City Council - workshop

I'D LIKE TO CALL TO ORDER THE JOINT CITY COUNCIL TAKOMA PUBLIC LIBRARY BOARD STUDY SESSION OF AUGUST 25th, 2026. QUICK, PLEASE CALL THE ROLL.

DEPUTY MAYOR BUSHNELL. PRESENT. COUNCILMEMBER D.S. HERE. COUNCILMEMBER HINES. HERE. COUNCILMEMBER PALMER. HERE. COUNCILMEMBER RUMBAH.

HERE.

IT'S VIRTUAL. COUNCILMEMBER SADALGE. HERE. COUNCILMEMBER SCOTT. HERE. COUNCILMEMBER WALKER. HERE. AND MAYOR IBSEN.

Here, our first agenda item is our Tacoma Public Library Annual Report. Oh, excuse me, yes. Missed that paragraph. Thank you, Deputy Mayor. At this time, I'd like to welcome the Tacoma Public Library Director, Amita Loneal, to introduce the board members who are present and begin the presentation. Hi.

Yay. Good afternoon, mayor and council. It is so great to be here this afternoon for our annual joint session. So you all know me. I'm the director of Tacoma Public Library. I've been the director for the last two years, but I'm going to turn it over to my trustees to introduce themselves if you want to say your name, how long you've been on the board, and anything else you want to share.

Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Jules Zylstra.

On the right.

Good afternoon, everyone. Joel Zylstra. I am a member of the trustees, vice president right now. And I've been on the trustees board for about a year and a half. So glad to be here today.

ELIZABETH BOWMANN, Good afternoon. Thank you for having us. I'm Elizabeth Bowman. It's my third year as a trustee, which I'm pleased and thrilled to serve in this capacity.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Andrea Cobb. I'm proud to have served on the board, and I'm in my fifth year now. So it's good to be with you again.

All right. Welcome, everyone. At this time, I'd like to call on Director Amita Lonial to begin the presentation.

