I'd like to call the order the joint study uh joint city council Tacoma Public Utility Board study session of June 2nd, 2026.

Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Board Member Bridges.

Board Member Gallagher.

Board Member Hampton.

Vice Chair Klaus McGann.

Here.

Chair Lochlin.

Here.

Councilmember, Deputy Mayor Bushnell.

Present.

Councilmember Diaz.

Councilmember Heinz.

Here.

Councilmember Palmer.

Here.

Councilmember Rumba.

Here.

Councilmember Sidalgay?

Here.

Councilmember Scott.

Here.

Councilmember Walker?

Here.

Mayor Ibsen, absent.

All right.

Thank you so much.

I would like to call on Tacoma Public Utility Board Chair, John O'Lawkin, and give him the opportunity to introduce his other board members who are present.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

It's a lovely day to be inside and covering this important topic.

And I'm sure my colleagues on the board.

Devin Hampton, Anita Gallagher, Ellie Klaus McGann, and William Bridges, and we're pleased to be here.

Thank you.

Really glad to have you guys here.

We love doing these joint sessions.

All right.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, board members and council members.

We are here to do our training for continuing disclosure and bond issuance.

We come in front of you as the joint study session.

We try to do it annually as close as possible.

And uh here to kind of go over some things that you all need to be aware of so that as you are speaking on behalf of the city, you are doing it in the right manners and making sure that the information that you're providing is is accurate, and we have some guests to do that for us today.

We have Deanna Gregory and we have Alice and Benge, both from Pacifica Law, and they are here to do the presentation for you.

So I will turn it over to Deanna.

Great, thank you.

Ooh, that worked.

I'm live.

All right.

Well, thank you so much for the invitation to be back here today.

Um, I was here last year for a very similar training.

I'm very happy to be joined by my colleague Alison Bench, who's our um tax lawyer.

So Alison is going to tackle the tax portion of this presentation, and I am going to kind of go through the introduction and then the securities law session.

Um I do appreciate that we're in a windowless room and it's uh beautiful outside, and we're starting off with bond training.

So I don't know what things can get any better, but let's let's get let's dive right in.

Uh so um we are going to talk about just debt in general and then dive into federal tax and federal securities laws and really the goal for today is really to give an overview of the requirements that apply to the city's various bond issues, whether there's public utilities debt or environmental services or general government, there are rules that apply across the board and um as bond council to the city and its various departments.

Um we uh want to make sure that um everyone is in the loop and we just spent this morning talking with um a large group in this very room of staff members talking about and doing a bit of a deeper dive into these various issues.

So um uh we had a really great conversation this morning and are happy um and thrilled to be here to give you an overview today.

Um so just the big picture here.

Um we are just two members of your bond council team.

Um I have been working with the city since day one of my career as a bond lawyer, so 24-ish years ago.

Um, and um uh but you do have a whole host of folks at Pacifica, and as I mentioned, we um do serve as council um tax bond and disclosure council to the city and its various departments.

We also assist on um really anything touching municipal finance, so um ballot measures, elections, things like that as well, levies.

Um uh sometimes those do come across our desk whenever we can be helpful.

All right, so just big picture.

Uh the uh city and its departments tend to issue uh two types of bonds that kind of fall into two different buckets for state law purposes.

And we bring this up, but just to kind of set the stage of when we're talking about debt and bond issues in general, and we use the word bond to really refer to any obligation for borrowed money.

Um that might be publicly sold on the um uh securities market.

They might be through a bank loan, so what we would refer to as a private placement.

There's also loans through the state in its various programs, such as the public works trust fund.

The city also has loans with the federal government.

So in all of those cases, because those are all debt, that the obligation that evidences that borrow money is what we refer to as the bond.

So we just use the word bond across the board because honestly, that's what state law does.

So the two big buckets from a credit perspective and an authorization perspective that the city issues are general obligation bonds, both voted and non-voted, as well as revenue bonds.

The limited tax and unlimited tax general obligation bonds are secured by a pledge of either voted or non-voted regular property taxes and other legally available sources.

So, for example, parking revenues.

On the other side of the house are revenue bonds.

Their debt really falls into this category.

And those are bonds that are paid from enterprise revenues from the operations of that utility that are pledged to that specific obligation.

Revenue bonds do not count against the city's debt capacity, but the other side of the house, the general obligations do.

Alright, so the role of the city council and the public utility board is quite significant, and it's a key portion of what we the process of the process that we go through in connection with every bond authorization.

For all matters relating to TPU debt, those obligations first go to you as a TPU board, and this is required under the city's charter.

That debt must be initiated by the board, and then it's taken to the city council.

All debt issued by the city does need to go through the city council.

So at the end of the day, we do take an ordinance to the city council for approval, but it is a critical piece to go through the public utility board in connection with water and electric debt in particular.

Alright, so the debt snapshot, I uh kind of made a general reference to this earlier, but the city and its various departments have uh many different types of obligations outstanding currently.

So, for example, we've got LTGO, limited tax general obligation bonds, unlimited tax, those are the voted uh general obligation bonds, local improvement district bonds, convention setter bonds.

Um the city is also unique in that it has separate um, it has separated and has not combined various utilities for borrowing purposes.

So the city may issue sewer related debt or electric related debt or water related debt.

Some jurisdictions have combined their utilities for borrowing purposes only to strengthen that credit, but the um but Tacoma has historically issued on individual basis, and it's it's really worked in a really great way.

We do have a disclosure and post-issuance compliance policy that has been um that has been developed by finance and um and issued by finance and has had many eyes from many of the various departments on it.

Um there is one overarching policy and procedure that does apply to all of city debt for various reasons consistency for review and for just to make sure all the check marks are being crossed off the list when we have to when we go through the bond issuance process and for ongoing compliance.

And it does really guide all city departments in connection with the issuance of bonds from everything from approval requirements to compliance with the federal securities laws as well as compliance with federal tax laws, and it does prompt all hands training, which is uh the staff training that we did this morning, of course, as well as being here today.

Before we dive into federal tax law as our kind of first big substantive topic, I did want to point out that there are a lot of resources available to you, to the public, and to staff on bond issuances.

There's a number of links up there on the screen.

Articles and alerts that our firm produces that are available on our website, as well as the city maintains two really robust investor relations websites or pages on its website.

And so those are really great resources for all things bonds, and as well as the electronic municipal market access system, which is a free online website that is the designated repository for again all things bond and disclosure related.

So if you're ever interested in getting information, and you don't have a phone line in to Michael or any of us, these are really great resources to getting more information.

Alright, with that, I'm gonna hand it over to Allison for an overview of federal tax law.

Okay, hi everybody.

Um I'm gonna speak for about 10 minutes on all things tax, so we'll do a very general overview.

Essentially, when you issue tax exempt debt, the federal government views that as a subsidy, so they put limitations on how you can spend your tax-exempt proceeds, how you can use the financed facilities or assets, and the investment and arbitrage of bond proceeds.

So we'll touch on each of these briefly today, mostly talking about the use of assets.

Big picture is when you're thinking about funding for a new facility, can tax exem bonds be used is the first question legally, and then should they be used?

How much flexibility do you want for the use of that building in the future?

Do you think it might be sold?

Do you think it might be managed by a third party?

Are there ways you might want to use it that would cause tax issues?

And it might be a better way to preserve flexibility to use taxable debt or equity to finance it.

We take into account as bond council, we're collecting all your reasonable expectations about the use at closing, but then you also actually have to track what happens after closing, and if there's a deliberate action taken to sell a building or use it in a different way, then we ask that you come to us and we try to figure out if anything needs to be fixed with the bonds.

And the general rule is that our tax exempt bond proceeds are spent on capital projects.

There are exceptions and some things around the edges that give you some leeway, but essentially when we issue tax exempt debt, it's for a capital.

Okay, so private business use is our focus today mainly.

There is a 10% limitation with respect to your bond issues that 10% of the proceeds should not be allocated to private business use.

There's a lot of measurement that gets involved in terms of how things get allocated and what means 10%, but essentially it's looking out for any private business use and then letting us know, and we'll help figure out if there's a problem with it.

Generally speaking, it's used directly or indirectly of a financed facility in a trade or business carried on by a non-governmental person.

For this purpose, that includes corporations, partnerships, any other entities involved in business.

It includes the federal government and federal government agencies.

This one is overlooked a lot.

So for TPU, Bonneville power administration, that is a private user, a bad user of the system.

So we have to take them into account when we're calculating private use.

Natural persons engaged in a trade or business or nonprofit C3 organizations for your tax exempt debt, those are all considered non-governmental users.

And examples of use, the main one actually is ownership.

If you sell a building or a finance facility, that is going to be private use.

It's often a very large percentage private use, so we need to take that into account.

And getting ahead of it and knowing when finance facilities might be sold is very helpful.

Leases, non-qualified management contracts, I'll talk about those very briefly next.

Output contracts that comes into play in water and electricity contracts, so output that is sold under long-term contracts, joint ventures, special legal entitlements or economic benefits.

That's just sort of general bucket that the IRS has for things that aren't listed above that we might think are problematic.

Management contracts, we have a separate slide on just because it's the one that comes up pretty often, that people don't necessarily think of the same way as ownership or leases, but it can cause problems.

Essentially, it's any sort of service agreement that is not one of the exceptions.

Incidental services are an exception.

So that's janitorial, copy or servicing.

Anything really that doesn't involve revenues that really is just like an operational support service, we don't really have to dig into those to determine if there's private use.

