The Tacoma City Council held a study session on July 21, 2026, featuring a detailed presentation on the 10-year Tacoma Streets Initiative, discussion of three council consideration requests for contingency fund expenditures, proclamations, and a motion to enter executive session. No formal votes were taken on the agenda items; the council consideration requests are scheduled for a vote on August 4, 2026.
It took like 10 years. I'd like to call to order the City Council study session of July 21st, 2026. Clerk, please call the roll. Deputy Mayor Bushnell? President. Councilmember Diaz. Councilmember Diaz is here. Councilmember Heinz? Councilmember Palmer. Absent Councilmember Rumba. Here. Councilmember Sidalga? Here. Councilmember Scott? Here. Councilmember Walker. Absent Mayor Ibsen. Here. Our first agenda item is the Tacoma Streets Initiative 10-year report. I'd like to call on Public Works Assistant Director Corey Newton to begin the presentation. Welcome, gentlemen. Good afternoon, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, and Council members. My name is Corey Newton. I'm the Public Works Deputy Director and City Engineer, and we're here today to celebrate some successes of the Street Initiative in a decade of progress. Next slide. All right, so today's presentation, it's a little bit long, uh, but we'll try to go through some of the slides rather quickly. Um, but we definitely want to chat with you about a lot of different things that were uh real uh example of success as part of the street initiative. So we'll go over background, um, the important stuff, the community impact and the accomplishments we achieved, uh, our financial stewardship of taxpayer dollars, uh, and an economic analysis of the great work uh and the uh examples of a success on the economic analysis front. And then we'll talk a little bit about remaining needs and then what's next. Next slide. All right, so I always like to start off with a question of why. So why was the street initiative created? Well, basically, if you remember the condition of our residential streets in particular, at that time, uh they were basically some form of deteriorated street. Uh the PCI rating overall was very low, uh, which is the pavement condition index or how we evaluate our street system. And then uh council started passing lots of policies around the right-of-way in uh different modes of travel. And so, in order to meet council's transformational goals as well as the infrastructure status uh and create a predictable and dedicated investment, uh we developed the street initiative and voters passed that in 2015. Next slide. With that, I'll turn it over to Joe. Yeah, thanks, Corey. Uh good afternoon, uh Mayor Council. My name is Joe Franco. I'm the special assistant to the director here for public works. Um we're gonna go over background. So in 2015, uh Tacoma Voters approved Proposition 3 and Proposition A. Uh together, these measures funded residential street maintenance, capital improvements, uh, and also safety enhancements along Tacoma Streets. Uh at the time, the measures were expected to generate about 175 million dollars uh in new local revenue, which supported roughly 325 million dollars in total transportation investments. Um importantly, the funding was always intended to sunset after 10 years and was supposed to be used specifically for transportation uh purposes here in the city. Uh and looking back, the investment really has exceeded many of our original expectations. Um next slide, please. I'll just add on to that.