Economic Development Committee - Regular Meeting

We're

recording. Are you ready? Great. I would like to call to the order of the economic development committee meeting of 04/14/2026. Can you please call the roll? Vice Chair Bushnell? Present. Council member Palmer? Here. Council member Scott?

Here. Chair,

yes. Here. Moving on, is there anybody signed in

for public comment online or

in the room?

Not in the room, and

I don't see any raised hands online. Online, is there anybody you wanna wanna give a public comment? Feel free to raise your hand. If not, we'll open it up at the end. Okay. Great. Just a good way for us to skip reading the blurb if no one's in the. I'll I'll check-in again online later, guys. So with that, let's move on to our first thing. And we're I'm gonna call up Katie Condit, Josh Stovall, Samuel Bradshaw, and Theresa Delicino from Workforce Central. Coming up, guys. We're gonna go over the Workforce Central 2026 for force development priorities impact and labor market analysis.

It's so good to be here. Thanks for making the space

and time for us. We

have a couple of of things we're gonna review, and, inevitably, our data and information will not cover everything. And so just know we wanna be a resource and can answer any questions you have or can dig in and

kinda create

any other kind of reports that are helpful for you all as you're making decisions. So we've got Josh here who's our senior director of data research, Tracy who leads our sector strategies, and Sam who leads our business solutions team. We're gonna talk

a bit about the state of

the workforce in the city of Tacoma specifically, what some of our broader sector strategy work looks like, and then just

what we're seeing, what we're

hearing from businesses every day on the ground here in the city of Tacoma. And so with that, I'm gonna turn it

over to Josh to start

with some of our overall data. And my understanding is we'll say next slide once, and then you are in charge of the clicker.

Excellent.

Alright. Thanks. And

feel free to to pause at any point if have any questions. A quick advance apology for the content and the condensed information. It's a lot to take in, so please feel free to let me know if you have any questions. So I'll start with labor force and employment. And as of January, we're waiting for some more estimates we'll have later this month.

They're kind of annual rebenchmark in the status. We'll have some more data coming out later this month. But as of January, we had about a 120,000 people in the labor force in Tacoma, representing about a 120,000 workers and about 8,000 folks who are unemployed and actively looking for work. That's not including doesn't include individuals who are hired. These are folks who are actively unemployed and seeking employment, driving up our unemployment rate to about 6.3%, which is just on par with Pierce County and fall in Washington.

While we don't see that nationally yet, we'll probably begin to see that uptake in the the next LAUS drop. Looking at unique job postings, this is kind of a reflection of demand for Tacoma. We can see that over time, that has kind of cooled. We're down to about 32 or 3,300 job postings a month. And really just wanna highlight that, you know, this isn't to say that there aren't opportunities.

There are plenty of opportunities. There's some misalignment right now, and workers are finding it to be a little bit more challenging as fewer job openings today than what we saw in the past couple of years. Very sorry for the density here, but I really just wanna highlight among the last quarter job postings by employer and by occupation, we see a high concentration of those occupation from government and health care employers. And then by occupation, you can see the top 10 of those 20 are in health care. Yeah.

Leading the list would be registered nurses. Thinking about, affordability and cost of living, we look at the consumer price index. And while Tacoma is very different than the Seattle, Seattle, Tacoma, Bellevue Metropolitan area, we see that the year over year change in trends are pretty consistent with what we see in Tacoma as far as affordability trends. And as of February, the year over year change as a proxy of inflation was about 3.9% for this area, meaning that all items in good services on average are about 4% more expensive in February than they were February 2025. The US average, 2.4%.

That is February. We actually had a new data job on Monday. That jumped to about 3.6%, I believe. So the next update we'll probably see for our area will also likely follow that trend upward. One of these ones that just take a step back and talk a little bit about workforce is the labor shed.

And when we talk about workers, we could be talking about workers who live in Tacoma and potentially work outside of Tacoma. And we see a pretty big share of workers commuting to Pierce County in that light red and then beyond Pierce County, that dark red. And then in addition to work in Tacoma, and that could include people coming in from out of county at Pierce County. Or we could talk about people who live in work in Tacoma. That's the yellow bracket.

So

it's a very big labor shen. It's really important because the framing kind of determines whether you're talking about policy that's affecting residents or opportunities that's affecting workers in the region. It's really important to have to know the population we're talking about. And with that, I'll kinda skip. This is kind of a record slide and more about looking at that labor shed, by county, where they live versus where they work.

And you can see that distribution as a table, but, I'm sure that's not the most exciting thing to look at at the moment. And you'll have this as a a link at the end, but this is kind of a a map, and you'll get to kinda toggle between workers going out of the region. You can see how they fan out geographically across the region. It's a very distributed workforce. And workers who are committing to to come up with work.

You'll see that as well, and the geographic distribution is is is quite large. I think it's really important to keep in, context. Looking at sectors of employment, these are kind of macroeconomic groups of industries. And in Tacoma, we see the largest sector is health care and social assistance representing about one in four workers. And there's a column called employment concentration.

That is the share of people in that sector or industry occupation relative to what we expect based on national averages. And if it's above one, in this case, 1.75 for health care and social assistance, it means it's a higher concentration. We have more workers than what we'd expect on average, which is a good thing. And we kind of look toward those higher clusters of workers to have to say, what's our industry advantage, where we see more workers in. Consequently, we see usually more opportunities where we have higher concentrations of workers.

So, Josh, we talk about manufacturing a lot. Can you share what the like, what we should read from this in terms of manufacturing Yeah.

So that's workers. Point five seven means there's about half as many manufacturing workers in Tacoma as what we expect on the national average. And same for industry, this is again, we're talking about the workers and the labor share of employment here in Tacoma, not necessarily residents who work here in Tacoma. So we only have about a quarter of the information jobs that we would expect on a national average. But we do have quite a few employment residents who are employed

in the information sector.

So it's just kind of an interesting dynamic and why that labor shed is so important. It depends on who you're talking about. Drilling down into the industries that make up those sectors. And this is really interesting because we can start looking at forecast and where we see the most growth. And there's gonna be a lot more demand for workers or opportunities that are vacated through transitions or retirements and things like that.

But the the forecasted growth is the net new occupations. This is kind of where we see, kind of underlying, change within those industries and occupations. And one of the things that you can kind of see is the top few are all health care. We have services for the elderly and persons with disabilities, general medical and surgical hospitals, and offices of physicians. So there's definitely a trend, and all of those industries are above average employment concentration. And this information is more, of reference than necessarily how to go through all of it. So I'll spare you that.

And so much of Josh, you can

go back to the last slide. I'll just say so much of the work that we end up doing in partnership with economic development is to assess if services for the elderly and persons with disabilities is one of our highest growing industries. We then look at a wage comparison and say, it's also one of our lower wage industries. And so the work in partnership in a region is to make sure that we are thinking about growing, paying, and quality jobs in each of these buckets where possible and developing pathways to those jobs.

Thank you for teeing that up

because I think that really resonates when we look at the individual occupations. So these are the jobs that individuals are employed in within those industries. And you can see over the next year, we see the, you know, the most growth, the net growth for those occupations are along wages that are at or below about $20 an hour. And here, you can really see, this is the median wage. So at that point, I'll use home health care personal care, about $21, about half of workers in that industry, about 3,000 or less if you're looking at that wage distribution.

And, again, that's that it's pretty widely distributed across occupations. Let's see how it's that particular sector or that that cluster of workers. But, again, it's a it's a challenge as we prioritize demand for workers

and what

we see from industries and players as well as our value and preference for getting individuals trained and into families and getting wages. And this is really important for young adults, especially disconnected young adults, which are young adults 16, 20, or who are not in employment, training, or education. And, those individuals are usually new to the workforce and, trying to, get their foot in the door. And, we are prioritizing because in Tacoma, they make up about 3,500 young adults, which is about one in six of all youth in that age bracket. You see in South Tacoma, they represent about 20% of all young adults.

