City Council - workshop

Good afternoon. I'd like to call to order the City Council Study Session of August 11, 2026. Clerk, please call the roll.

Deputy Mayor Bushnell.

Present.

Councilmember Diaz.

Councilmember Diaz.

Here. Councilmember Hines. Here. Councilmember Palmer. Here. Councilmember Rumba. Here. Councilmember Sedalge.

Here.

Councilmember Scott. Here. Councilmember Walker. Here. Mayor Ibsen.

Here, our first agenda item, long awaited, is our update on the Pierce County Unified Regional Approach. I'd like to call on Pierce County Councilmember, excuse me, City Councilmember Rumbaugh to provide opening remarks, and she'll be followed by Pierce County Councilmember Chair, Jenny Hitchen.

First off, thank you so much to my council for us getting to where we are. I know a lot of you care about this issue, and I just want to thank Council Member Hitchen and Pierce County Council policy analyst Mary Conley for joining us today to present on the Pierce County Unified Regional Approach to Homelessness. And I just want to take a second to honor Council Member Hitchen, especially. She's invested a lot of time in this, and she's traveled across this large county is working so diligently to build connections with different government leaders. There's momentum building. about the URA, and that is in thanks to your work. And I just really want to thank you. And also, I just think there's been a lot of people who've been involved with this along the way. The URA started with Pierce County's plan to end homelessness, which I have to give a shout out to Garrett Nyland. I hope he's listening or knows that he's been mentioned. Many leaders at the city had a hand in collaborating with the county. And I want to recognize former council member Catherine Nushka of blessed memory, who served as the chair of CVS when this work started. And also thank you to Council Members Hines, who was one of the original participants on the elected leadership group. Mayor Ibsen and Council Member Sedalge now have joined me in serving on this group. I also appreciate Hyun Kim, our city manager, for meeting with city managers involved in this process, as well as all of the staff who have participated in this work. Those are a few of the many people who are engaged in this work. All of us are at the table. And committed to these discussions because we each know we will get further if we work together This brings to mind the words of our former mayor Woodards if you want to go fast go alone if you want to go far go together One of the issues of addressing homelessness in our region is that we have to impair our imperative is that we have to go forward That is why the county's leadership on this issue is so impactful they have brought together so many different people with different perspectives and and serving different constituencies, it was an opportunity to meet with the other cities and learn where they sat on this issue and why they feel the way they do. That will become clear today when we talk. Not everyone sees things the same way. And we have owned a lot of that here in the city of Tacoma. And I know that there are hard feelings about all of the work we have done. But also, I just appreciate everything that we have done to serve people in our community. It's more meaningful that we are doing this together. And it's important that the city of Tacoma join in and be a part of this shared work to substantially reduce homelessness so that is rare, brief, and non-recurring. CM Hitchen and Mary will present today on what comes next for this work. They will outline their ask for the city of Tacoma, which I believe that we will have full support for. And I will be bringing a resolution to council on August 25th, co-sponsored by Mayor Ibsen and CM, Council Member Sedalge, to sign on to efforts to design an ILA and formally launch the URA. So with that, I'd like to ask you to start your presentation. And thank you for being here again.

Thank you, Council Member Rumbaugh, and thank you to my colleagues in the City of Tacoma and the staff that have helped get us to this point. From that first meeting that we held at Sprinker Recreation Center where we said, what could this be? There has been a consistent, concerted effort of we can do this better together. And that is what is being built. I really appreciate the way Tacoma has supported this work ongoing. Many of you have reached out, asked questions, even if you haven't actively been at the table. You've been working with your colleagues who have been or asking and sending questions with staff which we also appreciate Mary is a Guru in all things you are a and has really leaned in heavily and if she looks familiar if you haven't engaged she used to work with shapes So she really has a firm sense on how we can work together And collaborate on problems that impact every jurisdiction across the county and so that really has been our message We've been really pleased with the momentum that has built around this work, but we know that if we had started this conversation without Tacoma at the table, it would have been just done. We would have had to stop. So I appreciate that you've been at the table the entire time and you continue to ask hard questions, share your learnings as one of the providers of much of the actual services that happen inside your city limits. You understand what the impacts are and you bring your learning and resources and questions to this table so we can dialogue about what this looks like as a regional approach to homelessness. So thank you. I'm going to turn this over to Mary to kind of do a 101. And then we are going to hang out and answer as many questions as you have. I do have a 3 PM council meeting that I do have to go. So I'm assuming it won't be that long. And I think everyone here knows my phone number as well. But just thank you in advance to giving us this time. We're excited to be here. Mary.

Thank you. As Chair Hitchen said, my name's Mary Connolly. I'm a policy analyst for the Pierce County Council. And in this presentation, there we go, I will be covering a timeline of how we got here. I'll talk a little bit about homelessness in Pierce County. why we're talking about a unified regional approach, an overview of the design for Pierce County's unified regional approach, which I will just call the URA from here on out. And then next steps, and as Councilmember Rumbaugh said, are ask for you. And if you are on the City of Tacoma's Community Vitality and Safety Committee, You will have heard this information before, but we wanted to make sure that the whole council has the same information as well as the public. So I will be going over it again. With some updates. Okay, so a brief timeline of how we got here. As Council Member Rumbaugh mentioned, Pierce County adopted a comprehensive plan to end homelessness in 2022. And that plan included a goal to create a unified homeless system. In April 2024, there was an inaugural URA meeting with 13 Pierce County residents. jurisdictions to discuss the potential development of a URA. And based on that discussion, the Pierce County Council hired a third party consultant on Common Bridges to scope, design and implement a unified regional approach. Over the last year, Uncommon Bridges convened several groups to move this work forward. The work has primarily been guided by an elected leadership group, which consists of elected officials from governments in Pierce County. Currently, there are elected officials from 11 jurisdictions on this group. Also, as Councilmember Rumbaugh mentioned, that includes Councilmembers Rumbaugh, Sedalge, and Mayor Ipsen. There has also been involvement throughout this past year by government staff, nonprofits, and community members in the project. At their meeting in March, the ELG, which stands for Elected Leadership Group, reached strong consensus on a URA design, and that design included Pierce County serving as the administering organization for the URA. I'll explain a little bit more about that later but because of that it was determined that it would make sense for Pierce County to take the next steps on leading implementation and so in April the Pierce County Council took over this work to lead implementation and that brings us here today as well as to the rest of what we have called our roadshow presentations which began in May and So far, we have visited Edgewood, Fife, Lakewood, Ordon, Gig Harbor, and the Pierce County Regional Council Board meeting, as well as your Community Vitality and Safety Committee meeting. And we have four upcoming presentations to Ruston, University Place, Fircrest, and Puyallup.

which is a lot of cities.

