Economic Development Committee - Regular Meeting

Hi. Would like to call to order the economic development committee meeting of 10/28/2025. Clerk, please please call the roll. I'm. Okay. I'm. Absent.

Here.

Okay. Starting with public comment. Good morning. But has anyone signed up to comment or Person no one. Okay.

Perfect. Then we'll close public comment, and we'll ahead on to briefing items. So I'd like to call on Deborah Chavarro, community and economic development, Christopher Chase from career and college readiness and career technical education, and Liz Bartella from public schools. Good morning, deputy mayor Daniels on the development committee. As stated, I name is Deborah Chaparro.

I work in community and economic development, running several workforce programs. And joining me today, Christopher and Liz, Doctor. Cohen Public Schools. We're here to talk about jobs two five three, familiar with, but just to give you some updates. In our joint efforts to collaborate amongst our community members, our businesses, educational institutions, we're setting the stage for a great place for our youth to live and work.

The work is in alignment to council's strategic priority of having a trained and ready workforce with living wage jobs. The city and school's partnership and career and connected learning. So together, TPS and the city have created a student first ecosystem, including separate programs, career fairs, and paid stipends. There's a career fair coming up shortly. So the students aren't only given work experience, but they're also given the opportunity to gain confidence and a sense of community and belonging.

Equity is built into every layer from program design to which students are placed in the jobs you apply to opportunities. The city contributes financial support, access to employers, and logistical coordination, while Tacoma Public Schools or TPS brings curriculum, partnerships, student logistics, and support, as well as partnership creation of community with support. This joint effort provides adaptive learning. Why we began this journey? Many of you are familiar with this.

I've got some information, though, so I'd love to read that to you. In 2013, the program started as a challenge from then president Obama to mayors to do something about the staggeringly high unemployment rate. Former mayor Marilyn Strickland responded to that challenge. She shared her vision for youth programming in Tacoma, and the summer youth employment program, later renamed summer jobs two five three, was established. The president wanted this to go beyond a summer job program to meet the student needs of professional development, resume writing, and literacy training.

This was very important to the mayor. She recently explained that she wanted the program to be structured to meet the needs of teens in our community, many of them who don't have parents, who know people, and don't have access to open doors that some of their kids have. She wanted to provide opportunities, relationships so the student in the programs would get to know someone, be able to place them on their resume, you know, work with them as a mentor and form a professional relationship. She said, If we have an educated populace and if we graduate the students, it's better for the entire city. So from 2013 to 2019, the program focus was on collaboration with local businesses and community organizations for student placement.

The program had three parts, the job readiness training, creation of a community service project, and community service project implementation. We had 50 to 75 students on average per summer. Then in 2019, COVID hit. The program had already shifted to where nearly half of the job readiness training was online, so that was very beneficial with what happened in our world. It forced us to look at the program structure as well.

And while many programs closed, this one remained open. It was very important to the mayor to keep it open and running for the youth. There were even more need as they were stuck at home, etcetera. So even an online experience was better than nothing. It was summer jobs two five three then.

It still fulfilled the program goals as it focused on credit deficient and low income students. Graduation rates went from 65% to 89%, and the youth unemployment rate decreased. The cost of the program also decreased dramatically while the effectiveness and community impact increased. So that year following that year and shortly after that, the program was branded to jobs two five three as it was sorry. For service work.

Some of the jobs two five three service work opportunities are coaching, teaching assistant, assisting with community needs, and these are in community based organizations, local businesses, and public agencies. The Stadium High School student shown here, I think, yeah, you can see that very clearly. He was in a service work experience. He found a need, very touching, Homeless people who came in to use the shower facilities at People's Community Center didn't always have clean clothes to put on. He did a clothing drive.

He managed the marketing. He managed the cleaning of the clothes and set it up so it helped the people, and it was such a hit that it's been continued. Credential programming. So the jobs two five three program expanded further, and it now includes credential programming, which TPS has grown dramatically. And what that means is the student can choose a credential program.

It's still the same outline of the service work model. It's forty hours, $500 stipend, financial literacy, but they gain industry recognized credentials. So on that note, the city actually held one of those programs for several years in our environmental services department. And with that, the students earned credentials from the state of Washington Department of Ecology. It's called the CSOEL credential, certified erosion and sediment control.