And, actually, South Tacoma were saying Districts 34, and 5. They have the highest geographic of their final concentration of young adults. And this this particular group is really important to focus on because being disconnected at this point in their life have lifelong impacts on their career and economic trajectory.

Josh, what is PUMA? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Public use microdata area. So PUMA is a geography defined by the census that has a 100,000 individuals for statistical analysis. So there's two PUMAs in the city of Tacoma. There's north and south, and I have them out there just kind of showing how they overlap with the city councils.

Can you define this kind of thing?

Yeah. So, again, that's individuals who are 16 to 24 who are not in employment, training, or education. So they are you know, at that point in their lives, it could be a gap year, it could be parent, but often what it really represents is that individuals who are not engaged or connected to those opportunities that are gonna be so critical for a lifelong career or in our That's it for me. Any any questions before I hand it over?

Yeah. Just a quick question on the disconnecting of young adults. Thank you. Sorry. Jumping in. The the 16 to 18, I would assume that they're supposed to be doing high school.

Does that include, like, they're not going

to high school? They're not enrolled in high school. Okay. How are you able to collect that information?

Yeah. So we're using detailed ICOMS data, which is census data of households, and we're able to to kind of parse out the age, employment, training, education, and then focus on different geographies.

Does that include, like, homes where the child may be homeschooled or not? And is that

If they are homeschooled, they would be considered in education. Okay.

Yeah. So these are just young people that are kind of out doing whatever they wanna do.

Not necessarily. About one in four are homeless. Many of them are hoping to get into the workforce and are not able to either because of lack of skills or lack of opportunity or education. So there's a lot of conditions that might not represent this population. Really, really interesting group.

Okay. Yeah. I'd love to maybe connect

with you later. Yeah.

And what we can do, Josh, correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the things we've done is we can break it out by, like, 16 to 18 and then over 18 so we can see kind of the group that we would assume is in high school but isn't in high school by area. Correct?

Absolutely. And, you know, we can share. We have a report coming out here very soon, I think, that's gonna drill a little bit more into this particular population and kind of talk a little more about, like, what are the barriers for demographic characteristics. If you have some questions beyond that, we

can also do some exploration. I'd be curious because the the shifting in time and what the trends look like, especially given what happened with COVID and see if there's any correlation there.

That's a great question. We actually one the reasons to talk spotlight these populations that we haven't seen improvements. And over the pandemic, it did increase a little bit, but really, it's remained pretty consistent across the board, whereas we've seen improvements in connection for all other adults twenty four to sixty four.

Thank you.

One of the things that's true, which is not surprising, and you all know this, but it's and Sam will speak to this a little bit when we're out talking to businesses. Right now, because there are fewer jobs available, the the talent market is flooded. And when we've got folks in their thirties and forties who are are wildly talented on the market, young people are less and less able to find those entry level opportunities. And so a big part of our work that's funded through the Department of Labor is to connect with these disconnected young people, and we do that through a myriad of ways. But what we're hearing them say is, like, I am trying and trying, and I'm getting no response, or I'm you know, we'll get an interview and a no thank you, and I just can't quite figure out, like, what to do next.

And so, you know, the the harder the economy is no surprise. Disconnected young people are are the most affected typically.

So Sam's gonna talk a little

bit about what we're hearing on the ground from businesses and job seekers, a bit about layoffs, etcetera. So take the

right thing.

Yeah. Absolutely. So I wanted to highlight not just that, but also a couple of the services. So one of those ways of paid work experience program. This is earned on opportunities. Also, this is gonna get paid in terms of shape or somebody starting a new job and we're helping subsidize those wages for the first three months. What we're doing is through rates, two small and medium sized businesses across the city of all different schools. One of the folks down here, just right down the street, actually, ETC, etcetera. They've done two paid work experiences, two interns that were interested in the fashion industry. We're able to work with them there. They work in

that eighteen to twenty four instant after branch

started and get there and get a job. So

our team supports multiple MLU learning

opportunities, supporting those dislocated young adults. Said, and recently, the line as well this support resource center to help find folks there new pathways into. One of those ways is, again, through a paid internship. In it had in some period where they hadn't had any kind of employment or some kind of work experience, whether it's across the industry, manufacturing, logistics, maybe paying those first three months wages once they're done to employee, and then letting them file a

really great experience.

It helps them build work experience, help them build their skills and get a path towards that.

So

do have any questions on the table?

I'm trying to hold all the questions to the end. Yeah. I fell off the roser.

Reasonable. Okay. Can I share just I think what's really exciting about this is you hear about internships all the time, and they matter? The typical internship model is that an employer of record, a nonprofit like a Goodwill or a Palmer Scholars or Workforce Central will be the employer of record, and we'll just place a young person, but we'll pay their wages. We flipped that. We tested this a couple years ago and flipped that to say, employer, ETC or Campfire Coffee or hospital. If you want an intern, you're actually gonna hire them day of, and they're gonna reimburse their wages to you so that they're coming on day one as an employee. In a

typical internship program, we see about

a 30% retention into employment rate for young people. With this model, we have an 80% retained in the job after the paid work experience is over because these employers are bringing them on from day one. And that's sort of a game changer in this field,

and it's something we've been able to test

to our partnership with the city of Tacoma and Pierce County through some flexible funding, and we've been able to sustain it. So it's that, again, game changer in a in a model that really matters for these disconnected people.

Yeah. It makes it more of a job training. Supposed to change that. Yeah. We wanna talk about

some. We're talking

about right now. We just heard labor market time. There's less jobs. How do we help both businesses grow and people grow that are currently employed? That's helping folks get upskilled. Right? One of the ways we do that is we offer grants to create pathways for people to move up in organizations. So she's saying, hey. We could really use a couple frontline managers. We have a couple people interested in, but they don't have any leaderships.

Well, that's okay. We can partner with a local college, pay for them to get some managerial training, supervisory training, the HR things that they'll need to know, and then get them put into that supervisory role, right, at a higher wage, which then creates another job down low to back. Right? So it's a way for both the organization and the person to win in what is effectively a very tough market. You can directly lead again to promotion or wages. It's opposed to that worker advancement while strengthening those quality jobs that were so critical to the city of Tacoma. Right? And it helps employees retain that talent and build their resume. It gives them, you know, a nationally recognized certification or license that helps them move up. Things that we've done.

In this case, we've helped folks get CDLs. You know, they'll sign and say, hey. I'll work at this organization for the next two years. They really need yard jostler. That's a hard role for them to fit. It's just somebody who goes across the street. That's whether they have a CDL. They have a semi that goes from one side of the street to the other. We paid for that person that was a frontline staff with a CDL. They've been employed there for two years. As that role, they're still there to stay on because, you know, Huawei did helps them stay at home and work that nine to five schedule.

Other things that we've helped

with here, again, supervisory training, global organization, managerial trainings, HR trainings, and then main Six Sigma trainings for local manufacturing. It's things

to help them make things more

One of the important things I think about this model is that in anything that we do in the workforce ecosystem, we require employer buy in. And so employers have to kind of up to 50% of what we're investing so that they've got buy in to support their their employees.

Yeah. And it is scaled by size. So the smaller the business, the less than it is, but every size organization.

And this is a layoff aversion strategy as well. And so one of the things that we often hear businesses say is, like, we've got these frontline workers that we're we're gonna need to lay off because we just need different skill sets now, whether it's AI, manufacture advancements, technology, etcetera. And prior to layoffs, employers will reach out to us, and we're able to come in and say, what does an, like, what does an upskill plan look like as opposed to a layoff and a rehire plan?

Those are two of these services I want.

