I'd like to call to order the city council study session of May 19th, 2026.

Clerk, please call the roll.

Deputy Mayor Bushnell.

Absent.

Councilmember Diaz, absent, Councilmember Hines.

Here.

Councilmember Palmer.

Councilmember Rumba, absent.

Councilmember Sidalgay.

Here.

Councilmember Scott.

Here.

Councilmember Walker.

Here.

Mayor Ibsen.

Here.

Our first agenda item is our city manager work plan update.

I'd like to call on the city manager.

Thank you very much, Mayor Ibsen, members of council.

I am here to present to you my work plan that has been worked on.

I would like to start Mayor.

As the slide comes up here, we'll slip right into the timeline just for the public as well as for staff who are listening to this presentation, as well as council, just going back to where we started from.

Um as that comes up, and it is up on the broadcast.

So going to the next slide here, we're going to talk about timeline here.

Um in late March.

OSAC, the operations strategy administrative committee of the city council provided some preliminary input on the permanent city manager work plan.

And just for the public, the council had an opportunity on February 20th to have a retreat to coalesce around priorities for the council where we've generated some of the ideas from the work plan.

The timeline is here of all the touch points to the work plan, including last Tuesday's presentation on the roadmap to recovery, which is a portion of the function here.

I'll be going over first the first section of the focus areas of the work plan, which has to do with operational performance and internal administration.

And then secondly, it's on council priorities along community safety, housing and homelessness, and jobs and the economy.

This work plan uh outlines the city council's expectations.

This work plan will also be used as an accountability measure for the city council to evaluate my performance on behalf of your priorities as well as the administration of the day-to-day operations here at the city of Tacoma.

So we'll go right to uh where the emphasis areas are.

Um I have been directed through this work plan to work towards greater uh partnerships in working with not just our nonprofit communities, our regional uh partnerships with Pierce County, Sound Transit, Parks Tacoma, Tacoma Public Schools.

Um, that is a major emphasis there.

Access belonging, access opportunity and belonging is an area upon which we are looking to continue to push forward with our equity efforts here at the city of Tacoma.

Um being data informed accountability, performance management is something that I am looking to bring to you.

There's just a little bit of echo here, as well as look towards cross-departmental alignment and focus areas in which we're driving towards efficiencies, uh eliminating duplications, and saving saving costs for the taxpayers of Tacoma, and then focus communication, telling our story in different ways, and being nimble to advance in in communication methods that the city council wants us to focus on.

So we'll go right into the first um, and please, mayor, council, stop me at any time.

Uh, first area is along operational performance and internal administration of the city of Tacoma.

Um the description here is operational excellence is leading the organization to promote a healthy stable workforce that delivers on council's priorities while implementing internal process improvements, cost containment, and efficiency measures in 2026 as we work to structurally align revenues and expenses to ensure sustainable delivery of effective city services in future years, future biennia.

Um the metric here that I will be graded on.

The first one is to ensure the fiscal sustainability of the city of Tacoma.

The city manager will develop options for cost containment and reductions that meaningfully address the structural deficit in 2027-2028 budget.

So the biennium budget that we are developing right now in parallel, this work plan item is essentially bringing options to council to pair back not just one time but ongoing structural reductions to address our structural deficit.

Um the next one is to ensure the sustainable um delivery of city services to the community.

The city manager will promote a healthy, stable workforce and lead the roadmap to recovery to provide options to structurally align revenues and expenses by 2030.

So these are the ongoing roadmap to recovery presentation that I started to discuss with you last Tuesday, and just of note for the public who is listening to this, we do have a planned update to our forecast on June 9th.

So this will be a monthly endeavor where I will be reporting back on efforts that we're taking along with the budget meetings that we have with you all as well.

The next item is to promote transparent, timely communications internally and externally, the city manager will develop options to improve the impact of internal and external communications.

I just speak to this.

The council has asked me to not only execute and move forward but bring options for council to be involved in the decision making in terms of our communication channels, our methods, and working with Director Clancy and the MCO team doing all those things, starting the podcast.

Those kinds of things are the things I'll be reporting back to you all.

Alright, and then we go to council priorities, the first section on community safety, addressing community safety issues through code enforcement, innovative response models, and infrastructure safety.

The metric here that I will be judged on to enhance perceptions of community safety for Tacoma residents, the city manager will work with Tacoma police, fire, neighborhood community services, public works, environmental services in alignment with all other departments to improve the quality of life for the community.

I am looking forward to reporting back to you on efforts upon which this metric I will be defining in further report outs and in quarterly updates with you all.

The next council priority is around along housing and homelessness, addressing the regional and local causes and impacts of homelessness that residents can access secure and maintain affordable housing in alignment with the Ajas Plan, the Affordable Housing Action Strategy, and homeless strategies.

The performance metric here is to support the well-being and dignity of our in-house residents and promote the safety and cleanliness of the city for all residents.

The city manager will review and renew applicable portions of the strategy as well as particular focus on improving shelter acceptance and progression towards stable housing.

I will be back to you shortly here in the coming months to describe those efforts in more detail.

Under jobs and economy, this is my last slide here.

The descriptor here is leading on efforts to make Tacoma the best place to do business in the Puget Sound, including everything from opening and operating a business in Tacoma to being the best place to work for employees.

The performance metric, the first one is to support a vibrant business environment.

The city manager will direct CED and other departments to engage with community partners and industry to analyze and improve Tacoma's business climate in alignment with relevant economic development plans.

So our steady plans, take a look at those plans, adapt as well as make changes as we find more data to inform our decision making.

The next metric is to enhance the speed of permitting in Tacoma in collaboration with TPU and the city manager will direct PDS, finance, and other departments to reduce the time it takes to issue certain permits by proposing new and innovative strategies.

This will be a budget item, multiple budget items.

I'll be reporting back to you.

In June, we also have a report for our missing middle uh pilot program for upon which we are looking towards making the structural changes to continue to create the culture upon which we are um working with developers as well as applicants to speed up the the time frame it takes to get a permit permitted here at the City of Tacoma.

Mayor Ibsen, with that, I open it up for any questions.

Well, brevity is the soul of the butt thank you for the concise presentation, city manager.

Uh, I'm gonna start by saying I really appreciate um the responsiveness as part of this process, and I think just in our transformation to an even more efficient, responsive um city approach.

Uh, the fact that the council priorities that we said earlier this year, the work plan and the budget are all trying to be the same thing.

That's the most important thing is that there's total alignment and and just absolute clarity of intention for what we're trying to do for the city.

So I that's definitely appreciated.

Um, I'd like to start just by uh clarifying that um the metrics that we're talking about are more like broader strategic goals, right?

I'm assuming that in the coming months as we flesh out the budget that um you and staff are gonna put together actual metrics, like actual quantifiable goals um that you and your staff determine.

Um, and those will be baked into what you come up with with the budget, right?

Yes, sir.

I'll be reporting back um at our next opportunity.

For um, I think what we have learned together in partnership is that an annual evaluation of the performance of the city manager probably makes sense for us to meet more frequently than once a year.

Um, and so my next check-in with you all, perhaps even as early as next quarter, um, I will have some predefined actions that I've deployed to fill in these broad strokes of the details and perhaps KPIs in terms of what I'm looking at staff to move forward with, along with the budget as well.

If it requires resources or staffing that will come through the budget.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

All right.

With that, uh, let's start with Councilmember Walker, followed by Councilmember Sidalga.

Thank you, mayor.

Um, thank you, City Manager.

I think this is really a great way to digest this information and and look at it with the public.

I really like the first slide, the city manager is directed to that one with the five boxes, just to sort of roll up and be really clear about um those big picture big value items.

So thank you for that.

Um, the one item that I'm hoping you can just talk a little bit more about is on that first page.

Um, it's the last one, it's um labeled as new, and you talked a little bit about um, it's a communications piece.

Um, we already get a quarterly um update from MCO, and so what what is the the product that we're getting from this?

Will you just be adding to that presentation?

Will there be a document, a memo?

Like what what's the thing that we're getting?

So that's the action.

This is the report out.

So as far as the quarterly communications plan that Director Clancy comes to you all, that's how we'll be driving that.

I'll be supporting her, not duplicating her efforts.

She's our communications director, so any channels we want to utilize MCO for, that's how we'll be doing and um not to um to interrupt your train of thought here.

I failed to also acknowledge one thing that you've not seen here is of the color coding.

I have a black and white version here, but the color coding um status symbols, there's one new one.

Uh, it's purple for improved.

Um, whereupon I bring on something that materially changes when I report back potentially um council.

This is not something that's going well, I'd like to pivot.

Um, I want to make sure we have a status check for that.

If I'm proposing a new or an improved way of actually delivering upon which the council wants to see, um so um communications for instance, you know, telling our story through MCO and Director Clancy in different ways.

Perhaps we're doing this, this, and this.

We have an opportunity here, we're gonna try something else.

That's something that we will be updating on the progress sheet here as well, so that people can see from beginning to end that if this morphs or evolves that they could see what the progression and that decision quality why we had that discussion for transparency safe.

Great, thank you.

And I'm confident you said this and I just missed it.

How often are we getting these reports from you?

Um, so the concept right now, we've had a brief conversation.

We've not had the robust conversation in public other than at OSAC.

Um, I'm prepared to come back to you on a semi-annual basis.

I can come back to you on a quarterly basis that we as we take a look with the budget that will not go to production until sometime in October, November for your uh evaluation and approval.

Um, it probably makes sense for us to maybe have a check-in sometime this fall.

The next time you see this.

Great.

And uh my opinion is twice yearly is great because so many of these things do come at us more often than that.

So I think we get the information, and maybe staff or you can just remind us, and this is part of the larger plan, but I don't think we need this more than twice a year.

So, just my thoughts on that.

Thank you.

Thanks for your feedback, Councilmember uh Sadalgate.

Uh thank you, Mayor.

Um, I was actually gonna um comment on the fact that I saw that improved over there, and I really liked it, to add the ability to talk about what's new and improved.

Uh, my comment is generally, you know, I I want to make sure that the um those who are uh watching along.

I mean, this isn't the only thing we're doing, right?

Like just, you know, it it is short in this presentation, these are large strategic goals, but that's not the only thing the city does, and there's a lot more that you as a city manager are doing to make sure we're moving forward.

Um, and I appreciate that we do keep these very high-level strategic goals in mind.

I do appreciate that as we go through the the budget process and everything, we come with real uh tangible goals that we will be talking about, tangible metrics that we can talk about, whether they're goals or whatever.

Um for me, you know, there is one item on here that is more important than every other because it is the one thing that really dictates how successful we are, which is the budget, right?

Um, and I want to reiterate to those who are listening that um, you know, the the most important, the largest responsibility kind of power or authority that rests with the council is account is the power of the purse.

If we do not fund it, we cannot you know really execute effectively on it, and it's really important that we talk about given the resources that we have available to um put to this goal.

Are we doing as well as we possibly can?

And that's you know, that can be a difficult conversation, especially in a world in which we should be expecting some level of scarcity in a lot of things that we we have um prioritized these last few years.

Um so to me, in the next few months, it is really going to be about um thinking about the budget.

How does the budget reflect our overall priorities as they have they will always shift over time?

And are we giving you uh and staff the resources to be successful?

Um, which is a really long-winded way of saying that we have some responsibility in your performance and um largely through the strategic decision we give you on budget and your ability to execute.

That's really all I wanted to say.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Palmer, who's over there?

Awkward, yes.

Um, thank you so much for this update.

Um, a couple of things I'm really happy with with where we ended up uh with a lot of this, and it was a group effort, and you know, it was a great idea great um opportunity to work with my uh fellow council members on this.

Um when we're seeing the outcome and update section, um, that was one of the things that I maybe I was in the minority of wanting to get down to the nitty gritty and get get it all planned out, like uh this is gonna happen by this date and that sort of thing.

Um some of them have the dates on them, right?

So you know the 2027, 2028 budget, uh expenses by 2030, but something like that last one on that first page where um there's an objective there, but like for that for that instance, when could we expect like I don't know, is that something completion like a completion or is it ongoing?

I know we get the updates hopefully every six months.

At that six month date, are we expecting uh this is completed or are we expecting this is where this is at?

Yeah, um Councilmember Palmer, um telling the story of Tacoma, um, from a broad view lens, I don't think that will ever be a completion because um I think communication is a facet of an iterative process.

Um so I do believe that we will have meaningful updates through work product that's coming through MCO um in the quarterly updates, the stats in one way I am setting, you know, my office and MCO for success here in the sense that we already have a number of of um communication um initiatives that Director Clancy has already launched.

We'll be reporting those out, you know, in the coming quarterly updates from the communications plan.

Um there uh one idea, um, one idea that's been um generated through discussions with this body is how can we be more nimble, those kinds of things, perhaps that's what we discuss.

I don't think I will have completion in six months on the communications one, but I think it'll be iterative process.

Um, um but so the objective here is to develop options, right?

Like, yes, that I think we write six months makes sense.

Okay.

Just clarifying.

Um, and then on the number two, there's no subsection, so um the community safety section.

