Appointments Committee - Regular Meeting

Good morning. I'd like to call to order the meeting of the Operational Strategy and Administrative Committee of August 14, 2026. Please call the roll.

Chair Ipsen?

Here.

Committee Member Bushnell?

Present.

Committee Member Scott? Here. Committee Member Walker?

Here. All right, welcome everyone. So thanks for joining us at our last meeting on July 31st. We discussed one agenda item, the role of the deputy mayor, meeting minutes were summarized, including the packet. And today we just have one item, which is an update on the city manager's work plan, including a process for a periodic review and a timeline. With that, I'm going to, before we go to that, we're going to approve the minutes from the July 31st meeting. Is there a motion to approve? Move to approve. Moving second. Any corrections or recommendations? If no, those in favor of approving the minutes, please say aye. Hi. Minister approved. And with that, we're going to turn this over to our city manager to discuss the periodic review process and timeline on the work plan.

Mayor Ibsen, thank you very much. Members of the BOCESAC, council members, thank you for the opportunity to come and speak to you about my first periodic review of my work plan for you. Subsequently, one item that I would like to propose for your consideration is a change under the metric upon our homelessness prioritization, so I'll speak to that later. But before, I'm going to hand it over to Dan to talk about the cycle for review and setting the clear expectation as well as defining when I'll be coming to you as we work towards this annual evaluation period. Surprise, not a surprise to you all. We are well on our way to my next email with you for meeting those metrics.

So with that, Ben, take it away. Thank you, Steve, Andrew, Kim, and thank you all for having me here today. As you may recall, back in May when we took the City Manager's Work Plan to Council, there was a bit of discussion about what the process would look like going forward for updates, how changes could be made, how you continue to be at that, and how often that check-in should occur. So we've been processing that discussion and bringing forward today a proposal for what the annual review process could look like. So today we won't actually have an updated work plan with results in it. That's what we're we're planning to come up next. This will be focused on the process and the timeline with the one change that City Manager Kim has proposed. So looking at today, again, the discussion is about, is focused on the process and the objectives of those recurring updates, what you hope it's going to accomplish when we be checking with you. Is it possible to get the participants list moved off the screen a little bit there? Thank you. That would be helpful. So we want to confirm the proposed annual check-in cycle, have some proposed dates for you and the cadence there. We want to discuss the content and the structure of those individual check-ins. We want to identify OSAC's role in supportive conversations with the full council, and then that proposed update to the language for the existing performance metrics. So looking at this annual cycle, think of it as a recurring cycle, right? So in May, we would review the results from the prior year. We didn't do that this May because it was deferred. But then finalize the work plan for the upcoming year. So that's really where we started. We finalized the work plan in May of this year or this year. So the first review that we would propose would be in September. So kind of an average of what we are hearing council members say in that meeting, quarterly maybe too often, semi-annually not often enough. We opted for about three times a year, every four months. So September would be that first check-in with the structure really focused on a review of the early process, update or establish any missing measures or targets. So for example, there were things that as council was discussing, we weren't quite clear exactly what a good measure would be or what kind of target we should be setting. So this would be four months into it. We could see how the work is progressing and if a more concrete measure might make sense. And then we'd want to confirm whether priorities or direction has changed. It was clear through council's conversations that there needs to be agility and adaptability. Things come out of the city fast. Things change quickly these days. And so having that opportunity to change and adjust and not firmly set plan for a whole year. So then the next check-in would be in January. The focus then, because we're kind of then approaching into the last third, going into the last third of the year, identify any focus areas for that final push for the city manager. What would you really like to see done before a review year is complete? And then provide context for the annual council retreat and priority development process. Because you see there in February and March, council typically has a retreat and develops priorities for the year. And this is a good time to gather input for the city manager's annual performance review and next work plan. So then we would work in April to develop that next year's work plan and complete the final work plan report from the existing work plan and conduct the annual performance review. So in May, we are both creating the final and, or creating a final work plan and moving forward with the next work plan in September and January. every third of the year.