Sometimes service contracts are actually disguised leases and leases generally are private use.

So those fall out of the management contract category.

And then the main one is qualified management contracts.

The IRS has a revenue procedure with a whole list of requirements that if you meet them, then you're a qualified management contract and you don't create private use.

So that's often what we're looking at and trying to make sure that service contracts are okay under the regulations.

The main red flag we look for is net profits.

So if you have a manager who is actually getting net profits from a facility, like a revenue generating facility, if their compensation includes a net profit component, that's often problematic.

So that's the main thing that we're looking for.

It comes up for food services like concessions, those are often net profit arrangements.

Parking contracts can be, but fixed fees, flat fees, that's that's more what we're looking for when you've got a tax exempt finance facility.

Those are generally cleaner contracts.

And then we've got all of our great exceptions to private business use.

So use by the general public is not private business use.

So for your utilities, even if you have businesses using the utility, they're using electricity, as long as it's on the same basis as the general public, everybody is paying under a rate schedule, that's considered general public use, and you don't have to worry about the fact that your electricity is going to corporations as well as to individuals in the residences.

Incidental use is another exception.

They might also fall into the incidental use exception.

That's where something's taking up a footprint but doesn't have four walls.

Basically, that they're leasing their own space.

If it's under 2.5% of your finance facility, we can exclude it.

And then short-term use.

This is another really helpful one.

Less than 50 days of use, that is a negotiated contract, as long as there's fair market value.

If the use is under 50 days, then you can exclude it and not treat it as private use.

That's something we would use for the convention center.

Anybody coming in to use it would generally only be using it for a few days at a time.

It also works for month-to-month leases, so 30-day leases, even if they roll over, the length of the lease is 30 days, so we can count it in the short-term use exception.

And then there are a few other minor exceptions.

But generally, this is where we're trying to fit everything that we can into the common exceptions and to the qualified management contract bucket.

And of course, when we're kicking off a bond issue, we will look at any potential uses to try to make sure that everything complies, and then these trainings are meant to help flag things that might come up after the bonds have been issued and the facilities are in service.

And one of the things, one of the reasons that we like to flag these and have ways to notice private use very quickly, is that the regulations do provide ways to fix things.

There are remedial action rules where you can redeem or defease some bonds that are non-qualified.

Say you sell a portion of your bond financed facilities, you can use some of those proceeds to redeem bonds, and the IRS will say the rest of your bonds are fine.

So there's a whole list of remedial actions in the regs that you can take to sort of fix any potential problems with your bonds.

The problem is that you generally only have 90 days to do that.

So after you've entered a contract, after signed a lease, you might only have 90 days to redeem your bonds and take your remedial action, which is very, very fast, especially if you have to issue some taxable debt to do the defeasance.

So really getting ahead of things, knowing when those contracts are coming online, so that feet on the ground we can be moving to fix it, is very helpful.

Okay.

This is one short slide on arbitrage.

Everything else was about the financed facilities after the bonds have been issued and spent on a project.

These rules are about the proceeds themselves while you're holding them in cash.

So until the proceeds are spent.

Basically, Congress did not want you borrowing at a tax exempt rate and then earning interest at a taxable rate and keeping that arbitrage profit.

For many, many years we were in what we called a negative arbitrage environment where your short-term investment rate was never going to exceed the rate on your bonds.

So this was really a theoretical problem.

In recent years, this has become an actual math possibility.

So people are earning more on their project funds, so they might be investing it at 5%, but the bond yield is only 4%.

That's great, but the IRS has a lot of rules to limit what you can keep.

Essentially, there are two sets of rules.

One is yield restriction, can you earn it?

Those are times when you're not even allowed to earn above the bond yield, so you have to keep your investment yield below the bond yield.

Rebate is a second set of rules, and in that case, you might be able to earn it, but you will have to pay any excess back to the IRS.

So it's a good idea to keep bond proceeds separated so you can track them.

The city does have a rebate analyst that helps review and make sure that any funds that are subject to rebate are being tracked and any rebate payments sent back.

Rebate is not necessarily a bad thing.

It means you've earned as much as you possibly could on your project funds, say over the period, and then you just have to pay the differential between the bond yield back to the IRS.

It's just planning for it, keeping funds on hand to make that payment and knowing that it's coming up.

I think.

Yes, that is gosh, federal tax law in a nutshell.

So as you can turn my microphone on, there we go.

So we work very closely with your city attorney's office, with finance department, and with your various departments on reviewing contracts, on answering questions, on looking at, you know, when things do change.

As Alison said, getting ahead of things, there's an answer to a lot of this puzzle if it becomes a puzzle.

And then even in the planning part, just to make sure that the city is issuing the type of debt that would best best fit your needs, and depending on your your business plans and what your intended use of the facilities are.

So we spent a lot of time working with your staff who's very, very well versed in all of these various requirements.

We also spend a lot of time with folks talking about securities laws.

So we're gonna turn and now do securities laws in a nutshell.

And while the federal tax requirements apply to tax exempt bonds for the life of the bonds, these federal securities laws require federal securities laws apply to your bonds, not only at the point of initial disclosure when we're marketing the bonds to potential investors, but there's also ongoing disclosure requirements that the city is responsible for, depending on the bond issue.

And the uh SEC does not have the authority to regulate the municipal market in the same way that it does for the corporate securities market.

So if you're familiar with the corporate securities market, there's a lot of pre-registration and pre-review and other requirements.

In the municipal world, those rules don't apply, and the SEC is actually prohibited from imposing a lot of those rules.

But the big two key rules that do apply in the federal securities in land for your bonds are the anti-fraud rules.

And those are, we refer to those as 10B5, so a Section 10B5 rule as well as Section 17 or 17A rule.

And those are rules that apply whenever the city is speaking to the market.

And as Michael suggested earlier mentioned earlier, there's a lot of opportunities for the city to speak to the market, including in open public meetings.

And so these rules are important not only in the disclosure process, but also generally because of the application, does extend really any time the messaging is intended to reach investors, or is it reasonably expected to reach investors?

All right.

So and it goes without saying that the city's bonds are securities, which is why we are discussing this in the first instance.

So if your bonds are traded a lot of times in $5,000 increments on a day-to-day basis in the secondary market, a lot of times they're 20-year, 30-year bonds, and so your bonds are out there in the securities and securities land and can be, you know, purchased by not only institutional investors, but also retail investors, so individuals who might be just be adding to their own personal investment portfolio.

Alright, so the disclosure framework that we live in in the municipal world are, as I mentioned, these anti-fraud requirements.

And the two rules essentially say the same thing.

The difference is how the SEC or another petitioner would show that there's a violation.

One requires intent and the other one is just requires negligence.

So it's a much lower standard.

But as you can see up on the screen, the rule rules effectively prohibit any untrue statement of a material fact or an omission of a fact of a material fact that would be necessary to make the information that is provided not misleading.

So what does that mean in English?

It means that the all disclosures or all communications to investors need to be true, accurate, and complete, and cannot be material misleading in any way.

And the SEC will look at and will think that an investor will look at the total mix of information.

So looking at the offering document that we use in connection with an offering of much of the securities, which is very similar to a corporate prospectus, looking at the document as a whole, or looking at all the information that is posted relating to the city's and its department's finances, for instance, as a whole.

Looking at that total mix is really what we're focused on here.

There have been a number of SEC settlements and SEC enforcement actions with municipalities, really since 2012, which seems like yesterday, but I realize it was quite a few years ago at this point.

But the SEC was really hands-off on the municipal market for quite some time until 2012, when it really kind of dug into and was really dialed into its role of protecting investors and really hit the anti-fraud requirements pretty pretty hard to really regulate and kind of encourage the municipal market to up its disclosure practices and to, and we really saw at that point a sea change in how municipal securities are marketed, how disclosure has evolved.

If you look at disclosure document from 20 years ago, it looks very different and is noticeably shorter than how it looks today, as well as just the focus on overall communications to investors.

So it is it's really been a recent exercise that we have been doing with clients, including the city on these requirements.

All right.

So I've used the term materiality quite a few times.

I get the question all the time about what the heck does that mean.

The SEC has not defined materiality, so we get the guidance from case law, and this is where that larger total mix of information is really important and really comes in.

So the materiality from a definitional standpoint for municipal securities purposes is that there's a substantial likelihood that a reasonable bond investor would consider the information important in making an investment decision.

So would that either misstated or omitted piece of information had influenced or change their decision to purchase or to sell the securities?

And looking at it in the from the viewpoint of a reasonable bond investor is very important here because a reasonable bond investor from the SEC standpoint are those investors that it's really charged with protecting.

So it's those retail investors in particular, it's those corporate investors.

It's not necessarily the folks sitting around this table because we are also intimately aware of and part of the city's operations, but it is looking at, you know, what would an investor who's in Texas or who's in and New Jersey be looking for and would want to know about operations of that particular utility, for example, or the city as a whole.

So looking at it through a reasonable investor lens, which is very much an objective test, and there is really no one size fits all for all of this.

So we spend a lot of time working with your various departments and staff going through what do we think that an investor would want to know when making that investment decision.

All right, so some of those themes that have been coming out of enforcement, at least as of late, the SEC really focuses on omitted information as of late.

They're also looking at whether there was intent to commit fraud and deceive the market when selling the the bonds or the securities, or were they following industry standards?

Were they that they follow their adoptive procedures?

One way of showing that there was no negligence, for example, in a 17A enforcement action, is to show that you were following procedures.

