Economic Development Committee - Regular Meeting

To order the economic development committee meeting of 02/10/2022. Clerk, will you please call the roll? Vice chairpersonnel? Present. Councilmember Palmer? Here. Councilmember Scott? Absent? Chair via. Yes. Oh, just council Member Scott. We're gonna start the day here with public comments. Clerk, will you please read? To request to speak during public comment, Brian is on the agenda. If you have not heard so already. If you're speaking virtually, please press the raise hand button here at the bottom of the Zoom window or start right on your phone. Your name or the last four digits of your phone number to be called back in for this

Thank you. Mhmm. Do you have a sign in sheet?

Okay. Oh, okay. Is there

could you just come in? Who would

you like to sign in and see? Just wanna make sure I don't forget you. We'll get there in a second. I just wanted to provide a little context for folks. I think we have quite a few people here to give public comment today. I just wanted to give a quick outline of what our goal is for today. I wanted to let folks know there's gonna be no actions taken today by the council. We're getting informational briefing this week and next committee meeting just for context for folks on DWAs. And today, we're talking about Tacoma venues and events service agreements. So whichever topic you are interested in, there's no votes today. So with that said, Anna,

are ready with the list? Two minutes ago. Yes. Okay. On my heartbeat.

I feel for some break. Right? But people get to their day. So Hope they're welcome to stay. You're also welcome to. Will feel great. Brooke, would you like to sign in to speak? Yes.

Okay. Go first. I will put in the timer up now. I will start the timer where he starts speaking. So so far, I have hit Mike, Patrick, and Mara tomorrow. Good.

But the room is weird shaped if folks wanna line up maybe in the three chairs here as your name is called, it might be helpful. So I heard Kit.

You

heard your name? We'll go in the order, and

I called. So I heard my first. Get my back. Alright. I will. You're professional.

Okay.

Thank you.

My name is Kit Burns. I have lived in the last and only been home for the last thirty three years. I've lived here in '26. I just wanna mention on two items tonight that I was I have a question and just kind of a comment. So in the community work workforce agreement, I've been to a number of city council meetings and know that the department has come twice to speak about being undercut, I think, with their wages because they have union wages.

And as an architect, we've worked on numerous major projects ahead of high school, Auburn Mountain View, maybe high school, to name a few. I'm always concerned about having good quality trained union people. So I hope that part of the component of this is actually training and ensuring that you have quality people, not just somebody who's not skilled. When I started out in architecture fifty years ago in Tacoma, there was a family. Their whole family were carpenters.

When I say carpenters, I mean, these are the scale of carpenters that could make gas station look like looked like Michelangelo. They did it with such wonderful care, and they could do finish work and drop carpentry as well. So, anyway, I just wanted to bring that up. I hope that their their request was to me. I hope that's being addressed. I don't know if they have to. Maybe today's the due the day to do that. But the problem with venues, just wanna bring up the Tacoma Armory recently was told that I guess, I don't know if it's for sale.

I don't know what's going on with that. But a

couple years ago, there was an issue where somebody who had managed all the events in Tacoma for years was, running things, and then somehow this out of town company, and, again, I don't know specifics, took over it. They got aced out. So I don't know what's going on with the Tacoma Armory, but, I'd like to hopefully, that will be part of this discussion. I've not heard anybody sit

and talk about it. Thanks. Yeah. Mike.

My name is Mike Hall, and I work for a company here in Tacoma called Tucci and Sons. We've been in business since 1950, so longtime Tacoma contractor. I'm not necessarily speaking on behalf of Tucci as far as how the CWA affects Tucci and Saenz. What I'm more concerned about is how a CWA affects small contractors, and you have two of them here. The CWA affects small business enterprises, women owned business enterprises, and minority business enterprises.

Those are requirements within the city Of Tacoma contracts when you're doing contracting with them for construction. How it affects them is that it requires them to sign a union agreement in order to be able to work under an entity that has a CWA or a PLA. And what that does to them financially is it requires them to double up

on

benefits. Okay? So they're paying their own benefits as it is, and then the uni benefits are required on top of that. Something that WADDOT has done recently because they've just established PLAs is that they are now floating the idea of reimbursing the small contractors for the doubled up benefit. Benefit. Something to consider when you

guys are looking at this.

It's you guys have goals on your jobs. Within these goals, we have to hire these people in order to meet those goals. A nonunion contractor that is required to sign a CWA oftentimes is reluctant to bid these jobs. That reduces the amount of contractors that we have available to do the subcontracting work. So there's a realism that happens here that I think the council needs to be aware of and how that affects things. And it's not just as simple as paying wages, and it's not just as simple as hiring

Okay. First, thank you very much for first, for allowing me to sit here and talk to you. As a veteran and minority owned business, I know sometime in government service, we do things that we believe is a help, but it actually hurt the ones that you're trying to service. CWAs in Tacoma is going to hurt us immensely for several reasons. I'll just try to outline quickly three.

One is pay. When we do a job that has a CWA or PLA on it, we have to pay our employees weekly. Then we have to pay them monthly, the the trust. But sometime, we get a pay when paid. So now we're stretched out a month, maybe sometime two months, but we've already paid the information. And lo and behold, is there any kind of dispute going on? We may not get paid, as in my case, for six months. I have not been paid by two contractors for six months, so that's gonna hurt us. The other thing is pay benefit. I have to pay benefits since I'm a non open shop.

I have to pay benefits to my employees here, and then I pay it to the union when there's a CWA on it. And I never ever will they will be able to use it because the job doesn't last long enough. Yeah. So we're paying benefits into a hole that we'll never get to fill. And the last, which is more important, as a small business, when you put a CWA on it, they have the right to come in and look at your books to make sure that you have paid them everything you're supposed to pay.

And as a small businessman, you don't have five or six people in your shop altogether. And now you're trying to make all the other things done, and now you gotta prepare for the union. And I've never seen an inspector coming in and not find something. And so for this reason, we beg you not to put CWAs and PLAs because your minority population is gonna hurt in the city of the company. Thank you.

Alright.

Hi. I'm Angelica, president of High Grade Atkall and Steel Coat Inc, and I'm here to protest CWAs as they demand the extraction of money, time, and energy from small businesses and give nothing to small businesses in return. The truth is unions are lobbying for mandating laws that are not just fair, equitable, or inclusive towards small businesses. PLAs and CWAs force small businesses to bench their own employees in favor of union members on projects. Most unions dispatch union members that don't have the experience required to perform the workers' scope or know how to perform with a small business regarding the crew or equipment.

For example, it has been admitted by unions that they train asphalt rakers using sand. We don't pave roads with sand. We pave roads with asphalt. When small businesses have to bench their own employees for union members, it puts the small businesses at risk of losing their talent who will begin to look for work elsewhere if they are consistently removed from projects. And it also puts a small business at risk of performing poorly because the union does not dispatch qualified candidates to the job.

These DWAs require small business employees to pay into union trusts, but rarely or never see a return on those investments. And if a small business already offers a benefit such as health care, as mentioned before, that means we have to pay for the same benefit twice, and that is not fair or equitable. PLAs and CWAs add additional hardship to small businesses regarding cash flow because, as mentioned before, they expect us to pay fringes every month, but we usually don't get paid for three months. So that really affects our cash flow. Small businesses and businesses like mine, which are women and minority owned, we're already at a disadvantage.

