Tempe City Council & TCC Board Joint Meeting: 2025-2026 Vision & Priorities (February 11, 2026)
Tempe City Council & TCC Board Joint Meeting: 2025-2026 Vision & Priorities (February 11, 2026)
The Tempe City Council and Tempe Community Council (TCC) Board of Directors held a joint meeting on February 11, 2026, from approximately 11:00 a.m. to 5:04 p.m. The meeting focused on TCC's vision, priorities, accomplishments, direct services, financial health, and a call to action for community support. Key outcomes included updates on the 2025 Needs Assessment, the launch of a three-year funding cycle, and a strategic planning process to be initiated within the next two years.
Public Comments & Testimony
- No public comments were made during the meeting.
Discussion Items
- Vision & Priorities for 2025-2026 (Item 3A): Board Chair Rabani Kahn presented TCC's vision to "nurture Tempe's sense of community where children, seniors, families, and individuals care for and about one another." Priorities include aligning mission with community through a strategic plan, increasing volunteerism, and executing a thoughtful executive leadership transition following former Executive Director Octavia Harris's departure.
- Needs Assessment & Funding Process (Items 3B, 3C): Interim Executive Director Tim Birch reported on the 2025 Needs Assessment, conducted with Arizona State University's Southwest Interdisciplinary Research Center, which identified growing community needs and will guide funding through the Social Determinants of Health framework. Community Impact Manager Kim Venwigan announced a new three-year funding cycle with a renewal process for proven agencies and a $30,000 cap on new agency funding requests. The application deadline was February 2, 2026, with 71 applicants.
- Direct Services (Item 3C): Staff highlighted several programs: Threads (expanded to four schools, $300,000 in clothing donated, 40% increase in services), Open Horizons (celebrating 50 years, provided 20 weeks of preschool, bus passes, and over $3,700 in support to one young mother), Triple P Parenting (sessions doubled, registrations up from ~70 to 151), and VITA Tax Assistance (872 returns filed, $1.2 million in refunds/credits, $174,000 in saved preparation fees).
- Tempe Coalition (Item 3C): Bernetta Coggins reported on the coalition's work to reduce underage drinking and drug use. Data showed 43.1% of Tempe youth reporting inability to manage stress, average substance use initiation age of 13.3, and 28.8% using substances in the past 30 days. Accomplishments included 100% school district participation in the 2026 Arizona Youth Survey, a 300% increase in grant funding ($480,000 from five grants), distribution of over 1,000 boxes of naloxone, and reaching over 4,500 students through prevention messaging.
- Financial Health (Item 3D): Treasurer Magda Johnson presented the FY 24-25 audit. Revenue was approximately $2 million, expenses about $2.1 million, and net assets decreased by $68,000 to $1.8 million, described as manageable. Total liabilities were approximately $100,000, indicating low risk. Revenue sources included 41% in-kind from City of Tempe ($1.3 million), 35% pass-through for agency review ($1.1 million), and the remainder from grants and contributions.
- Acknowledged Awareness & Call to Action (Item 3E): Chair Kahn emphasized the need for a strategic plan, increased visibility, and expanded support. TCC holds two funds at the Arizona Community Foundation: an endowment and a collaborative fund. The Together Tempe program collected $30,000 in utility bill donations in FY 24-25. The call to action requested city introductions to new businesses, ambassador support through social media, and partnerships.
Key Outcomes
- Decisions: The meeting was informational with no votes taken. Council members offered support and suggestions.
- Referrals: Councilmember Hodge offered to introduce TCC to businesses and school districts. Councilmember Amberg suggested placing corporate representatives on the TCC board to facilitate sponsorships. Councilmember Armenta recommended including a Chamber of Commerce representative on the board.
- Next Steps: TCC will launch a strategic planning process within the next two years. The new three-year funding cycle begins with the 71 applications received. The city and TCC will continue to align on human services priorities.
Meeting Transcript
All right, good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the Tempe City Council and Tempe Community Council Board of Directors joint meeting. Item number one is call to order. Council meetings can be watched in real time via Cox Cable Channel 11 and at Tempe.gov slash Tempe 11. Members of the public may also attend the meeting virtually through Microsoft Teams. With that said, let me go ahead, maybe Mr. Birch, I'll start with you and we'll go around the table. Tim Birch, Director of Community Health and Human Services for the City of Tempe, serving as interim executive director for Tempe Community Council. Hello, everybody, I'm Tom Martinez on the EDI liaison. Alicia Hakovo Kenny, Tempe Community Council Board Secretary. Magda John Sarah Johnson, TCC Treasurer. Rabani for Kahn, uh Tempe Community Council Board Chair. Corey Woods, Mayor. Doreen Garland, Vice Mayor. Erlene Chin, Tempe City Council. Fordah Hodge, Tempe City Council Member. Nikki Amberg, Tempe City Council Member. Oh, House of Staff. I see. Okay, sorry. Rosan Chaucey, City Manager. Good afternoon, Eric Anderson, City Attorney. Hi, Karastia, City Clerk. Excellent. Thank you so much, everyone. Appreciate it. All right. So next up, we're going to go to item number three, Tempe Community Council presentation. So let's see. Item 3A, vision and priorities for 2025-2026. And I'm going to turn this over to the board chair Rubani. Thank you very much, Mayor. Next slide, please. Alrighty. So I'll give a little information for everyone on Tempe Community Council. Tempe Community Council have served the community since 1972. And we really work with the city to address long-term human services needs. And uh a couple of the things that I'd like to highlight. We work off of a formal affiliation agreement that allows us to work really side by side to strengthen human services across the city. Our role is to conduct uh one of the things that we do is to conduct a comprehensive needs assessment that we do every three years. We also administer as well as oversee the agency review funding process, which you'll learn a little bit more about here shortly. Uh we'll show more on that soon, as well as we bring together the committee, excuse me, the community uh that includes uh various government uh nonprofit organizations, faith groups, and various residents too as well, to make sure that we provide support to Tempians and really build a lasting foundation for uh future generations to come, human services-wise. Next slide, please. I'll go over a little bit about what we plan to share today. We'll start off with the vision of Tempe Community Council. We'll go into a little bit of the uh priorities that we have going forward. We'll share some accomplishments, uh, talk about our direct services, we'll give an update on where our financial health is, acknowledge some of the awarenesses that we are aware of, as well as the call to action at the end. Next slide, please. So our vision here at TIPE Community Council is to nurture Tempe sense of community where children, seniors, families, and individuals care for and about one another. Our mission is to connect those in need with those who care, and we do this by convening the community, conducting research, determining priorities, as well as implementing effective programs and really exemplifying uh a stewardship of resources that we have.
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