You did ask the questions, kick the tires, as we refer to quite a bit, and um and that the city really did an act in good faith.

So that is one reason why we do have those policies and procedures in place, and um and our use in connection with each bond issue.

It is not necessary to have investor harm, and that is I think a key piece that sometimes escapes the conversation.

Uh, there does not need to be a default or even financial harm in connection with the bond issue for there to be a securities law violation.

The SEC will really focus on the content of the disclosure and what was either misstated or omitted, depending on the circumstances.

And of course, hindsight is always 2020, which keeps me up at night sometimes.

All right, so there are kind of three main areas where the city speaks to the market.

Um, one is in connection with the initial offering of the bonds.

Um, these are again the disclosure documents that the documents that are prepared in connection with each bond issue that's publicly sold.

Um we refer to them as the preliminary official statement or the final official statement.

Um what's up on the screen right now is an issue that we did with um uh with a let with the electric attacoma power on the electric system in 2025, and um just it shows an example of a preliminary official statement.

Um, wanted to point this out that the city will, in connection with each bond issue, make certain certificate certifications at closing, and one is very specific to securities laws.

You can see the language up there on the screen, but it is important that that the city is comfortable with the language that is being provided to investors because there will be certificates that are being that are prepared and are gonna be included as part of the transcript.

These disclosure documents from a legal standpoint are the responsibility of the issuer, so of the city.

And so again, this is another reason why we want to have those good policies and procedures in place to make sure that all the everything is checked off before we go to the market with a document.

The next big bucket of opportunity for speaking to investors is secondary market disclosure.

And these in connection with a bond issue, the city undertakes to provide certain ongoing disclosure.

And this is very similar to filings that are made in the corporate security world.

But in the municipal world, the requirements are a annual financial statement filing, so financial statements, audit if it's available, unaudit if it's not, and certain operating information.

There's also requirement to notice certain events if they occur.

So for example, a rating change up or down, a payment default, or the incurrence of a new financial obligation.

Those are all things that the city is required to put notice out on the designated repository, which is this Emma website, and to let investors know really what's going on.

And the window used to be a lot longer for being able to provide this information, it's been reduced down to 10 business days.

So again, staff is very well versed in this.

So when things do happen, we get notice, and either we work with staff or you use DAC, which is another outside company, to help with these postings to make sure everything gets filed timely.

Here's an example of the Emma website and an event notices that the city has posted in connection with some general obligation bonds.

I've talked about some enforcement trends already, but we have seen a sea change really in what the SEC has been dialing into.

While it was using the enforcement tool to really regulate municipal behavior, I will say that it's still doing that, but it's really focusing right now on municipal advisors and particularly unregistered municipal advisors who are wearing a and acting as a municipal advisor but not going through the registration process.

So that only applies to you all in terms of who you're selecting as your advisors.

The city, of course, uses two separate municipal advisor firms, and both are registered, so you're in good shape there, but it is a uh something that they are very dialed into.

Timing of financial statements, making sure that what's being provided to investors is the latest and greatest, is also something that they're very focused on right now.

The last bucket before we kind of get to the end here of uh when the city speaks to the market is I will say is voluntary disclosure, and that's kind of everything else, and that would capture your investor relations website, so the material that's posted there.

You speak and you're in the what you speak is what you are saying, whether it's written or spoken is public.

It's the nature of being a public entity.

So while I will say that the securities laws are not intended to chill your speech by any stretch of the imagination, what we just want to make sure of is when you're acting in your official capacity as the council and as the public utility board, as well as of course, you know, leadership within staff as they're making postings on the designated repositories, just really in connection with any time you're really talking about anything that could touch or impact any bonds, whether it's an initial sale or ongoing financial status of the city, for example, just to be really cautious that what you're saying is true, accurate, and complete.

If you do find a situation where you see something that's been posted, and you know, it's um there is an error, again, in the same same vein as federal tax.

There's always room to fix things, whether it's a correction for the record or whether it's we look at it in terms of the total mix of all the information that's out there, and we decide that it's a very small, small item and is therefore not gonna move the needle.

But um, those are the types of things uh just to be cautious of and to be thinking about.

All right, now with that, I will say we are wrapped up and happy to answer any questions.

Great, thank you so much.

Um we're gonna start off with uh Council Member Hines, then we'll give her chairman walk.

All right, thank you very much.

I just maybe I missed the punchline to the presentation on tax funding.

But the list, the reason you went through that list is because if we don't qualify for those, then we can't qualify for tax exemption bonds, correct?

If we use private use, all those, that was the reason why you said here's all the things to think about.

Yeah, there's a there's a 10% use test that you're limited to 10% of your proceeds being used for private use.

So if you have more than 10% private use in the facility, then it shouldn't be tax exempted.

But we also have all those exceptions, right?

So if we can fit in in the exception, so we don't have to worry about it.

Yeah, I just don't know if it was ever clearly said like this is the line by which you have to go into the private because tax exempt bonds are much cheaper than tax bonds that are taxed.

So we want to as much as possible be using tax-free debt and finances, yeah.

So we want to be very clear of those.

I just I it no it I didn't feel like it came through the presentation of like this is why this is important not to make these mistakes because this is what yeah, and I I will add that there have been um situations where for a biz for business reasons and for operational reasons, the city has made a very deliberate choice to issue taxable bonds.

Um tax exempt debt, as you just mentioned, um, is beneficial because of course um the investor is not paying income taxes on the interest that it earns, and so the investor is willing to take a lower interest rate typically, which translates into that lower cost of borrowing.

But in order to operate to fit into some of those categories, it is um it is, I want to say in most cases, it's not restrictive because they're city-owned facilities or you know, utility-owned facilities, and operated.

Um, and so there's the um opportunities for or the need for any kind of um private use or leasing or management contracts or anything is small.

There are some facilities, and we see this a lot, for example, in the convention center space or stadium space, where the um there's the desire to have more flexibility with how the jurisdiction contracts with the ultimate users and the operators of those facilities, it's really beneficial to have taxable debt.

Um, I know we didn't spend any time on taxable debt today, but that's you're you're spot on that there's uh kind of the two different kind of buckets there.

Well, and I imagine there's the calculus is also shifted with the fact that advanced refunding for municipal debt is no longer allowed, since 2017, which is probably interesting to be talking about.

They're they're looking more closely at municipal data saying, Oh, yeah, well, it's one of the pay fors for the tax jobs.

No, you're absolutely right.

Yeah, and I know last year when um we had uh this um uh last year's training, um, we spent a good amount of time on tax reform.

And I know at that time we were very concerned about whether tax exemption would be eliminated or whether it would be carved back to the point where certain buckets, whether it's um um stadium bonds or nonprofit bonds or something would be eliminated.

Um we uh were we're here and we're talking about tax exemption.

So um we made it out um amazingly um pretty unscathed and actually with actually a few additional tools, believe it or not, which was great.

Um I was just in DC two weeks ago um talking with folks on the Hill about tax reform and tax exemption and the benefits again.

There's some talk, but um about you know, again, for just the very reason why you just mentioned of it's an in it's it's insufficient a subsidy, it's costs too much money, there are better ways to do it, but I think for the most part, um, until we get down the road into uh another kind of opportunity for tax reform, um, hopefully knock on some wood.

Um, we've we've made it out, and it's at least on the back burner.

And we are now in the position where it's great, we're asking for things again, so um asking for reinstatement of advanced refunding or um raising the limit for some um on some buckets of types of debt where the limit on them um has not been l has not been raised since 86 when the 1986 act was originally put into place, and so needless to say, things cost a lot more now than they did in 86.

And so um, so we were able to have some really good conversations about some of our priorities as opposed to um just being in defensive mode.

So that was really nice.

And in with the interest rate environment where it is right now, I'm sure it's there's probably a question of is this even needed right now when interest rates are much higher than they were when some of this debt was issued, say, six or seven years ago, so it it calls the question whether we need the reform now, but hopefully down the road, yeah.

Um so that leads me to my one one more question, Counselor or Deputy Mayor.

So when we think about that, right?

Or do we see like a stadium project or a public facility project?

Do we see kind of a combination of public or taxable and tax deferred or tax um free bond to be able to blend those two together?

Or is it if you can't get under the 10% threshold, you just see people go all into the tax market?

No, uh, we spent a lot more time earlier today talking about measurement and then this concept of qualified equity, which is if you put revenues or taxable debt into a project, that's your qualified equity, and private use gets allocated to that first before it gets allocated to your bonds.

So splitting a project um into multiple types of funding can be a very efficient way of providing flexibility.

And so, sorry, one more question.

Sorry, the other one was we talk about private actors.

So let's say we own a facility, say a community center that's operated by a independent taxable agency like the park district.

Is will be able to use tax exempt bonds or they count as that kind of private actor that's utilizing the facility, or is that probably a legal analysis?

Someone would have to do for me.

If the park district is a governmental entity or instrumentality, then they're good users.

But if you hired even a C3, a 501c3 would be non-governmental, so we would have to make sure that the contract complied, um, and then certainly just a private entity, um, we would need to make sure it was a compliant contract.

Well, thank you.

And I thought the one thing I did appreciate about the presentation was the um the arbitrage conversation, right?

Because when you have large projects like TPU where you're you're financing hundreds of millions of dollars or 80 million dollars or something, and that money's gonna sit for a period of time by which you're gonna then need to deploy it to build some large capital asset.

