisions, uh, making sure that we're including a focus on accessibility and inclusivity to talk not just about policy but also services and matters within the jurisdiction.

In other words, if people want to talk to us to us about something they think we should focus on in the budget or a policy matter that we should bring up totally.

Uh but also just those really local government focuses, like my street light isn't working, or there's recurring speeding or public safety issues on my block, or how do I get access to services that aren't even necessarily municipal, but you know, I need help with my social security.

I need help with fill in blank, right?

Uh we're the most local provider, we're the most accessible, and your average person doesn't necessarily make a distinction between local, state, and federal, they just need help when they need help.

So that's what informs the new purpose as proposed.

And above all, again, the focus on action, the focus on not just having people talk at a meeting, but there being some kind of relevant follow-up that we can provide and then have real accountability.

So next slide.

The current proposal, uh, because this is more than what we're currently doing in community forum, and that does have some overhead impacts if we're talking about staff time, if we're talking about um other facilities, if we are talking about food or other services, uh, these are still very controlled costs.

Uh I mean it's it's nothing like even the state of the city or city of destiny awards.

Um but these are still some added cost, and so for that reason, the focus on doing less but doing a much better job with less versus doing more but mediocre.

So that's why the proposal for five, and then with a focus on the city council districts, whether it's at high schools, that was one of the ideas I heard, or maybe very accessible equivalents like community centers or other places.

Um the current proposal would not have necessarily virtual participation or live um televised options, but still a recording for public record, um, just to have a greater focus on controlling the cost and focused on the highest and best um benefit of these types of meetings, which would be live interaction with your representatives and with city staff who are there, and also a focus on having translators, not necessarily for all districts, but certainly the districts with a higher uh proportion of non-English speakers, so think districts four and five, for example.

And uh a big thing that's important to me at least is meeting people where they're at, especially with basic life concerns, like if they are going to a public meeting, um, having some food there, uh being able to highlight local businesses, immigrant-owned businesses, um, making the place really accessible to working families by providing child care, for example, and kind of leading from uh meeting people where they're at, and uh not just having people come to us on our terms at the council chambers with the current status quo.

So those are some structures of the uh current proposal.

Next slide.

So anticipating the need rather than just having a follow-up.

So that would mean uh because the focus and the stated purpose wouldn't just simply be people talking at us about policy, but policy or any kind of local issue.

Um we would anticipate that by having certain staff ready.

So much like um a neighborhood council meeting, for example, but with a little bit more focus, uh, we could have people from say TPD or TFD or even other agencies like the health department, for example, uh present then and there to anticipate needs and just connect people to services as they bring them up rather than waiting uh for a connection after the fact.

And then making sure that at the end of the meeting there'd be some kind of mini after action report.

So again, instead of just the experience of people talking at us and nothing happening, uh a really crisp, coherent summary of what's happened and what we're going to do, followed up by uh, for example, a city manager briefing at the next study session about these were the main issues that came up.

Here's what the city has been doing.

Uh one other component which we'll talk about in uh I think the next or the slide after that is these meetings would start with not just the comments themselves, but um the current proposal has a small initial briefing by a staff member, could be um someone from the city manager's office, could be uh someone from uh from one of the other uh respective committees for for instance, uh but briefing the people gathering about what the actual calls for service are in the area.

Uh so that that's another pain point that we've heard about is who is showing up, you know, what what are the issues that the general rank and file who live in a certain neighborhood actually care about as identified by calls for service.

So 311 calls, 911 calls, not emergency, uh other uh calls for service, and then um summarizing what those are in just a very crisp, efficient manner, along with action items.

So let's say that there's speeding or there are public safety issues or or what have you on a certain block or in a certain part of a district.

Uh the city would then identify what actions have been taken or what may be taken, uh, just so that people know that we are actually taking these things seriously and keeping action in mind when we're uh discussing them.

Next slide.

And then um what we would encourage people to do if they do have um concerns or issues, so beyond just advocating for a certain policy change, but let's say that there is something really pertinent in the neighborhood or something that we need to help them with uh using another agency, like say um uh a state agency or you know that the social security example, uh, we would encourage people either through tablets or from other uh through other technological assistance through our staff to either use the 311 system or the council comment form on site there, and we would have people there to help them, um, if they're non-English speakers, for example, uh, and just making sure that there's immediate follow-up and immediate caption to our system so there can be accountability.

And then there would still be recording, just not as live for cost containment purposes.

Next slide.

And so to recap, this would be the proposed structure.

Um, what I think would be a really good way to set the tone and make this the opposite of adversarial, but more collaborative and focused on action and building social capital would be starting this like a neighborhood get together.

So think of a community gathering, so think local food, for example, maybe even local music from an artist, for example, and just actually meet your neighbors, meet your elected officials, your staff, and just actually building community.

So think of like food and fellowship.

Um that briefing, which I think 30 minutes even is a bit much.

I mean, I I'd say like 15 to 20 of uh just a really crisp overview about what the actual issues are in that neighborhood, at least in our system.

Then the open-ended discussion as facilitated by the district council member uh about issues and policies, but also just neighborhood concerns or just any issues that people might need assistance with, and then wrapping up with an after action report and what's going to happen next.

And at all times, staff would be there to help people.

Next slide.

And in general, like I said, this is a very open-ended conversation, but uh this is the next phase after having heard input from so many of you, members of the public.

Um not set in stone, very much something open for discussion, but um I just wanted to bring the most recent update to um to folks to hear what you think uh of where this is, what changes you might want to see, and what your overall ideas are so we can shape this together.

So with that, I'd like to open it up for discussion.

Who'd like to start?

Deputy Mayor.

Uh thank you, Mayor.

Um, I really appreciate you um kind of laying this out, um, contextualizing it for us, and then um really deep diving and thinking and taking a lot of input on this.

Um, I think it's uh I I really believe in in meeting people where they're at and trying to talk to folks and in environments that they would feel comfortable.

Um, and I'm generally supportive of of the proposal that you've brought so far.

Um I think one of the the big questions and and I think as we go through the logistics that I I will be thinking about is is what is it gonna cost in order to facilitate things of this nature?

Um and uh and so that's that's a conversation I'm looking forward to understanding fully um by the time we get to the end of this.

Yeah, the the range I've heard at least from my staff is depending on the the level of media and uh the level of uh like if we're renting or getting something unkinded, it's uh around the range of like one to five thousand per event.

And the higher range is mostly if you want live streaming or like full-blown TV Tacoma.

Uh on the much more conservative end if it's just recorded for public record purposes.

Got it.

Um yeah, and then that that's kind of leads into my other questions is um uh if it the the entire council is going to be there, obviously we have to notice the meeting, you have to create a public record and things of that nature.

Um and it's my understanding these things don't have to be recorded, just minutes have to be taken.

Is that correct?

That is a city attorney question.

Chris.

You're asking if an audio or video recording has to be taken.

Um the clerk is required to take minutes of the meeting and take action minutes.

That's the minimum requirement for these public meetings.

Okay.

I can get you a more complete answer after the meeting today.

No, I I I think that that basically it's so so recording and it basically you just have to have a record of the meeting, which is minutes, is my understanding.

Correct.

Okay.

Um and then I think you know, I've heard some from folks the accessibility uh particularly I I know how um convenient uh having Zoom is, um, especially if you have myriad of life events or things are occurring, you can zoom in and and provide comments and stuff like that.

And so uh I would just think about considering that or thinking it through.

I think that there are um a lot of valid reasons why someone might need to um access us online or at least be able to hear about that.

But uh, you know, there's you know there's unfortunately folks out there that that have used uh as well, and so I I think weighing those out is really uh important too.

So just uh some things to consider.

Thank you, Mayor.

All right, appreciate your comments.

Thank you, Devon Mayor.

Any other comments or questions?

Consider Walker.

Yeah, I I'll just briefly say um I I like the direction this is heading.

Um I think uh echo kind of understanding the financial cost and how we make that work if that's a budget ask, or if it's uh something that can be taken from another place, or I I guess I don't I'm not sure if we've done that work yet.

So do you want to understand the budget costs?

But I but I really do like the concept of going into the community.

I think having district meetings has been something we've talked about for a long time, at least since I've been here, and I think having it as a sort of community meeting rather than a council meeting makes the most sense so that it can really be conversational.

So I I really like the direction we're headed.

All right, cool.

Thank you, Consumer Rines.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Uh I think you bring this forward.

Um I just have a couple of questions to lead into.

So the first part is on the purpose side.

I just want to get some clarity, kind of your thinking on this one.

So the current purpose is over matters which the city council has jurisdiction.

The new purpose says within the city's jurisdiction, which uh well one way could say they're exactly the same, but another could say that we only talk about things that happen within the side the city of Tacoma.