And these unions don't wanna work with us. They just wanna take from us. And so they need to do a better job at collaborating with us if they're gonna insist that these policies take place. And so for these reasons, I think that small businesses, they like, they need to exempt us from having to perform on CWAs. There needs to be a better workaround. Policies that exclude small businesses out of public work is not equity. Community workforce agreements may sound good on paper, but they fail the small businesses and the people who are actually doing work.

Hi. My name is. Ma'am, Can I ask that you come up to the table? I might have something to swap out. It's because of the mics. Yeah. I'm not sure. I do appreciate it, everybody.

Yeah. There's a good location right here.

Yeah. The mics are here. Sorry. I just wanna make sure

we get your appointment. Thank you. Thank you so much. Hi.

My name is Tamara Heron. I am

the owner of YWCF, which is African Flaggers. I've been in this for two years. I've done CWA work. I am a. I do all I'm a member of the union hall, and I've been in this for ten years. The CWAs, I remember having a CWA and have to go, pay the dues. I ran to the medical, the benefits, drop off a check when I hadn't got paid for the company. So it's a lot of, the numbers look good, but it's not real. As a, you know, as a small minority business contractor, Michael, this is my purpose. This is my passion.

I teach blackers class. I send them to the union hall. I send them, but it's not working. We as small business companies are not getting the work that they need. They put us on the job for two or three days a week. The job is two to three years. We're hiring from ZIP codes. I hired from ZIP code, and the guy lived around the corner. He had to quit. He was an apprentice. There was no work. He had go get another job in another trade, and he was on apprenticeship. Are not getting enough work as small businesses and joining the CWA. I think it's a good program. I have nothing against the union.

I'm a union member. I'm a small business, but we need work. Overhead cost is constantly coming in. We have no work, and we still have to pay overhead costs. We have to pay zenith if we don't get paid. I was on a job and paid all the employees from the union and paid all the benefits, and then the company tell me that they don't owe me this month $33,000. I'm a small business. I don't have $33,000 to give up. I'm here. This is my purpose. I'm here to help to bridge the gap. I have certified over 500 flaggers. I send them to the union halls. I send them to. Pretty soon, there's where's the work at?

You need to work. There's plenty of work out there, but they're not hiring us. Two to three days a week, and the job is two to three years. We have poured a whole foundation of the schools, so we can don't need to be recognized, but there's still more work. There's trucks coming in, trucks going out. They're been doing there's no blocker at the at the at the driveway. Alright. Thank

you. Thank you.

I've got two signed up online. Shannon and Carter. Perfect. And I will will start the timer whenever he starts speaking.

Perfect. Thank you so much. This is Shannon Boldajar. Good afternoon, chair Diaz and council members. I'm here today on behalf of the All of Us Alliance.

We're a coalition of union and nonunion contractors, business associations, and community advocates united around one core goal, and that is ensuring that public works investments expand opportunity rather than unintentionally restricting it. Our work focuses on helping public officials understand how CWAs, as currently applied in Washington State, create discriminatory, exclusionary, and often damaging barriers for many contractors and workers. Our members care deeply about workforce development, economic growth, and fairness in public contracting, and they know firsthand the lasting negative impacts that CWAs have on communities of color, small businesses, and the workers they employ. We advance solutions and best practices that support small and diverse firms and assist public agencies that are striving to improve contractor diversity. CWAs were created with good intentions to do no harm, strengthen the workforce, and broaden access to opportunity.

But over time, especially since about 2016, they've grown increasingly complex and restrictive For small and women and minority business enterprise certified firms, the lower thresholds and added mandates have resulted in more barriers, not fewer, making it harder for these businesses to participate in public works projects. Here's the central economic development concern. 98% of women and minority enterprise business firms are nonunion, and most are small specialized businesses. They hire locally, reflect the diversity of the community, and build long term local capacity. But CWAs are limiting their flexibility in the workforce, imposing cash flow demands and creating administrative burdens that small firms are just not resourced to absorb.

So this isn't only an equity issue. It's really a missed economic opportunity for cities committed to building inclusive, resilient local economies. The All of Us Alliance strongly supports high labor standards and quality jobs, but what we oppose are unnecessary mandates and barriers that prevent women and minority business enterprise firms from competing, growing, and hiring in the communities that they serve. These barriers are, against public policy that was never intended to be created. It's essential that all parties involved in

Thanks. May I have the question? Carter.

Yeah. Hi. Good morning. My name is Carter Carlson. I serve as the government affairs director for the associate bills and contractors of Western Washington. I'm here today representing more than 300 member companies, many of live, hire, and perform construction work right here in the city of Tacoma. Our membership is made up of mayor shop contractors, and we urge the city to carefully consider the impacts of implementing a community workforce agreement. CWAs and p PLAs create significant barriers that discourage participation from a large portion of the construction industry. CWAs and PLAs impose substantial administrative and compliance burdens. The the volume of required paperwork reporting and regulatory obligations is especially challenging for the small and midsized contractors who lack the staff or resources to manage these requirements.

As a result, many of these firms simply choose not to bid on projects covered by such agreements. More than 80% of the construction contractors are unaffiliated with organized labor. Policies that effectively exclude the majority of the of the industry reduce competition, limit bidder participation, and ultimately drive up costs. These increased costs are borne by taxpayers and reduce the number of projects the city can afford to build. For these reasons, we respectfully caution the city against adopting a community workforce agreement and encourage policies that promote open competition, broad participation, and responsible stewardship of public funds. Thanks for the time and consideration.

Thank you, Barbara. We have

another live. Tim, I just gave you permission to

Great. And then I just wanna clarify for Shannon. If you have more comments, please feel free to send them over in writing to the clerk.

Yeah. Yeah. This is Tim Atterbury. I'm with the Associated General Contractors of Washington AGC. We represent approximately 700 contractors in the state of Washington. I I just wanna give folks in the room sort of a history lesson. Back in 02/1819, we we the city of Tacoma held a large stakeholder group with about 20 members of that stakeholder group coming together. It was union folks, open shop contractors, union contractors, members of the community. I was cochair of that committee. We met, five times.

All five of those meetings were half day meetings. The city of Tacoma, spent a $100,000 on a facilitator. We got testimony from all around the country. We analyzed CWAs to death. At the end of that committee's work, we decided to not endorse CWAs.

I remember at one point, there was a nine to four vote against CWAs. So I just I just wanna ask the question sort of, since the city council denied CWAs back in 02/1819, Since that that CWA stakeholder task force did its work, what has changed? I say nothing. So so we've already we've already been here. We've already analyzed this issue to death.

And and the stakeholder both the stakeholder group and the city council back then that was just as progressive as you guys that that that represented the same folks as you, they said no. And they said no hard. And I just want I I wanna I wanna thank everyone who's in the room there testifying today. You guys did a great job. Thank you.

I don't see anyone else online.

Anybody else still a little bit in the room?

Yeah. Come on up there.

Awesome. Awesome. My name is Garrett Ross. I'm the executive secretary of

the South South Building and Construction Trades Council. I represent 18 construction unions with about 10,000 construction workers in my jurisdiction. After everything that was said today, I understand and appreciate everybody's comments. I just want everybody to know, as unions, we do not depict who our contractors bid to or who bids to them. That has nothing to do with us. They have the right to bid any project they want to, and they have the

right to sub out any prop any portion of the project that

they want to to whomever they choose.