Sure. And before I get started, I just want to say that President Santiago and Trustee Saxena send their regrets for not being able to join today. But they are very active in the board and are really excited about what we're going to present today. I thought I would just start with the basics. I think you all probably know this, but I think it's always OK to review. But Tacoma Public Library is composed of eight neighborhood libraries that you can see here on this map. Real Branch opened in 1903 following a substantive donation from Andrew Carnegie himself, which is what we know as the Northwest Room right now. We currently have about 109 FTE. That's what we're budgeted for. It's not exactly what's filled today. And we are currently only open to the public 40 hours per week, Tuesday through Saturday. All of our branches operate on the same schedule. So every location is open at those same eight hours every day. And our operating budget runs about $18 million per year. As you know, very well know, we are funded through the city's general fund. That is where really 98% of our budget currently comes from in terms of running our library services. Let's see. And just to sort of talk about where we sit, I don't know if you all get this question, but I get the question a lot when people think about it as, are you a department of the city, or what's the relationship? And I often respond that we are family. I think that's maybe the easiest way to sort of describe it. So of course, we are our own separate legal entity. We have our own board of trustees that is nominated by our mayor. And we have our own strategic plan. But we are really proud of the partnership work that we get to do. with the city of Tacoma. I love that for the 2035 plan that we're prominently placed in placemaking and experiences. I think it is the perfect way to sort of describe how all of our sort of priorities really do advance the goals that we have for making Tacoma an awesome place to live and to work and to play and to be. Our partnerships with departments like Tacoma Creates and the Arts and Cultural Vitality Division, I think really allow us to really be dialed into how it is that we provide hyper locally curated programs and experiences where residents see themselves, their stories, their identities reflected in them. We're also really proud to be, I think, one engine of economic development. You know, we are an anchor in several business districts throughout the city. And I'm really proud of the ways that we've been able to experiment and innovate for our city through projects like our community archive center and our community hub. So for today, I kind of wanted to just give you some updates and hopefully leave a lot of time for discussion because there's lots of things we could talk about. But this last year, we did do a refresh of our strategic plan, and I wanted to make sure you all got a chance to hear what it is that we did and learned kind of through that process. I also wanted to make sure that you're aware of sort of the trends and the challenges that we're facing for all of our major lines of business, which are really our collections, our buildings, and our programs and services. There's a lot kind of going on within each of those areas, and just wanted to make sure you were dialed into those things and then hopefully have a chance to talk about What's going to happen for the future of our libraries? Let's see. I think there is a chat, but I won't worry about that. So our 2025 strategic plan kind of wrapped up. You may recall that we launched this strategic plan right in 2020, right on the precipice of the pandemic. While it wasn't the library's first strategic plan, I think we would say that it was our first ever community-led strategic plan to really understand what our community needed. We really focused on asking the community not specifically what they needed from the library, but what they needed. Because I think libraries in the 21st century are really focused on all of the different ways that we can serve residents, not just in the ways that they imagine we can serve them. So by taking into consideration the gap between what our community needed and the resources we had, we really strove to turn outward, to develop strong relationships to expand our services within our current capacity, not only to carry out our mission, but frankly, to kind of bring our library into the 21st century. In some of our future slides, I'll show you sort of what sort of physical development has really looked like. And I think in a lot of our libraries, you can feel that we were overdue for some transformation. And I think particularly in the strategic plan, a lot of our energy really went into the reimagined main library, which I'll talk about kind of in our next slide. But you can also see that sort of journey of becoming more modern in our award-winning approaches to archives and special collections. in launching our library social work program, in diversifying our collections, not only in terms of languages that are offered, but also in the types of things that you can now expect to check out from the library. It's really been great. I also think that there's no way to talk about this particular time period without naming the pandemic. Like all services at the city, every industry, I think the pandemic certainly changed us forever. And I think while our core services in some ways have kind of resembled the before times, like we still lend books and we still offer story times and computer access, we did have to adapt to all of the changing conditions, the rapidly changing conditions that happen and the persistent sort of, I think, socioeconomic conditions that are making more and more people vulnerable, coupled with the continued erosion of our local social safety net, meaning that we're having to step into more providing than we ever had before. So really, whether or not it was in our strategic plan, we really did need to change our approach to services to meet the reality that most Tacomans are grappling with and hopefully put us in a better position for 2025. So of course, the main library refresh. I know every single one of you has been to this library, because I've seen you there. So I don't have to tell you all of the great things about it. But I will say that this was a necessary investment. And in many ways, it was a modest investment. So with just $8 million, we put into this 90,000 square foot building that hadn't been touched since the 1990s. And we really created a space that resonates with so many of the different needs that Tacomans have. that's renting a tool from the tool library in the community hub or participating in community court on Thursdays or using one of our study rooms because it's the only library in our city that actually has study rooms. It's a space that's designed for all types of users and all types of learners of all ages. joy for me is actually seeing how much young people are hanging out at the library. I know people are like, oh, the library isn't cool. But actually, this library is really cool. And I see the young people there. They have taken over the teen area. They're gaming there every day. They're in there on the weekends using our maker space. And I think that that just says something. And so with just such a modest investment that just scratched the surface of what people can expect from their library, we've seen just an incredible return and an incredible transformation. Going into our strategic plan refresh, so we wanted to, as we set about the next five years, I think it was clear to us that things like our mission, our commitment to being radically welcoming, our goal areas, they were still resonant with residents, and that was really clear to us just in the ongoing conversations we have with people. But what we really needed to do was to reset I think what our principal goals over the next five years were. We're going to be considering the conditions that are changing. We did follow, we did not use a consultant this time. We did this in-house in the spirit of being efficient, operational excellence and all. But we did sort of follow the template that our consultants had used the last time with the one change of making sure that we offered more low barrier opportunities for engaging, which is where our book buddy ballots sort of came from. But really, what we wanted to do was to make sure, are we heading in the right direction? And what are the specific things that we can hone in on for the next five years? And what was interesting is that the results of that refresh showed that the things that we were not able to accomplish the first time were still the main priorities for our public. First and foremost was more hours and more access at current locations. That is by far the number one thing that people are asking for in our last strategic plan. We had invested in a level of service study to help us understand where it is that we should go if and when we're able to offer those hours. But we obviously have not yet been able to deliver on that increased access. There is definitely high demand for more access to our collections. I have a bunch of slides dedicated to what's happening with collections. So while we've been really creative with what we have and making it work, we are not keeping up with demand locally or, frankly, industry standards. when it comes to that. And then, of course, improved facilities, which I think the interest in this really seemed to increase, I think, because people have seen what's possible with the main library. And they see what it is that they want in their neighborhood libraries and not always having to come downtown. The other thing that we really wanted to focus on for this refresh, and this was actually based on feedback from my trustees and actually from this council, which is that we needed a stronger commitment to telling our story and having the data to back that up. So we really spent a lot of time thinking about, within each priority, what are the things that we can measure and we can benchmark to make sure that we can tell a strong, not just feel-good stories, because I have a ton of feel-good stories in my pocket of the transformational work that we do, but to actually really say, this is the impact, and this is the reach that we're having with the resources we have. So that's been a really big focus, is making sure that our data and the story that we're telling matches the impact it is that we know that we have. This is just a snapshot of our performance from last year. These are sort of what I would say are our core metrics. They're not necessarily specific to any particular priority, but they are the things that most national libraries also kind of measure about themselves. What's interesting about 2025 is this is actually the first year that all of eight locations were open. Maine reopened just in February sort of last year, so that was really helpful, although our Wheelock branch was closed for three months. And interestingly enough, they have the highest circulation checkout, and they also have the highest door count of all of our locations. So it'll be interesting to look at 2026. But I think 2025, for a lot of us libraries, really represents what our new normal is post-pandemic. really significant increases in door count, particularly from 24 to 25. And I don't think that's just due to main library being open. I think that is reflecting some of the needs that people have. The other place where we've seen really exponential growth is actually computer usage and Wi-Fi usage. Those are growing in really big numbers. And we just know that people are having to come to the library because they're relying on us in different ways. Talking to patrons, sometimes when they're having to make difficult economic decisions at home, things like having a personal device or having home internet, those are some of the first things to go. And so then they come increasingly to us because they're relying on us for all of those basic needs. To put some of what that usage looks like maybe in a little bit more of a local context, I will tell you that we typically have a line of anywhere from 25 to 70 people waiting to come into Main Library every day that we open. When we did a heat map of our opening hours, Main on average has about 175 people in the building within the first hour that we're open. So people are really coming to us in great numbers because of what we have to offer and because of the needs that are out there. I want to talk about books a little bit, because I don't think that you can possibly talk about libraries and not talk about books. I think when people think libraries, it's books and buildings, right? I thought it would be fun to just kind of put our business in some financial context. So what I really wanted to do was a Jeopardy moment and see if you all could guess how many physical items we had. But that seemed too hard. So anyways, we have about 374,000 physical items across all eight of our locations. We have 64,000 digital e-books. And then we also offer a little bit over 75 online resources. So when you go back to our previous slide, and we're looking at our in-person checkouts and our digital checkouts, you can see, if you were to do some really simple math, every item in our collection maybe checks out between three or four times physically. But our digital items are checking out probably nine to 10 times per item. And you'll see this sort of in some of the future slides that I put together as well. And our physical collection is not just books anymore. Books are the biggest part. There is no doubt about that. But we've really leaned into how is it that we can provide all of the kinds of things that people would need. With the help of our foundation, we purchased some podcast kits that people can now check out so that they can do their own citizen journalism. We have Wi-Fi hotspots, which is a demand that we'll never, I think, be able to keep up with. And I checked last week. We had about 35 hotspots, and we had a line of, I think, almost 60 people waiting for those hotspots to take them home. We offer museum passes, video games. One really cool thing is that we partnered with the American Heart Association this year. And not only can you bring home a blood pressure monitor to keep an eye on your health, but we have a kit that just stays in the branch. So if you ever just wanted to or needed to check your blood pressure, you could just stop into a branch and check out a kit for a few minutes and see kind of how you're doing. And we are trying our best to keep up with the demand for the digital materials, the e-books, the e-audiobooks, et cetera. I'll talk a little bit more about that in the next slide here. Some of you have heard me talk about this before, but I think it just continues to bear saying. Like everything, books have gotten really expensive. And maybe that shouldn't be surprising, because everything really does feel expensive right now. For us, we are really facing some tremendous economic headwinds with one of the most important parts of our business, which is the book. For many years, we've known that the e-book market is a really, really challenging one. One of the differences between when we procure e-items versus when we procure physical items is when we buy a physical item, we own it. So we get to decide, like, this is too dirty to check out anymore, or we're going to check this out for years to come. We own it, and we make those decisions. We have those rights. the e-content that we have, we lease it, which means that this really small set of publishers are kind of setting the conditions in which we can make this available to our public. People are often shocked that while you might pay $20 for a book like Yesteryear or a top trending book, we're sometimes paying $80 a license per person to check that out. We are also being forced to, at times, repurchase those licenses six months in. And if you didn't know, you can't really damage an e-book. You can't get it wet. You can't get crumbs in it. There's nothing wrong. But the market is such that they're able to get away with what I would say is unhinged pricing models that are completely unsustainable for all kinds of libraries, but especially public libraries, to be able to meaningfully manage. And we do know that making books available through libraries is good for book industry, right? We don't take away from author sales. Oftentimes we are contributing to the success of authors. So it's really challenging. The other thing that's really challenging is books themselves are also really getting more expensive. On average, we've seen those costs go up about 5% per year for just the regular ones that we're paying for. Last year, and the thing is that there's only a small number of book suppliers who provide books to libraries because oftentimes we're relying on those suppliers to do some of the like the processing kind of for us. They're giving us the records so we can easily put them into our catalog, things like that. And last year, Baker and Taylor, which has been like like, an anchor institution for book suppliers closed suddenly. And so we're now down to, like, a handful of, really, suppliers who can do this. So in both of these areas, we're really seeing less competition, right, because there's fewer and fewer places that are offering this, which is also sort of adding some economic pressure to this environment. And then I won't go into it, but AI is like another really big, sort of, thing, I guess, amidst this. And we're seeing a lot more content coming out that is being generated by A and is creating a lot of complexity for us to manage. So just wanting you to know, the business of books is not cheap. by any stretch of the imagination. And we're really struggling to keep up. So this slide represents a couple of different data points. In the bar graph at the bottom, the green is our physical circulation. And so kind of similar to actually libraries nationally. Most libraries nationally are seeing generally a plateauing or a slight decline in physical circulation. That's kind of been the norm. Our digital circulation, which is the pink, is the one that's growing. So again, in 23, we were hovering above 400,000 circs, and now we're over 600,000. And then that line at the top, the pink line, is our budget. And the thing that I will explain with our budget is that we actually haven't increased our circulation budget since the late 90s. In the biennium prior to the 23-24 biennium, we got some one-time dollars to launch our world languages collection. And so that decreased line you're seeing is actually our spend down into the last biennium of those world languages dollars. But really, we are kind of back at sort of that standard $1.2 million that we have to be able to provide digital materials, physical materials, electronic resources that we know a lot of folks and families kind of rely on. And those dollars, as you know, they just don't go kind of as far as they used to. One thing that shocks people when I tell them about this is that we actually now spend more than 50% of our collection budget on electronic materials. That's how expensive it has become for us, right? So just to be able to kind of keep up, I would not even say we're not keeping up with demand. It's to make sure that we're providing the offer at minimum because it is just an expectation of that we have this. The American Library Association, which helps to kind of set benchmarks for these kind of things for our industry, says that libraries should strive to spend probably between 10% and 12% of their budget on collection. And for us, it does hover at about 6%, which doesn't include salaries or anything like that. But we are really behind the curve in terms of being able to invest in the things that people need and want. And they keep telling us they want it. We have tried to be responsible stewards of these collections. So you may or may not be familiar with a service called Hoopla. It was a very dreamy e-book service, because you could just check out your book or your audio book right at point of coming across that title, like citizenship or whatever. But they had a very cost prohibitive model that was pay per use. And even when we tried to say, hey, we're going to maybe limit some checkouts to like five per month or anything like that, those costs were rising. I think they were close to almost, we were spending almost a quarter of a million dollars on Hoopla. And we just sort of realized that it was going to only keep growing. And it was going to be at the expense of, really frankly, all the rest of our collection. So we did have to let go of that service. And we redirected some of those dollars to Libby and other providers. That was hard for the public. I cannot go to any of my school functions for my child without a parent asking me about hoopla. So it was a tough decision. We also have to retire sometimes our legacy collections. This is really hard for the public to understand. I think they want us to hold on to, there's a way in which the whole library is an archive, I think, for people when that's not really true. But we realized that, again, we were investing in a legacy media that actually wasn't reaching sort of a lot of people. And we had an opportunity to make room both physically and financially for the kinds of collections that are seeing a lot of traction, such as our Lucky Day collection, our video games collection, and our world languages. So I just wanted to talk about our buildings a little bit since we were talking about the collection. I just want to point out that one of the things I adore about this slide is actually every icon is architectural representation of our neighborhood libraries. So they are very specific to our libraries here. And I think that's a very Tacoma thing, because we are not a cookie cutter library system. Even though we are a one city library system, every location really is embedded in their neighborhood and a reflection of the values, the culture, the vibes, and the character of those neighborhoods. So I really love the representation in this way. And I have two views of this, actually, for you to see. But I just really wanted you to see that, really, the 20th century was like a very library century. We went from having just one building in 1903. We actually ended with 10 locations, because our MLK and our Swan Creek locations were built with the last bond measure that we had in 1989. And then you kind of see very starkly, as we head into this century, that we went from sort of this prosperity and abundance. Oh, the other thing that isn't on here is we had a bookmobile. From 1940 to 1960, we had a bookmobile, which I wish we still had, because I think I could just, with the hills and the access, it would just be so perfect. Anyways, we briefly had a bookmobile. But you can see, as we get into the 21st century, it's sort of like a sharp turn. And I think we all know this happened for a number of reasons. Initiative 747. certainly has had an impact on our local budgets. We have the economic recession of 2010 that led to those closures. And really, since then, you've seen this sort of era of prosperity really kind of followed by this era of less and less resourcing and funding and access and a reduction in hours and capacity. This is sort of another view of this. And I'm sorry that the lettering is perhaps not that easy to read. But the green is basically when all of the libraries opened. The blue is the last time buildings were remodeled. You'll note that that's all in the last century, with the exception of Main. We have our closures and then, of course, the Main Library remodel. But I think I bring this up because it's actually been an incredibly long time that these buildings have been standing, and I know it's deferred maintenance is a common conversation with all of you. But knowing that we are receiving over half a million people every year through these doors, and it is becoming increasingly less safe to welcome people because we're not able to keep up with the needs that these buildings have is a real challenge for us. So just to talk to you a little bit about how our building maintenance works, we do not have a dedicated capital budget. And that is a real challenge. So basically, through our budgeting, we generally set aside about $100,000 in maintenance for our buildings. We feel really grateful for being able to make the request for REIT dollars from when we have substantive projects. So we were able to replace the HVACs at our Wheelock Swayze and Fernhill libraries this last year due to REIT dollars. But other times when we have these massive equipment fails that come up, we end up having to find creative ways of using our vacancy savings to be able to manage those. For example, one of our air handlers on the main library is dying. And the only way that we're going to be able to fund that replacement is through looking at our at our vacancy savings that we have. And again, I know that our friends at police and fire and the muni, I mean, we are not, and TBE, I know that we are not alone in our deferred maintenance woes and needs. So I certainly understand that. And we also are not alone because we know libraries across the country are dealing with this. But it's a challenge. One of the things my finance manager shared with me is that we spend more insuring our buildings than we do maintaining them. We spend twice as much money. On that and that is I think a very that's sad and that's not how frankly I think it it should be Kind of a thing This is just an example of sort of what those those different maintenance that can look like so we have soffit damage We have sidewalk hazards We have that's our communications office where they get the runoff from the air handler that's collecting next to their desk and You know, it's you know, and this is again like this is a place where we welcome children and families and vulnerable people and the elderly sort of every day. Back in 2024, we commissioned McKinstry to do a facilities condition assessment across all eight of our locations. All eight of our locations have what we know are outdated equipment in just the basic, like this isn't even like carpet or nice paint or, you know, anything like that. This is in terms of like the electrical, the fire system, you know, like all of that. At the time in 2024, they estimated that deferred maintenance to be in a ballpark of between $10 and $15 million for all eight locations. I'm guessing that that number has probably close to doubled by now, given how expensive everything has gotten, and also because we haven't really had a lot of chance to invest in some of the things that kind of need investing in. I don't want to always be so negative, so I did want to share we do have some positive news. And I think this is, again, like a testament to, I think, sort of public attitude about libraries. We got an unsolicited anonymous donor who dedicated $270,000 with the simple request of saying, can you please make Swayze look better? Swayze, if you don't know, is our West End library up on Sixth Avenue. And so with that mini investment, we are working with AHBL to address some of the structural issues. We have already, if you've driven on 6th Avenue, you might actually see the building because all the dead trees have been removed. So that's cool. And the vegetation is cut back. There's been some, we've done some exterior stucco repairs. But really the majority of these, the majority of this money is going to basics. For example, we're going to be replacing most of the windows of the building because they are all rusted through. And they've needed to be replaced actually for some time. We're going to be updating our landscaping right now. All of the water runs into the building. We're going to update the landscaping so it doesn't run into the building kind of a thing. We'll do some repaving. But we are sort of hoping to make that entrance a little bit more joyful and let people know that there's a library inside. We have found about $200,000 of our own money that we're matching to this so we can make some modest improvements to the interior as well. There will be sort of a short closure this fall to get this work done. Again, we were so grateful. This was just so lovely to really just literally receive a phone call and say, we just want to help the library. And I think it's a testament to how people feel about the services that we offer. I get this question a lot, which is, do people really go to the library anymore? Do we really need it with the internet and now AI and all of this? Actually, I think much to the surprise of my whole industry, we are back in business. I mean, people are coming through our doors. Just this last year, we saw an explosive growth in in-person visits at 15%. We saw over a 30% increase in our meeting room reservations. Actually, I was looking at our numbers this year, and we offer typically about a little over 3,000 programs a year that we sponsor and provide. And we've had over 4,200 room reservations just in the first half of this year. So people are coming to the library for a lot of different reasons. And it's showing. This is just another way to represent that significant growth that we're seeing, just some people walking through the doors. And I think it's for, again, all kinds of reasons, whether it's people have more needs and they're realizing that the library can meet that need. I think we've done a great job of matching our services to all of the different ways that people might need or want to use a library. I think the other thing we're noticing, too, And I think this is probably a Tacoma thing as well. I think after the pandemic, people really want to be together in person. I think people are really craving sort of that connection. And I think we're just one of those places where people know that they can be with their neighbors, they can be with other people. And we play an important role in that. And then just programs and services. Again, this is another area that there's been great growth nationally and locally. I think that this is a really great way that, again, we fit into that placemaking. Going back to that question of, do people still come to the library? I mean, the reference desk is not the desk that it once was, certainly not when I was a youth. anything like that. But I think one of the things that I have seen and observed is that while people may not come to the desk and ask for that same reference question, I think the interest in learning is social. And people are wanting to come to programs to learn things together. I think people no longer want to do their learning, their growth, or these things in isolation anymore. And I think that's showing in the numbers that we're seeing for programming. One of the things we're so grateful for is that even though This is another budget that really hasn't grown in this century. We have an incredibly modest budget for the events that we do offer. But we're really grateful for, again, our partnership with Tacoma Creates. Due to them, actually, the majority of our adult programming really comes from that. It's a really smart partnership. When I talk to my colleagues across the country, none of them really have a partnership quite like the one that we have. It's exceptional, sort of what it is that we're able to do. And we're also just so grateful for all of the partners who have decided to embed their services in the library. So whether that's Tacoma Pro Bono, Tacoma Needle Exchange, the Rise Brotherhood. Thanks to Council Member Rumbaugh, we have St. Leo's that's now feeding people sort of in our library. So again, just really We're able to do this. We don't do this in isolation. We are doing this really in deep partnership with community. And it's been exciting to see the response to that. And then finally, just wanting to talk a little bit about literacy. This was inspired by Councilmember Hines coming to a trustee meeting a few months ago, and we talked about how sometimes we forget to talk about the basics. I think because libraries have had to adapt really so much to all of the different things that are walking through our doors and all of the different needs, I think sometimes I even forget to talk to people about our bread and butter business is that we promote literacy. We promote literacy for sort of really our youngest learners. You all have probably seen some of the national headlines recently about how reading for pleasure is plummeting and people are sort of wondering in this era of AI what's gonna happen to reading when this generation has all the answers at their fingertips. the research remains really clear, which is that students who not only read but actually have a love of reading, they thrive. They do better academically, and they have better skills when it comes to interpretation, when it comes to resilience, when it comes to synthesis, because reading is really just so critical to building muscles we need to To do anything, we can hold conflict. We can have curiosity. We can ask questions. We can imagine. We can do so many things when we read. And with the resources that we have, we try to do everything we can to support our youngest people, whether that's our Pathway Partnership with Tacoma Public Schools, our youth librarians. All five of them visit all 64 locations, 64 TPS locations throughout the year, oftentimes more than once. And we do our best to really try to embed those literacy supports in organizations throughout the city. So really important, really important stuff. And then not only reading literacy, but digital literacy is also a huge thing that we provide. So I'm just going to keep telling you this, seeing a 40% increase in the usage of our PCs and Wi-Fi just between 2024 and 2025. It actually blew me away. I didn't realize that the need had grown that much or that we were really filling that gap. And we're really one of the few places where someone can sit next to you and teach you how to use a mouse for the first time, can help you sign up for that first email account or navigate Indeed, all the way through answering complex questions about how can you use AI to actually get legitimate information or at least check where the information is coming from. And then even further, we're exposing people to the technology that I think particularly future generations are going to have to really understand. So you can learn how to make content and media in our digital media lab. You can learn to engrave things, kids teens and adults are learning robotics. They're learning how to 3D print all in our Maker Lab. So really being able to offer that full span of both access and literacy for all ages is going to continue to be just such a core part of what we do. One of the headwinds we're certainly facing here is that part of how we fund our public computing for the public to use. is through a program called E-Rate, which right now the FCC is considering whether or not that is going to be a program that continues for schools and libraries to be able to get that funding reimbursement. So again, in all of these core areas of the things that we're meant and need to deliver on, we just continue to have interesting challenges in front of us. So just to wrap up on what we're thinking about for the future of our library services, it's clear to us what our priorities are. They kind of stayed the same from our engagement with the public. We're really striving towards open hours. I don't have a big win in this, but I have a mini win I can share, which is that we've often gotten complaints around how our holiday schedules are administered, where, for example, for this upcoming Labor Day, With the holiday observed on the Monday, our branches close on the Saturday. Next year, we will actually be able to be open those Saturdays before the Monday holidays. So four extra days a year, it's not nothing. But it's something, just kind of moving in that direction. We do need more supports, I think, to figure out how it is that we're going to have our collection kind of keep up with the interests and demands of the region. We know that the after-school environment in Tacoma is changing and that there's less support there. And frankly, we are seeing young people come to the library in droves. My delight, not everyone is delighted to have the tween takeover of the library. So we're really trying to figure out how it is for our spaces that, again, weren't really designed to be hangout spaces for young people, how it is that we can adapt and be that safe after school. environment that's really needed right now and kind of continuing to figure out how we can get to the facility upgrades and whatnot. As far as next steps, we are in the process of hiring a facilities manager who we are going to task with helping put together a facilities plan. So we have that facilities condition assessment. And our next, I think, responsibility is to really say, this is how we're going to execute on making sure that we can make sure that we maintain and develop the facilities that we have for future use. You all know that we've been exploring the potential of a future library levy. We do not have our own levying authority, so we would be relying on the city's levy authority potentially for a levy that's structured similarly to other municipal libraries in the state where it augments our existing funding and allows us to sort of stabilize what it is that we can expect from the general fund to support libraries. And we are continuing to figure out how to grow our library foundation. Our library foundation remains an all-volunteer board. They've been able to consistently fundraise anywhere between $10,000 to $25,000 sort of a year through that volunteer board. They fundraised a little bit more for our main reopening to support our children's area. We were very grateful for their partnership. We wouldn't have been able to receive the donation for Swayze if they hadn't been sort of around to help receive the funds in the way that they were sort of being given to us. But I would really like to see them move into the next phase of their development and have more operational support so that they can be the partner that we're going to need them to be kind of in the coming years. This is not on the slide, but I did want to take a moment to also acknowledge that Trustee Cobb and President Santiago are actually also going to be ending their terms sort of at the end of this year, which is sort of extraordinary. The leadership that you've shown throughout these last five years has been tremendous, and I think it deserves to be just fully recognized. It's incredible. And we're also going to be recruiting for two new members at the end of this month. So I hope that you all will think about your constituents and the folks you know so that we can get two new incredible trustees. You can never replace the ones that we have, but hopefully just kind of continue growing us. I will look to my trustees and say, did I miss anything? Or do you want to add anything? No? OK. That concludes. my library stuff for you.

