Appointments Committee - Regular Meeting

I'd like to call the order of the Community Vitality and Safety Committee meeting of August 27th, 2026. Clerk, will you please call the roll?

I have no vote. Here. Vice Chair Scott?

Here.

Council Member Walker?

Here.

Chair Aranda? Here.

So we'll move on to public comment to request to speak during, oh no, sorry. Do we have anybody, has anybody signed up?

Nobody signed up.

Okay, well, then we will. And then on to our items, starting with. When services Commission annual report, and I'd like to call on hearing Aaron Wellington from neighborhood community services as well as from human services.

Good afternoon, Chair Rumba and Vice Chair Scott and members of the committee. My name is Erin Watlington. I'm a senior community resources analyst with Neighborhood and Community Services. I'm joined this evening by the chair of the Human Services Commission, Christy Coyne, and we're excited to provide a brief overview of the commission's annual report and future plans. For a quick background review, the city council authorized the presence of the Human Services Commission over 20 years ago on January 24th, 2006. The commission consists of 15 members who are recommended by a CBS committee and appointed by city council to serve in an advisory capacity on human services funding and related issues. The Human Services Commission conducts meetings, review the rates-delivered applications, makes funding recommendations to city council, And additionally, the commission serves as a resource to city council and staff for the development and administration of human service related programs. Chair Coyne will now share more about the members currently serving on the HSE.

Good evening, Chair Brumbaugh, Vice Chair Saad, and other committee members. My name is Christy Coyne. I'm in my fourth year on the commission and currently serving a second term as chair. This slide displays the current roster, which is fully seated. Each September, five terms expire. This year, four commissioners, including our emerging leader, are seeking reappointment. If you look at the column Terms Served, you'll see that 60% of the commission is in their second term or pursuing reappointment. One commissioner is leaving her second term early, so CVF will be filling two vacancies in a couple of weeks during recruitment interviews. The HSC has representation from all five council districts, as well as one commissioner from outside city limits who lived in Tacoma for many years. We hope this recruitment cycle will increase representation from District 4 and 5 and add additional diversity to our group. Okay. This slide shows the current race and age demographics of the commission. Having diverse representation is important as we discuss funding recommendations and human service needs of the community. The demographic makeup of the commission is representative of Tacoma. We will be discussing ways to increase representatives from various age categories in the 2027 recruitment process. The next slide shows more of the diversity of our commission. Okay. Starting with the top left square, you'll see that several commissioners have experience working in the field of human services and are valuable subject matter experts. Outside of shelter, all the funding priority areas for NSC are covered by the commission. The top right square highlights the wide range of knowledge and experience of the members' professional backgrounds in both the private and public sector. The orange square on the bottom left lists some of the personal experiences commissioners have shared. These lived experiences are often why people apply to Human Services Commission. For example, I come from a family, my mother was bipolar and untreated by choice, and I have an older brother I lost to addiction. So aside from my professional background, that was what also brought me in. The last square on the bottom right highlights some additional perspectives brought to the commission that add depth and value to representing the uniqueness of Tacoma. The 2027-2028 work plan will include recruitment strategies for increasing representation across all demographics and increase diversity in thought and experiences. Erin will now talk more about the accomplishments of this year and plan for the coming year.

