City Council - workshop

Councilmember Diaz? Absent. Councilmember Hines? Here. Councilmember Palmer? Here. Councilmember Rumba? Here. Councilmember Sadalge? Here. Councilmember Scott?

Here.

Councilmember Walker? Here. Mayor Ibsen?

Here. Our primary agenda item today is the Tacoma Sister Cities. I'd like to call on Public Works Principal Business Services Analyst. Congratulations. Congratulations.

Dakota Warren, to begin the presentation. And Rhea Johnson. Yes, thank you, Mayor and Council, for having us this afternoon. So I'm in front of you today in my capacity as the Interim Coordinator for the Neighborhood Council Program. I'm sorry, not the Neighborhood Council Program, the Sister Cities Program. And I'm joined by the Tacoma Sister Cities Council President, Rhea Johnson. So we're here today to... Okay, there we go. Thank you. Just to give you an update on the Sister Cities Program... So over the last couple years, we've had a number of updates to the program as it's transitioned. So I'll go through the history a little bit and give you that update. We're here in front of you today because the last time that the council got a presentation was in early 2025, right before the program transitioned into the mayor's office. So it was the last time you received an annual report. So today I want to be able to just give you an overview of the program and how it's changed and allow the Sister Cities Council here to give just a little bit of an update on some of their activities and programmings that they're having going on right now and give you the opportunity to engage them more in depth as well. A couple things I want to just preface before we jump into the rest of the presentation and the agenda for today is that this is not going to be a comprehensive annual report. So there are a number of activities and events that Sister Cities Council manages over the course of the year. We're not going to cover all of them here. Primarily for my portion of the presentation especially, we'll be focusing much more on the city's role in the Sister Cities program and the work that we've done since the transition to the mayor's office last year. Additionally, those opportunities are open for you. You'll hear from Rhea towards the end of the presentation on opportunities to get involved with sister cities. So please feel free after the presentation to grab Rhea or some of the members of the sister cities councils and committees that are in the audience today to learn a little bit more about the events and programming that they have available or join some of their meetings in the future. So jumping right in, just going to overview kind of the history of where the program has been and where it is now. So the Sister Cities program started under President Eisenhower back in 1956. So the Sister Cities program has been around for a number of years. The Tacoma Sister Cities International just celebrated their 70 years during their annual conference earlier this year. And Tacoma has been involved in Sister Cities from the very beginning. Sylvia Sass had been part of the founder circle that Eisenhower had pulled together and helped to create our first sister city in Kirikishi, Japan, just three years after the program had been created. Shortly after, the sister cities has been a committee under the CBC structure of the city for many, many years from the first initiation of the Japan committee. And this continued much until the early 90s when the committee took on a independent nonprofit status and began to move to a slightly more independent model between the early 90s and 2017. There was a shift over time of the program moving towards that nonprofit model and away from direct city support and city management of it like our other CVCs. And in 2017 through about 2022 or so, the city had dedicated under Mayor Strickland at the time, $250,000 over five years, which COVID extended that five-year timeline a little bit as an intentional way to move the sister cities council from being supported by the city and the city staff to being much more independent and setting themselves up for being able to go for other competitive funding sources and more long-term sustainability that didn't require strong city staffing. And then, as I mentioned, the most recent change to the program that we're kind of updating you on today is in February of 2025. after the last biennial budget, we shifted the program. For those of you that have been here for a while, Sister Cities was managed under Community Economic Development for many years. Debbie Bingham had managed the program for well over 10 years and had done a really good job in that work, but the Sister Cities program takes up quite a bit of time A lot of that coordination and the international relationships and kind of the unique nature of how many different organizations and partners you work with to make the cultural exchanges and hosting of delegations successful required a lot more coordination than economic development was prepared to kind of take on at the time. And it didn't quite align with their strategic mission of what the city was trying to set out for economic development at the time. So we worked with them to move the program into the mayor's office at the time. So mayor's office, of course, we do a lot of that international work already. We work with a lot of federal state partners, and we work with a lot of community organizations already in the mayor's office that allow for those better partnerships and connections that can help to sustain the program and create opportunities for new events, new partnerships, and good experiences for when we're sending delegations out and abroad and when we're hosting them here in Tacoma as well. So a handful of our international relationships, just to give you a sense. So the sister cities program is broken into primarily sister cities and friendship cities. And here in Tacoma, we also have a level of friendship called provisional friendship cities. Sister cities, of course, is the highest level of formal relationship. These go to the city council for adoption after they've gone through a significant process, both with the sister cities council and through the administrative process of the city, and is that highest level of investment of our commitment to partnership and exchange with those communities. Typically, the practice has been over the program that we only have one sister city in each country, and then we have a number of friendship cities that might support that as well. Friendship cities are that lesser step, typically either because there's already a sister city in that country or it's meant as kind of a temporary step to explore a relationship to see if a sister city friendship can materialize from that. Most recently, at the end of last year, the council approved the Kochi India relationship as a friendship agreement. These agreements are typically timed to about five years just to allow for some focused development during that five years of the friendship agreement. to build the relationship and explore possible exchanges and programs to see if it is a relationship that will continue on. And towards the end of that five years, the relationship will either automatically sunset, council could choose to extend the friendship relationship status, or if enough of the relationship has been built out and the city is prepared to move forward with that relationship, working with the Tacoma Sister Cities Council, then the resolution would come to council to create a sister city in that community. The provisional friendship cities are more so just a way that we've used in recent couple years here to track the program. There are some relationships that the Tacoma Sister Cities Council has begun to manage or build out the relationships. A couple of recent ones include Mannheim, Germany, and Tula, Colombia that haven't hit the city council yet and have not gone through the administrative process but have been supported by the Sister Cities Council. There's also some on the city side where past mayors have established MOU relationships with city as an initial step to start building towards a friendship city or friendly relationship. But those have not come to the city council for full adoption, so they haven't become friendship or sister cities. And they may not have worked with the Tacoma Sister Cities Council. So both sides of that relationship for both the city and the Sister Cities Council have the opportunity to create those provisional relationships. So here is just a list of all three of those categories or relationships that the city maintains currently. As you can see, we have a number of sister city relationships, with most recently Garden Root being adopted March of this year. This was actually an expansion of a relationship from the George municipality that was originally adopted in 1997 by council. And through the work of Melanie Cunningham, who's in the audience with us here today, did a lot of work to expand that relationship from being one city in George to the entire Garden Route municipality, which would be more akin to our larger county in a multitude of cities. And so has done a lot of work in expanding our relationships as a city and the Tacoma Cities Council with the African continent in that area around George. I'll also note, just as you see them up there, a number of the Friendship Cities and Sister Cities, while we maintain the records for these, not all of them are active. And the activity level is different based on the city and the Tacoma Sister Cities Council's level of engagement. I'll give one example. The committee is very active for the Cinefuegos Cuba committee, but the city does not do any government-to-government relationship work with Cuba. So we maintain the records and we