So my apologies. I did not manage to get this in. She was like, I think we received it, and I apologize to those online. I'm not gonna be able to follow along. Wanted to talk about regional alignment and training pathways, some of the work that we are doing to support kind of a regional effort, local strategy support, etcetera.

So regional economic development work really allows us to define where we focus our work. So city, county, state alignment is really important, as we plan, prioritize, and make investments into workforce development. Sectors, Josh kind of already covered many of those, you know, health care, construction, maritime logistics, trade, manufacturing, technology, green jobs are all part of what our economic development partners are all focusing on as well. So that alignment's really important as we tackle this work on a regional basis. What I wanna talk a little bit about is some cluster work cluster strategies.

And there's different ways to look at clusters, but on just an example, aerospace, for example. We've got Boeing. Right? We've got space. We've got satellites.

We've got defense manufacturers, but not all of them have a footprint here in Tacoma, Pierce County. But what we do have is a pretty substantial supply chain of smaller manufacturers who are really, really val valuable and critical to support the manufacturing on a local and regional basis. So we're part of economic development strategies with city, county, state, and keeping an eye on what's going on and staying aware and aligned continuously around that. Industry roundtables is another approach that we use to get an industry voice, buy in, support, really, really critical, helps us understand workforce demand from the employer's perspective. Right?

We oftentimes bring them data. Josh does incredible work with that. We bring data forward, and then we bring it to the employers and say, I do anyway. Chew on this. Tell us if this resonates with you. What this is what the data is telling us trending, what's really trending in your world. Right? Where are your pinch points? Where are your challenges? Validate, or correct the assumptions that we have from our data.

And then we listen to them about their challenges, listen for skills gaps and opportunities around credentialing, and then also workforce constraints. You know, recruitment and retention challenges are huge right now. From all walks, workforce churn continues to be a problem for employers. They can't have stability in their workforce. That makes business unstable. So challenges there, policy and economic conditions, right, taxes, that certainly margins little less I'll

I'll

just say they're a little more thoughtful about their investments right now and whether they're gonna staff up or they're gonna stay lean. So that all impacts workforce. What we're hearing a common theme is it's across all levels. There's not, like, entry, middle, advanced positions. It's across all levels, and it's across all industries. So we hear about construction. It's not just laborers. Right? It's talent, skills, apprentice. It's skilled laborers, men and women, up to engineers and project managers. Right? But it's across the industry. And health care is the same way. It's not just nursing. It's the techs.

It's the nurses. It's the physicians. It's an entire system of workforce that we're trying to, address. So, when we talk about working with our colleges around education and training pathways, it's a really couple of examples that I'll share around where business education and workforce collide and create some momentum or hopeful change, right, and impact. We work Workforce Central and other local workforce boards manage what's called an occupational demand list that's established at the state level.

We kind of massage it to make sure it's connected to the what we see in our community. And then we work with our college partners and educational partners to make sure that there's alignment between what's happening with their training pathways and the occupations in demand. And why that's important is because there are funding levers that get triggered for people who qualify for financial aid, for education. It they're more often than not requires that that career path be in demand. So if that doesn't have alignment, then individuals don't get the funding support they're looking for.

So we think that's an incredible important role for us. Colleges are also looking more succinctly at stackable credentialing, short term stackable career pathways. So entry level to meet mid level skills and degrees as a pathway. And then, also, we're looking at how we go from education to employer, right, to advancing. So oftentimes, that includes incumbent worker training.

Sam just talked about the upskill reskill. So you get into a job, and you also we want to also make sure that folks have an opportunity to advance in their careers. So, one discovery I'll share with you, during our business, roundtable with the health care industry, we identified, again, in a room with business, education, and workforce, we identified where some bottlenecks were, and it it was a systemic issue, not enough instructional capacity to provide the nursing pipeline that we're looking for. So it was a bottleneck. And so business industry and workforce are coming together to resolve, like, a shared faculty model to help us push through that pipe pathway.

And then the last thing I'll offer is in alignment, strategic alignment. Another really great example is the work that Clover Park Technical College has done and Workhorse Central has partnered around the east side training center, expanding the facility, expanding the offerings, short term training, pre apprenticeships into industry. It's just a beautiful example of how when those things come together, we create some impact. So I'll leave it there.

I'll add what I think is the magic or the secret sauce in these industry roundtables is it's not just industries. We have health care. We have the manufacturing. We have a construction industry roundtable, but it was our training entity. So colleges, but also pre apprenticeship programs who said, like, we really need to, like, keep tab on what's happening with employers.

And so we bring employers into the room with those training providers and facilitate, like, where there's match and where there's mismatch. And out of that comes the development of different pathways, new curriculum, etcetera. Those groups meet quarterly, and our role in that is really facilitation and identification of where we can, like, plug resources or change making into what needs to happen for businesses and people who are training up in real time. And I think the last thing I'll share, and then we can open it for questions is, you know, when I started this in this role, I came to Tacoma almost six years ago and kind of looked at the the ecosystem of economic development. We have the court.

We have the city. We have the county. We have Workforce Central. We have the chamber of Tacoma Pierce County chamber. Every one of those entities had different priority sectors six years ago. Like, we we all aligned in manufacturing, but some were looking at defense and military, etcetera. Today, that's not true. Today, we are aligned. All of those entities, the EDD, are aligned in our priority sectors.

And I

say that to say there's been a lot of work, a lot of very regular kind of meeting and collaboration to say, like, we're yes. There's the city of Tacoma and Pierce County, and those can be separate entities in some ways. But if we're not all focused on the same goals, then we're not gonna move the ship. And there's been just some incredible alignment work that's happened in that arena, thanks to your team at the city and the work, frankly, that our elected officials have invested in these visions. So we're headed in a really powerful direction, and and that's a testament to the collaboration that happens in the city. So thank you for your partnership. It's helped move a lot of

these needles, and we're grateful.

Great. Thank you. Is that the end

of everybody? Yeah. Excellent. So now we'll actually formally open you up for questions if folks have them. And I have. Yes. Please. Customer's hot. Thank you, Cher.

Thank you guys for the update. Appreciate it. Going back to just some of the, like things. I'm having a hard time. I was just wondering when you talk about forecasted growth, is that based on, like, current employment, people who are, like, current education programs and training? Is that based on job openings that are slated to be billed, or is that based on, like, the need for for jobs to be created and filled versus type of mix of all that?

It's more of a mix, and I I don't mean to, like, just like a dramatic answer. It's a it's a it's a defined process for how they create these occupation forecasts. And those forecasts are really specific to those individual occupations, and they're really weighted heavily by the trend. So if they've been growing in the past, they'll wait it, and they'll assume that model will continue to grow. And there's been some estimation, I think, past analysis to say that they they tend to to be within the right direction before it passed, one or 2% of about, like, 75%. So it's not it's certainly not this is what it's gonna be. It's not a prophecy, but it is a pretty good indication of where we can expect to look.

Yeah. I was just trying to figure out, like I'm sure you guys are on it, but just I guess, to figure out, like, if we know that this is based on the need for the job, but we haven't figured out, like, where the pathways to the job care will look like, how we kind of use that forecast. Like I said, I'm sure you guys are on top of all that. The other thing I wanted to say, not necessarily a question, but I was really interested in the conversation around the. So whenever deputy mayor, you talk further with them, whatever information you're able to share. And

on that, we're coming out, Josh mentioned, but I'll I'll amplify with a really comprehensive disconnected young adult report that will also some of what you didn't see in here because we but it's very important to us is just, like, equity within the system and thinking about the, like, fact that occupation segregation is real. Women and people of color continue to be on the lower end of the wage scales across occupations, and that's something that we report on in a lot more detail pretty regularly. So we break that up by occupation, by gender, by race, etcetera,

and we'll do that when we look at disconnected as well. Okay. Yeah.

Thank you for all the information. Along those lines, is Workforce Central are you guys on the grade

board?