Sure. I'm excited to put that on the committee's accomplishments this year from the Human Services Commission since our last update. This successful year started back in 2025 during the spring retreat where commissioners had a robust discussion on their roles and experiences as HFC members. The retreat provided direction for a co-created 25-26 work plan strategically tailored to prepare commissioners for the RFP process. This work plan included over 10 hours of training and presentations that supported the members' knowledge of the city's strategic priorities and department goals. This intentional planning created a strong foundation for commissioners before receiving applications for review. This month, the HSC just wrapped up their role in the 2728 funding process. Among five rater groups, they collectively reviewed 123 applications, listened to 82 oral presentations, and made funding recommendations for over $15.4 million for essential human services. This year alone, we estimate their volunteer time totaling over 600 hours. Most of those hours are occurring in the summer and on evenings and weekends. This commission is no small task, and the department greatly admires their commitment. Other accomplishments worth noting We, um, as mentioned our full commission, most members, um, are seeking re-appointment or sought re-appointment. Um, and we all, including six, just this last biennium. Given the time commitment of this commission, it's impressive the number of people that seek another three-year term. Given the technical work of funding process, it's also a great benefit to the department when there are raters with historical knowledge. Additionally, we welcomed and onboarded five new members and they were all a great addition to this RFP process. They kind of jumped in right before the RFP and they were a welcomed addition. The HSC meetings are well attended both virtually and in person and we've had a forum at every meeting for over two years. Chair Coyne volunteered to serve a second term offering continued leadership and two raters committed to an additional RFP process last year. We continually stay on track with other commission responsibilities, such as reviewing bylaws and all the other onboarding opportunities we have. It's been a great year seeing this group come together and co-develop processes and materials to support NCIS's funding process. As mentioned, the main task in 2026 was this funding process. So monthly presentations were structured in a way to support that process. You'll see the meetings in the beginning of the year included a presentation by Ted Richardson on Tacoma 2035 and council priorities. We welcome Council Member Rumba and Director Esparza to help us kick off the funding process. And then we also had monthly trainings and briefings by NCS staff to adequately prepare commissioners for their role in making funding recommendations. This included a department issue statement briefing, bias awareness training, and radar reliability discussions, in-depth technical assistance trainings related to their role in the RFP process. The success of this year is greatly due to the dedicated commission members and excellent staff at NCS. Next month, we'll begin debriefing the funding process from start to finish and building out a work plan for the next two years. So we'll just start the process all over again. And these prompts and these queries are just examples of questions that we may be asking the commissioners in this debrief in a spirit of continuous improvement to better meet the council priorities and the needs of Tacoma residents. Just a personal note, we've had a very dynamic, this is a very dynamic and skilled group of volunteers and the staff at NCS. I hope this was just a launching point for enhancing our process and community engagement. It's been both a challenge in the last biennium and a pleasure to be this athlete. Thank you so much. Let's go ahead and we can check in with Kare Rumba and Dr. Walker on my idea. Questions or comments?

I wanted to thank, first off, I want to thank my

co-chair, vice chair for leading this meeting. Really appreciate you. Jamika, I just wanna say, I just really love, first off, the format for this was really good. And I just think that's amazing that you've had quorum at every one of your meetings, because I know that that is something we sometimes struggle with with some of our other commissions that are part of CVS. That's really great. I would love to know, and I really appreciate the chair's leadership. Obviously, that's part of what makes it great. And I wanna also say the support from staff, as you mentioned.

i didn't really hear from you and i'm sort of thinking that you maybe have something to say about it because you kind of brought it up but could you just tell me what you think your biggest challenge was this year this year really good this year we didn't have a lot of challenges last year was challenging but this year i would say if i had to pick a biggest challenge it was that there had been a hiccup in getting the new um, commissioners in on time, um, last fall. And so they didn't come in until right before. So they didn't have as much training, but they were really good this year. So the training was, that helped.

And I guess I would say you guys have a very specific thing that you do. So maybe that's what makes it also like the TCRA is another one of those groups that has really high amount of people who continue to show up and want to participate. So I really appreciate hearing this. I just want to see. What's good is if we can take this model to our other commissions and figure out how to make their mission more specific so that it's more enjoyable for people to serve. So thank you.

Thank you, Chair. Council Member Walker?

Yeah. Thank you. And thank you for all of your service and volunteering again. 600 plus hours already this year is nothing to see that. That is a ton of work. I am curious, I guess, so I'm learning like the cycles and that with like the funding, is there like a busy season versus like time where you're spending more time, like onboarding folks and just wondering kind of what the mix is throughout the year.

Do you want to take it or do you want me to take it? Sure. The busiest season is during this, what we just kind of went through. So every other summer, basically, when we get all of a sudden you're handed 30, you know, applications you have to review and then it's, you know, it kind of goes about a month and then you have the oral presentations and then you start making the decisions and having sometimes heated discussions among, you know, your group. Most of the time, The rest of the two years or each of the two years there, it's a monthly meeting. we talk about, we've, we started formulating, like she said, having more pointed discussions about how we can help the RFP process. So they're very pointed towards like, what do we need to know? What, you know, why do we need to know this? Why are we looking for certain things? And so it's once a month and then we meet separately to plan the meeting once a month as well. So it's not as labor intensive other than, you know, go type like right now. So, yeah.

Um, I'm wondering, does this committee play any part in the follow-up when we're tracking how folks that were funded are adhering to the criteria that we've set?