maintain the Sister City relationship with Cuba, but But the city itself doesn't have an active relationship with Cuba. But the committee does a lot of the work with the people of Cuba as well. So a bit of the difference is based on our roles and our responsibilities, which I'll get into a little bit later as well. So as I jump into some of these, this is going to be talking a little bit about the types of work that the Sister Cities program does and some of the work that the city looks at when we're looking at these relationships. I'll preface that these are just looking at some of those high-level engagements and examples. Again, these are not all of the activities that Tacoma Sister Cities engages in, but primarily are those that the city itself engages in. So these are just examples that we have more insight into because the city is directly involved in these events. On the screen here, one of the main arms of the work that we do through Sister Cities is youth exchanges. So we do a lot of partnerships with Tacoma Public Schools to get student activities together for both hosting folks here in Tacoma and for sending out abroad for travel opportunities. The largest one is our relationship with Fuzhou. So we work with Tacoma Public Schools to send 100 students every summer to travel to China and see both Fuzhou and other communities across China. And there are a number of smaller exchanges that we do more focused on. The students we have here in the top left, you can see Mason Middle School, which has a French class there. And this is them when the mayor of Biatt, France had come to visit us last year. And they visited the school and met with the students where they could practice their French with the mayor and his staff as he was visiting. You can also see we also do a lot of the sports diplomacy is what it's called. These two examples are just the most recent ones in the last year. Earlier this year, Mayor Ibsen traveled to China to see the ping pong diplomacy and the anniversary of that work that started under the Nixon administration. And then in the top right corner, this was last year, I believe it was, Lincoln High School's flag football team had traveled throughout China demonstrate football as a way of creating relationships and cultural exchange. And they did very well throughout their performances there in China as well, beating both co-ed teams and collegiate teams above them as well. We also do a lot of the cultural exchanges. So I just mentioned Biat, but the picture of the dome there in the top left, we do a lot of artist exchanges around glass art in particular. Biat is also a heavy glass community. They host annual glass festivals that When we're able to, we're able to send someone to those festivals, both from the artist community and from the city and council. And then last year, we had hosted them here as some of their artists and residents helped perform with our artists here locally at the Museum of Glass. We also have a number of visits and delegations that we host. We have recently started hearing a lot more from various museums that want to do museum exchanges with both the State History Museum here in Tacoma and some of the other ones along the Art Museum and the Museum of Glass. So looking at how we share, how we present our cultural artifacts here in the community and our artistic community. as well as learning from these other cities across the world and how they demonstrate their people's history and culture, and learning from each other and finding opportunities to exchange some of those pieces. And then, of course, top right is just showing off the Fuzhou Ting, which is one, I would say, the largest of our physical assets that usually people are aware of. through the Sister Cities program. There are a number of others, including the pagoda in the garden at Point Defiance, and there's smaller ones like the Korean Memorial along Ruston Way as well. And there's a number of other artifacts that you can find across the community from the Sister Cities program, but those are just a few of the larger ones. And then, of course, economic development. So as I mentioned, the program did transition from the economic development department, not because the sister cities program is no longer doing economic development, but because it wasn't the core focus. As I mentioned, the youth exchanges and the cultural exchanges really took point on what Tacoma was doing really well and really focusing on. So that was part of the realignment and the focus. But economic development still connects with us regularly when there are communities that want to invest in products, if they want to look at port-to-port shipping, direct shipping lanes, warehousing. So we engage a lot with community and economic development, the World Trade Center, Economic Development Board, and other partners as we find those opportunities to create those trade routes or those opportunities to trade products. We also have a number of knowledge exchanges with a number of communities. Most recently, we connected with Taichung, Taiwan, with a number of exchanges around our planning and development services and public works on how we develop and plan for cities and shared with them on how we do those things well and how we manage our projects. And they shared a little bit with us on how they prioritize their projects and what projects were important to them when they're planning out their communities. So those types of knowledge exchanges to learn best practices internationally is another space of kind of the economic development space that we use to learn and grow our activities. And then here is just kind of outlining, as I mentioned, over the last number of years, the Tacoma Citizens Council as a whole has transitioned more into its independent role as a nonprofit and taken much more leadership of its own activities. And so the responsibilities of the city have changed. We're no longer a direct staff member to the Tacoma Citizens Council. We don't manage their minutes, their records, their taxes, anything like that. And we are much more of a liaison that is present when requested to be able to share information from the city, hear information from the members, and make sure the city council is aware of opportunities to engage. So primarily, a lot of that is on hosting delegations. So the city, of course, we may invite delegations to visit city hall, tour the chambers, meet with departments. A number of you have participated in some of those hosted delegations in the past. Of course, when council members are traveling to visit our sister cities, we manage the travel arrangements for that and the delegation agendas and itineraries. And we also help to manage some of those relationships. So since we at the city manage the process, we help walk people through the process of going to the sister cities council and to the city council for approval of their relationships and questions they might have as they're building out new relationships and new friendship city relationships. So we do a lot of that coordination on what is the process and how to navigate it. And we also maintain the government-to-government communication. So I, as a coordinator right now, have a list of all of my counterparts in all of our sister cities. So maintain regular email communications and letters when appropriate for celebrating holidays. When we have new mayors in our sister cities, we'll work with the mayor's office to create a new letter to just congratulate them and reintroduce themselves. For example, when Mayor Ibsen joined office this year, we sent out letters to all of our sister cities introducing him as the new mayor of the office so that Our sister cities were aware that we had a new mayor that they could reach out to in this office. We also manage the sister cities international membership. So that's just the formal relationship for Tacoma as a city to be connected to sister cities international. So we maintain the membership logistics and then coordinate with Tacoma City Council on attendance at events or other needs, voting, et cetera. And then, as I mentioned already, we attend the sister city council meetings as requested. So that's just kind of a high-level overview of the city's responsibilities as liaison and what we traditionally manage in the process and delegation work overall. And then I'll pass it a little bit more to Rhea here to talk a bit more about the Tacoma Sister Cities Council in a moment. But as you can see on the board, the sister city council primarily is looking at, they work with us on the leading delegations, they travel with the council when attending sister cities sometime. They do a lot of their own work with the committees. So the Tacoma Sister Cities Council is the kind of overarching body that helps to support each of the committees. Each of the sister cities and friendship cities has a committee that does their work, fund raises, plans activities. So the council helps to maintain those relationships with the committees and coordinate what they need for support. And then they do a lot of the work with kind of people on the ground. As I mentioned, the Cuba example, they maintain their own communications portals. They maintain their own projects and relationships for people-to-people exchanges. And then they also encourage a lot of that community engagement and engagement in their events throughout the year. And like today, they will attend study sessions as requested so that they can help to update the city council when they want. and be able to share the number of events and activities that you have opportunities to engage in over the year as well. So with that, I'll hand it over to Tacoma Sister Cities Council President Rhea Johnson to go through the rest of the slides here.

