Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good. Yeah. Good. And I haven't done that for years. I've learned to get off it. Get the soft doughnuts, and I or a.

I don't know. It's like where's

Mic is on. Okay. Good evening. I would like to call the order of the first infrastructure planning and sustainability committee of the year, 01/28/2026. Clark, will you please call the roll?

Councilmember Diaz? Here. Councilmember Hines? Here. Council member Sadalgay. Here. And council member Walker.

Here. We're gonna start with public comments. Clerk, would you please read?

To request to speak during public comment for items on the agenda, please sign up at the front of the room if you have not done so already. If you're speaking virtually, please press the raise hand button near the bottom of the Zoom window or star nine on your phone. Your name and the last four digits of your phone number will be called out when it is your turn to speak.

Thank you. Have we had anyone sign up to speak virtually or in person? Probably in person. I don't see him online. Okay. Alright. So we will close public comments. As always, if there are people that pop in during the meeting, we'll open it back up at the end of the meeting. We are gonna start today as the first meeting of the year with the election of our committee chair and vice chair. According to the city council rules of procedure, each standing committee shall elect a chair and vice chair, which we typically complete at the first meeting of the New Year. Now is the time to bring forward nominations for election of the chair of the IPS Committee. Are there any nominations?

I would like to nominate chair Walker as chair of the IPS Committee for the year 2026. Second.

It's been moved in second seconded. Are there any additional nominations? Alright. All those in favor of adopting the motion to elect myself, council member Walker, as chair of the IPS committee signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion is declared adopted. Now is the time to bring forward nominations for election of the vice chair of the IPS Committee. Are there any nominations?

I move to elect council member Sabalte as vice chair of the infrastructure planning and sustainability committee for the year 2026. Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Are there any additional nominations? Alright. All those in favor of adopting the motion to elect council member Sidalgo as vice chair of the infrastructure planning sustainability committee signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Alright. The motion is declared adopted. Vice chair Sadalge, excited to have you in your new role.

Excited to be here. I feel like there should be, like, a skull that goes. Former vice chair DSSC. That's all

I have for you.

And as a former vice chair myself, I'm graduate

vice chair.

Now everyone has been vice chair on this. Alright. Moving into the work. Our very first item is the the urban forestry forest priority action plan, specifically our neighborhood council report out. So you have the documents in front of you.

This is a draft for the IPS committee. Once we have you have looked at it at the IPS committee given us any updates, we will post this on the website so that it will be public. I have a few comments on it as you peruse through it, And I do wanna give a big thank you to Mike Carey for coming to all of the community meetings with me. Also, council member Diaz for joining me. At least one, I've got a couple of the neighborhood committees, neighborhood councils.

We had great conversations. We heard from a ton of people. We got a lot of feedback, and a big thank you to Christina Khan for putting it all together in this report. She and I have worked together last couple weeks to make that final. I think she did a great job.

We kinda pulled out some different quotes from the public, so we got a a wide array of different views in there. But I'm gonna walk through it just with some high level points so that you can highlight a few things, open it up for discussion, and then, of course, after this meeting, if you think of things, we can incorporate those then as well. So this encompasses all the community engagements that happened in the fall. So these are part of the phase one of the urban forest priority action plan, which is the resolution we as council passed. We spoke to about or got in front of about a 150 people in nine neighborhood councils and on community walks in South Tacoma in the Lincoln District and also spoke to the youth commission.

I wanna start by saying how grateful I am to the neighborhood councils for welcoming me in and adding me to the agenda. It was a pretty meaty conversation and meaty amount of information, and they jumped right in and shared their perspectives. So a few key takeaways for feedback. I won't share everything in here, but just top three items to take a look at. So what what I found, these engagements confirmed that the residents have strong and often conflicting perspectives on tree regulations on private property.

I think even just the questions we asked were kind of shocking to community members as it as it forced them to think through the the trade offs that we're all having to deal with. I think most people are ultimately willing to support regulations on certain types of trees on private property, most notably healthy and mature ones. The second thing that I wanted to highlight is that many community members raised concerns about having to pay for new services or permits. You know, just one more fee as we're hearing with a lot of other things. Community is facing difficult economic conditions.

We keep hearing this through everything that we're working on. So we heard that as well. Not that people are totally opposed, but they definitely have concerns. What what are those fees? How are they calculated? And almost every neighborhood council talked about proposing incentives rather than than fees. So could you get incentive for expanding financial support for repairing sidewalks that are damaged by tree roots? We know this. We have this everywhere. What sort of dollars can we put towards that?

What could we put towards decreasing utility fees for properties with high tree canopy or large mature trees? And three, we heard this a couple places, having city arborists easily accessible to help property owners make informed choices rather than rash decisions. We know people wanna keep their property safe. They don't want trees falling on their property. But often, most of us, myself included, don't know enough about a particular tree's health to know whether or not to take it down.

So a lot of people said, if I could call somebody, if I had an arborist hotline, we could I could make better decisions. But a lot of talk about incentives. If I'm gonna do the work to take care of a tree, keep it healthy, make sure it it lives, what sort of incentive could I get. And then the last point that I just wanted to highlight is just the joy that I heard when people talked about trees. People overwhelmingly support and appreciate their urban forest.

Most of the community members also share that they benefited from the trees in their neighborhood. And I think we've all heard that as we've been out and about. That's certainly a a key. It's when it gets down into the nitty gritty of how we actually form this policy that that things get challenging. So our resolution is moving has moved quickly into phase two and phase three.

They they sort of overlap a little a little bit. One of the things that I have met with the chair of the planning commission about is how we give feedback to the planning commission about this work as they embark on it so that there's a little bit of back and forth now instead of a final report that comes to us later. And I think this document will be really helpful to them because we did so much work with the community. But I also wanna make sure that we're reflecting what this committee wants to see. So if anyone has questions or thoughts, this is the time to ask them.

Yes.

Yeah. We're we're open to making changes to the document if you feel like this doesn't reflect conversations. Yeah. This is the time to make changes because this this is the draft for IPS review, and then we'll get this up on the website. This is a reflection of our community engagement. This isn't the policy document. Right? So I don't want to mistake it for that, but it's also an opportunity to make sure that we have those voices in there.