They also learned a flagger certification of Red Cross, a first aid CPR, AED, and OSHA 10. So not even out of high school. So the credential programs validate student achievement in preparation for entering the workforce with job specific skills leading up to advanced credentials. This is the fun part. So to support the program, the city's early investments in the youth stipends, which was the only funding put forth towards the stipends in the beginning, and their grant matching made the start of the program possible.

The city contributes or continues contri contri continues contributing to the stipends in addition with TPS. We also preface the payments of the stipends. In the twenty twenty four, twenty five school year alone, this was payments to over 650 students. To support the program, we we answer the needs of other cities and school districts. I recently received a call from the city of Renton in the Renton School District.

They're desiring to put together a program just like jobs two five three. It's not the first time we've had a call like that, and we're meeting three of us with them in November. Also, the the special circumstances. So sometimes we have students that are homeless, and they don't have a way to get their check. We we can't have them pick it up here due to state auditor rules.

We can't mail it to the school or deliver it to the school. So in a very random meeting with Tacoma Rescue Mission, I asked about jobs two five three, seeing if they would place students, and they already do. They they take 10 per year. But then also it came up that, can you provide the address? Because they were telling me, oh, we can provide addresses for all our clients. They just use this one. They can get all their mail. So they also will do that for the students for both their stipend and for their ten ninety nine. It also comes. And walking the talk.

So in 2024, we held a pilot hosting Hajjabs two five three students in general government departments. Some of you were aware of this, and you were part of it. So we continued hosting students at the city this year. So far, it's been through environmental services in their lab and at the Tigro plant, and then Tacoma Venues and Events has taken part in their finance section and their marketing and city manager's office, working with you all as well, and also in our finance department. And that was a very strategic placement.

The the student, not one division of finance had enough time for them. So the student went between accounting services, tax and license, customer support center, and purchasing. Lot of coordination, and the finance staff was great. Student was great as well. I have a quote from one of the students who was in the ES credential program just to get their side of it.

My favorite day in the internship was when I got to assist in an extraction experiment. The scientists explained the process behind it and let me carry out a lot of the procedure. I love science. It was fascinating to learn the process. I also enjoyed getting hands on lab experience, learning how to problem solve in situations where I'm unsure what to do.

I learned how to follow safety regulations in a lab setting, and I learned how to navigate a new organization system. So with that, I know you've also sat through when we've had the students come to council and, at the end of their session this summer present and and share their experience. They love that, by the way, to get the recognition as well. And also as capacity allows, we do hope to increase the number and frequency of the jobs two fifty three experiences here at the city. So it's very important it's also very important for the youth to be able to put that they've done this at the significant on the resume.

And in working with our colleagues, the utilities actually hosted this this year as well. So branching out. And then finally, with the jobs due by the student placements, as Evolve City leaders, you are directly helping in shaping tomorrow's workforce. So thank you for your support. Thank

you, missus Tremorrow. Deputy mayor Daniels and the council members, thank you again for having us here today. I've had the opportunity to work in partnership with the city and more specifically with Deborah for about four years now, so I'm really passionate about this program and continued partnership. And truly, jobs two five three is is the heart beat of what we do, whether it's aligned to our district benchmarks and our district commitments to students, which we'll talk about later, but also it's really weaved throughout the programming and the scaling of what we're trying to do to really highlight students with or offer them intentional opportunities for them to gain hands on real world experience. And so whether we're thinking about this through a lens of career and college readiness, workforce development, or even career technical education, jobs two by three, it's plays an extremely vital role in creating and helping students, like, gain this opportunity and experiences that always should our goal is to lead to high demand, or in demand high skill livable wage careers.

And so jobs two five three affords students an opportunity to either find something that they love or just as important, find something that they don't particularly see themselves post. And so kind of looking at at this, you know, we want to offer purposeful real world experiences. And so the evolution of job suite by three, although it wasn't part of the inception in 2013, has has come a long way. And although it's still definitely the focus is on, you know, building community and community engagement and involvement, we've morphed it to include other skills that students can't gain in any field, in any sector. And so as we can continue to scale and build more opportunities with organizations, partners within the city and around our community, we want to continue to infuse other skills that would be valuable to them after they graduate.