Thank you, Bakoda. Thank you, Mayor, Council. It's a pleasure to be here. As you can see, I'll just go briefly over it. There's some current initiatives that you'll see here. Increased membership by 50%. I think it's really important to continue engaging the community and having people involved in the mission and vision of Tacoma Sister Cities. Of course, increased funding by 50%. You know, just... additional opportunities to bring support and structure to the organization and increase newsletter sign-up by 50%. I would love to talk about how in the beginning of the year we had 400 newsletter sign-ups and between now and then we have 800. So we've already met that benchmark and hopefully by the end of the year we could reach 1,000. So definitely encourage reading that newsletter, signing up for that newsletter. And forwarding it to your network so that they could see the mission and vision of Tacoma sister cities There is potentially a u.s. China student summit that's on the itinerary and supporting Tallulah Columbia and Daegu South Korea in terms of their friendship city status of course focusing on sports diplomacy Tacoma trade A Dragon Boat MOU has been brought up and really focusing on establishing and encouraging our active committees and inactive committees to see where we are relationship-wise and encouraging that conversation. You'll see our financial report. We're not millionaires, but we are working on it. And we definitely are very appreciative of all the support that have come from the city of Tacoma and its residents. We're very grateful for the funding, even through Tacoma Creates, which we were recently awarded, I believe, $54,000 to help continue our cultural programming and supporting some of these projects that you guys see. Current committee initiatives really is the focus of Tacoma Sister Cities is people-to-people diplomacy. How are we interacting amongst ourselves and each other? One great example of this is through our partnerships of Tacoma Sister Cities, we're able to partner with organizations like Asian Pacific Cultural Center, which helped hosted a delegation that came here this summer, and then partners like Chinese Reconciliation Park Foundation that also helped host the delegation and tour the Tacoma waterfront. Partners like New Tacoma Neighborhood Council, you know, we have an effort going on right now to help clean and maintain Thea Parkway, which is also a Tacoma Sister City project. There's a peace pole there. There's also an upcoming event there, September 19th, the International Day of Peace. It's a great park that we want to highlight, and it's at the forefront of Commencement Bay, which is great. as you know, just a beautiful set. One of the greatest experiences I've experienced so far as six months in as the new president of Tacoma Sister Cities is the thorough and beautiful opportunity for Tacoma Sister City International Film Festival. It was really beautiful to see cultures brought through the screen and allow our community to not necessarily travel to a City overseas, but also see a culture within our city Which was really beautiful, and I would love to continue to expand that effort It's a beautiful sight to see and you'll just see that a lot of community came together for that An example of that is we had interns help with the bittersweet production it was basically a showcase of our International Film Festival which allowed students who are in the film industry to produce a short story on us. And it is also a Tacoma Film Festival submission. And we partnered with the Blue Mouse Theater. Little did I know that's one of the oldest theaters. And so it is beautiful that we have those relationships. and a true partner of Tacoma Sister Cities. And then of course, Grand Cinema, we held a special screening of a film that was not necessarily set to be released here, but through our advocacy, we had the opportunity to partner with Grand Cinema and show a highly proclaimed movie at the Grand Cinema, which is also another partner for our International Film Festival. And these are just some of the examples. Again, it's not comprehensive. We plan to do another annual report that goes into sister cities a little bit more thoroughly, but this is just a brief overview. One of the other highlights is the Tacoma Sister Cities Library Series. That's pretty cool because each committee has an opportunity to talk specifically about their country, their country's history, their committee's history, which is pretty fabulous. and share their artwork. In front of you, you have a new brochure. Please excuse the typos. I mean, this is ongoing, and I'll take responsibility for all of it. But we have a new brochure. We would love for you to have a few copies as you may or may come across your community. It is a great opportunity to help spread the word and to support sister cities. And we could get more brochures to you. Another cool activity that I'm actually a big fan of is really the Tacoma Public School partnership with Fawcett Elementary. That is a big Tacoma sister cities It is a sister city school. And so to go in there to talk about sister cities with the students and they know they're sister cities and they ask questions and they're excited about traveling the world really is phenomenal to see in itself. And so we do encourage there will be opportunities, I believe, Wednesday. And I believe Helen or Francis could correct me on that. But there'll be an opportunity for you guys to come with me or to go on your own and see some of the kids and hear stories. their own view and inspire them with your talks of your delegation experience and why sister cities matters overall and why does people to people diplomacy start at home and start within ourselves. Just a brief note, I won't read it all, but we are committed to strengthening the organization, improving transparency and governance, supporting our team and positioning us to continued success for the years ahead. We are optimistic about the future and we are grateful for your partnership as we begin the next chapter together. Ways to be involved. Well, first and foremost, we meet on the fourth Wednesday at 5 o'clock, hybrid model. So you could join via Zoom, or you could join us at APCC. There's different community events that you go to. Of course, you could support, you could participate, you could encourage. And then, really, one of our asks, well, two asks for me that I have are on behalf of Tacoma Sister Cities I would like to ask is not only share, support, and promote Tacoma Sister Cities, but we're looking for an opportunity for council members to be liaisons with the committees, also become a member. Those member dollars help us strengthen the organization and the mission as a whole on in ways that grant dollars do not and so i you know want to encourage people becoming a member it allows you to have a newsletter access to the newsletter that will keep you updated where again we went from 400 to 800 and we want to encourage um any article submissions if you have something that you want to say on behalf of your vision and mission of tacoma sister cities and why it's an again i cannot stress enough How diplomacy starts with us, right? And so volunteering to be a liaison, I feel, is one way to help increase that transparency and governance within and to increase our collaboration between the city of Tacoma and Tacoma's sister cities. And so we'll put the list on the floor. Just take a list, look at your notes. If there's some of interest, I would love and be honored to connect you with those committees, see how we could help strengthen the next chapter moving forward on our sister city relationships, again, within ourselves and the global community. I appreciate your time. Thank you, and available for any questions.