No. No. No. I that's sure. I think Mhmm. Incorporated pretty much what I've heard when I've gone to public meetings or community forums around this. I think it recognizes the complexity that I often hear, which is the fact that I love my neighbor's tree, and I love my tree until I don't love my tree. And then I want it gone as

soon as

possible for as cheap as possible. Right? There's a contention that exists there, and I don't want my neighbor to move the tree unless he pays a million dollars to take the tree down because it has value to it. Right? And so there's something that's a conversation that can navigate around the public benefit that occurs to trees, which is true, and I hear that in public all the time, along with the private cost or.

Right? And as Mike just talked about, we'd say, tree trauma and kind of people's concerns about trees, concerns about trees balancing that with kind of a value. And I think this is a really good job. You know, I would say that it also reflects what I've heard, which is, you know, how do we get towards more of the incentives to encourage people to keep trees, penalties for removal of trees. I I think that works much better if we operate it under the premise that trees are a benefit, and they are a good thing. We should be penalizing people for moving them. Right? Because they shouldn't want that to happen in the first place. And how can we get to do that? I think encourage finding good ways to get more trees in the right places.

And do a good job. And some things that I I have heard that

I I wanna ask that'll be part of the further process is kind of

the the right tree, right place conversation with life trees. I don't know if that's gonna be opposite here or not. I do hear from folks I I I jokingly say that not necessarily seriously, but I have some neighbors who really love trees. I have some that love them until they walk through view, and then they wanna move them as fast as possible. And so navigating some of those kind of challenges there is something I'm thinking about, but I think it's really good. They come

to say everything I heard.

K. Other comments, questions? I don't see if it's

cold out here, but something that I hear around my neighborhood specifically is that there's, like, teeny tiny trees inside our out here. We've heard that in any of the meetings that I didn't go to around tree replacement essential. If there's a space for how we incentivize or not feeding people for taking a tree that is currently closer and harder than, like, anyone that's obviously not in the immediate, but eventually could grow to be bigger or happier. How long will they go? These all kind of kind of good trees near the mall.

Yeah. We did hear that, and there's a couple of places that it is called out or at least connected to that comment. Great. We talked about new trees being to increase the amount of years the developers are responsible for it so they can root a little bit better, which I think is connected to your comment. And then I don't know I'm sure I saw it in here, Christina, if you know where that is in terms of the replacement. Just the understanding that a fully grown tree is not the same as a tiny tree and that there would need to be some parity in that. I know we heard it, and I can't remember.

We made it. I don't know how

we make sure.

It's, like, weirdly new ones. Yeah.

I like to do. Okay.

It's important. Something understood.

No. I think it would be great to incorporate it. And for those who maybe didn't hear, Christina said, well, we'll make sure and then Okay. You're crushed in the microphone. It's okay. Councilmember said, I'll get anything to Yeah. You know,

I largely agree with both council member and Diaz. I suppose one of the overarching kind of themes we still want to suggest we we realize is that there is this kind of understanding that there has to be a balanced approach, and it has to be balanced in a lot of different aspects. You know, one of the growths. Right? Our GMA requires us to allow for a certain amount of growth in in our local jurisdictions and to also understand and suggest that when we look at a policy, it can be very easy to just go down a rabbit hole and see if it's a bad view and not in the larger

context of all the policy that

we need to also weigh against. Mhmm. And to kind of it is here in places, but to to kind of accentuate, you know, just to call that out a little bit.

Great. Thank you. We'll work on that. Just thinking pausing as I'm thinking about where to to add that in, but certainly that could be reflected in the intro. Where it

came in was, you know, we just allow, you know, the ability to add two eighty years of private lot. Right? And then what how does that interact? It's you know, that there is a public good over there that we've done as a policy. What kind of thoughts about understanding that there are kind of priority levels here? Perhaps we can talk offline more on on what that actually means.

Yeah. So we'll take

Yeah. Go

ahead. Another thought that came to our mind is customer was talking about the true balance or the policy balance is my thought my other thought around replacing some of these dead trees or these trees that don't quite make sense for the area. Say, they were planted with a vision that they would just always stay little when the area could accommodate a bigger tree. Or how do we how do we think about or incentivize the different types of trees? So some trees are invasive. How do we do we is it worth thinking about how do we replace invasive trees? Is it worth thinking about how we incentivize some trees, living in the neighborhood? What type of trees kind of were my Mhmm. Thinking around tree replacement or.

I think that's a great point, and it did come up in a couple different meetings for sure, specifically about the types of trees and avoiding future sidewalk Mhmm. Issues. People talked about tree fruit trees quite a bit on both sides. Right? Very excited that we allow it more now, but also less. Yep. So that did that definitely came up. And I think it also ties back to the getting the advice from the arborist. And so that kept coming up as a, how do I have access to somebody who knows the answer to this question? The mic. As a yeah. The mic. Yeah. That's alright. Sorry.

So that led into a question which I didn't a question that I would ask you on the public conversation is, was there a discussion? I don't remember hearing it. Who is the neutral, like, arbiter on the tree decision? Is there I mean, because

Arborist arbiter? Well, I because well, there's a line

in here, like, rash decisions on large tree Right? So if that tree's been in my yard for ten years, I probably wanna cut it down. It seems rash to my neighbor, but to me, I've

been thinking about it for ten years. Right?

I mean, is there, a ten thirty day ten day waiting period? Are any tree permitting issue? Like, really, you wanna think about it, like, tree down. But, I mean, imagine there's gonna need to be some kind of if we impose regulations in such a way that you, my neighbor, is gonna come back and cut the tree down, and I'm gonna say I really wanna cut it down because it's a hazard. Someone's gonna make that call. Or, like, someone's gonna say I have a good reason. Or is the way we mitigate that and this is a false question. I guess something makes it fast. Or is

the way we mitigate that escalating cost to remove it?

Right? So one one way to make sure I'm really serious is to have Mike come out and tell me, yeah, you can take that down. Another way is to say, like, if you wanna take that down, it's $10,000. Of which, if we go down the cost, so they should go on the permitting side, I do worry about equity kind

of issues where you're gonna

have parts some residents will able to say, no problem. Here's drop the $10,000 on the table and cut the tree down. And some neighbors are gonna say, I can't do that, and now you're forcing me to live with this tree I don't want, and it has some impacts on me. And what do we do there? I did read that the residents are interested in, like, helping people with the tree conversation. But, again, I I do question the idea that if I really don't want the tree there, does it make me feel better that my neighbors are now in my yard helping me maintain this tree? They're the ones who made me have it in the first place. I the these are just questions that I and I that I'm just does any of that come up in the conversations about it by these?