That conversational, well that can't go sit in a high interest earning savings count, or you have to be careful about what the numbers are.

I think that was very good for me to understand.

Thank you.

Great questions.

Uh Chair Lachlan.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Um I have a clarification, it's not exactly in my swim lane, but you were mentioning um the combination of different utilities for you know, essentially better rates.

It was my understanding that surface water is a subfund of wastewater, and we published combined financial statements, it is always my impression that we were using that as a combined when we went out for debt for the surface water utility, which is the smaller one, you had the benefit of the larger one.

Uh yes, there's um there are some combined there is some combining within the city, but for example, some cities will combine water sewer storm.

And so um sewer is definitely its own you know subsection.

Um, sorry, water is definitely its own subsection.

So um uh Tacoma just has more of more of a variety of different util of because of the strength of each one, it's been able to be very successful with having separate um utilities, not only for accounting and state law purposes of course, but also for borrowing purposes.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you.

Um, did you have a question?

Okay.

Great.

Uh board member Hampton, yes, thank you.

I want to go back to the arbitrage on the the um yield restriction versus the rebate.

I wouldn't make sure I understand this correctly.

For rebate, say you get a uh the first bond is there's four percent, and then say you earn six percent, you owe the IRS the entire two percent.

If you don't meet an exception, you would owe it.

So that's the exception.

But if you you meet an exception.

You get to keep it all.

You get to keep it all.

Yes, I just want to make sure I understand.

Yeah, so there's two different sets of exceptions.

The yield restriction one is essentially it's easy, it's a three years.

So for three years, you don't have to yield restrict your project funds.

The spending exceptions um are generally eighteen months or two years for construction projects, but you have to hit six months benchmarks.

So it really, um, if you're getting good rates and you're earning, it can be very beneficial to pay a lot of attention to how quickly you're getting funds out the door and maybe choosing to spend bond proceeds earlier.

Um, because if you just barely miss one of those spending exceptions, you don't want to have to pay the whole overage back.

All right.

Uh, any additional questions?

All right.

Uh well, I don't have any as well.

Thank you all so much for the presentation and taking the time to educate us.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you.

All right.

Our next briefing item will be.

Sorry to interrupt you.

Uh, we do need to adjourn the church.

We do need to adjourn our joint uh utility board.

All right.

How do we adjourn?

How do we adjourn?

Yeah.

Okay.

I'd like to move to adjourn the joint uh TPU board city council study session and to enter a five minute recess.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded any questions or comments.

All in player, please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

We stand in recess.

I'd like to call back to order the uh city council study session.

Uh next up, we have our second agenda item, which is participatory budgeting for the city council district, and I would like to call on assistant finance director Teresa Green to begin the presentation.

Good afternoon, Deputy Mayor and Council.

Yes, my name is Teresa Green.

I'm an assistant finance director and the budget officer with the Office of Management and Budget, and we are very excited to be here today to talk about some participatory budgeting with you.

I'm not alone today, as you can tell, and I'd like my colleagues to introduce themselves.

Hi, I'm Myra Wheelock.

I'm a finance manager with working with Lisell and Anna on participatory budgeting.

Good afternoon.

I'm Lisa Sandkile, and I work in the Office of Management and Budget, and this is our participatory budgeting team.

Hi, I'm Anna, and I am also on the participatory budgeting team.

I also want to um take a moment and acknowledge and thank our Washington State Department of Commerce partners who are online to answer any questions that you all might have that are um more appropriate for them to address.

We have uh Rowena Pineda, who is an energy program section manager and Aiden Garrity, um, environmental justice program manager, both with the Washington State Department of Commerce, who are um our partners on this new grant that we'll be telling you about.

So we would not be here uh today um able to share this exciting new um participatory budgeting news about a new council district project if the Department of Commerce had not um reached out to Tacoma to offer us this opportunity to partner.

So we are incredibly grateful for their partnership and their support of our community.

We do want to take a moment so that um everyone who is listening um can share in uh the presentation and describe a little bit about what's on this first slide to you.

And uh you'll see three images.

Uh one of them is Council members Asuka, uh Ashka and our current Deputy Mayor Bushnell, um, sharing a hug at a participatory budgeting event in 2022.

The second photo depicts a community volunteer holding up a ballot for uh items in district four.

And then the third is uh a group of uh a photo of a group of community volunteers who are listening to a speaker at a participatory budgeting event.

This presentation is going to be uh kicked off uh by Liesel, but before her comments, I want to share something that is really important to understand about the heart of participatory budgeting, as this process is not like normal municipal budgeting that you may be familiar with.

Participatory budgeting, which you'll hear us use the acronym PB, is a fully democratic process where a community decides how to spend public dollars from their own brainstormed ideas that they put on a ballot and vote on.

City staff involvement is to lead that process with the community and evaluate the feasibility and the funding limitations to confirm that the project that they select is going to be successful.

We do not go to the community with pre-selected projects, and we do not use these dollars to supplant current funding gaps on existing projects, unless that's the desire of the voting group to do something in their community that's not fully funded.

So this is a truly community-driven type of effort, and we are very excited to be able to do this work with them.

I'll have Liesel take over and do some overview of the participatory budgeting process.

Thank you.

In the interest of accessibility, we will continue to describe the photos on the slides.

On this slide are four photos, three people around a table at a participatory budgeting voting kickoff, a woman providing volunteers with materials for outreach, and a young girl with balloons at an event funded by participatory budgeting in Council District 4.

And districts 4 budget delegates.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor and Council members, for listening to our updates today on participatory budgeting at the city.

We know that some of the council members know quite a bit about participatory budgeting, and acknowledging that others may not.

Some of you have been champions for this deep type of community engagement for years and helped to bring it to the city.

Thank you for your support, leadership, and foresight in empowering our community to make real and meaningful decisions for their neighborhoods, schools, and communities.

We have been humbled by the amount of work, heart, and sheer numbers of hours that community members, interns, organizational partners, and cultural partners have poured into this work in the last several years.

We will cover a quick definition of what participatory budgeting is and then what some of our past participatory budgeting projects have been and finish with what our current work is and will be.

This slide includes icons representing the steps of the participatory budgeting process, which are design the process, gather ideas, develop proposals, collect votes, and fund selected projects.

Participatory budgeting is an innovative and creative way to involve and include Tacomans in deciding how to spend a portion of the public budget, as Teresa said.

People involved get to design the process and help to gather the ideas for solutions to pressing community issues and develop the proposals to turn those ideas into feasible projects.

Then they get out the vote with us and help with outreach to make sure people who don't always get a voice in our electoral system do get to vote on these proposals for their neighborhoods.

Finally, the proposal with the most votes gets funded.

We often do a large amount of idea collection and voting in our schools, at community events, and even online.

Belief and trust, access, opportunity and belonging, fiscal responsibility and resilience.

The photos were taken in the October 2025 community kickflip event in Council District 2.

And there's a young man on a skateboard, a colleague from Parks Tacoma delivering a presentation, a group of community members reviewing materials, and a man with glasses adding added to a wall of post-it notes.

But why do we do participatory budgeting?

This type of work upholds and actualizes the values we hold as a city.

In our Tacoma strategic plan, we expressly state that we must engage and involve our community in decision making.

But how do we do that well, particularly in developing an understanding of difficult decisions with finite resources?

Participatory budgeting is a tool that gets significant numbers of community members, often those who have been furthest from the decision making but impacted by it, involved in the ideas and solutions that improve their community, while understanding the cost and feasibility of spending finite amount of dollars.

They learn what the city is working on, what the costs actually are in real time, and they make decisions that make an impact directly on their neighborhoods.

Participatory budgeting makes complex information clear, timely, and accessible, ensuring that the community can easily understand and stay informed about city programs and services.

It fosters two-way conversations and builds authentic relationships with the community and with our internal and external partners to create opportunities for meaningful engagement.

It is focused on removing barriers so that all communities can participate fully and equitably in city processes and programs, and it allows people to dream of a better place to live and be part of that solution.

This slide has a table summarizing the outcomes of council districts four and two participatory budgeting projects.

We have demonstrated the value of doing participatory budgeting in two council districts so far, Council District 4 and 2 at the million-dollar level.

The sheer number of people civically engaged is astounding.

For example, the District 4 participatory budgeting process received 684 more ballots than did the previous general election for council member.

In both districts, we had young people, people of color, people with disabilities, and those with multilingual skills on both community leadership teams.

We saw ideas that encompassed addressing needs of our community, including education, affordable housing and homelessness, street and park improvements and youth services.

Many more ideas.

Beyond the diverse makeup of the community leadership team, both council districts had high rates of youth and community of color providing their ideas and voting.

In council district two, nearly 4,000 votes were submitted in a language other than English.

Oh, that should have been switched, Council District 4.

And then in Council District 2, online voting was popular with roughly 20% of the votes collected online.

But some of the outcomes can't be summarized just through data.

Thank you.

This slide includes three photos highlighting our kick flip event, which transitioned the Skate Park project from the city to Parks Tacoma, a speaker presenting to the audience, an audience of community members, five of our Spanish language cultural ambassadors, and council member Rumba and a city staff member on a skateboard in front of Parks Tacoma signage.

A significant outcome of this work involves mutual learning.

Staff learn about residents' priorities and values.

The community better understands city processes, priorities, and fiscal realities.

We give the feedback and the ideas we receive to city departments for their projects and initiatives as well.

Internal and external partnerships are strengthened as we find more opportunities to work together.