Last year, we brought briefings to the commission for each funding area. So Kim presented, I presented, and his presented on their different funding areas. That's an ongoing question. They want to know, we've made these recommendations. Now, how are those programs performing? And we've had discussions on, we give a briefing of the full area, not independently talking about an individual program. But yeah, that's been part of our cycle last year. And then they asked for that to come again, probably early next year so that they can hear about the last biennium's work. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Um, yeah, just, I wanted to say first, thank you all for, um, just being committed and it's always appreciated when there's professional experience, but I thought that you want to put it out. Um, because I just, I think that it being able to bring that, like the lived experience and that vulnerability to the work, I think it, you know, human services in general, like not missing that human piece of it and just having that ability to, um, have some real connection to, you know, the issues that we're trying to impact by, you know, having a bit of funding that we have for, for the various, um, buckets there. So I just want to thank you all for, um, creating a space where people feel like they can share that information and apply that to, to the work that you're all doing. Um, I had a question about the volunteer hours. Is that just like work that's done like commission wise, or are you talking about like, you know, in your, in your off time, you also like volunteer.

Yeah, that's a lot. 600 hours were total for the human service commissioners just this year. So regular meetings, retreat consensus, allocation meetings, oral presentations, and then. Each of them, about, I think each reader group had around 30 applications to read. So that includes reviewing and rating those applications.

Yeah, no, I think that's great. I just wanted to make sure that, like, wanted to point it out again that that's, you know, a lot of time. And we really appreciate it. And then as far as the issue statement development and the RFP development as well, I just wanted to say, I think that's really important. I also was thinking about kind of like how we, how we track the success and the impact of the programs that are funded. Um, and just want to say like, if there's any role we can play in helping you all work that out.

So we did slightly change the criteria for like the brave funding this time around. I'm wondering if that encouraged like different folks to apply or what impact

Yeah, we saw a lot of new applicants. I don't know. When does briefing come?

End of September. And we'll make sure to highlight that.

Thank you. Yeah, the other question I had was about tracking the success of the programs and the impact that they have. So those were all the questions I had. But thank you all for taking the time to come and update us for all the work that you've done. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right, for our second briefing item, we will have the Human Rights Commission annual report. And I'd like to call on Danielle Atta from Neighborhood and Community Services and Berta Watkinson from the Human Rights Commission.

Welcome.

Good evening, Chair and members of the Community Vitality and Safety Committee. My name is Danielle Lata. I am a Community Resource Analyst Senior with Neighborhood and Community Services. And along with me tonight is Chair Washington of the Human Rights Commission. This presentation is to provide a brief overview of the Commission's recent accomplishments, ongoing work, and plans. All right, so for background, The Human Rights Commission was created by the Tacoma City Council to study and investigate problems of prejudice, bigotry, and discrimination, and to encourage and coordinate the implementation of programs consistent with the needs and the rights of all Tacoma residents. The commission consists of 15 members who are recommended by the Community Vitality and Safety Committee and appointed by the City Council to investigate and mediate community issues that may result from discrimination on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin or ancestry, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, marital status, familial status, honorable discharge, veteran or military status or disability. Neighborhood and community services began supporting this commission in June of 2024 And in July of 2024, the city was notified by the Housing and Urban Development or HUD for their attempt not to renew our contract to complete the fair housing investigation. And so referrals to the city ended in September of 2024. And at this time, the HRC stepped into reimagining the work that they're doing and the purpose of the commission and how they can better serve the former residents. Since then, the commission has been doing dedicated work to rebuild and have a solid foundation for human rights work. And I will now hand over the presentation to Chair Washington to share about the membership and accomplishments.

Good afternoon and hello, Chair and CPS committee. I am Chair of Washington and this is my first full chairmanship of the commission. I served beforehand as a member and then as vice chair. And so then I have not been elected to this position. This slide shows the current roster. You will note that there are two vacancies. Historically, the commission has struggled with active participation, electing to freeze recruitment in late 2024. However, in 2025, the commission was able to add eight new members and then had two renewals and three commissioners joined earlier this year. During the January retreat, there was plenty of engagement, and in March, the commission was at full capacity with 15 members and elected to re-establish subcommittee work in March. While there have been two departures, they were both due to relocation, and we are pleased to say that the commission has committed an active participation and is strongly committed to human rights for all. Here we provide a comparison of the commission's age, range, race, and ethnicity, along with city population data. Since these demographic mergers overlap with the data we collect from commissioners and allow for a direct comparison. The commission also reflects a broad range of lived experiences, professional backgrounds and perspectives. Current commissioners represent four of the five council districts and include veterans, LGBTQIA2S plus perspectives, unhoused lived experience, educators, behavioral health professionals, social justice and DEI policy advocates, nonprofit and community leaders, union organizers, neighborhood council members anti-hate and anti-discrimination advocates and dedicated volunteers this breath of representation helps ensure the commission brings diverse perspectives to its work addressing discrimination advancing equity and serving the community this graph displays the volunteer hours report which demonstrates the shift from five commissioners at the end of third quarter of 2025 to 13 commissioners in the end of 2025 the january retreat and the three New commissioners that joined in the first quarter of 2026 contributed to the high volume of volunteer hours during that quarter. We had one commissioner depart in April and one last month, but have experienced wonderful engagement. We often have more than half of our attendees joining our monthly meetings in person. Our 25-26 accomplishments were largely based on re-establishing committees and commission priorities. We focused on education by bringing the key city and community programs that are in line with our strategic priorities. We brought in representatives for Tacoma Police Department, the neighborhood and community service, homeless strategy and heal teams, and the Tacoma Fire Department HOPE team. The commission engaged with community programs as well, including the Community Trauma Response Team, or CTRT, and the Youth Action Board. We participated in an opioid settlement focus group to advise on the use of funding and attended neighborhood and council meetings. providing education to the commission on how to engage, access and engage with meetings and to learn from current issues. I will now hand the rest of the presentation back to Danielle to wrap things up.