And so in addition to the programs that are already in place and that have kind of lasted with time, we're continuing to add more opportunities and focusing a lot on equity, but also finding more opportunities for students who may have disabilities. And so one of the things that we've done over the past two years now is created and crafted new opportunities for students who may fall into that category or need specialists. And so we never want to limit students by partnering with organizations like Anew or partnering with to come events and events, identifying those students and then recreating and recrafting those experiences for students who need that or or who need specialists in there. And we and we been successful with that. So not only continuing to branch out to how many students are we serving, but also the students who are underserved.

So it's been quite successful so far. But, definitely, again, civic and community connections and engagement. And although the excitement is a wonderful thing for students, I think the best part is the students don't need to necessarily make a decision between maybe going out and getting a job to support their families, which a lot of our students do, but also can gain valuable experience, gain them income as well so they're able to earn IRCs or gain more, work experience, hands on experience, and not have to make a decision or choice between that or a part time job. And, again, recognizing that the these recognized certifications are are crucial to the workforce development pipeline that we're partnering on, and how can we better prepare them and set them up for success as early in advance as we can so that they're the ones who are first to get those jobs. I do have the pleasure of introducing, again, Liz Portella.

She's one of our newest members and leaders of this initiative. She's the coordinator for innovative learning and jobs two five three. And so she's gonna share a little bit more about some of the specifics in your experiences and what they've experienced so far throughout the program.

Thank you, Christopher. Mhmm. Hey, everybody. As Christopher said, I am the newly appointed innovative programs learning coordinator. My position was actually created to provide more focus on and dedicated time and space for programs like jobs two five three. I'm really excited to be part of this program. And I think that we can talk to you guys all day about how great we feel our program is, but I think the most important voice comes from the students because they're the ones that are actively involved in this. And if they're not walking away with something that they're excited about or proud of, then we need to go back to the drawing board. So one of those students I wanted to highlight today, her name is Keely. She is a stylist graduate.

She graduated in 2024. But she first came onto our scene in 2023. She was interested in becoming a firefighter, and one of our summer credential programs is wildland firefighting. She was trying to get into that program, but that is a very popular program. It filled up very quickly, and she missed that window.

And so she started looking around and learned that through our MMC, our merchant mariner credential program, there is a little bit of firefighting education and practice through that program as well. So she went ahead and was like, well, let's try it. Let's do test it out. And she learned that she actually really enjoyed the merchant mariner career and the maritime industry just through that summer program. So we were able to provide her with all of the tools.

The she got her drug testing. She got her TWIC card, which is required to apply for a merchant mariner credential. We were able to provide her with that entire experience for her to decide that she wanted to move forward with that career upon graduation. So in 2024, she did graduate high school from stylist, and then she attended what's called Piney Point. It is out in Maryland.

It is one of the main maritime industry training facilities. And she graduated from Piney Point also in 2024 and set sail on her first voyage, in 2025. It was a three month voyage. She went from Italy to Mexico and then back to The United States. So she got to be a little bit of the world, and she made approximately $18,000 just in those three months from her first voyage. We are still in contact with her, and I just spoke to Jeff. He was the one that coordinated the MMC program this morning. She is currently out at sea in South China waters. So she's still going. She's loving it.

And we've asked, like, when she returns from her next voyage if she can come speak and to us again and provide us more feedback. So this is just one of our, like, shining star examples of a student that she thought that she wanted to do firefighting, and we provided her an opportunity that opened her eyes to an entirely new career that she never even considered. And she found success in doing it and continues to thrive. So she is one of many students that we are trying to support and provide opportunities to. We're really proud of Keely. So she is awesome.

I get so excited about our kids. Like, really? Cool. It's it's amazing. And I think about these opportunities that we cocreate together in partnership, and I just think, like, I wonder what it would have been, like, if I knew about these things even when I was in high school or even younger than that. Of course, data is really important. What's been really cool these past couple years, these past three years is that we've created new systems, innovative systems, automated systems that we are better able to track and manage student engagement and accomplishment. And this goes beyond these numbers. Mhmm. But it it it's by demographic statistics.

