The Tacoma City Council held a study session on May 5, 2026, covering a range of topics including the 2025 Climate Action Plan progress report, expansion of automated enforcement cameras, an update on historic preservation, and two council action items related to immigration. The session also included proclamations for National Red Dress Day, City of Destiny Awards Day, and Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, before moving into an executive session.
I'd like to call to order the city council study session of May 5th, 2026. Clerk, please call the roll. Deputy Mayor Bushnell. President. Councilmember Diaz? Here. Councilmember Heinz. Councilmember Palmer. Councilmember Rumba. Here. Councilmember Sidalgay. Here. Councilmember Scott. Councilmember Walker. Mayor Ibsen. Here. Welcome. Our first agenda item is our 2025 Climate Action Plan Progress Report. I'd like to call on the Center for Strategic Priorities Director, Jacques Cologne to begin the presentation. Welcome. Thank you, Mayor, and good afternoon. Uh Mayor, Deputy Mayor Bushnell and members of Council. We come to you today with an update on our climate action plan. But before we jump into the actual progress, I do want to take a step back and mention a couple of things. The first of which is the fact that right now across our city, the impacts of climate change are already being felt. In fact, just last week a new fence had to be put up on Rust and Way by Cummings Park because sea level rise has been undercutting the sidewalk there, forcing infrastructure collapse. And so we're already seeing the impacts very much real and presently in our community. In addition, we're seeing extreme heat days increase in our city, and we know from studies that the urban heat island effect that we have in our city can produce as much as a 14-degree difference between neighborhoods. So even those extreme heat days that feel hot in some neighborhoods, they may even feel hotter in other neighborhoods, depending on what kind of tree canopy they have and other factors like that. And then finally, wildfire smoke is also continuing to get worse, and we're having more days of it. And this is particularly important for our vulnerable populations like children with asthma, people that might be susceptible to heart attacks, like the elderly, or folks that are living outside. So these impacts are very clear and present. And those risks will continue to increase. One of the things that we hear in the climate world is that this is probably going to be the coolest year that we will ever experience again. And so these are the impacts that we will not only see this year, but what we will continue to see becoming greater risks in future years as well. I do want to say though that the city continues to lead on these efforts through the climate action plan and all of the actions within it. We also see that reflected in the values of the city. You all are aware that we recently passed a new 10-year strategic plan, Tacoma 2035, and this work is reflected not just in the goal area of climate and environment, but also in the values of the city as represented by resilience. Understanding that for us to be effective in leading the city forward, we also have to make sure that we are building a city that is resilient to these climate impacts over time. So thank you for sharing that. And with that, um pass it to Christy Lynette, who leads our Office of Environmental Policy and Sustainability to talk you through our progress report. Christie. Next slide, please. So what I'm going to do today is um really just briefly again reminder of what the climate action plan is, and then talk about some of the highlights of our our 2030 indicators, our targets and progress, uh walk through some success stories from last year, and then briefly um mention some next steps. Next slide. Great, all right. So uh as a reminder, the city of Tacoma's had a climate action plan for almost 20 years. We're currently working on our third plan that was originally adopted in 2021. Uh, for many of you, you might remember that we uh had an update last summer where we um updated the actions. We have now short-term actions, so actions that we're measuring and hoping to complete between 2025, 26, 27, and that's what I'll mainly be focused on today.