So the commission in 2026 started having regular work reviews in their study sessions to ensure that they were working in alignment with their priorities. They also work to delegate action items to commission committees when appropriate, and updated the work plan priorities as follows. So the first priority was to increase presence in Tacoma and community member awareness of policies, services, resources, and resources throughout Tacoma. The second priority was to ensure voices are heard, incorporated and properly represented in programming, access and services. The third was to increase civic engagement with city and institutional resources. And the fourth was to advocate and amplify community voices to support restoration of trust, repair, and dignity within the community. Thank you for the opportunity to present today, and we are available to answer any questions.

Thank you all. And go ahead and start on that. I'm the chair on that.

Just trying to make it easy for you. Thank you so much to Virta. I want to thank you and staff for all your great work on the Human Rights Commission. And it's nice to see what your priorities are. What are things that you'd like to see that you get done next year? I know this has been sort of a struggle because it's sort of like rebuilding and getting new members. And Virta, you've just been that continuous... like person moving forward and you just always have a smile on your face and you're so welcoming. And so I just want to know, what do you think are some things that you'd like to work on next year?

Well, the thing that we want to work on is continuing to get the community informed because as we realize there are so many things, a lot of the answers are out there for questions people have, but people don't know the answers are out there. So we want to work more with the communities. to have them understand what the city is all about and how they can go online and find it for themselves and also encourage them to attend meetings in person or online.

What can we do as a council to support you?

I think one of the things that the way the council can support us is When people bring up things, even if it's not something that you can answer right away or you know that it can't go the way they want it, be able to at least acknowledge it and find out what can be done and how they can better present it the next time so that maybe it can go through.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you for the presentation. Nice to meet you. I am curious, could you give kind of, I guess, a couple examples of, actually, like, I don't know if you call them cases or that folks might come to you or issues that folks might come to you that they would like some help with?

One of the things that I think about is one of the things we're trying to work through is forgetting that previously when the Human Rights Commission was organized, the city had people on staff that could go out and investigate if something that was reported, a person felt like they had been discriminated against. The city no longer has an investigator. However, people still have rights and there are other areas where they could get some questions. And for our September meeting, we will have the state human rights person there to tell us how to go through those things. So I think that's the main thing, because for people who, years and years, they know, OK, let's sue somebody or whatever. But the whole thing is your rights are there, and there are ways to go about finding out. And if this doesn't get answered here, what is the next step? to go to get an answer and so that you don't feel like you've just been, well, we don't do that anymore. And that's the end of it. And like I said, I think there are so many people who there are a lot of the rights and things that they have actually having an understanding, not just something somebody told you, but okay, you've got an issue. Okay, this is where you go. to make sure you've got an issue. And here are the steps you need to go through. And I think when that happens, people are less angry. But when you feel like you are ignored, then you get angry. You tell your friends. They get angry. And a whole lot of angry people. And once you find out the truth, it's like, wow, that's a little bit embarrassing. Because if I had known what I needed to do next, I wouldn't have gotten so many other people upset.

Makes sense. Do we feel like there's any holes in the areas that we are able to send people to? Do we have enough partners or partners in the right areas to refer people to?

That's part of what we're working on now is that as a commission, we get all the steps. Then we will go into the community. And that's one of the things that we're informing and urging more people to at least listen to the meetings. We're looking forward to where we will have some public sessions where people can come also in working with the youth because the things that are in the city and by the time they finish high school, they're going to be the ones that are the paying citizens and having to do with those things. So we'll be working with them more so that also On an early level, they can become more engaged in what the city does and why it does it, how it does it.