Thank you so much, Rhea Bukota. Any council questions or comments? Council Member Rumbaugh.

Thank you so much, Rhea and Dakota, for coming and talking about our sister cities. My question for you is basically, I'm a member of Rotary 8, and I'm just curious how you intersect with the Rotaries. Because one of the things, we have an international service committee, and it feels like there should be some connection. And we also have grants that we give out, and I would love to see sister cities program it's a 501c3 right just be able to apply for funding to do something that might be instrumental in one of these cities that you're doing so i just i'd love to talk with you about our rotary and see how this program could be be more involved with our rotary it would be an honor and a privilege to do so okay thank you thank you councilman walker

Thank you so much for your leadership on this. Dakota, thank you for shepherding it through multiple different places of the city. I just think this work is underappreciated and so, so important, and I appreciate what you said about diplomacy starting here in Tacoma and with each of us. I think sometimes people look at this and think it's just maybe a reason to travel, but there's so much more. I mean, that's important, too, for us to see other cities, but it's so much deeper. And I appreciate how many layers. I appreciate you mentioning the education component. Each one of the sister cities that I know of, and I know I don't know everything about all of them, has these sort of unique things with the glass blowing and the connections with the different schools and different economic developments. So just really appreciate you highlighting those. And thank you Makota you talked about the history of sort of that the grant that got us to this point And then thank you for sharing the the financial report It seems like we're in pretty decent shape to kind of keep keep the program going with the current operating costs is it your Estimation that that will kind of continue or is there a need for additional funding additional asks? How can we help with that?

Well don't mind if I do I appreciate you bringing that question You know it's always a good opportunity to consider. How can we? Put financial support behind an organization with its mission as valuable as it is And so I think that is something for the council to consider I think that's something for the council to consider, and if I could provide any additional information or we could brainstorm that together, it would be, again, an honor and privilege to do so.

And does Sister Cities do a fundraising event that we can help promote? I mean, you do all these awareness events that are so awesome, but is there a specific ask of the community? I feel like this is something that people want to support, too.

Yeah, you know, Council Member Walker, I think my first ask, of course, is just going to be membership, really. And I hate... to just lowball that in terms of fundraising. But engagement for me is worth every dollar of every time that we spend. We will be planning some type of fundraising specific event in 2027, but as the new president, it wasn't my first priority. But I definitely am open to the conversation, all things financial. I think, again, as we... begin to be more transparent, as we begin to start to brainstorm how we could be financially responsible, I think those will help us shape on what the upcoming year looks like.

Awesome. Well, thank you, and I will get the word out, and I appreciate getting the early, getting this on the calendar soon. I did just become a member as we were sitting here, so I'm very excited to just stay involved and both in my council role and just as a member of the city, resident of the city of Tacoma. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Palmer.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for the presentation. I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact that this is not like a normal committee, and so there's different aspects of it. Like membership, could you talk a little bit more? Because normally our committees are, we appoint a board, but there's no members. So could you talk a little bit more about what membership is?

I can. Thank you, Council Member Palmer. You know, so I apologize if I'm not too thorough, but it is a 501c3, and we operate through memberships, volunteers, sweat equity, donations, grants, and things of that nature. And so members are anybody who choose to be. You know, there's no financial barrier, so if you want to be a member or receive the newsletter, they are free. You're able to attend. Meetings are public. and then each particular committee manages their own members. There is members per committee, and then there's members at large for the whole organization, and that's kind of what I could speak to, per se, in your question. There is an option to be a member for $25, and then again, the different tiers, just like any membership tier, you could be a member as just a member, you could be a member as a corporate sponsor, you could be a giving member,

or sustainability member any option any rate that you want to be a member is really a choice of yours we don't really want to have any barriers when it comes to being an active member i hope that answers your question super helpful and then i guess that leads to my other question about the this so there's sister city committees for each of these the sister cities um and then how does that kind of interact with the the meetings on the fourth wednesday do different committees come and like say what they're working on or how does that work?

Yes, yes, actually a little bit of both. So I guess the word is autonomous when it comes to committees. The committee itself meets, they may meet on a Tuesday or they may meet on a Friday or however that may be. We're working on creating an opportunity where it's more public for people, new people to go and check out different country committees. But the sister city general council meeting on the fourth Wednesday of the month is, it is open generally to the public. Any committee member could go, but the expectation our chairs are there. And then it is an opportunity for the committees to talk about an event that they may be having, or ask for any support, or just do an overall report. But that's essentially one of the expectations in our bylaws for the committee to be remaining active is to either participate in this general meeting per month or in one of the other annual meetings that we may have. But that's kind of in the details. Awesome. Thank you so much. My pleasure. Thank you, counsel.

Thank you. Council Member Sidelga. Thank you.

Hi, Rhea.