So is your intention at this would be to say if someone comes with some issue that we tangentially have influence with at the federal level or at the national level that we would say that doesn't happen inside Tacoma, so that's not here for community forum, or uh just to clarify the purpose and understand where how we landed, where what we're looking for.

Yeah, that's a fair question.

Uh and definitely open to helping with the wordsmith there.

So just to make this more concrete and specific, for example, let's say someone has a concern about um Medicare benefits, for example, right?

I mean, clearly not within the city's jurisdiction.

Uh but I I mean I'm sure at some point all of us have taken a casework call or or or two from people who have concerns about federal benefits or um needing advocacy for who knows what relating to um like I helped someone get Apple Health access a number of years ago, for example, right?

I mean that's that's not a city-related issue.

Um but just because we are local government and we we have uh a more direct access to people than say their congressional or their state delegation just in terms of day-to-day interactions.

Um that would be something that would be worth uh at least being open to exploring, like, hey, we will connect you with the case manager in your congressional office, for example, or we will help you understand this policy better.

Uh now if they're asking us to end the Iran war, for example, right?

I mean, that's you know, that's a different matter altogether, right?

Yeah.

Uh and so however that looks, yeah.

But the the intention here is more um just meeting people with the rat with realistic expectations that we touch city policy, we we touch city services, and we could help connect and and do things better with jurisdictions that we may not directly control that we have some influence in with the goal of just helping people to the best extent we can.

No different than a constituent letter, just systematized, basically.

And if if you think that there's a better way of phrasing that, uh certainly open to revisions.

Well, yeah, I know I just trying to get it understanding your intent, this is your proposal, um, was just that was that component of it.

Because I could see if we are moving towards a process by which people would be able to come talk to us about an issue, and then there'd be a report out process afterwards.

Um you would want to probably keep that tight to what the city actually could do something about, right?

Versus if it was topics that were tangential to us but happening, there'd be less of an ability to follow up on some of those specific topics, right?

So, like your question about the using your Medicare example.

Um, you know, uh you the report out would be we let connected staff and they pass this information on to someone with the Medicaid author, Merit Clarit Authority.

So that's just it would be much less versus if somebody came and said my street light was out or my sidewalk was broken or this other issue, there could be actually more of a a an uh report out.

So either way, I mean, again, this is your I mean it's our proposal we're talking about it, but I just want to get understanding what you were thinking through this.

Um that was my that was my two questions.

Sure.

And that an abundance of realistic expectation sitting on the front end.

That's that's very reasonable.

All right.

Um my next question would just be around, you know.

I uh I think we've talked in the past about the in-district special council doing meetings in districts, getting out into the community.

I think I I'm open for those conversations again.

I think with the deputy mayor, really want to know what the fiscal note is on that, and also just kind of being aware of not overpromising and underdelivering when it comes to fiscal notes.

I would hate for us to go through the first three meetings and they get very expensive, and then we get to the fourth one, it's like, okay, actually we can't do child care at this one, or we can't do boot at this one because we spent $20,000 at this one the first one we did, and then by the time we get to the third, it's not there.

So just would love to know more that and then cost containment around that.

Just something I keep in my mind as a question.

Um or uh a comment.

The the district council will be facilitating the discussion.

So I guess I just want to know more what you're thinking through that, right?

Because the way community forum works now is we sit as a council, people come in, they share their concern, um, there we don't respond to them we we may work off the dice.

Let me just pause for a second.

I hear everything that everyone says at community forum, and if you'd love me to reiterate exactly what people have said for the last six years I've been on the council, I'm happy to do that for you at a separate venue, probably not right now.

It's a good parlor trick for me to do with my later.

Um, but usually the public sees us not respond, and then but there's it's a venue for which they can provide their thoughts.

My question on this one is if let's say we're doing a district one meeting, is your envisioning that I would stand up in front and take the questions while you all watched me facilitate it?

Would the whole council be there?

Would I, as a district council member, be the one who would say, hey James, thank you for coming here today, appreciate your comments.

Uh please direct your comments to the city council.

What do you what do you think what are you thinking through that would look like?

Um very open to interpretation.

I mean, that this could range from more of that town hall format where the district rep is mostly taking the lead, it could be jointly hosted, like you could have at large people.

I could help you if if you want.

Um I'm open to suggestion on that front.

Yeah, okay.

Okay, I that I just was curious um because I think one of the the values of community forum is the chance for the community to come and talk to all of us.

So I would hate to see a format whereby when we were in district one, everyone would kind of just train their eyes on me and be like, hey, Councilmirch, your district, you're up, like you're gonna respond to these comments.

I would want it to be uh space.

I think that's just something I've been thinking through.

So uh if that's not fully fleshed out yet, I can I have some thought I could talk through more about that.

Yeah, that'd be great.

Uh go ahead.

No, I think that's just when I when I saw that, I just I I didn't I don't think we would meet the needs of the public if it was me on on stage at Silas taking questions while the council sat in the audience and watched me.

I think there's a component of we would all be up there together adjusting the body.

Yeah, and that could very well be the case where you could have the entire council or at least a quorum or along those lines on the stage with the the district rep taking the lead on facilitation or could work in a number of different ways.

But um uh very open to those uh perspectives and uh what I'll also say before we move on, I I believe uh Councilmember Palmer has a question and then Councilmember Walker again is um all of these areas of nuance aren't necessarily going to be baked into the council rules because the community forum discussion is is part of the larger council rule amendment that we're doing this year.

So um, you know, 20 minutes or 30 minutes for food or who's facilitating or which venue or whatever are necessarily policy choices.

Though they'll be things that we implement and learn as as we do it.

But um but that being said, yes, if there are ideas for especially that really crucial first one, how that's going to run um and what the best way would be that's comfortable for uh for the council, then uh very open to those uh possibilities.

Well, I have two more things before I kick off.

Uh before I hand it over here.

Yeah, go for it.

Um so I think that was thank you for answering that question.

I I do agree, right?

That nothing, no set of rules or procedures or practices ever gonna uh trump really good facilitation of the conversation, right?

So it's always gonna come back to who's running it and doing and having that person be skilled at running it.

So I I agree with you that we can't ever write the rules that way.

Um my next question would be the so you're this proposal would state that we would take questions ahead of time.

So that there would be a process by which people would submit comments and then are it again, it's not fleshed out, but I just I'm trying to get to hear your thinking.

Are you thinking we would then collect all the comments ahead of time and then collate and understand like okay, here we got a bulk of questions around, say homelessness, we got a group of questions around immigration, we have a co group of questions around public safety, and those are kind of the buckets we're gonna be working through, and we'll make sure staff's available, or is it or is it just kind of whoever gets their question in we go with it, or is it or and will there be an opportunity are you seeing an opportunity where people can just walk up to the microphone and say, here's my question?

Are you talking about slide five?

Yes.

Yeah, so and there that might not have been written clearly enough, but that that's not um precluding people just bringing out their issues or concerns at the microphone.

That's basically an encouragement for people to go through the 311 or or gov delivery system just to make sure specifically for like constituent concerns, for example, that um at that time immediately that things get entered into the system for more rapid follow-up.

So no, that does not preclude, hey, I just thought I have a concern, I'm gonna sign up and speak.

Uh that would not preclude that from being able to happen.

Okay.

Uh then my last comment is I just don't think 60, 90 minutes is probably sufficient if we're going to get everybody out to a site and location and and deploy our staff and do all that.

So I would imagine that uh 60 minutes seems very short for the amount of work it's gonna take to get people out of here.

I mean 60 minutes is fine if we're sitting in the chamber and it's just we're not going to a new location, not asking staff to deploy, not asking for exact you know, directors to show up in a new place, not asking the community to travel somewhere that's not right here.

I think 60 is fine.

I think if we did 60 at like a deployed site, I think that would be not sufficient.

So I would think 90 would be the floor, if not two hours.

Okay.

I mean, I guess they could always run shorter if we don't have as many comments, but if we're moving to five, um I would just want to make sure we have kind of more time baked into that.

Okay.

And maybe less time in the district issue briefing.

Yeah.

Um just just to setting an hour and a half is the minimum for that.

Or yeah, I mean, I just think sixty minutes seems too short.

Okay, great.

Anything else?

Uh that is it.

Very good.

Appreciate your comments.

Councilman Palmer, follow the councilmember walker again.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um I think it's great that we're looking at this.

I think as with anything, it makes sense to review um what we're doing and make sure that it's meeting its intended purposes.

Um I will say, and I think that there's some awesome ideas here when it comes to like translation and city staff being available to answer questions and direct folks, um having a follow-up report, like all of those are great.

I I I guess my question is why or should we be considering something that's going to take or if we're if we are considering something that's going to take more funds, would those funds be better utilized to improve the community forums that we're already having in chambers.

Could it go towards having that translation in chambers?

So I get overall, I guess like I would just I prefer community forum to really continue very similarly to how it is.

I'm open to the conversation of why we would want to go out.