Thank you so much. Very exciting stuff indeed. And thank you to our library board members as well. Any questions or comments from the city council? Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you so much for the presentation. Appreciate all of your volunteer work. And one of my questions is, do you have any As you develop the facilities master plan, do you guys have any preliminary cost estimates of what it would take to kind of, what would it look like? So it's like, yeah, end state, it would be, you know, everything fixed, right?

Oh, do we know how much it would cost for everything to be fixed?

Yeah.

At this point, I don't, I mean, I know it is certainly more than $15 million. I mean, I think we would look at that condition assessment that we did with McKinstry a few years ago as like a baseline. But again, that was really looking at sort of the nuts and bolts of the building, like the infrastructure. What I would want to layer into that facilities plan is some of the things that we really prioritized in the main library refresh, which is what is the user experience when people come in. I think right now people really appreciate at Maine that there's designated areas for teens versus the adults. They're not running into each other as much. Kids can be on their own computer. and parents don't have to worry about the adult content that people are maybe looking at right next door, that they may not want to be mixing together. So I'd really love to actually get a sense of, how do we add more power outlets? That's a huge thing right now. There's a lot of tripping hazards that happen in most of our locations, because everyone is trying to charge their phone or their computer or whatever it is. More than $15 million is my answer to your question.

Totally, yeah. And part of the reason why I ask is I think about when I'm thinking about facilities maintenance, it's difficult to do it all at once. And so once you kind of have a dollar amount in mind, you can start plugging away at the different critical needs and assessing, OK, this HVAC system is in critical need of replacement. So that might be a little bit higher on the priority list than then working our way through that list. Eventually you make your way through that list, and hopefully by then everything's done, but then you kind of cycle back to, yeah, just because of long-term planning, yeah.

For sure. And I don't think that we've ever really, to the best of my knowledge, and I will say that I'm not sure if my knowledge is complete, I'm not sure that we've ever had a master facilities plan. So I think even just getting into the habit of knowing, okay, this is what we're going to do for the night, and having that cyclical, sort of attention to the facilities is the thing that I'm trying to build. Because I think we've built all of these libraries in the 20th century. And now we're like, oh my god. We've got to replace this stuff.

Absolutely. Well, again, I appreciate all the work and all the programming. We do have some great libraries out there, so I'm hoping anybody out there, if you haven't had a chance to visit, definitely do. I really love the main library updates. I've been there quite a few times since it's opened, so I'm really happy about that. And I love all the 3D printing as well, which is really cool. I've been meaning to use it, actually.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Deputy Mayor. Council Member Diaz.

Thank you. And thank you to our library directors for all the work you guys do. I appreciate you all being here. and joining our director for the update. It's really helpful and nice to see you all. I was wondering, I guess I had one question, and then just some comments, is I'm wondering why the air handler wasn't handled in the big main library update. You can speak to that.

So when we originally planned sort of the main library project, we hadn't yet done the McKinstry study. So we learned a little bit more about what the condition of that building was afterwards. We started the main library project. I think our original budget was closer to $5 million. We got $2 million from the state. We got $2 million from the city of Tacoma that matched it. And we used some vacancy savings. And I don't think that with the pot of money that we had, we could really quite do the level of updates that we needed to.

And that all happened, I think, mostly before I was on council. So it was a genuine, like, how did that happen? Because I wasn't here right now. And I think I got to be here for the grand opening, right? I got to be here for the fun stuff. But not where those decisions were made and handled. So I was just curious.

We also have, I would also say, like, our facility staff, we have a really small team. And they do a really good job of, I think, trying to, get the most out of every piece of equipment. And it wasn't on their radar that it was going to fail in the way that it did when it did.