They prioritize advocacy for youth and understanding their rights. And then, like you said, that's been a big focus for their groups. They have a lot of folks in the commission right now that work with youth. And they want to provide some more education and engagement of young folks in human rights so they know their rights and they know the steps that they can take to get support if they need it.

And one of the other things also is we've been urged, and they are starting to do it, to go to the neighborhood council meetings. Not necessarily, I mean, your own or someone else's, because as you get exposed to the various parts of the city and what they do, and why they do it, and how they do it, and who lives what place, and how they feel that they are either being... Ignored or this one. So the more we are educated, then the more that we can help people. And also, like I say, I'm very much one for pointing to people. Okay, here's where you can go and find out for yourself. That's not enough information. You can go to another place and here's some more information. Go and talk with someone else. Let's have the real facts and not just like the telephone game that I don't know if any of you played it. But the telephone game, when I was a youngster, we used to play the telephone game. And there were people who played it who would deliberately switch what they were going to tell the next person.

Thank you for that. Thank you. And again, just that I, this is another commission, I mean, all of our CDCs in general, but I think, you know, human services, human rights commission, it's like, it's one of those spots where having that lived experience, having people who come from, um, you know, neighborhoods or communities or identity that have been marginalized in some way, or, um, are at the highest risk of having their rights made unavailable to them through various means. Um, I think it's just, I think it's just really helpful to have that lived experience, that background that you can bring to the work that you do. And I think it just adds to the compassion and the empathy that you all are able to bring as you're working through these things. Um, I have this similar question as Therarumba with just how do we all support you, especially in that, um, increased like helping to increase that engagement. So I think that y'all are doing some great work on that. And yeah, I think obviously like just being able to respond to folks and even if we're, even if the answer is we can't do that or we don't do that and here's some resources that you can check out. I think that's always going to be helpful because, you know, not getting a response is just kind of adds to that, that, that trauma that, you know, frustration of, of having something where, you know, most people don't want to have to, go through the process of being like, hey, I have rights that are being violated. I'd like that to stop. And so at any point where we can be kind of a little bit more receptive and helpful in encouraging them in that, you know, journey of navigating that, I think it's helpful. So I appreciate that feedback.

Yeah, thank you very much. Over the course of the year, we will be extending invitations to the individual council members, because we want to be able to sit down and hear from you and have you hear from us. And so that we know each other by sight. And some of the ones, when we go into the community, we might be inviting you to go with us. So the council districts, especially, you represent them so that your constituents know who you are.

Appreciate that. And then my other question I think is probably for staff, how often does like MCO share out? Do they put an update up every month of like, Hey, this, the commission meeting is coming up. Here's the time. Here's how you attend. And this is virtual link. Does that happen on a monthly basis or like when the meeting is pending or is there a more frequent link?

I think it just happens in advance of each meeting. Yeah. So it would be monthly or for some, you know, twice a month, maybe twice a month. Yes. I see. It was pretty great about that.

I think those were my questions. Yeah. Thank you all. Appreciate you. Thank you for the work that you all do. We appreciate it. All right. Our third and last briefing item is. the Commission on Immigrant and Refugee Affairs annual report, and I would like to call on Kim Bachrach from Neighborhood and Community Services, as well as Yulia Dzidzic from the Commission on Immigrant and Refugee Affairs. Welcome.

Thank you, and good evening to Chair Rumba and members of the committee. Again, my name is Kim Bachrach. I use her pronouns. I am a community resource analyst senior with the Neighborhood and Community Services Department. I am joined this evening by... of my Vice Chair Julia Didkiffe, who is the Vice Chair of the Commission on Immigrant and Refugee Affairs. Vice Chair Julia, would you please share a little bit about yourself? Thank you, Kim.

And good evening, Chair and all committee members, everyone present here. As a public health professional, a Tacoma resident, and also a refugee myself, I've a personal connection to the work we do through CIRA. I understand both personally and professionally how important it is to welcome refugees and immigrants in Tacoma, how important it is to provide them with all the services we have and make them feel welcomed, included, and accept it, which is also really important. I'm honored to serve as vice chair and support CIRA's mission and support diverse communities here in Tacoma. And now I give the floor back to Kim. Thank you very much.