If if community is asking for that, I guess what's what's leading this ask.

But I'm I'm curious if we can't fulfill the same thing, same purpose without these added costs outside of chambers.

So I think a combination of improving what we do in chambers as well as encouraging council members to attend neighborhood council meetings and seeing how we can support them to improve their processes, uh makes the most sense.

And I I did have a concern similar to council member Hines about the the district council member meet leading because I feel like I would be there kind of as an at-large foot council member just kind of sitting and I wouldn't know what to be doing.

Um I am looking forward to getting back to the whole conversation about the council procedures as well, because I feel like maybe some of that sparked my interest in this topic was you know, some of the issues that we've been having with the the video and you know, folks maybe abusing that uh and so trying to work around solutions to um the problems that we have.

I don't see necessarily how this is solving a problem that we have.

Okay, I appreciate that.

Okay, councilmember Scott.

Oh, I'm sorry, Councilmember Walker than Councilman Scott.

I just one follow-up question I forgot to ask because I didn't see a timeline on any of this.

What is the goal for bringing this forward?

Sure.

So I don't have the exact date, but this is all part of the council rules review.

So this um, if approved by the council, if if there's consensus on how to move forward with this, this would be wrapped up into the broader um rules vote, which I want to say is either next month or June.

Okay, thank you.

And then there were a number of questions at the back of the cam.

Yes.

I think this is called a camp.

Uh the issue brief.

Um, and I think we've talked about some of them in the proposal, but not all of them.

So are these questions that you're you and your staff are working through, or how do we get to answers on some of these things?

These are provided for discussion.

So we've answered some of these, some of these uh have been covered by the presentation, but this is more just daylighting areas of inquiry that we've experienced as part of this dialogue.

Okay, great.

I will have a few follow-ups to those at some point.

Okay, great.

Councilmember Scott.

Thank you.

Um I think, yeah, my thoughts are kind of along the lines of what Councilmember Palmer kind of wrapped up what she was saying with is I I think I'm trying to understand the problem that we're trying to solve.

I think originally this was the problem I thought we were working on solving was that the forum as it was being not necessarily where it was held.

Uh obviously people had you know suggestions around the length of time to speak or how maybe how often we were having community forum, but I felt like most the the initial problem that we were trying to solve was like the experience doesn't feel conducive to the outcomes that we were looking for.

Um and I I felt that a large part of that was because the rules that we had or have that kind of outlined, you know, what's kind of expected of people at and what's what they can expect from community forum.

I I feel like there was a misalignment there.

Um and so I was you know, I don't mind this I this idea of having an end district forum.

I do not believe that it should replace community forum.

Um I think that we and I think that even if it replaced community forum, um because we we are not specifically updating the rules around how things go, um, like clarity on just clarity on various things, I think we'd still end up with the same problems just in a different location.

Um and if we're not going to have video access there, like via Zoom, then not only are we going to end up with the same problems, maybe a few less of some other ones, but we're going to be creating an access problem.

And when I think about accessibility, you know, I don't necessarily see it as every single event, like every single thing has to, you know, we might not be able to make it accessible in all of the ways, but I think like when it comes to residents here being able to get in touch with their council members, express their opinions, share concerns, ask about policy, get re like connected to services, you know.

I think broadly like making that accessible in as many ways as possible.

So maybe the in-district forum doesn't feel super accessible to you, but maybe the in chambers forum does, or maybe it's the it's writing your comments and submitting them to the clerk, or maybe like so as long as we have that broadly across all of like across the avenues of which we have people like able to participate.

I think that's okay.

So I don't necessarily like I I understand if we are moving this off site that some of those adjustments might need to be made and might not feel similarly accessible.

But again, I think that the issue that I'm seeing is that we're not solving the problem, we're just kind of like moving the venue.

Um, but I and I think we're creating problems for ourselves in the sense that um, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't have to be community forum.

Like it does a the way in which we hear from folks and and you know, about anything we have jurisdiction over, it doesn't necessarily have to be community forum, doesn't have to be community forum in the way that it's been.

Um, but I think in all the feedback that we've heard, um people would rather have community forum than this new in-district version solely.

Um even with all the flaws that people might see from it.

So I guess I'm just trying to understand like what was the specific is this a problem of like disruption of the meetings?

Is it are we solving a problem around access?

Are we solving a problem around like quality of engagement?

Is it some version of all of those things?

And does changing this to an in-district only format solve that?

Um, and I don't I don't know that it does.

Um yeah, I think that's kind of the main thing.

Like there's some other questions I would I have around community forum, but I think all of those questions kind of some of those questions wouldn't matter necessarily if we're doing just in district and not district and in chambers.

Um so I can chime in on those on a later day.

But I think my main question here is like I I again or concern is that we're not solving the initial problem that we set out to solve, um, and that we're creating some others for ourselves as well.

Okay, appreciate the comments.

Consumer Dios.

Thank you.

Um I share, I think some of a lot of the thoughts that have already been shared, but a couple of things that rise to the top for me, are I wanted to specifically state that we current even if we don't pass this proposal translation, is currently something that the council offers at every council meeting, every public notice meeting, we are required by civil rights law to do some kind of reasonable accommodation if folks request that ahead of time.

So this is not a unique to this proposal.

This is just sort of asserting that this would be still required as we're adding a new public meeting.

So I just wanted to be clear for anyone who might be listening and interested in that.

This that's currently already a service that we offer, so I don't want it to sound like we're we don't already currently do that.

Um it may not be as utilized, and that might be just that people don't know that.

So I just wanted to sort of reaffirm that that that is something that already exists.

Um, and that does exist specifically with city council meetings and public notice meetings, study sessions, um, as opposed to say when people do coffee hours, it's not necessarily required there.

Um folks can request it, and like if it was my coffee hour, I would make sure that we figured that out in my team, but that would be a more discretionary budget choice for council members.

So I just wanted to note the difference between like an individual being out in the world versus us having a real notice meeting with staff support.

Um the other sort of thought question pondering I have is uh similar to I think what council member Scott articulated, which is I think we've gotten a little far away from what the purpose is or what the intended sort of what the intended things are trying to fix is.

I'm hearing a lot of conflation between access and some assumptions that folks don't have access if it's here on a Tuesday night versus who does, because if this was in community, it may not be moving dates and times, it might be.

Um mostly because I'm not convinced that having something that moves it.

Council has been on a Tuesday night for as long as I can remember folks know that, whether or not they can make it as a different thing.

Doesn't make it not possible, but it just makes it a new thing for folks to be trying to track on top of all the other ways that they can already reach us access us and that sort of known Tuesday night endeavor.

The other thought I sort of have around that is the stretch, even if there somehow comes back no fiscal note.

I think there is a real um impact on our city staff.

We already have them here all day on Tuesdays, especially all of the directors.

We have almost all of the same group of folks at nearly every neighborhood council meeting as well.

So we should look at how this would be or wouldn't be duplicative of those meetings.

I mentioned this when this proposal was first brought up, is that if we could talk to some of our neighborhood council folks to see if there's an interest from them and having us do more noticed meetings there, I think that might be a better way to use some of the staff resources and time that they're already there.

I know when I've gone to neighborhood council meetings, they have a population of people at most of them who don't actually come here on Tuesday nights.

So that would be a great way for us to reach them as a body if that was something that folks are interested in.

I just don't know if this is necessarily solving for um some of the conflicts that have come up in chambers in the evenings.

And I don't know that it's necessarily a gap in our rules so much as potentially a gap in the enforcement or the consistency.

Um and there's certainly some tightening up of the rules that we could do.

The other sort of thought I have is how do we or if if this goes forward, I'm wondering if it can be separated from the rules conversation.

I think there are things that I would like to see in a rules cleanup that is separate and different from this proposal.

So I would love to see if we could potentially vote on those two things separately.

Um just because I think this has gone to a different place than I thought we might be going, and there are still some other things as Councilman Palmer pointed out that need to be addressing the rules updates that have nothing to do with community forum.

So just some thoughts.

I appreciate that.

Councilman Sidalka.

Uh thank you, Mayor.

Um, thank you for putting this together.

Uh I want to express that I'm generally in support of this because it it accomplishes the one thing I've asked for, which is to go into uh district for uh community forum.

Uh actually just this week I had two people tell me that they did not uh feel that it was accessible for them to come to community forum last week uh and express some um uh sentiments to me that I wish the rest of you had heard.

Um however I just don't think you know, for rules update, we don't need all this detail, right?

Because how we want to do it in any district is really up to however.

I think I think it would have been fine just to say that we have at least five in district and they kind of generally go the way we do right now, but we'll also add this addition, you know, two kind of main points, which is uh if there are a number of people in district that want to talk, we'll emphasize the district um uh issues, but not but it is a citywide forum, you know, that happens to take place in district four, a citywide forum that happens to take in district whatever.