City staff deepen their relationships across jurisdictional and departmental lines, surfacing shared projects and costs, such as for online engagement tools like social pinpoint.

This is squarely access opportunity and belonging work as we engage communities that have been historically disconnected from city work.

The data shows large participation from communities of color and those who speak other languages, the elderly and young people.

Participatory budgeting is the largest implementation of our language ambassador program, and shout out to those who help us connect with our communities in multiple languages.

Our language ambassadors help to collect ideas and votes in multiple languages, and I want to give a shout out to our language access coordinator, Maria Theresa Games, who's been an incredible support for this work.

In support, PB help, in summary, sorry, PV helps us remove barriers to participation and helps us to leverage existing strategies and find alignment with work already happening in community.

I'll now turn it over to my new colleague Anna, who I am very grateful to work with in Council District 5.

She grew up in Council District 5 and is as passionate and committed to community engagement as I am.

With her past work at the city manager's office and other departments, she brings a level of expertise that will ensure internal engagement with many of our leaders as well.

Thank you, Liesel.

Deputy Mayor and Council Members for the opportunity and time to speak with you about participatory budgeting today.

I would be remiss if I did not also share praise on Liesel.

She has the most experience with participatory budgeting out of anyone in Tacoma, regardless of agency, which by extension means she is the most experienced in this area also in the state.

So we're really lucky to have her.

Like so many Tacomans, I was disappointed to learn the city's participatory budgeting program would end at the conclusion of 2025.

Participatory budgeting had flatlined.

It's time of death pronounced when the Department of Commerce reached out to the Office of Management and Budget to explore the potential of funding participatory budgeting in Tacoma.

Participatory budgeting had a pulse with a new lifeline, it was revived.

This slide summarizes the grant using a formula with the State Department of Commerce, Climate Commitment Act, and City of Tacoma logos coming together on the left, an equal sign in the middle, and grant information on the right.

This participatory budgeting project and process will differ from those from districts four and two because its funding source will be different.

The grant includes $650,000 to pay for the costs associated with the participatory budgeting process, including the two FTEs before you.

The grant calls on community members to decide how to spend 1.6 million dollars.

They must select a capital project, and this capital project must be focused on improving Tacoma's climate resilience and or decarbonization.

Our agreement with commerce also demands an aggressive timeline.

The participatory budgeting processes for districts four and two leading up until project implementation, each spanned no less than two years.

Liesel and I will be finishing those same steps in less than one year.

Council District 5 checks all the boxes you'd want checked for an area targeting climate resilience and environmental justice funding, but perhaps equally important, District 5 is home to existing and potential partnerships, community groups, and numerous organizing opportunities that are already proving to be critical as we work to meet the needs of the community while operating on this condensed timeline.

This slide brings back the participatory budgeting process icons from earlier.

I will be summarizing this condensed timeline I just mentioned.

Liesel and I are currently elbow deep in recruiting the community leadership team who will be responsible for the process design over the next month or so.

Right afterwards, we will dive into gathering project ideas from the community and continue this outreach through September.

In October and November, a smaller group of community leaders will take all of the ideas their neighbors submitted in the preceding months and develop the proposals that will go on the ballot.

Voting will run from January until mid-March 2027.

So, how can folks participate in participatory budgeting?

It depends on whether you're a District 5 community member and the step in the participatory budgeting process.

So this slide uses our process icons again to explain the who, when, how, and what in line with participatory budgeting's objective of empowering voices that have historically been excluded in conversations about budget priorities and how budget dollars should be spent.

Our definition of district five is expansive.

If you live, work, learn, or play in district five, it's your turn.

Community members can get involved during one stage, all the stages, even just part of one.

The only wrong way to participate in participatory budgeting is to not participate.

During the process design phase, you can serve on the community leadership team.

Our first meeting is tomorrow night, 6 p.m.

Star Center.

Please submit a proposal when we're collecting ideas.

Proposal development in October-November is intense and a heavy lift, but also incredibly rewarding.

And as always, vote vote vote during the voting period.

Council, even those of you who are not at-large members and represent other districts, you're welcome to attend any of our community leadership team meetings.

Each of you are out in community year in and year out.

So we welcome your insight and guidance because it will ultimately help us better serve district five.

That concludes our presentation.

We look forward to answering your questions.

Great.

Thank you so much.

And I'm really excited about this, as I'm sure you are being a district five council member.

But uh before I go, I'll open it up to questions or comments.

Councilmember Robot.

Um, thank you.

Thank you so much.

I'm so excited about this.

Um, I thought doing participatory budgeting, like I participated in the one in district two, and it was fabulous.

Um, the young voices that were there and the ideas they had, they were so creative.

Um, my question for you is do you have when you say um like you have this kickoff tomorrow?

Do you have a um a calendar of the different things so that we know when they are?

So like I can't make tomorrow's, but I would love to participate.

I mean, I'm so excited that it's tied to the climate.

Um, and I'm hoping that possibly Tacoma Tree Foundation could be a partner in this.

Um so if if we could get a calendar, that would be great.

We will have that calendar after we do the doodle poll of the community leadership temperatures who are.

Thank you so much.

And um, I just I really don't have a question except for to say I really appreciate that we're doing this, and um I think this is good for Tacoma and for people out there who think that this is a waste of money.

That's what I've heard from people like I can't believe we're doing this.

What a waste of money.

I want to say that I think these projects are really important because um if the one thing that we're able to do is inspire people that are young and old to feel like they belong here, that's really important that they understand the process and that they can be a part of our government.

Then you've done everything you should do.

That's what I saw is that people were involved and understood they could be here and had a space, and a lot of times people feel like they are separate from government, but we're here, and I hate to use the word government, but your local community government people who are here, we're here working with you, not against you and for you.

And so I just I really appreciate what this means to um the group of people who came for for district two was very diverse, and um, I just there what they had to say, we listened to them.

We never ever didn't say it wasn't important, and I know that that this will be how it is for this district.

So thank you so much, and I'm glad we picked district five.

Thank you very much.

Uh, next up we have Councilmember Palmer.

Thank you.

Uh I love everything about this.

Um, I'm so excited for this.

Um, how how have we gone about like letting folks know, like, for instance, like it's coming up tomorrow, right?

With our first team meeting.

Um, how do how we let folks know that this is happening?

Yeah, we've been recruiting like mad because we just um had this signed about a month ago.

Um, and uh so we an example is we went to Mountahoma two days last week and presented in uh to 30 students in two different classes to see if we could recruit for community leadership team, and we got three students from October signed up.

Um we've been uh sending it to all kinds of cultural groups that are involved in council district five, including ones like APCC Safe Streets.

Uh, we've been going to all the neighborhood council meetings, both South and South Tacoma, neighborhood council meetings.

Uh we have been emailing, texting everybody that we can possibly do in that area because sometimes email isn't the way to work in community.

Um, and then I mean I I pick up the phone and make phone calls too, but that's probably generational.

Um, and uh every way we can think of to get people to come out.

Um we don't want too many people, we really want to uh shake out at about 30 people for the community leadership team where it gets unwieldy.

We haven't had difficulty having between 15 and 30 people at a given time.

Not everybody makes every meeting, we meet twice a month, and then we try to keep people up to date so that they can get involved if they've missed a couple of meetings as well.

And as we mentioned on the discussion on slide eight, I believe it was uh we knew we needed to hit the ground, not just running but sprinting uh with the existing structures that are in district five, which are really robust.

Uh so yeah, we you can you should see how many different agencies and groups Lisa will can email in an hour.

It's really impressive.

Uh, because we have all of these uh relationships already and relationships with people who can point us in the direction of other folks and make recommendations.

And if whoever you've got recommendations here for district five people who should be on the community leadership team, that is the most valuable thing we can ask from you at this point.

I don't want to forget to give a shout out to Kenny Koble and Matt Accabao who have done a lot of the work um in the other council districts.

Um just wanted to make sure that was said.

That's great.

I did have one other question.

I know we're just getting started with this one.

Um, is there any talks of uh doing this in other districts after this through this funding?

Thank you for the question.

That is precisely the reason why our uh colleagues at Commerce are online right now.

So we would like to kick it over to Rowena andor Aidan.

I do see we have a couple in the if we can move them over to panelists, please, so they've raised their hand.

Okay.

Thank you.

Go ahead.

Oh, can we uh move over?

Um, Rowenna.

Uh good afternoon.

Can you hear me okay?

We can.

Great.

Thank you, Nier and Council members.

Um, I think the question, if I heard it correctly, is if there's if there is an opportunity to um to have additional funding for other districts.

Um that's a good question.

I think we are right now just looking at the really one district, and we really look to the city of Tacoma to determine which district that was going to be.

Um, our mandate is to work with the city of Tacoma to decide on that.

Um we are hoping to get some additional money for the next biennium, and maybe we will be able to expand it.

Um, but we also are looking to see how we can expand it statewide.

I know that's kind of not a direct answer, but I hope that helps.

That's as much as an answer as I was expecting right now.

Thank you.

Rowena, I'd like to give you the opportunity to mention the other uh communities in Washington that are uh part of this particular grant process, since you mentioned that it's not yet statewide.

Uh yes, thank you.

So the other communities that we are working with.

So there are two cities, the cities of Tacoma and the city of Spokane.

And then we are working with a community-based organization in the lower Yakima Valley called Nuesra Casa.

Um, and so for the Department of Commerce, this really is a pilot for us.