Not really. Okay. I think these are really great questions for our next conversation, and I don't know if I can phone a friend on to when our next tree policy conversation is, but we do have one scheduled for IPS for exactly this reason is to kinda ask those questions and then put those

out so that we can Was that?

Think that's what it is. Right? Yeah. Yeah. That's in our next.

Just But your point is well taken. Yeah. That these are the conversations that we need to have.

Mhmm. The traditional mechanism by which we just settle land disputes between neighbors is the hearing examiner. So I don't know if that then becomes now this is something else that goes to the hearing examiner to determine what the tree your hearing is tree. Maybe you can't remember at all. But I I just it all sounds great when everybody feels like it's good about what's happening and, like, everybody's in agreement about the decisions they're made. But in my time on council, I find that roughly the neighbors always agree on what their neighbors do with their property.

And that did come up a lot. There were a lot of specific examples of, well, my neighbor took down the tree, and I'm so mad because now my shade is gone. Two, my neighbor won't cut down their tree, and now I have to deal with either it falling on my house or the leaves or whatever. There were many, many stories about that. So the conflict was for sure reflected the question about who arbitrates in that, and we didn't get that far. I didn't hear that from the public, but that's the next step of the conversation for sure. Great. Yeah. Thank you for bringing those up. Any other thoughts, comments?

I just wanna thank you for putting together a really good report. A lot of really good information there.

Oh, yeah. A picture. You. Yeah. Is that really good?

Thank you, Christina, for taking pictures everywhere we went. So, again, this is gonna be up on the website. So the Urban Forest Tree website, it has lots and lots of stuff that that our team does, our staff team does. But we now have a section specifically dedicated to this policy, and it has timelines as to when we're gonna do work, when the planning commission is gonna do work, when there are meetings so people can listen in. This will now be on there with all the other documents and information. So if you have constituents that want to look there or to look for information, please direct them there. We're trying to get that updated really regularly, and we have a good format that is updatable. So we'll keep putting it out there. Alright. Thank you, team.

We are moving on to our next, urban forestry topic. We purposely put these together. We are gonna get an update on evaluating Tacoma's wood waste streams and the circular economy potential. We have Brian Keeper and Mike Carey from environmental services here. There's not a decision that we're making here. This is informational only, but opportunity to to give feedback and have discussion on this connected topic. Take it away.

Okay. Thank you so much, chair Walker and members of the council. Once again, like Carrie, I'm the urban forester here with the city of Tacoma. And I have Ryan with me, and Ryan has been spending a ton of time and energy working with the consultant team to look at a circular economy system in Tacoma around urban hardwood trees. I also have Kay Wayne here as well who is with solid waste in the environmental services department, and she has brought a wealth of knowledge to this project from solid waste perspective and how can we help some of the solid waste goals around our waste stream. Actually, with that, I'm gonna kick it off to Ryan, who's gonna

walk through our report and some of

the outcomes, and I'll lead some discussion towards the end as well.

Alright. Thanks, Mike. Hey there. As Mike said, my name is Ryan Hebert. I'm an analyst on the urban forestry team in environmental services.

Myself and my colleague, Kate Wayne, over there in solid waste were directed by council via resolution four one five five five to conduct an urban wood reuse study evaluating opportunities to better utilize wood waste produced through city operations with a goal of diverting it to higher and better uses while ultimately trying to reduce the amount of wood that ends up in the waste stream. We worked with a consultancy called Ambium Carbon to produce the full report that was sent to you all in advance of this. I also brought two copies of it here just in case anybody wants to reference it throughout. Today, I'll just be presenting a high level overview of the findings from that report primarily just for your awareness, but we're also hoping to get some feedback from you at the end of this regarding some potential next steps. Next slide, please.

Okay.

Great. So we'll be approaching this first by looking at the why. So what what is this issue? Why do we care about it? Move into the what. What do we actually find throughout the study? We'll try to lay out kind of the the status quo, how things are done currently, and then we'll finish with some opportunities for improvement and potential next steps that were identified throughout the study. I'll jump right into the background here. Tree pruning and removals are necessary within urban forest maintenance. We need them if we want a safe and healthy urban forest within our community, and these activities generate what's called woody biomass, and that's just kind of a catch all term for the different parts of a tree that might enter the waste stream.

Woody biomass is generated from all kinds of different activities but we typically see it from pruning for clearance or tree health, hazardous or construction removals, storm damage, that type of thing. The type of activity also determines the type of the type and quality of material that ends up being generated and and what that can ultimately become. The takeaway there is not all woody biomass is created. On top of that, we have more severe storms, droughts, increasing development, future infrastructure upgrades. All of those are expected to increase the volume of woody biomass generated above and beyond what we're seeing today.

Our current system for managing trigger removals and maintenance activities across the city doesn't really meet our stated climate and sustainability goals, and addressing wood waste has the potential to trigger this wide range of benefits such as saving time through improving operational efficiencies, saving money through disposal cost reduction, it has environmental environmental benefits through waste reduction and diversion, emissions reduction, and if we really expand it out to a regional level, it has workforce development opportunities and even revenue generation potential. We wanna put this slide in here just to add some real world context to the wood waste issue. So these two trees represent the potential of where we could possibly go, which would be a system that fully diverts wood from removals like these to higher and better uses. Both of these trees were removed due to being hazardous and each of them had significant amounts of high quality wood that would have been a good candidate for reuse through milling. For a variety of reasons that are stated on the slides, they were not diverted to reuse and instead they were chipped and chunked and most of those chunks were hauled off to infant.

These are typical cases, they're not outliers and they're not limited to our hazardous operations. This happens in our capital construction projects, this happens during private development both in the right of way and on private properties. And we basically just wanted to put these examples in here to add context to a few important things that frame the the wider issue, which is that this is a typical outcome for a lack of a citywide salvage protocol around tree removals. They illustrate some of the current challenges to diverting material for reuse without dedicated equipment or infrastructure, and that could be physical infrastructure like a crane or a grapple truck or contractual

infrastructure,

like having a dedicated salvage partnership kind of thing set up. And they show that we have a need for clear operational procedures across our departments and work groups when it comes to removing trees. It's not all sad, though.

