Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon. I'd like to call to order the Infrastructure Planning and Sustainability Committee meeting of June 10th, 2026. Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Councilmember Diaz? Here. Councilmember Hines?

Here.

Vice Chair Sotomay?

Here.

And Chair Walker?

Here. All right, moving on to public comment. Clerk, will you please read?

To request to speak during public comment for items on the agenda, please sign up in 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 or the last four digits of your phone number will be called out when it is your turn to speak.

Great, thank you. Clerk, has anyone signed up to speak virtually or in person?

Neither.

Okay. We will go ahead and move on to our briefing items. We have three today, planning commission interviews, and then we have two presentations. So we're going to start with Planning Commission interviews and Nicole Emery is online, our city clerk, to help us get started. And you have many things, as usual, in your packet to look through. Go ahead, Nicole.

Good afternoon IPS committee and chair walker. As you said, my name is Nicole. I'm your city clerk and you will be interviewing 8 individuals today for the planning commission for 4 open positions. This also includes the reappointment 2 people seeking reappointment. You have Chris cards and Anthony steel. They'll both be interviewing today. For the presentations, each person will provide a three-minute presentation and will answer the following three questions. Number one, why do you want to serve on the Planning Commission? Number two, what unique experience, abilities, skill set, or perspective would you bring? And item three, Tacoma is responsible for accommodating and managing, oh my goodness, I'm going to get this, I promise, significant future growth. With that in mind, what do you see as some of Tacoma's greatest opportunities and challenges? After each presentation, the committee has the opportunity to ask additional questions. And once concluded, you can make motions to the full city council. And Steve Atkinson and myself are available for any questions before we get started today.

Great. Thank you. Any questions from the committee? All right. Let's go ahead and get started.

Okay. So first up today, we'll have Erin. Hi, is it Aaron? Hi, Aaron. Welcome to the IPS Committee. I'm going to pass you to Chair Walker to begin your interview.

Hi, Aaron. Welcome. As I think you know, you have received the questions ahead of time. You'll have three minutes to answer those questions. The clerk's office will put the timer up on the screen when you're ready. And then after that, the committee will have up to five minutes to ask you any follow-up questions. And before we start, I should also have introduced all of us. I am Christina Walker, the chair of the committee. All four of us are in the room today, so you have Vice Chair Sadalge, Councilmember Hines, and Councilmember Diaz here in the room. You can go ahead and get started, and we'll start the timer when you start talking.

Thank you. Can you all hear me okay?

You're a little quiet, but we can hear you.

Okay. Let's see. Well, thank you very much. My name is Erin Anderson. I appreciate your time. And why do I want to be joining the planning commission? I would love to join the Planning Commission because I was previously on the Transportation Commission and I ended my term and I had a big project that I was working on with Pierce County, which is my employer. And now that that project is wrapping up, I have some more time that I would love to use by serving our community, which is something that's very rewarding to me. And I have some unique skills, abilities that I would love to be able to participate, bring to the table, share with our community. I'm a licensed architect. I've been working for over 20 years in our community. And I also have a certification in project management, which I use in my job at Pierce County as a construction project manager. I've been working for the county for over five years and I'm very familiar with capital planning, long range planning, capital projects, presenting to council, the historic commission and many presentations that I've done throughout the years. The biggest strength that I think that I could bring to the table as a commission member would be listening, listening to the community and giving back on behalf of those that maybe don't have the time to volunteer or maybe don't have the skills or maybe just don't want to but i'd love to be able to listen to the community and give back to others and keep growing our community because it is a great place to live um One of the things that I think is amazing about Tacoma and that I'd love to keep working forward and future growth is affordable housing. I think working on the transportation commission, we got to give our recommendations on home in Tacoma and many more transportation projects. And I would love to see even more missing middle housing and home in Tacoma has been great. I would love to see it keep going further and in partnership with transportation, that can benefit the entire community. And I appreciate your time and any questions you might have for me.

Great. Thank you so much, Erin. I will open it up to my committee colleagues to ask any follow-up questions. Have any burning questions they would like to ask?

I'm going to ask the usual. But actually, you know, I was going to ask the usual one. But I do see it's pretty easily answered with the fact that you've been on the transportation commission for a while. I just happened to notice this on your resume about adopt a family. Can you just explain that to me and why it's your favorite activity?