Um we did a great job of in including a lot of the plans in a lot of these so that we know because those plans include goals, right?

And they include uh a lot more time frames.

This is the one where I'm not seeing referring to a plan.

Um, and I think you know, the community safety action strategy is a good one to refer to there when we're looking at what our goals should be, so maybe just including that in there.

Um, but overall, thank you so much for this putting this together and looking forward to making progress on it.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Palmer.

Okay, Councilmember Hines.

Um, uh thank you again for the presentation.

I think it's a really good job of kind of encapsulating what we're you know what we discussed, and we're putting together the work plan, and I want to thank the work of OSAC for I know they did a lot of the omen's work of getting this stuff shaped up.

Um I two things.

Um, number one, I would think that in the outcome updates section when we have our next report and say six months, and and I I'm fine every six months.

I'm probably more of a quarterly update person, but six months is fine if that's where my colleagues want to land.

Um, would be more of kind of what is staff doing in those buckets.

Like, so what is you know, because right now it's we have given you kind of a mark set of marching orders, but I think when you come back, it would be outcomes and updates would be the things that staff departments are doing, each one of those would be clearly kind of listed out in this, and you know, the overall status indicator would be the color of where everything's moving, but just having a list there would be good to be able to see.

Yes, sir.

I would I would share in that too from uh the prompting that um six months as I report back to you in six months, it gives me a good check-in point to describe the actions I've taken along these broad strokes, and then council can let me know.

You're missing the mark, or this is exactly what we want you to emphasize, or we're questioning this.

Like, we'll see in another six months.

So it's a good dialogue, yeah.

Yeah, no, I I think the some uh some kind of ongoing frequency that's separate from just the evaluation for contracting purposes or the yearly evaluation.

I think we want to be able to kind of make sure we're still heading towards the destination throughout the process.

So um no, and then I think the other part was I do appreciate all the metrics and pieces that are here, and I do think the conversation around so then in my mind, a couple of these in the operational performance are landing around the upcoming budget cycle.

Uh so would we imagine I would imagine that we would have a conversation later after this budget's through about what we think the metrics should look like in operational performance and internal administration.

Yes, sir.

Um the councilmember Hines, the the roadmap to recovery, as as I presented last week, it's it's gonna take more than just a budget season.

Um so I would presume as we take options to you to consider as soon as we're done with that process.

You know, we'll be slipping right into what what actions will we take next year at mid-MOT as well.

And so it makes a lot of sense to report on that as well as um yep, absolutely just right.

Great.

So, those are all my uh questions and comments, Mr.

Mayor.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh thank you, Mr.

City Manager.

I don't have any questions at this point, the one that I had you already addressed.

Um I just wanted to say thank you.

I know this has been a very long uh process to get uh get here, and so I just wanted to say that I appreciate your patience with us as we all kind of work to get ourselves together and uh in a way that made it you know coherent and and everything for you to put together uh this document, I think it's really helpful.

Thank you.

And it's mutual on from a staff standpoint.

The directors and I stand ready and uh looking forward to this process, and thank you for your patience with this process, Stu.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Very good.

Uh Councilman Pullman.

Thank you for letting me talk again.

Um, after hearing Councilmember Heinz talk about quarterly updates, I think I might be a fan of that.

When we're thinking about, you know, a lot of this is well, not some of it's carried forward, but there's been a lot of changes at the city, right?

And so maybe initially we start with like a quarterly update so we make sure everything's going smoothly and then move on to six months.

So, just a suggestion.

Thank you.

All right, very good.

Any further questions?

All right.

Well, uh, thank you very much for the presentation.

We look forward to continuing those.

Thank you very much.

All right.

Our next topic is our review of our alternative responses programs.

I'd like to call on Deputy City Manager Alison Griffith for the presentation.

Thank you, Mayor.

I'm gonna give those slides a second to come up.

Okay, Mayor and Council Allison Griffith, Deputy City Manager here to talk to you today about alternate response programs.

Um before I get started, I do want to acknowledge I've got several folks in the audience with me.

So if I get out of my depth, they'll answer questions for you.

I have Alicia Morales, who's our program manager for HOPE.

I've got Chief Stallings back there somewhere.

Uh Tony Esparza, who's a neighborhood and community services director, Javon Carlyle, who's our program manager for Heal, and Assistant Chief Lane, who is our uh chief over our uh CSOs, and then Kendra Jones, who's our deputy director of our Tacoma Public Library.

As I said, as you get to questions, if I can't answer, they can certainly do a much better job than myself.

Um, so today, council, generally we have provided a quarterly review of performance of these programs.

Um, but with a new mayor and new council member, it seemed like a good time to kind of reset and reground ourselves in our alternate response programming.

So we'll do a review of our goals uh from the outset of those programs and then move through our understanding of our current capacity.

Just to ground all of us here, when we talk about our alternate response programs, we're talking about our HEAL program, which is our homelessness engagement and alternatives liaison.

Our HEAL, I just said that HEAL team, who does our homelessness response, our HOPE team, which is our primary response for our behavioral health crisis, and then our CSOs, which are coming out of our uh TPD and our non-officer response for uh low acuity crimes, and then our library patron crisis and de-escalation team over at the library.

Uh you may have seen this diagram before.

This is what we refer to as the Swiss cheese diagram.

This diagram represents the city's original vision for alternate response, acknowledging multiple layers of protection reduce harm, and each each slice, however, has holes or failures, but when layers overlap, risks are caught before reaching the public.

However, uh, kind of in the evolution of our alternate response programming, we did receive feedback that this didn't necessarily capture the overlapping nature of our programming.

And so that's why we've moved to using this slide.

Uh, you may recall this bubble diagram from our last few presentations.

What this slide is attempting to illustrate is the interconnected nature of these services, uh, where and how they overlap with our traditional police and fire responses.

So, uh as I said, our non-violent criminal acts can be referred to our community service officers for issues related to homelessness.

HEAL will take the lead on response, but they must also necessarily work with our police department and may, as you will hear, make referrals to the Hope team.

Hope and the designated crisis responders may respond to incidents that initially involve police fire or both traditional emergency responses and the level of behavioral health needs helps to determine the appropriate tool in those cases.

So we do feel like the bubble diagram more accurately accurately represents our programming.

This slide endeavors to give you a sense of how calls come in and where they're routed.

Responses led by our HOPE team and our CSO's teams generally come through our 911 dispatch center and may be triggered by an initial call to 988.

As you'll hear, HOPE and CSOs are not self-dispatched.

So those calls will uh flow either through fire or police dispatch before getting to those teams.

Requests for heel generally originate through our 311 system.

So you see that on the right hand side of the diagram.

Okay, with that general grounding in our framework and current practice, I'm now going to walk through each service in the particular areas the intention for that service, our current capacity and funding, as well as a little bit of performance and some items for council's consideration.

We'll begin with our HOPE team, which again is our behavioral health focused crisis response.

The HOPE team was created to fill a critical gap in our emergency response system.

As the slide notes, Hope's initial role was to provide community-based response to behavioral health, mental health and substance use disorder issues, emergency crises through a dispatched field team staffed by civilians.

What that means in practice is that HOPE is designed to respond to crises that don't require a police officer or a firefighter, but absolutely do require trained professionals who understand behavioral health trauma and de-escalation.

It's a civilian-led model that is voluntary and consent-based, meaning the individuals they interact with voluntarily consent to those services.

And it's essential for building trust with the people we serve.

That model in particular, right?

So it's not compelled.

For your awareness, this program launched in two phases.

Case management began in July of 2023, giving the team time to build relationships, establish workflows, and connect with service providers.

And then field response went live in September of 2023, once dispatch protocols and safety procedures were in place.

Staffing has been one of our biggest challenges for this program in particular.

The original plan called for eight full-time employees, seven of which were providing direct services.

But due to national behavioral health and health provider workforce shortage, we were only able to hire five direct service staff and two program managers.

We currently operate with one program manager.

That gap in staffing has led to real operational impacts, including limited service hours and a slower ramp up of independent response.

There are also several startup considerations that shaped early months of the program.

Funding was initially pieced together from one-time or limited use resources, which made long-term planning difficult.

Integrating HOPE into South Sound 911 988 and Tacoma Fire's dispatch systems has required significant coordination, and our data collection tools were not necessarily designed for a program like this.

So I just want you to note that because some of our numbers are a little bit on the conservative side due to that.

Finally, you'll see that the program's annual cost has grown from the initial estimate of 825,000 to about 1.34 million today.

Hope resulted from a combination of resolution 40622 and the matrix alternative response study, a desire and also a desire from the community to provide individuals experiencing behavioral health crises with first responders specifically trained via education experience and equipped to deliver crisis care and reduce reliance on the traditional pathways of law enforcement, fire EMS, jail and emergency departments.

Hope was developed because behavioral health crises were frequently being handled by police and fire, which are systems not designed for long-term stabilization.

The intent was to create a voluntary consent-based model that could respond independently or alongside traditional responders and provide warm handoffs to community providers.

Here's a little bit of performance for the HOPE team.

When you see these performance metrics throughout the presentation, they're going to be from formation of whichever team we're talking about through March of this year.

So since 2023, Hope has recorded over 4,400 program contacts.

That's any and all folks that the program encounters, right?

So let's say that you know you and I may both be standing on the street, and there might be an exchange going on.

They're going to record both of us as having an encounter with HOPE.

So the 2,296 case management contacts, those are pre and post intervention uh contacts.

So those are folks that once they've either prior to actually having to uh maybe engage with more formalized behavioral health, but contact with the team, or post that uh intervention, they will follow up with them.

They've had 2,251 dispatches, that's dispatches through the fire system, and have received 598 referrals.

Referrals come from a whole bunch of places which can include the community, can include other programs that you will see in this work today.

So that could be the HEAL team, could be the library social worker, could be the CSOs themselves.

Just as again a reminder, it's important to note that the team had only had full staffing for three months since the launch, and that our data tracking limitations mean that some of this is uh conservative estimate.

Here we see some uh lessons that we've learned as HOPE has evolved.

It evolved from the concept of a solo responding civilian team to a co-response model supporting police and fire.

In addition to some of the staffing and role challenges HOPE has faced, labor feedback led to constraints on independent diversion, which resulted in self-assigned dispatch or HOPE assigning their own fire and EMS dispatches ending within a few months of the program launch.

Current operation schedule is a day shift of seven days a week, which also differs from our original due to current staffing availability.

As HOPE continues to evolve, um, they're looking to unlock the full diversion potential of their program.

They have added a certified peer support specialist to field response, which will enable the HOPE case managers stop filling in as a field responder, unless needed for coverage, and they are pursuing their behavioral health licensure so that they can have a better path to sustainability.

So that is something they're working on right now.

With that, we'll move to the HEAL team.

The HEAL team again is our homeless response team.

When HEAL first launched in 2017, it started with just one full-time employee.

At that time, the work was primarily reactive, responding to encampments as they appeared and doing what was possible with very limited resources.

Over the years, as homelessness has increased and the city policy has evolved, HOPE's role expanded significantly.

Today the team has grown to eight staff members and an annual budget of about 1.65 million dollars, reflecting the scale and complexity of the work.

This slide highlights several startup considerations that shape the program.

One of the biggest challenges early on was a lack of trust, both from unhoused individuals and from folks in the community who were frustrated by encampments and unsure what the city could legally do.

Building credibility on both sides has been essential.

Another major constraint has been limited shelter capacity and the lack of storage for personal belongings.

Even when individuals accept services, the system doesn't always have the right type of shelter available, and belongings can be a barrier to moving indoors.

These structural limitations directly affect TEAL's ability to place people into shelter quickly.

And then just as a final note, the team has had to navigate significant health and safety concerns in the field, everything from biohazards to unpredictable conditions and encampment sites, which requires specialized training and coordination with police and fire and public works and a trauma informed approach to engagement.

Here is the timeline for heal.

Boy, having Hope and Heal right after each other is difficult, but here's the timeline for HEAL.

You'll see that as the city has hit some major milestones in city policy and response to homelessness.

So on the left-hand side there, you see that of course in 2017, we declared our public health state of emergency on homelessness.

In 2021, resolution 40622 formalized our civilian homelessness outreach response.

In 22, our camping restrictions first went into place, and then in 25, we, of course, had an update to those camping restrictions.

So particularly in the 22 to 26 period, you do see an increase in staffing to help us address those things.

Here, because uh I did talk about the fact that uh heel is a little bit different than our Hope and CSOs, heels dispatched through week 311.

So this diagram illustrates how HEAL's work is assigned and how they interact with the other work groups in the alternate response realm.

If individuals are determined to be likely to benefit from interaction with HOPE prior to other housing or stabilization needs, then he'll request Hope to respond.

So even if he'll take that initial 311 request, they may make that referral to hope.

Here you'll see the performance for heel.

You may recall from earlier slides that the camping restrictions went into effect in November of 22.

So although versions of heel were in place prior to that date, that's the timeline we have the best available data for.

So in this case, although I told you mostly we're going to be looking at program launch, in this case we're looking at November of 22 because that is when we really started to record data in a different way.