If not, I know it's something we talked about sometimes. I sorry for all of the different agencies. I don't know to do in my head, but I remember in

our last conversation. Yeah.

I don't we aren't currently, but we'll just work however can. Yeah.

You know, happy to look into that a little bit more. How do both individuals and employers access your service or learn about that you have available?

Yeah. I'll have have you dig in there. So one's through socials quite often.

A lot

of our employer engagement

comes directly to us from social media posts. We try to be very loud on talking about, hey.

Here are all the services

we offer. Hey. If you were even thinking about layoffs, please contact us. Let's work for some things first. Hey. If you're growing your staff, contact us. Also, work through other partners. Right? So when I worked

with one organization, I was told that say, if you have other HR friends that that

need assistance, Jason, my waiver,

package or assistant, get many referrals.

So

they both partner agencies like, and other city areas, but also some other businesses that they're sending their colleagues.

Know? A lot of our folks doing that.

Yeah. And I'll add.

I mean, we also recognize that not all businesses, particularly small businesses, are gonna trust a bigger semi quasi governmental organization.

And so we really believe in

a trusted messenger model. And so we actually fund business experts at, like, trusted messenger entities. So we fund a position at the Black Collective. We fund a position at Niche Centro to, like because those are trusted entities where small businesses are gonna go. And so we actually have humans in those organizations who then are experts in these services and can make those connections and referrals.

Interesting.

What about what does capacity look like? Like, if people are coming to you, are you guys able to offer everyone that's coming to you some kind of solution, or is there kind of a wait list for some of these things?

I wouldn't say that there's a wait list, but it depends on business needs. So we treat every business business you know, it's all. So we could have the first thing that we ever do would be incentive. What are you currently doing? What is your trying to do? How can you help? And that could be, and it could be leveraging, you know, the employee training grants and getting those things. Right? It certainly could be an earn while you learn opportunity for interns or new employees, things like that. It could also be just you talk about, like, this plan and how you want to go. But, no, I wouldn't say there's a wait list to work this at all, but I would say I might schedule you for next week. Does that make sense?

And so much of what businesses need doesn't require funding. I think another really great example is we have a lot of businesses reaching out to say, how do I thoughtfully and ethically integrate AI into my business? And so we have a couple folks who are AI experts on our team who will just sit down with the business, look over their plan, and say, here are a couple different ways that could look. And so it's really it's a it's a it's time more than anything. We had a

business reached out two weeks ago who needs a

$40,000 HVAC replacement. That's not necessarily something we can do, but we were able Sam was able to sit down with them and kind of create a some growth and projection planning and determine what they may need. So folks come to us for all sorts of for all sorts of needs.

And, also, I'm worried about that. I'm just sort of ballroom. The folks at E Central and also perform services. So there's gonna be workshops on how to get licensed in city, Tacoma, how to get local business insurance, how to market your business with AI on Facebook and Instagram, like places

you need to be when

you have a small business. And so they're also, I mean, many of them say, you know,

Could you guys speak a little bit more about, like, the how the green tran like, the green transition is with some of these programs? Like, are, I guess, are employers asking for that help, or are we finding that we have to offer that more? Or is there more of a what are the opportunities in, like, education?

I'd say it's a mix dependent upon industry.

Right? Very often,

we come to a soft. Positions. So they're already considering some kind of transition. Maybe you want to talk about, hey. I have a a manager who's working on our our. So we wanna reduce waste on. How can we get this person some kind of training to reduce organizational responsibilities, a paper organization or a machine. When we reduce those. That does cost, and it makes them want both. And so

I'd say very often they come to us to have those conversations,

but it is a pretty cool part of, like, when we're doing a needs assessment, talking about the overall organizational strategy.

As far as, like, the the training in some of these these fields, is is that something that's available in our educational institutions, or is that something

that, you know,

we could look at as an opportunity?

Yeah. I think many

of our local colleges right now, especially on the side, are talking about. I think that sometimes we do have to go out to Sydney for a training provider.

Yeah. A really great example of this is the east side training center was opened and developed in partnership with Clover Park, Workforce Central, and a number of other folks with, like, a green with a green strategy embedded in it. And so just a couple weeks ago, we were over there with a local employer who is kind of pre doing prefab construction, council member Walker and council member Sadavi to talk about and and think about how we can integrate deconstruction, for example, into their construction training pathways. Palmer Scholars does their preapprential construction training at the Eastside Training Center as does Clover Park Technical College. And so what we know about green jobs is roughly, you know, 80% of those jobs are really about reskilling.

They're not new jobs. They're about doing these jobs differently. And so I would say at our industry roundtables, but also in some of those really tangible examples, it's about integrating skills into those training pathways, and employers are are coming on board for that.

That's great.

Can I ask you this? Oh, sure.

You mentioned that churn and retention was an issue. I guess or what are we hearing is, like, top reasons for that? Well,

there's a lot of different reasons. So individuals may be jumping to another employer for a better rate of pay. They may be jumping for an advanced opportunity. They may realize that they may need new skills and go toward education and training, and then get back into the workforce. It's part I just feel like it's part of, the environment of workshops right now. So there's a pretty good trend of folks working for a couple of years and moving on. Right? And so and that's not just in a entry level. I mean, it's top to bottom. Right?

It's everywhere. And all all of you probably know people that used to have relationships with this organization,

and they moved on. Now you

have to rebuild that relationship with that organization. So it's everywhere. Ask colleagues to add to that.

Yeah. And I would add, which I think is an elephant in

the room

that we all know, but instability is higher than it has ever been in our economy. It means people are moving houses more frequently because they can't afford to stay where they're at. I will be this strong, but childcare makes it really difficult for folks to stay in a what might look like a traditional nine to five. And so that instability in some of those, like, family life ways has has really peaked in the last many years, and that makes it hard to stay. You know, we work a lot with our populations that are reentering the workforce.

And what we're finding the most important part of that work is is actually educating employers. If someone has a probation appointment, they have to be there, and you have to create a schedule that's flexible that, etcetera. And so part of it is thinking more nimbly as employers about how

to support folks who are

facing that instability. A couple of our board members, we have a private sector led board, brought to us some real concerns about domestic violence in the workplace and how women specifically, if you talk about childcare all the time, that are are sort of burning or stopping out of work. And there's a far deeper prevalence of, like, the impact of domestic violence and the instability that creates for people in the city of Tacoma. And so we have formed a a cross sector group of businesses who are looking at that to say, how do we better support our employees and and keep them? So I don't wanna lose the incident factor. Did you wanna add something?

Maybe just, like, alternative advancement. Like, you know, over time, we've kinda shifted away from, like, this institution where I'll work for thirty years, build a pension and a career out of one job. And now advancement looks more like transition between employers, and sometimes that leads to more commuting or instability in, like, their their work portfolio. But that's that's how a lot of workers are able to kind of grow and level up to other positions they they might not have access to

at the same employer.

Final question. Where does entrepreneurship fit into

these programs?

Yeah. So entrepreneurship is actually something we're really excited for. With our small businesses, the small stuff we love, we offer small business grants to help them grow and flourish. We're also spinning up right now, glad you asked about it, workshops where people are looking to start their businesses and and looking to to understand what does it take, again, to get a business license? What does it take to start a website? Because that's if you've ever looked at it, pretty hard. Right? You know what we're doing. You have to find images, make you do all of the content for it. It's just teaching people how to take their idea of a business and turn it into a. That's something we're having we should be going right

around June 15. You guys are eight week long sessions with

different kind of big workshop projects. Yeah. It gets really publicized. So on one hand, like I said, we're supporting small businesses through consultation and grant opportunities, and the other through training entrepreneurs how to take their ideation, turn it into.