Any comments or questions about the proposed annual cycle? Just wanna ask now or just wait until the end of the presentation?

Either way you wanna do it there.

Wanna just hold off until the end, is that cool? All right, okay, cool.

So then this is a little bit more of a deep dive into what each check-in should cover. So really looking at the September and January check-ins. What progress has been made? So the city manager would bring the actions that were completed, the milestones that were achieved, and any early outcomes or evidence of progress, especially in that room you're checking. The second would be, are we on track? So given that we're a third of the year or two thirds of the year through, are we making adequate progress? Are there any barriers, risks, or dependencies that have emerged that need to be addressed or might change our targets or direction? And then areas that are needing additional attention. So if you're seeing places where there just hasn't been enough progress or it's become more of a priority, we can emphasize those. Then that third area, again, can expectations now be made more specific? So as we've kind of done preliminary work in various areas or started to implement, can we see what good targets would be? Can we establish good timelines, be refined? And are there any performance measures that need to be added or tracked, especially in the reporting side of the process? of the document. And then that fourth item, has anything materially changed? So is there new emerging council direction? Have there been budget or operational changes that require a shift in focus or priority in the work plan? And have there been any external events affecting the feasibility or priority of various aspects of the work plan?

Ben, thank you very much. I don't mean to take you off the presentation today. Committee members, this checkpoint in September will be an opportunity for me to come to you and be quite frankly from an organizational perspective, be vulnerable to here's what's working, here's the early indicators. Council is really appreciative of the color coding of what's working, the color coding on green, yellow, red. The operative word the council has spoken to me through this whole process of developing my work plan in partnership with me has been that the word is agility, right? So if there are other things that are coming online, such as the budget that's being developed now, we should not have to wait a whole year to pivot off of those areas, but also be accountable to the public that is seeing this, how you're going to review my performance. So this is what we're talking about here. And we do have one change that I want to talk to you about subsequently to make sure that we can have success. Thank you.

Then what is the role of OSAC and the full council? And I think there is a choice here for OSAC and there's a potential that you could play. Reviewing the completeness and clarity of drafts of the report and the updates, identifying any questions or requiring additional any information that you'd like to see before it goes to the full council. Testing whether proposed measures meaningfully reflect the work plan and highlighting items requiring that full attention of the city council. And then possibly recommending any process improvements for future check-ins. But for the full council, the proposed role would be that full council is really receiving the City Manager's Progression Court and discussing the overall progress. And so it would be at the full council level where we'd identify any changing priorities or clarify collective council direction and confirm any major adjustments. So really having OSTAC kind of be more focused on process and a preview in order to give feedback so that there could be a more robust draft at the council stage. So that's all about the process and the structure. Next, that update that State Manager Kim has been referring to. Thank you very much, Ben.

This is for your consideration here. What we have done with our department, NCS has taken a look at what is the outcomes upon which we could be the most successful and what is the problem statement that we seek to improve? What are the conditions on the ground for our most vulnerable communities? in our community council. This change also, it's not ignoring the fact that you've taken action in receiving a presentation even on Tuesday with the URA concept as well. So the change here that I'm seeking some guidance as I take this to the full council is changing the performance metric with the strikeout provision here. It would read as to support the wellbeing and dignity of our unhoused residents and promote the safety and cleanliness of the city for all residents. The city manager will review and renew applicable portions of the affordable housing action strategy and homeless strategy with a particular focus on, so let's drag out provision. They would read moving more unhoused residents inside to shelter or stable housing. We believe that this change is not just surface level. It is more clear, a clear line to what you actually want to see. It's not that we're going to measure who's accepting housing. offers of shelter or wraparound services, we want to measure exactly that we're moving folks to shelter, transitional, as well as potentially actual permanent solutions that are more durable. So that's the department's recommendation that I've accepted. I bring that to you for just awareness as I take this to full council, because this is a change.