Oh, yeah, that was a program that was run by our human services department and it was a program that you. adopt a family, which just means they give you a gift list of a family in our community. And within our own department, we purchase things off the list. And then we get to go deliver it back to Human Services once it's all wrapped. And then we aren't the ones that get to deliver it or see the families, but we get to hear back from the Human Services staff. department person that got to deliver the package, maybe we would see pictures, but just to know that some family in our community that maybe didn't have gifts would have something special that was from their list. And we would always come together as a team and make it a fun event, wrapping gifts and shopping together, fundraising for these families. And it's just, it's nice.

My follow-up is you did mention Oma Tacoma, and I really appreciated those recommendations. I was on the planning commission when you did. What are some ideas around there, as you said, that we need to continue this and learn?

I mean, I'm still learning too. I didn't work on it, so I got to hear about it, learn about it. I went out of my comfort zone years ago too with the AIA and did some lobbying with the state when there was a missing middle house bill. So on behalf of architects, we got to talk about missing middle housing, and I would love to see more affordable housing. I think that there's different programs, different – nonprofits within our community that are doing great things. And it would be great to keep partnering, hearing from community members, hearing what the needs are, partnering with transportation. I'm a big fan of the 15-minute city and being able to have affordable housing, near transit, people can get to where they need to work. But housing is such a basic need for people to be able to grow their lives. And I feel like that's something really important to me and many other people that I've gotten to volunteer with, like Habitat for Humanity has been another one of my favorite activities to volunteer with in my community. I love what they're doing. Thank you.

Any questions for Dr. Miller?

yes but you speak louder speak louder okay not you aaron oh okay that's for council member hines when you think about the planning commission i guess you have a good experience with construction construction management yes and

We create these plans to kind of build the future we want to see, but there are things that get in the way of that sometimes. So maybe your thoughts on what those are and maybe how the planning commission and the role of the planning commission in helping us facilitate some of the growth we want to see for some of our plans.

Yeah, I'm sure a big factor is always money. Developers need, maybe they need motivation in order to build housing that has affordable aspects to it. Maybe there's Some housing that's affordable, some housing that's a higher price point and incentives to be building within certain areas. Certainly zoning, I think the home in Tacoma made all kinds of great progress with zoning updates. I've seen lots of ADUs, DADUs going up all around my neighborhood, which is really fun to see. But I'm sure there's kind of, there could be incentives, there could be ways to work with developers to incentivize building within our community things that are affordable and that also benefit the contractor. Thank you.

Great, thank you, Council Member Hess. Thank you, Erin. We are interviewing many people today, but we will make decisions on all four of the open positions before the end of the meeting and the clerk's office will reach out to let you know in the very near future. So thank you so much for spending your time with us and being willing to serve.

Thank you.

Take care.

Bye.

chair walker next up will be nick great thank you

Hey, Nick, welcome to the IPS committee.

I'm going to pass you to Chair Walker to begin your interview.

Great, thanks.

Hi, Nick. Good to see you. I think you're aware of our process here, but you were provided the three questions ahead of time. You have three minutes to answer those questions.

Yes, I can.

Okay, so as soon as you start talking, the clerk's office will hit play on that. And after the three minutes, we'll have up to five minutes to ask follow-up questions.

All right, sounds great. Well, thank you, Chair Walker, members of the committee. My name is Nick Anderson, and thanks again for the opportunity to interview today. I want to serve on the Planning Commission because Tacoma is my home and my family's future, and I can help translate policy vision into implementation. I'm raising two boys here, and the challenges the Planning Commission addresses, including housing, infrastructure, climate, equity, will shape the city that they grow up in, and I want to help get it right. After seven years developing Tacoma's capital facilities plan and now advising Pierce County on growth management, I know how planning decisions translate into budgets, projects, and outcomes. The planning commission advises the council on implementing One Tacoma's vision and I bring three things to help do that. First, a dual perspective, seven years inside Tacoma city government and now a strategic advisor to the Pierce County executive has given me the experience to understand both Tacoma's specific context and regional growth patterns. Second, infrastructure finance expertise. I've helped build capital plans, worked with boards, commissions, and elected officials to enact them and understand the fiscal constraints that the Planning Commission operates within. Those constraints are the difference between aspirational and achievable policy. Third, practical experience navigating trade-offs. I help craft a facility prioritization process here at the city. I balance competing priorities on a daily basis and help make difficult choices when resources are limited. I've done that work in challenging environments and understand Tacoma's specific context. I bring an implementation focused and fiscally realistic perspective to the commission. Now looking at Tacoma's future growth and challenges and opportunities, three examples stand out. First, of course, housing. We need thousands of units, over 40,000 by 2044 and 60,000 by 2050 while infrastructure is strained. And there is an opportunity there for strategic focusing on growth near transit and services as one Tacoma envisions. We can add housing while using infrastructure more efficiently. Smart growth, focusing on the 15-minute city, maybe even increasing social trust in our city can help achieve multiple goals. Second, climate adaptation. The new climate element requirement can provide us, the city, and the community a framework to ensure growth supports our carbon reduction goals and the opportunity to shape where and how we grow to advance climate resilience. Third fiscal constraints, infrastructure needs to exceed available resources. The planning commission can help the council prioritize strategically what gets funded first, what's phased and how to maximize impact with limited dollars. My capital planning experience positions me to help the commission navigate those trade-offs, ensuring growth happens thoughtfully, equitably and within fiscal and environmental constraints. And with that, I'd be happy to take any of your questions.