Thank you. Anybody else come up? Okay. Great. Thank you everybody for being here and for giving us great context, stories, testimonies. We really appreciate it. We're gonna get into the policy presentation that will be a significantly longer history than the brief thirty seconds that Tim was able to give us. And today's whole

sort

of purpose is to get this conversation going. So your testimony is really appreciated. If you haven't, please make sure your contact info is here on the sign in sheet. Please make sure you're reaching out as we outline the process for ongoing engagement. I know that two minutes is not a lot of time, and so we wanna make sure that we hear any other issues that come to folks' mind, anything else that they weren't able to address today. We're looking forward to having a more robust conversation around that in the committee and as individuals with folks. This is just the kickoff to the conversation, and it's really appreciated. With that said, let's move on. This will close. I declare a call on the period closed.

And we'll move on to the first item of business, which is b, the community workforce agreement history and policy review with my policy analyst and job officers coming to the table. We're gonna tag team this presentation. As I mentioned, it's gonna be a good overview for folks on what's happened with CWA and PHAs in the city and where we're going, where the conversation goes in. So Okay. Thank you.

Linda, do you wanna introduce yourself? Hi, everyone. My name is Linda Foster. I'm senior council policy analyst in the senior manager's office, and I am presenting today just on background. So I think Tim did allude to some of what we'll be talking about, but I'll be sharing background on this topic and explaining what a priority hire ordinance is, what a community workforce agreement is, and the history at the city and considering these policies. I also want to refer you I printed it out for me. There's a 79 page report that was included in the advanced meeting materials, which did come from 2019. So there's a lot of additional information in there, and I'll be referencing some of it today. Cute. And then folks who might be new to this process, that the packet for the meeting is uploaded to Legislature.

Is that what I'm So if folks are interested in that report, it's gonna be there for folks whose interest. Also wanna just provide some background context for Linda and I's presentation today. Last year, this economic development committee held a labor workforce discussion and worker safety and wage theft roundtable. We learned some policy background on the city's history considering this policy, and we wanted to make sure that we took this policy up in this conversation up today as a result of that meeting. So the year got away from us, different chair, and now we're kind of coming back in new and full swing in this new year.

This, I think, is a great topic for our committee making a formal recommendation on, which is why we're bringing it through this committee. My goal today is to make sure we all have a good grounding in what PHOs and CWAs are, how the city's considered the policy related to them in the past, and also in the coming weeks, look forward to share, what's changed since here and then, to answer some of those questions. And, we'll be sharing sort of the plans for outreach, ways to get in touch with us, and ways to provide more feedback going forward. So with that, can we go to the next slide? We can start if you can go back to the previous one. Yeah. Okay. So there are a lot of acronyms. I'm gonna try to be clear. But if we say PHO, we mean priority hire ordinance.

So apologies if we get a little acronym heavy. But currently, the city has a local employment and apprenticeship training program, LEAP. I'm not gonna be talking about that today, but CET staff, community economic development staff will be coming back on February 24, and they will be sharing more information about that. So I'll defer questions about existing city programs to the next, economic development committee meeting. Okay.

This program just does significant work to achieve local employment and apprenticeship goals. A priority hire ordinance is a distinct policy tool that seeks to achieve similar or the same goals, but it establishes a new tool for reaching priority hire and apprenticeship goals. It normally sets the goals, but it requires contractors at a certain threshold. So a common threshold might be $5,000,000 for public works project. To utilize a community workforce agreement or project project labor agreement, these might be referred to as CWAs or PLAs. You heard that in some of the testimony. Project labor agreement might apply to a specific project. CWA, community workers agreement, is a whole project, you might say. So, yeah. So I'll be using CWA for the purpose of the quotation.

Next slide. You want me to do it? Here you go. Great. Thank you.

Community workforce agreement. I'm gonna say a lot more than what's on this slide. But a community workforce agreement, it is a pre hire collective bargaining with one or more labor unions that establishes the terms and conditions of employment for a specific construction project. They're used for both public and private projects and typically require that employees hire for the project or refute referred through union hiring halls. As you heard in some of the testimony, nonunion and union all pay dues.

They have other fees associated with union fees, and that's part of the cost, of this program. I wanna go into more depth about the practical application of how CWA would work. So community workforce agreement, CWA, is the administrative step that comes from a priority hire ordinance. Part of this includes a dispatch process for workers. So you've heard some of this in the testimony as well. A core function of the CWA is setting standards to dispatch workers on project. I'm gonna use Seattle's community workforce agreement as an example. They identify priority workers from economically disparate ZIP codes. They might also do veteran status. There might be different things that contribute to what a priority, worker is.

Then And whenever a contractor enters into a public works contract, in Seattle's case, over 5,000,000 with the city of Seattle, they would need to use a union hall to select workers for the project. So if you have existing workers, everything has to

go through the union hall.

The union hall would then use the preferred entry structure to first provide priority workers. And the intent there is that you would hit the priority worker goals because the union hall would be dispatching according to those goals. And then the preferred entry would also include an apprentice apprenticeship component, which would again help hit those apprenticeship goals. Union dues and fees. Dues to workers being dispatched through union halls.

Just a common practice is that contractors are required to pay into specific benefits for workers on our union dues and potentially union initiation fees. And this is the case if folks are part of the union or not. Seattle helps mitigate this. They have a program to reimburse businesses for certain costs if the business provides benefits to the workers suffer from the union. So that is a additional financial cost that Seattle has taken on to help make the program more sustainable.

Workplace conditions, another real key factor of community workforce agreements is that the contractor and subcontractor there's there's just a lot of worker conditions that are across the board. So this includes prevailing wage requirements, standard for hours of work, work week, defined holidays, and overtime pay standards. Safety standards and even details like parking arrangements are often outlined in a CWA. Unions are provided, reasonable access to the job site and are allowed to designate a steward for each contractor or subcontractor that may be appointed each shift. Equity and contracts and considerations.

One of the frequent concerns heard about TWA is increased cost and administrative burdens on nonunion contractors and subcontractors, particularly women minority business enterprises. CWAs are often structured to provide more flexibility to subcontract contractors. For example, if you look at community counties, community workforce agreement, conditions are in place so that a contractor subcontractors can keep what is called core workers. So let's say I'm a small minority owned business, and there are core workers. These are folks who I hire.

The agreement can't be arranged so that their distribution of workers is in a certain order. So King County does core worker, core worker, union worker, union worker, core worker, union worker, and that's how their CWI is outlined. It's not universal to all CWAs, but that's just one example. Management rights, conflict resolution, collective bargaining rights. The contractor maintains full and exclusive authority in their operations. Generally, a CWA takes precedence over union contracts. Any exceptions are spelled out on the CWA. And community workforce agreements layout dispute resolution processes with clear timelines and escalation processes. They also clarify there can be no strikes, work stoppages, or lockouts. So that's a really high level example of, what these are.

And if there are questions at the end, we can do additional research and bring that back. So Gotcha. Okay. You're already there. Mhmm. On

top of it.

So back in 2018, resolution four zero one two four directed the city manager to prepare a draft priority hire ordinance, PHO, and community workforce agreement, CWA, and to convene a CWA task force. It was later named the Tacoma Community Work force Advisory Committee. So if you hear someone refer to a task force, they also mean the committee. Apologies for confusion. And the committee recommendation was rather than pursue a community workforce agreement to strengthen city policies on women minority business enterprises and priority higher goals by ordinance.

