The Tacoma City Council held a study session on June 9, 2026, receiving a detailed six-year financial forecast for the general fund and considering a sponsorship request for the Juneteenth prayer breakfast. The forecast revealed a widening structural deficit, with revenues growing at approximately 2.9% annually while expenses rise at about 4.8%, driven heavily by wage and benefit costs. The council also approved a sponsorship for the Juneteenth celebration and received a proclamation declaring Mayors for Peace Day.
I'd like to call to order the city council study session of June 9th, 2026. Clerk, please call the roll. Deputy Mayor Bushnell. Councilmember Diaz. Councilmember Heinz. Here. Councilmember Palmer. Councilmember Rumba here. Councilmember Sidalgay. Here. Councilmember Scott. Here. Councilmember Walker. Here. Mayor Ibsen. Here. Welcome everyone. Our first agenda item is a forecast for the general fund. I'd like to call on Finance Directee andy Director. Andy Cherulo to begin the presentation. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council members. My name's Andy Cherulo. I'm the finance director. With me here is a very familiar face for you, our city manager, Han Kim, and our assistant finance director and budget officer Teresa Green. So we're here to present to you on the six-year financial forecast. This is working. Our agenda, just so you know, we're going to kind of do a quick review of the budget process and the budget calendar, so we can lock in on what you all should be expecting in the next few months in that regard. A brief overview of kind of the current economic conditions that uh factored into kind of what you'll see in our financial outlook, which is what Teresa is gonna walk you through. So here is our budget calendar. You have seen this graphic before. Um one thing to point out on this one is you'll notice it is it starts in January and goes through December, it's the full year, and there is something about budget going on all the time, always this year. Um, you guys, city council are the big blue bar at the top. Um, so again, you guys have an opportunity uh throughout the entire year to provide feedback to the city manager about your budget priorities, your policy changes, anything related to the budget. So please take advantage of that as this year drags on. Do not wait if you have ideas to change policy or uh budget ideas, revenue ideas. Now is the time to be speaking with the city manager on any of those. Um, as far as uh presentations to you all, we were here in February with a plenary preliminary forecast. Um here we are in June where that big blue star is with our update to that. Um, there's a little bit of a gap in there, and then we'll be back in the fall with an updated forecast if we need to update anything from today in the intervening months, and then you'll be getting briefings from our department heads on their budget proposals. Uh, the city manager, as you can see, is busy in a budget year. There's um all kinds of work going on in the city manager's office related to the budget and meeting with departments and going over proposals, uh culminating with uh late in September, early October his presentation to city council of a balanced budget for you all to consider. Um, the last thing on there is the community bar at the bottom. Again, the community has lots of opportunities to give feedback on the budget. We encourage it. We have lots of different uh avenues the community can provide feedback. We'll talk more about some of that a little bit later, but uh we really love getting the feedback from the community on what uh their budget priorities are this slide talks about uh our roadmap to recovery, the city manager's strategic plan to kind of bring us in structural alignment in our budget over a number of years. Uh so again um we're looking right here. This graphic starts in 2026. We've taken actions in this current year to help set up uh alignment better for our 2027-28 budget.