Great.

Thanks, Nick. I will open it up to questions from the committee. Council Member Diaz? Okay. Council Member Szilagyi?

Vice Chair Szilagyi? Sure. I guess one of the questions I had, and thank you, you had really extensive work within municipalities, which is really appreciated. But have you worked on a commission before or in a group project? And how do you go about that? If you have real world examples, that'd be great. But just really kind of want to know how you would work in a commission or board type.

Sure. Well, I think public policy in general is a team environment, so it's important to have a lot of people and a lot of opinions take place while we're crafting and implementing policy. I haven't served on a board myself, but I presented to the Planning Commission while I was working on the capital facilities plan. with the city and I work with a number of boards and commissions at the county so I'm familiar with their work would want to be a team player on in that setting and really work to strive to understand fellow commissioners thoughts perspectives where they're coming from and backgrounds and I think Doing that together as a group is an important way to craft policy and maintain a certain amount of collegiality throughout the policymaking process, which can be contentious at times.

And I actually do remember you presenting in front of the Planning Commission when I was on the Planning Commission, so I appreciate that.

Great, thank you.

Thank you, Chair Walker. Thank you, Nick. I think my question is going to be, I think you identified this multiple times throughout your presentation, which is the balancing of competing interests, right? Which is the thing about the Planning Commission, we have lots of competing interests that have to compete when you think about the future. So I guess my question for you would be, what are some of those competing interests you see yourself trying to balance? And if at all possible, can you give us an example of where you might land on

Um, so, uh, housing development certainly is one of the competing interests that I think about a lot. Um, you know, there are pressures, uh, for, for folks who, uh, bought their houses maybe a couple of decades ago and like the community, the way that it is now, but we have lots of pressures about, uh, you know, planning for the future and more people who want to come and live in this community. And how do we do that, uh, in a way that balances some of those interests? In general, I would say that growing pains are always going to be there, especially in the context of Tacoma, a place that's growing pretty rapidly and a place where people want to live, live and play. And I think it's important that we really were cognizant of some of the problems the perspectives of people who don't want to change very fast, but at the same time, I think, you know, change, change is something that we need to, uh, manage our way through and, um, it's going to be uncomfortable sometimes. And, um, if we're standing in one place, we're probably not growing as a community. So I guess if I had to come down on it, it would probably be something that is a managed growth perspective on some of those housing things while being cognizant of other folks' sensitivities about changing too fast.

great thanks so much nick for coming in spending time with us and being willing to serve um we are interviewing um many other people today but we will make decisions on all four of the open positions today so you'll hear from the city clerk in the very near future um but for now um that's all we've got for you so thanks for coming in thanks for the time appreciate the opportunity

Is it Maria? Hi there. Yep. Hi Maria, my name is Nicole. I'm going to pass you to chair Walker to begin your interview.

That sounds great.

Hi Maria, welcome. Thanks for coming in and being willing to serve. You have all four members of the IPS committee in the room here. I don't know how well you can see us. We're very tiny on the screen, but we also have a timer up on the screen. Can you see that?

Yep, it's right there.

Okay, great. So, you know, you've received the three questions ahead of time. You have three minutes to answer those questions. And then after that, we'll have up to five minutes to answer or to ask you follow-up questions. So whenever you're ready, you can go ahead and get started.