Um for me personally, it's just the fact that of the and you've done it too, of the thousands of people, especially in in district four and five that generally uh uh have way poorer um voter turnout and voter apathy apathy.

There's some really wonderful points of view and really important concerns that need that I really want the rest of the council to hear.

So those aspects and being able to get that are really important now.

Uh does it only have to be in district?

I don't really know.

Uh I'd love an opportunity for us to try being in district for a community forum at least once a year.

So for that reason, I'm generally uh supportive of where this is trying to go.

Again, I don't think all these details need to be ironed out for a rules update.

Um we can decide on because I think we're getting kind of lost in the minutiae of exactly how we will uh operate.

Um I think there should be some flexibility in how we write the rules to allow us to achieve that.

Um also I do need to think about the idea of no online participation, whether that increases or decreases access for people in my district.

I'm just not I just haven't decided on on that yet, because we live in an online world where people you know need that flexibility.

And as I recently found out, only 11% of the major uh zip code and and a whole part of my district have people that can work remotely.

So most people are blue collar workers that are going somewhere.

Um I'm generally okay with trying to you know uh work with neighborhood councils.

Um for my district is a little harder because I have two very active neighborhood councils that span my district in two different ways.

Um so choosing between them would be difficult because they're both very active in what they do, but I also want to make sure the people who aren't um uh uh uh kind of activated by neighborhood councils will come out.

I mean, I go to quite a few neighborhood meetings every quarter.

Uh people do come out when it's near their homes, and they don't come out here.

So I've actually seen scores and scores of people that are active physically in my district, but who don't feel comfortable for whatever reason being able to come here.

So that was that was a big impetus for me.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And to be clear, the proposal here is more just of a day lighting of how something might look.

Uh this this level of granularity is not expected to be part of the formal rules or for things to be voted on, and obviously flexibility is uh is something that matters a great deal.

But uh definitely to clarify that, and I appreciate your comments.

Councilmember Scott, all the counselor high.

Thanks for letting me jump back in.

Um earlier, but I wasn't I got distracted on the other piece of it.

Um if this in district thing we're doing, it like if this is something we move towards doing in some way, whether it's a mix of it or or or what have you.

Um I I guess I want to caution us against like just because it is in that district, um, kind of framing it as though it is being run by that.

And I know it's already been said, but I just wanted to chime in on it again of like of it being I under I don't I feel like this is just it's us taking a portion of the council meeting and moving it into the community.

And so I feel like it should be run like a council meeting where you, as the mayor are the one chairing the meeting.

Um because what I don't want is that like community forum, you can come here from whatever district, even though you know we are in a specific district in this building, you can come from any district in the city and and talk about what you would like to talk about.

I want to avoid saying, you know, oh well we're in district three, so we're only here to listen to people from district three.

Um you should be able to come over from district one or district five and say at the meeting in district three that I have this issue going on in district five.

And so I just want to make sure that that's you know, and I think if we as council members are looking for more targeted feedback from specifically, especially the district members like from our districts, like that's also why we have these other avenues available to us.

Like we all have budget for a town hall.

We all have you know the option to do office hours.

I know most a lot of us do.

We do.

Um we do go to community meetings.

We're out in the community in general in various ways, whether it's events or just doing your own day-to-day stuff that you have to do.

Um so I don't want I've I don't want this condensing of opportunities for people to chime in to like not allow us to lean on these other tools that we have for people to lean into how do they get in touch in in touch with their uh representative, whether it's an at-large member or or your specific district representative.

Um I I think we just need to be careful of this whatever this process ends up being, um trying to make it something that fills the gap for things that we already have resources to address.

Like it making it clear that you can come here and speak about whatever is happening in whichever district you live in, regardless of where it's happening.

Um and that, like and I guess the same thing, like if I'm having office hours and somebody doesn't necessarily live in district three or they live in district three, but their problem is happening outside of my district, they should still feel like they can come and say that.

But I think at something like this, where essentially we are just taking a portion of the council meeting and bringing it to the community, it should be run like a council meeting, and people should feel as though they can come to the meeting and say whatever they would say in chambers.

Okay.

Well noted, thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think that also will help with attendance if people, if we're only saying come here and talk about district three, only people from district three are gonna come.

And again, trying to make sure that everybody feels welcome at the these specific things because that ultimately is the purpose.

Very good.

All right, Councilman Rhines.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, thank you.

Mr.

Mayor for letting me have another body apple.

And thank you for just kind of holding space for us to kind of share some thoughts about this.

Um, I council reminded me, and some of the colleagues reminded me that I I have because I'm just naturally dive into the weeds on how things run.

That's just my behavior that I went really far in the weeds on some of these.

So I think I just want to step back for one second.

Is this as you're further going through with your thinking around this and as we further the conversation?

I think one question I come back to, again, we've all said what is the problem we're trying to solve.

And the question I have is who are we hoping will join us that otherwise is not here already?

Because I what I find is it's just a an observation.

No one seems to really like the way community forum works.

Even the people who come every time complain about issues with the community forum, right?

So the highest utilizers don't like it, the experience, right?

Either we're not responsive enough, we're not getting back to them enough.

We're, you know, so the people who really value community forum have clear concerns about what they think is not happening.

So I think as part of this, I would really hope that we would maybe reach out to some of our high utilizers and get some of their thoughts around like, well, what would make this better?

Recognizing that something my father used to tell me a long time ago is just because I didn't do what you told me doesn't mean that I didn't hear what you said.

And I do think we need to have a clear conversation with the public around we hear you, but that doesn't mean that it translates to then and then because you told me to do that, I then did it.

Right?

That's a uh something we have to be clear about with the public.

It's not like, hey, I sh we all showed up for four months and told you to do the same thing over and over again.

Yes.

And we said after the first time that it was illegal, expensive, we couldn't do it.

So I I guess that would be frustrating if we came back, if you come back over and over again for four months and say the same thing after after the first time we said we couldn't do it.

But I think there's a that's a we're gonna have to have broader community conversation around what the purpose of community forum is and make sure that they understand what the limits are and we understand what the public is looking for.

Um as part of this problem statement, because otherwise I agree, Council Scott, we could just the the problems that we have here will just show up on the road in the next location we go to.

It'd be frustrating.

But I think that's my question is who are we hoping is gonna show up?

Are we hoping to create an environment whereby the person who has never been to a council meeting before, who's never had but has like an issue, they're gonna some they're gonna find their way to that place where we're meeting and they're gonna show up and speak to us, and it's like wow, we've never heard that before.

Or is it another person of a group we hear from all the time that maybe gets a voice in it?

So that's because I think if we get closer to like who is it, is it the senior who's disabled who can't get to the chamber and what can we do about them?

Is it the mother with five kids who speaks, you know, Khamaya as her main language and can't get here, right?

I mean, who are those folks and and thinking through how this can better serve them versus not?

And then the last uh thought that I came back to was just um uh you know, my goal is always just about better public access, but for access for our community.

And I, you know, I do really want to make sure that we create a forum where it's a conversation with the council and the community.

I sometimes think that there's uh that the camera often takes over in some of those situations where like, well, I'm here because the camera's on.

And I and the community, I'm not actually talking to you all, I'm talking to the people out there that are watching the meeting.

And I I think that's another conversation I want to have.

I think there's not an issue with if we're the council sit here, you're just not gonna be on camera and we'll have the recording later.

I think that gets most of what people want, which is the council's listening.

It's just removing the kind of broader audience that people sometimes seem to be performing for.

Now that could be, I could be wrong and people actually aren't doing that, but um that would be another part of those questions I want to ask.

Like, could we get through, could we actually change nothing except we go to community forum and the cameras aren't on and the council sits at the lower table and we just talk to folks.

I I don't know.

Maybe that gets us most of the way there.

Uh so those are questions I'm I'm putting out for my colleagues, for the mayor, for everyone to be thinking about um how we get to something that's closer to a community forum.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I think that was a very succinct definition of the problem statement in the sense that what I think is motivated this conversation, not not even just from me, but from my colleagues in the community, is yes, there's a broad dissatisfaction from community forum.

I mean, it is just broadly known that people aren't happy with what's there.

But I I I think I would say that the bigger problem is that there's just a bigger opportunity cost itself as to who we're missing, what perspectives we're missing, and just broader opportunities for building trust in the community and for the city government too.

Because the reality is if you knocked on someone's door, which most, if not all of us have have done, and you asked someone what your opinion is on a community forum, they would look at you funny, because the average person doesn't even know what community forum is, right?

The average person doesn't have an opinion, they don't care, it's not relevant to them.

And there's a real big disconnect, I would say in terms of fleshing out the problem statement in the sense that there's community forum in principle versus in practice, because in principle it's beautiful.

In principle, it's engaging your council as a whole and you know, hearing your voice, having direct access to your representatives.

But how does it turn out in practice?