And later in the presentation, I'll be talking about the outcomes of those meetings, but I'll keep you waiting for right now. Keep you on your toes. So now I will talk a little bit about homelessness in Pierce County broadly. A lot of you probably know this or know at least some of it, but I want to make sure we're all on the same page and kind of grounded in some things. So starting really high level, homelessness affects all kinds of people, families, adults, youth, disabled people, veterans, seniors are experiencing homelessness in Pierce County. And people might become homeless for a lot of different reasons related to the cost of housing, income, a situation with their family or household, a medical issue, behavioral health issue, substance use issue, et cetera. And homelessness doesn't always look the same. The word homelessness often evokes the image of a single person sleeping in a tent. And that is true for some people and tends to be more prevalent in certain parts of the county, such as here in Tacoma. Homelessness can also look a lot of different ways, though. A family that sleeps in their car, to families that are sharing a home because they can't afford their own homes, a young person couch surfing. These are all situations that are harder to see, but they are happening across our county in rural, urban, unincorporated, incorporated areas. And I'm going to talk a little bit about data. And I want to acknowledge that data can't convey the whole and true picture of homelessness. Data isn't perfect. It summarizes a wide variety of very unique stories, and focusing on numbers can sanitize what can be, what is often a very painful experience. And at the same time, these numbers can paint for us the scale of this problem, and so I will be covering a few different data sets to talk about that scale. geographic scale as well. So the chart on this slide shows the number of homeless people served by Pierce County's Homeless Crisis Response System between 2015 and 2025. This data is from Pierce County's Homeless Management Information System, also known as HMIS or HMIS, and as you can see this number has more than doubled since 2015 and also in the last few years has leveled out a bit. This slide breaks down that information from the last slide by the city that each person reported they last slept in. There's a lot of caveats with this data that you can see on the right. So for example, this information is self-reported. Somebody might have slept in Parkland, said that they slept in Tacoma because they're not really tracking jurisdictional boundaries. Why would they? And so these data also represent where people last slept and not their last permanent address. So it's more of a picture of where they slept once they were homeless. rather than where they came from before. We do have data on people's last permanent zip code, but it's hard to match to city boundaries. And then finally, not everyone has answered this question, so there's missing data. With all those caveats, in general, you can see there's a large number of people who reported they last slept in Tacoma, but there are people experiencing homelessness in other parts of the county as well. And I'm going to talk about two other data sets to also fill in this picture. So this is from the data set for the demand for eviction, for Pierce County's eviction prevention program. From January 1st, 2024 to July 30th, 2025, so that's an 18-month time span, there were just over 2,300 households that submitted eligible applications to Pierce County's Human Services Eviction Prevention Program. To be eligible for this program, among other requirements, an individual or family has to have an eviction notice or a pay or vacate notice in hand. And unfortunately, there's not enough funding to support every household that applies. And we know that when a family experiences an eviction, they can be at higher risk of homelessness. This data is that same data set, but broken down by city or jurisdiction. And while Tacoma is still the jurisdiction here that in the county with the most applications for the program, you can see that the need is more evenly distributed across the county than in that prior data set. And then one more data set we'll look at is McKinney-Vento data. McKinney-Vento programs support homeless students, but for this program, homeless is defined as students lacking a fixed regular and adequate nighttime residence. So this includes children that might not literally be sleeping in a car or in a shelter. But they might be, for example, living doubled up with other families because the cost of housing is too high for their family to have their own home. Across Pierce County during the 24-25 school year, there were over 5,600 enrolled students who identified as homeless during the school year. And about 2,200 of those were enrolled in Tacoma School District, which means that about 3,500 were enrolled in another school district in Pierce County. And this is that same data broken down by a percentage of enrolled students who identified as homeless during the 24-25 school year. So overall, the last several slides, the overall message I want to convey is that although homelessness might look different in different parts of the county, risk and experience of homelessness is not limited to certain jurisdictions in Pierce County. And so now I will talk a little bit about what happens when someone is currently experiencing homelessness. There are a variety of programs across the county that are available to support them. Pierce County has programs that serve the whole county, so both incorporated and unincorporated areas. For example, the Shelter Access Hub is a 24-7 call line to connect people to shelter. There's also the eviction prevention program that I mentioned and coordinated entry, which serves as the entry point for certain housing referrals. And then individual jurisdictions also fund or operate programs to support their residents. So I've provided a few examples here. The city of Edgewood has previously provided funding for a community center to serve as an inclement weather shelter. or an inclement weather day shelter gig harbor hires a housing health and human services program manager to help connect residents to resources the city of fife operates a shelter and jobs program as well as conducts street outreach and then here at the city of tacoma you all support outreach services as well as a variety of other shelter models and supportive housing as well as hiring your own outreach or heal team And so many of these programs are successful in preventing or ending homelessness for people in Pierce County, but there are opportunities for these programs and jurisdictions to align and collaborate better. And so that brings me to ask the question, why a unified regional approach? For people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness, accessing programs in different parts of the county can be confusing and the system can feel disconnected. For organizations that support homeless people when there are inconsistent requirements across government funders, that can require them to spend an inordinate amount of time of their scarce resources on compliance. And then for local governments, there's only so many resources and so much capacity to support residents who are homeless. And at this time, there's no dedicated staff capacity to facilitate in collaboration across governments in Pierce County on homelessness specifically. So these are the issues that the unified regional approach is meant to address. And so with that background, I'll now turn to talking about the design for the unified regional approach. There is a document in your packet that goes more into the weeds, but I will provide a high level overview. The vision of the URA is to substantially reduce homelessness so that it is rare, brief, and non-recurring. Because that's a lofty goal, the mission statement is meant to ground that vision in what the URA board and staff would actually be doing. The mission is to empower Pierce County governments to choose locally responsive solutions to respond to and prevent homelessness while establishing a county-wide framework that supports coordination and efficient use of shared resources. So this mission emphasizes that governments should retain their ability to determine what's best for their community while creating capacity for coordination and collaboration across governments. The URA will have limited staffing, probably two to three staff members at least in the first five years to facilitate coordination, collaboration, and communication, provide technical assistance to governments, access additional resources and funding such as at the state or federal level, and track and report on countywide data and outcomes to understand what's working well and what could use improvement. What would that look like for the city of Tacoma more specifically? I'll give a few examples. So the URA could or the URA will convene staff to collaborate and share ideas. So for example, the HEAL team might decide they want to collaborate with outreach staff from other cities like Fife and Gig Harbor to share ideas on how to connect people to resources. The URA can provide support for collaborative projects as members are interested, such as administering pooled funding, administering shared services, or applying for grants. So let's say the city of Tacoma was interested in pooling funding with Pierce County and the city of Lakewood for a shelter in that kind of area where you all meet. The URA staff could support pooling funding or submitting an application to the federal or state governments for resources. Again, these are just examples, but I'm trying to give more specific ones to get you thinking. The URA will also facilitate alignment of procedures across jurisdictions. So let's say your neighborhood and community services staff wanted to work with Pierce County to align timelines for funding release or jointly monitor programs that are funded by both jurisdictions. That's the kind of collaboration the URA could support. I mentioned the URA could advocate for federal and state funding for the region. And then I also want to acknowledge that the city of Tacoma has already invested a lot of funding and resources into homeless response over the last many years. And so the URA could also be of benefit to the city of Tacoma by increasing capacity for other cities to respond to homelessness. Now I'll talk a little bit about governance structure and staffing for the URA. The design of the URA includes establishment via an interlocal agreement without the creation of a separate legal entity. Participation by governments in Pierce County will be voluntary. The URA will be governed by a board of elected officials representing participating governments. I guess I should caveat, we're still determining, or the elected leaders are still determining alternate staff members will be allowed to serve on the board. But there's been a lot of interest in ensuring there is elected representation on the governing board. Pierce County will serve as the administering organization for the URA, and that includes as employer to URA staff. For the first five years, we expect the annual budget to be about somewhere between $400,000 and $600,000. primarily supporting employment of two to three FTEs and that ranges because two and three FTEs cost a different amount of money. And then the URA budget will depend on revenues from participating governments with the amounts based on the population of each jurisdiction. The elected leadership group has been having ongoing discussions about the possibility of of reducing costs for other jurisdictions besides Pierce County in the first year or two to encourage participation and reduce costs while this is getting up and running. Once we pass that initial period and the amounts or the revenues are based on the population of the jurisdiction, the estimated contribution from Tacoma for the first, let's say, five years would be about $92,000 to $142,000 per year. And again, the exact number would be determined based on the number of staff hired, future discussions, as well as the elected leadership group or the board of the URA adopting future annual budgets or biennial budgets. So I know there's a lot up in the air with that, but happy to answer more questions if there are any. And then a couple more slides. I'm going to talk about next steps. Now that we have a design for the URA, governments that are interested in participating are asked to adopt a resolution of intent to do the following items. The first is express their intent and commitment to work with other governments to launch a URA. The next is to direct staff to work with other governments to develop an interlocal agreement or ILA. And then while an ILA is in development, commit to certain activities that I'll describe on the next slide. And I'll also just mention that the purpose of this resolution of intent is like a stepping stone to the ILA to ensure that governments are expressing their support and provide staff with that direction to be at the table to develop the ILA. So I mentioned that the resolution of intent also includes some steps for governments to take in the meantime. So those are developing or updating data collection requirements to ensure that data in HMIS is more complete and accurate. This is something that the city of Tacoma is already working on by getting the HEAL team trained on using HMIS and by requiring the nonprofit organizations that you fund to use HMIS. Next, developing or updating a procedure to connect residents who are homeless or at risk of homelessness to resources. And those resources can include those that are funded by Pierce County, such as our Shelter Access Hub, Eviction prevention program. Did you have a question there or okay? Sorry? I never mind and then Finally developing or updating a policy to connect homeless people to resources during inclement weather events such as extreme hold excuse me Combining my words extreme heat and cold or smoke as well as identifying locations that might serve as inclement weather shelter this is another item where the city of Tacoma has already a been taking steps to partner closely with Pierce County. In the last couple of years, Pierce County has updated its inclement weather response protocols. And the city of Tacoma has been partnering closely with Pierce County since then on inclement weather. So this is another item that you all are already working on. And then finally, finally, is supporting establishment or expansion of at least one homeless intervention. And this was included in the template to get cities to be thinking about what's one more thing that we can be doing for our residents. With a city like yours, homelessness is at the forefront of a lot of your conversation. And so I'm sure there's a lot of things that are already in the works. So this could be something that you want to highlight that you're already working on or that you plan to work on. That's what we did at Pierce County is highlighted some items that Pierce County Human Services plans to be working on over the next couple of years. And so who has already signed one of these resolutions? We have Pierce County, the City of Fife, Gig Harbor, and Lakewood that have signed. And then the City of Orting has a vote scheduled tomorrow. And Once at least five governments of various sizes have adopted a resolution of intent, those governments will begin ILA negotiations. That number was selected because the elected leaders didn't want to start discussion on an ILA if there were only like two or three cities that were on board. So five was chosen as a reasonable kind of number to aim for, but I think the elected leaders at the table would also love to see way more than five. So we'll see what happens. And then a template for what this resolution can look like is in your packet, along with guidance on drafting the resolution. Just a couple items before I wrap up. Also in your meeting materials, there's a short one pager summarizing the URA at a really high level if you want to use that to introduce anyone to this concept. And then there's also a website that we have been updating with upcoming meetings as well as past meeting materials if you want to check that out. So at this time, we're happy to answer questions.

