On May 19, 2026, the Tacoma City Council held a study session to receive briefings on the city manager's work plan, alternative response programs, and proposed code amendments. The meeting also reviewed draft council rule changes for public comment and community forums. No formal votes were taken; the session served as preparation for upcoming public hearings and future agenda items.
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.