Hi, Bakoda. I also want to recognize, because this doesn't always happen at study session, we have a number of people here who are volunteers, board members, active participant, people who keep these, you know, the sister city program going. And I want to appreciate them for being here and showing support and doing all the work that you do. Because, you know, at this point, it is largely a volunteer-driven organization, am I not? Correct?

Correct.

Okay. So I want to appreciate all that work because we as a city seems to have had a generational intentional agreement to have relationships with other cities. And I also want to, you know, point out that, you know, in a world in which we have divisions and stripes usually between sovereign governments, right, where we may or may not like immigrants, where we may or may not have apparently even a diplomatic openness, because we even have a sister city in Cuba, as I look at these 12 countries, four continents. It's important to remember that we had an intentional desire to connect people with other people, right? throughout the world are humans. And when we get together, we tend to agree on a lot more things than we don't. And those that are being governed don't fall into the stereotypes that we will use for the government that we maybe for that moment disagree with. And that happens. And that's why this is important, right? I've seen that firsthand in being able to go on some travel. And it is, you know, I also find it deeply frustrating sitting over here understanding that we've gotten to a world in which it has to be a largely voluntary-driven organization today on the heels of the Great Recession, really, that forced us to pull back funding and having And let's face it, a budget that municipalities can't keep up with, just inflation. So I genuinely thank all the volunteers, board members, and everyone here, because I understand how important things like this are for just our society, our city, our neighborhoods, our communities. I also want to thank you for doing so many programs on the Eastside Community Center. It's important that we have access to communities that have been historically marginalized, but communities that represent the international flavors of Tacoma that we value. I did have one suggestion. In many of the conversations I've had throughout the world, environmental policies are massively important. there can potentially be synergies and abilities to think about programs or events around what are we all doing collectively to be better stewards of the environment as a topic point in addition to youth and sports. and whatnot, this has been an absolute number one kind of topic amongst quite a few people, especially with FIFA coming in here. It's something we saw a lot more of, and we need more kind of regular conversations on a people-to-people kind of basis.

That's actually kind of it.

I guess I didn't have a lot of questions. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you. Council Member Hines. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you, Dakota and Rita, for the presentation. I just had two questions. And I don't know if maybe you said this in your presentation. I just missed it. But number one was, do we have criteria for which somebody becomes a sister city with the city of Tacoma? Are we looking for something specific? Did you say that, and I just missed that?

I did not say in this presentation. I just spoke broadly to the process. But yes, we do maintain the criteria in the process. And we've shared that Tacoma Sister Cities Council, and they have that in their materials, as well as when they're working with people that are interested in creating relationships. Generally, we're looking for cities of similar size or have characteristics that are similar to the city. large port city, industrial history, things like that. For us, art, glass is why we have viat. So we look for something that has a characteristic that is shared between the communities, and that's usually the primary thing that leads towards that. There also could be relationship created on interest. So it may be a community that we have nothing particularly in common with, but something that we want to exchange on. The environmental policy could be an example. If we knew there was a city that had a really great economic policy or environmental policy, we could create a relationship with them, particularly on that kind of exchange and research into that space.

I mean, there's millions of cities in the world, right? And so sometimes thinking about how do we partner, especially when we think about our goal of trying to stay to maybe one city per country, how do you make the choice around some of those things? So thank you for answering that question for me. I think my next question would be just, who's next? What other cities are out there that are kicking around? Are you allowed to talk about any of that?

Well, I would love to. Thank you, Council Member Hines. You know, I want you to think about that yourselves as council members, if there's some type of best practice that you've seen or have heard in terms of other cities around the world. But specifically, there's two that I particularly have interest in, and that is Tallulah, Columbia. They are currently, I believe, a provisional sister city. They do have an environmental pillar, which I would love to support. That is potentially a university exchange with water and that scientific aspect of it. And then we have another one upcoming. Mayor, thank you very much for your support for Daegu, South Korea. That would be a provisional... Friendship City, bless you. As we do have Gunsan, which has been a sister city for one of the longest, 1978. And they're fabulous. We appreciate Ms. Oksun. But so Daegu. South Korea is potentially a upcoming one because they also have a focus on sports diplomacy. That is a big effort for Sister Cities International. And so, you know, when it comes to sports, you know, who doesn't love a good, friendly competition and then to be friends and talk strategy afterwards?

Okay. Thank you. I just, as I look through this list, you know, I know there's... just from my own involvement, I know that there's the country of Italy, there's been lots of folks lobbying for us, especially in Italy, which we don't currently have. I just leaned over to Councilor Bushnell about some other, I'll be able to talk about some other places, but it just was, thank you for answering my questions, this is a very, kind of a, one of the more fun things we do around here, and also meaningful, and so... great to hear about what the future holds.

Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. And just as a note with Italy, this is where you come and become a liaison and we support you on creating that potential sister city relationship. And so if they are dear to you, that is another conversation to be had.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor. And thank you so much for the presentation and dittos to all the volunteers and all the organizations that helped make the sister cities work. I think there's so many things beyond just what you had talked about here that really support our community, both arts, culture, economic development. And sometimes that face-to-face and that people-to-people diplomacy is life-changing experiences for both the folks that are receiving individuals, but then those that go visit as well. I've talked to many high school students that have had an opportunity to visit China, for example, And just the life-changing experience that moment had will resonate with them for their entire lives. And so those are really, really great benefits to our community. And it's because of the Sister City program that we're able to really establish those relationships, help make those connections happen. And so it's something that I want to continue to support in every way I can. I'm able to join Council Member Walker and also become a member as well. I know that economic development is a part of this as well. And I have heard of delegations like with the World Trade Center as well as the port to like Vietnam and other regions. What's the kind of relationship with them in trying to help establish potential friendship cities or sister city relations with folks that we're trying to commerce with?