Okay, let's get to know I actually really appreciate I appreciate the whole update But really having that examples of our deferred maintenance. I think is really critical It's gross to have to share some a bucket of nasty water for people to sort of see that we are Libraries are in a state, but I think it's also really impactful and helpful that y'all do that. I It's always nice to have a compliment sandwich, but it is important to know where we're at. I think of it a lot from the mind frame of not just the public going there, but all the workers who are there working, the library staff who's doing the hard soul work of being in the library, and then you're sitting next to a bucket of gross. I think about that a lot. And I think that gets me to the place of I'm interested. I'm always interested in what more we can do to help support. I think the big thing that I hear when I hear about the library or hear updates or think about the library is In my mind, Tacoma Public Library is the biggest way that the city proper of Tacoma funds children and families, like functionally in our government, besides obviously utilities. I think it's because you are a board similar to the TPU board. I think you... in my mind or in the same regard, but I don't think necessarily in the public's. But you're all the thing and the place where people can go to just be. It's one of the last free spaces that people can get into. So I would love to see what we can do to support this future levy to get us to where We can get to the seven days a week open. I think the hours is really critical in getting those buildings up to par. So if we have the staffing to run them seven days a week, that they could actually be open seven days a week, right? So in my mind, it's both pieces. It's that ongoing maintenance capital, but also the people end of it. I would love your support. I'm looking forward to how we can help that. And I always have to tell you how much I need a Hilltop Library and the Eastside Library. So he's my piece of how we get that funding. I think it's going to be critical to getting us back a Hilltop Library.

That's right.

Thank you. Absolutely.

I had a thought and it just flew out of my head. It'll come back.

I'll give you an opportunity. Okay. Council Member Walker.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for all of this information. There's so many things I look forward to hearing more, learning more in the future. I want to focus a little bit on slides 15 and 16, the buildings. First of all, the graphics are awesome to the individuals. And really appreciate knowing the timeline of all of those buildings. And, you know, what a joy to have historic buildings in this city. And I know they are beautiful and they cost a lot of money. And we have a lot of pride in them, so we want to keep them going. Absolutely. appreciate those timelines. I have a couple comments. I do want to also ditto what Council Member Diaz has said about how we provide to youth in our city, and I think that that's spot on, the way you phrased that, in terms of making sure our libraries are open. I'm super appreciative of the four extra days for the long weekends. And I think most of my comments are actually directed towards general government, so probably deputy city manager. But there's so many crossovers here in conversations, and I know you have a team... That's thinking about and working on grants and state budget asks and we have our state agenda. So I just want to understand where those conversations are crossing over so that we can make sure we're as supportive. And the one other very specific niche thing that I was thinking about is the work in the climate action plan around decarbonization. And I know a bunch of the work at Maine is part of that and that makes it more eligible for more grants. So how can we help support that?

Yeah, I am working with our counterparts in the city to sort of figure out how I could get out in front of some of the legislative asks. You may or may not know that the main library is, I think, one of the biggest carbon emitters in the city. We're not the biggest. But that boiler is really, really old and really emits things. But it would take a substantive investment both to study what it would take to sort of replace that system and then actually be able to do it. But I am trying to get more dialed into sort of the state legislative and what dollars are potentially out there beyond the city to be able to make some of those investments. OK. Great. Does that make sense?

So maybe we can pull you in when we have our legislative agenda meeting. I don't know what that is, but just thinking out loud. And I think that somebody will correct me if I'm wrong. We just got a big grant for the number one carbon emitter. So we're ready to fund the next one.

Yes. And the sustainability office recently reached out to my leadership team to sort of talk about, OK, how do we start thinking about what we can do for the main library? So we're trying to get dialed in and figure out what resources are out there. We do currently have one of the climate action grants that's actually studying the feasibility of the main library to be a solar hub. If there were ever some sort of catastrophe in the city, that we would be able to provide that sort of emergency power. So that'll be also another interesting layer of information as we look at how we address this. Awesome.

Yeah, I think some of those leveraging the different departments we have with the library I think is the way we get some of these things done anyway. And then also just a note for our government Advocacy team and our federal agenda on those digital costs and I would be really curious. I mean the offline We don't talk about it now But just what the efforts are at a national level to figure out how we bring those down because as you said This is not just a Tacoma problem and it's not a year. That's not sustainable Yeah, so figuring out how we can add that into our federal agenda as well as you know We all go to DC in March. So yeah, but give us the talking points.

We can Yeah, great. We could nerd out about it for sure. Mm-hmm.

And then the left. Oh, yeah, good. Oh

I don't know. Is E-Rate also something to add to that list for federal advocacy?

E-Rate is the program where we get a reimbursement for the public internet that we offer. So it's offered to schools and public libraries and funds a majority of our public computing infrastructure. And it's currently, the FCC is reevaluating the program for the first time in decades. Good. Okay, thank you.

And then the last thing, this is definitely a question for you, Allison, is when are we talking about the facilities plan overall? We did all that work and that study two years ago, and then are we getting, is that coming back to us at some point? Because this is a piece of that, but I feel like a very substantial piece of it.

Yeah, Council Member Walker, I'll commit to you that it's coming back. I don't know the date, so I'll have to follow up with you on the date.

Great. Well, thank you so much for all the information and all the things that you're doing. I always learn more and it makes me excited to get more involved.

Thank you.

Council Member Hines. Thank you, Mayor Ibsen. It's great to see the trustees here today. It takes me back to a few years ago when I was on the board myself. I just wanted to say a couple, I'll take a couple comments and have questions. I'm really excited about all the partnerships you all have established. I think that was something when I was on the board of trustees years ago, we had talked about, you know, what does it look, you know, We have these spaces. People want to use the spaces. They want access to low-cost or free spaces. And how are we being a good community partner on that beyond just simply we have a space you can come into? And so I think the main library is a really good example of that. Do you have any other kind of insights in other areas partnerships like that in other branches? I mean, we don't have capacity in a lot of other branches for that beyond the meeting rooms. Is that something else you all have looked at?

I think that we're pretty deeply embedded. I mean, one of the partnerships that we brought on this last year that I was really excited about is we tripled the capacity of our social work program by partnering with the University of Washington. So we now bring in social work students who we sort of mentor in social work. And then we're able to sort of expand our reach sort of out into the community in that way. Like I said, many organizations really welcome the opportunity to either come in and table with us and meet patrons where they are to provide those resources. And we also do our best to just do a ton of outreach and make sure that we're not only asking people to walk through our doors, but meeting people out in the community at the spaces that they're hanging out in.

I mean, I don't know if you've done this, but a broader question as we start talking to the public about how important the library is is not just what you all do, but how much you're able to leverage the community. Because I think if you could probably do some math on how much is the Tree Foundation, Right 253, the Tool Library, and Remakery saving in rent costs, right? Because they're not paying you the full what they pay for a commercial space. Sure. So there's those benefits. There's the benefits you're providing to the, social work program. So that might be something to be thinking about the broader kind of, you don't want to say economic impact, but economic social impact that the library is having beyond just the dollars that we as a city invest or that you are spending.

I think we work really smartly. I think you can see that in every dollar that we spend. I mean really our budget has not grown substantively over the years and in the areas that we deliver for the public yet we've continued to increase the amount and the quality of services that we offer. And I think that's a testament to how well we work with our partners to make sure that we work in a smart way.

Yeah.

No, I think it's a really good example and definitely a place of growth since when I was on the board till now that your trustees and you all have done a wonderful job with. Great to see the collection and the amount of circulation going up. Hoopla was always an issue, even when I was on the board where we have, it was Overdrive, now it's Libby. We had where we bought a certain number of materials that then had to be rotated through. And then you had overdrive, which was a pay per subscription. And I was always concerned about that taking off, right? Because we had no control over how much that was going to cost us.

And you couldn't predict how many users were going to start up, right? Yeah, you couldn't predict.

I mean, you kind of take a guess, but if... While a valuable service to the public, I do see that was a real challenge and something we think about investing in kind of liberty and digital resources.

And we do have a lot of partners who rely. I mean, Tacoma Public Schools relies on all of those e-resources that we offer, right? Like resourceoftutor.com. We are the premier online support for sort of our students in that way. It's not just the users we're trying to reach, but we really are kind of doing it for everyone.

Something you didn't talk about, but I know this is a recent policy change, at least since I left the trustees board, was we got rid of late fees and fines for books. We sure did. Do you want to talk a little bit about, Are people still returning their materials? Do we see a big loss? I mean, how has that worked out for us?

There's no books on the shelves anymore. They're just keeping them. Yeah. No, just kidding.

I have some overdue books in my house right now that I need to get back to the library. So I do understand that part.

No, it's actually been wildly successful. I think this has been really, this is one of the few things I think that's been relatively well studied, which is that the amount of money that we were collecting in fines really wasn't paying for the amount of staff time that we were putting into having to manage the program. And rather than create sort of more barriers to access for people who might feel a sense of shame or, I mean, I feel ashamed when my books are late and I have to go in every day. And so anyways, we just wanted to make sure that people always knew that they were welcome at the library. It was a pretty negligible amount of money to waive for the return on the number of people who kind of continue to come back. And then every once in a while, you hear a wild library story of an item from 1975 finally being returned. And we welcome that, too.

It's not quite as valuable as it was in 1975. That's right. No, I mean, I think that probably is another piece of the overall budgeting conversation we can't neglect here, which there used to be a revenue stream that was from fees and fines. While it was small, it was there. And now that is not there anymore. So I mean, it's another way we're it's impacting kind of your overall budget.

The thing that our fines were mostly impacting is they were providing some amount of, I think, modest support for our summer reading program. Our summer reading program predominantly was funded through fines as well as through our book sale. We've been able to make it work kind of a thing. Our book sale is continuing to also decline, unfortunately. And so again, in the coming years, we're looking to sort of hopefully bolster the capacity of our foundation. to be able to really be able to meaningfully support that program and other efforts. So, yeah.

Two last questions, and I'll stop dragging this on, though I'm always happy to talk about libraries. The first question for me was just around something probably more fun that's not on the list. What was the top circulated book in the library this last year?

Oh, my God. I don't know off the top of my head.

I'd like a written response to the top 10 books that were issued.

Was it the Heaven and Earth? No. I know 24 was the Heaven and Earth grocery store. And that was also our Tacoma Reads title. Man, Council Member Hines.

That's a joke. You don't have to do that in writing. But I was curious to see. I will email you and let you know. Just what was the number one book. I see that.

I'm so worried about buildings and other things. I don't get to always know the fun stuff.

Well, you did make a comment about my fixation on literacy. And so it continues to be something that I'm fired up about. I just think the last thing, the last question, probably a more serious note, is I mean, look at your facilities. And this is something that's been ongoing for decades, that we've had a lot of facility needs for the library. And you all are doing the best you can with what you've got. And I've always been deeply impressed with the staff and what people are able to accomplish. I think as we're looking forward to the kind of future potential funding opportunities, I would be remiss if I didn't point out the city of Seattle passed a $480 million library levy in August.

It did. 70% plus approval.