And so we are looking to see how it will work when we're working with jurisdictions like cities versus community-based organizations.

So part of it is also for us to learn more about how community participatory budgeting works in different contexts.

Also, uh, I'm fresh to the budget office, so I'm not gonna use like very formal language to talk about this, but part of the reason why we have such a condensed timeline is so that they can't take the money away.

And also so that they we can line ourselves up with the legislative process uh to potentially make an additional ask when it is a budget year again.

Great questions and the answers, thank you.

Uh Councilmember Svalgon.

Uh thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Um, this is actually the first uh Council Member Palmer asked one of the questions uh I had.

Um, but I also wanted to express my excitement to see this coming in with District 4 having a participatory budget process that went through and seeing how much engagement there was and the really good works that came out.

I got to participate in some of the kickoff events, and one of the uh other aspects of participatory budget was also supporting local for district four.

There was a lot of local nonprofits in the arts and cultural space that uh had the opportunity to um uh do programming in district four.

So um I think there's there's opportunity to engage a lot more.

Um I think in some ways I would say you're you're underselling the point that you you'd made, which was um more people participating in participatory budgeting than in in an election year in district four, um, which is really important because there's a lot of voter apathy out there and disengagement, and this is a way um that shows that when you engage directly with residents, they actually come forward and want to participate because there's a trust factor.

So I appreciate that you have the trust and transparency um slide uh in here in district five is more than uh deserving.

I'm also really pleased to see if if you don't mind you know, for the sake of the public, repeating the amount of money that's going to be uh uh available.

Yeah, one point six million dollars.

Yeah, and that's really important, right?

Because uh, first of all, it's for a capital improvement, and second of all, you can't do capital improvements on very small amounts of money.

So the fact that we have 1.6 million dollars available for a capital improvement in district five is gonna be pretty transformative, quite frankly, which is amazing.

And I say thank you to the Washington State Department of Commerce and the state uh climate commitment act dollars for allowing us to do that and thinking about what it costs to do a capital project as well.

I've learned a lot about how that doesn't go really as far as you would like with capital projects.

Uh that's it's both not enough and and and a good amount at the same time, um, because I think there's gonna be a lot of really good ideas.

Um, and to an earlier comment that was made, you know, I'm really glad that we're recognized as a municipality that can execute on this very quickly and efficiently because we've done it.

Um I think that goes a long way in showing how efficient and effective we are as a city in getting things done.

Um, and so the abbreviated timeline is I understand why we have to do the abbreviated timeline, but I want to say I have confidence in the team in executing on this abbreviated timeline because um we've already done a really good job.

Um, we are also relying on um uh the expertise within the city that we don't have around climate climate and sustainability.

So we have a great climate action plan, and we have great environmental services people that are already leaning in to support us on ideas and uh what kinds of uh projects we already have in the works, and uh helping the community understand some of those.

So I I think we couldn't do it this fast without that expertise as well.

Because we don't have it.

I mean, Anna and I don't have it.

Excuse me.

Take it back.

I don't have it.

I'm gonna embarrass you and it's weird seeing you right there.

I'm so happy you're there.

I know how to uh change the slides, so um and I and I assume that there's gonna be some sort of regular cadence update, either through city council or maybe through IPS or some other form on where we are.

I think um at any cadence that we're directed to do that, we can certainly do that, but we'll probably do it after the idea collection and um after the voting, so at least twice in the next year.

Great.

Well, thank you very much.

Thank you for your time.

I'm gonna call on council member Scott online.

Thank you, Effie Mayor.

Thank you for the presentation.

I'm always excited about opportunities like this because I think I guess for everybody makes it one of the it's fun, but it's also one of the like coolest ways that we get people engaged and involved and making decisions for that community.

Um I was wondering uh, I think down.

District three was in the two to come up next.

And so just looking at the requirements or at least the criteria of what you're all looking for to select the district.

I was just wondering how consideration is far as how to add to the district five rather than district five.

Why district five and not three?

Uh going back to those, it's actually really uh a big coincidence.

During my fellowship, I staffed uh two neighborhood councils, the South Tacoma Neighborhood Council and the Central Neighborhood Council.

Um, I don't do as much community engagement as you all did, or like that Liesel did, but uh enough to get a uh an idea of the you know groups that would help us leverage leverage outreach, get the word out there.

Um, you know, when the when commerce first reached out to Tacoma, the question was not district three or district five or district one, it was actually like can we do all of them by March?

Uh the answer was no, it would be doing all of those districts in disservice.

Um, if we could do it all of the districts uh during this time with the amount of money that we have, we absolutely would, but um, we had to choose a district, and uh, nevertheless, you know, that live, work, play, uh learn deal uh works out really well for people who live in district three also too.

So we have a number of South Tacoma neighborhood council members that actually live uh in council district three already involved in the community leadership team, but um I it really did feel like um to us, like there I wish we didn't have jurisdictional lines, and I wish we hadn't um uh well we already had a precedence of doing it by council district, and that's what we stayed with.

And if we had enough time um and staff, I think we would have tried to do both council districts.

Uh, but 1.6 billion dollars does not go as far for a capital project.

Um, and um our hope is that uh this is a pathway we can look for funding, not just this climate commitment act dollars, but uh a pathway to look for other funding for our other council districts, perhaps.

Um, and that's uh this is one-time funding.

We want to be really clear about that.

But um, I think there might be other opportunities as well to look for funding for other council districts as well, and three and one are certainly deserving.

All right, thank you very much.

Uh next up we have Council Member Diaz.

Thank you.

Um, trying to think of where I want to start my questions, thoughts, comments.

Um, I was wondering, I feel like I heard that you are currently looking for community leadership team members or okay.

I did hear that.

And we would take suggestions, you can email us.

We have our contact information on this.

Um, so yes, we are looking for people who live, work, play, learn in council district five.

Perfect.

So I just wanted to clarify that you would like us to send you names.

If folks in the community are interested, should they reach out to us then to you?

Do I send them straight to you?

How best can I help you find people?

Thank you for your offer of support and help.

Um, whatever is easiest for you.

I think you know how to get a hold of me.

Yes.

I do know how to find you both.

Uh, and you can send uh connections our way in whatever way they feel most comfortable with that.

Great.

Um, and with the first meeting tomorrow, the idea being hopefully getting them there.

If not, I'm sure there's room to onboard folks after that.

Um is there a hard date beyond that?

No, there's not a hard date.

ASAP.

Um so we'll be meeting twice in the month of June and then twice monthly, all the way through April.

Uh that's the cadence for our community leadership team in person.

It probably will go, we'll we'll take the pulse of the uh the people that that come as to what day of the week it will be and where.

I heard from uh a number of people last night at South End neighborhood council that they definitely don't want us to just stay at the star center that we need to go back and forth on either side of the freeway.

So um we will give you that schedule once we have that in place.

Thank you.

That was a thought I had too.

Is I know that there was some momentum a gosh, two years ago now, perhaps W mayor, around getting a community center over on the other side of the freeway, and I think some of those looks might be good to reach out to as they would remote.

Yeah, perfect.

I was like, you guys already know all the people, but I thought I should mention.

Um, and then um let's see here.

Uh I think a statement I wanted to make rather than a question was I know I heard at some point one of the slides talk about the incredible work that y'all did in the past participatory budgetings and how there was greater turnout in those elections than there was in actual actual like auditor council elections, which I actually love and it makes sense given the amount of actual deep on the ground um work that y'all are doing.

But I did want to point out I think it's also folks under 18 can vote, like any age can there's a bigger voting pool and the voting pool I would argue is probably better, so it's a longer timeline for voting as well.

So it's not just one day that people vote.

We we try to make it as long as we can.

For this this one, it'll be January to March 15th, which is not as good a time period as summer months to get the vote, but we will be going to school soon.

Yeah, we'll get it, we'll get a good amount of votes during that time, maybe not quite as large, although we're gonna go for it.

We're gonna, you know, she really we we definitely want to do that, um, but it is it's a broader segment of the community, so not just people who are registered voters.

Yeah, I would argue it's um the most participatory way that we actually can get people to engage in any kind of civics or voting at all is just by having literally no boundaries, no barriers, and a ton of language access and handholding.

Like that's how you get people there.

So I really appreciate the work they all did on that and then are gonna do going forward.

Cause I think it helps us really be a stronger community and more connected.

Um the other I think question, was that a question?

Um I guess maybe comment I had was I think for my colleagues, particularly based on Councilmember Palmer's question around how do we get more of this funding?

I would point us to our GR team and making sure that we put support for these kinds of projects in the CCA and in the Department of Commerce into our um legislative agenda or just on the minds of our lobbyists and our RGR Alex and folks, um, because while Rowena, hi Rowena, I it's so rare that my day job colleagues meet me in my night job.

So I thought I would give her a quick shout out.

Um, uh, it's really rare that um uh we as a city have a chance to um move the needle on these kinds of things.

But um this is one where we will do that with the receipts of the work that we're gonna do, and we can make sure we're pushing for this not just for us but for other communities, and um Department of Commerce will be able to do that as a cabinet agency and in their process and in their work as Rena pointed out, but it also helps to have external partners sort of be that lift and that voice for the work that they're doing in those good agencies.

So thank you.

I would just like us to own a piece of this getting this money back is on us as well as it is on them.

Thank you.

All right, um, Councilmember Walker.

Okay.

Um, well, thank you so much.

Uh, okay, it's my turn.

Uh thank you so much.

Uh I'm really excited uh for this.