Yeah, that sounds good. I'm ready to start. Yeah, so my name is Maria Buchanan, Tacoma resident for three years, Pacific North resident for my entire life. But I was really interested in joining the planning commission because I am really passionate about the city of Tacoma. I love living here. I have lived in the Pacific Northwest for most of my life, including Seattle for a long time. And when we moved down to Tacoma, my partner who's from the Midwest and I, we first we realized like Tacoma feels a little bit like the Midwest and that it is the first place that I've lived in a long time that feels like really genuinely kind and not just like nice and friendly. Um, and I think that it's, we're, we're in such an interesting place as a, in a city, as a city, um, and that there's just opportunities for tremendous growth and also like really, really rapid change. Um, and I have a lot of experience working in the built environment and in community engagement, and that felt like it feels like a really natural alignment. Um, I am a community engagement consultant. I'm right now serving as the community engagement lead for the West Seattle Inc. So council member Walker in my head, you're still board member Walker. But I've been working in community engagement for just about eight years now. I've worked on a lot of large-scale transportation, transit, and infrastructure projects, and also some smaller-scale projects, including a few for the city of Tacoma. I'm working on the Puyallup Avenue sewer utility replacement project. So I'm really familiar with the built environment and the landscape of infrastructure in the city. Um, and I also, I, I live in McKinley Hill and Dome Top neighborhood. And I think that it's a really interesting place that obviously was, um, one of the first neighborhoods to receive, um, a, um, neighborhood plan a couple of years back. And so there's a lot of opportunity for growth that I, that I've seen kind of firsthand living in the neighborhood. Um, and then I guess in general for Tacoma, like we're, we're, um, living in just an interesting time of asking ourselves how do we balance encouraging growth and taking advantage of being in such a dynamic region without really compromising the history of diversity and access that the city of Tacoma is really known for. I think we have such historic accessibility for the working class that asking us questions of how do we create policy and code that allows us to build a built environment and city that encourages growth without discouraging access is really critical, interesting, especially in these times of financial challenges for nearly every agency in Washington.

Great. Thank you so much, Maria. I'm going to open it up to my committee colleagues for questions. Council Member Diaz, do you have any follow-up?

I guess I'm just curious, working, I think PRR is mostly maybe hybrid, but just seeing that you're doing community engagement work in West Seattle and that PRR is a statewide firm, being cognizant of the fact that the Planning Commission is probably one of the most time commitment commissions we have, so I'm just wondering, do you have a plan for that? There's a ton of reading involved. There's just a big scale of work, and I'm wondering how that might fit

Yeah, I mean, so it is hybrid. I'm in the Sound Transit office up in Seattle right now. I'm there a couple of days a week. But I work primarily from home, usually two or three days a week. And I do typically have, I feel like I have additional capacity. This is also just work that I find really fascinating. I'm like an infrastructure and built environment wonk. My partner is an architect and he He and I, I spend a lot of time in our personal time kind of learning about urban planning and architecture in the built environment. And so it isn't necessarily that laborious to me to learn about planning policy. But in general, I would say that I don't have children. I just have like a dog that I hang out with in the afternoon and evening. So I feel like I do mostly have capacity.

That's great. You got a region partner.

Thank you. Yeah.

Good. Nice to meet you.

Hi, Maria, and you're a neighbor because you're in McKinley Hill. Yes. Great. Well, I would really love to understand how you would translate some of your existing skills and what you've done in terms of community engagement, particularly in how you can, how you see that with the role of being the transportation, public transportation representative on the planning commission.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think in general, public transportation is such a critical resource, and it is often used by people who have the least agency to engage with government. And so my community engagement philosophy that I've used on a lot of public transportation projects in the past is understanding who... is most likely to need access to these resources and where do those people gather and what communities exist and what channels exist where there is already sort of built trust that we can leverage to understand that the needs of communities, both in terms of like actual physical access to resources in transit, but also just how do we build awareness for what resources already exist? I think that I really focus on understanding how do we bring voices in that don't always have time to devote to seeking out information and resources about how the how public transportation is built and developed, people who maybe have not historically had a tremendous amount of trust in government in the past, and seeking out opportunities to engage with those people, whether that means physically going to their neighborhoods. I've hosted engagement on a really, really local level, going literally to people's neighborhoods and setting up tables for a few hours. I've also worked really closely with CDOs that engage with refugee communities, communities that speak languages other than English. I just feel really strongly that when we're building, developing resources as critical as public transportation, really actively seeking out the voices of folks that Are going to be using these resources, but might not be inclined to engage and provide input through traditional channels is is a really key part of the Community engagement practice.

Thank you.

Thank you. Yes.