Which was more than they'd ever asked for in their history. Again, not doing really amazing things for the library. It's about maintaining services, some expanses, some facilities. So I mean, again, the need is so great. But I mean, hopefully those are some of the conversations we're having about how we can best kind of think about setting up a library for the future. Absolutely. And what it looks like, because it has such value here in our community. And also very much thinking about how there are a lot of organizations in our city that are looking at expanding facilities, expanding options, and looking for different things. So how we're thinking about partnerships and co-location and other pieces. I mean, I've said this before. I'll say it again. My passion project was always, I wish there was a branch in the Tacoma Mall for the library, which is just something I've thought about forever. It would be very popular. And when I see facilities that are that have deteriorated because just over time, buildings get old. To think about partnering with a property where we wouldn't be on the hook for all the facility maintenance, but we would be more of a tenant is something that I've wondered about. And just something for us that I would think to be thinking about.

I think the community hub really proves that the idea of co-location is such a smart way to kind of go about business. I think the challenge is that it's never going to be popular to close neighborhood libraries, right? Kind of a thing. No one ever really wants to, even if we're sort of like, the usage isn't there, or this, that, or the other. Generally speaking, I think that it is just not popular with the public to do that kind of thing. And so what we really heard loud and clear, I think, through our strategic planning refresh is that the public really wants us to take care of what we have. And they want us to be supported and resourced to be able to kind of do that, right? But I hear you. I do think a mall outlet would be so delightful and delightfully popular. We're actually, as part of library card sign-up month next month. We're going to be doing some pop-ups in the mall to sort of be able to connect with folks over there kind of a thing. But I hear you. And I do think that moving forward, co-location is the way to do it. And I also want to make sure that we are being the stewards to these fantastic, joyful buildings that we get to run and maintain. I guess I was thinking more, not less.

But I guess I get to have that. That's where I'm thinking about it. But thank you. Thank you for inviting me to dream of abundance. Well, we should all dream of abundance. But I think those are all my questions, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Hines. Council Member Palmer.

Thank you, Mayor. I think my council colleagues asked a lot of the questions I had, specifically around our legislative agenda and what we're going to bring forward and how we can maybe support or what's happening at the state or federal level around the digital libraries. That just seems so pertinent to pay attention to right now. I was curious about, you mentioned, I guess that's slide six. You were awarded eight grants. And I was just curious if you could comment a little bit about the landscape. How many did you all apply for? And what did you get? What's available?

Yeah. I will tell you, we actually don't have development staff. So I just want to say that first and foremost. When we are going for grants, it is myself. It's my deputy director. Sometimes it's one of our neighborhood library managers. So I think that is a hindrance. And it's something that I am hoping to sort of change in the future. But so again, just kind of a scrappy shop. I wouldn't say that we... I don't know exactly. Off the top of my head, there were quite a few grants that we did apply for that we didn't get. Maybe we applied for twice the amount of this. The biggest bucket of funding here was really from a state grant called the Library Capital Improvement Fund, which is how we funded the main library. It made up the bulk of that. We had been relying on that typically flowed through the Institute for Museum and Library Services. Sometimes that was federal grants we could apply directly for. That's how we funded our community archive center. Sometimes those dollars flowed to the state library, and then we were able to get a grant that way. Those dollars are gone, and I don't know that they're really coming back meaningfully in any way, shape, or form. So we are reorienting to kind of what is or isn't. available. Does that answer your question?

Yeah, I mean, everything's so unpredictable right now, that makes absolute sense. I do wonder, you know, if we're talking about partnerships and that, if there's, you know, if you guys are working wonderfully with what you guys have, if there's a way the city can support in, you know, applying for some of those grants or support in the back end of that, so.

I will say, I think we're not a department of the state, but we are family, as I like to say. And I do want to say that I feel like we are generally well-supported through all of the departments that we reach out for. And we're really grateful for the ways in which they support us and the needs that we have. So yeah, for sure. That's great to know. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Council Member Rumbaugh. Council Member Rumbaugh, I believe you have your hand up still.

I do. Hi. Okay. So thank you so much for this, for the opportunity to hear your report. I really always appreciate when you board directors. It's really wonderful the work that you do. I just wanted to ask, I just want to first off say I appreciate the access to the library that we're, you know, to just a multitude of people. Thank you. And then my other thing is I'm just curious when we will hear back from you in a longer conversation about the levy.

That's a great question. So right now, we are hoping to put out a survey in early September to actually figure out what our public's attitude would be towards a prospective levy. And I think once I have the results of that would be the time when I would come back and talk to you in a longer conversation. I think absent that information, it feels a little bit perhaps too speculative to put it on the table. So I'm hoping that in early fall, you'll hear from me again around. the direction that we're heading in, in that way.

That's great. And I'm really supportive of what you're doing. And I know that you've talked about having longer hours. What are the other top things you'd like to do with the funding for the levy?

Yeah, I mean, hours is really a big crux of it, increasing that collection budget again, because it's sort of fallen behind. You know, I think one of the things I do want to say is that I think the ask that we're going to do is not going to be anywhere near enough it would take to sort of restore library services to neighborhoods that did lose libraries. We haven't lost track of that dream and that goal. But I don't think that that's something that's feasible sort of in this next five years. So I would love to think about, are there opportunities for embedding ourselves in different locations? could there be a return of the bookmobile? I think a bookmobile would be really just so perfect for Tacoma. And bookmobiles have really evolved. I've seen a lot of libraries move in the direction of having what they call stream mobiles, so really focusing in on the science, technology, and all the learning and literacy that a library can deliver to a location. But really, I think it's about the basics. It's about hours, collections, making sure our facilities are not going to fall down and maybe bringing a little bit of library joy to a bookmobile or something like it.

I think you'll be surprised how much the community supports that. And then just the last thing I wanted to ask about is that, you know, we've talked a lot about food at the library and how necessary many of these libraries are in food deserts, and they do draw a lot of kids. And so I just was curious if you still support the idea of food lockers, since it's something that I'm really working on. It's something that, like, the CS have at the main library.

I would love to have a food locker at any or all of our libraries. We know that people of all ages, frankly, are coming in hungry. And I always tell people, I can't do the mission work that you think a library is meant to do if people are hungry or in crisis. So we're so grateful for the connection with St. Leo's. It's been wildly popular. And it's been great. And I would love to expand that access through something like a food locker. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Council Member Scott.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you all for being here. I always love a visit from our library family. All the questions I had have already been answered, so I just want to say thank you for being here and just share my support of looking at a levy because I think, just as you said, there's a lot of things that are going on that are going to be more costly if we keep putting them off, and then some things like whether it's a bookmobile or something else that We just know what the expanding needs and access issues in the community that something like a levy is just really going to put us in a better position to continue to serve the community as well as help with that capacity and the safety of bringing people into the physical spaces of the different libraries. So I just wanted to make sure I shared that. Thanks. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Sadalga. Thank you, Mayor. Similarly, many of the specific questions have been answered. I do want to mention that right before this meeting started, my wife sent me a picture of our one-year-old for the first time sitting down and reading a book by himself. This is really important in our family because he's usually eating the book.

Which is an appropriate first step before reading the book, I think.

In this picture, as far as I know, he actually had the book, and he looked like he was looking at it. And we have many, many books. But I bring this up because that's the lens in which I'm kind of looking at this, which is the time horizons are when our son will be using the services and kind of things that we have in the libraries. I think you touched upon it. throughout your presentation I think you I appreciated that you you called it out you know there's this kind of idea that you know we're in this you know we're in this century do libraries matter and the fact is they do they do right they do for for many reasons and they don't matter by becoming more digital they don't matter by you know necessarily embracing whatever AI is going to be. They matter because we provide a space. And as we are growing, and that's what I'm kind of learning myself and understanding, that in our community, especially in District 4, where we lost the library, right, on the east side, that not having those spaces to come together, interact, and grow our connections within community is something that is unhealthy for our community. We kind of learned this also through the pandemic and why we need spaces. So I would urge you to talk to everyone and say, at the end of the day, one of the reasons we need better facilities is because we need facilities. We need spaces and no matter what we do in this digital world, we are human and we need actual physical connection with one another. And that is, you know, that is a piece of kind of It's been reinforced to me in your presentation, and I really appreciate that. And I think that maybe there's a world in which we can remind people of that to continue to gather that support, especially to the naysayers who are out there saying, do libraries matter? And they absolutely do. They're a space that we absolutely need in this world when we're losing spaces. So thank you.

Thank you for saying that. Can I just add a comment to that? You know, I think one of the things that our industry has been talking about a lot is ever since the Surgeon General's report on the pandemic of loneliness coming out, like the very distinct role that libraries actually play as that third space because we are free, because you have, there's no, you can just come just to come, whether you're just coming to sit there to use our bathroom, to, come to a story time. You know what I mean? We're really one of the few functioning spaces that allows that to happen. And we're one of the few functioning spaces where people will come across people from different walks of life. Not only have we lost public spaces, but we've lost that sort of opportunity to be around different people's stories and different people's experiences. The infuriating thing about libraries is that I think that we do, thank you for your comments, I think we do play a role in that sort of social cohesion. We play a role in literacy. We play a role in the social safety net. And it's really hard to measure and tell it because we're not the only ones doing it, right? And so I think the struggle I always have is sort of I know this to be true. I know this to be true in the stories that I hear from patrons or that I hear from my staff. And I know this from the national studies that happen. But it can just It can be hard to prove sometimes the exact impact that we're having here in Tacoma, but I do know we're having that impact, so thank you for recognizing that. It's really meaningful.

Thank you, and I'll just say to conclude, thank you so much for your presentation at the beginning of a very robust conversation, and it is a bit of a shameless plug for the book of the year. I would say that libraries are the epicenter of citizenship, citizenship in the sense of the most general possible layer of what it means to come together and better oneself as well as better the people around them. And as a third space, as just a safe space in general for adults as well as for children. And more to come and a lot more of a thoughtful conversation to be had about how to make sure that the physical stuff is in line with the needs of the community. But if the question is are those needs still there, then I don't think there's any feasible answer except resoundingly yes. And so you guys are doing great work and let's keep it going.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for that plug, October 1. Hope it's in your calendars. It's going to be a great conversation. All right. Thank you so much. Yes. Please.

Thanks. Just a couple of quick things. There were actually two successful levies. You mentioned Seattle and also Snow Isle, right? That's right. Just recently. And Spokane County. And Spokane County. So we have some nice leverage there. In terms of the E-rate, the public comment ends in October. So I don't know how that might affect legislative efforts, but I'm sure Mita can send the explainer from the American Library Association and some of those deadlines. I don't think that's limited to individuals either. So agencies and government bodies might be able to. But it can't wait until February, is I guess what I'm trying to say. And then I don't know exactly how to frame this, but when Council Member Hines was talking about how do we demonstrate impact of some of our community hub partners, we just had a brilliant presentation from the Tree Foundation. They collect great data. I believe they said they are the largest urban tree organization in our state. They have mapping. They have all kinds of data. They can demonstrate their impact. And then tying that, I hadn't even thought of it until you mentioned it, tying it into the fact that the library provides the space for them to do this even greater. And they're thrilled to be there and engage new people. But then looping it right back to Councilmember Walker's comments about climate and sustainability, I just see all kinds of fruitful connections. And because you raised the bar last year or the year before about let's get some data that ties into narrative that sends us back to data and data we don't even know we need to collect. So I think we're on the precipice of some really interesting collaborations.