So they have responded to almost 57,000 homelessness related requests since that time.

They've logged nearly 8,000 outreach contacts.

They've identified over 4,300 people interested in services, placed 850 of those into shelter, and they've also been able to reduce their average request closure time from 11.9 days to 6.5 days.

So meaning that folks in the community who are requesting response are experiencing us responding much, much faster than we were previously able to.

And here are heels kind of lessons in evolution.

Heels shifted from a reactive encampment response to a scaled coordinated program, which started as a model that was embedded in reactive response to encampments, has evolved to a model that allows for client management and service coordination or connection.

Importantly for you to note kind of having multiple staff members allows us to cross-train staff and allows us to respond kind of across the city effectively and efficiently.

We are still challenged as we talked about by our system capacity.

Both shelter and housing availability are restricted as you all know.

So that tends to be HEAL's most limiting factor at the moment.

So that when they're making connections in the field, folks are feeling like they are able to connect with folks who most closely match their experience.

Next, we'll talk about the CSOs.

CSOs provide an unarmed response to calls with no threat to life or property.

The program launched in June of 2024 with three FTEs and now operates with five CSOs and a sergeant.

The initial vision for the team was to be staffed with 12 CSOs.

So just to give you an understanding of that.

You may remember from early presentations that the safety of these personnel to be able to respond to low-risk calls was a paramount consideration.

This is why calls are screened by a sergeant.

Although the unit was originally envisioned to be 12 individuals, you'll see in the statistics that the call volume has not necessarily supported expansion of the team.

Here you'll see the timeline for the development of this program.

The opportunity for civilian response was first identified in 2021.

2022 was spent developing the budget and staffing needs for this team.

2023 was spent developing classifications for the team, recruiting, and getting early staff onboarded and trained.

In recent years, the department has been able to refine necessary training and develop performance reporting.

In order to help counsel and the listening public understand the difference between this team and sworn police officers, I thought it would be helpful to walk through what the team can and cannot respond to.

As I've referenced in previous slides, the CSOs are sergeant supervised, and that sergeant determines the calls that the team can respond to.

As you can see on the left-hand side of the slide, the calls are routine.

They're not in progress, and there's no immediate threat to life or property.

This means that CSOs are most often responding to routine motor vehicle theft reports, theft, vandalism, burglary, fraud, and forgery reports.

The top 10 calls for response are listed on the next slide.

Here's a little bit of performance on the CSOs.

Since January of 2024, the CSOs have responded to just over 3700 dispatched calls, completed 2300 written reports, and that's an average of 9.2 calls per day across the team.

As we talked about previously, top calls include murder vehicle theft reports, citizen assists, vandalism, fraud, and found property.

In addition to these calls, CSOs are available to attend community events and assist residents at police substations, which can include referring individuals to hope if needed.

Here we see again the lessons and evolution of this particular program.

Community feedback's been positive, especially regarding improved response times for low priority calls.

Do you want to make you aware that one emerging issue that the team is concerned about?

Certain calls and particularly nighttime responses.

So for these reasons, they've requested the ability to carry electronic control tools, often referred to as tasers.

That's a discussion still underway.

With constraints on what the team can respond to under the current model, it may be preferable to increase community liaison officer staffing, which are fully commissioned officers to complement existing CLOs and CSOs.

Finally, we'll talk about the library patron and de escalation program.

The patron support team launched in February 2024 to help patrons navigate social services and maintain a safe, welcoming library environment.

Increasingly, the library is being utilized as a service center to access system supports beyond traditional library functions.

The library is a natural destination for vulnerable populations, including unhoused patrons, patrons with substance use disorder, and are experiencing other forms of crisis whose needs go beyond the traditional library's worker skill set.

The library deescalation team is staffed with a social worker to help with patron support and a security personnel who's trained in de-escalation and responsible to assist staff in working with those techniques to keep everyone accessing the library safely.

Since uh let's see, I got off track.

We're gonna go to the next one.

Come back.

Since launching, uh the team has supported 719 patron interactions, uh achieved a 24% referral rate to services, meet 76% of patron needs on site.

So for awareness, the top uh areas for service include housing, behavioral health, shelter access, employment, and family support.

So I think importantly, again, to know this is another area where hope is available to do some of those referrals if needed.

Um, and then just for awareness, too, as you're looking at these definitions, uh, referrals are when a patron is connected to a third-party service, and support or consult is when the patron actually receives service directly from the library's social worker.

Let's see.

Here in the uh in the lessons and evolution, staff report improved morale and confidence in managing challenging interactions.

Our social worker has been able to connect patrons to life-saving resources through coordination with Tacoma's vast support community.

The patron-led nature of services sets the work apart, allowing social services to be administered through the lens of client autonomy and self-determination, which is not typical of social work environments.

Um, just for council's awareness, limitations include an inability to address issues that may arise after hours, including property vandalism and overnight camping, as well as other illegal activities that may occur on library property.

At current staffing and resource levels, the program is challenged to adequately address the needs of unaccompanied youth and high need individuals with co-occurring disorders.

These patrons tend to absorb much of the available time and resource for that de-escalation team.

So, Mayor, this presentation was meant to provide counsel and an overview of the history of our approach to the alternate response program as well as an understanding of our current capacity and investment and an understanding of how the approach has shifted as we've uh learned and evolved.

Um, that concludes my presentation, and I'm happy to take any questions.

And as I said, I have a whole team behind me.

Should there be something I can't answer?

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Deputy City Manager.

Are there are any council questions?

Council Member Scott.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, thank you, Alison.

And sorry, let me get to have okay questions.

Um, so as far as for the HOPE team, uh, we'll start there.

Is the plan still to get to, like, is that the well, you know, excuse the button, but is that the hope to still get to like eight staff members or um have we found that there's another number we should be look work looking toward and um yes.

Uh Councilmember Scott, thank you for the question.

I think that um, frankly, the staffing has been a challenge for the team in terms of being able to find um to find adequate staff, right?

So that's the role that was never filled.

Um, I was actually a uh nurse practitioner, and frankly it's because um the environment in which they have to operate with this team as well as just what the city is able to compensate an individual for, um, there is not been reachable for us.

So I think um frankly, if you were to ask the hope team and Alicia, you can throw something at me if this is not correct, but if you were asked to if you were to ask the hope team, I think the the goal and hope is still to get to um would actually be to get to a model that allows for 24-7 response, but that's a significant financial investment over what we're currently able to do.

Um, and so looking at the annual program costs um being initially being 825 and then now being 1.3, is that what is the what accounts for that difference?

Yeah, we can follow up with specific details, council member Scott, but the primary driver is personal costs.

Um, and then looking at the referrals.

So, what does a, and you said that that can come from like a community member or a provider, but what do those referrals look like?

Is that just like a um there's a person that is having some behavioral health crisis, and so we're gonna connect you with the hope team.

Is there are they is it we are connecting you because we know the hope team has this specific connection?

Like what's kind of the impetus for somebody to I think it can be a little bit of both of those, Councilmember Scott, to be very honest with you.

The ones I'm most familiar with are ones that would occur through the heel team, right?

Which are somebody who is experiencing uh some level of behavioral health crisis that doesn't allow them really probably to have conversation around connecting to shelter or other services, right?

So most of the time um I'm guessing the referrals come because uh somebody needs stabilization or uh interaction prior to some other service being delivered.

Got it.

And so a referral is like it's somebody seeing somebody in need and and making that call.

It's not like, oh, I I came across this person, and here's a card for Alicia and call, you know.

Yeah, that so the hope team cannot do, they don't do we can't do direct dispatch, so I couldn't pick up the phone and call 911 and say I'm requesting hope to come out.

What would happen is I would describe what happened is happening in the issue or engagement, and then hope may be dispatched if they're available in the case of referral.

I believe it's usually um uh a later follow-up issue that happens with hope, right?

So that uh let's say you have a uh family member or community member that you're interacting with that you believe would benefit from interaction with hope, that's something that you could uh provide information about, and then hope can make that connection.

Um Alicia sounds like she wants to correct me a little bit, Councilmember Scott.

So I'm gonna ask her to come on up.

Hello, council members.

Um again, my name is Alicia and I oversee the Hope program.

Uh so referrals can come from community providers as well as um through the 911 system.

So traditional first responders, if they're on scene and we're unavailable, they can send us a referral.

If a community provider or uh community member that maybe works at a community agency sees somebody that they think might benefit, then they um will find a way to contact us, whether that's calling through the 9-1 system, or um, we do have a behavioral health case manager on the team, and so sometimes people have interacted with her, and so they will reach directly back out to her to make a referral request for themselves or for somebody else, so that we can re-engage.

So if it's not an immediate behavioral health crisis, then sometimes we will receive referrals that way.

Okay, awesome.

Thank you.

Um, double check.

I feel like I had one more question written down here.

Um, and on the Hill team, so obviously shelter and permanent housing are key and limited.

Um, are there other limitations that are being that are there other resources that are limited or unavailable that are playing into like any of like heel's ability to do the work at their fullest capacity?

Yeah, I think the one that heel would most directly call out would be storage of personal belongings.

So oftentimes we um, as you all know, we do provide storage at the stability site, however, um if you know where the stability site is and you know our system, it can be difficult to reaccess those belongings, right?

And then oftentimes shelters have restrictions on how many belongings you can bring with you just for availability of space, right?

So that is probably the number one um issue or item that I would say heel would tell you is a barrier, so not that there aren't probably others that I would hire.

There is no shortage of them, but um, but that that's good, that gives helpful context because obviously, like the things that we're doing to try to get more housing and more shelter is one thing, but if there are other things that we can be looking at that would um that we either need to be considering that have budget things, or if it's just about connecting with a different community partner or or things like that.

Like, so that's just very helpful.

Thank you, and thank you, Mayor, for the time.

Thank you, Councilmember Walker.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, thank you, Elison, and to all of the team members who are here.

Um I really appreciate that we get this this presentation regularly.

I think it's so important.

All of these are so important, but foundational programs for our city, and having being here having the public be able to listen in, I think it's really important.

Um slide seven, and this matches all of them, and thank you for that consistency.

It really helped me read through them.

The annual program costs, um, and so I have this question on all of them.

The initial number versus the current number is initial the first year, and now it's costing more, or is initial a startup cost, and we anticipated that being different.

Um, so most in most cases, initials reflective of both startup costs and actual operation for that beginning period of time, council members.

So, um, and and um again, most of the change in any uh of the program would be related to uh increase in personnel costs.

So, for example, on hope, it is costing us more to run the program than we initially thought it would, but we have less staff.

So it's the staff is or labor costs are just more expensive.

Yes, okay.

And is that consistent throughout that um for the other two teams, it's are a little bit different.

Sorry, for both HEAL and CSOs, it's a little bit different, council member heel um exponentially frankly increased our staffing.

So, what you see related to that is the increase from one FTE to eight FTE, right?

Um, with uh the CSOs, the actual initial cost is lower uh than the current cost, I believe.

Yeah, 2.2 and 1.2.

Yeah, okay, and that's just reflective of this.

Yeah, that's reflective of our stopping model.

So that's really helpful, and I'm wondering if we might have um when we get to budgeting time that we might have like a better breakdown a little bit more.

I think that would be really helpful because obviously we're always trying to save costs, but we're also trying to increase the amount of services we provide the community in the right areas, and so I think understanding that um I I don't think I'm alone on this diocese saying we want to fund all of these things.

They're all really important.

Um, as I said at the beginning, um, but understanding how we make that happen to the best extent possible is really important.

So I don't know if that's part of a larger budget conversation or if there's another one of these before we get to budget that we could just maybe include that.

We can do either that is preferable for you, council members.

So and I've got a long bolted list of what is in those costs, but I don't want to sit here and read them out.

Thank you.

We can provide one-on-one briefings or um do another uh update for you all, whatever makes sense.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Thank you for all the information and all the great work.

Thank you, Councilmember Palmer.

Thank you.

Uh Ditto to Councilmember Walker.

Councilmember Walker said, um, do we have there's a team called HOT still, right?

Uh HOT, which was the homeless outreach team was the early version of HEAL, right?

So it was actually the police portion of the response to uh to homelessness, and I believe police does still refer to their officers that are assigned to the heel team as homeless outreach team officers or hot team officers.

I know I've still maybe seen that on a line item or something.

Just curious, thanks for that.

Um can you help me understand what or what the process is, like maybe the what the cost might be to get um hope have to have that BHA licensure?

Um that's actually gonna be a question Alicia can best respond to because she is the technical expert on our BHA licensure.

Hello, council, thank you for your question, Councilmember or sorry, Palmer.

So the cost for that is a little bit over $1,300.

Um, it would require the so that that is the expense of just the license, however, it requires policy and procedure that aligns with Department of Health, and then it requires an assessment for the Department of Health to come and see what our processes is, make sure that staffing have all of the educational and or experiential requirements that they need, and then um it requires specific supervision.

And then how long is that process, do you know?

Uh typically it can take about six months.

Uh Department of Health has also been experiencing some slowdown times with licensure things.