It's it's people shouting into the void and getting no response.

And generally speaking, it's interest groups organizing on their issue.

And that's it.

And those two things and the perception of you're not listening to us when the word listening really means you're not doing the thing I want you to do, right?

No one is served by that.

And that that's therein lies the conversation there is I think to answer the question about who's not showing up, it's most people in Tacoma.

And how you get people to show up to generally anything, whether it's a public meeting or whether it's joining an organization or getting more involved, it's it's you prove that it's something of value.

You prove that it's actually worth their time.

And how we make something worth their time in a broad sense, if we're talking about a government, is we do things that enhance trust by being relevant by actually helping people with identified problems, and that's why clarifying that this isn't just about lobbying us to pass laws or make budget changes, but um fixing street lights or potholes or connecting people with social services or helping them out in some other way, just making it abundantly clear that the focus is on follow-through and action, even if it's something very small, small scale, uh, along with just tone setting that this is a community meeting where people are welcome and where the goal is also just meeting your neighbors and your representatives and your service providers, so food, child care and things like that.

So uh I'm not a fortune teller, but having more of a focus where the stated purpose is building relevancy and directly solving people's problems so that people aren't just talking, but to the best best extent we can, we are following up and actually providing real services.

Um I think there's your reason for attendance because that's providing an actual demonstration of credibility, trust, and relevancy to people.

And so that's uh that's what I would say there, and I really appreciate you bringing that uh that forward.

Councilmember Rumba.

Thank you.

And I want to just thank everyone for um everything they had to say.

And um I really think like figuring out why we're doing what we're doing is really important.

Um it sounds like we're not talking about a community forum, we're talking about a community conversation.

And so calling it something else gives people that message that we're looking to hear from you, but we're also gonna respond or help you or get back to you.

Um I kind of think it would be better if we kept it here.

I like the idea of going out into the community, um, but maybe it's just once a year that we go out into the community and do that as a council.

Um I really like focusing on some of the lower turnout areas where there seems to be less um equity.

Um I can tell you right now, like looking at three, four, and five and making sure they get heard from.

Um I think one and two, I no offense, my district is two.

I'm gonna say they are very involved, and I hear from them and I get so many letters and calls, and I really appreciate everybody for reaching out.

But I think that um the issue that I see that we have at our meetings is that the little lady who used to come who lived in district five or district um four, doesn't feel like coming here anymore.

And I know that she used to come, and I'm curious why she's not here.

Um so I really feel like I would love to know if we're gonna do some more outreach to the community to ask them about community forum and get more ideas from them.

Um I've been talking to people in my district or people who get a hold of me, and they've had some really good ideas.

Um one of their ideas was they really like like like they really like their three minutes.

They mention it all the time.

Um would we be able to just put a um a time amount of people who could speak at a meeting on could we say that there could be 20 or 30 people who speak?

We have 20 or 30 spots.

Um could we do something where we allow the individual the opportunity first before a group to speak?

Um is there anything that we could do when we run our meetings to just say if you're part of a group, you can sign up for a five or ten minute presentation in another meeting, bring your slides, we'll put them up.

Um could we come up with some other creative ways to do the meeting?

So they the groups of people who have concerns can still talk, but we're allowing those individuals the first spots on the agenda.

It's just some ways that we might run the meeting, we might get a different outcome.

Um I would love to kind of get more creative and and thinking about how we run and facilitate the meeting.

It's maybe that that's gonna be helpful.

I don't have all the answers, I just got these from people who called me.

And um I did talk to other people on the council about it, who, you know, I I'm just looking for ways that we can get a better outcome than what we have.

And I other cities have done things where they meet on a different night and all they do is do community forum.

And then they it's more like a community conversation where it might be two or three hours long, people come in with their concerns, and then they help talk about what those issues are after they get done.

I just think that when um people talk into the void and they feel like they weren't heard, that's so hard to listen to because I feel like I want to help them and normally I I try to get back to people when they call or email us.

But when we're sitting up here, I feel like it's like you just talked and the words just dissipate into the air.

You feel like no one no one's no one cares.

And I don't think that that's true.

I think we all care about what they have to say.

Um I just want to see if there's a way we could format things that we get a different outcome than what we've been getting.

Thank you.

Those are great points.

And uh I like the word conversation.

I think that's that's a very inclusive word.

Um that is uh an idea I've heard from other community members too is you know, do you name this something different?

So uh hearing your feedback, uh I I have some questions uh for you guys I'd like to pose, um very open-ended here.

So um besides the name question, one idea I've heard is uh instead of an outright replacement of the community forum with the neighborhood, uh one idea I've heard is um maybe a stagger where you could have uh a neighborhood meeting followed by the the next month the more of the conventional in chambers community forum and then just back and forth, for example.

That's one idea that I'd like your feedback on.

Um focusing more on the the lower in the equity index uh districts instead of you know everything, so more of like an equity versus equality type of focus.

So um instead of districts one and two being treated the same as three, four, and five, maybe just a greater focus on on those districts south of of Sixth Avenue, for example.

Um less of a focus on individual district representatives, but basically just making these special council meetings where we're all there and for example, I'm chairing it.

Um another thing too, seeing is that there are real questions about how this this intersects uh to Councilmember Diaz's point with our our rules and just being sensitive to the fact that this is a larger conversation than just that.

Um would this be more palatable, um, you know, being mindful of the budget and so forth, to just try as a pilot for this year, for example, and just intersperse it on say on a staggered basis with the conventional and chambers meetings and just see how it goes in 26 and then just schedule conversation to debrief, see if it's a value, see if it wants to be continued or uh just jettisoned if it wasn't worthwhile.

Um so those are some general questions I have in follow-up.

Are there any members of the council who have feedback and would like to answer any of those?

It's a lot of questions.

Oh no.

So how about I'll start with one?

So um the idea of instead of outright replacement, maybe the idea of staggering, you know, whether it's all five districts or just districts three, four, and five.

Um let's say having one one month and then follow up the next month with a conventional chambers meeting, so it isn't an outreplacement, but maybe more of a supplement.

We'll start with that question.

Deputy Mayor?

Uh thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

And I think it's a really good question.

And I I appreciate um Council Rome by your your point earlier about trying to focus on equity areas.

But I I do want to say that I think that there could be genuine concern and issues happening in Northeast Tacoma and the Procner neighborhood or other areas that I think the council body as a whole would probably want to hear about as well.

So not that I don't want to have um, you know, uh a focus on on district five and and four or three.

I think I think just I think just hearing from everybody generally is a good idea also.

Uh so I just wanted to put that out there.

But um I I could I I really do like I said earlier, I really believe in in meeting people where they're at.

Um and I do think you get different folks in and uh demographics and people that would be interested in in joining and attending these things.

Um I think that they're certainly as valuable uh having it in chambers, and so if it's like maybe every other month we do a community forum in chambers and every other month we do something out in district, maybe uh some sort of stagger makes makes some sense because then you're able to kind of reach people that might not traditionally come.

And if it's a different time, uh I used to work second shift at a warehouse, and there was no way I would ever make a council meeting ever for my entire life uh in that job because um I was working through five o'clock and up until 10 o'clock at night.

Um and so I think just I whenever I do my office hours, I try to stagger sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, sometimes it's in the evening.

So that way I can hit different different folks that are uh would love to have contact with me uh on an individual level.

I think but I think people would want to address the body as a whole in different ways as well.

And so I I think about that a lot and who we're missing um and maybe having a change in venue.

Um but then I like some of the other ideas, Councilmember, you brought up on maybe some changing in facilitation within the chambers as well.

Uh but I so I I I think there's a lot to to talk about there.

Um and then to to Councilmember Heinz's point.

Um there I think that there is uh folks that come in here with genuine concern and issues that they're trying to get addressed, and and then I do know, and it's happened multiple times where folks come in and they're clearly not talking to us, um which is the point of the community forum is to discuss things with the body um or or address things to the body.

Um and it's just making clear to folks that that this is um you know you're supposed to be expressing things to us as a body, um, and it's not necessarily not to just social media.

Exactly.

So um just those are some thoughts.

Thank you.

Okay.

And so if I'm hearing you clearly, uh Deputy Mayor as a district representative, especially, you would be more inclined towards something that's not just district um facilitated, but basically a special meeting.

Yeah, special meeting.

I I think it's really important for all of us, regardless if we're at large council members or district council members to have we're all city council members, so we just have to remember that also.

Yeah, and I represent district five and I do that to my best of my ability.

But I think that what's happening in district one or district two is just as important, especially contextually for the entire city as a whole.

Yeah.

Um and so um that's that's where I think I think people in Northeast Tacoma and other areas of the city, you know, it's it's important for us to hear and acknowledge and understand where they might be coming from on different issues and perspectives that we might not hear from uh our own constituents in in my district or district four.