It's by grade level schools. What areas are we serving students throughout the city? And so just some highlights from last year. You know, we served 673 students through both types of programs, over 330,000 in stipends, and almost a thousand IRCs for those kids. We've increased our employer partnerships, probably almost tripled them since three years ago, and so we continue to push this up.

We're pretty aggressive when it comes to even grant writing and grant funding so that we can continue to support the the stipends in partnership with the city. And so we're really proud that we'll be able to continue this, moving forward. I know over the lifetime of this, we probably paid out over a million dollars in statements already, and I'm excited to continue working with Deborah and Liz that we could be able to share those numbers with you too.

Alright. So as Christopher stated, we've only recently started having these tools and tracking systems in place. But when we launched those tracking programs back in 2022, 2023, these were the numbers that we're working with. And that starting back in 2022, '23, that's still a big jump from what, Deborah had mentioned, at the inception of this program. It was just summer serving 50 to 70 students.

And as you can see, over the last few years, we have almost doubled in size. So our programs are growing. We are reaching more students than ever, and we are continuing that trajectory to just continue to grow, build our employer partners, provide more opportunities for more in demand industries, and we're excited to just continue that program. So the voice of the Tacoma's future workforce, some of the through lines that I was reading through our student reflections, which we do require students to submit a reflection about their experience after it's been completed so that we can learn and grow. But we pulled some really powerful ones, in our opinion, that shows how meaningful Jobs two fifty three is.

So for instance, you can see where I consider sorry. It showed me more sides of working with kids that and will be a considered factor into where I steer my future. That statement in itself is a huge win for us because we've provided the student, Peta, an opportunity to she thought that she wanted to work with students and children, and now she knows after her experience if that's where she is going to continue to see her future or not. And I just I feel like our our jobs two five three program provides students with leadership, confidence, and exposure to pathways as they're preparing to go into adulthood. And as Christopher mentioned, I didn't have these experiences when I was in high school, and I'm just so proud that we can provide these opportunities to these students and provide a paid stipend for them to just have these tools in their tool belt to be a successful adult in the way of their career or secondary.

Alright. And that leads us into our district commitments. We, as I said, are gonna continue to build and scale this program. All of these bullet points here kind of have the overarching goal of our district and our benchmarks to ensure that every student does have access to and participates in a work based learning opportunity that provides them experience and exposure, to help them create a well informed decision of their future and their pathway. We are ensuring that our industry credentials are accurate.

They're actually needed with our industry partners. We have design teams and other committees where we have industry partners that say, hey, what is the latest and greatest? What do our students actually need to be successful within this industry? And we adapt and adjust as we are informed. That way, we are truly providing them with skill sets and credentials that mean something, not just a, well, here's an OSHA 10 because it's easy to get.

But, oh, they don't actually need that for this career field. We're very intentional with the way that we're structuring our programs and the experiences and credentials that the students come out with. Equitable access to high demand pathways. This also ties into not only job suit five three, but our career and college college readiness pathways, as a whole in the department. We will continue to commit to these students the best that we can provide them to be as successful and have the tools in their tool belt upon their graduation from our our district. So we're really proud of them. And that, I believe, concludes.

In my thank you.

No.

Yeah. Yeah. My last shameless plug is we will be holding the fourth annual trades and hiring fair at the November 7 at the Tacoma Dome, and I'll be more than happy and willing to share that. And I think miss Tremorrow would be able to share that with you too. We do promote all of our job see by three experiences there too. Mhmm. And so it's a free event to all community members. And if you can't attend, it's from nine to four November 7 to Commodore. It's amazing. It will be the biggest year yet. We have over a 100 vendors. Please come. It's great.

We're anticipating about over 4,000 and start joining in that event as well. So it's be a big deal. I'd like to add. I'm sorry. Not on the slide. From what they've been said, from my work, this is the most enjoyable program to work on. You'll see the results, meet the kids. The ones that come here have actually got to meet. Otherwise, they haven't. We're just, like, distanced from it. And then also in 2014, my youngest daughter went through this program. And it was a great situation because being a single mom, you know, it's like, okay. Beginning high school kid, what is she doing? Where is she type thing? And it was a way to keep track of her for a minute.