A minority report said the perspective that the task force was unbalanced and downplayed the need to help local residents and two meaningful careers in the construction industry. So just a little additional background on this. The committee there was a committee formed. It did have about 20 people in it. They met seven times in 2018 and 2019.

They were asked to review if a priority hire ordinance and committee workforce agreement can be drafted to accomplish the dual goal of supporting priority hiring goals and equity and contracting goals. So, that's a big one because it was both pieces, not just priority hire. The committee, I did mention about 2018, 2019, and the committee's final report was included in the meeting materials for today. The final recommendation from the committee stated there were, they were not convinced that a dual purpose CWA can be constructed that will effectively promote both the goals of promoting hiring of residents of economically distressed areas and women minority business and city public work projects. A specific concern was that open shop women minority business enterprise firms could not effectively be placed on a level playing field with unionized firms under a TWA.

And having looked at several potential community workforce screening models, the report identified four core structural challenges, input implications for WMBEs of meeting union obligations, dual play core employee limits, and the sourcing of priority hires. Unit union contractors have collective bargaining agreements that may conflict with the CWA. Unions have fundamental sorry, foundational concerns that a CWA not disrupt their dispatch procedures from union hiring halls. And, ideally, contractors should be a signatory to an agreement like this as they are in project labor agreements, but no one can represent and bind all potential contractors in advance. So that was me reading verbatim.

But just one other thing I want to point out is that community recommended that rather than pursue a CWA, that the city work on 25 recommendations and the community and economic development. Alright. Community and economic department will present on the outcomes of these 25 recommendations at the February 24 meeting. So that's a conversation, but that will be coming at the next EDC meeting. And then just to flag that on page 75 of the report, there was a minority report that said the perspective of the task force was unbalanced and downplayed the need for the need to help local residents into meaningful careers in the construction industry.

Okay. With that, go over to council member Diaz.

Great. Thank you. So as mentioned, I'm bringing this forward today because, we did have a, actually, around this time last year, February 11, economic development committee meeting that hosted the labor roundtable discussion on worker safety weight and wage theft, where we had a lot of the folks in the room today plus some carpenters and some other folks bringing up issues that are happening at work sites within Tacoma. They shared a really illustrative video. We have to send out that link.

And, we know that the work for the task force, the committee that was, held seven years ago was predates not only everyone on this committee, but everyone on the council. I think perhaps the mayor was on council at the time. I don't know what the math is. But otherwise, no one else was here at that time. So part of why we wanna bring this issue forward today is to hear to get the good background and to learn more from the community and from our staff on what has been done, what recommendation what action has been taken on the recommendations in the report, and, get ourselves orientated with what might be needed for the community going forward.

As a committee, now is a good time to review whether or not the recommendations have been effective and discuss any policies that might help us be successful in achieving our contracting goals both for minority and women owned enterprises and for our community wages and wage that we can issue. So with that said, I'll to the next slide. I appreciate everyone who contributed to the city's 2019 review of this policy topic and the thoughtful comprehensive report that we're able to review today. With seven years past, I think now is a good time to check-in on the topic, and we wanna take stock of the changes that have happened not just in our policies at the city, but also in the landscape in Tacoma. As folks might know, A lot of things that were done in 2018, 1917 are very different now, both because of the pandemic and just because our country's in a different situation now.

And so it's just been a good enough amount of time. An important question to address is whether or not the priority hire and apprenticeship concerns have been addressed since the report was finalized. I'm thankful to our community and economic development staff for being able to join us on February 24 to to share their hard work implementing the recommendations from the advisory committee. This will pair really well with the second informational briefing that day on workforce programs update. Is that Katie Parker? Yes. Yes. I believe it Yeah. We're No. It's not Katie. It's Casey. C. Casey. Casey. Yeah. Right. Casey. Oh, sorry. The other one. I'm confusing my own calendar.

But it will pair really nicely with all the work that we've been doing. Casey does a great job highlighting all the work that she's been doing in her team. An additional policy review steps that I plan to work on include, in addition to this upcoming February 24 meeting, is contracting other municipalities with CWAs to learn about how effective their PHOs and CWs CWAs have been in achieving priority hire and apprenticeship goals and how they balance their programs with equity contracting goals. We also know that there's other local folks in Tacoma who have these types of rules like the school board. So we're gonna reach out to not just other municipalities, but other government entities, non transit.

Lots of folks in the area have these types of agreements. So we're gonna do some lesson learned, some deep diving in with other folks in the in the region and the community and comparable municipalities. So, namely, Spokane, I think, passed the thing last year. So we're gonna look at their their work there too and their community engagement as well. Understanding our current budget situation in Tacoma, I also work to understand the cost associated with creating a program like this here in Tacoma as well as what funding options exist.

So we gotta make sure not just is this the right moment for our community, but is this the right moment for our budget and for our staff capacity and for the community contractors. So that is what's ahead. Oh, look at that. Was blowing off memory, and the entities were up there one more time. Sound Transit.

School board. So like past consideration of creating a CWA in Tacoma, I wanna I want any proposal brought forward to be community informed. To that end, over the next few months, I will be arranging stakeholder meetings and roundtable discussions with policymakers and jurisdictions of active PHOs and CWAs, union and nonunion contractors, women and minority business enterprises, and apprenticeship groups, workers and labor organizations, and any remaining sort of in the community or in the area reachable twenty eighteen to twenty nineteen community workforce advisory committee members. So if you're on that list or if you're not on that list, please make sure that you're reaching out. We will be proactively reaching out.

But, if for some reason you feel like you haven't heard from me yet, it is not intentional, please reach out. And folks have been already really good and proactive about that. I will say it is my goal to put together a report or a presentation at the end of our outreach so that folks know sort of what was heard and are able to hear it in that way. If folks want to reach out, obviously, I am one policymaker of nine at the city. So you're also welcome to reach out to any of my colleagues here on this committee because, clearly, y'all have a briefing and all the stake in this.

There's also obviously members of the council and the mayor who are not on this committee. So everyone's fair game, but I think it should be included in that general synopsis at the end, and I'll make sure you touch base also with me. Lastly, the information I plan to gather when doing outreach will be grounded in equity goals laid out on this slide. So we'll have these three main policy goals. If we get data in the next EDC meeting that shows the city is not achieving our priority hire and partnership targets, I wanna hear from contractors what barriers they're facing in achieving those goals and discuss possible solutions.

Community workforce agreements will be one item for discussion, but I wanna hear all of the thoughts. There might be other policies, other considerations, other things that we can be doing as a city in addition to or in lieu of. We wanna make sure that we're hearing everybody's possible solutions. I also want to understand the biggest concerns our contractors have with the city utilizing a PHO or community work work agreement and their thoughts on how the city could mitigate for those concerns if we did work move forward with the CWA. I heard some really good suggestions today. I've been

grateful for those, so please feel free to keep those coming.

Just a broad overview here. Our next steps are outlined here on this slide. This is a really rough overview because we're still building the plane as we fly it. Obviously, there's other community issues that come up for council, and I have one one fourth policy analyst Linda Foster's time. And I have a full time day job, and everybody else has lots of life and other things that we're doing.