Thank you so much for your briefing. Before we move on to general counsel questions or comments, one of our co-colleagues on the URA, Council Member Sadalge, who's also lent amazing work as this thing has gotten up and running, would like to start the conversation off. Council Member Sadalge.

Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate that. I have a couple of questions actually on this, but before I begin, I just wanted to thank Council President Hitchens for her leadership on this. Yes, it's true, we started with a third-party consultant who did a really good job of convening facilitating, explaining some of the issues, but I really saw personally a lot of forward momentum when Council President Hitchin herself and Mary together started leading these conversations and seeing a change and real desire on the part of our neighboring jurisdictions to do something. And I can't give it justice the amount of hard work I've seen her do personally in doing this. So I wanted to take a chance to thank her and Mary for the tremendous amount of work they've done personally to get to where we are. I do have a couple of questions. If you don't mind going back to the second to last slide that lists the four kind of things that the resolutions does, I just wanted to, I can't see it, but let me know when that's up on the screen.

I think we're getting it pulled up, so one second. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. And I think you maybe meant...

The one right before this, I believe. Yeah.

Can I do that?

This one, yeah. I just wanted to add some color for some of this, that very first one, the data collection requirements for HMIS. I just want to confirm one of the reasons why we are asking for that is HMIS is a requirement from HUD and they provide a lot of funding. for all sorts of services, so if every jurisdiction is using that data, it enhances our ability as a region to vie for dollars that can continue to help us. Am I correct in kind of summarizing that?

I do believe so, although Pierce County Human Services is a little bit more of the expert in HMIS, but were you going to say something?

I would just add, Councilmember, that one of the benefits is if every jurisdiction is using the same system, we'll actually get a better picture of the story of homelessness in the county, which we do not have when people choose whether to use the same system or use any system at all.

Absolutely. And one of the issues we have is that we have fragmented systems, and some of them are just no system at all. And then on the third bullet with the inclement weather policy, if I'm not mistaken, it's also to have a consistent policy across member jurisdictions so that, you know, We're not changing the people understand that there is a consistent, say, temperature, you know, value, days of the year or seasons, et cetera, correct? That's part of that inclement weather is not just to identify locations, but to have a consistent policy that says, hey, in every one of these jurisdictions, it's kind of the same kind of rules. You don't cross the street and have a different set of rules.

I would say that that is definitely a long-term goal. Right now, it says developer update a policy because it's possible that some cities might not have a policy. So yes, the hope is that governments will coordinate on these items. And then once the URA is established and over the next couple of years, if those policies can be better aligned and have kind of minimum expectations around when that is activated or what governments are doing in response, that's definitely the long-term goal that might just take a year or two more to kind of get set.

Understood. So that might be something we kind of approach more on the ILA negotiation side or through after the ILA side?

Yes. But in the meantime, there's still a lot of opportunity to align processes and set up processes.

Great. So I'm gonna finish with the last question I think might be on several of my colleagues' mind. How is this different than King County and what happened over there? I'm gonna just leave it at that.