So uh I know that it's taking longer for people to get independent licenses, so that also means it's taking longer for people to come out and do the assessments required.

So I don't know exactly how long, however, I can find out for you.

Okay, just curious.

Ballpark's good.

Um, and then I'm guessing that that will allow this program to be uh to be open for more maybe grants or that sort of thing.

So becoming a behavioral health agency would do a couple things.

It would allow for us to bill for the services that we're providing through Medicaid Medicare, as well as um being eligible for some grant funding and other funding that the state provides through the Washington State Healthcare Authority for endorsement of these types of teams, which the legislature made uh independent from traditional crisis teams a couple years ago, what's what's okay?

Sorry.

So I'm trying to understand that that's on the docket.

That's a plan, planned VHA licensure.

Does that is there uh something in the way of that right now?

So that is something that I'm been working on.

Um we had a transition where we had two program managers, now I'm overseeing the program, and because we also had a loss of a staff, staffing constraints have impacted.

So I'm I'm responding in the field in addition to doing this, um, and once we're able to bill for services, then we that that's another component.

So there's just a few steps that have to happen.

Okay.

I just want to make sure we're supporting those steps happening.

Um another question, I don't know if you have the answer right now, but I am curious as far as like how many uh folks are are referred.

I think you're done.

Thank you.

Let me see.

I think you're done.

We'll see.

Um referred from Hill to Hope.

Yeah, it's off the top of my head I don't have it, but I'm sure we can follow up with you, Councilmember.

That'd be great.

Um I'm hoping the HEAL folks can talk a little too because there that's quite a big difference in the numbers, right?

As far as like contacts and services, and then those placed in shelters, and I'm I'm guessing that there's reasons for that, if they could speak to why we're at 850 folks placed in shelters.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I can have uh Javon Carlyle, who's the Hill team manager come on up.

But um, primarily council member Palmer, uh, it is going to be both availability of shelter, right?

So uh when somebody says yes, I'm interested, uh we don't necessarily have available shelter for them, or type of shelter that's going to be something they want to go into, right?

So um they may say, I'm willing to go to the stability site, but not anywhere else, for example.

So I don't know if you have extra to add.

Um, yes, not too much to expand on that.

Uh deputy city manager Alison Griffiths hit that on the head in terms of sometimes the uh issues that uh perceive that are lack of available housing or not necessarily lack of available shelter or temporary shelter, but the uh type of shelter individuals are looking for.

Um, we do have a lot of individuals that are more willing to accept services for non-congregate shelters, and sometimes those are very limited in regards to or in comparison to congregate shelters throughout the city of Tacoma.

Thank you.

Um that's what I thought.

I I would love if we could be keeping track of that, you know, as far as like because there's no number here representing that group of uh folks of who are actually interested, but we can't serve.

That is a number that we regularly track council member.

It's available both on our dashboard and is included in the city manager's weekly report.

We do let you know that.

Thank you for that.

Um, and then sorry, I'm taking up all the time.

Um for the CSO services, it feels like there's an opportunity there for, and maybe maybe there is, and it's just not showing on this one slide uh for more um interaction with like youth and uh maybe follow-up services as far as like hey, this kid needs to be checked in on or what benefit from being checked in on.

Um I don't know if that's kind of in the purview of the CSO service.

Yeah, Assistant Chief Lane, I don't know if you want to talk at all about kind of how or what might happen in terms of uh additional referral or follow-up.

Yeah, any time we talk about youth and further youth engagement, I think that we're extremely receptive to that idea and that concept.

Uh it hasn't come up recently.

I know that there'd be some contractual labor issues possibly that we might have to explore.

Um, but something like that is a is a possibility.

Okay, and then maybe you'll answer this as well.

Um, what is the main difference between CSOs and CLOs?

Yeah, a CSO community service officer is a non-commissioned unarmed employee, essentially.

And uh their specific assignment is to go to uh calls in which they're uh low no no violence uh with no suspect on scene, oftentimes property calls, sometimes in which they could be taken over the phone.

A community liaison officer started out live as a commissioned police officer, and they put a request for assignment to go over to our community policing division.

They retain their commission, they're a certified peace officer, they have full arrest authorities, and those community liaison officers, they work hand in hand with our different community groups and address concerns uh throughout the the neighborhoods, whether it be blight or uh unhoused uh populations that are um cause concern for the for the residents themselves.

So the community liaison officers, um, I guess you could describe it as a CSO on on steroids, uh, they can do it all.

Okay, and they're um assigned to a like a whole district, or what is like the area that's right?

Right now, currently our community policing is divided into north and south.

Okay.

Um so we have community liaison officers that are assigned to work the north in Tacoma, and we have community liaison officers assigned to work the South Ecoma.

Previous staffing allowed us to divide their work assignments into four different sectors.

That's how we divide the city up within the police department.

We previously had 16 community liaison officers, we now have eight community liaison officers.

But they are tasked with finding long-term solutions to ongoing uh neighborhood concerns.

They're worth their weight in gold.

Thank you.

I think those are my questions.

As you can tell, I'm very interested in this.

And probably benefit from follow-up conversations, but thanks for all the information.

Absolutely.

Thank you, Councilman.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Thank you, Alice for presentation.

Um, you know, they're all like lined up at the same time.

I I do really like the operating reality diagram versus the Swiss cheese diagram.

Um, I think that there was a sorry I'll get close to the microphone so people can actually hear what I'm saying.

I think there was a sense when I and Councilor Walker and I've been here for quite a while, right?

When we first started talking about these conversations and setting up alternative response back in 2021, was that it would be kind of a pure alternative response.

So I call in and say, I don't want the police, I want the heel team, or I don't want the police, I want the hope team, or I want fired, but I don't want, you know, there was an idea that we'd have a kind of a lac heart system for the public to choose who showed up when I think that's been borne out to not really be effective often because they do our braided together.

So I do really like the model here that kind of lays out how they do function together.

Um, and that uh we can't really kind of see them as separate entities, but part of a kind of a system that functions together.

So whoever put together the operating reality diagram, I thought that was really good.

My only quibble would be that I feel like the heel team also probably interacts with the fire department too, yet it's off center, and I know we can't put all the buckets in the same spot, but that was just one question as looking at the diagram.

I thought it looked really good.

Okay.

So please give my compliments who ever put that together.

Um, the next one, the service model cost question.

I did notice that the 311 is the only way to get access to heal teams.

So if someone calls 911 about an encampment and says there's people sleeping outside of my house and call 911, how is that rerouted?

Is that the I believe most of the time the dispatcher will actually ask them to call 311 and report the encampment location as long as there's nothing they're reporting that is an immediate life safety issue.

Yeah.

Okay.

I just uh, you know, there when we get to the idea of there's no wrong door, right?

I know a lot of people call 911 for all sorts of reasons, both emergency and not emergency, and so just making sure that those get channeled to the right spot.

I thought that was I just want to make sure I ask that question.

Um the hope team, I am interested in the uh BHA licensure.

I know that's a real challenge, it takes a lot of work.

I guess the other question, the the missing piece here is we do need to have a supervisor, a medical professional that signs off on all of that stuff, correct?

Uh yes, and I believe Alicia would be our clinical supervisor for the BHA.

So we don't need an MD or uh PHA to do something like that.

No.

Alicia can come and tell you the particulars.

Thank you for your question, Councilmember Heinz.

So for the behavior health agency licensure, the only time we would need a medical provider is if we're providing substance use services such as um or map treatment.

If we're not providing those services, then I would be the one that provides clinical supervision for the staff that fall under the BHA.

So is there going through their coding and billing services to meet the Medicare Medicaid codes, you would be the one who could sign off on all those things?

So all of services would fall under my license.

Gotcha.

Okay.

That's good to know.

Because I knew that was always a kind of a broader issue when you think about service providers that are trying to do direct billing to Medicare and Medicaid, was having someone who does supervision.

Um that would be well, that's very interesting to think about that.

I um while I am excited about that, I also do recognize that Medicaid uh has taken a lot of hits recently, and so there's a there is a challenge around how do we fund that as we ship our model to billing for services.

I think there's also a challenge around, at least when I talk to other cities about doing that, it does shift some of the client care to actually trying to make sure billing codes for certain things versus kind of the direct person to person connection.

So there's a whole layer, and probably even more um someone on the back end who's coding all that stuff to make sure it lines up correctly.

I would I would love to chat more about what that looks like because I do feel like it's it's a lot more complex.

There's a lot of infrastructure that has to be built around something like that.

But it can be a great way to get Medicaid to pay for the services we're already providing.

Yeah, and you're correct, Councilmember, that there is uh significant administrative pieces that would need to be put in place uh for that as well.

School uh great.

Um so those are my questions about hope team.

I you know, I again very interested to see what we can do to try to expand the amount of services that we provide and what time frame we do.

You know, emerge emergencies don't happen during the day between a certain set of hours.

So I think there's a good uh a good conversation around that.

I would really be interested to know kind of what the price points are.

I hate to say it like that, but just the idea of you know, um, two more staff means this, three more staff means this.

In some cases, just adding two more people is not worth it because you need to add at least four, right?

So I think that would be a conversation to be had in the budget process I'd be looking for is kind of what can what is each cost look at.

Um, the heel team program, uh heel team, thank you very much.

I do think it's I want to just point out that when I started here way back when we had one member of the heel team, and now we have eight doing outreach and working in the community.

I think that's really important, um, and has been really good.

Uh to Councilmember Palmer's question about the number of people asking for shelter and services.

I think that's a broader question we as a council should have because there's a conversation of what is it that I want versus what it will adequately meet my needs, that is probably a broader conversation for us as a council to have when we start thinking about finding decisions for what types of services and shelter we're gonna be providing for folks uh more broadly.

So I think that is uh an ongoing question.

Sorry, Allison, I'm not I'm making comments and not asking you direct questions.

How about uh and then the CSO structure, I think that's great.

Um would love to see how we can better utilize that and fit that in there.

Um how it makes the most sense.

I mean, our initial thought at the very beginning when we we launched this was we would take some of the low acuity calls off of the books of the police department and to be able to redeploy that.

Um is that are we seeing that or is it are we seeing that it's still requiring police response from them in the delegated out?

So we're not seeing a direct this level of calls or going to this position to this group versus going through the police department.

The calls still do need to be reviewed by a sergeant uh council members, so they're not we're not reducing that management um portion of the police department's role.

I would say probably we're the most benefit from the CSO program that's been reflected by the public is is the ability to follow up on things that frankly our police officers probably do not have the time to follow up on, right?

So those again, those not in progress.

Motor vehicle theft reports is probably the biggest example we get is that hey, somebody actually came out, they took my report, they talked to me about what was going on, right?

So feeling very positive about those things.

So as you'll see, they're handling only about 9.2 calls a day, so in terms of actually balancing uh load off of our working police officers is a little bit lower than we anticipated.

Yeah, I guess I mean, if we're thinking about budget conversation going forward, I'd really want to know how we could better utilize those folks if we start thinking about investing more money into it.

Because if they're just a night if the call volume is a point, I would really want us to be thinking about can we expand the amount of work that they're able to take on for the value proposition for further investment, or is or we kind of this is where we're at, is a question I have.

Uh last, I just say I'm very happy about the library program.

Um it was something we talked about way back when I was on the library board about how do we, if people are congregating inside the library, inside the library, um, that we want to make sure we're getting services and shelter or services and support for them, the ones that are inside.

Uh, I think it's really important, and I've been very impressed with the work so far.

And I will tell that to the library before we run there tomorrow.

Uh thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Those are all my, I didn't think I asked any questions.

Those are all my comments.

Thank you, Councilman Rhines.

Council Mr.

Sidelga.

Uh thank you, Mayor.

Uh I want to start off uh by saying, you know, uh I too prefer the second diagram from the first diagram.

Well stop showing the Swiss cheese.

How about that?

What I was gonna say is the reason I like seeing both is it's it's a aspect of of this presentation.

I actually like.

It it talks about, you know, in every one of these, uh, not only go did you go through the history, we talked about what we have learned, what we've changed and what we've improved.

So in that world, I think it's important that you show both to say, you know, this is how we kind of looked at it, but now we know it's more like this.

And I think that's a an important theme.

You can still get rid of it, but uh I do appreciate that that part.

Um I have a question you may not know the answer to.

Um how many other municipalities have programs like this?

Um it depends on the number what portion of the programming we're talking about, council member, but I do have a rather lengthy uh document with me today, just talking about kind of the number of options.

Um I did have our uh continuous improvement folks pull a couple of those things.

So when we look at hope, um they were able to pull one, two, three, four options uh that other municipalities have in.

Other municipalities in our area or just in Washington.

So just generally in the nation.

In the nation.

Yeah, we looked at one model that's in Seattle outside, and one that's in Olympia for hope.

So those those two heel, uh, we found one comparable in Multnomah County, um, and one in Seattle.

Um, and then looking at CSO comparables, uh, looking, and again, when we say comparables, council member, we there are details in each of these programs, right?

Um, but uh um Seattle PD does have community service officers, and then Portland PD has public safety support specialists.

So not saying that's an exhaustive list, but just to give you some some examples.