So this is a goal. And also just know that schedules are what they are and council priorities are more than, again, more than just me. So, again, I wanna thank CED staff ahead of time for the discussion coming forward on February 24. That will give us all a chance to dig into the data on our equity goals. I plan to dig into the outreach over the next few months and then bring the results of that work and any identified policy solutions for consideration back to this committee so folks can have it.

And, it's always helpful for other folks who are not on the committee, if they're interested to go back and, watch us like a podcast. So, with that said, we will close out our our presentation unless you have anything else to add, Linda. Just any quest any questions and any reactions. K. That's where I went. That was a lot of information, but I I did not warn you that you were in for a book report. It's also not the only time to go for it. Thank you.

I wanted to thank everyone for all

of the information that you've presented today. You've

been here for Diaz.

This is a newer subject for me, and so there's a lot of homework that I'm going to need to do. I'm looking forward to kind of peeking through the reports and some of the videos you mentioned. I feel like it it sounded to me like maybe, you know, there anything is possible at this moment. And so, you know, we don't necessarily, in Tacoma, like to follow what's happening in other cities as far as, like, hey. They're doing it there, or do it here.

We like to make it our own. We like to make it work for Tacoma. And so I feel like maybe there's a a way forward in in that and kind of co op or co op collaborating together and creating something that works for folks. I did have a question on the so you mentioned, like, 5,000,000 as, like, the threshold for a lot of the requirements to kick in. Is that something that is in place with Tacoma right now, or is that, like, what what normal for other cities to do?

So I'll point specifically to the city of Seattle, how they've set up their community workforce agreement. They have it for projects higher than $5,000,000. Tacoma doesn't have a community workforce agreement. However, when they were reviewing options back in 2018, 2019, they also, I believe, did the 5,000,000 threshold for consideration, and that's something we've seen in other community workforce agreements. Certainly, if you guys decided to pursue this policy, that would be a policy decision that was set by council.

Thank you. I think my question then is, like, how how many projects, would fit into that five over 5,000,000? So how many projects would this necessarily, affect? We'll get that

you have more information. Thank you. Questions, thoughts?

Well, I'll I'll just say I I appreciate all the feedback from everybody. I think this is, it's been really eye opening. I think that there's some legitimate concerns that our our labor partners have, especially when it comes to workplace safety, you know, wages on time. But I think there's also legitimate concerns from our contractors on getting paid in order to pay their folks as well. So it sounds like there's some cash flow issues going on, and I think that there's opportunities to make sure that everybody is paid timely and fairly, contractors included as well as as the the the workers. And so I I think that we as Citi definitely have a role to play in helping with that. And so I'm really looking forward to the conversations then.

Thanks. No.

At the

moment, I appreciate all the information as well

as perfect, but, like, customer Palmer said, there's a lot that I get

to dive into and and get and feel like I'm up to sleep, but I appreciate

your briefing and everybody's comments here today. That's kind

of help. Give it some context. Super duper. Thank you. So with that, I will say thank you, Linda. We'll close this topic and move on to our next one, which is Tacoma venues and events service agreements. So for that, I'd like to call up to the table Adam Kirk from Tacoma venues and events and Melinda Altamir Altamirado from Amar can you say it for me? Air Amar. Air Amar. Yes. I have seen the trucks my entire life, and I can never say it. Air Amar. Sports and entertainment.

You. Yes.

Yes. Thank you. Fabulous. Well, good morning, chair Diaz, council members. Just for the record, again, my name is Abbott Cook. I serve as the director for Tacoma Venues and Events, and I'm joined today by Melinda Altamorano, the district manager for Gerramark Sports and Entertainment, who is the food and beverage provider for the Tacoma Dome and the Greater Tacoma Convention Center. Today, we're gonna discuss the different structures and processes for service agreements at the city's public assembly venues. We're gonna give a really broad overview. I'm just gonna preface with that. DBE processes hundreds and hundreds of contracts a year on behalf of the city for all of our venues.

And as with all things contract related, the devil's in the details. So everyone is a little bit unique, but we'll hit historic high level right now. It does.

I'll be the first one. There

you go. Thank you. Before we start, I wanted to take a quick moment just to discuss DBE's overall structure. So as an enterprise fund pardon me. We're tasked with being largely self funding and not relying on the general fund.

We are successful in this goal with our operating of the venues, Tacoma Dome and Greater Tacoma Convention Center being fully self sufficient. The remaining venues, including Chaney Stadium and the Tacoma City theaters, annually receive less than $3,000,000 in general fund support, so, also largely self sufficient as much as they can be. However, even with that financial mandate, we still approach all of our work with a community focused, centric vision and mission around the vitality of the. So as we look at how this direction impacts our services and our agreements, we first need to really understand the unique operating structures within our public assembly venues. Cheney Stadium is currently operated by the Tacoma Rainiers under a long term lease agreement through 2041.

The Rainiers retain complete financial and operating control over the stadium with the city's involvement being limited solely to maintenance and capital repair support. The Tacoma City Theaters are are operated by Legends Global through 2032 under a management contract with the city. This agreement was awarded through an RFP process in 2021, which the previous manager chose not to, apply for. The city plays a slightly more active role in the theater operations, retaining financial control and providing guidance on the overall desired direction for the theaters. However, we do not actively participate in the day to day operations of the venues.

The Tacoma Dome and Greater Tacoma Convention Center are all self operated by the TBE team, allowing the city to retain full financial and operational control over these iconic venues. We also support the city's special events program, which which issues grant funding to community events and produces the city's annual recognition and awards programs. Operational work within this team is largely focused through the council appointed city's events and recognition committee. With that as our backdrop, we can look at how these structures impact purchasing and service agreements for TBE. For Cheney Stadium and the Tacoma Rainiers, the city has no input or oversight on any of the agreements related to venue operations.

We partner with the Rainiers on some of the maintenance and capital projects, and those projects are either contract contracted directly through the Rainiers or through the city's standard procurement process. The Tacoma City theaters operate in a similar fashion. Legends Global has the contractual rights to manage the full venue operations and contracting. TBE's team takes a more active role in the maintenance and capital repair of the theaters and manages almost all of those contracts through our standard city procurement process. Also directly manage the relationship with the resident arts organizations and nonprofit community organizations and the policies and benefits that come with that.

For our self operated venues at the dome and the convention center, we manage all day to day operations and all contracts. For our core services, these agreements take two forms, and you see them on the screen. Our agreements for food and beverage, parking, audiovisual, merchandise, and ticketing are all considered revenue generating agreements, while our staffing agreement is a pure expense agreement for the facilities. For our revenue agreements, parking operations are under a management agreement, meaning that the company is paid a fixed management fee while TBE retains all revenue and all expense responsibility for parking. Similar to the theater management agreement, this provides TBE the ability to provide additional guidance in the overall operations of the services without taking on full ownership of their execution.

The food and beverage, audiovisual, merchandise and ticketing agreements are based on a commission structure model, meaning that the company retains all revenue and expense responsibility while paying TBE a portion of the gross proceeds from the sale of those items. Under these agreements, a majority of service or subcontracting decisions are turned over to the contractor with TBE having limited input into items like pricing and revenue share, while at the same time protecting us and providing a less downside risk. In addition to our core services, TDE also contracts with many different organizations across all of our departments. A majority of these are standard expense agreements issued through the city's procurement process, but always with an eye towards supporting local businesses. All of the companies you see listed under the marketing and communications, event services, and maintenance and capital are vendors local to this region with city contracts.