I had other avenues, but yeah. But it was great because she she got to work with the school district, and I can't be placed here. I need to be placed over here because I don't have transportation here. And just that experience of having to work that out and, you know, deal with adults, deal with bus routes helped her a lot. And then also where she served, she was working with, people with disabilities.

She eventually, she went through college, got her bachelor's in psychology, but then she also, went to Bates for their certified occupational therapy assistant program. And she swears that was a direct result of her experience in jobs two five three, and she's actually very well suited for that work. She's very personable and and loves it. She has most incredible stories. You just cry. So I love the linkage, though. That's all. Thank you. Well, thank you for sharing, and thank you for being so passionate about the work we do. I have a nephew that went through a program, and he he has, like, severe autism, but he's able to go to work.

And, he's working now, and he went through a program. And I don't you know, sometimes I I always I wonder, you know, how hard it is to get a job when, you know, socially, it's difficult for you to, be. And I'm just really proud that he's able to, like, maintain full time employment as an adult now. And it's just I know that

he got a lot of

the stuff. He did flagging and some other warehouse type of thing. And I was, like, thinking about moving on, and I'm just I was really happy to see. Thank you for your name. I'll open up to my colleagues if they have any questions or comments. I just have one quick, maybe silly one. What's an IRC? Are you interested in number? $90?

It's an industry recognized credential.

Oh, okay. Okay.

So they're just related to a specific sector. And, again, we're informed by our advisory committees about what is the most important kind of skill that a a student might need to know for, like, entry level careers. And so we par pair those with some of our opportunities so that students at the end of their experience gain this state recognized credential that they could go and use and put on their resume and hopefully give them a a step up into, you know, hiring.

Very cool. So it's almost a a running start alternative. So, like, every person can get a certificate certificate in something.

Yeah. There are different types of, like, licensures and things like that. Definitely, Running Start is something that we offer at the district level too. Our program is a little bit different, but yeah.

It's a bright start. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. That's my question.

I've over the I really appreciate the work that you guys do and all the support you're doing for your people. This is great. And I feel like if we were to do this presentation like others, like, what more could we do? And so I was wondering, like, have you guys in terms of funding to support for students, have you guys looked at opportunities outside just the city and the school with this other, like, private donors potentially that might be able to support the.

What's really cool about Tacoma Public Schools is especially when we're contracting with certain companies and organizations, we're starting to now infuse jobs two by three requirements. How many students is your company willing to to, offer an opportunity for them? How you know, even with our continued partnerships, and miss Portela here is very much in charge of a lot of the contracts that we have with the partners and the program managers. You know, we're now asking them, how can you contribute to a stipend and writing that into our contracts? So in addition to our own grant writing and grant getting very aggressively again, we are trying to infuse that into the agreement that we're we already have and the agreement that we continue to try to make.

But that means that we are always willing and open to any suggestions you have because we never want the monetary piece of this to be the barrier to offering more experiences with kids.

We do also we are supported heavily by the Tacoma Education Dream Fund, and they are recipients of many, you know, donations and whatnot. So they do help fund us from what they receive as well. So but, yes, we are we are aggressive. We are asking our employers like, hey. We are providing this amount. Would you be able to contribute to make it a little bit more lucrative for the student, especially in situations for summer time when those students do a lot of our population does need to work to help support their family. In certain situations, $500 a stipend is not necessarily as lucrative as we would hope. And we have met some success with our employer partners in in matching or contributing to those type ins. So it's been it's been good, and we're gonna continue to push. So Yeah. It's great to hear. And is it

just kinda fine within the city of Tacoma, or are we looking outside the county wide kind of in terms of, like, how

Currently, it's just to go up up schools, students. So Well, are you talking about, like,

the Place. Just Yeah.

No. That It's open. Ground. Yeah. Yeah. Want ideas. Yeah. Yeah. Let us know. Let me know, and and and if there are ones that would help us stipend. I actually if you don't mind, I brought, like, a card. So if you do know anybody, get get the full drive then to the website, and then they can be an employer partner going right up there.

Okay. Yeah. Thank you.

You. Alright.