On the government side, so we do do a lot of work, particularly with the Port of Tacoma, because the ports have a similar program for sister ports. So we do a lot of work when they're looking at trade exchange and shipping exchange. And then if you recall from past presentations from the economic development department, we have what we call our international soft landing. So it's something that was developed thinking about our sister cities and giving them kind of a singular space for if they're interested in finding investment in Tacoma or bringing Tacoma products into their communities. That's kind of the singular landing space that connects to all the different organizations for trade on our side so that we can help to navigate them through the process. get them the support that they need to be able to set up shop or bring new products into their countries as well as we look at those exchanges. We also maintain regular communications with those partners as well. So World Trade Center in particular leads a lot of those delegation trips. Or when EDB travels, they may give us that heads up. And then we will look at council availability or staff availability to send either materials or personnel to travel with them to help to set up those exchanges and those economic opportunities for trade as well.

Yeah, thank you for that. I think it's really important because it's like one of those things where, you know, Tacoma is a world-class city. We're an international city. And so it's really important for us to continue to maintain and build those relationships. And we have Tacoma products all over the world now because of exchanges like this, which helps our economic base here in Tacoma. And it supports jobs and things of that nature. I'd love to see more of it, of course. And then I'm curious as to if there is a group of folks that want to potentially establish maybe a friendship city in order to become a sister city. I'm thinking particularly with my Cambodian community because we have a lot of Cambodians here that I'm sure would be interested in potentially being a part of that. What does it look like to help establish a committee or guide folks into potentially trying to establish a friendship city of some sort?

Thank you very much council I would say the first thing first would be just to engage with Tacoma sister cities Maybe show up at a meeting become a member. There's that plug for that again But becoming member and then you know really it's just do you have the desire to? Form to meet regularly to have those conversations for people to people and then do you have a relationship with? that you could help foster and grow with the potential city that you have. There's different ways to get that, but ultimately, there'll be a letter of interest expressed between city to city. There'll be an application process to identify what are your top three things that, is it glass, is it port, is it trade, is it education, youth, diplomacy, sports diplomacy. What are the focus? And then of course it goes through the Tacoma Sister Cities Council. They review it, they approve it, and it gets established. And so that's where that cycle comes. You start off as a provisional, then there's a timeframe. Have you done delegations? What does that relationship look like? Are you guys working together and whatnot? And then once all those bars are cleared, THEN POTENTIALLY BROUGHT TO COUNCIL FOR EITHER FRIENDSHIP OR SISTER CITY APPROVAL. DO YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO ADD?

YEAH, AND FOR THE CITY'S PROCESS, SO ONCE THE APPLICATION HAS KIND OF BEEN BLESSED BY THE SISTER CITY'S COUNCIL, THAT'S WHEN WE RECEIVE IT FOR OUR ADMINISTRATIVE PROCESS. WE'LL CONFIRM THAT THE APPLICATION KIND OF MEETS THE CRITERIA, THAT IT'S A SIMILAR CITY OR A TOPIC OF INTEREST THAT THE CITY CAN BENEFIT FROM, AND THEN MAKING SURE THAT IT IS MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL. SO WE WANT TO MAKE SURE IT'S SOMETHING THAT THE CITY CAN ENGAGE IN, LEARN FROM, AND THAT WE HAVE SOMETHING THAT WE We also make sure that there are volunteers in place as a part of the application. So we want to make sure that it's not a relationship built on a single individual, that if that individual were to leave, the relationship no longer has a connection. And then we also walk them through the process of setting up their application to city council. So very similar materials they'll talk about. why they're setting up the relationship, what they want to focus on, the people that are going to lead that relationship, and what they hope to accomplish in their first few years. And at least currently, what that means is we'll bring it to you as a friendship city request. So you'll see the resolution for establishing a friendship city, and then they'll have that five-year period to continue building that relationship, hosting exchanges, whatever that might look like. And then at the end of the five-year period, depending on how that went, they may become a sister city or continue the friendship status or let it sunset.

Great, thank you. It's a lot, very involved, and a lot for volunteers for sure as well. But you need those relationships and the investment of community to make these things successful. So I appreciate you laying that out.

Yes, and I'll add, at least for the city's role, we're primarily the holders of process. So certainly those who work with the sister cities council or are interested, they can reach out to me as the sister city coordinator, and I walk them through all that information and help to do the heavy lifting of that work, since we don't want to put that all on the volunteers.

Yeah. Absolutely. All right. Thank you so much. And again, thank you to everybody that's involved. Thank you, Deputy Mayor. Council Member Diaz.

Thank you. I think you might have touched on the answer to my question, Bakuda, but I was wondering if there's anyone who coordinates all the sister cities beyond the national organization? Is there a step at the state level? I know the lieutenant governor does a lot of our international work as a state. So is anyone on first in terms of who all already, as far as cities, which cities are sisters with which other cities within Washington state?

At least for the city, we haven't engaged kind of formally in a state-level organization. But as you mentioned, the lieutenant governor does manage a lot of international relationships. We go to some of the consulate meetings throughout the year with the lieutenant governor's office and are aware of them at least. Members attend as well. So we maintain a lot of those relationships with the embassies of our sister city countries. There are also opportunities to engage the governor's office more broadly on the state to state relationships or larger county to county style relationships. For example, a couple of years ago, because of our strong relationships in Ukraine, the state set up their state to state relationship in Ukraine. Ukraine here in Tacoma. And so we had the event here, we hosted it because we had that strong relationship with Brovery already. So we do a lot of work and more in that regard of helping them establish relationships and maintain connections. And then we can lean on the Lieutenant Governor's office for connections to the consulates that we might have trouble reaching out to or need more information or want to coordinate events. Those are opportunities for us to engage. But it's usually more on a kind of email basis or regular cadence of a newsletter. We don't have a formal state position that we reach out to.

That's very cool. I was just double checking just because I know that they do a lot of that work there. So it's really cool to know that the volunteers are working hard to coordinate that work because it's more of the highlighting the important work that y'all are doing. So thank you. And I guess the only other thing I was going to share is I'm looking forward to see what swag it is that I get now as a sustaining member. So just racking up the memberships today.

Hold me accountable, council member. Thank you.