Our sponsorship and booking and sales agreements are revenue generating agreements, not expense agreements. These are also executed with the goal of supporting local businesses and the community. This slide lists the 10 highest paying sponsored partners in our venues. You'll note that Ticketmaster is the only partner with a local without a local office or agreement. All others are either locally owned and operated or contracted through a local distributor or office.

In fact, of our current partner agreements totaling just over $2,100,000 in total revenue, more than 80% are locally owned and operated businesses being supported through the work of the dome and the convention center. That focus doesn't just stop with TBE, though. It extends to our partners, which is why I'm happy to have Melinda with me today to speak to Aramark's efforts in this area.

Clicker. There

we go. Magic. Clicker. Okay. What is the clicker? Forward.

Thank you.

Yep. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, Adam, for the partnership for years, and thank you, principal Diaz, for the opportunity to speak. I'm not gonna read this slide. I'm gonna let everybody read it on their own, but I really thought it was important, to share Aramark's commitment to the community. So you mentioned the trucks, and, yes, it trucks is a line of business we have. It's uniforms. It's everywhere. Aramark is an international organization, which you're able to reap the benefits of some large pieces, but we operate in a very small localized way when it comes to communities.

So it's incredibly important that we're partnering in the right way and that we represent the communities that we step into. I'm from the Pacific Northwest. I my first concert actually was the dome. So in 2018, it was very exciting to be able to sit on the other side and be able to celebrate that. It is community is one of Aramark's huge pillars, and it's the outreach and what we can do in the local communities in partnership is incredible.

Large scale events can present unique challenges. So the reality is, we are dedicated to creating those opportunities for both the businesses and the guests. And what we do is really partner and work with work with local businesses to find the best way, so that they can be involved, and we really do represent what is the heart of Tacoma. From an Aramark perspective, you know, we really look at workforce, workplace, and marketplace. And today, we're gonna be talking mostly about the marketplace and what that really means, as it relates to this.

In Washington alone, we represent this is with small and minority owned businesses. I feel like there's a theme to today's meeting. 6,400,000.0 in spent just in Washington. I will say that is with certified. So those are organizations that are certified.

Not all are, and we do not preclude not working with one just because it isn't certified. It's about doing the right thing in a local community. $2,000,000 in income, and you can see about 9% of total spend is with certified small and diverse organizations. When it comes to supplier, and this is where I kinda the different ways that we interact with the local community. So there's locally owned and operated businesses.

There's locally owned and operated national brands, and that may be it may be a franchise. It may be a partnership. There are many ways that that can happen. And then there's locally made products. So, all three of those kinda go into the bucket as we think about what makes up the whole portfolio.

Local and sustainable spend, it's another thing we track as an organization. We track it as the organization holistically, line of business, and then down to the state level, because it's part of our core values. It's part of what Aramark is important to us. So you can look at 5,300.0 with local farms and producers, 2,900,000.0 with local businesses. More than 30,000,000 is spent on food.

And when you think about this and you can look and say 5,200, like, that that much? But when we scale the way we scale and and when you look at events, we work with a lot of locally owned and operated brands. And I reach out constantly to local brands and different businesses in the community. One of the things that's challenging, and and I think until I got into this large scale business, I didn't even understand, is is the scale of what we do. And when we're looking at feeding 18,000 people in four hours, that is very different, and it's hard to keep up with.

So it's a very different type of business. So we really work with the local businesses to understand how can we partner with you in a way that makes sense and supports your success as well as ours because many aren't in a position to produce 50,000 x y z for a Friday night. They simply don't have that capacity. So we look at how can we partner with you in a way that that does work and that we can bring you in. So you can see here, Beanwater Stacks, House of Donuts, Tin Hut.

These are all, local organizations that we work with, owned and operated. And then on the right hand side, you see locally owned and operated national brands. So those are national brands, but they're all owned and operated in the city of Tacoma. So they are all locally based and then locally sourced products. Almond roca, I don't know that that needs any more to say. The other the others are vendor products. So we work with, vendors that source from local farms. We get local seafood. So we work with vendors to ensure that we're bringing things right into the community. From a subcontractor standpoint, and this is this is so, again, two ways.

Vendors aren't showing up here. So local farms, local seafood, we do local meats. They're not showing up here. This is a subcontractors, and and we used 14 subcontractors in 2025. 10 of those were locally owned and operated. And these can show up as a product in the building. It can show up as a food truck. It can show up as as a vendor selling inside. 10 are locally owned and operated. Three are locally owned and operated national brands, and then one is not locally owned.

All of the staff is local, and all the product is purchased through the Aramark. So while the company is not local, we infer that the dollars are going right back into the community. We also are continuously looking for future opportunities. So we have I'm gonna touch on the second bullet first because the first bullet has a bit more. Plaza activation.

So we're looking at some continued developments in partnership with Adam and how that's gonna build out, and how we continue to integrate because that is a great location, again, when we talk about success for business and success for the guests. And then the Tacoma logo. So we are continuing to explore and bringing in more and more local products. Like I said, I reach out weekly, to partner to understand how we can integrate more in. So we've been looking at a lot of concourse redeployment.

There's there's several things that go into into the movement on a concourse, but bringing to life this Tacoma local concept. And we brought Tacoma local products into a certain place, but we're really working to try to build out one location that really celebrates local Tacoma. It's a little again, it's not as easy as just saying, do you wanna partner with us? It it takes a lot of work. So the grab and go products and package, that's easy.

Packaged food products. But what we love are the handcrafted, and there's some amazing bakeries. There's amazing there's amazing businesses from a food and beverage standpoint located right here in Tacoma. And what we do is really work with them to try to understand how can we bring you in. And with this Tacoma local, it gives us an opportunity. Even disabled bring in 20. They can do 20. They can't do 20,000. So we'll bring in 20. And when those 20 are gone, they're gone.

But we're we're looking at how can we do it in a way that celebrates the community, ensures that the people going to the venues know they're in Tacoma, but also works for the business. Because if it doesn't work for the business, then we all none of us win, if that makes sense. So you can see on the left hand side, those are the the locals that have been brought in.

With that, we're happy to answer any questions.

Thank you.

Does anyone else have any questions?

Yep. I'm sorry.

So AIR I don't know if I caught what AIR Mark is.

It so AIR Mark is is a service organization. Okay. It's international, so we actually have locations all over the world. It is based out of Philadelphia. I am with the sports and entertainment division, so there's several divisions.

The trucks are the uniforms. Several divisions. So I'm a sports and entertainment, so we represent convention centers, performing arts, cultural attractions, large scale venues, and then sporting sporting venues of all sorts. So while we are national, I would say what I love about working for Aramark is that we are national and, honestly, have a huge marketing department and a huge departments in data science that that partner with me to be able to understand the best information and understand the demographic and understand the community. And I partner with Adam so that we can build the best programs.

But Aramark understands the need for local. We're not boxed in, like, some organizations to have to use certain things. They really understand that we do best when we show up locally. We do best when we represent the communities that we're a part of. So very large scale food and beverage.

Is it just food and beverage?

No. There's nine lines of business. So there's food and beverage. There's uniforms. There's facilities. There's I feel like you're this is a test. There's there's corrections. There's higher ed. There's k through 12. There's health care.

What am I missing?

Retail falls under food and beverage. Yeah. Retail falls under food and beverage with us, but we do Yes.