I can add a small comment. We're also engaged with the Tacoma Anchor Network for jobs two fifty three on the workforce development arm. And so looking at the ways that we can engage the 13 largest employers in first time in placements for students with the jobs two fifty three, and that's been exciting to see the progression of that as well. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. I am I'm excited to see this work. I think about it as workforce development and and driving the economy, but I also think about it as a means of prevention. So I think as we can even as you are able to expand your students and expand how you support different populations of students, thinking about how we use work making money to be able to, do that, I think it's, another way to get more funding. Things like that. So thank you again for the word.

Thank you very much. Okay.

Up next, we have our Ticonder Creates annual report. And for that, I'd like to follow-up with Ella Somersen, Lisa Jarrett, and Fedorza Gaines with the Community and Economic Development Department, and Kaitlyn Tanis from the Ticonder Creates Advisory Board. Good

morning, deputy mayor. Thanks

for letting us come and present on the criminal credit annual report. My name is Rebecca Solverson. She her pronouns. I'm with the arts and cultural vitality division division manager. Before sharing the report, I just wanna say how wonderful it was to hear that last presentation.

I sit really close to Deborah. And we don't always get to see each other's work, and I do I I I love seeing the impact. So whoever whatever universe or Tanya to get through the same presentation, I appreciate that, and I've it kinda makes my brain go on how we can work together more. So so I'm gonna pass it over pretty quickly to our staff, but we are here to present the Tacoma Crates annual report for the 2425 program year. So it's been an eventful year and eventful couple of months, But this report covers the July 2024 to June 2025, and then we will also talk about briefly some of the things we have with the presentation.

With that, I'm gonna turn the presentation over to Tacoma Crates, Tacoma Crates team who, is working on this day in, day out, and I'll let them introduce themselves, and share the presentation. See how we work together as a partner. Can we just call for next slide then? Yeah, that's fine. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. All right, next slide. Good morning. My name is Lisa Barrett. My pronouns are sheher. I am the Tacoma Crate program manager.

Good morning. I'm Tercea Dennis Sheher. I'm the Tacoma Crayta coordinator.

I'm Katie Madrigg, sheher pronouns, and I'm the chair of the advisory board. And also with us today is Kyle Mullins, who's the program associate for Tacoma Crayta. This slide shows the cover of our forthcoming annual report, and it shows a performance from an event produced by the Chinese Reconciliation Project Foundation. Next slide. Our investment in cultural access is grounded in the state legislation that was passed in 2015.

In 2018, Tacoma Creates was established through a very successful ballot initiative. And over the last six years, we have been building, developing, and implementing this program, which has had a tremendous impact on arts, culture, heritage, and science opportunities in Tacoma. And then this year, three weeks ago, actually, you might be familiar with this, Tacoma Creeks was reauthorized for a second seven years by a unanimous vote of Tacoma City Council. This is an important milestone for our city and also an important development for the state's cultural access efforts. Next slide, please.

And the core values that drive our funding.

Next. Oh, there we go.

That's all good. So the core values that drive our spending are increasing access to cultural programs, events, and classes, reducing barriers participation, especially for historically underserved or marginalized groups and within neighborhood across Tacoma, supporting programming that is by and for culturally or ethnically specific communities, and supporting the sustainability of Tacoma's cultural sector organizations. Overall, our funding priorities are centered on equity, access, inclusion, and sustainability. Here are some key outcomes from last year, which was our fifth full funding cycle. Next slide.

So the depth of impact during the 2425 program year can be seen in the nearly 1,500 programs produced. Funded organizations counted a combined total of 1,000,000 participants. The 6,000,000 in funding supported events ranging from education programs to neighborhood festivals to formal exhibition that engaged young children, family, and older adults. The 69 organizations funded represent our largest local cultural institutions and an increasing number of smaller and newer cultural organizations. Next slide, please.

This slide shows the significant continued growth over the last four years in four key areas. Organizations funded, funding amount, total programs, and total youth education programs. Compared to the twenty one-twenty two program year, this past year, we funded 35% more cultural organizations, and they produced 42% more programs and events. Next slide.