Great question. I will go through some ways that this is different. So one way I'll start with is that this is not a new entity. This would be housed within Pierce County. And so that means that it would also be subject to Pierce County's financial controls. Some other differences, KCRHA's interlocal agreement is between Seattle and King County and does not include the other cities in the county, although they do have seats on the board, I believe. But cities across Pierce County have been engaged in this process from the start with a total of 10 jurisdictions participating in the elected leadership group since March 2025. And that's because there's been a goal of having more than just Pierce County and Tacoma developing the interlocal agreement. The URA effort is also going to start small. I've mentioned there will likely be two to three staff in the first five years or so. And for comparison, I was just looking this up, in 2025 KCRHA had 106 positions budgeted before it introduced a plan to reduce that number in response to budget shortfalls. So starting a lot smaller. And then finally, KCRH mission in the interlocal agreement is focused on administering services. And the URA's mission is focused on supporting governments in facilitating coordination. So that could include administering services if that's something that governments want to do, want the URA to do. But that's not its main focus. mission or goal and it won't be taking on administration of services at the start by any means.

Thank you very much. I think throughout this process I've gotten a real appreciation for a process like this where we are where quite frankly together we are finding a coalition of those willing to be part of this and the importance of that and the strength that that's going to give to this set of agreements over time. So I appreciate all the work you've done. I will yield the floor back to the rest of my colleagues. Thank you.

Is it really a floor? I'm not sure. Got to have a different metaphor here. Sure. We'll yield the table. So with that, who would like to get started here in the council?

Council Member Rumbaugh. I just want to say two things. First off, it's pretty amazing. We decided to be the fifth city. because we didn't want it to look like Pierce County and Tacoma always doing everything. And I think it's important if you look at the cities that signed on, they're small cities. So they have different issues than we have. And they may not have as many homeless people per capita based on our city. but their voice is really important and listening to them has been sometimes a struggle, but also really an opportunity for learning and realizing that many of them are doing things that we may not value. And so I just want to say that that's why it's important that we were the fifth to give other people a chance to have a voice, register their concerns. And I just want to say also that since we started our URA, we have other cities now that are coming to the meetings. So Bonnie Lake came, which I just thought was amazing. So I'm really excited to see them at the table talking about this conversation. Could you talk a little bit about the school districts and how the McKinney-Vento plays into this conversation? I think people might be surprised that there's that kind of data, and it actually does show that there is homelessness in other cities where we don't think there is. Could you just talk a little bit, and what does that look like for those cities? Do you want me to start?

Yeah, you start. Thank you. Excellent question. A lot of times people look at those numbers, and because they have that vision of a tent, but they see this 100, 200, 900 in the Bethel School District. Well, I don't see 900 tents, and there's a disconnect, right? And so one of the things that happens is most people the elected leaders are familiar with their school districts, and they can go and have that conversation. Is there really 300 kids that were considered homeless in your district? And the school districts have the data to confirm that. The way they define them is a little different. But this is a student. And if we assume that every student has at least one adult that's caring for them, you now have two people who are considered homeless when you talk about that school district. And so we are talking about two people whose lives are impacted. Education is impacted. We do everything we can to keep it as cognizant as possible. But we work really hard to try and provide services where they're at with the school districts. They are trying to do the least amount of impact to learning. And so if we are better coordinated through the URA, we might have better outcomes when it comes to helping students where they're at. in a more timely fashion because we have better coordination and better conversations. And the school districts hear those stories. They're going to be the front line because probably, I don't know the actual number, but many of those students are currently often doubled up COUCH SERVING, SO THEY STILL ACTUALLY ARE SHELTERED AND SAFE. THEY AREN'T LIVING IN A CAR, PER SE, OR THEY'RE LIVING IN A CAR, BUT THEY'RE LIVING IN A CAR IN SOMEONE'S DRIVEWAY, NOT ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD. AND SO IF WE'RE BETTER ABLE TO MOBILIZE AND IMPACT THEIR OUTCOMES QUICKER, WE WILL GET IN FRONT OF THOSE NUMBERS IN THE LONG TERM. WE WILL SEE A REDUCTION IN THOSE IMPACTS. SO I THINK THERE'S TWO WAYS THAT THAT DATA IS REALLY IMPORTANT. ONE, IT HELPS TELL THE STORY OF WHAT'S REALLY GOING ON, BECAUSE THAT STUDENT AND THAT FAMILY THAT'S now considered unhoused according to McKinney-Vento, will eventually, if nobody steps in, become unhoused according to the federal government, which means they have no place to call home.

Isn't it true that McKinney-Vento students, the way that that law is written up, they could be located in Tacoma at one of our shelters? because then they are given services to get to their school, correct? Correct. Okay, and so maybe people at the table don't know what the McKinney-Vento bill, what that program is. Could you just talk a little bit about it?

Do you want to jump in?

I'll do my best.

McKinney-Vento is a federal program, and there's also a law attached to it. I'm not sure if it's called the McKinney-Vento Act or if that's... But there are essentially federal requirements that if a student lacks a fixed regular and adequate nighttime residence, that they get the support they need to stay in the district that they were enrolled in when they became homeless, and that they get the support to ensure that they are able to continue their studies. And these programs also help connect them and their families to resources to get housed or other resources. Did I miss any important points? And I'll just add, I think, to what Councilmember Hitchen said, if the URA's role is to facilitate coordination, collaboration, and so I think there's a lot of different ways that school districts could be involved. That might look like URA staff developing those relationships. It could look like URA staff facilitating those relationships between McKinney-Vento liaisons and the cities and towns but there's, I think, yeah, there's a lot of opportunity for that kind of thing to occur, and then once that collaboration is occurring, then there's opportunity to identify, okay, like, what can we do about this, and then how can we work together on that?

All right, thank you. Council Member Palmer.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you both for the presentation. I was in the original presentation, so thank you for the new information that came with this one. Thank you to all of our Council, city council members, Council Member Maramba and Sadalge, who are working very hard and participating and being willing participants in the URA. I had a couple questions. Since I had heard the presentation, I took a little time to read through the larger document. And I'm happy to see that there's space for kind of innovation and it's kind of in different places here. So I'm seeing it written in like the budget here where it says that research and just like similar programs in the Puget Sound region and then regional approaches up to homelessness nationally. That's kind of one of the things that staff would be able to do. And then looking into, you know, you have it here on Slide 22, as well, with the support, you know, establishing an expansion. That, to me, kind of goes hand-in-hand. You research what's out there and see if there's other approaches. I would love if, also, if we maybe included, because I know there's great examples internationally, as well, to different approaches to homelessness, particularly, like, in Finland, what they're doing there with Housing First. And so... that would be something that I would love to see. And then I don't know if that's something we can be more explicit about, that that's going to be part of the process and when we're coming up with what we're planning to do and how we're expanding some of these programs in the future.