I wanna

highlight a recent success in this space also that happened kind of direct parallel to this study, and that's our arborist crew. So we now have a two person city arborist crew that began working this past summer on tree pruning removal and planting on environmental services and public works projects as well as other city properties and city managed right of way. So far in this first six or seven months, their initial work has centered on young street tree pruning, emergency removals, and storm response, and then they've been doing replacement plantings for trees that haven't moved over the last few years. The crew is projected to handle roughly around 2,000 tree removals and maintenance activities annually, and they could generate around 220 tons, which is 440,000 pounds of woody biomass just from a two person crew. And that number probably sounds a little scary, but I we actually think it's probably a great opportunity to reclaim some noble logs, maximize the effectiveness of wood chips that are generated through their work.

As their, arborist program progresses, the levels of tree maintenance and removals activities are expected to grow right alongside them. One exciting thing is we've already seen improvements on the wood waste issue with with the arborist crew involved. So when the arborist crew generates loads of trailer loads of chips through their pruning and removal activities, They've been we've been coordinating with the city's open space team, and they've been delivering the ship loads over to the open space sites for their restoration needs. So that's already a a meaningful easy way for them to offload chips that supports open spaces. At the same time, I just wanna call

it that the crew does not have some of

the necessary equipment it would need for kind of larger salvage opportunities, so they don't really have a way to salvage logs. Most notably, a a two person crew can't legally climb a tree to take it down. So when you see people all roped up in trees taking them down, our crew is not able to do that. You you need to have three people to do those kinds of approvals, which means we'll still be reliant on support from private tree care companies or private lumber companies for any kind of larger wood recovery opportunities.

Jumping into the kind of

overarching goals in the process of this study, we had three large goals which were to interview the relevant city work groups, partner agencies, and companies that handle wood waste in Tacoma to figure out our existing tree management practices and identify the gaps within that, and then to use that information to develop opportunities for wood reuse alongside some of the potential costs and benefits of implementing those opportunities. And how we actually went about doing that was that Cambium, our consultant, conducted 25 collaborator interviews with internal city teams, external partner organizations, and private industry. You can kinda see the bigger buckets of those groups that we spoke to in the on the graphic here. And then based on those interviews, we mapped out the various disposal options for wood waste throughout Tacoma, Pierce County, and even some of the wider region. These range from landfills to compost operations down to really hyper local mills here in town.

The primary focus of the study was the material that's handled by our city operations because there isn't a lot of information available for tracking private tree removals, and, we just don't have jurisdiction in that space. So improving internal city operations is kind of seen as the the most promising opportunity for increasing reuse and a chance to lead by example. But even within that, our government tree activities are still intimately tied to private companies. So our city teams are often collaborating with tree care firms and construction contractors and subcontractors to support all of our removal and disposal work across the city. I just wanna put a little call out though.

Maybe with the adoption of the urban forest priority action plan, you might get a little better insight into what's happening on the private side of things at some point in the future. But for now, we're working with with what we have. So after those interviews, the team conducted a thorough analysis to try to estimate our waste generation and disposal volumes, and then they ultimately came up with five sort of opportunity pathways for Tacoma to improve the reuse system. So this one focuses in on an example of kind of the current state of things. So this graphic shows the way that wood flows into and out of our transfer center.

This is our landfill recovery transfer center. One thing I wanna stick in your brains is that the transfer center receives over 57,000 tons of woody biomass annually, and it it comes from four sources. So we have our internal city operations, the private yard waste collection bins, the private municipal solid waste collection, just the regular trash bins, and then the self haul process where people, residential and commercial, bring things to the transfer center. When it hits the transfer center, it goes into one of two streams. It'll enter the yard waste stream or the municipal solid waste stream.

The yard waste stream definitely has the best opportunity within it because most of the wood in that stream is clean, but it's currently being sent to be composted at Cedar Grove or LRI, which are both places that we currently pay to send material to. A very small portion of the material in the yard waste stream gets chipped up and it's delivered over to TAGRO, and they sell it to the public at a reduced rate of $5 a cubic yard. But, again, currently, there's high quality material that's entering that yard waste stream that is being chipped and composted, but it has a lot of opportunity. Very briefly, wood that enters the municipal solid waste streams mixed all in with people's trash, it's very difficult to recover. Going through the waste characterization studies, found that a lot of the wood in there is actually pretty high quality wood, but because of what it would take to get it out of that stream, it doesn't really make sense to focus on trying to recover wood from the solid waste stream.

It'd be better to focus on just diverting wood from that stream to begin with. And then I was just

Can we pass through a quick question? Sure. How

many tons did you say? 57,000 tons. So what percentage is going to the yard versus municipal here kind of estimation? Is it a 50 yard?

I can tell you how much is being converted versus not. I remember that. I would've because I was It's really

In my head, I was like, why is it all just going to the yard stream? I also now realize that pay for it. I forgot that. Yeah. That we pay them.

But it's also just stuff that people throw away in their trash that is wood that could have gone to the yard waste, but it it didn't.

Yeah. That's the MSW side that you're saying. Right? So what, like, what is that in the percentage? Like, half

of the plant. Roughly half.

Yeah. Like, half. Because the yeah. There's the yard waste side of it, a good portion of that is all being sent off to get composted, and none of the solid waste side is. Yeah.

Historically, we have also had regulations that require wood over a certain size to be disposed of this waste as well. And so part of that thing is cultural that, you know, people are used to wood over a certain size having to go to a certain waste stream that's not composted.

Well, I suppose also now that I'm thinking about it, mean, it's technically cheaper for us than to throw it into the plan because I keep forgetting that we pay someone to compost it. Cheaper today. Yeah. Today. Yeah.

There are also issues of contamination. So if we do have loads that are too contaminated, they will end up going to the landfill rather than being composted.

And that would include because I guess in my head, I was I could see that on the municipal solid waste side, but I suppose that also exists on the yard waste collection side because not everybody.

Not everybody's using their brown bin.

Yeah. The brown bin's. Okay. I hope it's not 50% on the city side. I suppose maybe to. Anyway

I feel like you're starting to tackle

other issues. Well,

that's really fine. It's all interconnected.