All right, and I'll just conclude by saying I'm deeply appreciative and really want to start by giving credit where credit's due. I mean, it was such a pleasure very recently witnessing the Sister Cities and Friendship Cities program with yourselves, with you, Rhea, and you, Bakoda, and also thank you to Counselor Sedalgi for joining me on a very epic pilgrimage to China. I think it was, what, 11 days from Beijing to the tour day Friendship slash Sister City. And just the sheer relevancy of those people-to-people relationships. And that's really what it comes down to, I think, for the average person when you think about why we even do this, why we have people-to-people diplomacy. Yes, it's about breaking down barriers. Yes, it's about long-term peace. But also, these are very real benefits to actual Tacomans. I mean, from our waterfront to economic development and housing. the fruits of these carefully nurtured relationships actually mean something for our tax base. They mean something for opportunities and markets that Tacoma products are being sold in and so forth. And just kudos to you guys for everything from even the most little bitty detail to higher level, big picture, the attention to detail, the planning was really peerless. My question, just based on that, in that rubric of effectiveness is you've touched on a little bit. You've touched on how we judge what cities do rate, being friendship cities or sister cities, but after the fact, right? I mean, not all of these things are created equal. And frankly, some might have had some relevancy at one point, like when's the last time we engaged with Vladivostok, for example. And clearly, some are super relevant, like our port-to-port relationships with Fuzhou and Shanghai, for example. not simply how do we judge which new ones rate admission, but how do we judge the long-term effectiveness of these things? Like what do we use to determine what success looks like?

I'll say the first kind of measure is just the activity of it. So, I mean, Central City Council will have a more active list of the committees themselves, but for the city, once a city has gone into what we would call emeritus status or an inactive status, we just stop prioritizing in terms of what staff will commit our time to. I just keep using Cuba as the example. For example, I may have a contact in Cuba, but they never respond to me. And we don't do a lot of government-to-government work with them. So it's just something we put on the bottom of the list, and we might send passive letters. But we don't do a lot of coordination from the government side of trying to establish delegations, host delegations, or set up a lot of events focused on that. We leave that to more of the people-to-people relationships that have that connection more already. In terms of looking at the long-term success, I think for the city, we look at what are the outcomes we're getting out of it. I think the physical infrastructure is kind of those first visible things. I mean, the Fuzhou Ting down at the Reconciliation Park, some of the other assets for the Korean Memorial or the Japanese Gardens. There are a lot of the spaces that we can physically see where these relationships have borne fruit. We also can see it in some of the trade and exchanges we've done. We've most recently had started a trade exchange with Asia Pacific Cultural Center in helping import fujo tea and jasmine tea from that region where they're known for it and helping that company to establish more sites here in Tacoma and throughout the Northwest to sell their product. So it's using our sister cities to both bring in products that are beneficial to us and looking at local products to bring them out there. We've worked with the tribe in the past on their chocolate and their other products and seeing how we might be able to get that out there. Fujo in particular likes to say that they have better geoducks than the tribe, and they disagree. So a fun way of exchange around geoducks from both communities, similar products, similar food, but different. very different cultures and ideas. And there are a lot of areas like that that we can see, maybe not the physical infrastructure of what is successful, but we have those stories to share of what are really fun, what have created the relationships, and what has helped to bridge a lot of those gaps between us. With fighting mollusks, go figure.

Very good. Well, this is truly commendable. Really excited for what the future holds, and thank you for your presentation. Thank you.

Thank you for having us.

All right. Moving on, are there any other items of interest to share? Council Member Rumbaugh.

Thank you mayor. I just wanted to give an update a little bit on the unified regional approach some we have councilmember Hitchin and her and someone from the Pierce County Council Team coming to talk about the unified regional approach next study session next week and I just want to say that We have now heard Lakewood just signed on last night. So now we have the city of Fife has signed on to the resolution, the city of Gig Harbor, the city of Pierce County, and the city of Lakewood. And after they come and give a conversation talk and we get to ask some more questions, I would like to bring forward a resolution that we would join their resolution that would then lead to an ILA for the Unified Regional Approach to Homelessness. I'm looking forward to everyone coming with their questions next week. I know that there's a lot of questions, and I really appreciate how thoughtful we have been in talking to Councilmember, Pierce County Councilmember Hitchen. It has been a long time going. We started with a select committee on homelessness, which Councilmember Hines sat with me on when we first started. They allowed us a seat at the table to talk about homelessness, and that was really great, and it has morphed into the Unified Regional Approach. to homelessness. And I thank every one of you for all of your tough questions and your desire to work together with the county and other cities so that the city of Tacoma has more partners when we're talking about how we talk and deal with homelessness as we move forward as a community. Thank you.

Thank you so much. And for all your and Council Member Sedalge's, Council Member Hitchens, and just everyone who's been at the table, it's a pleasure serving with you and can't wait to see that presentation next week. Thank you so much. Any other items? Council Member Palmer.

Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to flag that I'm going to bring forward an amendment to one of the proposed changes in the council rules tonight. And I want to take a moment to kind of preview that. There is a handout there showing the proposed change to move the MFTE. There is a proposed change to move the MFTE projects to the consent agenda. And my amendment is to strike that language. I would like to keep the MFTE program on the regular council agenda Although I do not believe we need a presentation from city staff on each project So that would take a little bit off of their plate I understand that I can move items off the agenda for a vote at any meeting and can do that if needed I just think it might be redundant in order to do so but I believe that we do not have a clear legal answer to council's role of in approving or denying applications. So in my view, the code isn't clear. I think there are vital opportunities to improve the MFTE program so that it better serves the dual purposes of incentivizing development and creating affordable housing. And I am looking forward to being engaged in the next policy discussion on this topic to advocate for those changes, particularly around affordability. In the meantime, I would like the ability to continue to share my disapproval of the program as it currently stands.

Okay, thank you for bringing this forward. Council Member Palmer, any council questions or comments? Deputy Mayor?

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you so much for bringing this forward. I actually have a question, but maybe it's for the city attorney. When it comes to the MFTEs, it's my understanding that when it's going for permitting, It goes in for, they apply for it. And say, for example, if a majority of the council actually disapproved of it, would it still be, would it actually be disapproved? I guess that's my question.