Thank you, and thank you, OSAC. That brings us to the end of our presentation and really to those kind of four main questions. Does the tri-annual cadence work for you, where we come back about every four months with updates? Does the structure of each of those updates meet your needs? And what would you like the whole OSAC to be versus the full council? And is there any feedback on proposed change in the housing and homelessness area before that returns to the full council?

Okay, thank you. So some clarification and we'll open up the question. So I believe the contract says quarterly updates. So if we have just three, I mean, we can totally be flexible, but how would that align?

So this is, as we start this process, we're in it right now. What I'm proposing is that we'll have check-ins for three quarterly check-ins with the final check-in being my last report to you. the overall performance as we move forward this cycle that Ben has presented. We will have that. It's where we're at. My work plan was approved by council mid-year. Not mid-year. It's not there.

We really missed that first quarter. Got it. I've got a bunch of questions, but I'll turn it over to the committee first.

No questions. I'm happy with the timeline. I think it makes a lot of sense. I do appreciate the check-ins because we can we can have the agility to modify or change as needed based on the needs of the community and the city. And yeah, I think it's good. I'm thinking about a lot about the performance metric and the wordage change. And I... I'm looking at it holistically, not just the change. I think the change at the end makes a lot of sense. We can't force anybody to accept any shelter, but we can make sure that there's opportunity for good shelter or stable housing. And maybe we should have caught this earlier, but I was thinking earlier in the performance metric how we kind of talk about supporting those experiencing homelessness and know in in the second line here it says promote the safety and cleanliness of the city of all residents and that's a allowable goal i agree but i'm not not sure that that just that necessarily coincides with housing and homelessness services support specifically um deputy mayor i thank you for bringing that up um i i guess non-response just conversation with you

would be that, yes, they're not necessarily aligned in terms of making sure our other residents or Tacoma feels like the community is getting more clean from that standpoint, and then shelter acceptance, more stable housing options, but they are in some ways too, such as, you know, I'm aware of the fact that our teams are working right now on proposals for new programming and enhanced programming to help support at the same time. So thank you, Deputy Mayor. If you would like me to take that back to the full council for discussions and if you want to pull that out, I'm okay there. He's in some ways keeping me accountable to doing both. That's the balance desk.

Yeah, and it's not that I don't want safety and cleanliness in the city, of course. I'm just thinking about how it's aligned with our housing and supporting folks experiencing homeless schools and affordable housing. I guess I'm just thinking about it. I don't have any specific verbiage that might change that, but that's kind of how I thought. Okay.

Any other questions, Dr. Merritt? No, that's it. All right. Let's go to Scott.

I don't have any questions on I kind of had a slow thought around the loneliness part of the, of the dating feminist part of the metric. Um, and I, yeah, I mean, I understand. I know that like when we're doing, when we're looking at responding to, um, parts of, you know, the impacts of people experiencing homelessness with like encampments and cleaning it up. And obviously people like to see that, um, you know, folks are outside, um, that, you know, there's places for them to throw their trash. We are making sure that they're saving things. So I can understand in, like, a intellectual sense how that ties into the overall, like, work, you know, that we're doing when we look at it through the whole scope. But I also see, like, it does kind of... There's also this... Isolated like this, it makes it feel like we're almost saying that homelessness is one of the causes of people feeling unsafe or that the city is not clean. And so it kind of brings in like that moral side of things too. But yeah, so I didn't, I also don't have anything like that makes that feel better. But I think part of it is that this is isolated outside of the entire housing action strategy or overall, even like what touches on like our environment and climate and all the other things that halfway ended up. Yeah. Isolated. I don't like that. puts it in a little bit of a different light.