Um but I do really think that you'll you'll you'll have different folks show up to these things that might not go to neighborhood councils that might not come come to city council meetings.

I think you'd have I think you'd have a different group because I I attend a significant amount of safe street meetings within my district, and there's not significant overlap always between those safety groups and then neighborhood councils, or who shows up here at the council um community forum.

Okay.

Very good.

Thank you.

Councilmember Walker.

Um just to answer your question in the staggered meetings, I think that's a good idea to have one here and then one in district.

Okay.

So in chambers versus in district, just to achieve a better balance.

Okay.

Uh Councilmember Sidalga.

Uh I agree.

I think there's a suppli there's a simplicity and elegance in having it staggered.

Um I mean, there's nine of us, you could even think of there being nine meetings, only because I think about the realities that we have to take at least two months off, usually um around uh the holidays and and summer, so you could D5 or five uh or five and four because that matches how many council members there are.

But I think there's a simplicity in if if what we're trying to do is download and understand and assess that we simply just move a Tuesday to in district five times a year, see what happens, see if we get additional people.

The the Tuesday that would have a community forum, we would add we would we could discuss in the future additional changes to rules where we would become more of a community conversation, and how do we how do we prioritize but not limit it to just a council uh district conversation in those meetings as a way to assess do we actually get greater participation in those uh districts?

Um I just think that's just a much simpler, easier, more elegant kind of solution to try.

So it sounds like you're in favor of uh treating it like it's a special meeting, maybe with like a local focus on issues like maybe 311 or what safe streets groups are bringing up, but the expectation that it's all of us, not just the district rep.

Uh yeah, no, I imagine it just being a Tuesday 5 p.m.

meeting every other, you know, whatever community forum be moved into district every other month.

Um and just operate like it's a council meeting and during the community forum portion if we're in that district, if there are people from that district where they have issues with the district, we just prioritize them, but don't limit it to just that, saying this is going to be a citywide forum that happens to be in whatever district we're in.

And then just see if we get that additional kind of you know participation and and different kind of conversations that we're looking for.

I I think it just it seems like a simpler, more elegant solution to if we're going to be assessing there's a lot of what ifs that we're talking about here.

And so it it just seems, you know, I'd be that just seems like a much easier kind of solution to me.

Okay.

Now, if we are talking about just conventional council meetings in the neighborhood, for example, if we were to talk about the other things like focusing on like calls for service, for example, or if um if there are opportunities for building communities, it's still something that there might be some open.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

So so council meeting plus is what I'm hearing.

Yeah, sure.

Maybe there's a presentation before community forum starts and a district one where we talk about some of that stuff, and then we just invite whoever's there.

Yeah.

We do our best to you know encourage but not limit it to just the district and just say this is a citywide community forum.

We happen to be in this district, so we hope we're gonna get some really good participation from this district as well.

Yeah.

And uh finally, uh sorry to put you on the spot, uh, Council Mr.

Sidelgate, but uh your thought on focusing at least initially trying this district approach to um just just districts in the equity index or just in totality one through five.

Um I mean I certainly want district four.

Sure.

So uh and I think I agree with uh council member because we're we're neighbors over there in district five, because of the fact that there are a lot of people who out when I was in community had a lot to say that right now feel apathetic, and there is a large group of people who do participate in other type of uh forms that I I would like the rest of the council to hear from.

Um I will leave it to my other district council members to decide on whether they want their district included.

I mean, it just seems easier to do it in every district for me.

Okay.

Appreciate it, thank you.

And I forgot to ask you, Councilmember Walker, before we move on to uh councilmember member Rumbaughan.

Um you had mentioned the the staggering being okay with you, the um the expectation of the entirety of the council and your thought on whether to emphasize um districts three and five or all the districts, in your opinion.

Sorry, I thought I was following the directions on one question at a time.

So the other questions are districts, I think all districts.

And the last question was what?

Uh the expectation that it's not just uh led by the district rep, but the expectation that that would basically be treated like a noticed special meeting where we're all expected to be there, and I'm sharing it.

That's great.

I'll be at all of them.

Okay.

Very good.

Councilman Rumbault.

Um I think I have a question for you.

Um I just do you know how like what kind of advertising we do for community forum right now?

Because is it just on the agenda?

Do we do anything that like, hey, come out and give us your opinions, come talk to us about the issues in your district.

Let us know, you can get on virtually.

I just I don't know, do we do anything like that?

Because I I don't really know about that because I haven't seen anything like that.

Um and then the second thing is um, are we still are we considering, like, once we get done having our conversation talking to people in the community, bringing this out to the neighborhood councils, going to business districts?

What are we thinking?

Are we going to do any of that?

What are we gonna do to get people get more input from the community?

Sure.

Uh there's been a fair amount of that.

Great question.

Uh to the best of my knowledge, I I don't believe there there is any formal uh promotion of community forum currently or public comment.

Um I think that's definitely a good component to make sure that if the council does move forward with having in-district meetings of some kind, that that would be something we try to do, along with just getting the word out organically to say neighborhood business districts, neighborhood councils, um, neighborhood block watch groups, people on the the distribution lists.

Um this is just my own philosophy.

I I think people have to have a reason to go.

I think that if we're just telling people to show up to a public meeting, then you know the follow-up is why.

Like why why am I why am I talking and hanging out with a bunch of politicians?

So uh I would say having something of value and having a very clear um a clear reason that this is something that's very distinct from what we've been doing in the past.

And you know that's that's where my heart goes towards you know, a focus on follow-up and problem solving, not to mention food and child care.

Um in terms of openness and willingness to talk with people.

I mean that that has been something that's been ongoing.

I'm I'm certainly happy to have those conversations.

Um I think a fair amount of of people who have opinions have been weighing in.

Uh what I I suppose I would caution is there is input, and it's similar to Councilmember Hines' point.

There's the distinction between listening and do what I want, right?

I mean, there is something to be said for taking in the input but ultimately making some kind of decision, which is why we're elected.

Um my experience has been that there often is a lot of just frankly fear of change.

Uh there are a lot of people who are just used to something and trying something new just by itself is just something that's uncomfortable, and that itself is the basis for opposition.

Uh and uh I do think that um opportunities for input are certainly a given.

Um happy to have those conversations further, but at the end of the day, we we still have to make decisions.

And I'm happy to connect offline.

Um my next steps are to digest what we're talking about once we're done talking, uh have some more one-on-ones, and whether it's to your liking to have a similar follow-up here in study session or uh move forward in a different way, uh, very flexible on the next steps.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Oh, man.

Uh thank you.

I I'll answer the question really quickly.

Uh I'm fine with the the staggered conversation.

I the but uh not to add another piece to this here, right?

Um I do think the what has been uh uh explained here or shared by most of my colleagues makes me wonder the why we would do community form out in the districts.

I think the district idea going out there is supposedly probably to highlight issues happening in the district, get the district council member engaged and bring people who are in the district who are normally not there to be part of it.

So then I I wonder if we're going out to say district four, but the topic conversation could be anything.

Is that actually meeting a need there versus engaging those people?

I mean, do we think people are more likely because it's happening in their neighborhood to show up to talk about anything versus um just having something more focused on their district themselves?

Which makes leads me to think that maybe the better thing is just doing a council meeting in a district, and then it could be like how the county council operates, where you know each council member picks a spot and then they get to highlight a little bit about in their district and they get to help kind of put the agenda together for what we're going to cover.

But that is kind of separate from um the community forum part of it.

It's just something that I have been kicking around in my mind.

Um I just it would be interesting to say we're in district four, but then everybody who shows up that day is really adamant about um the north and northeast, Norpoint Way and the traffic camera.

We're like, well, this is for district four, but please proceed to take our time talking about a traffic camera in a neighborhood that's completely unconnected to this.

So that's just something I I'm thinking through as I notice how community forums sometimes certain topics kind of ebb and flow.

Um the other thing that I so that was my question was I'm I'm okay with the all training if that's what we if that's where the will of the body is.

But I I I wonder I need us to tighten down like what is the purpose of going out into a district or not.

The other thing I just would I uh to go to Councilman Rumbaugh's point, and and normally her and I agree all the time, this one might be, I think it's a soft disagreement, which is there are highly engaged people in district five, district four, and district three, just like there are highly engaged people in district one and two.

Um I actually think if you look at currently community forum, if we did a number we counted off where people are from, I think most people are actually from districts three, four, and five for the most part.

Uh we could do that next time.

Three, four, and five, three, four, and five, so I guess you shake your head.

Um but I would say I don't see many district one people coming into community forum.

And but so I would say I'd be cautious as of of us using averages instead of individuals.

Right.

So if we went into District One, Councilmember, the mayor and I have both been to parts of District 1, like uh along Pearl Street north of 30th, where there's a huge, very large Russian immigrant population, that they are not very connected with what's going on here.