The Commission on Immigrant and Refugee Affairs was created by the Tacoma City Council in 2017 to better engage Tacoma's immigrant and refugee committees and to work with community partners and staff to identify and advance positive outcomes for immigrant and refugee communities in Tacoma. The resolution identifies improving access and participation in economic, cultural, and civic life. It also has an array of areas for the commission to focus on during its engagement with community partners and the city. This focus is on improving outcomes for immigrant and refugee communities related to employment, public health, student achievement, citizenship, public safety, criminal justice, civic engagement, language access, and protection of civil rights. Resolution 39892 includes duties such as studying problems and issues that impact the immigrant and refugee communities in Tacoma and providing written recommendations specific to the purpose, which I stated earlier, of furthering immigrant and refugee access to and participation in Tacoma's economic, cultural, and civic life. In June 2024, due to temporary reassignment of some of the work of the Office of Equity and Human Rights, the Commission on Immigrant and Refugee Affairs moved to the neighborhood community services where it has been ever since. This slide shows our current roster. I want to acknowledge the three new commissioners who have joined the commission this spring. Commissioners Padumba, Tracy, and Sanago. I want to thank them for joining the commission and look forward to continuing to bring them into the work. There are currently two vacant member seats and a vacant emerging leader seat. This slide reflects the commission's demographic. 80% of commissioners identify as persons of colour compared to 39% of Tacoma population. Additionally, the distribution of membership across the City Council districts is shared. It is of note that Commission on Immigrant and Refugee Affairs does allow for membership of people who live outside city limits, but are involved in the city and other capacities. Every City Council district is represented by at least one commissioner. Many commissioners bring their perspectives as immigrants, children of immigrants, and partners of immigrants. At least eight different languages are spoken by commissioners. This next slide shares the volunteer hours that Commissioners have exceeded this year within the last year. I'll pass it on to our Vice Chair.

Thank you. Now we'll move into presenting what the Commission has been working on this year. Some of the Commission's key accomplishments for 2025-2026 include Strengthen collaboration among elected officials, city departments and commissions to advance coordinated responses to immigrants and refugee issues, including the Northwest ICE Processing Center crime response, law enforcement interactions, and access to legal advocacy and support services. than centralized immigrant and refugee resources by developing CIRA materials that were incorporated into the city immigrant and refugee resource website, improving access to information for community members. Increase public awareness and community engagement by supporting Welcoming Week with partnership with Tacoma Community House contributing to City Council proclamation and producing the International Migrant Day video proclamation with Mayor Udart. Next, we also established and supported three active zero communities governance, community safety and housing. They provide focused collaboration and advance priorities affecting immigrants and refugees in Tacoma. At the beginning of 2026, the Commission established its work plan and continues to implement its priorities throughout the year. The Commission's work is guided by four key goals. You can see them. to equip their commission and promote successful city requests and recommendations, to support community service committee and direct community impact, to promote immigrant community access of city resources, encourage and advise on the development and implementation of policies, services and programs to meet the needs of immigrants and refugees in Tacoma and ensure that voices are heard, incorporated and represented here. The purpose of our work includes the following areas, outreach and engagement. We provide listening sessions with different sectors of community to understand needs and inform future tasks and projects. language access. Working to increase and ensure translation and interpretation services to engage with city and both city and community services. Increasing awareness and or access to resources from know your rights to an array of social services. Advise the city council, city manager, departments and staff on reducing barriers that refugees and immigrants are facing with the purpose of the Commission. We are excited to work on our 2027 work plan at our Commission retreat in September, where we will establish our priorities, goals and key initiatives for the year ahead.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to share what the Commission on Immigrant and Refugee Affairs has been doing and is planning to work on. We're now available for any questions.

Thank you both. Chair Rumba, did you want to start?

If that's okay. And I want to thank you again. And I want to thank Sarah for being here and all. I want to say that you are doing so much stuff. It's like overwhelming to hear because it's, it's words, but it's, it means so much. And especially at this time and what the crisis is in our city for people to who are from different places, who live here, who did not look like me. I just want to say this is, it's very trauma informed, like to listen and to know what you're dealing with. and how people show up and it's tragic that we have to have a commission like this that has to work so hard. And I just really wanna say that we on the council really support the work you do and believe strongly. I would say that there are things that you want that we can't necessarily always do. And it's, that's hard. I just want to say, we know that you want more support. We'd like to be able to do everything you want us to do. It's not that we don't care, but I feel like I need to say that because it's sort of the elephant in the room, some of the asks that we've gotten and we do care. I just want you to know that we do care. So thank you.

Thank you, Sharon, for sharing that. That's important to know. And behind every story, every situation, there are people with real life, real issues and desperation.

Thank you.