A key part of supporting broader participation in cultural programming is financial access. Tacoma Crate's funding allows organizations to offer more free programming and more reduced price tickets and class scholarships. Nearly 70% of all programs supported by Tacoma Creates were completely free for all participants with over 300,000 attendees at free in person cultural events. In addition to financial access, we look at other kinds of access as part of our funding priorities, such as communications access, access for people with disabilities, and creating welcoming and inclusive spaces. In their final reports, Way Out Kids articulated an example of this work.

Next slide. They wrote, equity and access remain central to our mission. With support from Tacoma Creates, we've continued to expand opportunities for youth and families in Tacoma who have historically been left out of high quality STEAM education and culturally relevant programming. Over the past year, our after school program and our annual Juneteenth WA event have served as key avenues for building community, removing barriers, and ensuring every child has access to joyful, meaningful learning experiences. Because of the city's investment in cultural access, young people and people of all ages are engaged in more learning opportunities and more festivals and events that are culturally relevant to them and their families.

Another key aspect of access that's important for our city is geographic access. Next slide. We

ensure that publicly supported cultural programs happen in different parts of the city. We support programming that brings residents and visitors to our great cultural facilities downtown, and we support programming that happens in all five council districts. Funded organizations report their programming locations to us, and this map combines all of that reporting. Our program locations map is overlaid over the city's equity index, which we use to inform funding decisions and to encourage organizations to expand their reach in ways that best support our community as a whole. There's an interactive version of this map on our website, so we'll take a quick look there.

So this is on our website. This is takomacreates.org/locations, and it's an interactive map where you can actually click on every single dot, see the exact program that was offered there. So many of the dots are multiple programs. You can scroll through all the little cards that say which things they are. You can zoom in on different neighborhoods.

And we now have four years of data, so you can you can look back through all four years of layered them on top of each other, look at different layers. We'll go back to the slideshow now. And next slide. This is a financial summary showing a key way that Tacoma invests in the creative economy. So we use a July to June program year, and we use sales tax revenue received in one year to support the expenses in the following program year.

So in 2223, our revenue was 7,700,000.0. And in twenty twenty four, twenty five, our expenses were about 7,000,000. Of that 7,000,000, the vast majority of it, $6,000,000 went directly into contracts with cultural organizations in our community. The other key expense categories in addition to administration and program management are the designated funding categories for capacity building and transportation. And the chart on the right hand side shows how organizations allocated the $6,000,000, and most of it goes to support jobs in the creative sector, a combined 73% for staff

and contractors, which includes individual artists and other creative workers. Now we'll look at education programs and key partnerships. Next slide. Over one third of all Tacoma Create supported programs are youth education programs. 45 Tacoma Create funded organizations provided combined total of nearly 600 youth education programs last year, and over 70% of those, were free for participants.

The topics of these programs ranges from dance and music to engineering, world languages, environmental science, and more. And the types of programs range from summer camps to full day assemblies to Saturday morning classes. When young people have opportunities like these, they expand their horizons, build intrinsic motivation for learning, and meet new friends with different backgrounds but shared interests. These are all the things that support positive outcomes both inside and and outside of the classroom. Next slide.

A significant subset of all the youth education programs are those that are part of the public school cultural access program. And that's a program that's the commitment is outlined in state cultural access legislation as well as in our city code. Most of this commitment is in partnership with Tacoma Public Schools, and it includes learning opportunities that are part of school day as well as district led out of school type programs. So last year, there were 27 organizations that allocated a combined total of $1,200,000,000 to support ETS student success. And in addition to supporting organizations and offering field trip programs, Tacoma creates covered bus costs for 280 cultural learning opportunities for TPS students.

98 of all TPS schools have, benefited programming, benefited from Tacoma Creates programming. That's all elementary schools, all middle schools, and all comprehensive high schools. And the 58 Tacoma Public Schools that had programming supported by Tacoma Creates had on average connections with at least six different Tacoma Creates organizations. Next slide. We also have a great partnership with Tacoma Public Library in which every branch is activated with unique cultural programs.

People of all ages can engage in hands on workshops, listen to music, learn new skills, explore a wide variety of cultural traditions, just to name a few options. Several years ago, the library director commented on how happy they were to have an average of more than one Tacoma Crate funded program every week. This past year, organizations provided an average of more than 4.5 free programs every week in our library system. Next slide, please. And so coming down to the present and to the future, in our current twenty twenty five-twenty six funding cycle, we have contracts with 79 organizations for $6,700,000.