But the one the last thing I wanted to say about this slide was just a a finding in the study, which was that so 95% of that 57,000 tons of woody biomass that comes in is recoverable either through higher uses or could be composted. So there's only 5% of that 57,000 tons that should actually be going into the landfill. It's from from a recovery standpoint.

Okay.

Just moving into the meat of the study's findings right now, overall we found that there is a large amount of woody material being underutilized. Most of the material is currently composted which isn't really high value or particularly climate friendly and as we said that process costs us money to send to those facilities. The volume of removals is expected to grow in the coming decades due to increased development, climate related stressors, and infrastructure needs. There's recoverable wood that enters our system that is frequently chipped, composted, or landfilled without a process to evaluate it for uses such as milling or furniture making or even long term habitat placement on our restoration sites. This disconnect is primarily the result of gaps in our data across this pretty wide network of groups that generate wood.

We have a lack of infrastructure to capture that material that's being generated and then in coordination among the groups generating the wood and potential utilizers of the wood is sparse right now. Again this we think is actually an exciting opportunity for improvement. We're not in any kind of terrible dire situation. Composting is still a pretty good outlet compared to landfilling and it's definitely better than burning which is where a lot of municipalities resort to. And additionally, we have recent efforts to improve reuse, such as green lighting this study, so thank you all, and the establishment of the city arborist group, which all suggests that we have an opportunity to become a regional leader in this space.

And this space is a space that supports both climate goals and potentially economic opportunities. We put this slide in here specifically to call out some of the limitations in our data as we try to figure out exactly how much woody biomass is being generated and disposed of. I'm gonna try not to spend too much time on it, but the the main takeaway here is that our existing data on the generation side of things, so that who's producing the waste and how much is really pretty weak just because there are so many different players in that space and they're all tracking or more likely not tracking the data in very different ways and then not really speaking to each other. And what this means is that the data that we do have is is not capturing all the removals that are happening across the city. It's just really underrepresenting the amount of material that's likely out there.

So we don't know the full extent of the volumes or where it's going, which makes it hard to fully identify the use opportunities. But even with those gaps in the data, Cambium was able to estimate our city operations and then any of the permitted projects that we have permit data for, remove roughly 400 trees, and maintain an additional 2,300 trees each year and that's kind of based off the last few years of data. We know that city operations only generate a portion of that total biomass but the biomass generated through those city activities really has an advantage for action because we could potentially have control over its origin, its handling, we would know its species, we would know its condition. This material could be strategically assessed much easier than trying to capture the fall of the wood at once, And if we were to harness this controlled stream of wood waste, it would really represent one of our more practical and impactful opportunities for reuse. On the disposal side of things, there's data's quite a bit better, but there's still a lot of private and regional outlets that we don't have information on.

So for instance, trees might be removed by a by a private tree care company in Tacoma, but then hauled outside of Tacoma to be disposed of, and we don't

we just don't have that data.

One really quick win utilization opportunity that we wanted to pull out that happened just through the data gathering phase of this was that TEGRO, we we mentioned, currently receives some clean chips from the transfer center. They receive about a thousand little over a thousand cubic yards of chips that they sell to the public. But then separate from that, they externally source 30,000 cubic yards of chip material to make their black bark mulch product that they sell. And we just think that that could potentially be a need that's met internally through our own widget generation assuming we can work with them on quality issues that they might have. Okay.

Moving into our opportunities. So we've organized the potential opportunity pathways for improving wood reuse into kind of rough categories of near term low to no cost, midterm low to mid cost, and long term mid to high cost. For opportunity number one, improve our wood waste data collection and integration. So with all those different work groups across the city and our partner agencies generating wood waste, there's currently no standardization for data tracking around removals. If we were to create clear methods for tracking removals, it would just really allow us to capture source and volume and species and condition, and we can even track where things are going more clearly.

It would really improve our opportunity to coordinate wood reuse within our kind of standard operations that we do all the time. I wanna highlight just a couple departments and teams that are have taken steps to and these these happened taken steps to improve tracking and data even while we were doing this study these were happening. So in urban forestry, for example, we track species and size data on all of our hazardous tree removals. We also recently hired a construction arborist who will be, among other things coordinating removal data for city capital construction projects, which

I think will open up a lot

of data we haven't currently had. And then in planning and development services, they maintain and have been actively improving the the database, the Acela permitting database, which holds a lot of information related to tree permitting and land use. Admittedly, lot of that information is self entered and not always verified, so data. Opportunity number two, revise our project specifications. So we don't really we don't currently have standardized requirements for how contractors must handle wood during our capital construction projects or really for any of our removal activities.

The language in there usually just says something to be effective, the contractor is responsible for disposing. And what that often means in practice is that they retain ownership of it and and they dispose of it at their discretion with no obligation to prioritize any sort of reuse. So within that we see an opportunity to standardize project specs for contracted work in a way that prioritizes reuse over disposal and focuses on diversion to higher, better practical uses. Our mid tier opportunity, number three, would be to establish a chip depot and a log sort yard. And this one could kinda be split into two because a a chip pile and a log yard don't have to be done at the same time to see benefits from them.

But that said, establishing a a centralized chip depot for internal use, partner use, maybe public use, maybe all they love, and a log sort yard would improve how woody material is tracked, staged, and redistributed. Under this model, we would designate a space at or near the transfer center where chips and logs generated through our our regular tree work could be temporarily staged to be picked up by a wood utilizer at a later time. And this would significantly simplify that wood transfer process by taking some of the logistical pressure off of trying to coordinate removal and reuse on the same day. Any of our pilot wood reuse efforts right now have had to be the the stars aligned perfectly for when the tree is coming down, the there's an opportunity for someone to come there and intercept that log with the right equipment and the right things on the same day. Oops.

There are multiple tiers for how something like a setup like that could work, which would range from essentially no staffing, very minimal staffing, very minimal investment to huge significant investments in a full scale wood processing facility at the transfer center. But all the detailed breakdowns of those kinds of scenarios are within the full report. Moving into the long term, opportunity number four would be to focus on some workforce development. As we were going through the process, we we spoke with existing small scale reuse opportunities like the local mills we have here in town. That demonstrated a community interest in this.