Just appreciate uh the partnership with Department of Commerce.

Thank you for thinking of Tacoma and the experienced people that we have to be able to help lead this effort.

Um really appreciate um, you know, to to even be able to to move and do something in this space um really is a testament also to just the community itself being prepared uh to be able to receive these kind of funds and being able to execute it on it um when the time arrives, and that that takes a lot of on-the-ground work at the community building level, um, and that's happened a lot in South Tacoma and South End community.

Um, and really just happy to see that.

So, because of that, we have these opportunities as they come to us to do things like this.

Um, I do just have a few clarifications I'd like to talk uh through.

Um, and so small some of the things that are on I've heard is this is a little bit different than how participative budgeting has been done in the past, like in district four, for example, there was an opportunity to do uh a wide range of projects.

Uh, is this different in scope?

Like, are we kind of limited in what kind of projects we can do?

Could you kind of describe that a little bit?

Um, so that way folks are like, well, we can't do this because it's not within the scope of the grant.

Yeah, we've been um working with the Washington State Department of Commerce to generate a list of ideas of capital projects because I think we'll we'll need some of that, those examples.

Um, so I just to give you an example of a few, and um, I have this is not my expertise, so if I say this wrong, please forgive me, but um, projects that would um decrease emissions, so um uh environmentally friendly modes of transportation, for example, um, and um uh bikes, electric bikes, uh pedestrian, uh more commuting friendly types of things, it could be putting in EV chargers, uh so those are sort of uh mitigating some of the pollution in the ways that we know how.

And then also um uh land acquisition, green spaces.

Uh, we've already been working with Parks Tacoma a little bit after their bond passed to see what kinds of projects they have in the works.

Um so they were very good partners on our last project and continue to be, and we want to make sure that we're we're talking to their climate action plan people as well and seeing what is in the works there as well.

So giving them some examples of like green corridors, um, that it would be potentially something that our public works would do, but in conjunction with Parks Tacoma.

We don't want to give people too many ideas because we want them to dream the ideas, um kind of what Council Member Rumbaugh said about people are more creative than we give them credit, especially students.

So we when we went to Mount Tahoma, I was just looking through some of their ideas, and they're incredible.

I mean, we we already have incredible ideas.

Um so we will give them some examples like I just gave you, but we really want them to dream, and then we'll bring some feasibility experts to say yes, that does count, or no, that doesn't count.

Uh we've had some discussions, for example, do trees count as capital projects, and and we're not we're unsure, we don't have clarity on that, but we know that if we work with some of the project partners, trees could be part of a capital project, right?

So we've already started those discussions about how that can maybe fold into something that goes on the ballot because we think we'll hear loud and clear trees.

Yeah, but we want to make sure that it fulfills the definition of capital projects, and we're working with the Washington State Department of Commerce to clarify that so that we're not raising the expectations of community and then dashing them.

We wouldn't want to do that, yeah.

And that's part of why I asked the question.

I just want to be very clear with folks that um this is not exactly like participatory budgeting has been in the past, it is slightly different, and it is a little bit narrow in scope, but also we can be very imaginative within that scope, yeah.

Right.

So there's a lot of opportunity for some really some really creative ways to decarbonize to um support the the built environment in some way uh and you know green up uh you know the district five area.

Um and so uh, you know, because like district two did escape park, that's great, but it might not necessarily fall within this criteria.

So just being up front with the community about that, I think it's gonna be really important so that way we're not setting people up for you know expectations of what participatory has been to what it is now.

Um could you also just talk to me a little bit more about the geographic constraints?

I know we had talked about district five, but district five is a very large, obviously, it goes from um the borders boarding Lakewood all the way to bordering Midland, um over the east side, and so could we uh just kind of I know you mentioned the South Tacoma Groundwater Protection District, um but so that further constrains it.

Could you talk a little bit?

We're not necessarily talking about Stewart Heights Park area and district five, but maybe or or are we so could you talk about the geographic boundary in which this area would be able to that's all district five, 56 and orchard all the way over to Stewart Heights and then over to Midlands down to Hosmer and then Mountsahoma, yeah.

Okay.

So we're getting really familiar with your council district in the map, and um and and and I would say that we take maps everywhere we go because people don't necessarily identify as a council district, right?

So we point out what the borders are as well.

Um so we want to have a capital project that's within these boundaries, but it could include the Southwater uh ground.

So so it can include the STGBD, um, but it could also be outside of it.

The South Tacoma Groundwater Protection District falls in both districts three and five.

Correct.

So but the STGBD does not cover the entirety of District five.

Correct, yeah, so it community can spend this money however they want.

They want to within District five, so it could be no, like if they want to spend this money outside of District five, they can do that too.

I I would say um, I'm sorry, but I think it needs to be in council District five in order to follow this process.

But there are parts of the Sound Wa uh South that are in Council District Five.

So if it included that, it would count for council District 5.

Or parsing work, maybe maybe we can get offline and just kind of hash that out.

I just want to make sure that folks are very clear on which areas will be able to do this part.

I obviously anybody that does live work or play within District 5, great.

We have a lot of community members that live out there and play or work out there.

But you know, I I'm just a little unclear on where within District 5 this might fit because the STGBD boundary does not cover the entirety of District 5.

Right.

So just want to just look for clarification there.

We'd love to have a conversation about that.

And and to um, you know, Councilmember Scott's point earlier.

I think that there's a lot of opportunity even in the north side of South Tacoma, which does fall within this TGBD, but is technically outside the district five boundary.

Um, and so not not saying that I you know I'm more than happy to support district five, but I also think about you know the disproportionate disparate impacts that we have in the whole South Tacoma area, specifically.

Um, and on and it like you remember earlier, it doesn't necessarily cover both geo like the the jurisdictional geographic boundary that we've set up for ourselves, and so um maybe, yeah, just we can clarify that a little bit later.

Um, and then the other question I had um is as project ideas are coming through, is there going to be some sort of scoring system uh developed?

Um have you guys had any thoughts about that?

Like how do we know what is going to be presented like to the public?

Like this X amount of D carb is gonna happen, this X amount of but how's that scoring?

Is there gonna be a scoring system or just uh there's a delicate process, so a budget delicate process where we look at the feasibility and we bring our experts in to talk about things that include numbers, and if that's what you mean by scoring, um and then we do have a ranking system, Councilmember Rumbo, got to see us in action around the ranking system of the budget delegates, and how do we come to a decision about what comes on the ballot?

So that's similar to a scoring system.

Um, but whether whether we rate one a certain score versus another certain score, it's not typically how we've done it, but again, we're open to ideas about how to do this.

There's not one way to do participatory budgeting, uh it will be it will be the community making the decision.

That's what we know for sure.

Yeah, absolutely.

Um I think the more information that our our community can have is going to be really essential, especially as you move through this process.

There's a lot of um there's a lot of other work happening at the same time, the South Tacoma neighborhood plan.

We have a lot of um sound transit improvements in that area as well, access improvements like in the in the tens of millions of dollars, and so I think making sure that the community has that information available to them.

So if they can have creative ideas with things that are happening already, maybe there's ways that we can improve existing projects or be more creative with other projects.

Um, and I'll just throw an idea I have out there, um, especially along I-5, the coma mall boulevard on the South Tacoma side.

I think there's a lot of opportunity for deep having, um, and especially capturing a lot of pollution coming off of I-5 going into the neighborhoods of South Tacoma, um, because currently it's just straight air right into uh our neighborhoods out there.

So that's just an idea I'm gonna throw out there.

Um, if anybody's listening, we just got our first district five project proposal.

So, um, but there's certainly a lot of opportunities out there.

We have a lot of pavement out there, so I think there's a lot of opportunities.

Deep pavement is a part of the capital project that we've already heard for the Department of Commerce, it could be uh a good project, a capital project.

That would be great.

Um that's that's all the questions I have.

I'm really looking forward to continuing to be a part of this process, and would definitely invite all my council colleagues to be very much in part of this because I would like to see it happen all over the city personally.

Um, and we have done it in other areas like district two and four.

Um, but then I will kick it back over to Council Member Bark away.

Um thank you, Deputy Mayor, and I just wanted to say that um at the end we had three projects, and they were really brought by young students, each one of them, and they were really different.

One was to do some improvements to our um to our stability site down on PewP Avenue.

They wanted to make it, they they had some plans for that.

The other one was to increase the hours at the library so that kids could be there for longer hours, and they they chose the skate park because they wanted a place to utilize and be active in our community, they're taking a place that wasn't active and making it active, and I think that um that was what they were looking for.

So I'll be really curious to see what students in district five want to see what the students at Montehoma are interested in because I think sometimes kids know better where they're where they want to be, and they and they were thinking about how homeless people as well were that's a great place to have a skateboard park because they knew that a lot of different types of people will use it.

So I just I want to say that they think differently than I do or other people, and um I I think we I had like I had other ideas, and I came and I saw what they wanted to do, and I was just really on board for it.

And we had started with an idea of activating another building down on another street, and they kind of moved away from that when they saw the practicality of the other projects, and the feasibility study was really helpful, but at the end of the day, it was the people in the room when many of them young people voting on something that they really felt that they would use and would make our city a better place.

So thank you.

Yeah, thank you for that.

Um, I brought one from Mount Tahoma just in case this came up, and the idea given was more community hubs to provide a safe place for uh to collab with organizations to clean and protect the land that we walk on.

It also creates a place of security.

So they come up with ideas of ways to combine things too, I think.