But the sports entertainment is largely focused towards the food and beverage operations. And so for the city, it's the food and beverage operations that they don't at the convention center is the extent of our contract.

Okay. That

was my

thought. Your your region, though, extends you also have University of Washington.

University of Washington, Seattle Convention Center, Washington State University. And then I cover NorCal properties where we have them.

So I've done some.

And so Melinda mentioned having that data science backing her on a global level for us as we looked at it, it's having that local data science to be able to back and say, what are our friendly competitors doing with their pricing models so that we can price the food and beverage appropriately for the region of the market?

Okay. So Aramark pork to Colma is the food and beverage. Mhmm. And then as I don't know if you can go back to one of the first slides with the kind of breakdown of the the dollar amounts there.

That is they put agreements.

One. There we go. Okay. So I'm wondering what this is compared to what's not being shown here. So if it if if 4.3% or 4.3 is spent with local farms and producers, how much isn't being spent with local farms that produce?

Yeah. So more than 30,000,000 is gone. So there's a lot of dollars spent on food. And, again, the local and and I think that that's where I say, like, the 5,300.0 on local. The local really comes down to what can the local farms support. Mhmm. So it's it's not about it's not about us limiting what local farms can do. It's really about what local farms are able to produce. So we are buying and in the event based business, we're not buying consistently. So we can't work with a farm to have them ramp up because we're gonna be buying x amount all the time.

It's based on an event. So we may not have anything for six weeks, and then all of a sudden, I need more chicken tenders than you know what to do with. I need more lettuce than we know what to do with. But local farms aren't able to support those influxes as well, so we use them in select areas. So we use them wherever we can where we're able to leverage that, support the community, but also ensure that the guest experience is what they're looking for.

So if you total that about 3,000,000 right now is the spend locally of the 30, so roughly 10% there. That's yeah. So the 2.9 plus the 5.3, 6.8, that's direct spend

That's direct.

Aramark. So Mhmm. A lot of the food is brought in through distributor hubs, and so they may be procuring directly from local as well to round up.

Yes. This is third party certified. So third party certified, there's a lot that goes into the certification. For our food, it's very critical that they that they're certified on certain things. But there's a few things, like certified certified minority, certified small business.

Those certifications are great, but they're not required. We don't require that. We love for them to have it, but it also is very costly for them to get it. So we do have a department that actually works with businesses to help them attain that. But to Adam's point, we use so we use just a produce distributor that gets 90% of their produce from Western Washington. They so we get a lot through a supplier. We use a seafood distributor that gets local seafood. So we're able to bring that in, but that's through the distribution channel. There's there's multiple ways that we that we ensure that we have local come to us. There is no one way.

It's all captured. That's what makes it a little challenging. I wish there was one slide I could say here here it all is. But it is very important, and it's something that, again, we are very consciously going after or conscientiously going after, I should say.

Are we tracking the trajectory of of this? Mhmm. Like, if if it's going up. But

Every so every year, we look at it. We do business reviews every year, and we look at the various components. So we look at, frankly, workforce. We look at vendors. We look at direct local brands, and then we look at subcontractors and local businesses that we're bringing in.

And it is on that, like, a Yep. Yes. Alright. One last question. I think it would be helpful to know maybe some of the challenges of of, like, these farms instead just to know, like, hey. What can the city do to support these folks to produce more so that we we can reach them more? I don't know if that's in your wheelhouse, but I think understanding the challenges, it would be helpful.

Yeah. That would I can

work with Adam. You can

work together. Perfect. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you. I

had a lot of the same questions. That's councilor. Thank you. Thank you for asking that. I appreciate your partnership with the city and really focusing on your own businesses. Saw a

couple of names up there.

Was really familiar with. How often are you going back out to kind of re reach back out in the community and then maybe think about new folks that are coming up? Because it's really easy to sit back and just continue to use the same folks on not that there wouldn't be any problem with that, but, you know, we wanna make sure that we have opportunity for everybody in the city to utilize, you know, services and to be

able to sell their products to folks that are

coming from enterprise. A 100%. So we try to keep a very close thumb on local businesses that are coming in that relate to food and beverage. So it is it is hard because they come and go a lot. So we have some different resources we use.

We also are out in the community a lot. So we ourselves, I would say the partnership, Adam and his team, they will bring them to us. About once a month, we'll go through what I I I call it more data search. So that's going through, know, you a Tacoma business directory, going through and seeing if there are any new businesses that, quote, Internet, going through the food trucks and going through what are the new restaurants in Tacoma. So we really try to keep an eye on that, and I would say once a month very intentionally, but we don't have it's not like second Tuesday of every month.

That is what we do. We are constantly doing it. So when I run when I run across the new business, I just talked to a bakery last week, and they're new, and they do some very unique products. So when I run across them, I call right away. So I call right away. We have the conversation. We discuss, like, what can it look like. And and through those conversations, it's part of what really led us to this concept of a local Tacoma location that can feature these businesses in ways that that they can't be in the whole building.

Sure.

So it's it's an ongoing effort, I would say. But welcome any you know, I would say if anybody has has a business or has an idea, please. Like, we we definitely reach out to all.

And and, I'm assuming you're collecting data and information on all the folks that you're interacting with. Have there been any gaps in certain demographics or folks that have been identified through that data collection? Is there is there thoughts? Like, who are we missing here?

I would have to go I would have to go back and look at that because I don't know from our perspective, it hasn't been who are we missing. From our perspective, it's more how can we partner with them to make to make it viable to be in a large scale business. So whether it's the convention center or the dome, finding ways that we can partner with them is has been more of what I focused on, not necessarily the demographic of who they are.

Okay.

Yeah. Go

ahead. Filter in just a little bit on that. So every year, we Melinda mentioned we do an annual business review with them. At that time, we're also reviewing all of our menu options, and our pricing structure. So specifically for the dome, it's what new concepts, what new stands can we potentially bring in or vendors. For the convention center, it's a full menu review sort of top to bottom of what makes sense for us. And that's sort of the two arms that we have for local that are very, very different. The the dome is that 18,000 people in four hours. The the convention center is the okay. We actually have a kitchen and prep time can bring in products.

So when Moana talks about bakeries and things like that, an example I'll give is, a few years ago, we started conversations with Love by the Slice, which fantastic local to come organization. Absolutely love them. We partnered for a few months on a trial run at the convention center to see how we could maybe bring them in as serve providers. The irregularity of the business, the fact that every event coming in has their choice of menu items, it's not consistent, Just made it not viable for them. They're not quite at the scale to be able to deliver yet, but it's one of those where we keep reviewing each year. What can we bring in and what can we highlight?

Do we do we kind of, like, provide any kind of workshop or training, to try and help folks address those barriers to being able to scale up? What are some of the challenges? I know that there's literal environmental challenges, you know, the kitchen sizes,

things like that. But how how do those impact?

Yeah. So we work with them. So we work with them on how they're doing it and what they're doing and talk to them about what are the challenges so we can look and we can see certain ones, but we ask them what they are. I think the biggest challenge that we find is a lot of small businesses, they have whether you talked about the space constraint, they have the labor constraint. So they many, many good ones are at capacity. They are they are producing everything they can. And so when we again, because of the sporadic nature, and, you know, the with the pies, it was a great example. So we had a function where we needed two. Perfect. Right? It's a very small VIP event. The next time, we needed 600.