Thank you. No, thank you so much for interviewing with us today and answering some questions. And the question I've asked the last few applicants is, you know, when you think about the Planning Commission, and you've got a lot of work in the community, it requires a balancing of a lot of competing interests. So my question for you is, can you identify some of the competing interests you see that you'll be trying to balance as your role on the Planning Commission? And then maybe give us an example of where you might come down on one of those, just so we kind of understand your thinking and how you approach

Yeah, I mean, I think that there's always the competing interests of we have finite resources to dedicate to a lot of different communities and groups that are all in need of transit and understanding kind of how do we like support bringing transit into our communities and being a city that is transit friendly and development friendly in terms of our permitting and code policies, while also protecting the needs of existing property owners and businesses and communities, I think is always really a balance, especially when we're building new like light rail, streetcar, bus infrastructure in existing communities. Understanding how we, to many people who will, for example, ride a bus in a neighborhood, it feels really excellent to have a bus apron that allows you to safely enter and exit the bus without having to compete with traffic. But to say a business owner who uses a driveway nearby for trucks that maybe need a wide turning radius, that can feel really challenging because we're impacting the infrastructure that they've been using for sometimes like decades at a time. And so I think there's just a lot of those kind of large scale philosophical conflicts, but also just on a really local level, understanding like the nitty gritty of design and engineering and how we physically build

um street by street there's there will always be kind of conflicting infl uh interests to to balance thank you great thank you maria thank you so much for coming in and being willing to serve um we are interviewing many folks tonight um but we do plan to make on making decisions on all of the open positions before the end of the meeting so you will hear from the city clerk's office and the very near future um but thank you so much for coming in yeah thanks folks

Next up we'll have Lyle. to the IPS committee. How are you doing?

Hello. How are you?

Good. I'm going to pass you to Chair Walker to begin your interview.

Okay. Thank you.

Hi, Lyle. Christina Walker. I'm the chair of the IPS committee, and I'm here with my three colleagues in the room, if you can see our tiny little faces on the screen. I think you got the questions ahead of time, so you have three minutes to answer those three questions. And then we'll open it up for questions from the committee up to five minutes after that. Can you see the timer on your screen?

Yes, I can.

Okay.

OK, well, good evening and thanks for the opportunity to interview for the Planning Commission. My name is Dr. Lyle Cruz, Jr., and I'm applying for the Development Community position. I'd like to serve on the Planning Commission as I care deeply about Tacoma's future and believe that planning is one of the most important ways that I can create a long lasting impact for our community. As we know, Tacoma is experiencing a lot of significant growth. I believe the decisions made in today's world will influence housing opportunities, economic development, transportation, neighborhood character and quality of life for decades to come. I am excited about the opportunity to contribute to these discussions and help shape policies that support a strong and inclusive future. Professionally, I bring a unique combination of experience, Real estate, property management, development, finance, and education. I currently serve as the managing broker of Aspen Northwest Real Estate, and I'm involved through development through Cruise Development Group and OneDrop. I also teach real estate and property management at North Seattle College. I'm the lead faculty and tenured there. Together, these experiences provide me with the practical understanding of how land use policies, zoning regulations, development standards, and infrastructure investments affect residents, businesses, housing providers, and neighborhoods. What I believe I bring to the Commission is the ability to connect policy with implementation. I understand the challenges of development, feasibility, housing operations, and long-term asset management. while also recognizing the importance of community engagement, equity, and neighborhood preservation. My approach is collaborative, data-informed, and focused on finding balance and practical solutions. As Tacoma continues to grow, I believe one of our greatest opportunities is increasing housing choices while creating vibrant, connected neighborhoods. This includes supporting the really big missing middle housing, encouraging thoughtful infill development, ensuring that housing, transportation, infrastructure, and economic development are aligned and working together. Tacoma has an opportunity to be a regional leader in creating communities that are both livable and economically resilient. At the same time, we face important challenges. Housing affordability is a huge concern. We must accommodate growth while maintaining community character, expanding infrastructure capacity, supporting transportation mobility, and reducing barriers that can make housing more difficult or expensive to deliver. Successfully balancing those priorities will require collaboration, thoughtful planning, and really a long-term perspective. If selected, I believe I bring a practical solutions-oriented mindset that commitment to listening and learning, a desire to help Tacoma grow in a way that benefits current and future residents. And I've been part of the community here for a long time. My mom was from here and we had a lot of work to do in the community and I do a lot of work in the community. So I'm excited to have the opportunity. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Great. Thank you, Lyle. We'll open it up to questions from the committee. Council Member Diaz.