I guess a clarifying question. So kind of like a think tank and then bringing the learnings back to the jurisdictions is part of the hope. So there'd be like a feedback. We've heard about a great program in Finland, not sending people to Finland to go see it in person, probably on the budget we're talking about, but that they would be able to do the work, to do the learning, and then share with jurisdictions as part of that back and forth? Is that kind of what, okay. I mean, I think it would naturally happen. It's literally happened while we've been in our current URA meetings where people are sharing ideas, and then it's getting spread to other jurisdictions about, oh, you're doing this? That's great. I want to learn about that. And then we set up trainings where we provided opportunities for people to go and watch the street medicine in action, like things like that that we've been able to facilitate because we're actually talking to each other about the same thing.

Thank you.

OK. Council Member Hines. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you all for the presentation. And I was not part of CVS, but I had any of this presentation. I was there way back when we had that first conversation at Sprinkler back in April of 2004, which seems like a very long time ago when we think about it. I really appreciate all the work that's gone into this. I had the conversation, read through the documents. So one question that I hadn't seen answering here is, how will the URA function with the COC? Has there been conversation about how those two will fit together, how those are going to work together? With the COC, the continuum of care being kind of the primary funding function from the Housing and Urban Development, from the federal government, we have to have one. How do you see all them functioning with the URA? Are they going to be completely separate? Is it going to be integrated? What has the talk been about that?

There, you'll see in the design document includes that the design of the URA doesn't include any sort of specific advisory body. And so it names a lot of different groups such as the continuum of care that the UNIFIED REGIONAL APPROACH BOARD MIGHT COLLABORATE WITH OR LOOK TO FOR ADVISEMENT. BUT WHAT THAT ADVISEMENT OR COLLABORATION LOOKS LIKE HAS NOT BEEN EXPLICITLY NAMED OR OUTLINED. BUT I'LL ASK COUNCILMAN HITCHEN IF SHE HAS ANY OTHER THOUGHTS.

THANK YOU. EXCELLENT QUESTION AND SOMETHING THAT WE'VE DEBATED AND KICKED AROUND FOR TWO YEARS. I think one of the things we were waiting for is really to see where the COC was going. When we initially started this work, they were in the middle of a technical assistance program, which was unfortunately canceled by the federal government. So they are now back where they've started. They have a new charter. They have some new leadership. I feel like they're running parallel and that they are going to continue to kind of weave back and forth. And I think as the board is established and an executive director is identified, I think, in that work plan, that initial work plan, I think one of the things that we should ask them to do is figure out what is the relationship initially with the COC, because they are a really good resource, but they have their very specific charge that they have, and while they may completely align and overlap, there's going to be things that they're doing on separate tracks.

I know there's a lot of players already involved in this, and we're talking about adding an additional player, which I think If it goes as well as intended, it will help kind of simplify and streamline some things, but it is adding another player to what's happening here. I think I have two broader questions, because I wasn't part of the conversation, and I would defer to Councilor Rumbaugh or the mayor or Councilor Stalge. But through these conversations, was the gap that had been identified that there were lots of people that wanted to do the work, but it was disorganized, or there was lack of coordination, or there was a lack of alignment of the effort? Or was there a distinction about what the work actually is? I think that's where I've kind of nosed leased some of the conversations. What this is presenting as kind of a theory of change, Council Member Bushnell, is that by providing more information and coordination, people will come on board and will be more effective. But sometimes folks don't want to come on board. is the assumption that we will get most of the way there by just the alignment alone, and we have to figure out some of the disconnects later. I think that's just been my question about it. Because if everybody's like, yeah, homelessness is a real problem. Yep, we all want to do something. And then we say, OK, what are we going to do about it? And the question is, well, it's a problem that we don't have the capacity to deal with, so someone else should look at it. Or I think that's something kicking around in my mind. So I'd love to know, just based on your conversations, do you feel everybody's ready to come to the table? Everybody sees like the coordination of efforts and resources are going to pull us all together and get us rowing in the same direction. Do you still see potentially people not getting on board? I just want to know from the conversations.

So I think the short answer is there's still jurisdictions that are not on board. I'm not going to sugarcoat it and pretend that it's not happening. But we have used this as an opportunity to really work with jurisdictions on an education level When we've presented, it's one of the reasons we bring McKinney-Vento numbers along with the data from the point in time. If you say only four people reported that they were experiencing homelessness in your jurisdiction, and then I see Tacoma's numbers in thousands, there's people go, well, yeah, I see that every time I'm in Tacoma. And I was like, yeah, but here's your McKinney-Vento numbers. And there were hundreds in this region that were homeless or on the cusp of homelessness. And since the only place we offer services really intensive services tends to be in our Tacoma area, the reason you don't see any is because they have to go somewhere else. And so it allows us to use this opportunity to have those data-driven conversations about what's actually happening. And that's where we've been able to make headway with Bonnie Lakes and Sumners and Ortings and Edgewoods. And they continue to come back to the table and continue to have the conversations. When I did that initial meeting way back when, I even had feedback from like, I think it was Wilkeson. I mean, they're like, we don't have anyone who's experienced homelessness, right? But if someone did lose their home, What would your city do? And that's part of the learning that we are trying to get everybody on the same page. In Pierce County, no matter where you are, when you are experiencing homelessness, there should be a response. No matter how big the jurisdiction you are, no matter what your reason is, there should be a response. It may not be exactly a perfect response, but there should be a response. And right now that's definitely not happening. So I think that's my big hope with this is that we get to that level And then as we bring on more jurisdictions, we can have more locally sourced responses where we are keeping people closer to where they have their friends, their families, potentially a church, a school, their community, so that we aren't going from one extreme to another extreme.

No, I think I appreciate it. Thank you for kind of the insight. And I, you know, I, aspire to the same vision that you have, right? Which no matter where you are in Pierce County, you have access to the services you need. I think the, if we move forward, there's something, questions I'm going to be asking. So I think that's probably what I would probably say. Questions I'm going to be asking is how do we navigate a system in which it looks like the URA is going to be providing technical assistance support and offering, hey, we're willing to help you out. If we have players that are like, I'm good, I don't need help, right? Because I've said for a long time, like one way Some places can look at homeless and say, hey, the way we address homelessness is if you become homeless in our community, we provide services to help you get success. Another way could be, we don't have any services, so we don't have a homelessness problem. And those folks determine someplace else to go where they get their needs met. And there's financial incentives around that when we're all under pressure. And so a question I'm going to be asking is, how do we navigate that? On the flip side, how do we navigate it where if someone does come in and say, hey, in the past we may not have been doing what we are doing and I want to help, are we then using that as an opportunity to say, OK, here you go. You get all of this support services right in your jurisdiction because you were a willing partner. And then the ones who are on the side are like, ooh, maybe I don't want to get involved because that's going to mean they're going to take that as an opportunity to let my city become the source of a lot of these services for other places when others don't have to do the same. So that's kind of a question I want to ask and think about. The other question I have is just around the staffing and kind of what they're going to be working on. Because I think one question I would want to know is, if we're hiring or employing FTEs to do coordination work, how do we ensure that person has the ability to kind of work with jurisdiction? One, it seems very client service based. It's like, well, this person now has a job. They have this position. There's this URA. And they're available to work with anybody who wants to work with them. So I guess, how do we encourage people to work with the URA? How do we encourage cities to want to seek out the technical assistance and the programming support? Has that been a conversation you all have talked about?