But chances are, I mean, that actually helps me understand that we're we're relatively exceptional in our area and for our size, quite frankly.

Yes, in having relatively, you know, pretty ubiquitous um alternative response programs that we've stood up in less than a decade or just about half a decade or so.

About half a decade.

Um which you know, I think it's a is a point to celebrate in some way and understand that we're still kind of moving through this.

Um also it is a point that I want to make in the lack of investment that many of our neighbors are making in a lot of these services.

And it goes back to, for example, you know, yes, I would love to know, you know, how many direct heel placements are being made into shelter versus not shelter and for the types of shelter available, but I know in my work in the URA we were also generally the only option for shelters in our region.

And another aspect to actually have all of this be more uh effective is to also advocate on a state and regional basis to have more options open, uh, especially for for things like homeless services.

You know, I'm gonna make a a relatively unpopular um statement with our neighbors, but I have in the URA made comments and let people know that, you know.

I know because I've heard this in my community, how unfair it feels like uh when our neighbors' solutions to a lot of these issues is to send them to Tacoma because we will actually take care of them.

I'm proud of the work that our staff does because we do.

Um, but we also have to recognize, you know, when we're better at these solutions, other people's solutions are to just send them to us, and we have no extra revenue other than our own to cover that.

Um so having said that on CSOs, you know, um, I think I got the first briefing on this when I was first appointed, and I think at that point, and it's a point I kind of want to make, um, you know, at that point it looked like we we really had no pathway to uh reducing the shortage of of police officers, uh patrol officers, especially.

And in that world, I think in that first set, we had better numbers in terms of ours uh avoided by patrol or patrol doing additional ones.

So um uh in one sense, I I you know um Councilmember Heinz said, you know, does the call volume support it?

Uh I would love to know is it really a drop in call volume, or is it an increase in our capacity for patrol to take some of these on, and so then there was a less need?

Because that would be an important thing to know, because if that's true, then I am more okay with keeping the size where it is right now.

Does that make sense?

Um because we are down to single digits if I recall uh shortage versus budget.

Yeah, I couldn't tell you the exact number off the top, council member, but you're correct.

Um but having said that, some of the, you know, a lot of these call types that CSOs do um uh respond to are you know the lower level issues that have really impactful destabilizing um uh effects on people's lives, you know.

I came out to go to the go to work and my car isn't there anymore, right?

I came home from work and there's a broken window and someone's burglarized my house.

They're not here right now.

I need someone to show up, and there was a time when we didn't have enough patrol officers to show up for those because I recall a time when people and even recently people have been so impressed.

Oh, someone from the police actually showed up.

So CSO's helped in perceived responsiveness, and I do think there's value there, uh, but I do appreciate um taking a look at this and understanding hey, in today's world, where we have gotten what we asked for in terms of a $50,000 signing bonus to have um uh experienced officers come in.

You know, I think there's there's actually uh maybe a beneficial kind of uh uh implication of that, which is we we've actually had better response.

Yep.

And we can follow up with you, council member, on kind of what our staffing levels have looked like over and compared to calls.

Thank you.

Uh and if I recall correctly on your on your history, um part of the money that we got to stand up the CSO team came from Marilyn Strickland's office, correct?

Uh, from a federal grant.

Yes.

Um, and to uh council member Palmer's point, we also uh with with youth intervention, I think we also have an opportunity through the Brave programming um to also affect that.

And I think you are on the CVS um committee, and I think you get more uh um background on that.

That might be also a place to look at how how we can do that a little bit more.

Uh, not to say that it can't be in CSO, but I think there is a limit in the number like what the overall uh responsibility matrix is, especially since it has to be through um through dispatch.

Um for heel team, I'm gonna ask a really important question.

Does heel team do encampment removals?

He'll team does do well heel provides the service instead of the actual removal itself.

Yes.

So they will go out and will do service contact.

There are they also actually removing people.

They do not perform the removal.

Um we have uh contracted work for removal for litter and debris.

And of course, as you know, they place individuals uh in service if they if we have more when there is service available generally only in our jurisdiction, yes.

I'm editorializing for myself, you don't always have to create.

Um got you, council member.

What is an example of a non-congregate phone um shelter?

Non congregate would be our stability site where they have options to go into.

We generally call them micro shelters, council member.

So our stability site, any of our uh Thames 3 location out at six and orchard, um, those kinds of things.

So places where folks can actually close a door and be in their own unit.

Okay, I just wanted to make sure people understood what that meant.

So the tiny home villages is what a lot of people refer to them as.

Um, and heel is uh Monday through Friday?

Heel is Monday through Friday.

Okay, no weekends, no evenings, no weekends or evenings at this point.

Is there an opportunity for, is there any recommendation to expand beyond that, or do we still think that that's generally good for the request to come in?

Um because they have uh operated in conjunction with the police department to provide security um in certain encampment locations.

We've generally been um constrained by when we have police availability to do those functions, council member.

Um we've looked at alternate uh uh schedules at periods of time for heal, but I don't know that um at our current pace that that's currently under consideration for the team.

Um, try to make it a little faster over here.

Uh hope team, what are the constra uh that's seven days a week day shift is what you answered.

Um I'm gonna go back to the referrals question.

Um kind of like heal, because I I understand that a little bit more, you know, involved in in homeless service research here.

Um, what are the constraints in our ability to you know place people or refer to them based on basically factors outside of our control?

Yeah.

I'm gonna ask Alicia to come back up because she's gonna be able to most acutely talk about council member um where they're actually providing referral at this point in time.

We did have a couple of closures uh last year that restricted some of our abilities.

So Alicia can tell you what's online currently.

Thank you, Councilmember Sadalgay, for your question.

So when we refer to when we are creating referrals for people, we look at uh wherever they are willing to go.

So sometimes people have family out of state.

So we will work with community service providers and their family to get them to the state that they are wanting to go to.

Um depending on uh I think the biggest resource would be Pierce County does not have a co-occurring um facility, so people who are experiencing mental health and or subs and substance use, there's not one place for them to go to receive services.

So we will coordinate often with Sound Behavioral Health Hospital, and that's in Thurston County, so we will coordinate transportation to get Thurston County.

Thurston County.

So we will coordinate transportation to get someone there if they need that level of service.

Was there a co- you called it a co-occurring facility or facility that does both substance abuse and mental health disorder treatment?

There hasn't been one in Pierce County in quite so.

So we've never had one here.

I believe we did, but it's been I think it's a long time since we've had one.

Yeah.

Okay.

Um we also do not have currently there are no active crisis stabilization facilities in Pierce County, and that's been since March of 2024, so almost two years or over two years now.

And so if somebody needs short-term crisis stabilization services, our program works with them to try and stabilize them in the home using natural resources, so the people, friends, family getting them connected to those outpatient service providers as quickly as we can uh or um is there any crisis stabilization service facility anywhere close to us, or they're just not around anymore?

There are some in so King County has the has a crisis stabilization facility, so we would have to coordinate transportation.

I believe Thurston Mason also has one.

There's just not one anywhere.

There's not one in Pierce anymore, relatively recently.

Yeah, in the last two years.

So we work with Well Found because they are um inpatient hospitalization, so they uh have different criteria and offer a longer stay, and what that looks like for admission is different.

That is one service provider we will work with.

And then whatever other resources a person needs, whether that's domestic violence services, sexual assault, or housing through like an adult family home or school nursing facility.

Do we track the type of referrals we would like to make, but is or is not available?

It seems like that seems to be a way to potentially have a bigger impact, for example.

I mean, if Pierce, from what I understand, maybe I might be wrong, the way um funding works is the state gives counties money for things like substance abuse and some um mental health um uh dollars and the county is generally responsible for a lot of that and I could see advocacy from us on a county level potentially or state level on helping add capacity in that level I'm trying to understand ways that we can kind of maximize um your work and try to understand that same kind of question that we asked heel team if we had this would more people take advantage of it right so our program tracks where we send people for referrals and including the the county that we send them to so that we can see that we're sending people outside of Pierce County for that specific resource and then we will also document what what we are lacking in the narrative I would love to see what's lacking is really that question that I'm trying to understand because potentially it's something we can add to our federal um state advocacy kind of um memos we can say hey we have this many people that we could help more right um I would love to know if we had a a crisis stabilization um facility like the one that closed down how many people have we not helped because it's no longer around and kind of understand why did that happen with our same counterparts on that higher level um you know my theme on this is it can't you know we've done a lot to add a lot of these teams I want to make them successful but success isn't just ours alone in in terms of funding you know we have partners we have the county we have uh neighboring jurisdictions kind of some of the stuff we're doing with the URA to try to get them to uh provide some service I would love to also have that conversation in terms of what are other services available that can make our teams because we've invested in them successful for those residents that are here in our city um so any information around that over time that we could do as as a body for advocacy I think would be really helpful.

Absolutely for the sake of time I will leave it at that thank you.

Thank you councilmember thank you Councilmember Scott.

Thank you again mayor uh I had another question that came up I forgot to ask earlier does the hope team have the ability to do like proactive outreach or is it all like limited to what is like being dispatched or a referral.

You want to go ahead and answer that one Alicia shouldn't have you said I know I was almost gonna say you should say but that but you were sitting down before I could that's okay thank you Councilmember Scott for your question.

So hope does provide preventative outreach so we go out into the community and we also engage in community events so that people know how to contact us and um can ask us questions and for resources outside of just engaging with us when they're in immediate crisis.

Thanks there ever like a time where you're out and about and you see somebody in crisis are you able to stop then or would you guys would you if you are seeing that would you all like have to call you know 911 first and be like dispatched through them or could you step in?

So hope has the ability if they're in the community and they see somebody experiencing crisis to put themselves onto a service call.

And so that they would radio into communications and let communications know where they are and um that they're going in on on a call.

Okay.

And I know oftentimes like you know if there's a situation for fire there's times they have to wait for police to show up to kind of make sure that it's safe for them to go into the scene is that like a similar thing for you all like if you see somebody who's in crisis are you able to uh just immediately like put in that say you're on a call and and go to work or uh is there some level of like I we have to wait for police to show up kind of be around and make sure that this isn't going to turn into a situation where we're unsafe and like are you able to do you have to wait or do you can you just go ahead?

So if we are in the community and we see somebody, a great example would be um somebody was near this building last week, and so the team dispatched out to see them.

And if we don't see any immediate safety concerns, they will sell that they will put themselves on a call or um and then if things change, we are volunteering consent-based service, so then we will remove ourselves from the situation and and coordinate with traditional first responders if needed.

However, we we will attempt to engage with that person prior to escalating if it's not necessary.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilman.

Thank you.

And I want to conclude by saying that I I too am very appreciative of the uh just the context of these programs, um, whether the bubble versus cheese or whatever you want to call it, maybe maybe you need another food.

Uh but uh I think it's interesting because I remember when this conversation first started uh 10 or so years ago, when in some ways it's almost like we've gone full circle.

When it when it was the hot team, and the entire idea of this was a supplemental, a yes and let's have law enforcement respond to these activities and have a specialist, and then um the circumstances then led to that a la carte uh in lieu of model, where uh the intention was to have these services in lieu of armed responders, and then the reality what kind of brings this forward is that it's community members as well as providers who do want law enforcement and and other first responders present for them to feel safe and to make sure that the people they're taking care of feel safe too.

So I do appreciate this attention of aligning program with reality.

So a question and uh more of a request, actually.

So my question is um, how does heel or hope or any of the other programs determine where someone comes from?

So they encounter someone in the field, either make a referral or someone makes a request of them, whatever.

How do they determine if they're from Tacoma or if they're from another outlying city to council member uh members Sedalgay's question?

Yeah, uh thank you, Mayor, for that question.

So heel, as part of our metrics and tracking, does ask the question about where um somebody considers themselves to be from.

However, for service delivery, if you spent one night here in Tacoma, we do consider you a Tacoma resident because frankly uh they are um if someone is needing service on our streets, then uh whether we provide them that service in the form of shelter or something else, there's a likelihood that we're going to have to provide some level of service to.

Sure.

And the context for my question is the unified regional approach because two of the three major asks that Tacoma and our participating neighbors are going to be asking is specifically getting everyone on board with HIMAS, so there's a common data system and everyone on board with uh with point of entry, so that we we don't simply know where people are coming from, but we we also know where their case is living, what what stage they're at so that we don't duplicate so people get the real help they need.

And also, frankly, from a again to that same point to a fairness perspective, we're making sure that we're not just simply bearing the burden of an entire region's problem, right?

We all need to work on this together, and data is a really important part of that.

So that's good to hear.

Yes, absolutely, councilmember, and I believe that Tony's working with the team in terms of uh coordinated entry and HIMAS access uh at the moment.

So, yes, we'll be we'll be better equipped if and when uh the URA is up and doing those things.

Sure, and then lastly, more of a request that's open-ended to the city manager's office, and that's in the context of the last presentation about the work plan, road to recovery, and the budget, and that is um this is just the first of many broken record statements I'm gonna make this entire thing, which is that the council's strategic plan, the city manager's work plan, and the budget should all be the same thing, basically.