But through that process, we also found that there's a a pretty significant skills gap in this space around identifying what is reusable, how to process it, all those kinds of things. In an interview with a private tree care owner, they said that a lot of the they they've noticed that there's a pretty significant lack of arborists that are out there doing tree work that have knowledge in the space of wood reuse, and a lot of tree care company setups aren't currently set up to handle anything beyond this sort of chipping and chunking up that they're doing right now. But they're all interested in that in that space. And then finally the final opportunity would be to support emerging technologies and regional initiatives and these are kind of the pie in the sky opportunities way down the road where we could potentially look to collaborate with Pierce County or other jurisdictions in the region to all contribute to a regional clean woody biomass supply that would support technologies like biochar or renewable fuels or mass timber production or things like that. But those are much more complex opportunities that were kinda out of the scope of this study for right now.

We just wanted to include them to show that this is kind of a a nesting egg of opportunities the more you dive into it. With that, we've reached the end. So we are looking ahead. We're right now hoping to get some feedback from you all on the study's findings. Are there things that we should potentially consider for further discussion or analysis?

In the meantime, we'll do our best to begin addressing some of the the data collection issues that are within our our purview. But if there are other opportunity pathways that you potentially like us to dive deeper into, we could work towards creating an implementation strategy that we could potentially bring back in the future, I guess, community meeting, exploring any of these opportunities further. But with that, I just wanna thank you all for your time, and and open it up to you all.

Great. Thank you so much. This is so exciting, and I really appreciate the how many opportunities there are in there in terms of, you know, maybe tackling some things now and some things in the longer term plan. Before you before I open it up to questions, you had a slide in there that talked about what changes or a bullet in there that said, we've already done a bunch of things internally Mhmm. To streamline, and you listed off things that you're doing in your department in PDS. I feel like I missed one, so I may be gonna ask you if you can just repeat what the things are that are already happening. Because that seems like a really cool part of the it was a study, but thing you know, benefits came out of it already.

Yeah. So one like, in our department, so we are tracking well, there's a few things. One was the the arborist crew. So the arborist crew is coordinating with the open space team to do chip deliveries, whereas in the past, there would just kinda be a set chip pile at the landfill that was only available to public works, street ops, and chips would go there and they would just kinda sit. And our open space team was often in need of chips and didn't know how to get them.

And so that need has been met very quickly with them being like, hey. We're we're generating chips now, and we need them. And now so wherever they are in the city, they'll deliver chips to the nearest restoration sites that open spaces identified that need them. Within our urban forestry team, we're tracking all of the species and size and condition data for all the hazardous trees that are removed through the hazardous tree assistance program. We also piloted some a little bit of wood reuse through that program when it has been possible.

And then I mentioned, yeah, planning and development services with the addition of their compliance arborists that are working on tree permitting and tree violations now. They've been working to improve the the Acela database around permitting to have more reliable data in it around tree size and species and things like that with trees that are coming down.

Okay. Great. Thank you for that. Sometimes I just need to hear it twice, but I I think those are worth reiterating publicly too just that there's some great wins already. So I will open it up to my colleagues first if folks have questions or comments for the team. Go ahead. Jump right in.

No. Very excited that we can just come back. I think just a really cool way we can look at trying to make sure less of our waste ends up out of place. Right? It's the right spot. I think I just to be honest, I'm very interested in the centralized Chimp Depot's out of the door. Because I think one of things

I've heard and heard this

from the deconstruction conversation that comes with Walker led, which is the marketplace is not friction free. So you deconstruct the house. You don't have to cast someone right there who wants the stuff, but if you could put it somewhere, people over time will eat it. And that seems like that's the biggest barrier for some of this is if we had a central location where we can put the chips for the logs to be sorted, but then people can pick them up. So I I'm very interested in that. I know there's grant funding programs and things like that out there to support that work. I also think you've done a really good job identifying, in my mind, nexus for how to actually support our work here in the city. Right? So the wood chips, I think that's a great finding right there. I think larger wood reuse is great.

I also think the biochar, think we would probably be a top consumer of biochar in the environmental service department. I think one of its main places to be used in mitigating the impact of storm water. So I'm just I'm very interested in that, what that would look like going forward. And I think it could also be could we broaden some of this conversation, the deconstruction conversation that councilor Walker had, What it would look like to have salvage on both sides. So I'm trying to

expand the scope a little bit, but I

I would love to think more of what that looks like, and I think it aligns with how things work. My question I mean, for someone here. Right? So I can't throw, like, whole logs into my yard. So how do how do whole logs end up at what's the path I would say end up at the transfer center? It has to be private haul or someone putting up a truck and bringing them in there?

Yeah. Typically, it's a self haul option, and that is a a barrier for a lot of people. Maybe you don't have a truck that you can use, and logs are heavy. So maybe it's a mobility issue as well. But, yes, that is the primary option that you have. You pay someone to come and get it, or you bring it as a self haul item, and then it is sorted when it gets to the the transfer center.

One thing that I was involved with last year last year, two years ago, around the kind of gar not garbage haulers. This is not garbage, but people who haul things that are like garbage, right, or garbage. There's only a few people that do that. Right? So I think another place I'd is is where is the educational? How are we working with folks that do that? Because your point, when I take down a whole tree, there's only a few companies that actually really do that or

or there that we

should that should be doing that here in city of. Right? Lots of try. But could we work more closely with them? And if we have this option of, hey. Maybe not. You know, could we work with you partner to take your I think there's educational support for them that would be helpful. Because I know I've definitely thrown a few larger blocks into my yard waste bin and felt really bad about it.

But but,

you know, they're they're being composted. They're being that's great. That's good

to know. Yeah. They will run to a higher better. You know? Get to a better place and know the truth afterlife. But I think the partnerships around that would be really good. One question about the Shift Depot. Someone knows this better. Is there, like, a program where I can sign up online and people just drop ships off at my house?

Yes. So there's a program called ShipDrop, and it's so it's not affiliated with the city anyway, but there is a It's private. Private. Yeah. So it's a chip drop is essentially a private program where arborist companies or tree work companies can sign up to be distributors of chips. And so if they know that they have a job they're doing in the neighborhood, they can register on the website, and then people will have a running list of registrations. So they're sitting on a wait list. And if the arborist crew knows there's some way for chips in the neighborhood, they'll they'll drop the cordon.