One thing to your first question, the technical assistance and the facilitating collaboration will mostly be for those members of the URA because they have said, yes, we want this. And also that door to join would always be open through some kind of interlocal agreement mechanism. So I just wanted to clarify that piece. I feel like there was something else I was going to say, but I forgot. So you go next.

Thank you. And I think to your point about membership and the technical assistance, like what do we get for being part of this? I think we continue to get people to learn about what homelessness really looks like, what the impacts are, the narrative around the long-term impacts. I mean, in education, we know that Young people whose interruption learning happens because of housing instability, the impacts long term about not graduating from high school, potentially going down a pathway of crime. There's all those things that are compounding that cost local governments money and cost the state money that we start to interrupt. And there is a cost benefit to us, along with it being the right thing to do because they're human beings. I feel like we kind of danced around your question.

Do you want to ask it one more time now?

No, I think there's, in my mind, the value of a URA or a Unified Regional Approach is someone, some organization gets to tell people, here's what we're going to stop doing, here's what we're going to start doing, and here's what we're going to continue to do. Because if there's an implied assumption in this conversation that there are gaps in the system, that a system that has currently been constructed just by evolution of how it's evolved has gaps and missing pieces. I won't say broken, but it has challenges. That then someone at some point is going to have to be able to say, hey, though we've gotten into this space where this is the system we have, we've got to stop doing this, we've got to start doing this, and this thing needs to continue. And currently, I don't see this body being able to fill that role right now. Over the long term, it's going to have to get there. And so I'm happy to support us on how we get to that point of having someone say that. And I also had a conversation about animal sheltering earlier today, which is a completely unrelated but countywide issue. And I don't want to say that homelessness and animal sheltering are analogs. But one of the points that came out of that was, We know the system isn't working. Could we not, just by finding efficiencies, could we get improvement without actually adding an additional dollar? And that's what I think is really important for me as part of this, is can we look at the system in a holistic way, say we start doing this, stop doing this, continuing this, and then we have a more functioning system, and then we start investing in it, and we can get more out of it. So I think that's a long-winded way of saying I think this has some, we'll have some real benefits if all the cities adopt it, but I just want to make sure we're, I think we're all on the same page. At some point, someone has to be able to say, we're doing this, we're not doing this, and we're going to keep doing this, and have the ability to do that. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, Council Member Hines. Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Chair, and Mary, and everybody else that's been a part of this. I had the honor of being able to be on the governance subcommittee, and I think, just kind of dovetailing off your points earlier, I think We've done a really good job of setting up the ground level for that kind of discussion. And we have to go slow. We have to build trust. We're going to go at the speed of trust. And it's really important that we're working with all jurisdictions, those that are willing and those that are curious, right, and try to continue to educate. But then also setting up the governance structure in a way that it can be more effective, be strategic, align budgets, find ways that over time, as trust is built, We'll be able to get more partners. They're seeing that it's working and that decisions larger decisions can be made over time I think you know what it's such a severe issue that everyone really wants to be very quick and and be effective and make things happen, but because it's such a complicated system we have in our county and And there's so many different needs that to try and do something quick, you inevitably, in my opinion, you're doomed to fail. So it's really important that we are diligent and very reflective on the way that we're approaching this. And I think the ERA discussions have really been cognizant of that and being very intentional about how we proceed and how we can grow and be more effective over time. And that's why I appreciate We're taking these initial steps to say, hey, we agree that this is a challenge here that we need to face locally and we need to face together, and here are some deliberate steps we're going to make in order to make that happen. And then as we build our capacity, we can bring other jurisdictions on. I'm really pleased to see the folks that have already signed on. I'm just so happy. That just goes to show that it's already, the education has been effective. There are jurisdictions that I didn't think that would be one of the first signers onto this, to be quite frankly with you. And so I'm really excited to see that. And I think it's just, I'm just really amazed at the work that everybody's been doing and I'm really excited to see how this plays out in the next few years. I'm really excited to continue to support this effort here in Tacoma and I'm looking forward to us doing a resolution as well. And then I also appreciate some of the, a lot of the work that we did on the subcommittee for the governance is reflected in here. And I think one of the rationales behind it was giving local governments the opportunity to do things that work for their communities. I think that there's a lot of people that want to try to do something to somebody, and that's one really quick way to break trust. When you have people from anywhere or outside just saying, this is how you should do it in your community, even though they may have not ever lived in that community, know the people there, And so I think it's really important to make sure that folks that are willing to do this work, we can help support them in their efforts. And I see that reflected here. And then we're just asking for very basic things to be a good partner in this effort. And then as we grow, the regional coordination is going to be really important, especially when it comes to state and federal grants. I would like to see some grant support for regional efforts at the legislature. I'm not sure that I've seen any of that come out of the legislature, but that's something I'd look forward to maybe working with our legislative partners on. so that if there are not just Pierce County, but other regions that are looking to do regional efforts in this regard, because it helps support the resource allocations and make it so that they're more streamlined and we're more effective with the dollars that are being used, as opposed to all these different silos happening all over the place and I think the other challenge that we face is the the the competitions for limited dollars we have multiple organizations that may be doing similar or the same work but they're competing for the same pool of dollars and that that could also make things ineffective also or maybe not go as far as it could so I think this is a good way that we can help bridge that gap bring efforts together be more coordinated and I don't really have any questions specifically. I'm just, as you can imagine, I'm very, very excited. I just appreciate the years and years of work and effort that has put into this. And I also appreciate all the nonprofits and partners all across the region, not just local jurisdictions, but nonprofits and others. Because, you know, there's a want to go very, very fast. And because there's such great need out there. But I think that a lot of our partners have been very patient with us, and I really appreciate their patience as we try to build out a program that will be successful for as many people as possible in the near future and ongoing. So just thank you so much and appreciate the presentation. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor. And once again, to reiterate, thank you a thousandfold to my colleagues, to our friends at the county, our partner jurisdictions for bringing this proposal forward. Yes, this is in its initial phases a a modest idea, but that's the intent is being smart with the modesty so that we can exercise our collaborative muscles as a region. What I really like, I mean, this is kind of the elephant in the room, but what I really do like about this conversation is that this is a non-adversarial collaborative way of saying that housing stability is not just Tacoma's problem, that this is about all of us coming together. And in particular, I really want to give kudos to the county for demonstrating through your direct actions what that means, whether it's directly with shelter space like the Good Neighbor Center in Spanaway to hosting the future staff of this organization. This is a great step in all those directions there. So a couple of clarifying questions because these are things that inevitably we'll hear from constituents. Starting with slide number seven. where we're talking about the causes of homelessness. Now, we know, being PowerPointed to death about these problems, that this is primarily about just a failure of infrastructure, of human infrastructure, of unfunded mandates of local communities taking on what should be national mental health and housing and human services infrastructure, and decades of compounding problems there. But inevitably what we hear a lot of the time in town halls or just out the door is, well, obviously drugs cause this. Mental health causes this, right? It's not caused by eviction. It's not caused by economics. What does the data show when people say that?