Um I'd also say that area that's south of Sixth Avenue over in the Geiger neighborhood, also a large population of folks who are not super engaged with our council.

So I don't think just saying, well, district I agree with Council Mr.

and Councilman Rombaugh that the averages that we don't see as much engagement district four, three, four, and five.

I would say there are engaged individuals in each one of those districts, and there are disengaged individuals in council districts one and two.

And I think we should be more focused on do we want to engage disengaged, or do we want to go to a place where we see lower levels of engagement because we believe that's what's gonna spike engagement.

Okay, that's fair.

Um this is just my my own thought on that.

I mean, those are really uh intricate questions.

Uh I would say that for me, again, just to be a broken record, it comes down to relevancy.

I think that even if someone has uh a concern in a neighborhood they don't necessarily live in, seeing is believing and having a reason for people to show up to solve problems and just have the city be able to demonstrate follow-through on things.

I I think that's how you give people reason to actually show up, not to mention come back.

Uh but those those are really good questions.

I think a lot of it might be just a matter of facilitation.

You know, if um if people are just very clear that they're going to write down what their topic is and what they want to talk about.

Let's say there is a mob of people who want to talk about a district two traffic light, but it's district four.

Um we could just move those people to the bottom, for example, and just make it clear we'll prioritize people with more neighborhood concerns or more global concerns, for example.

I mean that that could be just as simple as how the meeting is run.

Uh but those are all good questions here.

Uh my final question to pose to this body, since these are all really good questions and we'll have some further dialogue about what that all means.

Uh it it does seem like there's a consensus for not necessarily jettising the status quo, but maybe balancing it and refining it so that there's uh a balance between neighborhood and in chambers, for example.

Um it seems like um there is an interest in a broad focus on all the districts, perhaps, but um just making sure that we're being as inclusive as we can.

An expectation that this is something for the entire council, not just the district rep.

Uh but seeing as there might just be some lingering questions that we might not even necessarily know until it's in practice.

Um if this was something that wasn't a permanent change, but maybe just a pilot to run for 2026, for example, or even 2027, um, and then just try it out and see how things work in practice and then evaluate what the value looks like.

Would that make you feel different about it, more certain, uh more interested in seeing how it proceeds.

Um why don't you share your thoughts on the idea of pilot versus permanent.

Um why don't you share your thoughts on the idea of pilot versus permanent council members got um yeah, I mean I I think because this is something new and we don't you know we even even if we took everything here and we came up with one coherent thing that we're gonna go start, like clearly, like for every one thing we've mentioned that might be a good thing, there's another suggestion of like, well, this could also work.

So I think leaning more towards like we we give it a timeline of like we do one in each district, and then after that we pause for to evaluate, or there's some ongoing evaluation that happens after each one, so that by the time we're done with the fifth one, we can kind of wrap it up sooner as far as like kind of evaluating like what we pulled from it, what we learned from it, what might need to be adjusted, did it work, did it not work, um, did it get to what we were trying to get to.

Uh but yeah, I think uh what whether it's a pilot or it's just you know, whenever we put it together, we say, like, you know, after this, we're gonna go back and review it, um, and that you know doesn't put it on hold or it does, I'm not sure.

But um, but yeah, I think it it we shouldn't make this change with the idea in mind that that's just gonna be it.

We should definitely go into this thinking that at some point um we will evaluate how it's going and how to adjust it.

Okay, great.

And goes without saying, but uh my office will follow up in terms of the fiscal ask.

Uh it really was not that much with uh what I had initially heard.

The biggest impact that from what I heard is how much how much do you want it to be televised, basically was was the biggest draw in it.

Food, child care, uh, the other things were fairly minimal.

Um I had heard somewhere in the realm of uh the code is probably gonna kick me if I get the number wrong, but uh I think 5,000 per event was the highest possible um uh amount.

Um it was a lot less, like two to three per event, was what I'd heard.

Uh but we'll we'll get those figures uh substantiated.

Um so how about um I'll follow up um after Councilmember Palmer has uh her comments and we'll talk next steps.

Go ahead.

Thank you.

Um I guess my my question is if or comment is if it is a pilot or for considering it being a pilot.

I feel like there has to be some kind of control in order to actually like weigh one against the other.

Like I was kind of appreciating where we were going with like the full council meetings being in district versus just like a community forum.

Um because I mean I don't think you can weigh out like having to sit through a council meeting and then having community forum versus just having you know the community forum out in the districts.

Obviously, people are going to prefer not having to sit through council business for two hours, three hours before they can comment.

So I guess that's like I'm hoping we can have some kind of criteria that we judge this by and that there's some consistency between the meetings so we can judge um which one we prefer.

Under that rubric of let's say that this is just a regular council business meeting, just a change of venue.

Is your vision that community forum would be at the end of all the regular business or differently held to be more available for people?

Like, say the start of meeting.

I think it would be a normal council meeting.

I think it would be the same same agenda, same schedule was the word process.

Yeah.

Um but again, that's something we can talk about.

But I think um some kind of consistency across meetings so that we can judge um what what's the better format uh makes sense.

Okay, very good.

Well, I appreciate everyone's uh feedback.

Thank you for your uh your questions and your conversation here.

Um my staff will take this back, we'll uh compile these notes into something that um incorporates all of these, we'll have some one-on-ones and we'll talk about what the best format is for continuing the conversation.

Thank you, everyone.

So with that, we're gonna move on to our third item of interest, item number three, other items of interest.

We have a proposal from Councilmember Heinz.

Well, get myself cued up, Mr.

Mayor, thank you very much.

All right.

There we go.

So uh as you can if you were gonna ask Council Mr.

Hines, what do you bring it forward, you would not be surprised to hear it something about animals.

So uh thank you, Mayor.

I'm pleased to share this proposal for an important update to Title 17 of our animal control code.

Um I put this proposal together uh in response to several community members who'd reach out to me and share concerns about our current standards for restraining or confining of an animal.

So, like every good proposal, it usually comes from a community member who brings forward an issue and says, Hey, I ran into this challenge with this part of the code or when my interactions with animal control, what can we do about it?

It really kind of sparked me myself and uh some staff to really look into okay, well, what what is the issue here?

What can we do?

So working really close with our animal control officers to examine our current code.

Um we decided to make a couple changes to the animal control code, which is how 17.

I'm gonna keep very high level and then I'll answer any questions that people might have.

Uh first, our existing code has few protections for animals kept in a stationary vehicle.

So one of the um the what brought this board was there was a resident who had kind of at least prompted this conversation around a person who lived in a house and kept their animals outside in the car for extended periods of time.

So not letting them out for bathroom breaks.

So they they lived in a home, but they chose to use their vehicle as the place where their dog lived.

Um and really brought support some issues, the neighbor was concerned about it, this dog was outside, it was cold, it was in the vehicle for eight, ten, twelve hours in a row.

That um what is what can we do about this?

Calling animal control code, not a rule a lot of clear um uh specifics in the code that would allow us to address it.

So here's what we've done.

Uh the proposal before you is to do a couple things.

One is addressing animals kept in a stationary vehicle.

So it would say no more than four animals can be confined into a stationary motor vehicle.

So not, you know, four or five alcohol uh dogs or animals in a vehicle gets really tight, not really meeting the adequate level of care.

No animal could be tethered inside a stationary motor vehicle, so not you know, leashing the dog into the vehicle for an extended period of time.

Uh there must be evidence of adequate care and open public view for any animal confined in a stationary motor vehicle.

So it includes food, water, containers that cannot spill in proper shelter.

So again, we're not talking about someone's park their car, leave their dog in the car and run inside to the store and run back out.

We're talking about extended hours of which the animal is confined in a vehicle, to which point someone from animal control or neighbor would be walking up and looking to see if there's you know adequate care for these.

And the animals have access to at least 30 minutes of time outside of the vehicle for every four hours they're confined or confined to it, right?

So this idea that animals being in the vehicle, you know, for multiple hours a day, that they would have some time where they get outside, relieve themselves and do that.

Again, you know, when you think about this, um, you know, the we don't have the animal control officers to drive around the city and continually monitor every animal that's there, but if someone did call and report this to animal control, it would provide c clarity in the code for what animal control could tell them in educating them about proper care.

Uh second, we want to clarify the uh requirements around tethering an animal.

Right.

So we currently have language in here about tethering animals, like meaning like leasing them or tying them onto something.

Uh this proposal includes language that bans tethering animal outdoors while exposed to adverse environmental conditions.

Um there's been some horror stories of animals being leashed and left outside during traumatic weather events, whether that's storms, fires, all sorts of things.

So you wouldn't let people do that.

And we're also going to add adverse environmental conditions to include temperatures 32 degrees Fahrenheit or below and 90 degrees or Fahrenheit above, right?

So if the animal's outside and it's freezing below freezing or above 90 degrees, we're not the code will not allow people to tether animals outside.