I think that's right on the unrealized opportunity to chip drop. Right? I mean, yes, that's great, and maybe there's coordination there. But how could that work? Because the city end up selling

chips wood chips at some point in time.

I mean, right now, we are selling through TAGRO. Yeah. Clean chips already. Mhmm. And so I think a lot of it comes down to quality control concerns. Just backing up a second. Hazardous trees become hazardous for a reason. Oftentimes they're diseased. They're pest infected, whatever it might be. And so when they come down, the chips may not be necessarily appropriate to dump at somebody else's house or to sell because you might be through contamination spreading something you don't wanna spread. Yeah. And so there's this part of the sort yard aspect is really the quality control too to understand what needs to be contained, what can be distributed. But to answer your question briefly, they could be sold if they're of a

grave where we feel comfortable too. Well and so I think to that point, actually, if we're thinking about our broader kind of tree canopy ecosystem, right, having that quality control around what actually gets dropped off at my house because I wouldn't know if they drop them off my house and start spreading diseased wood chips over my yard and then kill my trees. Right? So I think another piece why I'm interested in centralized chipping holes. Part of it is quality control around health of our tree canopy. Right? So then we have someone eyes on it. Like, oh, that's those are diseased wood chips or those are low quality. Put those aside. Maybe it could be composted, not burned, thrown away.

Right? But here's the high quality ones, and maybe actually have a a knock on effect for some of our tree canopy trees that are still alive. So I and, you know, along with other pieces. I think the the short term things, I really love to know what we can do to kinda support that work. And longer term, I guess, this is why for Mike, you're the arborist. Like, what is the training program for arborist? Like, is is it a is what kind of program? Because I guess I'm thinking about if we did this, is this something we could

partner with our technical colleges to

support people on? Is it a partner with, you know, four year universities? Is it a graduate school program?

Like, what would it look like?

I'm so glad you asked that question. We are already partnering with, so we have a workforce development program right now that we're running under a pilot. It's called Grow Corp. It's its name. Green Resilience Opportunity Corp. It's a partnership with Palmer Scholars, the city of Tacoma, the conservation district, The Nature Conservancy, and other partners as well. And it's essentially an eight week training program for all things green stormwater infrastructure. And right now, it's this eight week, like, really broad program. Right? You get one week on urban forestry, one week on traditional stormwater engineering systems, but it gives exposure to different career pathways.

We are now going through our fourth cohort of individuals going through this program, and it's great. And a lot of them have expressed wanting to take the next step and dive a little bit deeper into one of those areas of focus. One of our partners that we have right now actually through a grant, they're consulting with us for free. It's an organization called PowerCore Philly or for Philadelphia. They do workforce development in this way, and they do the next tier, which is like a two zero one level nine month program where they actually do a deep dive and do real, like, training on how to do our orculture work, treatment pruning work, climbing, all that stuff.

And through that program, they also have a lumber mill that they operate in partnership with the city where it's a sort yard. The qualified staff through power core actually tag the trees for grade and then ultimately get them to their highest best use whether it's milling, whether I mean, they actually turn logs into tree stakes to actually stake up trees that they plant. And they have a partnership with the local educational institute as well to take the SADAS product that's generated and inoculate it with mycorrhizal fungi that is used in restoration products. So, like, a 100% recovery is what they're targeting.

And so that's Philly. I had read I don't know if it's the city of Baltimore had it that runs a lumberyard. That's it's more than Baltimore. That's what and that was what I saw. So Yeah. My last point on this is you can tell I'm really excited about it. But it was the Baltimore model, right, where they're running an actual lumber mill, and they're actually taking it from beginning to end. They're milling in stuff. I think in Baltimore, actually, employing formerly incarcerated individuals doing work too. So, like, there's a whole bunch of knock on effects of it.

That being said, I just would say I I'm very excited about potentially further exploring the Chippy Quan in South Bay, how it's I think it can support our urban forestry tree canticles and some of the our recycling depth reuse processes processes and even our, you know, how we operate our utilities. So thank you,

Thank you, council member Hines. I am very excited about that program. I think we need to talk about it more or, like, celebrate it more. I because I haven't heard about that. It's really cool, the training program.

I'd be happy to arrange a presentation at some point if that's of interest to IPS or even a report if it's if we don't have time to get on the calendar for it. But I know that they would love to come here and talk to you as well. Cool. That's great.

At the class?

Yeah. Absolutely. That's what I have. Yeah. Like,

Canadian Tree Academy. Yeah.

I think April 6 is when the next cohort starts. And, actually, the I mentioned the grant we have with PowerPort Philadelphia to consult with us. They're actually flying out to help work through the program and figure out what improvements. I'm sure they would love to meet with you all too.

Thank you. Alright. I have two questions. I can't remember

the second one, but I'll start with the first one. On the data collection piece, it sounds like you're interested in figuring out how we can make the data both talk to each other, how do we collect it, how do we talk about it once you have it. One of the pieces I'm thinking around the how do we talk about it is will are you at a place now, or will that continued work lead us to a place where we can include some of this data in the climate action plan results? Is that where we're driving, or is that or we already arrived there?

I mean, that's a great suggestion. Okay. Yeah. Very tightly. Right? That's I think what am I hearing that that would be a good thing

to consider including in the climate

action? Action?

Yeah. Okay.

I wasn't sure if that was something that you are already doing. I'm just out. But, like

No. No.

No. Or if it's something that we could it's even possible. Right? Because sometimes I don't hey, John Pat. Sometimes we often, we are copying in circles around how we report on the Climate Commitment Act. Right. And there's no agreed upon greenhouse gas emission thing. It's a little bit ratable, but I was just wasn't sure if it was possible. And then if what is possible, how how do we incorporate it?

Yeah. Right now we have, like, broad policy objectives that have been stated in the cap and not data points. Right? That we're and now that we're starting to go down this path of collecting data or understand better what the ecosystem looks like for data collections, we can start relaying more specifics.

And then I'm also interested on some degree to what the economic development benefits are. Right? It sounds like the program has benefits. The the reuse recycling piece of it has benefits. What do we end end up creating some sort of, like, enterprise around. Right? Like, was built out of this kind of creativity. So those are things that I have in my mind of how we create new city revenue streams, especially maybe you can fund the incentive programs for the for the last presentation. Mhmm. Because that was what I kept hearing was, I think, the city tends to lean towards, fees or sticks rather than carrots because we also need to generate funds.