And so my request is that as we flesh out these conversations about these different programs in departments.

Uh, it is absolutely important that we look at staffing and we look at service delivery.

Uh but it's also equally important that we look at scope, especially when we understand that uh the scope of programs and the reality of these programs has changed from the initial onset when we first designed some of these programs as something in lieu versus something complementary, um, especially in the context of the budget.

Uh my request is basically just let's not leave things unquestioned.

Let's not make this simply about do we resource this more this one thing more or less, but uh let's talk a little bit more about in the context of the work plan.

How do things make sense and just leave no stone unturned even at the largest level.

That that'd be something I think we could all benefit from and just ensuring there's alignment that people get the help they need as best they can.

Great.

Thank you, Mayor.

Absolutely.

Thank you, Alison.

Any other council questions or comments?

Seeing none, we're moving on to our third briefing item, which is the 2026 amendment to the one Tacoma comprehensive plan and land use regulatory code with the presentation for our preparation for our public hearing.

I'm gonna call on Steve Akison, interim assistant division manager for planning development services.

That's a mouthful.

Welcome, Steve.

Great.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

Uh Mayor Ibsen, members of the City Council, I'm Stephen Atkinson, planning and development services.

And as we bring up the PowerPoint presentation, I'll just uh let the council know this is a briefing on the planning commission's recommendations on our amendments to the land use regulatory code for 2026 in preparation for the public hearing this evening.

Um I intend to go through just a little bit of context uh for the annual amendment process, um, provide a briefing of each of the applications and then uh finish the presentation uh with the upcoming next steps and schedule.

Um this first slide will be a little bit of kind of the background and context for the work that we do through the annual code development process, but generally uh the genesis for this slide is um the uh state growth management act, which establishes uh a lot of the steps that occur through the planning and development process, um, first of which is uh under the State Growth Management Act to establish a uh adopt and maintain a city comprehensive plan which establishes how we intend to accommodate growth and development within the city of Tacoma, and appropriate scheme for how we allow different types of land uses within the city, and to provide services to that growth, both in population and jobs.

Uh the second step, uh the state requires that we develop a land use and regulatory code.

Um, often we call that we talk about our zoning districts and the land use regulations that accompany that.

The intent under state law is that our land use regulations are consistent with and implement the direction that you give us through the comprehensive plan.

The third step in the sequence then is through our permit review.

When we are intaking uh permit applications, our intent is to make sure that new projects and applications are consistent with and apply the standards that the council has established, and then through the construction and development process to ensure that the actual final product uh that is constructed uh matches what was approved uh through the permit application process.

Um, one of the key things to know here is in this uh the sequence of steps.

The first two are subject to city council uh decisions.

So when we adopted the comprehensive plan in 2025, uh the city council adopted that by ordinance, and that is part of why we are coming to the city council for the code uh development amendments that is adopted again by the city council.

And then as we move into steps three and four, uh that is typically more of an administrative process to apply and ensure that new development activity is meeting uh the intent of the decisions that the council has made.

Um our focus through the annual amendment process here is on step two.

Um, and we expect in the coming uh couple of years uh there will be a lot more emphasis on code development in implementing our recently adopted comp plan and some of the new requirements under the state growth management act.

Um so you will see that um as a theme uh in many of the applications that we are currently reviewing.

Uh these are intended uh to address uh consistency with the comp plan, uh consistency with new state laws, and as we had uh briefed the city council earlier this year, um the state has been very active in adopting new requirements uh that affect our local planning and zoning.

Um, and so you will see that as part of the impetus for a number of these uh applications this year.

Um, as part of this code package, there are four applications uh McKinley pre-annexation, uh, which is uh uh annexation that was initiated by the council last year, uh special needs housing and shelters, uh, our annual minor code amendments, and then the fourth application is directly related to uh new state requirements for daycare facilities and uh binding site plans.

We'll talk a little bit more about each of these applications.

Um, first up, uh I want to just make sure we are aware um earlier, I believe this month or in April, the council took action to accept a uh potential annexation in the Fife Heights area of Northeast Tacoma.

So just for clarification, this is not related to that action that the council took.

This is related to an annexation that was initiated in 2025.

Applicants, property owners in the McKinley area of our potential annexation area that you can see here in the map on the right, filed a petition of intent to annex in early 2025.

The city council conducted a public meeting and accepted that applications.

We're now working through the next steps in that annexation process.

One of the important steps is to establish what the zoning will be upon completion of the annexation process.

So when those properties potentially become part of the city of Tacoma, we have zoning and development standards in place to guide how development activity can occur on those properties.

And just to make note, this action will not complete the annexation process.

And an ordinance that will come back to the city council later to finalize and potentially finalize the council's annexation.

Now, kind of zooming in from the big picture to the small kind of focused picture.

This slide shows the specific properties that are under review and consideration, the addresses of these properties.

That have been established.

So the planning commission's role in this process and recommendation is to designate these properties as low-scale residential in the comprehensive plan and to apply the urban residential one zoning district upon completion of the annexation.

In general, as you can see on the map, the surrounding residential properties are all similarly designated as low-scale residential with the same UR1 zoning.

So there's a couple things I want to kind of mention here to be clear on what it is that we're talking about when we talk about special needs housing.

This is a broad term.

Generally, what is being considered here are recommendations about specific types of uses that are residential in nature, but also include licensed medical or clinical facilities on site.

And so some examples of what this could be is things like dementia care, where you have people who are living in a facility, it's a residential use, but they have 24-7 care on site related to either chronic conditions, disabilities, or other health services that are being provided.

This category of housing is under review in part due to recent state legislation as well as a council direction adopted by a resolution to evaluate appropriate siting for these facilities within the city of Tacoma.

In general, I will note on special needs housing.

Throughout all of our higher density residential districts, commercial districts, mixed use centers, downtown, historically in our what was formerly our urban residential zones.

The Planning Commission's recommendations are kind of threefold.

First, this is a use category in our current code that is very duplicative.

So generally we have seven or eight different use categories that all comprise special needs housing.

They're all similarly regulated, and what the commission's recommending is that we combine all of those different terms into one general use category.

The situation that the commission wants to avoid is where we are constantly trying to amend our land use code in order to account for any new state licenses that are established.

And that's a challenge that we've had in the past in trying to keep our codes current with the types of terminology that are being used through state licensing.

Instead, what the commission is recommending is more of an umbrella use classification that does not run the risk of kind of losing consistency with those state licensing requirements as they change over time.

This is an approach that we vetted with uh the state and some local service providers to get feedback as we go through this process.

The second uh change that the commission is recommending is to increase the bed capacity limits in the UR1 and UR2 zones specifically.

Um the former bed capacity was uh six beds for a special needs housing facility in again what was formerly our R1 zone, and 12 within our R2, those today are known as the UR1 and UR2 zones.

So the commission is recommending an increase, and then historically, through a conditional use permit, a provider could exceed those bed capacity limits, and the commission is recommending again that we maintain a conditional use permit to exceed those bed capacity limits, but they are recommending some changes to simplify the conditional use process in that circumstance.

In effect, I think what the commission is recommending are some changes to remove some of the barriers to being able to establish special needs housing facilities throughout the city, to simplify the code and permitting process, and to kind of future-proof the code so that if new state licensing uh types are established in the future, our code is not out of compliance with those state uh licenses.

The second component of this is related to shelters, and um do want to clarify we have uh two types of shelters that are regulated uh in our land use and zoning codes.

Uh, these are referred to as permanent and temporary shelters, and I want to be really clear at the outset about what we mean when we say permanent and temporary.

Um, so sort of two ways to think about this.

Um, permanent and temporary in this case often refer to the structure in our usage.

Um, so a permanent shelter is based on a permanent structure, so one that has a permanent foundation that has sanitary electrical mechanical uh components have been built and approved on that site.

A temporary shelter is a temporary structure, it is not a permanent structure, so you can think of a tent or uh a tiny house as a temporary structure.

The other component of that is a permanent shelter is year-round and provides that service throughout the year.

A temporary shelter typically has a limited duration.

Um, so an example of a temporary shelter would be in the event that there is an inclement weather event that is imminent.

Um, often service providers will try to stand up emergency shelters to ensure the people who may be at risk from that inclement weather have a shelter to go to during that period of time, but the expectation is then the shelter is then taken down after the emergency event.

You can also think about some circumstances where there may be other kinds of natural disasters or other circumstances where there is a need to stand up emergency shelters, but again, they're on a temporary basis for the duration of the event and then taken down.

So in this case, uh, what the commission is recommending is uh first kind of level of changes that are to come into compliance with new state law for permanent shelters.

Uh recent legislation requires that all local jurisdictions allow permanent shelters wherever we allow hotels and motel uses.

Um we're starting to see this as a little bit of a trend in new state requirements that they're starting to say if you already allow housing or if you already allow a hotel or motel, then you have to allow these uses as well in the same way that you allow a hotel.

So the first level of changes that the commission is recommending is really to come into compliance with the state legislation.

For the most part, I'd say 90% all of our zoning districts are already in compliance.

And in some cases, we're already allowing shelters in zones that don't allow hotel or motel.

So on the one hand, one high-level message here is the city has already done a lot of work in the past to create pathways to establish these shelters throughout the city and to allow these shelters, but there are still a few changes that are required for compliance with state law.

The second side of this is pertaining to temporary shelters.

They found it was really difficult and challenging for service providers to locate where our temporary shelter codes are.

So part of this is a recommendation to co-locate our permanent shelter and temporary shelter standards and permit processes and to kind of locate those at a higher level in the code so that they are simply easier to find, locate, and identify what standards you have to meet to establish these shelters.

One of the challenges where we heard feedback from service providers and internal staff is that our current temporary shelter codes had what I refer to as dispersion requirements.

Now, the first thing I've often heard is does that mean stormwater?

No, we're not talking about stormwater dispersion.

This is about and separation standards.

So if you want to establish a shelter, you have to locate a certain distance from another shelter.

So they're recommending simplifying those criteria to make that easier, again, reducing barriers to providing these temporary shelters.

And then second is to extend some of the permit timelines so that when you have a temporary shelter, a single provider or single property could get permitted for up to five years to continue to provide this temporary shelter.

So it would still have to be temporary in nature.

So you could think about this as a maybe a property owner that wants to establish a temporary shelter for an inclement weather event.

After the event occurs, they take the shelter down.

But the next winter, you might reasonably expect another weather event may occur.

So they've already been permitted on that site to reestablish that use.

They don't have to go back through permitting every year and every time they want to establish that temporary shelter.

Now the third application is our minor code amendments.

Um this is generally a package of amendments that are considered non-policy oriented, so non-substantive.

Generally, where we are trying to keep information current, where staff or applicants have identified inconsistencies or errors in our code.

Some of this is based often on feedback that we get from people who are using our code on things that they feel like are not clear, or where we've updated standards and that we've created a potential um conflict somewhere in the code that needs to be addressed.

In the planning commission's recommendations this year, they've grouped uh the minor amendments by different categories that you can see here on the right hand side, and I'll provide some examples on the next slide of what these actually look like in practice.

So the first example here in the top left, related to definitions and terms, is just a simple example where we had a definition that was in our building design standards, and the proposal here is to relocate that definition in the definitions of a blank wall.

So there are circumstances where if you have a blank wall of a certain size, you may have to take steps to either landscape or implement certain standards to break up that blank surface.

The definition is simply being moved to be organized and located with all of our other definitions for our building design standards.

The second example is in our urban residential zoning design standards, and this is related to the kind of conflict that can occur as we update standards over time.

This is related to the applicability of building orientation and parking lot, location standards for pipe stem lots, pipe stem lots is an interesting term, but generally is a circumstance that you may have seen, where someone subdivides their property, the rear half of their yards.

We can think of a circumstance where someone has a large lot or a very deep lot, and what they do is they subdivide the back half and then provide access through the side yard so that a new housing unit can be constructed to the rear of the front facing house.

In the adoption of our new urban residential design and development standards, there were some conflicts in terms of what standards should apply to a pipe stem lot.

So you can imagine there are circumstances where we're saying we want a building to be oriented to the street, we wanted them to have rear access for parking.

When you have a pipe stem lot and a unit to the rear of another unit, some of those provisions don't make sense and can create conflicts in actually being able to accommodate that rear unit.

So again, the intent here is not necessarily substantive policy change, but to be clear about what development standards actually apply to the development of these pipe stem lots.

Under permitted uses and standards, an example here is to modify the use table for the T transitional zoning district.

The T district is considered a commercial district, typically for kind of small box retail, small box commercial uses.

One example you could think of for this, the you know, sort of the intent of this district was you may um take an existing house and convert it over into a business.

So it's sort of a home occupation plus where you can have the signage and make it obvious that this is a commercial establishment.

It can be a little bit more intensive than a home occupation.

Um what was caught here is just over time, these uses have been or this zone allows things like home offices, you can think of a chiropractic office, things like that, but uh did not allow for some kinds of personal services that are often uh neighborhood serving and personal services in the parlance of our zoning code, means things like a beauty salon, uh barber shop, things of that nature that are often sort of neighborhood serving uh small box uh uses.