I'm thinking about, I guess, the connection between possible entrepreneurship and all of the health care workers that we have. I know that some other places are people have been successful in creating, like, health care co ops where, you know, nurses can come together or or elder care people can come together and, you know, own what they're doing and work together to you know, maybe on their own, they couldn't afford to do that. But together, they're able to do that. So I'm curious about looking more into dual or, you know, multiple people being able to have shared ownership.

Yeah. So right now, I'll give you the. We were recently on college. While we were there, one of the graduating students was visiting. She's a Latina business owner who just started a medical. She's a one person shop. She's looking

at her a couple of people.

She's already got several contracts that she's working. I happen to be on-site. Katie and I were just touring, but we had a really good conversation. I said, hey. I'm gonna send you the give me your email. I'm gonna send you this link. We filled it out. She's actually hired two people because that grant is growing. Very small medical building organization right in

the city, like, literally right now.

It happened, like, three weeks ago. So, yeah, it's it's really exciting stuff.

The other thing that I'll say is we we have a real entrepreneur spirit in the city of Tacoma. I actually think it's something that I know you all have prioritized and that we've kinda grabbed ahold of. And we wanna make sure that we are not only helping people start up businesses, but keeping them in business and growing them. And so we have hundreds of folks go through, you know, the the business accelerator program and other kind of startup business. And part of what we aim to do is, like, to stay in contact with those businesses to think about, like, growth and sustainability plans.

What is it in the first five years? It's something like over 70% of new businesses fail. But once you get past one of the the critical markers is number of employees you have. And so Sam spends a lot of time with his team focusing on getting folks over that employee threshold to maintain sustainability, but it is a huge priority for us.

Yeah.

On that note, just FYI, cooperatives have a a higher percentage of success that way and and being able to stay open and and be in business for longer. So sounds good.

That's good. Thank you.

Yes. Thank you. You're my pleasure. Apologize for freaking one off the rails. I've been I'm really excited about

the Okay. You guys got excited.

I let you go. I appreciate it. I have a lot more questions, and I'm just gonna throw a bunch out there. You might not have the answers now, but I'd love to follow-up at some point in the future. I'm I've been thinking a lot about the disconnected young adults, and I didn't know the word disconnected young adults. I and but I've been thinking a lot about it because I know what's an issue in my community, particularly in the in the South Edge. Yes. The data already indicates South Dakota area, South End, East Side. And I I didn't know how to define it. Right?

So I'm just so excited that you guys have defined it, and you have data to kind of, like, already fill out what I've thought about anecdotally. But some of my questions are, are you guys the only ones looking at this data, or are there other organizations that are are looking at this information and data and trying to do something about it. And then I'm curious about the kind of ecosystem around it, like, with the school district, like, Arlington use center, like, all these other things that could be connected to a potential solution. And then separately, I'm curious about, has the state offered any support resources around trying to connect this demographic. And if not, that's I'd also like to talk about.

So those are the kind of the the quick rundown.

Thank you.

The short answer is yes. I'll share. So we I mean, we're sort of a lean and nimble organization that functions as a workforce center functions as a backbone to a workforce development system. So we actually have a formalized MOU with about 30 partners who are working with job seekers in the in the community, and that includes disconnected young adults. You know, the state has not, I'll just say, like, formally strategically prioritized investment in disconnected young adults in a targeted way.

Certainly, things they fund impact disconnected young adults. The Department of Labor at the federal government actually a big portion, about a third of what we are charged with doing as a local workforce work is focusing on disconnected young people. So through our funding, a couple decades ago, the federal government said this 16 to 24 year old age range are stopping out. Like, we need it's one of the only dedicated funding sources for disconnected young people. And so our role is then to look out to the community and determine who is best reaching

these young people,

and then how do we steward those resources to those organizations. And a really good example is Palmer Scholar. So, know, about five years ago, they were really kind of four year college focused with the young people they were supporting, and we worked with them. They led it. We just supported it. But to develop shorter term pathways, which sparked their pre apprenticeship construction training program, which, as you probably know, is, like, a is a preferred entry straight into labor and apprenticeships for 100% young adults of color. And because we came alongside and are one of the main funders of that, the focus of that work is 100% disconnected adults. And so those are some shifts organizations have made locally that have been.

Great. Thank you. I I'm curious of, like, how I you have obviously census level data. I'm I'm curious of how granular you can especially start getting to partners and stuff like that. And, particularly, the school district, like, who disenrolled. Well, they didn't the kid didn't necessarily disappear. They you know, maybe they moved. There's a lot of reasons why, but, like, it also could be

they they just

they're not going to school anymore for a variety of reasons. Maybe that's some opportunity for targeted resourcing and support for a family. Like, there's just a lot that I think that could be done around the space that I love to be able to dive into. So thank you. That's

Perfect. Thank you. Two quick housekeeping things. Sorry to put you on the spot. When you were coming in, were you able to hear us okay? I meant to ask at the beginning, and I did not.

Yeah. I could hear you.

Great. So we're back in our old committee room, and I meant to ask sooner if people online could hear us, and I did not. So Okay. Just remind me that we we've been chatting for an hour, and I didn't ask sooner. And then

because the sound of the last year was not great. And then

let's see now. Teresa, if you can get the slide that you gave us to the clerk so they can get it in the packet so folks online or in the future, Judy can see the slide. It's not really important information, so I'll make sure we loop that into the deck. Those are

my two housekeeping things. And then I kind of had a

couple different questions. I guess one is around the work that y'all are doing to try and get people retrained. I remember us talking a lot in this committee last year, year before. I've lost track of time. When WestRock was closing, and everybody started to meet and said, well, Workforce Central on it. We've already called them. I was just curious if you had a story to tell there around how how that went for you.

Yeah. Yeah. So

If if that person is here, I don't know.

Luckily enough, I actually worked mostly with drugs, so I'm. So, yeah, immediately, I engaged with the state Washington's security department. We have what we call rapid response program. Rapid response is effectively. We

want to help the people. So

I immediately engaged with my security department to be accessed what what they call,

like, emergency or rapid response funding, we're and able to bring on the person.

I could pay as an unemployment navigator full time for, I wanna say, two business quarters to help us facilitate the transition of all to speak. So we went in, and I think we did over the course of about a month while we we closed one on-site kind of services session as many I think we had the

first thing I think

we had was 70 or 70 or

60 attendees to talk about all of these services that are available to you when you. Right? How to access on to access Washington Health Plan Finder

to get insurance. If you need assistance from the GSA just for the food assistance, those kinds of things. How to use the workforce system itself to get your resume, your cover letters, and how to get applications. All of the things are available. So then we also have Michael. We got himself on a workstation at the workshop and had him engaging as people. Because if you remember, they were kind of parsing out their layouts. Right? So as people were being laid off, they

would flow through Michael to get either enrolled in the training through through the different programs we have at the InSource, or they would

get, you know, access to some of our job fairs or or directly employer assistance to get. Last I spoke with Michael, I wanted to say we had gotten into contact and worked with somewhere around 80% of the folks that were laid off. It was really hard to track the because some of them just as soon as they get a job, they stop calling me and then talking to us really.

But we tracked over a 100 placements each of new roles when we kind of lost contact.

Michael actually took a full time role with the Washington State Labor Council as an unemployment navigator here in Tacoma. So he's currently placed here working for his layoffs, and and we came on a regular basis. It's just that he came straight through the program into us, and then it stayed right here.

That's incredible. Thank you. Thanks

for jogging my memory. I also wanted to know how it ended because I I had some sense from articles or from data that I've heard, but I I haven't talked to people who did it. So it was very good reminder of of how it can all work. I guess just sort of a a one on one, Katie, if you wouldn't mind. Can you talk a little bit about, like, how workforce came to be and how many staff you have? I don't I don't know that we got there in the we got straight into the good stuff.