Yeah, thanks for the presentation. I guess I was curious, the same same question I was asking the last commission, like maybe an example. I think Council Member Rombo is maybe more familiar with kind of the ins and outs of the work that you guys are doing right now. If there's something that kind of stuck out over the past year that you guys have been working on.

Let's see, I'm fairly new to staff recognition, but I can just last. week was a commission meeting and the commission passed proclamations that they're going to be recommending or have recommended to council. So an example of one thing that they worked on for a while, drafted, edited, and made recommendations. We have an active safety committee that meets monthly and discusses kind of how they can be involved in safety for the immigrant refugee community within Tacoma and where they can make recommendations. They particularly make sure that they're very informed of what's going on and try to meet with agencies or council or attend council meetings to make sure they know what's impacting the community.

We have an active housing committee who are working hard, helping access people to the resources they need. and making sure that we are aware of all the resources. So they're working hard, like connecting to the different organizations just to learn what they have and make sure that we share it with the community here. And we pay a lot of attention to language access because it's an important topic. Well, everything starts with understanding. People need to understand what they do, what they're dealing with. So, and this is about language access plans, and this is our priority for the next year. We are going to discuss. So we want to make sure that all organizations who are dealing with people, they have a language access plan. And also know your rights is not enough. Last time at our meeting, we discussed now, know your rights is not enough. So, because it doesn't protect anyone. And unfortunately now, only those who are president, citizens, only they are protected. Even Green Hub holders are not protected. So we're not talking only about undocumented immigrants and refugees. We are talking about all immigrants and refugees in our community, and we need to protect them. And we need them to know their rights and also to be aware of Plan B. So they need to know the organization they can contact in case something happened. They need to know all the steps they need to do after that. And we are discussing and we're in collaboration with the Community House talking about the best ways to teach families so that they could have this conversation with kids and encourage them to have conversations with kids. So all of these things...

I just, I toured Tacoma Community House this morning and participated in the talk time. And it was really amazing to kind of witness that program and to just see see what bringing folks from like, I spoke to people from Ukraine and from the Congo and you know, they're all together in the same room, helping each other out. It was just like an amazing thing to see. Um, so I know we have amazing programs and you know, it's, it's great that we're paying it, playing a role of connecting folks to those programs.

Absolutely. And I, I just willing to share, uh, Ron example, the family, um, And the actually husband is Belarusian and wife is from Kazakhstan, if I'm not mistaken. He was detained and she stayed at home with a small kid. she did not work and she was absolutely disappointed about what she could do. All the cards, well, she could not pay any bills because everything was on him. She could not do anything. She was like, you know, frozen and she didn't know what to do. And you know, this is about collaboration of different agencies, including CIRA. So it was the Comic Community House, it was us, health departments, and other agencies, RISE, and other agencies who help this family in all the ways. Tacoma Community House, EMIHU, contacted Northwest Immigration Project, and they provided the support and help for free for that individual. They help him now he's free, he's released, he joined his family, And when he was imprisoned, our commissioner, Zapata, is dealing with volunteers who attend the Dungeon Center. And she actually sent one of the volunteers who had a lot of meetings with this individual and supported him in all the ways. He started reading the Bible with her. She brought him some English books to learn English. He was joking. He was joking and laughing with her, though before that he was absolutely stressed and refused to talk to anyone. So this is a small example of huge work we do, but it's not only us. It's about collaboration. It's about support from all the ways. So thank you for supporting us. Thanks for sharing that story.

I saw your hand up, Councillor Walker. Did you want to jump in with any questions or comments?

No, I'm good. I had my question answered, so I will just say thank you so much for all of your work.

Thank you. Yes, thank you all for the work that you do. The question that I had is, What are you, and you answered it a bit, but what are you feeling like in this moment are like the biggest barriers that immigrants and refugees are facing? You don't have to list all of them. Silence crisis. Silence?

Silence crisis. They do not talk about this. They are scared. They are afraid to ask for help. And sometimes it's us finding them and offering them help. Because the problem is they don't know where to go and they do not trust. The trust we have been building for a long time is crashing now because of the situation. And we try to keep it. We try to keep in contact with people. We try to show them that they can trust us. Though we can not promise them anything. And this is the most awful thing. But now, and I say silent crisis because they don't talk about this, they don't want to talk to their kids about this, most of the time they don't want to discuss it, they don't want to get together just to be provided with the information. They're afraid if they can't, something can happen. Now we can see that even the attendance of public events is less than it used to be last year, two years ago. So this is probably the biggest problem now and we need to keep this trust. And when they trust us, we can help.