So the intent here is to modify the T district to allow those kinds of personal services within those zones.

And then finally, again, even with the change in home and Tacoma and the new UR zoning districts, there are some circumstances still throughout the code where we caught uh outdated references to the zones that were replaced, the R1, R2, and R3.

And so these are some minor corrections that we are making to update those references throughout the code.

And then finally, the state legislative code amendments, and again, this addresses two uh state requirements the first related to daycare facilities, and the second related to binding site plans.

The first topic for daycare facilities, again, quick reminder when we talk about daycare, it's not exclusively uh child daycare services, it can be child or adult daycare, and generally providing care for less than 24 hours a day.

This is uh based on new state requirements.

Generally, uh, the state has identified that current demand for daycare is dramatically exceeding the current supply for daycare facilities.

And part of the challenge that the state has identified is many local zoning ordinances are restrictive and not creating the pathways that are needed to meet the demand that we're seeing throughout the region.

Again, at a very high level, the city of Tacoma allows daycare throughout all of our residential mixed-use commercial downtown zoning districts.

Typically some restrictions within our industrial zones.

So, on the one hand, again, uh big part of the story here is about 90% consistent with the state law, but some changes that we have to consider based on these state mandates.

So the commission's recommendations here, the first one that you will see affects primarily our U1 and UR1 and UR2 zones.

In our current zoning, we allow daycare facilities up to 12 enrollees by right.

So you don't need any special permitting conditional use permit for a daycare facility of that size.

To exceed 12 enrollees, you have to go through a conditional use permit process.

Generally, where the state has sort of preempted local regulations is to say we have to allow daycare facilities by right in all of our non-industrial zoning districts.

So that generally means, in our interpretation, without a conditional use permit or those kinds of special permit processes.

So to come into compliance, what the commission is recommending is a removal of that conditional use permit and no limits or caps on enrollment within the UR1 and UR2 zones.

So that would create more capacity.

Again, just for reference, about I'm gonna guess somewhere around 50% of the city is zoned UR1 and UR2, that is our most prominent land use categories.

So that would allow more capacity for these facilities to serve our neighborhoods.

The second change that the commission is recommending is related to our M1 light industrial zone and M2 heavy industrial zone.

These are the only circumstances where the state says that we can prohibit daycare facilities or require a conditional use permit based on the presence of potentially hazardous uses.

The commission recommends modifying our zoning to prohibit daycare facilities within the heavy industrial zone and to require a conditional use in the M1 light industrial so that through that conditional use process we can better vet any potential hazards to the daycare facility and identify potential mechanisms to mitigate those impacts.

Now, again, for the council's awareness, a binding site plan is uh really kind of a uh similar to our unit lot subdivision, which I think you've heard a lot about through uh home and Tacoma.

Uh the general concept here, same as unit lot subdivision, is you have a parent lot, you're looking at our zoning and development standards across the entirety of that parent lot, and then uh showing compliance with that site plan, and then over time you can subdivide property and sell off individual units, showing so that each lot that is created doesn't on its own have to meet all of our design and development standards.

So, again, what is then tracked over time is that those sort of the child lots have restrictions about what they can do on those properties to make sure that in their entirety they still conform to our code.

That same concept is true for a binding site plan, but a binding site plan has been more typical for commercial industrial properties.

It's been more widely used in circumstances where someone wants to build a shopping center, where there is likely going to be a phased development and potential multi-year build out, and or where the developer wants to construct in phases so they can sell off individual components of that as they are building out over time.

One of the things that was changed at the state level was just clarification around what the state means by commercial land, and what they've clarified is commercial also includes any property or any zoning that allows for multifamily residential.

And so at the basic level, what this is is a modification to our code to make sure it is clear that the binding site plan is a tool that could be used for multifamily residential development within the city of Tacoma, and that it could be used in the UR1 and UR2 for larger development sites, but for smaller properties that we would still rely on the unit lot subdivision within the UR1 and UR2 zones.

The commission is recognizing even in UR1 and UR2, you still have things like UPS, that is a major institutional use that is zoned, as a residential, you know UR2 zoning classification, actually UR1 or UR2.

And so recognizing that you can still have these larger uses, larger development sites, sometimes with greater complexity, that this could still be a tool that could be of benefit for those kinds of developments or uses over time.

Alright.

And so with that summary, as I mentioned, this is a debriefing leading into the city council's public hearing this evening, followed by uh first reading of ordinance planned for June 2nd and then final reading planned on June 9th.

Um and then I just had in uh kind of to finalize my presentation.

I had a couple of things I wanted to make note of that we are aware of uh for the public hearing this evening and moving forward for the council's process.

So the first of those uh with our minor amendments.

Uh we have reviewed some of the comments that have been submitted.

Um comment in particular that we're expecting from the Port of Tacoma and some of the industrial property owners in the tide flats is uh some of we have already had some conversations and will likely um be vetting potential amendments uh to bring forward to the city council.

Uh these are comments that we've received.

Staff concurs with the nature of the comments and the proposals from uh the public.

Um so we will likely be reaching out and working with the council to identify council support for some potential amendments in response to those comments.

Um, and then finally for special needs housing.

While the planning commission's recommendations are based on recent state legislation, um, as we are preparing to come to council, uh it was brought to our attention that there was another recent bill uh that affects our proposals on special needs housing and shelters.

Um we have reviewed that state legislation uh with the city attorney's office and uh believe it does affect the exhibits that are coming forward to the city council.

Um we are proposing to uh draft amendments to that legislation and again to work with council to introduce that and seeking council sponsorship for that introduction so that we can address those new state requirements while we are going through this process.

Um the options there are effectively we either um adopt and then have to start a new legislative process to then revise again, or to go ahead and try to address those new state changes uh while we have this topic before the city council.

Um so that uh concludes my presentation.

Happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Thank you, Steve.

Any council comments?

Council Hines.

Uh thank you, uh Mr.

Mayor.

Uh thank you.

You know, so a big chunk of this is the step housing bill that came out of the state.

Uh so let me make sure that we're in 2266.

So did the planning commission adopt any of the there was a huge battle at the state legislature over this, right?

And the state legislature allowed local governments to allow for, you know, just make sure I'm getting this correctly, holding community meeting, notifying local residents, providing for further information, and also some information around 500 feet of schools with good neighbor agreements and things like that.

Does the planning commission proposal have any of that stuff in there, or is that something a council member would have to have part of the conversation if we're looking at the code?

Yeah, great question.

So we already um for both emergency and temporary shelters have requirements in terms of notification, uh public process, as well as operational plans that are required uh for shelters in particular.

Um so the commission's recommendations um do not, especially for temporary shelters, do not modify any of those requirements.

Um the so the operational plan requirements and some of the public process would still remain in place.

Okay.

And so, you know, the there uh was a provision in there about within 500 feet of a school, a city could negotiate reasonable requirements for operation of these.

Is that part of the proposal?

Do we have enough capacity?

Does that already exist in our code, or is that something that we'd have to have as a conversation?

I think we'd need to have a conversation about that specific provision.

Um I'll need to go back and take a look at the code specifically.

I think, for that limitation.

Um, generally for permanent shelters, our code has a limit on how close the shelters can be to each other.

Um, and that is kind of the primary uh buffering uh for temporary shelters.

Uh the current code has a limit that you can only establish a certain number of temporary shelter beds per police sector.

And the limit basically occurs where you one police sector can have up to 150 beds, and then you cannot have any more shelter beds in that police sector until all of the rest of the police sectors have a similar number of temporary shelter uh beds in place.

Um that is something that the commission had recommended modifying.

Uh the recent legislation, I forget the House Bill effectively says we need to treat all step housing the same way we would treat any other housing in the City of Tacoma.

Um that's the legislation that we're currently vetting that we think will have some impact on these proposals.

Yeah, no, I I think my um just to lay my cars on the table, right?

I have a temporary shelter a block from my house on Six and Orchard.

Um fought for it, so that's my neighbors did the whole process to get that put in there, but I do think critical pieces of the process was the notice we gave the neighbors about it, the public meeting we held about it, the conversations we had about what was gonna happen there, wasn't gonna happen there.

Um, I think that's critical process for these things, especially as I mean, as you're saying right now, I think we've tried to as a city uh predating my time to kind of disperse some of these out there, but what this is gonna mean is that anywhere housing allowed, if I want to set up a temporary shelter, the city can't stop you from doing that.

So if you know, there I there's been past concerns about these shelter types congregating in certain parts of our city that we're no longer to be able to preclude anymore.

Uh so there's a probably needs to be some process of conversation around that, if if that's something we're we think we want to try to um you know, address into our city code.

So I'm happy to talk more with my colleagues about that specific piece and Stephen, maybe I follow up with you about that.

Yeah, absolutely.

And again, just be aware uh the commission's recommendations did not take into account um some uh some of that recent legislation.

So uh we will be seeking some direction from the city council to work with you on kind of what those amendments could look like, and that would be an opportunity to follow up on the specifics about uh kind of what those amendments entail.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Palmer.

Thank you.

Um two questions, maybe.

Um can you provide an example of M1 light industrial zone?

Yeah, so M1 light industrial, I think everyone's familiar with Nally Valley.

Um so generally, light M1 light industrial um is one of our prominent zoning districts in the Nally Valley uh South Tacoma MIC.

Um often allows things like um you know warehousing, kind of smaller scale manufacturing.

Um generally what it does not allow are sort of larger scale uh kind of basic um chemical manufacturing type processes.

But generally, where you'll likely find M1 is most prominent in the Nally Valley.

Thank you.

Um and then when you were talking about the conditional use recommendation, did you say that it could be a conditional use for state law or we could choose to prohibit?

Um this is the one circumstance where the state said we can still choose whether we um we have to allow daycare generally in industrial areas, unless we have cause to believe that there would be hazardous uses that would be create an unsafe circumstance.

So the commission's recommendation first is we believe heavy industrial zones kind of constitute that circumstance.

Um so in the M1, we have to at a minimum allow it as a conditional use.

So the choices are really you could allow it by right with no special review or as a conditional use that would uh entail some additional public review and public process to establish the daycare facility.

So prohibiting is not on the so prohibiting likely in the M1 is uh probably outside the purview based on that state legislation.

Okay, thank you.

And then my other question was about the additional changes that might come forward due to the new legislation.

Um our public hearing, I guess.

Would we allow another public hearing before after we put those things forward?

Um I think I think based on the fact that these are pretty prescriptive state mandates, at least my initial conversations with city attorney's office, the council does accept public comment as part of each of your agendas.

The topics that are under review were part of the planning commission's review and considerations.

So the two things that it likely affects are the bed capacity limits.

The commission did consider a potential recommendation to say that they did not believe there should be any bed capacity limits.

And then the second part is specifically related to the dispersion in the buffer requirements for these uses.

So I think based on the fact that these were part of the commission's discussions and deliberations.

They were options that the commission considered.

They just didn't have the awareness at that time of the state legislation and what was occurring at the state level.

We feel like it's likely part of the public record, part of the deliberations, and likely would not need a uh an additional public hearing.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Any other council questions?

All right, thank you, Steve.

Great.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

So moving on to other items of interest.

Uh the first is um our uh iteration on the public comment community forum uh aspects of the proposed council rule changes.

Uh credit recredit is due.

First, want to start by thanking my chief of staff, Pakota Warren for uh working very tirelessly on coming up with the text here in consultation with the city attorney's office, and thank you also uh to my council colleagues for your input.

So this reflects um these conversations that we've had over the last month or two.

Um so I'll give you guys a chance to review them.

There's also a one-pager that summarizes the changes.

This is also emailed to you prior.

Uh, but just to give you the uh very high level overview, this accounts for um much of what we discussed.

Um, I'll give you the brief summary and then I'll give you guys some time to read it, and if there are any thoughts, then we'll we'll take those.

So in no particular um order, there's just some corrections that we see on on some of these sections.

Um what we heard from folks about uh courtesy and conduct about um just ground rules for public engagement for both public comment as well as community forum is to give some examples of unacceptable behavior, but to make it clear that that just sets the floor that uh we do we do have the ability to ensure that there are content neutral time place manner restrictions to ensure that there's good order in meetings, but not listing every single uh transgression, but uh it was important to have at least some examples of that just so we can adequately run these meetings.

Um, with community forum, um, this reflects what we've talked about about having flexibility for either in chamber community forum meetings or in district meetings.

This reflects the request of having that just be a regular council business meeting that happens to have a community forum if it is in district, um, just being clear about what the purpose of community forum is, that this can involve uh talking about council policy, but also service requests and um just general community building, uh limiting forum to up to two hours, um, ensuring that uh there's accessibility when it comes to uh people not speaking English as a second language or uh other alternative um accessibility accommodations, um a maximum of up to two minutes for maximum speaking time, just some guardrails on what the topics can be just so it's relevant, and then uh ensuring that we are not required to speak at the end, but we may, if um if uh members of the council feel compelled to.

And then um the only other changes would be just clarifying what happens if there is um a need of enforcement at the very end for um recess, for instance, uh or in worst case, if it becomes really unruly in adjournment.