Thank you. Board Chair Zylstra, Dr. Cobb, any other words of a goody order? Okay. Thanks for all you do. Okay, moving on. Our first of our city council briefing items, we have three today, is from Jacques Colon, Director of the Center for Strategic Priorities. This is going to be an update on our council consideration requests and council action memo process.

Welcome, Jacques. Thank you, and good afternoon, Mayor Ibsen, Deputy Mayor Bushnell, members of council. For the record my name is Jacques Cologne and I serve as the city's director for the Center for strategic priorities Today, I have the pleasure of following up our exciting libraries with something that could only be described as more exciting a memorandum process No in all seriousness I am I am truly excited to bring to you an update on where we are with looking at our council action memo and council consideration request process I So moving to my first slide, to be clear about the purpose of this presentation with regards to requested action from council, heading out of this presentation, we're looking for council to provide input as to whether or not the proposed changes to the CAM process meet your expectations and to provide any redirection if you so choose. In addition to that immediate response from you, we are also looking to initiate a multi-month pilot process based on that feedback to test out our assumptions and make sure that they are in fact true before we go live with the hoped for go live date of January 1st of the coming year. Next slide. So the purpose of a CAM, just to briefly go back and talk about that for a second, is to introduce a proposal or recommendation to council for their action. Now, if it is coming from a council member, then it would be in a CCR as opposed to a CAM followed by a CAM. And in both cases, they lead to a resolution or an ordinance, which does include council consideration requests that are of a financial nature. Both processes are intended to provide council with relevant and meaningful information to inform and describe the decision-making process, either from the council member themselves or from the staff coming to present that proposal to council. Next slide. So we're talking about this now because the problem statement that we're seeking to solve is that the CAM and the CCR process and forms were last updated seven years ago in the year 2019, the before times, as some have called it. And since then, the city... Since then, the city has adopted a new 10-year strategic plan, Tacoma 2035. Those changes have not yet been fully incorporated into the CAM and CCR processes. So there is our first main problem statement that we're seeking to solve. Now, because we are opening it up for the 10-year update, that also provides us an opportunity to identify whether there would be any additional changes that could potentially increase the effectiveness or value of that document. And in doing so, in making any additional changes to the document, we also have the opportunity to look at the process and see how we can make any tweaks to refine that and make it work as best as possible for you and council. Now, to be clear, the current process is working for many council members, and there is a lot of feedback that I received from council about how the current process is effective and is serving your needs in many different ways. AND SO AS WE TALK ABOUT CHANGES, JUST WANT TO BE CLEAR, WE ARE TALKING ABOUT TWEAKS AND REFINEMENTS AND NOT A WHOLESALE CHANGE TO THE PROCESS OVERALL. NEXT SLIDE, PLEASE. SO A QUICK REVIEW FOR THOSE OF YOU THAT ARE NOT ON COUNCIL'S OSAC COMMITTEE ON HOW WE GOT HERE. EARLIER IN QUARTER ONE OF THIS YEAR, OSAC INITIATED THIS PROCESS. After that initiation, interviews were conducted with each council member. Following that, a workshop was held with different staff that I term frequent fliers, those that are often the ones filling out CAMs. And then after that, OSAC was provided with recommendations based on all of those interviews and feedback on May 8th. Today, you're receiving a follow-up to that to be able to move from here into the proposed pilot phase that I referenced on the first slide.

Next slide.

So there are a series of recommendations that stem from those interviews. And I'm going to quickly go over them because these are the crux of the tweaks that I'm talking about making as we move forward. The first and potentially most significant is to combine and align the different use types for the CAMs and CCRs. I mentioned that we have not made any updates since 2019. I'll just say that our ability to use technology to help us with these processes has grown since then considerably. And so when we talk about using different forms to indicate who's submitting the form or what the use type is, we can figure out ways to accomplish that task without requiring multiple forms, without requiring unnecessary information be included with every single one that's submitted to you. And so really looking at how can we combine these into one process, leveraging technology to allow us to still achieve the same functions that we wanted before with differentiating between different use types. So the second recommendation is related to that, which is that To be able to do that, we can create specific dropdowns for those use types. And I'm using the example of a board appointment here, because you can think about how different a board appointment CAM is from a significant policy request that you're putting forward to your colleagues. And so thinking about that one in particular, if you were to select a dropdown for board appointment, you could then filter out questions that are not as applicable. Like staff recommendations, as an example, would not be as applicable in a board appointment camp. The third recommendation is to identify the problem statement that the recommendation is seeking to address. Having a clear problem statement is one of the most surefire ways to ensure that you are being strategic in your approach to the policy that you are seeking to put forward. Fourth, including an opportunity for the author to clearly include past council action or touch points, including the last council or committee meeting. This is an opportunity, if relevant, to include a line of sight to where this has been discussed before. As I mentioned previously, the last time that this was discussed by council was on May 8th at OSAC. In my opinion, that's an important piece of information to share with you for building context. It will not always be useful information, but providing an opportunity for the author to provide that will at least improve some policies in providing the necessary background. Fifth, creating a clear standard for the information included in the CAMS is a goal of this entire effort. And so editing the section titles and descriptions to more clearly differentiate between the purpose, the problem statement, recommendations, and background allow for a standard of presenting all of those pieces of information And I say standard because when you look at all of the different CAMs that are presented, there are some folks that fill this out, and they include all of those things consistently in a fair level of detail. Other people may not include those same things. By actually breaking them down into their own categories, we're just creating a little bit more consistency and a clearer pathway for the authors to know what information you as a counselor are seeking. And then finally on this slide, the sixth recommendation is to update the community engagement section to encourage sharing not just was community engagement done and where, but what did you actually learn? What are you taking from that engagement and applying to this policy that you're putting forward? Next slide, please. Additionally, expanding the impacts and analysis section to describe how it advances Tacoma 2035, how it increases access, advances opportunity, and centers belonging, and also how it accomplishes our other values, like climate resilience. And thinking through all of the policies, all of the actions that we put forward as an organization should be helping advance Tacoma 2035 and our goals there, as well as living the city's values of access, opportunity, and belonging, and climate resilience. So helping figure out how to create an impact and analysis section that does that effectively is one of the goals of this as well. Number eight is to simplify the fiscal analysis section, limiting it to the most necessary info. If you look back in time at how this was filled out in the past, there are pieces of financial information that are currently asked for that are not as necessary because of our technology and systems that we now have for tracking financial investments. Nine, editing the alternative section such that it is not just providing a binary of do this or don't do this, but is providing the author with options for not just talking about what options exist for you as the decision maker, but also what alternatives were considered in the development of that policy as well. Many of the alternatives that are unspoken in these policy discussions were already considered as part of the development process. and then just are not included as part of the discussion after the fact. So providing an opportunity where that might be useful to include that in the conversation. The 10th recommendation is to move the recommendation section closer to the beginning of the document. And this would be, I think, best captured in the spirit of don't bury the lead. If the main idea of what's being brought forward is the ultimate recommendation, have that near the beginning of the documents that you as the decision maker know from the very jump what is it that you're being asked and what is being recommended to you as you go forward. And then our penultimate recommendation is to include a proposed timeline and completion date in the evaluation follow-up section where possible, and to include what measures would indicate the effectiveness of that effort. And then finally, update all relevant sections to reflect Tacoma 2035 and those goal areas. Again, that was the original problem statement that we were seeking to solve with opening this up. Next slide, please. So a quick review of the background again. This decision is coming to you now primarily because of the need for including the updated Tacoma 2035 goals, but that is not the only rationale. Updating the CAM has provided us the opportunity to make additional changes to improve the process and better assess the impacts of those potential policies. Those updates about this process have been brought to Council twice through OSAC, most recently on May 8th. And staff have taken steps to prepare for implementation by setting up a potential pilot process based on Council's feedback today.

Next question.

Now, engagement for this process was already outlined on that past council action slide. The reason for that, you are the intended audience on this process. So you are the folks that we are engaging with primarily. So in addition to the engagement that we talked about already, key learnings included that that any changes that we make have to consider staff impacts. There is a balance between how much information is going to be useful to you as a decision maker with how much time and energy it takes for staff to develop that. So the point at which it becomes a long research project as opposed to figuring out how to describe meaningful information for your decision making process, we've lost the balance that we need to strike for this to be an effective process for you and for staff. Next slide, please. So I mentioned Tacoma 2035 alignment and impacts. You can see here the updated goal areas in our adopted Tacoma 2035 strategic framework. Wanna also mention that updating to these goal areas also allows us the opportunity to have the author describe how are they advancing equity by either increasing access, improving opportunity, or increasing the sense of belonging for folks in Tacoma. And they can do that with data, like using the equity index to describe how that's going to happen, or through narrative. And that expansion allows for a greater diversity of inputs to you as the decision maker, depending on whether a process or a policy has data that can be pointed to or has narrative that can be pointed to. But this at least gives the option TO PRESENT ONE OR BOTH OF THOSE TO YOU AS THE DECISION MAKER AT THE END OF THE PROCESS. AND THEN FINALLY, I ALREADY MENTIONED, BUT THIS ALSO ALLOWS US TO ASK EXPLICITLY HOW THIS IMPACTS THE CITY'S RESILIENCE TO CLIMATE RELATED AND OTHER POTENTIAL SHOCKS. SO GREAT EXAMPLE IN THE PAST PRESENTATION AS YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT EMISSIONS FROM SPECIFIC POINT SOURCES IN OUR FACILITIES, LOOKING AT THOSE AND SEEING HOW CAN WE ACTUALLY USE THOSE POLICIES AS OPPORTUNITIES TO MOVE FORWARD OR ADVANCE OUR CLIMATE RELATED GOALS AS WELL. NEXT SLIDE. So as we look at the fiscal considerations of this update, to be clear, there would need to be no additional investments for us to make these changes to the CAM process. And we anticipate that this would have negligible impacts to staff time. I did mention that part of the pilot process is to test that assumption and make sure that we are adequately tweaking the document such that that is true. And then in terms of alternatives, during the development of these recommendations, alternatives were considered for each of the sections. What did we hear was working and what did we hear was not working? What are the different options? The sections that you have been shown are the recommendations. But for you as a council, now that you are at the decision point, you do have other options in addition to telling me to move forward with the pilot process. Those two options are no action, so no updates to the CAM needed. or delayed action. What you've heard hasn't met your expectations. There's some redirection that needs to happen. And January 1st may not be realistic, but you do want to see this move forward, but just at a slower rate. So those would be the two alternatives that I would say you can consider today as part of this decision-making process. Next slide, please. So timeline and next steps, we will incorporate any feedback that we hear at today's study session into our process. We will then, if directed by you today, initiate a pilot process to further test use types and the process laid out to you today. We would then communicate the results of that pilot process to you and the city manager in the fourth quarter of this year with the intent of going live on January 1st.

Next slide.