Thank you for sharing that. And then my other question is, as far as the website that the city maintains, How, like, how do you feel like it's helpful? Do you think that there are things that are missing from that? Is there, you know, things that we can do to just make it a better resource for folks?

It's already good, but it's never enough. So we need to add and our last meeting we actually were discussing about some things to be added there. So it's already good and people find it really useful. Moreover, a lot of organizations use it. Because it's easy to find the necessary information there and They can change the language there, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, they can. I can't imagine their screen and where they can change the language. So they can, there is language access. So, but as I said, it's never enough.

I'm glad you asked that because we do have a good close relationship with media communications office and we're able to kind of keep it as a living webpage. So for example, this morning a request was made by commissioner that, hey, there is not a resource for what folks can do to prepare for their animals in case they were to be detained. And so we were able to get that up today, should be up within the week, approved. So we're able to kind of move on that and edit as needed.

Cool. Thank you. I appreciate that. You know, it's one of those websites that I'm glad that we have. I also, you know, like outside of referring people to it, I'm not... doesn't pertain to me in the same way. So it's hard for me to always understand, like, is this actually the most useful information and what can be there? So I appreciate that you guys are looking into that.

Another problem is everything is changing so quickly. Sometimes it just never stops. So that's why it's sometimes complicated.

Yeah, I appreciate that. And again, I appreciate you pointing out the silence issue and just the crisis there. And I'm not like outside of... people choosing to take that step to trust you know oftentimes it's the first step to building trust is for somebody to just blindly say i'm just i'm just going to trust you like i'm just hopefully i'm going to take that step and i'm going to say i'm going to trust you and then i'm hoping that it works out that i'm trusting the right people um and i'm really appreciative that we have a lot of really um just great folks and again i've said this about each of the the that I presented today, that lived experience is really valuable, invaluable actually. And I'm just glad that we have people who are dedicated to doing the work, to getting out in the community, especially when a lot of these issues are the same issues that you all are facing as you're just trying to navigate life. And so just the bravery you all have in putting yourselves out there and stepping up and inviting people to the table and trying to do your best to make sure that folks have that access and those spaces where they feel supported.

Yeah, I feel the same. I know how they feel. I know what they experience. I know how it is. I try to do my best. Yeah.

I think you're doing a great job. I think you all are. So I, again, we just, we really appreciate that. Yeah. This is a commission that we have and we appreciate that we have really great commissioners who are doing, doing some really good and important work. Thank you.

Yes. Our team is really amazing and they're so devoted to what they do. And yeah, just, I'm so proud and proud of this. Thank you.

Any last comments? Awesome. Well, thank you both for being here and for the work you're doing. Thank you for being here. All right. That was our last briefing item. So we will move on to topics for upcoming meetings. And I would like to call on Director Tony Esparza, Executive Liaison, for topics.

Thank you so much. So at your next meeting on September the 10th, you will have interviews for some Human Services Commission members. In addition, you're going to get a report out from the Chair and Vice Chair of the Community Council of Tacoma on behalf of all the neighborhood councils for their annual reports. Then moving on to the 24th, you will hear a report out from neighborhood and community services staff on the human services funding recommendations for 27-28, which you just heard a little bit about today. And then on October the 8th, you are going to hear from some staff from the Greater Tacoma Community Foundation about an effort they are hosting to collaborate across the region on a resiliency hub in light of changes to broad sweeping administration changes to human services.

Thank you. All right, other items of interest since our last board meeting, or our last meeting, has anyone visited any of our CBCs? And are you willing to provide a quick update? I did go to the last CPAC meeting. It was, right now I'm blanking on the, I had a presentation. I'm forgetting what it was, so I'm getting really, Yeah, police and HEAL. Thank you. I was like, why am I speaking about it? Yeah, so it was from the police and the HEAL team. Lots of questions asked and both, you know, obviously there's always lots of feelings around how we are just, you know, addressing the most vulnerable folks in our community. And so, but I think it was a good discussion and CPAC always has really good questions and is always really engaged in the work that they do. And they have a town hall coming up at the end of September. I should have the date memorized, but I do not. But I'm happy to share that data. And I think, they'll probably be reaching out to just make sure that we all know when that date is as well. But that was what's going on there. Awesome. Are there any other items of interest before we move on to our final motion of meeting? All right. Well, I'm happy with that last motion.

All right. I move to adjourn. Second.

It's been moved and seconded. All those in favor, signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Those opposed? All right, well, the motion is declared adopted and we stand adjourned. Thank you all.