I really appreciate that. And to Deputy Mayor's point, too, there is somewhat, I guess I would say it this way, there is a healthy tension. And that's why I think you would be proud of our team, led by Director Esparza, Director Chavez, and others, that as they revamp our actual strategy, it's going to require a process that requires me to come to you and say, we've tried this aspirationally, maybe we need to hone in on this. And then engaging with our public too, members of our coalitions and partners that are seeing this for what that is too. I do see though that council has not yet seen the full budget package or fully agreed to council priorities with the budget for 27, 28. But it's not a secret to our community that graffiti cleanup, you know, trash removal, those are top priorities of this council. I suspect that will be making the top of the list as well for our EPW team. And I'm also prepared, right? I'll be vulnerable with you all that many of the things we've launched here, they're broad strokes. And so when we're filling in that picture, I'm prepared to come to you and say, this is why it's not going well. I readily will not accept that I will bring to you a failure, especially when it comes to our most vulnerable residents in the community. But might I come back to you in a quarterly or at the end of the year saying, here's what we learned, how much we learned.

If I may, I wonder if we might have been thinking in the original writing of this, if we were referring to the safety and cleanliness of those who are experiencing homelessness, right? So their dignity, well-being, safety, and cleanliness all being important.

So this is my few hot takes. Before I get to my few hot takes, I want to make sure, Councilmember Walker, if you're still logged in, if you have any questions or feedback on what the talk's about.

Thank you, Mayor. I agree with all the things that have been said. Thank you, Council Member Scott, for bringing up the language there. And I think that in this document, the most important thing is that it's something that's clear to both the city manager and the public what we're asking and how we evaluate. So I think we're on the right track and appreciate the conversation, but nothing more.

nothing specifically from me so thank you and also ben thank you for thinking through that timeline with so much thought that that totally makes sense to me all right so my particular hot take and thank you hen for bringing this forward i think this is a reasonable change um i myself care a lot less about wordsmithing because you know that this isn't a resolution you know like if any of us have been involved in like party politics, right? I mean, just the sheer bloodbath bites there are when people argue over semicolons, right? This isn't a resolution. This is just giving enough guidance to staff to make things happen so that we know what success looks like so we can hold ourselves accountable. That's the entire purpose of this thing. John Q. Public doesn't care about sentence structure or syntax that they just want things to happen. They want their neighbors to feel better. They want people to get help. People want to make sure they can pay the rent. It's really action oriented that we have to bring everything back to. I'm perfectly fine with revisions to the language. I recall in the council conversations about those word changes to the homelessness performance metrics that the word progression meant that it wasn't the either or of being referred to shelter, being referred to permanent stable housing, but there was also a component to pre-information city manager. There was a component of graduating from one to the other right because you know we can't shelter away out of a homelessness problem and there's a great deal of prevention work and there's ideally moving people through a succession of growth where first they're sheltered and then maybe to a halfway house and then to permanent supportive housing into home ownership and this is not me needling on word choice this is more just clarifying what the the meaning was behind that word so as you flesh out your your performance metrics or your department standards just keep in mind what the the context was for that work but i'm not going to trifle over word choice or sentence structure or what have you um my take is that this is really about staff autonomy i mean we've had a lot of input as a council at the the council retreat and in the uh the summation of this so um i think consultation is fine i'm really reluctant to just have another you know two-hour study session talking about word structure. So just my little hot take there. My big, big ask with all of this, just like I've said repeatedly, is that the budget and the work plan should be like happily married spouses. They should be very, very aligned. So I know that we talk a little bit further in this or earlier in the presentation about budget modifications, but just as we flesh out the budget process and as you flesh out this, just making abundantly clear in department budget proposals that you're constructing and in the articulation of the work plan, the things that we're prioritizing are also the things that we should be disproportionately funding, right? Like that's how these things should work. So just making clear that they are as closely aligned and we are talking as outwardly about that alignment as possible would be really important. And then finally, my other question is, as the budget process moves forward, I know that we didn't quite have the performance indicators in this iteration of the work plan. Like we had a discussion and the consensus was to keep it pretty vague and without those metrics. But as the department goals get formed with the budget, can you elaborate how you see those departmental performance measurements How do you see that process working? How quantifiable those things might be?