Um and I think this is the idea of just humane care for animals.

Um if it's above 90 degrees and they're outside, do they have access to shut to shade, water, some kind of shelter, not just being outside.

And then finally, um there's a couple other suggestions around uh not tethering animals, oh sorry, within the tethering animals, not tethering animals to vehicles when they are unsupervised, right?

So we we found you know, people tying up an animal to a vehicle and then walking off and going someplace else that proposes a danger to folks around that.

Plus, I mean we have seen uh this that people unwillingly drive off with animals tethered to vehicles and not know about it.

So that's just trying to be clear about those two things.

Um we also made a couple other code changes around uh definitions around humane standards for keeping animals that are just in line with what we're seeing more at the state and federal level.

So uh just kind of a life touch on the animal control code, but I'm happy to answer any questions, and I want to thank Councilman Rumbaugh and Council More Diaz for co-sponsoring this with me.

Um we're aiming to hold first reading on April 28th and happy to answer any questions from my colleagues.

Thank you, Councilmember Hines.

Any counsel questions or comments?

Council Rumbo.

Yeah.

Thank you.

And I I want to thank Council Member Heinz for working on this.

Um I did I have a horror story about dogs that were harnessed inside a car for upwards of over 36 hours, and they had to break the animals out of the car, um, which you're not supposed to do.

Um I just had one question, um, and I'm so happy that I got to co-sponsor us.

Thank you so much.

I'm I'm curious if there will be an increase in um staffing for animal control to make sure we can handle like the issues that might come up.

Uh great question, Council Ramot.

The C CR doesn't say that we're gonna we're there is no we are not planning to increase staffing to comply with this.

The reason being that animal control is currently being called about these issues, but are unable to do anything about them.

So the what brought this board was the animal kept in a stationary vehicle for extended period of time, animal control reported and responded and was had to tell the owner or the reporting person we can't do anything about it because they're complying with the code.

So the idea is this would not lead to an increase in animal control response.

What it would do is lead to an effective response to what they see.

Would it be possible?

Thank you so much for answering that.

Would it be possible to get some data after this passes on what the outcomes might have been?

That would be really helpful, like maybe in like a year, I don't know.

Some time frame.

Thank you so much.

Yeah.

And this would be my time to spotlight though, it's with all the budget challenges we're going into.

I would just take this opportunity to say that our animal control department is also woefully understaffed in many capacities.

Um we currently operate with three animal control officers, and in most cities our size have usually have multiple uh more than that.

Uh so that is something that uh as we think about kind of how we address public safety, um, animal control serves this huge purpose of kind of managing public safety related to animals, and often in any cases involving the police department where animals are present or need to be um I don't want to say captured, but you know, we need to be contained or or withheld.

Animal control has to be there, and that it does kind of pose a real challenge that we don't have quite a number of animal control officers that a city our size most likely needs.

So member Scott.

Thank you.

Um I get the so are there when you talk about like tethering the animal to a car.

Are there already rules in the code about tethering animals anywhere?

Like do we need to look at like tethering animals to a tree or a bike rack or anything like yeah.

Are there rules to that already?

And that's why it's just kind of focused on the car, or is that just the example?

Great question.

Yes, there are rules around tethering and what is and isn't allowed uh around tethering, but this was just one where uh just giving a more clear definition around uh the tether to vehicles themselves.

So uh the documents that are being added.

Christina did not want me to read, but basically that there's a clear definition of tethering and what is required, and then also if you are to tether an animal to something, how big the chain needs to be, how um lots of the pieces.

So that's why we just focused on the car, whatever this.

I just want to I wasn't sure if that like I imagine tethering to a car has a implications, safety implications for anybody walking by, but also the the animal itself.

But I imagine that's similar for you know, if you're there have been times you know somebody runs into a coffee shop and they will tether the dog outside or something like that.

So wasn't sure if we had rules around that in general.

There are some, there are three ones about tethering, but this is just we were really trying to focus on that one specifically.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Palmer.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um I think the intent behind this makes a ton of sense.

Um I my worry is that this might negatively affect like our unhoused population who might have pets or you know are temporarily having to stay in their cars somewhere.

Um I'm wondering if maybe accompanying this, if there's an idea around, hey, here's some resources or here's some spots that could maybe hold on to your pet while you're in the situation, or um, here's some ways to to make this situation better for your pet.

Um that's the demographic that I'm I'm worried about.

Yeah.

No, that's a a great question, and something we definitely talked about with animal control, and what and actually was one of their bigger concerns that they raised as part of this when we brought this forward was you know, and talking to animals, there were what about folks who are living in their vehicles with their pets.

Um and what they brought up is we're always gonna go with education first, we're always gonna step in with resources first, right?

It's very touching that animal control is like we want to keep families together.

And I thought it was was really really really impressive.

And so they're gonna work with they that's their normal approach on this.

This is more for um kind of providing some guidelines around that, right?

So, you know, having more than if even if you are kind of unhoused them in your car, having five or six dogs in there with you is is gonna be a challenge.

So it's really kind of setting some norms around that.

But um we we can talk more about maybe how we kind of do the educational component and the resource component around it too.

Thank you.

Councilmember Sidalga.

Um Thank you.

And thank you, Councilmember Hines.

I actually really, you know, I was just reading through this that this is not a part of the code I have gone too deep on because I know you're the guy that does the animal stuff.

Um I actually really appreciate the addition of uh a definition of adverse environmental conditions on top of adverse uh adequate uh care, because I think that actually jives in really well when I was looking at some of the stuff around motor vehicles and others, so I really actually appreciate that.

Um very thoughtful kind of definition.

Uh I had a question more about um, and again, I know you just have snippets of this code, maybe it's already there, and I just am ignorant of it.

Um I get a lot of uh constituent concerns about repeat offenders or you know, animals that are you know, or owners that don't fix the issue that cause animals to get out and and uh either attack people or what else.

Is that already in the code?

Does that need to potentially be looked at?

Because that's recently been one of the most common things I've gotten.

So great question.

There are components around that here.

Um last year there was a conversation about looking at the dangerous dogs and potentially dangerous dogs definitions and something human society's asked us to look more into.

We haven't yet done that part yet.

So there are components around that, plus there are requirements if or there are penalties required if your animal does get out, harm somebody that the animal control code can do.

We actually have shifted some of those from kind of a criminal misdemeanor to a civil infraction last year that was related to dog barking two years ago, related to dog barking.

But um something it's in there, but something we could talk more about if you want to dive more into that.

Yeah, it may not be for this update.

Um, but that seems to be something that's been consistent since I got on council is I know its neighbor X.

Right.

Or I recognize this animal uh regularly.

And just like the maybe it's a conversation with code enforcement that we're also doing on this idea of you know, repeat offenders that are not um correcting the underlying issues that's causing these animals.

Quite frankly, you know, a lot of people blame the animal, but I mean it's a stressful situation for that animal.

Right?

That's causing them to do you know, the dangerous behavior they're doing because they're protecting themselves.

So yeah, happy to have a conversation in in the future about that aspect of it.

Thank you.

I know that thank you, Council.

I mean, that falls really clearly into that they're you know trying to kind of move pieces as they go.

The dangerous dog conversation and dogs in general has been one that's I think is going to require a lot of conversation, just more broadly among the council of animal control, uh humane society community around that specifically, because it it is something I've heard quite a bit about.

But uh not part of this one but further.

And thank you for bringing up the adverse environmental conditions.

I you know, I think just this is something we picked up from other cities that have the same thing, and just really being clear about you know what um what we're looking for for humane conditions for animals.

Okay.

Thank you.

Uh well thank you very much, uh, Councilman Hines for bringing this forward.

We look forward to continuing the conversation.

Are there any uh additional uh items from other council members to share?

Seeing none, are there any committee reports?

Okay, seeing none, I'd like to call on Deputy City Manager Alison Griffith to begin the weekly city manager's report.

Thank you, Mayor, Mayor and Council, for your awareness on this evening's meeting.

There are two proclamations.

Uh the first is proclaiming April 2026 as for housing month, and the second is proclaiming April 2026 as occupational health month.

Uh there are no modifications on tonight's agenda.

There are two opportunities for public to provide input this evening.

The first is on regular uh public comment regarding motions, resolutions, and items on your agenda.

The second is a public hearing on the 2026 annual action plan for housing community and economic development and public services.

Please let us know if there's any questions ahead of tonight's agenda or meeting, excuse me, so that we can uh set everyone up for success.

And attached to your uh study session agenda was the weekly report.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you.

With that, I'd like to call uh I'd like to entertain a motion to convene to an executive session pursuant to RCW 42.30 point one one zero section one G to review the performance of a public employee not to exceed 30 minutes.

So moved.

Second.

Those in favor to convene to an executive session, please signify by saying I.

Aye.

I was supposed to say nay.

Guys have it.

Thank you.