I don't have the literal numbers on hand, but I know that homelessness, as the slide says, Occurs for a lot of reasons and often people once they become homeless Develop mental health issues or substance abuse issues in order to be because of the situation that they found themselves in So that's one thing I would say I can get harder numbers if needed we also the point-in-time count it's just a snapshot of The point-in-time count is just a snapshot on one night of of the people that were able to find an interview. But that question of what caused you to become homeless is asked, and there's a variety of responses. So I can also get that data.

And I guess I would just add that that is a common comment that we hear, especially in jurisdictions that aren't funding services like the city of Tacoma does, where there is a disconnect between the reality of what is causing homelessness. And so we use these opportunities to educate the electeds in these smaller cities and towns around. Really, the stories that we are hearing and the data that we are collecting is showing that people are entering homelessness for a lot of these other reasons. And while experiencing homelessness due to trauma, crime, being victims themselves, they are turning to either substances or The trauma alone is creating behavioral health problems. And then that compounds their ability to be able to access the services that are available, which then starts that cycle. So it's an education thing.

That's true. And the reality also, what I tell people, is that drug abuse, mental illness affect everyone of every income and class stratum. I mean, the world's richest man is a non-drug addict, for example. He's not sleeping under bridges, right? So making sure that we're cognizant of those real root causes, certainly. Final question is when it comes to the data, and that's one of the other real wins of the foundation that this is setting up, is making sure that everyone is on the same page, that we're reducing duplication, and also so we're telling a clearer picture about where the needs are really originating. HMIS and my understanding is HMIS and the McKinney-Vento data don't really play that well together currently, even though McKinney-Vento is very comprehensive, in some ways more expansive because it does account for those subtleties. As this thing gets underway, I mean this is not an immediate project, but as the URA gets more established, as more communities join, as we get more staff, as we get more funding from the state, do you see maybe not even a marriage but an engagement perhaps between these two sets of data, like making sure that we can play better together and see a fuller picture?

I believe that there are some limitations on the ability of the school districts to share that data. And so that's something I need to educate myself a little bit more on is if there are opportunities that we can take advantage of to marry or engage the data and what the limitations are. So I don't have the best answer now, but I can look further into it.

I think the other part is that we're working really hard at the county on by name lists. And youth are one of the by name lists that they are attempting Again, wanting to protect that information, but we would be able to behind the scenes really kind of tease out what are some of the things that we're seeing, what are trends that we're seeing, where are we seeing failures? Meaning we had somebody who was doubled up, a family that was doubled up, but now they show up in the HMIS system in an emergency family shelter in downtown Tacoma from Eatonville. Let's talk about what happened, and a staff person at the county level running the URA may be able to collect that data and go, okay, what happened? And have the conversation with the provider that was helping them because they were in safe parking and then they ended up here. Tell me that story and helps us improve the systems.

Absolutely. And I think the final takeaway here is that everything that we're talking about from optimizing systems, getting different jurisdictions to play together, it's not just about making systems work more efficiently. It's about helping people and having those systems become more human-centered so that people aren't reliving their trauma and people actually get long-term help and ideally don't have to live in cars and driveways or elsewhere. So with that, we are very excited to support this resolution as it moves forward. Thank you for everything you do, and we'll continue this conversation.

Thank you very much, Mayor and Council Members. Please feel free to reach out to both Mary and myself if there are additional questions you think of, you know, anytime. You all know how to get a hold of me.

All right, very good. Thank you so much. All right, our second agenda item is the Subaru Utility Replacement Project Update for Puyallup Avenue. With that, I'd like to call on Susie Rogers, Real Property Manager, and Jordan Ennis, Principal Engineer from Public Works.

Thank you. Hi. Thank you. And good afternoon, Mayor Ibsen and council members. I am Susie Rogers, Real Property Manager here on behalf of Real Property Services Public Works Department to provide an update on the City of Tacoma Environmental Services Puyallup Avenue Sewer Utility Replacement Project, identified under project numbers ENV030340203, Stormwater. and ENV040260203, wastewater, and to provide a recommendation on the approval for authorization for the use of eminent domain at the city council meeting scheduled for next Tuesday, August 18th, 2026. Here with me is Jordan Ennis, principal engineer with the Environmental Services Capital Delivery Project team, and he is here to present on the project scope and to answer any technical questions you may have concerning project construction. Next slide, please. So, Jordan. All right.

Thank you, Susie. Good afternoon, Mayor, Council Members. If I can give a brief overview of the project here. The limits span from South Tacoma Way near the octopus structure, if you're familiar, downstream to Puyallup Avenue where it crosses underneath the I-705 overpass. The main driver behind this project is to address flooding that occurs at the South Tacoma Way and Pacific Avenue intersection, while also, since we're in the area, we have identified various other infrastructure that is in need of improvement. So we are combining these together in order to optimize costs and constructability and also minimize the impacts to the community into one construction window. So some details, we are going to be replacing, rehabilitating, and rerouting about 5,000 feet of stormwater and wastewater mains. These are large diameter. ranging from 48 inches to 72 inches, anywhere from 60 to 100 years old. So these are our major interceptors, our artery mains, so to speak, and they're aging, getting old, and nearing the end of their service life. At the downstream end on Puyallup Avenue, we have a maintenance yard that is operated by our transmissions group. And so there is the need to replace and install new maintenance structures and then retire old assets in that maintenance yard. And to do all this work in that area will require replacing a bridge adjacent to that maintenance yard. It spans about 150 feet over part of the yard. And so we will be replacing it by building new walls or a wall on each edge of the road and then back filling it, raising it to grade of Puyallup Avenue. So filling that void. That covers most of the scope. This is a significant project for us because it is upgrading critical infrastructure, our interceptor mains. And if nothing were done, we would continue to see that flooding south to come away in Pacific Avenue, as well as put us at continued risk of a wastewater system failure, which ultimately would result in overflows into private property and Puget Sound. Next slide.