So if we find other ways to make funds, then we can have incentives. And I'm still trying to remember what my other question was. Oh, on the last slide, the last bullet, do you need an action from us to start thinking on implementation, or do I just say I'm interested in implementation and we will consider that?

Because each one of those options requires funding and resources. So we need to be mindful

as to

how we present something that is manageable to IPS. So that is coming up.

Perfect. Thank you. Great.

And I think we said multiple times this is informational only, so we weren't prepared to put together a proposal. Now that we have the information, I do think it's worth another conversation before you guys go too far down the, like, full implementation plan. I think you're hearing already even before council members and lobby speaks. Like, we're we really wanna bite some of this, but maybe we should just have another conversation to let's move forward specifically in this area. Yeah. Because yeah. K. Fully I know

we're informational. I mean, we didn't have an action plan today, but I just

Yeah. Teeing up with

it. Let's do it. Form an action have an action plan.

Yeah. That's what

I was about to you.

Thank you.

I colleagues have covered a bunch of it. I suppose I suppose the color I'll add is I did appreciate the reminder of your first bullet, which is the tree removals and proteins are just a natural and essential part of urban forestry. Right? And I almost wanna say that that should be put into the other report, right, just to say that, you know, as much as people have issues with this, we have to realize that trees are living things, and they need to be cared for. And when they die, they need to be dealt with appropriately.

I don't really have much of a question. I'm as excited as as my council members on potentials. I suppose the thought that was going through my head at one point was, you know, this is we live in a region that was made in large part by the temporary industry. There's gotta be a way to turn some of those negatives into positive revenue sources. Right?

And if there's ways of us investing in in figuring out how that is so that eventually one day, perhaps it doesn't pay you a 100% for yourself, but it does pay in some ways. These you know, not only is there a financial benefit, but there's this the whole aspect of it helping us mitigate, you know you know, like, you know, releasing too much carbon into the air and carbon sequestate sequest. I can't even say the word. You guys, I think, know the word sequestration. So, yeah, I'm really excited about what some of the opportunities are, especially since I mean, we're at maybe 50% if your numbers are kind of right.

And then you said that you don't take you know, we don't collect data on a lot of it, so it's probably a much higher ceiling. Right? So I think there's some good opportunity. I'm I'm very interested and excited.

Great. Thank you.

Yeah. I would also share my excitement for moving forward on these. Councilmember Sinalga and I toured a company earlier this week and talked about deconstruction, and they're looking at setting up some space for, as councilmember Hyde said, for this issue of, like, you deconstruct a house where there's a lumber go before it goes to the next project. And so I think that there's I'm really excited about that work as well. It's I know it's not the same, but it's there's some similar similarities in terms of taking things out of our waste stream and needing that big spaces.

So I think there's some maybe public private partnerships that we could look into that sounds like there's some low hanging fruit. I'm excited to hear that the transfer station is an option. I mean, it it we've talked about before, right, that the nature of the land there is only good for certain things. Sounds like piles of chips might be the perfect solution. So, yeah, I I I am curious, and I think maybe this is a conversation that we can just have in terms of this committee's work is how we move this forward with the urban forestry plan, the deconstruction, all these pieces that are related, making sure that we're getting those updates into the climate action plan.

I think there's a lot of wins already that we could celebrate and and move forward together. So thank you for the presentation. I think that you're hearing definitely we want to move forward on some action. So I'll circle back about when we might bring this back to IPS in a time that makes sense.

It

doesn't sound like the items in here, the the opportunities, the long hanging fruit are things that would need to go through planning commission. These are council actions.

These are nonregulatory as they're, yeah, currently in the plan.

Right? So

because there were some permitting things, but those could be council approved?

There so there were comments made about potential wood salvage in relation to tree removal for private development. At prior discussions, we were talking about the urban forestry action plan. Mhmm. And so if we're gonna dovetail, you know, regulation with salvage, that

would potentially be a development regulation. That's a different track.

Yep. But for everything that's in this current plan that's nonregulatory in that way, just how can we recover part of this waste stream, that's not not a planning commission action.

Okay. Great. Just in terms of timeline. Yeah. How is the contract done with the consultant?

It is.

Okay. Great. Not great, but they did great work.

It's just good to know that,

you know, whether or not we have that resource going forward or not. So Okay. Well, thank you all so much.

Thank you all so much for the

work and for bringing this forward. I I I am excited that we were able to hear these together and kind of talk about these things in a circular economy. So yeah.

Yeah. Thank you for having us.

Thanks. Alright. Topics for upcoming meetings. Anna Lee, our committee liaison. On our meeting on February 11, we will be discussing another pilot, the PFAS construction project and or completion path regulations.

Great. I was just thinking about March 11, but that's the week before put LSU. So we're good. Okay. Thank thank you as always, Anna.

And I do want to highlight to as I said earlier, that urban forestry website and the the section specific to our resolution does list out all the times we come back to IPS with the tree code. So both if folks are tracking that specifically. Okay. I did want to highlight, and it is in the public packet, that the committee received a letter from the bicycle and pedestrian advisory group on transportation impact fees. So we have already done our work on transportation impact fees, but I do wanna make sure we always daylight that when we get good information from our advisory groups and commissions.

So thank you to the BP tag for that letter. And then I know we've had a number of Anna's done a great job of getting us all signed up to visit our commissions. Has anybody visited any of our committees commissions? Go ahead. Howard's Climate Commission. Awesome. Good time. Anything you wanna share?

They did their leadership elections, so they're all set for the year. It was kinda easy to go there before we had done ours. They're they're moving, and we're still not. But, yeah, they're great. They're doing the work. They got a good review over what the planning commission is up to, and so I think it's good or helpful to align with everybody. Okay. Awesome. Thanks for

doing that. Mhmm. Alright. Any other go to the order? Go ahead.

I just learned not too long ago that I'm on the NLC's transportation infrastructure services committee, and I'm looking forward to doing some advocacy around reauthorization of the service transportation bill, which should help us over here because we need a cat.

I love it.

And I will be going to the planning commission meeting next week.

Awesome. Great. Thank you. Alright. Anything else good in the order? I will entertain a motion to adjourn.

I move to adjourn. Second.