This represents nearly a 15% increase in the number of contracts compared to last year. One new element in the current funding cycle was our direct support of programming in summer late nights, and there were 13 Tacoma creates funded organizations that participated this year. We're in process now already for our 2627 funding cycle in which we'll be implementing a lot of the updates that were approved on the recent code updates. The biggest evolution to come will be developing the recently approved capital funding program, which we're excited to be in development about over the next year, and that will launch as part of our 2728 funding cycle. And in addition to the direct funding to cultural organizations, we continue to work on a variety of things that supports the cultural sector.

So we do that through capacity building programs and community engagement opportunities, and a really strong commitment to continue to update our materials and our processes every year so that we can best support both our current funded organizations as well as potential future cultural organizations. Next slide. That concludes our presentation for today. The full annual report will be released in a couple of weeks. So thank you so much for your time.

Thank you for your continued engagement in Tacoma's cultural sector, and we're happy to take any questions. Thank you. It's a decision. Amy McBride shared videos from and so five years ago or eight years. I don't remember how many years ago it was, but was so fun to see, like, of the, you know, people that are either have organizations or, you know, came to speak about different things and, like, you know, just in the videos of, like, leading up to. It's very cute, very dark videos. And all the work went into that. So I'll leave it to my colleagues to ask questions, but I know we have kind of heard some piece of this presentation at

least by the way.

Yeah. Here. So but if you have any questions, please. Please. I don't

I don't have any questions. Just appreciate you go and create some all it does for a city. I think it's all. Like, really, it's a great economic development tool as well. And I think I really appreciate the commitment that the folks took over for the discounts as well to continue at all because of the how strong it's been. And then, yeah, it's just it's huge. Thank you.

I just had a question I would ask. What are you excited about in the next? That's what do you hope to how do you hope to see it? I can I've, so I do think the, the council's addition of the capital program is really exciting. We've already started getting some feedback from organizations to something called roundtables just the last couple weeks.

And it's been really interesting to see how the organizations are thinking about equity and how that could support, like, who that should be for, which should support. And a lot of times, they're not necessarily thinking about their own organization. So, what I've been really excited about those conversations is how they're starting to, really act as a cultural sector, how they're starting to, like, support each other. We're starting to hear stories about how, their funders are supporting the different organizations because they see connections between them too. So, I'm excited in digging a little bit deeper into that.

I think the capital piece is gonna be helpful for exploring that, but just, like, in general, how we're how we can continue building it as a cohort. It's a group that's important because we all know we need resilience right now. And so as we can build that locally, it's really pretty incredible. So very excited. Very excited to see that I brought on more more to work as far as, like, admin staffing and so to do all the week you want to do, but Alright. Well, thank you all. Another year. Yeah. Yeah. I'm for seven more years.

Yeah.

It's just good to have that stability for organizations too, and they can continue doing this good work. Go ahead to Deborah's email about Sure. I'm super excited. I love it. Good timing.

Okay. So now I'm gonna call on Tanya Carter, our executive liaison, because that's coming to talk to us upcoming meetings, but also, a quick director's update with CBD. I don't really have any updates this week. I think, customer Diaz, what I did mention on Fred Meyer is that we are continuing to have regular calls with with the folks over at Meyer Kroger. There is, this week, a call where we will just introduce the sub area plan to the folks at Fred Meyer.

And our intention of doing that was to kind of educate them on what our future plans are and our vision is for that area with the hopes of when they do talk to or engage with any interested parties that they'll be able to provide a little bit more context about what's going on in area, which the hope is there to make that area a little bit more contextual and a little bit more attractive to anyone who's considering it. So, that's the main update that you all are getting all the federal funding updates on a regular basis, so it won't beat a dead horse on that one. And other than that, there is nothing more to report. Okay. Well, are there any other items of interest?

Okay. All those in favor, we can pick up the motion. You're adjourned. Second. All those in favor, we look by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed, we look by saying aye. The motion is supported by the release and adjourned.