Yeah, so I would say the council gave me a work plan on behalf of the community that gave me the autonomy and space to work without being bounded by KPIs or metrics that would come to what I get to do in partnership with my team, the department directors, is to set actual metrics This first review will not see those things because I want to honor counsel. But I will speak to that. As I bring out, here's how subsequently we moved on this work plan item, and here's how we did this. So a good example is the budget overall. not just the RCW requirement that I provide a balanced budget, but, Mayor, what you spoke to, that the key priorities within my work plan should have elements of a balanced budget with those priorities. I'll show you that, and I'll show you that those resources will be used to develop metrics, and I'll speak to those things. You're not bounding me to that. I am bounding my... working in space with the department directors and the departments to actually move the needle. I think I owe you that explanation, Howard.

Yeah, that's great. And I know that in past times, there was slight experimentation with departmental KPIs. It was atrocious when it did happen because the departments did it in complete isolation and it was meaningless to the overarching strategy. So the most infamous example was... They could all come up with their own goals, right? So TPD's big performance metric had nothing to do with the things that actual people cared about, like response time, for example, or maybe survey perception of safety. It was like number of community fairs hosted, number of attendees to community fairs. It was just silliness, right? So, you know, just basic accountability and, again, just alignment with your work plan. That's definitely something I'm excited to see.

Yep. Thank you, man.

All right. Any other feedback or questions from the council? Okay. Well, thank you very much for the update. Anything else?

Thank you, chair. So given that feedback and that it looks appropriate, we'd be looking to come back to the September 11th OSAC with the updates in the work plan, the actual content report out updates and aiming to be in front of the council on the 22nd. Okay.

Very good. All right. With that, is there any public comment? Perfect.

I think we have any in-person public comment speakers. We do have one person who's raised her hand. Ms. Sally Perkins, why don't you go ahead? I'm going to share my screen. When you are called on, please state your name for the record. You will have two minutes to make your remarks. Please be mindful of the time frame. And go ahead, Sami, please state your name for the record.

Thank you very much. Sally Perkins, District 3. First, I want to thank the committee for working on the process and making it visible as to how the updates and how the review is going to happen and what those timeframes are. And I'm particularly encouraged that you've created a process where updates can be built in because I think agility and flexibility are really key terms in terms of looking at the city manager's work plan. In anticipation of that conversation, I would observe that one of the most important priorities facing this city, which is accountability of the Tacoma Police Department, is not currently in the city manager's work plan. And while the city manager cannot direct the content of the bargaining around that issue. They certainly can be paying attention to the process which has dragged out and resulted in no progress essentially in 2026 after the previous council promised it would get done in 2025. And so I ask that that get on the list for the future for updates. I know that the Black Collective Coalition, of which I am a member, has had at least two conversations with the city manager about this. And I think he has expressed his interest in this as an important topic. Right now, what happens is talk about disproportionate funding. The police department gets disproportionate funding largely through pretty generous compensation agreements in the CBA, but is not held accountable and does not have independent oversight. And does not demonstrate the kinds of accountability that we would want to see and that you're talking about in terms of this work plan. So I would urge you to take a good hard look at that topic. I urge you to consult again with the leaders of the Black Collective Coalition on what that might look like in this work plan and what it might look like in terms of actually getting accomplished in the future. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Sally. Any other public comments?

No other speakers signed up for this online and no speakers in the room.

All right. Thank you, Deidre. We're going to close comments. And as we close up our meeting, Ben, if you can give us a recap of what we discussed today.

Absolutely. So we discussed the work plan process and cadence. Check-ins occurring in September, January, and May throughout the remainder of the year. Staff will be coming aboard on September 11th to OSAC with a preliminary draft of an update to go to Council around September 22nd. Cool.

It doesn't look like you need any motions for any of that. It's just the staff left it at those, so we have something after that. Okay. Any topics of interest that anyone would like to put in the committee pipeline? Okay. Well, those, you know, whether it's committee members or other council colleagues who are non-OSAC, I'm just going to draw a vote. Okay. Well, with that, seeing as there's no further business, I welcome a motion to adjourn. Move to adjourn.

Second.

Move to second. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

All those say no. We are adjourned.