Deputy Mayor, thank you for the question. If I understand your question, I'll try to repeat it. You're asking if the council were to disapprove an application. Mm-hmm. would that result in the tax exemption not being applied to that project? And the answer is that the statute requires that the council's ordinance either provide for administrative approval or council approval. And the statute also requires that if approval is denied, that the approving authority, in this case the city council, because that's how our code is set up, The city council would have to specify the reasons for disapproval, and the reasons would have to be based upon the criteria that are set forth in the municipal code. And so if the council did deny it, the tax exemption would not apply.

Yeah, so with that understanding, because we had set forth the criteria in the code already as it is, We can't add additional conditions to it after the fact.

That would be our interpretation of state law and the code, that the criteria are what drive the decision and the criteria developed based upon what's in state law. And so if the council were to deny the application based on criteria that are not specified in the code, then that decision could be challenged.

Great.

Thank you. Customer Hines. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you, Chris, for clarifying that. And I'll save most of my comments for later, but I think what the city attorney has gotten to underlies a broader point, which is the question that is not being asked is why would the city council have a process or a criteria by which we would be approving things only to then vote no on it? Wouldn't we be better off rewriting the policy in a way that actually got us closer to what we wanted to see? And so while... The impetus behind this idea of the multifamily tax credit, and I'll say this again tonight, but I'll say it right now, which is the votes are not controversial. Because we approve them because we've set the criteria as a council. We've set the policy, and the projects that are coming in meet the criteria of the policy, and we are approving them. What is controversial, I don't think is controversial, but obviously the public does. Some people think it is controversial. is the policy itself. And so I think rather than each time one of these comes up for a vote, not voting for it because it doesn't conform to a certain interpretation of what we want to see the policy is, we should work on changing the policy. Which is, Council Member Palmer and I have talked about this in the past, and it's something I've been engaged on in both 2021 and 2025, to change the policy twice. So I feel more confident with this going on to the consent agenda and being approved. I would just posit that if we were to pull it off the consent agenda and vote on it, what I would ask for my colleagues is I would really love a clear articulation of why you're voting on a specific project and not biasing certain projects over others. So I guess if you were going to vote on every single one, that would be fine. I would worry about us voting no on some and not voting no on others could open us up to a real challenge. And so I would challenge us to come back to, like, what is the criteria by which we are voting no on these? Because I think that is what's really important and what opens up to a challenge if we were just haphazardly or kind of indiscriminately voting no on different ones. So that's the thing. All right, Council Member Palmer.

Yeah, thank you both for those questions and those statements. When I'm looking at this and when I'm doing my personal research into this, I think it is that differentiation between disagreeing with the current policy versus disagreeing with the interpretation of that policy. I think I do have questions around the interpretation of that policy. And so those are the things that I'm still ongoing and looking into. And so it's not necessarily, even though I do see opportunities in the policy, I do still see opportunities to question, I guess, how the interpretation of the policy, the current policy is, and how that's being implemented. And so for that reason, things on the consent agenda, I feel, and I believe it's in our council rules, are there if they're uncontested. And so, I mean, it's contested because I have questions around those things. So that is the reason I would like to move those off.

City Attorney, can I ask a further clarification? So my understanding, hearing your answer to the Deputy Mayor's question, is that when a council, if the council is approving these legislatively versus just administratively, that any disapproval has to be basically made on technical reasons, not political reasons. Like you can't the state law, because the MFTE is ultimately rooted from the Department of Commerce. It's based on state statute. When it allows cities to be the approving authority, any disapproval has to be rooted on whether the project application is true to the local regulations the council had previously set up. Is that correct?

Good question, Mayor. It's a little more complicated than that. So there is, the council has discretion to set up its policies, and it has done that and implemented them through code. The policies create a process whereby a person can apply for a property tax exemption. The argument is, and I would agree with this, that that creates a due process, substantive due process interest, because once you set up that process and an application process with criteria, If you don't follow that process, you're subject to constitutional challenge for being arbitrary and capricious, because you're going outside of what the code requires you to do, and making your decision based on criteria outside of that code. So once you set up that code, whatever policy decisions you make, implemented in the code, and then you must follow that criteria, And it becomes a ministerial decision by the council. It's just like issuing a permit. If you meet the requirements for a permit, the permit must be issued. And if you don't issue the permit, then you've denied due process to that person and denied them their property right.

Yeah, and this reminds me of the comprehensive plan almost. Like the council does have, for example, the power to rezone areas, but you can't just spot zone a single property outside the context of the comprehensive plan, right? That can get the city sued, for example. Would that be a good parallel?

It would be, except that it's not the comprehensive plan. It's the zoning code and the land use regulations that are formally adopted by the council that implement the policies that are imported into the comprehensive plan.

OK, thank you for answering these questions. Any other questions or comments? Council Member Palmer?

Yeah, I just wanted to mention that luckily, I guess I have considered a lot of these questions. And I still have questions. I have questions around actually being administrative versus discretionary. And so these are, again, things that I'm looking into. And I love that I can talk to our staff about it and do my personal research into. But those, to me, are still open questions. I understand that we get advice from our legal team, but I also know that it's also to our discretion at the end to decide what we're going to do with that information. And so just exercising my role as a council member to continue to look into this further and happy to have more discussion around this and show the research that I put in so far if other folks have questions. Okay.

Thank you, Council Member Palmer. Any other items of interest? All right, seeing none, moving on to committee reports. Are there any committee reports to share? Seeing none, moving on to agenda review and the city manager's weekly report. I'd like to call on Deputy City Manager Allison Griffith.

Thank you, Mayor. Mayor and Council, for your awareness, there are no ceremonials on tonight's agenda. There are no modifications on tonight's agenda. There is one opportunity for public comment under regular public comment. If you have any questions, please let us know. And your weekly report was attached to your study session agenda. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Allison. I'll now entertain a motion to convene to a closed session pursuant to RCW 42.30.1. 1, 4, 0, Sections A, excuse me, Sections 4, A, and B, to discuss labor strategy not to exceed 30 minutes. So moved.

Second.

Moved and seconded. All those in favor to convene to a closed session, signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed say nay. Motion is declared adopted. Closed session will begin once study session is adjourned. Is there an adjournment motion?

I move to adjourn. Second.

Moved and seconded. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed say no. We are adjourned.