You know, they are not just thinking about one, you know, the climate piece of it, but thinking about so there's very creative ideas in just the 30 that we collected.

Yeah, thank you for bringing that up.

All right, thank you.

Councilmers Scott, you still had your hand up.

Did you have uh additional comments?

No, sorry, just forgot to push the lower hand button.

Perfect.

Thank you.

All right.

Uh I am just super excited again.

Thank you so much for all your work on this.

Uh thank you to our partners at the Department of Commerce.

Thank you so much, as well as the folks around the CCA.

Um, I think this is going to be a phenomenal project, and we're looking forward to being a part of it.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you for having us.

All right.

Next up, we have other items of business, and our third agenda item is uh council consideration requests next gen GM Sports Executive Internship Pilot Program sponsorship.

And I would like to call in Councilmember Walker to begin the presentation.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Um, this is a really fun one, and there uh is a lot of information in the packet that or the CCR that you have.

So I'll kind of go through that first, and then there's a couple things we've learned like in the last couple hours.

So I want to just overview that the point of this pilot or the internship pilot program is to get youth exposed to the um world of sports executives to work in the field of sports if you're not playing sports.

Um, and so this is specific to Tacoma, and it will give students a chance to experience firsthand the business sides of side of professional sports.

Um it is primarily based at Cheney Stadium where the students will have facilitated discussions, they'll bring in facilitated speakers.

I have been told we are invited to the graduation day, so we can be part of this too.

Um, but then they're also gonna have several um field trips around the city.

So the money from our um council uh fund would make it possible for the students to have transportation to and fund the programs, food and a stipend as part of the program.

They've already identified um a lot of the students that are going to participate, but there are a couple spots open if you know people who might be interested in this type of program.

Um, and it is really what got me excited about it and the work, and there's more details about what the kids are going to be doing, but what really got me excited about it is um a couple things around our strategic goals of investing in young people in our local economy, giving them opportunities, it's connected to our work around violence prevention, um, and gives uh youth a really specific um look at career paths that they might be able to take advantage of.

Um, the things that are different than what you're looking at, um, the boys and girls club is not going to participate this year, not because they don't like the program, they just don't have the capacity this year.

Um, so that that is listed in your CCR, but will not be in the cam.

And then the other thing is we were able to connect the group that's that's leading it, the next Gen GM Sports Executive internship, with our Tacoma Galaxy, our women's professional sports team.

I was really interested in making sure we had women's sports represented in there, and they were super excited to make that connection.

It sounds like they had been working on that anyway, but we were able to make that match and um they're gonna be be there as well.

So those two additions will be in the um the final version.

Um, I do want to thank Councilmember Diaz, Councilmember Scott, and Councilmember Heinz for joining us co-sponsors of the proposal, and it is our intention to bring it forward on June 9th.

Um, so with that, happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Councilmember Walker.

Any questions or comments?

Councilmember Rumbach.

Thank you so much.

I'm really excited about this.

I this is the first I've heard of this, and um I'm really this sounds great.

I'm just curious.

Um, so they're looking at stadiums.

Is there any opportunity to think about a visit to the Tacoma Dome and how that's run?

Um, it sounds like because this is a pilot program, they are open to many, many ideas or any ideas, so we can certainly bring that forward.

Um, I did talk to Adam this morning, it sounds like they have a similar program at the dome with students already there.

So I don't know what capacity they have to add capacity, so um, but it is specific to sports management, so we do want to keep it in that.

But I will I will bring that up.

Oh, yeah, I'm just curious.

Very open to ideas.

Yeah, because they do all the like, well, they do a lot of the sports event like the football and stuff like that.

So I'm just curious if there was an opportunity at all to share some of that, some of those logistics with them.

Thank you.

Yeah, I love that idea.

Councilmember Sidalgi.

Yeah, this looks um really cool.

So thank you for for bringing that forward.

Uh I'm especially uh I was intrigued when it said sports analytics because uh I did data analytics for a really long time, and quite frankly, it was the one time I got regular people to start liking math when he started talking about things like what a batting average actually means or what your ERA means.

Uh, my question is, and if you covered it, I'm sorry I missed it.

Uh, how many students are gonna be um served with this program?

Do we know an idea or it's okay?

The more the merrier, the more people give money, the more students.

Like, should we be talking to other municipalities?

I'm sorry, that's a lot of questions there.

And I think the answer is all of the above.

Right now they're um scoped and ready to go for 10 students, but I again they've been so open to ideas that I would not be surprised if they said sure if we have more money, we can take more students.

But it is a pilot, so I um I know that they want to um get it right this first time as they extend it.

So, but right now it's designed for 10.

10 is a great number for a pilot.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Palmer.

Thank you.

So you mentioned that there's a diverse group of students that are slated uh to be involved.

I'm just curious where maybe some of them are getting green dropped from.

So I heard this morning that so far the students signed up are from Silas and Lincoln.

I don't know demographics of them.

Okay, that would be my only question is if we can if we're spreading that around the city and making sure we're getting folks from all different spaces.

Otherwise, love it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments?

Um, really excited to support this.

Thank you so much for your leadership of bringing this forward, and um it's really great when some when these things come together because there are additional opportunities to make connections.

I think that's so important.

Um, and it helps um beyond just the CCR itself because these connections stay beyond these initial things, but it's a great way to segue into helping build community connections and supporting our young people all across the city.

Um, all right.

Uh, next up uh without any any final questions or comments.

Nope.

All right.

Uh next up we have our fourth agenda item, which is the council consideration request for ride transit month sponsorship.

I'd like to call on council member walker again.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor, and this is um something that the mayor led in putting together, but I am a co-sponsor of it.

Um, and in his absence, agreed to speak to it.

Um the ride it uh ride transit month was originally tri-transit month started by downtown on the go in 2013, um, who is now Tacoma on the go.

The money here goes to both Transportation Choices Coalition and Tacoma on the go as they promote Ride Transit Month and advocate for more transit across the region.

So there'll be events.

I know transit trivia is happening next week.

Um just a lot of events that both help people get on uh transit but also um elevate the conversation around transit so that everybody um recognizes that it is available that kids 18 and under ride free.

Um it just uh is a really good way to get um information out to the community, and both of those organizations are very reputable around um transit advocacy as well as transit um education, so um, very happy to be supporting their work, and then obviously um very recently been working closely with them as we worked on our uh Tacoma Dome Link extension, um, saving our Tacoma Dome Link extension through Sound Transit.

So um great organizations that we're excited to support and support the work of getting more people on transit.

Thank you, uh Councilmember Diaz.

Thank you.

Um I was just curious, just because it says in here that Ride Transit Month started as tri transit month over a decade ago.

And I don't recall us having sponsored this in the past, and I was just wondering if you know if we have or if you know why we're sponsoring it now this time.

It's it seems great to me.

I was just curious of the background there on that piece.

I don't think we've sponsored it since I've been here.

Um, so I don't know the answer to that.

I don't know if Bakoda is listening, uh, if he knows the answer to that, um, because I don't know why uh the mayor brought it forward this year and it hasn't been in the past.

Okay, I was just yeah, curious.

Maybe uh when he's back, he can give us more background on that.

It just seems like a what is the new unique thing that is causing this this year?

Um, because I love Ride Transit Month, and it's my new epiphany from Monday raising the pride flag at Pierce Transit was um it is Pride Month and Ride Transit Month, therefore we should all be gay in ride transit.

I'm very excited.

But um, I was just curious.

Um, and then I'm also wondering is and I should have asked this for your last one, but now since you're on the House Ever both, I will ask are these both up for a vote tonight or are these next week?

Okay, thank you.

Great, thank you.

Um, I am really excited to support this.

I think it's really important to continue to advocate for our transit.

Um, and there's been a lot that's going on in the transit world.

Um, especially really appreciate your leadership on Sound Transit Board specifically and the work that you're doing there and saving TDLE.

Um, and uh the other projects that are going on in the Pierce County area, and uh, I think this is just a great opportunity to continue to build on that success um and support our local transit uh here in Pierce County.

Um, so with that, I any other questions or comments.

Seeing none, uh, we are moving on to committee reports, or is there any other items of interest to share before I do that?

Seeing none, we'll move on to committee reports.

Do we have any committee reports?

All right, seeing none, we're uh going to item number five, which is our agenda review and city manager's weekly report.

I'll like to call on Deputy City Manager Alistair Griffith to begin the presentation.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Um, for your agenda this evening, there are three ceremonials.

The first is proclaiming June 2026 as fan zone month, the second is proclaiming June 2026 as gun violence awareness month.

So good job wearing your orange today.

The third is proclaiming June 2026 says ride transit month.

There are no modifications to tonight's agenda.

There are three opportunities for public comment this evening.

The first is under regular public comment, which is regarding motions, resolutions, and ordinances on tonight's agenda.

The second opportunity is a public hearing on the proposed amendments to chapter 13.11 of the municipal code relating to critical areas preservation as recommended by the Planning commission.

And the final opportunity is a public hearing on the proposed six-year comprehensive transportation improvement program amended for the years 2026 and 2027 through 2032.

Please let me know if there are any questions related to tonight's agenda so the staff can be prepared to respond accordingly.

And for your review, attached to the study session agenda is the weekly report to council.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Thank you very much.

Any questions for the deputy city Mayor?

All right, seeing none, I'll attain the final motion.

Move to adjourn.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to adjourn.

All in favor, please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

All right.

We stand adjourned.