Yeah. For sure. No. I appreciate that. Happy to frame it up, and I I did make yeah. So we Workforce Central exists actually through an interlocal agreement between the city of Tacoma and Pierce County that dates back to 1982. So we are sort of fed we're we started as federally funded. The Department of Labor funds local workforce board. There's one in every region in the country, 12 in the state of Washington. We cover Pierce County.

And the area is actually designated by the governor. So the governor says our state needs 12 here of what the areas are gonna be, and we're gonna steward funding based on an algorithm that takes into account, like, unemployment, poverty, etcetera. I know I butchered that from my data perspective. But and then they steward those federal funds in our direction. And for a couple decades, we solely were focused on, like, stewarding federal workforce system.

Over the last ten years, the state, which which as you can imagine is always, like most things, an sort of an underfunded system, but the state has come alongside one of the only states in the country to say, actually, the workforce system really matters. It is underfunded. And so they have stewarded additional funds through a couple programs like economic security for all. Most recently, the community reinvestment plan. It's not widely known, but workforce development boards get about 25% of that funding to support local workforce.

And we track all of those outcomes and have a lot of monitoring and accountability around that. So state, federal, and then local funding through the city, through the county, depending on what the workforce priorities are in our in our local area. And what I often say is we function as or have functioned as the arm of workforce county and are really tasked with carrying out, and this is in our our charter, carrying out the vision of our local elected officials. And so as you know, we have a a board, council member Diaz, that you sit on, the mayor and the county executive co chair of that board of elected officials, and that is our role. So we're lean.

We have a staff of 24. We are not interested in building an empire. We're interested in stewarding out and aligning an ecosystem. And so the majority of our funds go out into the community in in an in as aligned a way as possible to ensure folks are kind of connected and working. Does that

answer your question? That is perfect. Thank you. Please do the two other thoughts. One is for folks' awareness. I am on that board. The mayor's on that board. I wasn't able to attend my first board meeting because we were all in DC. But I think for Anna, if you wouldn't mind putting in our our our work plan for the future for me to get an update when I do go to go to those board meetings, such because it seems like everybody else is really interested, I can please keep me account. I guess it's my my my request for when we have future board meetings, I can come back and and give a quick sort of what what we did or what happened.

And then you touched on the other piece that I I sort of had a question around, which is this how much staff you have and the work you're doing with other people. And I'm wondering if there is a role in in what you do. Clearly, it's like a referral network, not just for the entrepreneurs, but, like, you clearly work with, like, our our jobs two five three program and our SpaceWorks and the chamber and all all the network of folks. Is there are you the best resource referral network? Like, if I get someone in the wild I get a lot of small business owners looking for facilities like commercial kitchens, kinds of how do we how do we get to the next place we're trying to build or rent or buy?

And I know our economic development team does some of that work, but I'm just wondering is, are you guys a spot for us to send folks? Is it our shop? Who's who's the best person on first?

That's a great question. I mean, I would say from a city perspective, certainly, your team in the city is is wildly knowledgeable and kind of deeply embedded in it. So I would start there, particularly when it comes to, like, use space capacity, etcetera. We would often refer anyway to our our economic development partners. Right. But and, you know, and then anything kind of workforce, business development, growth, data, and labor market. So, typically, in the past, city and county have have questions about labor market analysis. We get media calls, etcetera. Like, we've provided that data, and so that

that could

come to us as

well. Perfect.

Yeah. Happy to keep to our CV. Yeah. Is it okay if I

just add a little bit just a little bit more context, a couple things. So what we've started to do working with workforce central is past that we kind of do a a pilot and really dig into Tacoma data. So what you see here is kind of our our start of our collaboration. You know, we always had traditionally gotten Pierce County data. So what we're really trying to do is dig into the Tacoma data and just see, is it, you know, really aligned with Pierce County?

Is it, you know, a little different? If it is different, where is it different? You know, industries, occupations, things like that. The second thing that we also are doing is, you know, our one of our divisions really works on, you know, the bigger businesses and attraction. Another division works on smaller businesses and retention and growth. And so what we're

really working with as well

is trying to align. So, you know, what kind of workforce, workmanship do we have? What does the future of that look like? And then collaborating to make sure

that the industries that we're attracting, the businesses that we're helping

grow or, you know, attract supply chain or related businesses are all kind of aligned with what the workmanship is. So our teams work really closely together there. And then, you know, as Katie was alluding to, we do work really closely. Like, our leadership meets every month, you know, for myself, Katie,

the chamber, doctor's home partnership,

You know, I'm missing some folks. The

e b.

E b. Yeah. So we meet once a month of leadership, and then our

teams also do a great job, and

they all and they have really kind

of tactical plans that they they execute. So we have a really, really close collaboration.

Super cool. Yeah.

Thank you.

My other question around the sort of regional portion there being twelve twelve of y'all. I assume ours is the best one. But I am curious as, like, with the WestRock example. But, I mean, I know Starbucks is trying to move folks to Tennessee, and folks are not wanting to go. I know that, you know, Boeing constantly lays off people, doesn't lay off people, threatens to.

I'm wondering to what degree any of the other workforce development agencies sort of call y'all up and say, hey. I've got all these workers that are in Tacoma because Starbucks is leaving. Do they pass them to you? Do you just to get to your your graph there of, like, people leaving our area, how do we how do we do that handoff? Does that handoff happen so the folks can sort of get plugged into our network here and get a job maybe is relative and retrained here?

Yeah. We do tight lip baling is a really great example. We'll be in tight collaboration with this Seattle King County Workforce Development Board, and we'll often do, like, a joint rapid response. One of the things we can see when companies are laying folks off and they put out what's called a warm notice Mhmm. We can actually see where how many individuals live in Pierce County. So there might be a warm notice for a company in Naho Mish, and we can see, like, 10 of those folks live in Pierce County, and that's that's where we would focus is getting connected to those people and really trying to bring them back into our our labor market. So we do get that data and have really close Thurston in Seattle, as you can imagine, are our two closest collaborators. Anything you would add to that?

We have monthly meetings of people in my role literally across the state. And anything soon,

it's okay. The next few weeks here, we come together.

Cool. The other thing we started doing, which

WestRock kinda helped with, we're

doing it a little bit before is recognizing when WestRock closes, it also impacts multiple other supply chain businesses. And so we've kind of reached out to those tenant goals in Pierce County. Something happens in Seattle, they're often, like, supply chain or other businesses that are impacted locally. And that's a newer assessment that we brought into this layoff aversion work because it doesn't show up readily in the data. And so figuring out, like, the ricochet effects or the downriver effects and layoffs as well in Tacoma and in Pierce County.

Very cool. Thank you. I'm just really glad to hear that that recording happens. I figured it did, but it's nice to nice

to hear.

The other sort of question I think I know the answer to is I believe that y'all have a seat at the South South Military Partnership. Mhmm. So I just wanted to sort of note that that's probably also a big thing. Probably work with Thurston County on is how do we get folks sort

of

from their boots into into different training programs. I know there's a labor component, so they have different routes to, like, painting apprenticeship programs. But how do we get our our military folks who are discharging, leaving service into into our workforce and help keep them stay here?

So I don't know if you know Shelly Willis on our team, who's on our leadership team, piloted and launched the first ever American job center on a military base in the country. And so that is at the Hawk Center, and we have teams there of folks that we fund to be there for certainly military military spouse. It's military families. And that that's a pilot initiative that has been replicated in in multiple areas of the country, and we're really proud of that. And that is a tight nursing company partnership. Yeah. You're spot on.

That is cool. And I know that, yeah, military spouses are also a really critical piece too because they always get fooled around, and their careers get on hold. And then my other questions so I look here in my notes. Coming back to the disconnected youth, because I think we're all really interested in that piece of it. I mentioned jobs two five three earlier, and I know that they are sort of housed in Tacoma Public Schools.