Thank you. So this project... This big project is being paid for through a variety of funding sources, totaling approximately $90.7 million. The majority of dollars are split between two City of Tacoma Environmental Services funds, the Environmental Services Stormwater Fund in the amount of approximately $49 million, and the Environmental Services Wastewater Fund in the amount of approximately $40 million, together totaling 100% of the city's contribution towards this project. The remaining monies are from the Department of Commerce Local and Community Projects Grant in the amount of approximately $1 million, and the Department of Commerce Public Works Board Grant in the amount of approximately $389,000. As a recipient of state grants for this project, the City of Tacoma is obligated to spend the monies within a set time frame. In addition, added delays in constructing the project would significantly impact project scopes and schedules, which would substantially increase project costs, which would unduly burden the taxpayers. Next slide, please. So construction of the Puyallup Avenue Sewer Utility Replacement Project requires property right acquisitions from five private property owners comprising eight separate parcels. Several of the owners own multiple parcels. Property right acquisitions comprise a mix of permanent easements and temporary construction easements, or TCEs. Permanent easements are permanent property rights that allow the city to use a property indefinitely for a specific purpose. In this instance, an easement to maintain, repair, and replace an existing underground stormwater wastewater pipe and associated purchases. example, manholes. And TCEs are temporary in nature and are temporary property rights that allow the city to use property for a specified period of time. All acquisitions were conducted in compliance with state and federal guidelines for real property acquisitions, namely the Uniform Relocation Assistance and Real Property Acquisition Policies Act of 1978. otherwise known as the Uniform Act, all acquisitions, whether permanent or temporary, are valued by a licensed appraiser and property owners are compensated fair market value for the use of the areas. Out of the eight private parcels, the city has acquired all the necessary property rights to construct the project with the exception of two remaining parcels owned by a single common owner. Negotiations on the parcel holdout have been unsuccessful due to disagreement on fair market value payment and non-responsiveness of the property owner. Next slide, please. The last remaining parcel holdout for this project is located at 102-106 Puyallup Avenue and 101 East 25th Street. The owner is a Washington Limited Liability Company. The site is a commercial building and associated parking lot under one common ownership, one owner, and is located at the intersection of Puyallup Avenue, aka South 24th Street and A Street, west of I-705 between Streets 24th Street and 25th Street. At this site, the city requires a permanent easement of approximately 870 square feet to access an existing manhole and underground pipe. All work to reline the pipe and rehab it will be subsurface work. While it will take several weeks to cure the lining underground, the city will only require intermittent access to the site during that period, and the surface area will remain undisturbed, and access to the property will remain open. The city initially reached out to the property owner in May of 2025. Site visits were conducted, offer packages were mailed both by regular mail and certified mail, and personally delivered on site into the offices of the registered agent. Next slide, please. To date, we have not heard back from the property owner by the required deadline for response. Therefore, Real Property Services is recommending and requests that the council approve the Condemnation Authorization Ordinance authorizing the use of eminent domain that will be presented before the council next Tuesday, August 18, in order to obtain the necessary property rights to construct this project for the community. Next slide, please. I think we might be missing a slide, sorry. In order to move forward with constructing this project, Real Property Services has submitted a council action memo requesting from the city council authorization for the use of eminent domain for condemnation proceedings to commence, known as the final action ORDINANCE OR CONDEMNATION ORDINANCE. AS WE ARE NOT SEEKING AN EMERGENCY CONDEMNATION ORDINANCE, THE FINAL ACTION ORDINANCE WILL HAVE TWO READINGS. THE FIRST READING WILL OCCUR ON AUGUST 18TH AND THE SECOND AND FINAL READING WILL BE ON AUGUST 25TH. THANK YOU FOR PUTTING THAT SLIDE UP. PUBLICATION OF THE ORDINANCE IN THE TACOMA DAILY INDEX WILL OCCUR TWO DAYS AFTER THE FINAL READING AND THE ORDINANCE WILL BECOME EFFECTIVE TEN DAYS THEREAFTER. AS REQUIRED PER STATE STATUTE, Revised Code of Washington, RCW 8.25.290, notice was given to the affected property owner at least 15 days before the final action ordinance council hearing date. And the notice of the final action ordinance was made as required by law as follows. Notice delivered by certified mail-to-property owner and address of record as found on the Pierce County Assessor Records as required by state statute. Notice made by publication in the newspaper with the largest circulation in Tacoma, which is the Tacoma News Tribune. And notice was made by publication in the local newspaper routinely used by the city for legal noticing, the Tacoma Daily Index. Approval of the final action ordinance after second reading will allow the city's legal department to file a petition and summons for a condemnation action with Pierce County Superior Court. If at any time during this process the property owner wishes to contact the city to negotiate or settle the matter, the city will do so at any time up to and immediately prior to final determination at trial. Next slide, please. Thank you. Thank you for your time and consideration of this presentation. I can answer any questions you may have at this time.

Thank you. Any questions? Customer in Baltimore.

Thank you. Yes. Are there any, is there an active business in this commercial property right now?

Yes, it's a commercial building that houses two tenants. However, the tenants, as we said, the access is not impacted. The work is subsurface. Okay. So they'd still be in that building? Yes, there'll still be, there's no relocation. They'll still be able to maintain use of it.

Thank you. Mm-hmm.

Councilor Hines. It says that the alley was vacated in 1992. Yes, it was. Why did we not reserve an easement back then?

I don't know. It might have been an unfortunate oversight, but unfortunately we did not retain an easement, and now we need access, and we need to maintain that underground infrastructure.

common practice that we don't reserve an EMIS? I feel like I hear about this more and more with new development coming in that we are pretty adamant about retaining access to easements.

Yes, yes. It is very common practice to retain easements for underground infrastructure when we vacate an alley.

No, I think it's interesting. And this is for a permanent. So basically, we're going to basically take back the alley for a permanent. Not take back. They're going to retain it, but we're going to take back the permanent easement we probably should have kept when we returned it over in 1992. Yes, yes. Okay. No, thank you very much.

Of course. Thank you, Council Member. I appreciate the briefing. It looks like we have no further questions or comments from the Council. Thank you. So we'll be reviewing this tonight.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Moving on, we have two items of interest. And I lied. We have one item of interest because the family requesting the memorial has decided on another location, so they're withdrawing the request for city support. So we only have one item of interest, which is courtesy of Council Member Diaz.

Thank you. So I am requesting support today for adding a flag to our commemorative flag policy for a one time only event. The Association of Washington Business is hosting manufacturing bus Manufacturing week as a bus tour and the stop in Tacoma is coming September 30th through October 7th So we're hoping that we can fly their flag Our staff has been working with them since this request came in a couple months ago To make sure they understand our flight policy requires that we if we're flying any flags that we fly them aboard the four flagship places that we fly flags, which is the Tacoma dome TMB the fire headquarters, and the police headquarters. So they have secured those flags. So we're moving forward with this resolution. As the chair of the Economic Development Committee, I'm really excited to be bringing this forward. We have regular conversations with the World Trade Center and with the Economic Development Board about how important manufacturing is currently. But it's also quite a historic event. way that Tacoma has developed our economic situation, and so we think it's a really exciting opportunity for us to fly this flag as part of the bus tour, and looking forward to if folks have any questions about this.

Thank you, Council Member Diaz. Any questions? Okay, thank you for bringing this forward.

Thank you.

Okay, any other items of interest? Seeing none, are there any committee reports? Seeing none, we're going to move on to the agenda review and the city manager's weekly report. Allison?

Thank you, Mayor, Mayor and Council, for your awareness this evening. There are two ceremonials on tonight's agenda. The first is proclaiming August 2026 as Emergency Management Awareness Month. The second is a presentation of the Puget Sound Regional Council Vision 2050 Awards. There are no modifications to tonight's agenda. There are two opportunities for public comment this evening. The first is under regular public comment. Going too fast, Mayor. Regular public comment regarding motions, resolutions, and ordinances on tonight's agenda. The second opportunity is under community forum regarding items over which the City Council has jurisdiction. Please let me know if there's any questions related to tonight's agenda so that staff can be prepared to respond accordingly. And for your review attached to the study session agendas, the weekly report to Council. Thank you very much, Mayor.

Thank you, Alison. Council Member Diaz? Your microphone is on. Do you have anything to say? Okay. No worries. With that, seeing no further business, is there a motion to adjourn?

I move to adjourn.

Second. Move in second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed say no. We are adjourned.