Mhmm.

So for a for a small business, they generally do not have the labor to bring in to make 600 pies in a time frame that's still gonna keep them fresh and quality preserved. Right? They they don't have the infrastructure nor the labor. So we talk about, like, how how does that get done? And it's challenging. It's really challenging. Again, I think there's that. For some, there are food safety certifications and requirements that that we do require, and that is there's nothing that is nonstandard in the industry. But I would say we are, we are very strict on that.

Yeah.

So we require certain things. And and, again, none of them are unique if you're in the food service industry, but that can be a barrier,

at times to some.

And we work with them on that as well. So we'll do one on one work with them. I'm based here, so I personally got into businesses and worked with them and talked to them about what it looks like. And when we're preparing for an event this size, what does that mean? So we we do partner. And, again, I think that I think this local Tacoma location is going to help bridge that so they can see the benefit. But it's hard when you have a workforce of, you know, even 10. And I'm in the same boat. So we have a workforce of 30, and I all of a sudden need 700 people. And I need 700 people for two days a month.

It's it's challenging, right, to get to get the quality of our products, especially for a business owner that take great pride. Yeah. And and we don't wanna at all, infringe on what that looks like in their brands.

Thank you so much. Thank you, sir. Thank you.

Great. I just wanna make sure. Okay. I thought I saw, but I didn't. I think I have two questions. One is I was just wondering, and you might have covered it, and I just missed it. How long has our Aramark have the contract with the city, and how long is it?

Our current contract started in 2018, 2019. We did a brief extension because of the pandemic. So we are currently through 2032, and that's for both the dome and the convention center. Aramark's been in the convention center I'm gonna miss that timeline. Very long time.

We have been in the convention center twenty five plus years. '21?

That's how we were. I was gonna say that.

The life of us Okay. We opened it.

We opened it by the time. So '29.

We opened the convention center. In fact, my my leader, the regional vice president, actually physically opened the convention center, as of July. So we have been there

Cool. That way. Not at the door.

And then who had the dome contract before?

It was a company called Centerplate, and we went it was full RFP process in 2018 to we would have accepted separate, but the goal was to merge contracts, just because you get economies of scale and and better operations when they were closed.

K. And then what you said you sit down every year. I'm wondering, is that, just to go through the subcontractors and the other, like is it a whole contract review? Is it just pieces of it? Or what is the

It's a whole business line review with everything that Aramark does. So we talked through the convention center's results. We talked through the Dome's results. The data analytics team that Aramark has is is second to none. So they give us very specific details, every item sold, every food vendor, whether it's our brands, whether it's a subcontractor.

We see their numbers and how they've done, which really does help inform, okay, what's the next thing that we wanna shift? We haven't done it for a little while just because, again, you're rebuilding the business. But, generally, with large sports entertainment venues like The Dome, you wanna see about a 10 to 15% turnover in your brands, and the style of food you're bringing and just keep things fresh each year. For the convention center, menu revamps, we're about every two to three year cycle.

Yeah. About every two years.

And and even within that, we issue menus. We have menus that our clients can use. I would say a significant portion is custom.

85. 85. 85%. So the the menu is there. We wanna make sure it's always there, but the majority is customized through the sales team to really make sure that we're meeting the needs of of that particular group.

Thank you. That's a really helpful overview. I think councilor Bushnell had a similar question to what I had in my mind, which is how do we maybe work with Casey's team? I don't know who the appropriate team is here at the city figure out how we not only bring in more equity and contracting length, but how do we get the subcontractors who are OMBEs, but also how do we certify or not. But how do we also think about how we help small businesses scale up so that they can handle some of these capacity things?

They can can get to install the Tacoma Dome. I just think that is a important longer term goal for economic development in cities that we have not just national franchises who are to call to call on business owner owned, but actual local chains so that we can get more future almond rota type things out

Of Dakota. Yep. It's just a

good goal for us as a city. Yep.

Absolutely. And and I will say that's something, as we launch our our sort of master planning process, that becomes a topic that we absolutely can include in that conversation. And and I hearken back to many years ago now, I was running some buildings in Edmonton, Alberta, of all places, and a an unused sort of back of house space in our Expo Center, our 500,000 square foot Expo Center. We were in the process of converting into a test kitchen space exactly for that reason. How can we bring smaller groups up, give them a large kitchen space where their local and their business kitchen is never gonna produce what we need?

But how can we give them that large so they have that ability to flex up and down a little more? So I love that for that conversation as well as we talk about the dome.

Perfect. Thank you.

And then I have two more questions. One one last one for you, Melinda, is what was your concert in 2018?

I can hear you.

Are we putting

2018 when she was on the other side of the equation of seeing her of seeing a concert. Your first concert.

Yeah. My fur yes. 2018 was not. My first concert, I think, was I don't if she and Tina Turner or Billy. I know. Or Billy Joel, and I can't remember who opened. Yeah. It was I yeah. It was it was a long

time ago. Long time ago. Long time ago.

I saw my number two with my attorney. Good stuff. See. No complaints. I was just curious. You can't just drop myself a concert and not tell me who. Me

too. And I'm still working on money.

Thank you. I mean, you know, everybody wants it now. So we were we were hipsters. We were here first, Adam. Mhmm. And then I think my other question is for Adam. It could be for someone else on the team. How many but totally unrelated to Aardvark. How many kitchens do we have at the convention center or at the dome or available to us? And is there a way that we could make those available for small businesses to use? We have a huge commercial kitchen shortage in the city and in the county, and that's something that this committee has talked about before. Something I talked to small business owners before. Is that a pilot program or

something we can look at how we stand up?

It's definitely something we can look at. What I will say is we have one professional kitchen at the convention center, one at the dome. The convention center is booked solid. The work that Eric and team are doing is pretty much three sixty five at this point. At the dome, obviously, a little less used. The only hesitation I would have to talk about that would be that it is not designed as actual sort of catering prep kitchen. It is very much geared toward concessions. Mhmm. So I think a whole lot of fryer space Yeah. And things that are very specific to our line of business, not necessarily a broader kitchen prep.

Great. Thank you. Very helpful. Great. Anybody else have any questions? Yeah. Perfect.

Add I'm a note.

I was just gonna make a a note on the, collaboration with CEB. Our team has actually talked to Adam's team about that,

and it is on our work plan Okay.

To have more discussions on how to build the skills and capacity for smaller Good. Thank you. Hey, Adam. Thanks, Amy. Great. We're gonna move on to topics for upcoming meetings with.

Okay. As discussed in 2024, Steve is going to go over that 2019 that we were from previous report recommendation report and touch on how we are doing on progress and And on March 10, downtown Tacoma partnership will be here for their annual update. In March 24, we have acre.

Perfect. Thank you. Yeah. For other items of interest, wanted to note for folks in the packet. The committee received a memo from the associated general contractors of Washington on community workforce agreements. This memo was sent to the committee along with today's materials and will be available on the legislature for the public. And it was from Tim Atterbury who testified today. So if folks wanna check that out, that is there. Would any of my colleagues like to discuss the memo in greater detail or have

any questions? Feel free to review. Come back next time. Perfect.

With that, I will take a final motion.

Will you go, Drew?

Second. All those in favor, see you by saying that.

Aye.

Nobody clicks. Motion's been adopted. Please sign adjourned. Thank you, everybody.