I can't recall if they'd wanna present to us this year, but I know that they will at some point if they haven't yet. I might be I might be remembering last year's presentation. But they obviously work with students in Tacoma Public Schools to help get them job ready, get them a similar internship model. I'm wondering if there's a connection that you guys have with them at all or if it's strictly their lane around getting your Tracey mentioned this, like I forgot the word for it already because I didn't write it down. This opportunities list of, like, what what sectors we're needing to grow people in or or what the opportunities there are out there.

I'm wondering if y'all are in the schools, if it's just them, to talk to kids about what their options are after they leave school. So it's more than just hire maybe that's. I don't know who fits that role, but I'm just thinking about, like, how do we get to this how do we get to the disconnected youth while they're still connected? Right? So how are we sort of breaking that disconnected youth cycle? Mhmm. And what if you guys have a role in that, I guess, is my question.

Yeah. Folks we have folks who, like, work in the work source and work with job seekers who actually, like, now have space on campus at our alternative high schools to work with students who are closest to potentially disconnecting. So that's one way. Another is that we will often provide data to the district or information on, like, what's in demand, what's coming up, what's conversationally, anecdotally, but also if they have requests along those lines. Those are two ways we work together.

In terms of getting into the schools, we've kinda kicked around some pilot ideas of having more of a, like, presence of, for example, getting enrolled in, like, work Worksource Squad, which is your next step to the workforce system before you exit high school. We don't have a system in place for that yet, but there's potential there. Cool.

Yeah. Comment.

Please. Couple

comments. So, career technical education has grown exponentially the last few years across all of the school districts. And so the investments that the schools have made in career technical education have included curriculum alignment to industry, right, experiential opportunities for students and teachers, externships. And some of the ways that we've also helped is aligning some business site visits with businesses that we work with with some of the student populations and the teachers as well so that they can have some of that experiential opportunity. And then there's the skill centers approach, right, which is what Maritime two five three will be kind of modeling that skill center approach just like the Pierce County.

So multiple schools and students can those programs and opportunities rather be school specific. So, yeah, there's some other things that are going on. It's just incredible

work. I

know you've heard Josh Garcia talk about their leadership at Tacoma Club,

but school is one of

the most innovative school districts in the state, and they say workforce everywhere they go. And that's new in the last five five or so years. So, yeah, they're incredible partner.

Yeah. And I think it really does I I feel bad because I think people sometimes can associate workforce with the evils of as capitalism, but there's just a reality to, like, if you don't have a job, you probably can't afford a rent, and you probably can't afford to be. Right? So there's just a very practical in our society need for folks to be especially youth to be ready. I guess the only other question I had was Josh brought up this piece around low I can't remember which slide it was on, but the graph that said that there was low one of the highest in demand jobs is very low paying work around caregiving for seniors.

And I'm wondering if you can speak at all to where the conversation is happening or if you guys are having this conversation around whose role is it? Is it a joint role, maybe it's the anchor network around getting some of those low wage paying jobs that are in high demand to pay higher wages? Right? Because there's obviously we wanna move some of those folks into just high paying jobs, but also those jobs are gonna continue to be in demand. How do we just fix the fact that those jobs aren't getting full benefits or aren't getting all of the all of the things that a a person would need to be a a good paid job?

So this is kind of a couple of different spaces that I'm only partially involved involved in. I know the company talked about this. Health care industry roundtable employers are aware and focused on, like, a pathway for those entry level jobs. And one of the challenges so often there, they have terminal occupations. They don't really need anything else. So trying to be intentional and think innovative ways to connect those. And it's really employer specific at the moment, like, what opportunities to connect maybe a home health aide to maybe a medical assistant position. And I think, really, the conversation's trying to shift. It's it's been a slow progress, but to institutionalizing some of those pathways to make it a little more broad, a little more consistent across across the sector.

Great. Thank you. And gosh. This is smart.

Just in terms of the way that you framed that. The other thing that I'll mention is, like, for in childcare, for example, getting labor involved in solving some of these kinda lower wage stagnant pathways and testing out, like,

what an apprenticeship model might look like,

which is something that's happening in partnership with labor at the new child care center that they're opening up on the East Side. How do we kind of apprentice folks in and then identify the next stage in those pathways. So apprenticeship pathways, pre apprenticeship pathways are other ways that we're looking at. And nontraditional apprenticeships. We often think of apprenticeship as, like, the building trades and construction. We piloted last year for the first time in Pierce County behavioral health apprenticeship pathways. You So don't have to go to school for eight years before you can get your foot in the door as a behavioral health specialist. And it's allowing earlier entry, but it's also the job has been allowing people to see, like, where they can get to if they start. Because entry level job we all had entry level jobs. Like, they're critical.

People have to see how they can advance as well.

Yeah.

I would add too. For years now, we've been speaking to businesses who come have concerns about their workforce, and they're not able to retain them. We tell them, let's take a look at your wages. Let's take a look at your job descriptions. Let's take a look at the environment that you're So it's not just culture, but it's also paying benefits. Right? I just we've had some consultative services, and then I know one particular organization that we've worked with for a long time has has steadily increased their wages. So they have a pretty respectable entry with some training and advancement opportunities. So that's what we'd like to see.

Keep doing that. Excellent.

Yeah. To that point, I think looking at compensation strategies, right, is that important where somebody says you work your. If an

employer is in the bottom

quartile for their industry, they're gonna see more churn than some people's. It's just the way they need to. So if they're willing to accept that,

it it effectively act as a

training organization for other businesses, and that's a strategy. But if you wanna retain your employees, you wanna grow your employees, you wanna keep your employees, living in that top half is what's gonna do that, and that's talk to

that through conversation. Many times, employers don't know. They don't have a conversation strategy. So just

understanding what that is and how we can perform.

Great. Super helpful. Thank you all. I meant to ring myself because I live a little long. But thank you all so much for the presentation. I'm sure we'll have lots of questions in the future for future. Okay.

Thank you.

Happy to come anytime. Thank you. With

that, we'll go ahead and move on to our next topic. We're gonna go into enhancing Tacoma's tilt industry, and I will call on phone for the next spot. Thank you, dear. Sorry. Couldn't hear you.

Oh, no. No. No. No worries. I don't I this is I'm not sure if it's with you all. They were in your inbox, but just in case you want a physical copy or Thank you. Thank you.

I don't think so.

Was like, I got handed this. And I

like Oh, sorry. They handed

it to me. No. I was like I had to think for a second. I didn't have three outside. I'm so excited for this one. Cool. That's awesome. You just you just have to listen to me. But, yes, thank you, Cher. I wanted to and I'm excited to share my proposal to support some work in the film industry through supporting the Grand Cinemas Film force.

I've been speaking with a variety of people who are engaged in the filmmaking community and trying to find ways to expand and enhance the film industry here in. One of the key things I hear is that our film industry has a lot of energy and momentum along with a talented and passionate filmmaking community, but it lacks organization and leadership to help with some of the desiling that needs to happen. And I wanted to address the problem because filmmaking is not just an important part of our creative part of the work that our creative community is doing. It is also a powerful economic development tool. Filmmaking can foster a wide range of jobs, engagement with our local businesses, as well as tourism.

Last year, Tacoma only issued 11 film permits while Seattle issued about 360. The permitted projects in Seattle have helped employ more than 4,000 local crew and cast members, and there is no reason why Tacoma shouldn't be attracting more film projects. We have fantastic locations, great hotels, parking lots for film crews to use. Plus, we also have people who work in the industry living here who unfortunately have to commute to Seattle all too often for their jobs, which we just haven't heard of. So we need to do a bit more to elevate Tacoma as a film for the city.