And those are the summarized changes.

Um I'll give you folks some time to read these, and then if anyone has questions to feel free to chime in.

Councilmember Scott.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, I guess my question would be around, and I apologize if I missed this when I stepped out um the kind of the industry format.

So this is essentially sorry, this is essentially keeping it to in chambers unless there's some reason we as a council decide like let's go do this in the community, and we can either do that as part of a meeting or it can be on its own.

Even broader.

So the intention here is just to get the rule changes in place because we are time bound for the amendments to the council rules just as part of the normal review.

Um but the the most recent place where it's landing is more of a stagger system where we might have an in-chamber community forum at a regular business meeting one month and then the in district the following month.

So that's also being receptive to the community and the council input of wanting to have full access to the entire council, it's just the the in district would be a council business meeting that would happen to be at a high school or a community center.

Okay, but this isn't necessarily setting a cadence of every other month it's in district, it's just kind of as that this is just the rule change.

This is just giving us a flexibility to say that.

That it can happen.

Yeah, yeah, that one once per month we will have community forum, which may take place in chambers or someplace else.

Okay, got it.

Thank you.

Other questions?

Consider Sidalga.

Uh thank you.

I'm generally in favor of this because I wanted the option to be um uh in district, and I appreciate the uh comments on whether we should should not, how what the cadence and and I like that we have the option there.

The only small thing, I just only noticed it right now, yeah.

Um, and I just wanted to see these forums may be held in the city council chambers following a regular business.

I was gonna suggest during or following, just because sometimes just so we don't have to do a really long business meeting, just to give us the flexibility if you wanted to put it in the middle of your meeting.

I don't know if it needs to be there or not.

Um, one of the things I was thinking about in a in district meeting was to have a more defined time.

So uh if you're gonna do it in district, not to have everyone wait too long, but it it's a really tiny edit, so I don't even, you know, we could say it literally just came to me right now.

I was like, following or during, yeah.

Okay.

Just to add flexibility in how like I don't want to have it be that you have to finish the meeting before you can start community forum if that is an option that could make things easier for people.

Okay.

But other than that, I have no other um rule of comments.

Thank you.

Okay, nice friendly amendment.

And just to remind anyone, we we're not removing community forum in any of this, right?

Correct.

We are not removing community forum.

We're talking about adding flexibility to it.

Thank you.

All right, or during those are two easy words to to add.

Councilmember Palmer?

Thank you.

I think we're getting super close to where we need to be with this, and I appreciate all the hard work.

Um I'm curious about the attending remotely.

Uh I know that's kind of an ongoing conversation that we've had about how we would like to go about that.

Um, is now a good time to talk about that, or what will what would you like to hear?

Sure.

Um my understanding is we're not um we're not touching that with this particular rule change, and um the uh the city attorney can clarify that as well.

But um my understanding is we actually are pretty constrained by state law in terms of how we can or can't touch on that.

We we can do certain things but not others to virtual attendance, um, but uh that itself is not part of the rule nine changes.

Uh I think I want to say that's rule four.

Um city attorney, do you have anything to add here?

Anything to clarify?

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, with respect to the remote portion of the meeting, uh my view is that the statute that governs open public meetings applies equally, and the statute that governs open public meetings requires that there's can be no conditions upon attendance at a meeting, which include participation in the public comment or community forum.

And so some of the proposed changes that I saw to the remote portion of the community forum would have imposed certain conditions, like you have to identify who the speaker is, you have to sign up, you have to sign up by a certain time.

None of those are conditions uh that can be imposed on persons who attend in person, and so they cannot be imposed for persons that attend remotely.

So I'm sorry, please go ahead.

So we do have folks sign up though when they come in in person, and then I guess so.

But that's not they can't be required to provide their name, but we ask for their name so that we can keep them in order so that they can be called because if they don't leave a name or some identifying symbol or representation, we won't know how to call them to the podium.

Okay, that helps clarify.

Um I guess one thing that I was considering um would be to require cameras on.

Um I mean, we do require people to show their faces in chamber, so would would that be possible to require online?

You actually don't require them to show their faces, they could come in in a mask and be completely covered, they could look down, they could look away.

There's no requirement in your rules right now for anyone to face the camera.

And so to impose a different set of rules for people that participate remotely would treat them differently than it treats the people that are here in the chambers.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, so I think the takeaway is that in person or virtual has to have parity in terms of uh an open public meeting.

And the context for for those questions that Council Member Palmer and others have brought up is that there were some ideas floating around like um the requirement of uh turning a camera on, registering in advance, uh just ensuring that giving people the rights to to have accommodation to attend virtually, also having responsibilities of conduct professionalism, and just ensuring that people are in fact talking to what they're speaking to.

Um that that was one of the takeaways is that we are constrained in some ways from uh uh from state law.

Really the latitude we have is to either allow or not allow virtual uh testimony at these meetings.

That's basically the flexibility we have.

We're not required to have virtual attendance, but if we do, then our options are limited uh to parity with in-person effectively, and that's why we don't see changes there.

I think that's rule four.

Is that correct, city attorney?

We're uh virtual attendance shows up.

I just want to eight.

Because what we have in front of us is just a draft for changes to rule nine, and that that was mostly what was topical.

Yep.

Uh Mayor Realmore for is order of business.

Oh, I see.

Yeah, okay.

Well, thanks for clarifying.

Does that answer your question, Conserver?

Uh Consor.

Okay.

Consmer Hines.

I I'll talk to the attorney later.

I I just I I continue to struggle with I talk to elected officials across the state who limit public comment virtually to people who sign up ahead of the meeting because they need a reasonable accommodation, which is what state law says, to understand why we can't ask people to sign.

I understand we can't ask for address, we can't ask for their topic, but we can't we make them turn in their written public comments 24 hours in advance for organizational purposes.

So is there a way for me to say to make it fluid for the clerk to be able to manage the online cue?

We want people to sign up by noon the day before, or the noon the day of for online comment if they need a reasonable accommodation.

So I'll go back to what I said earlier.

The way I interpret the statute.

Um, first of all, the statute requires liberal construction.

It also has provisions in it which favor remote access.

It doesn't mandate it, but it favors and supports it.

It doesn't define what participation means or attendance, but the way I would interpret it is participation means includes remote um communications, and what the statute requires is that there can be no conditions precedent to uh attendance at a meeting, which I would equate with participation.

So my interpretation of the statute is that we can't have any preconditions to participation, whether it's remotely or in person.

I can't say what the advice is of other city attorneys and other cities.

I mean, I think that's really what it ends up coming down to.

Right, because I I I would I thank you, city attorney.

I would just pause it that we could go to MSRC's website, we could talk to multiple cities across the state of Washington where they they have created rules by which people need to sign up for virtual comment ahead of a public meeting.

So it's it there are cities that have made that choice.

I guess I'm more interested in that possibility, but I I understand the advice better.

I guess my follow up question: the rules don't apply to the state of Washington, so the legislature is completely separate from us.

To the state legislature?

Yes.

That's correct.

Because they require you to sign in with a personal ID number and then they email you later to testify.

So their rules are completely different than ours, correct?

That's correct.

I would also want to add while other cities uh view the statute differently.

I would just note that a violation by a council member of the open public meetings acts subjects you to a fine of $500 on the first time, the second commit second time you're found to have violated is a thousand dollars.

So there are monetary penalties associated with the violation for each council member for each meeting.

So if you have this in place and it turns out that it's not lawful for every meeting, you could be fined personally $500.

It's not a fine to you as an elected official, but to you personally.

In the since 2021 when the vote the law was changed.

But I do agree that you are correct that it could happen.

So I thank you for uh clarifying that was just something I had a question about.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Yeah, thank you, Councilmember Hines.

And these are all very thoughtful questions and comments.

What I will say is that even though we are, just to wrap this up, even though this has been largely focused on community forum, thoughtful conversations or amendments.

If if folks really do feel that this is something worthy of a further council consideration, then uh this isn't just the mayor's proposal about this.

If there are other thoughtful um ventures that you'd like to visit, whether it's virtual attendance or any other amendments to the council rules, those are certainly welcome.

So with that, any other council comments or questions?

Councilmember Scott.

Uh what are we on a specific timeline with getting these done?

I believe so, Alison.

Oops, sorry about the buttons.

Uh yes, mayor, um, in that you need to make a determination before the fourth um Tuesday of next month because uh because frankly, at the end of this month, you revert to your existing rules, right?

Which would have you having community forum both the second and fourth Tuesday?

So if you want something different than that prior to the fourth Tuesday, you will need to make that determination.

Thank you.

And is this an ordinance requiring two readings or a resolution?

Uh Mayor, it's actually a resolution that requires two readings because of your rules.

So your rules require that changes to the rules require two readings.

So confusingly a resolution with two readings.

Okay, clear as mud.

All right.

Well, um, I'm hearing one friendly amendment.

I'm perfectly fine with that.

Um if I'm reading the room properly, uh I'm assuming first reading at some point when it's practical for staff, and then if people want to see changes, amendments are always welcome.

Does that sound good?

All right, wonderful.

All right, well, fastest go to the order ever.

Um any other items of interest.

Any committee reports?

Uh Councilmember Sidalga, not to put you on the spot.

Uh, would you or Councilmember Palmer who attended virtually like to talk about uh PSRC last Friday?

Or I can.

No, we uh last Friday we attended an all day um kind of training session at the PSRC around housing, um and housing um uh basically, a lot of the the the laws that have gone in um the last few years to increase uh really middle housing across the state.

Uh it was actually kind of really nice as it was invited to really first time elected officials uh or newly elected officials is a better uh term.

Um it was fascinating to see how much farther ahead of the curve we are than nearly every single other jurisdiction, and how they're only just starting some of the conversations that we've had, and that there's some really uh intriguing opportunities.

Um there's uh gonna be additional work at the uh at the state level this year.

Um, some of the work uh that was intriguing for me, and I would love the the rest of the council to to ask through the PSRC.

Um is an idea to increase um industry in in Washington through what's called off-site construction.

Um, this is not a new idea.

In fact, a lot of Tacoma homes were built on off-site construction.

Uh Sears and Roebuck literally sent you a home on a train, and you picked it up and you created it, and they're still around.

Now we call them historic homes.

Yeah, the craftsman home is uh you know, craftsman is the brand of Sears.

Um that's what they've called that.

Um, but it's also reviving that uh opportunities on how do we incorporate that through um existing pipelines um to really um bring down the cost of home building so that we can bring down the cost of of uh having homes for for people that need them.

So those are a couple of the big things.

It was a really long uh meeting, lots of really good stuff actually.

Great Mexican too.

They said as well.

Uh Councilman Palmer, I I understand you attended virtually any comments about uh your experience there?

Yeah, I uh appreciated learning more of how much we are an outlier, um, and again ahead of the curve, but I also um you know off-site construction is something that uh we've we have the possibility to do and be ahead of the curve here in Tacoma as well.

We have the start of the infrastructure that's needed for that, and so um I think it's a really interesting conversation and necessary conversation because off-site construction helps would help us meet a lot of our goals when it comes to uh building affordable homes and also to um our climate uh goals as well because it's a lot less waste when it in that type of a construction.

So um I'm excited to continue the conversation.

Thank you.

And if one of the one of the main takeaways that I've heard of this entire process culminating with Friday's conversation is that for housing to be affordable to people on Moss, it has to be affordable to builders as well.

And that's one of the uh the things that's really attractive about um modular build, factory build, whatever you want to call it.

Uh the other thing too that Tacoma shines in, I think, besides the progress we the progress that we've made ahead of the state with land use, uh, is also the fact that we have inbuilt capacity through our tide flat sub-area, for example.

We have great opportunities for industrial symbiosis.

We have a skilled trades pipeline in the works with the two five three job centers and our our technical colleges.

So Tacoma could really lead on this potentially.

So I'm really interested in learning more and grateful for my colleagues for the attendance.

Or uh besides that, any other committee reports to share.

Seeing none, I'd like to call on Deputy City Manager Alison Griffith to begin the presentation on the city manager's weekly report.

Thank you, Mayor.

Mayor and Council for your awareness.

There are three ceremonials on tonight's agenda.

The first is proclaiming May 17th to the 23rd as National Public Works Week.

The second is proclaiming May 2026 as Jewish Heritage Month, and the third is proclaiming May 2026 as therapeutic court month.

There is one modification to tonight's agenda.

That modification is to add a recognition for Deputy Chief Frank Krauss of the Tacoma Police Department.

There are two opportunities for public comment this evening.

The first is under public comment regarding motions, resolutions, and ordinances on tonight's agenda.

The second opportunity is a public hearing on a 2026 amendment to the one Tacoma Comprehensive Plan and Lake.

Land use regulatory code.

Please let me know if there's any questions related to tonight's agenda and for your review attached to the study session agenda is the weekly report to council.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Ellison.

I will now entertain a motion to convene to an executive session pursuant to RCW 42.30.110, sections one, one one, and sections two to discuss potential litigation not to exceed 30 minutes.

So moved.

Second.

Having no further business, study session is adjourned.