So this was a pretty dry presentation, so I thought least I could do was just end it by wrapping it nicely with a bow. And so what I have led you through with these slides is actually the exact same set of steps that the updated CAM process is intended to go through. What you saw for each of the slides presented to you, the requested action from counsel, engagement, what was learned, all of that is the CAM process. So if the flow of information in today's presentation made sense to you, my hope is that that reflects that the CAM process will make sense as well. But if not, I would love to hear that as part of your comments. And with that, our last slide. Thank you so much. Looking forward to hearing any comments and answering any questions.

Thank you, Jacques. Way to undersell yourself. I think it's just as much of an edge of the sea thriller as books myself. I'll take it. Let's open up the floor. Any council members with questions or comments? Council Member Palmer.

Thank you, Mayor. Thanks, Jacques, for this. Chef's kiss. I think this is exactly what we're needing. You can almost call this stop Council Member Palmer from asking so many questions to staff. because I think this would go a long way in me getting those answers up front. Two questions. On the drop, I'm seeing drop downs in a couple areas that I'm wondering if there's like opportunity to provide more information if needed. Like when we're talking about the Tacoma 2035 alignment. I'm guessing there's going to be a list there. I'm wondering if there's a way for

like how how would how would those feed in yeah absolutely great call out the drop down and I apologize the materials that you received are static materials right so you cannot see the drop downs or how the document changes when those drop downs get selected but you are correct there would be a drop down that would allow folks to select which of the seven goal areas are is this contributing to, and it would give them a primary option as well as a secondary option, because we know a lot of the work that's done at the city does not just have one outcome that it helps to achieve. And then in addition to that, it would ask, are there specific strategies or plans that this is advancing, and how? So, for example, if there were a transportation-related policy that were being proposed, that person would have the opportunity to say, this not only helps us advance transportation and mobility, but it specifically helps us advance Vision Zero. And how it does that is by improving this specific intersection that we know is part of the high-risk corridor. So allowing them to be able to go those extra steps in describing that.

That's fantastic. And then the other drop-down I was curious about was the fiscal considerations, if there's anything else that pops up. I know right now there's, we're receiving a lot from our public works department and stuff. When we're receiving estimates, it'll have like a percentage of, like this estimate was 10% above or below. So I'm wondering if there's like a place to kind of explain those things and I'm wondering, it seems like there's a need for maybe improving that formula a little bit because prices have changed. So I know we've had a couple of CAMs recently that have shown that those were above the estimate, but that was because costs are higher than normal. So I'm wondering if that could be tweaked as well so that it's better represented in the CAM.

Great question. We will have finance staff as part of the pilot process team to make sure that when those issues come up, we can kind of reverse engineer what could we have had in the CAM that would have better explained that difference as you describe it. But in general, it is fairly broad in terms of what will be the fiscal impact. And what we heard in the process of interviewing folks around what was working and what wasn't was the primary thing that was not working was that it did not capture ongoing costs as accurately as you were hoping that it would. And so that's one of the main things that, to your question about drop-downs, that's one of the main things that has been added is in addition to the near and present costs that you need to understand as the decision maker, what are the ongoing costs that might be, for lack of a better word, hidden?

Thank you. Looking forward to playing with this over the next couple months.

Thank you. Council Member Diaz.

Thank you. And thanks for all your work, Jacques and team, on this. While I think the incorporation of our new umbrella, our 2035 goals, is really important and probably, I think, the most important thing that needed to be updated in the CCR form and the CAM form, I have some questions about some of these other pieces, and particularly, I think, around what the staff impact is going to be. I guess logistically I'll look at recommendations 9 and 10. I'm not seeing, and I only have the CCR in front of me that was printed for today about the CIC program, but I'm not sure I understand how the recommendation needs to move closer to the top of the document when I'm looking at this one and it is the first thing on the document. So how much closer to the top does it need to go?

Great question. It is not always at the top of the document. Sometimes people use that as the purpose, and sometimes people frame it as the recommendation. So I would say that that might be true a large percentage of the time. We're just trying to maintain consistency across all of them. And the CAM is not necessarily framed in the same order. So just aligning those so that they're both.

The one I have in front of me seems to be a good example, but there are bad examples.

Correct.

And I have seen other templates come through that are like an old template or something weird or wrong. So maybe this will help us streamline that.

That is the hope.

Heard. OK. And then the other question I have, I think, where my concerns are around how this is going to impact staff is the alternative section. Currently, we've got this little diagram box where staff will plug in different options. We'll talk about them, and we'll get to a final draft version. I am a little concerned that if they have to go down the rabbit hole of listing every alternative recommendation, that is a whole separate project than the project that I've been working on. Particularly, I have in mind my really complicated community workforce agreements document that we've been working on, and if we had to go into all the positive negative impacts and every other recommendation that we could have sought out that is a whole separate project than me just putting forward a Proposal so can you can can you speak to what the expectation is going to be around? some exhaustive list of alternatives that I'm not dreaming about or thinking about or Caring about when I'm bringing forward a proposal that has nothing to do with those Absolutely great point

So the intent of the alternative section is not to provide an exhaustive list of all of the potential alternatives. It is to provide whoever is recommending or proposing that policy the opportunity to communicate what alternatives they would like to communicate. So there will be a lot of cases where there won't be a lot of alternatives to communicate. There will be other cases where there will be a number of alternatives. And so one of the ways that I thought about this as I was working on it was, what are the potential questions that council members will have about why didn't we think about doing it this way? And so you can just imagine how widely ranging different policies that come forward would have a wide range of alternatives. So the intent is not to create consistency around the number of alternatives that everything coming forward to you has, but simply to allow the opportunity that when it is helpful, those alternatives can be presented in a more effective manner. That is the intent. Now as we go through the pilot process, if we see that that is not in fact what is happening, we can revisit that because we absolutely want to avoid a scenario where there is work happening from the staff side that is not helpful or impacting the decision making process.

Okay. Also, now that I'm looking at this one, I think this one's different than what we normally have. We normally have like action, no action, something else. So this one even is probably a bad example for me to be looking at for this conversation. But that's helpful. And then I guess my other sort of question is, sounds silly, but enforcement, is that going to be ultimately what? gets the mayor's office to sign on or not on traditionally this submitted for council by consideration just the mayor signs on to everything so is this going to be a whether or not all of these parameters are met is that going to be something that your office is now actually doing a review and an approval of whether or not this form is filled out correctly to whatever the standard is or is this just new guidance that we can use and we use it or we don't

My understanding is the latter. I mean, I'm not in the business of memo policing. One, I don't have the time. Two, I don't have the interest. But I appreciate the question. And if I may, if I think I understand the really good questions you're bringing up, Councilmember Diaz, is I think actually your signature issue right now about workforce development, for example, it sounds like when you're talking about alternatives to that question, it's really about internally consistent alternatives with the intent of the proposal. should we do community workforce agreements or should we do project labor agreements? That would be an example of an alternative or something like that, right? Not whether or not we should do this or something totally different.

Great, that's helpful, just to know where folks are coming from. And then the last question I had is, we've got this cool example that doesn't actually have the dropdowns on it. No critique there of that. That's the static nature of printing out a thing. I'm curious, is this a PDF that is going to be fill-outable? Is this an online form? What am I looking at here?

Yes, this is an online form that we would have staff and anybody that is filling one out be able to access. it would then render the final form based on the dropdowns and the information. So it is an online form version, but that's one of the things we'll be testing in the pilot process. Does that communicate the right way with everything else for resolution development, for financial impacts, all of those things, making sure those connections are going to work for us after we go live.

And then will this online form spit out a Word document?

I believe it will spit out a PDF.

So therein, I think, lies my concern and problem. I can't edit a PDF readily. I mean, I think I can technically on my city computer, because I have Adobe. But a way that I typically work on these with my staff is they will send me a Word version of this document, and we can write comments, and we can edit in the document. So this online form to me poses a serious barrier to doing that. I also do it a lot on my phone because I'm often in transit. I don't always have my city laptop out. So having to pull that out to go and try to edit a PDF sounds annoying, for lack of a better word, onerous. And then my other thought around that is, quite frankly, I don't fill these out. I mean, that's the non-secret secret is staff fills these out. I wouldn't necessarily be sitting there clicking through the dropdowns and helping her figure out which dropdown I'm doing. So I would at some point need some sort of a cheat sheet or a master list that says what all the dropdowns are so I could tell her, here's what I would like to see. So just if we're sticking to an online form, I see some barriers there. But a possible solution is giving me some options that I would then I think staff would create a way for us to give them all that information on the front end, like we currently do, so they can populate a form. But my biggest concern is it's not going to come to me in a Word document.

That's really helpful. I'll take that input and make sure that as we're piloting this, that that part of the process is we're being intentional about it so that you don't have that barrier.

And also on the staff side, I don't want them to have to fill out a form every time I make one edit. That seems really counterproductive also.

That makes sense.

Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Walker.

Thank you for all those really thoughtful edits, Councilmember Diaz. Because I've been involved in this, I feel good about it. I feel like we're headed in the right direction. I feel like so many of these things are just things that maybe we're naturally doing anyway, so they feel easy. the one thing I was just gonna add was And and I think I will circle back with my staff on this because I know you did interviews with all the staff It's just understanding if this feels good to them because as I remember you said they're the ones that fill it out But I do feel like it's getting at the right things and it gives us more updated options And I think the other thing that we talked about a little bit in OSAC and in the interviews and going through this is we can make really good updates to our form or our plan or our, you know, our process. And in the end, we got to do the work. And so a form is not going to, not everything's going to fit in perfectly into the dropdowns or the, however we design this. We're going to have to have conversations and tweak it. according to the topic that we're working on. There's no way around that to make it perfect. So with that, I feel like we're close on having it in the right place as a usable tool. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Hines. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you, Jacques. I thought a great teaching moment of walking through it with all of us. That was great. A concept attainment lesson is what we would probably call it way back in the day. I thought just two things I would recommend. I think this is good. Lining up with 2035 makes a lot of sense. I have similar questions to what customer ideas brought up, which is usually I get a Word document. I edit on the Word document, put comments on there. I could do the same thing on a PDF, but then I just don't know if that captures. I think it may simplify something that's been eliminated part of the workflow that I'm kind of concerned about. So that would just be one piece that I bring up that I agree with. I like the... Recommendation 4 to include all the touch points of how things have gone through each council touch they've had. I think within that, it might be worthwhile. If it goes through, say, EDC, which I'm not on, there might be something there like, here's what was said, or here was the vote, or here's what happened, just so I understand. I guess I could always ask the EDC members what happened, but if there was something there, again, not wanting to create too much more work for folks. But I think that could be helpful because I know things have come forward to us that have gone through GPFC and people say, hey, well, what is this all about? And so I think that's helpful. And then I really like the community engagement section and about sharing what was learned that informed the recommendation. I think that's also very helpful because I do think part of And you'll probably never get away from the fact that we have to talk about this as a group. But I mean, there is a time where the person who's presenting the CAM is like, OK, and I did this, and here's where it went, and here's what I learned, and here's what I did to reflect this. And we could talk through it. But having that information available, I think, would be really good. Otherwise, I don't have any problems with what you've put together here. I think it's a good first step, and the timeline looks fine to me.