And to get started, the Grand Cinema is going to be launching a film task force, and I plan to make a $10,000 contingency fund request in support of that effort. This kind of partnership is vital as we face a serious budget deficit, but we still need to help against the work that helps us enhance our local community. Task force would have a diverse range of participants, and their scope of work would include developing proposals and recommendations for the city council, voting permitting updates, enhancing local film project connectivity, and more. I also wanted to take a moment to mention that we are also working on updating our motion picture municipal code, which I did not know we had until recently. So if you also didn't know, that is a thing.

As well as Ashley here at TBE is working on updating our permitting process. So the task force, the code update, the permitting process, all kind of work together to help enhance this connectivity and our film friendliness. And then I plan to bring this forward to study session on April 21 or twenty eighth. And if anyone is interested in joining as a co sponsor, I am happy to have you, and I'm also happy

to answer any questions you need.

I will look to Mary. You

can you speak a little to who's on

the task force or who might be on the task force?

Yes. Currently, nobody is on the task force. We have zero members. So the gram would be it is it's up to the gram to kind of kind of source those folks. They have a broad connection to the film community here, both for people who are actors, who are crew members, who are, you know, both above and below the line workers on on film sets, producers, you know, people who are building the sets and and all the the latest still labor that goes into that.

And so they they also already do a little bit of work convening these folks. So they already have kind of a immediate network of people to reach out to to get connected to. They also, in just their model in general, are committed to diversity, equity, bringing differences, opinions to the table, and perspectives to make sure that they're doing work that has the broadest impact. So they would be the ones who are in charge of kind of putting this together and and encouraging folks to apply for the task force and to be selecting those folks. But with their connections in the film industry as well as the the mission of their organization, not gonna have to do the job.

Great. When I first read this, I was thinking about and this kinda ties into our earlier subject about I think this is a very youth friendly and a youth attractive industry. And so I'm thinking, you know, is there also opportunity? You know, there's there's short films that that that kiddos will make for, you know, or influencer kiddos who you know, that is a career path for some folks. Like, how do we make sure that those folks are represented or,

you know, maybe can get involved with this one

as well.

Yeah. There's a space on there, and I think that language is in the draft as well of having a one or two that are engaged with tax folks as well. And that was kind of a lot of that. I think about that often too, especially, like, there are you know, when when we think about laborers, it's like, you need electricians on film sets. You need people who can who are doing carpentry and things like that. And so some of those jobs might not be appealing if the kids are like, I don't wanna go build a house. But if they're like, I'm gonna build a house inside of a a soundstage, that's pretty cool. And I think it's one of those things. Like, we want we wanna be able to encourage kids to say, like, yeah. You cannot be Michael Jordan.

And, also, let's prepare you for just in case that doesn't happen because the people who become Michael Jordan, like, that's a very small subs like, that's a small amount of people who may get to that level. But you could be Michael Jordan's manager. You could be his publicist. You could be his trainer. And so helping kids understand, like, encouraging to or encouraging them to reach really broadly and and dream big and also preparing them for the inevitability of that. Sometimes you have to take a different route to return. And that route is not better or worse. It just

Thank you. Here, you guys. Push on.

Thank you, chair, and thank you for bringing this forward. I'm really excited about this. You know, we had the chance to go down to you on the interview. Mhmm. Yeah. And I you saw, like, how really impactful it was to have a thriving film industry and how it connected to so many different different areas, small business, you know, construction, soundstage, like, the whole nine yards. Like, it really we really have a great creative economy here. There's a definite opportunity. So I'm really excited for this task force to come together. Do we know when the last time the motion picture municipal code was updated?

Because I I didn't know we were.

Maybe not since it was great.

1992.

1992. I know. A lot has changed since 1992. So I think having a fresh eyes and fresh perspective on this and then to council member or community member Palmer's point, like, the industry has changed significantly. Technology has changed. What how a lot more short form as opposed to long form. There's a lot of things. And then so that's why I appreciate also the the connections, like, the Visual Media Lab and and the libraries because that might help, you know, entrepreneurship and stuff like that. So I'm I'm really this is really good, I I like it. I'm happy to sign on and and talk more about it.

But, yeah, I think this this would be good. And, like, also a larger economic development over the city as well. So if you get different perspectives, if even wildly successful, it it could, like, bring in. Yeah.

And without having tabs, I've seen him move in. I'm like,

oh, she goes to see what that thing's about.

And just kind of going back to your comments about our our trip to Santa Fe, like, it was it was, yeah, it was just really cool to kind of see. One of the places we visited was a soundstage, and it used to be a casino. And they during the pandemic, we're, like, the space sitting here, and, you know, it's not being used in the same way. And and so they were able to shift it into something else. And it was really I don't know if you've ever seen the show. I just had the name of the show

on on

AMC. Mhmm. They filmed there. And so we got to see all the cool, like, sets and how they put things together and tour it and how they use this space that kind of would have just sat there and not been doing a whole lot. And they did it in a lot of different ways, but it, yeah, it was just it was really cool to see how they took, you know, an asset that was in the community that wasn't necessarily living up to its potential usage and turning into something that not only is something that provides jobs that people can be proud of, but it, you know, they brought economic development and and other positive benefits to the surrounding community.

Sure. Okay.

Okay. Thank you. This is very cool. Excited to see also that there's a bunch of picture municipal code updates coming. No shade to anything that's been filled in Tacoma since then, but I think the last time that code was probably most 10 things I hate about you. So Yeah. Be nice to get a a revamp. But Yeah. A new a new glory story. That was over twenty five years ago, I think. Yeah.

I put well, I don't know. I think it maybe it was after 1982 that I I came came. It was. Absolutely. So, yeah, that might

have been it. So what I mean, they made the code. Before that.

Yeah. Sorry. I'm gonna have

get it. Yeah. Hand of Rocks Cradle made the code. Stadium got the second glory, and we've seen that as much since. So would love to see more come through. I also think a lot about how this kind of initiative can help us just in general, to your point, create some of these other other industries that are filled on g center. Right? So commercial, anything else that folklife, family. There's certainly a role in there for youth and social media. That's the whole industry itself.

And then a lot of these jobs are actually really good working family jobs because they pay really well. A lot of them are union members. Right? There's I don't think that any films are made without teachers. So there's a lot there that is really cool and really took them up its its core. So that's this is great. I assume

that

you are looking for folks to reach out to you after committee to sign on. I am happy to sign on. I will let you decide pick your favorites afterward.

I have no favorites.

But, yeah, I don't I don't know that I have any other questions. This sounds great. Thank you.

That's yeah. I appreciate it. And if anything does come up in the meantime, feel free to reach out to me. And but, yeah, this as long as nothing crazy comes in, this should be the final version of the continuous prep request. So if you look through it and there's something that sticks

out to you that we can talk about,

I'm happy to chat.

Yeah. I love that they mentioned boards. Yeah.

You know? The better. It can be. You know? But, yeah, there's Charitable vampire? I think, you know, the source material for that never mind.

I don't wanna talk We don't It might be somebody's favorite. You know what? I don't wanna I don't wanna talk to them.

I have to say, I have very low brow taste in film. So but, yes, but thank you, guys.

I appreciate it. Thank you. With that, we will move on to topics for upcoming meetings with committee liaison. Annalie? Yes. There is another is this Tuesday?

Is this Tuesday? No. Just the second one.

Not special. We will

have the center of total leave

here for an annual update. Rebecca will tell us about the arts and

cultural vitality strategic plan refresh, and Debbie will present on glaucoma. On May 12, CED will provide a quarterly update in our.

Great. Thank you so much. Are there any other items of interest from the committee? No? I don't think I see anybody from the public online. So I know I mentioned that would open public comment at the end. Just going once, going twice, raise your hand. No. With that, I will move to adjourn, or I will I will accept the motion to adjourn.

Move to adjourn. Second.

Thank you. All those in favor signify by saying hi.

Hi.

And no nays. We stand adjourned.