I'd like

to call to order the study session of October 6, 2026.

Court, please call the roll.

Deputy Mayor Bush now.

Present.

Councilmember Diaz.

Here.

Councilmember Hines.

Councilmember Palmer.

Councilmember Rumba.

Here.

Councilmember Sidalgay?

Here.

Councilmember Scott.

Councilmember Walker.

Mayor Ibsen.

Here.

First agenda item is an updated budget proposal forecast.

I'd like to call on City Manager Henkin.

Mayor

Ipson, thank you very much.

Deputy Mayor, members of Council, we are here to provide you with an update as well as a presentation on our proposed budget for this next biennium fiscal year 2027 and 2028.

The agenda here that we will be covering is the strategy upon which we've we've built a budget for your consideration that is the baseline budget, but is the proposed budget that is both balanced, and we believe that it's in a way in which we

are

in alignment with many of the things that council has spoken to on your priorities.

Also have a revised forecast for the public as well as for yourself based on the numbers that we saw back in February as well is in June, and then a uh synapsis just on our financial overview with this budget and what this budget does.

And then priority pri priority area presentation.

I'm gonna take a few slides to talk about council.

You're gonna

see

budget presentations from our departments in a little bit of a different way in alignment with Tacoma 2035.

So we'll go over those in the presentation.

So the budget as we present by the numbers, um, we have a all funds budget of 5.3 billion dollars.

This is a biannual two year budget, the general fund of which is about six hundred ninety-six million dollars, and we have 4200 dedicated public servants who are supporting the mission of driving out the efforts of our council on a policy execution on a daily basis.

Tacoma 2035 is our 10-year strategic plan.

Um mayor, council.

Um this budget is in alignment with the community's vision that you have set for us.

It's about keeping Tacoma safe, housed, and connected, working, and sustainable and thriving.

That is the vision of this budget.

It's the vision of our organization.

Um the staff we are mandated to deliver high quality municipal services.

That is our mission of those 4200 employees.

Um I want to emphasize that our values that we have built this budget around in alignment with your 10 year strategic plan, they're just not words, not only words on paper.

When we talk about belief and trust, um, I want to talk about the fact that our patrons that we serve, they expect a government to

work

and

you

know, focusing this budget and where we are both taking a look at where we can actually drive through excellence, providing continuous services.

That's about belief and trust.

Being transparent about what we cannot accomplish is also part of belief and trust and realistic taking a look at where we have the dollars uh to continue to invest or where we don't have the dollars to invest.

Um when it comes to access opportunity and belonging, um, we saw it out in every budget proposal that we receive from the departments that I have considered with the OMB staff as well as with assistant director uh Teresa Green here.

Every proposal we looked at AOB, so access opportunity and belonging as a focus of where we need to invest or sustain services where we can.

Um we also sought to understand and mitigate many of the impacts with potential reductions that I'd be proposing to you and the disparate impacts that those um program reductions or eliminations would have on our communities.

Um that's something that we have that lens on there.

And then also for any new investments or ongoing um potential new programs.

We wanted to leverage um a data-driven way in which we continue to emphasize our equity index so that we actually can use the data that we've already captured to say this is what the community supports.

This is where we want to actually have you know inroads to providing more services to our districts that need more investments, and so we uh absolutely looked at that as well.

On the resiliency side for our value, um, we invaluated sustainability of our service models um to ensure that ongoing programs uh were paired with ongoing revenues, and I'll speak to um some of the programs that we are talking about potentially um eliminating or reducing later on in the presentation so that we can start the dialogue candidly with you all when it comes to if we have dedicated revenues, it's a lot easier to provide those services when we don't.

We really need to talk about the trade-offs.

And from our workforce standpoint um of our 4200 employees, um, you know, providing the tools, resources, and training were necessary to provide the continued service um both safely and effectively.