Thank you. I'm really, really happy with the direction this is going. Before I can expound on this, it looks like the deputy mayor just chimed in, so let's go right ahead. Thank you.

You can be happy to. Yes, I appreciate that. Sorry. You're good. Last second there on the thing. Appreciate all the work you've done on this, staff, as well as I appreciate all the council feedback on this as well. I think it's going to be a really informed process. And as Council Member Hines mentioned earlier, I think a lot of this is stuff that we're already doing, but this really kind of helps flesh out and formalize. And I think as a policymaker, it also helps me think through any particular things that I'm I'm trying to address and how best to really strategically address those in a systematic way and ask all the right questions and try to fill out and have as much of information as possible for all the other policy decision makers here at the table to be able to understand what I'm trying to address. So I think this is really good. And I think for Council Member Diaz, your concern over the being in PDF format, it makes sense. I guess, but logistically, it's how I imagine it occurring, is you have your Word document, you go through all your edits back and forth with the staff, or however you want to do it, and then whatever the final draft is, that's what ends up getting filled out into the form, spinning out the PDF. But I could see the challenge where, uh-oh, I need to change that one word because it doesn't sound right at the last second being a minor hiccup. So I could see that being an issue. But overall, that's, at least in my mind, how I think that could work out in the process, so to speak. But that's why we do the pilot projects. We hammer those things out. But yeah, no, I really appreciate the work that's gone into this. And I think this is going to be really beneficial. I do particularly appreciate the alignment with 2035. I think it's really important for us as a council and particularly for the community at large to recognize that we do have a 2035 plan, and that a lot of the work we're doing should be in alignment to address those things and approve it, not saying that there's one-offs that can't occur. I think those are important as well. But by and large, we should be striving because we as a body are implementing this strategic plan, these goals. And so I think about a lot of the policies that we're working on to advance those goals. So that's really important, at least for me specifically. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor. Jock, thank you for the presentation again. Suggestion as we flesh this out further, engagement here seems like it's mostly post factor, like it's mostly what was the engagement that allowed us to get to this point. And I think for some, not all, but for some proposals, it may bear fruit to actually have a future oriented engagement process as well, no different than if there's a fiscal note so that colleagues can know what we're going to be getting ourselves into for any kind of obligation. what is the expected plan of engagement subject to revision for fleshing something out? So a really good recent example might be like Connect Tacoma, for example. There was post-factual engagement in that there was a really thoughtful levy committee that drafted the thing, but there was absolutely a post-proposal engagement plan in the form of our media communications office, our social media, town halls, staff handouts, what have you. And Some engagement might be very extensive and very pricey like that. Other engagement might just be as simple as a social media post or leveraging pre-existing community groups or neighborhood councils or what have you. So maybe just to put that bug in your ear about engagement as something future tense and something to be baked into policymaking just as much as how did we get here. Thank you for that comment, Mayor.

We'll certainly go back and look at the language underneath that particular section and make sure that that reflects both a backward-looking and forward-looking approach to engagement. Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Well, seeing no other council comments, thank you for your presentation. This is off to a really good progress. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. Our next agenda item is something I will be bringing forward, and this is tonight we are going to have a Council Action Memorandum for the support of the passage of Pierce Transit's Proposition 1 on the November ballot. I'll be bringing forward a cam tonight to express support for the passage of this measure. Per the ballot measure, this proposal would authorize the collection of an additional sales and use tax of three-tenths of a percent, or three pennies, for every $10. If the voters approve the measure, it will maintain an improved transit service, including adding bus routes and special event service, expanding daytime, evening, and weekday service, reducing wait time between buses, improving access to light rail, health care, schools, and jobs, expanding services for people with disabilities, and providing fare-free bus service to seniors and youth. Pierce Transit is going to provide a brief PowerPoint presentation tonight and be available to answer questions. And this action memo is to express our support as a council, which we are allowed by law to do, for the passage of their ballot measure. And I also want to give thanks to the Deputy Mayor and Council Member Palmer for their co-sponsorship. Are there any questions about this? Or any comments? Okay, well this will be on tonight's agenda. Thank you. Moving on, our third item of interest is also another memo. And my staff is just about to pass out the handouts on this. This is a resolution expressing support for our commitment to minority and women-owned businesses. And in particular, it's signing on to the ongoing community investment commitment. And we actually have staff from both our own Hubleaf office as well as our counterparts from the school and the parks districts. The reason why we're doing this is that despite the fact that we are doing the work, the city has had a long commitment to the utilization of local hire and apprenticeship utilizations. This is all about alignment. It looks like we have some extra copies. Great. This is about alignment with current efforts that are ongoing and acting more as a region with our jurisdictional partners in the schools and the parks. This also syncs up very nicely with other workforce development conversations, like Council Member Diaz has been working on and speaking about, as well as our anchor institution program. We have had this conversation well underway. But this is basically a formalization and a recommitment to ongoing work, as well as seeing what we can do to act with greater unity, with greater cohesion and alignment between our agencies. And I also want to thank the Deputy Mayor and Council Members Diaz and Walker for their co-sponsorship of this. I'd also like to thank our agency partners who are here in the room with us too, and they're also available for any technical questions about how this currently works, as the SCIC has been active between the schools and the parks for some time now. Are there any questions from the council? Council Member Scott.

Thank you, Mayor. Just wondering, and you might have said it, but I got a little distracted when we were making sure we had the right coffee. But as far as this, what is our... What is our commitment to this? Is this just like kind of a values statement of like go team go in a sense? Or is it like we're committing dollars and staff or something else to that?

Sure. My best understanding, and if I botch this or if there's something more to it, open invite to my friends here, both from the city and our parks and schools colleagues. This is not a new fiscal commitment. This is not a new program that's being set up. But it is a step above just raw, raw resolution. What this basically is, is this is taking the work that we have currently been doing with workforce development, with local procurement and hiring, and de-siloing it. So it's basically doing our work in tandem and with greater coordination with agency partners that are stepping it up so that as a region we're working on the same thing rather than in a fractious manner. Does that make sense?

Yes.

All right.

Thank you.

Of course. Any other council members? Council Member Walker.

Thank you, Mayor, and excited about the work that is represented in here and happy to sign on. I think one of the things that I have understood in the process of this, and this is sort of to address Council Member Scott's comments, is that this is not taking any steps backwards on any of our goals because a lot of the pieces in here we already had, but is reinforcing them, saying we're going to continue to do that, and making sure that we are not investing in something that's going to cost us a lot of money in terms of tracking something new, but we're committing to being in community and conversation with our partners. so that we're all working towards those same goals. I think part of my stress about this early on was, are we taking on a total new data set when our staff has done such a good job of getting us to where we are today? And we've done an incredible job of meeting those goals, so not losing any of that continuity. But to your point and what you said about making sure that we're talking to our partners and heading in the right direction. It took me a little bit to get there, but I really think that what we've outlined in here and how the final legislation will look is really clear about that in refocusing on all these numbers and these goals that we want to continue to commit to, but also making sure that we're not losing any pieces while we partner. And we do want to partner on this work because so many of our projects are connected, whether very specifically or just existing next to each other. We all just went to the Sheridan Avenue opening, which is a streets project, but it's right next to a park. And so our agencies are already doing this work so collaboratively and or next to each other. And so putting these things in place makes it clearer for contractors, it makes it clearer for workers. So I'm really, really excited about it, but I think it is maybe a little bit more complex than I initially gave it credit for. But thank you to you and your staff's work, Mayor, to get it to a place that feels really good for the city, because I think this is really a good city-tailored proposal that fits in with our partners, if that's helpful.

Yes, certainly, and I really appreciate your thoughtful revisions to that as well. Council Member Scott, do you have any additional comments?

Yeah, thank you, Mayor. Thank you for that. That helps a bit. Are we... So it says requested for September 15th. That's when we're going to be voting on this. Is there, like... I'm going to take a closer look at this, but is there any other information that you guys can all send that just kind of helps me get to the point of understanding that you all have

Yes, of course. We can certainly send that to the entire council.

Thank you.

Would any staff, either from the city or schools or parks, like to say any words on this?

Casey Woods, Business and Economic Development. Let me just do this. Casey Woods, Business and Economic Development Manager with CED, Community and Economic Development. More or less, the community inclusion commitment provides a regional way for us to transparently communicate what we're doing within local procurement. So following the work of the Tacoma Anchor Network local procurement work group, where we already provide information on local workforce utilization as well as apprenticeship utilization on our public work and improvement projects or construction projects, as well as utilization of small minority and women-owned businesses on those projects. We'll just be doing that now collectively to be able to show community wealth building and collective impact within Parks Tacoma, Tacoma Public Schools, and the City of Tacoma.

And I just want to share, the city has been an amazing partner in this. And we are excited to have the city on board as an active participant, as well as we really show the community how we come at this together. As Casey mentioned, this is about community wealth building. It advances initiatives that are being supported by both the Joint Municipal Action Committee, by the Anchor Network, and by our collective agencies, both individually. But this brings us together. And this is what I'm excited about. Finally, we've been doing this work together for a decade. but now we can truly be on the same page and be able to tell the community about that impactful work and align some of those strategies and really be able to work our different levers, but be able to better describe that impact in the future. So thank you all for considering this.

Thank you. Council Member Hines has a question. Council Member Walker?

Can I just interrupt for a second? We all know you, but the public doesn't. Will you introduce yourself?

Yes, thank you.

Yes. Alicia Laver with Tacoma Public Schools. I'm the Director of Strategic Planning. I've been managing this effort for the last decade.

Thank you. Council Member Hines.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And so, I mean, one good thing, it seems like in some cases we're exceeding the goals that were established already. It looks like we're already exceeding some of these, correct?

Yes.

And so I guess my question would be, by signing on to this, will we be reporting across three organizations, the percentages, will the numbers be pushed together, or will we still be disaggregated? Because I, so I come out of an education background, right, where when you take all the numbers of an entire school, and you push them together, you can sometimes lose sight of maybe subsets of the data. So I mean, it's going to be aggregated and disaggregated at the same time?

Council Member Hinds, yes, that is correct. It will be disaggregated and combined.

So you will be able to see across the three organizations how they're doing, but then we'll also see how Tacoma, Parks, and School District are doing separately from each other? Correct. All right, great.

Thank you. All right, thank you. That's a great question. All right, seeing as there's no further council question on this, this will be in front of us later in September. Okay, with that, our fourth agenda item was just concluded. So with that, we're moving on to committee reports. Are there any committee reports from members of the council to share? Okay, seeing none, we're going to go on to our agenda review and city manager's weekly report. Allison? Allison?

Thank you, Mayor. Mayor and Council, for your awareness, you have one ceremonial on tonight's agenda. That's proclaiming Sunday, August 30th, as Concrete Technology Corporation Day. There's no modifications to tonight's agenda. There's one opportunity for public comment. That's under regular public comment regarding motions, resolutions, and ordinances. Let me know if there's any questions. And for your awareness, the study session agenda was attached to the weekly report to Council. Thank you, Mayor.

All right, thank you, Allison. All right, seeing as there's no other further business, I'll welcome a motion to adjourn. Move to adjourn.

Second.

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