Thank you. Um, well, this commission is a lot of work. I think I can probably correct me if I'm wrong, but it's got to be at least 10 hours a week, if not more. It's almost a small part time job, if you let it be. I'm just wondering how that fits in with your current schedule of developing and

Oh, that's a great question. And I thought about that when I was posed to take this on. I'm in the spaces. I'm in the meeting rooms. I'm in all the places. But, you know, you make it work. And that's when I got the tenure job over there at North. They asked me that question in my last interview question, which I thought I blew. But I was like, you know, when it's important, you make the time you get up a little earlier, stay up a little later. Yeah. Time manage and you make it happen. It's not a lifetime commitment, but it's an important one. And I'll make the time to make it work. That's my, that's really the answer is just you build in what's important to get things done. Busy people get it done.

Perfect. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Walker. And just to be very open to the rest of the committee, Mr. Cruz is applied because I kind of challenged him to. I met him out in community. I don't know Mr. Cruz. personally that well, but we were at several events and I was introduced to him through One Drop, a network of minority developers in the area, and I challenged him to. So I appreciate that you went through with the application and you're here talking to us. I'm learning a lot about you right here, looking through your application. That's very particularly what I would love to kind of understand because you have this background, both being a developer and educator and a community member is, you know, what are some of the barriers you feel there are in the development community and what are some of the um kind of longer medium and long-term um kind of uh tactics do you think we need to continue doing at least in the heels of homo tacoma a urine

You know, that's a great question. So in all these spaces, and like I said, we bumped into each other in quite a few. I'm in a lot of rooms where these conversations are happening. And I'm a person that's, you know, doesn't lean in the political to solve problems. It's more about how do we solve the problem and then let's start breaking it apart. Obviously we have the, it's a hard to me and I've been in the lending space since 1992. I got out of, I got in real estate right out of college back on the East coast and it's the hardest time to buy a house I've ever seen. I have kids between 23 and 37, and one of them is a homeowner. The other is, it's a struggle. So, you know, obviously there's affordability. And then there's the development process itself. And, you know, one of the biggest complaints for most of the developers is the permitting process, which I'm sure you guys are well aware. And how do you find the ability to line up practicality, safety, and good business practice for long-term success that moves the bar forward through all the political challenges and all the things? There's a lot of conversation about it. I don't mind challenging a little bit. How do we get there? But we have to work together. As I had said, I was the union president at the college for a couple of years and led the negotiation committee. And my challenge to the administration when it came to our pay equity was what if it was you, half of most of our community was unable to live near this college. So these are tough challenges, they're not easy and it means getting in the room, working together, bringing it up and exactly what is the big challenges on each stakeholder side and starting to work towards practical solutions. And I just think it takes collaboration and working together to do that, being willing to ask the hard questions and and listen to each other, which is usually how we we move forward with things.

Thank you appreciate that answer. Thank you so much for being here with us today. The question I've been asking folks has been you think about the planning commission. One of the key parts of the work is the competing interest that exists. of fosters some competing interests that will only plan the future so i'd love for you to maybe talk about what are some of those competing interests that you see you've already talked a little bit about them in your presentation and then maybe where you land on one of those competing interests can you say that last part because it's hard to hear you oh yeah sorry i've been told i need to talk close to the microphone uh the uh thinking about the competing interests you'll have to kind of work your way through on the planning commission and also maybe How you would land on 1 of those when you think about 1 of those issues, like, where would you lean to give us an example of how you're thinking as a planning?

That's, you know, the big challenge of any of these positions, and I've experienced it in a lot of the leadership roles I've had is that the union was definitely 1 of those. You have to listen to again, you have to listen to each other and. I bring, one of my good skills is objectivity. And you have to leave, when you're solving problems, you have to leave subjectivity to a certain extent over there and go, okay, what are we facing? What are the, let's say there's three core issues like permitting, which is the big thing. Well, we need that for safety, but we also need to speed it up for costs. It's really expensive. How do we find the balance between doing the right thing and safety and the balance of moving the bar forward And it's very competing from all sides of the fence. And I think it starts with listening to understanding all the stakeholder interest and then going, OK, what are the barriers? How do we begin to break them and not be afraid to ask the hard questions? If we don't ask the hard questions, we only get answers to the questions that you ask. And we have to be informed listening to all the parties. I think the biggest thing is that when people don't feel heard, they get frustrated and you get resistance. And how do we begin to move that so we can move forward and have a more successful Tacoma?

great thank you lyle really appreciate you taking the time to come in and your willingness to serve we are interviewing a number of other people tonight so um but we will be making decisions on all four of the open positions and so you'll hear from the city clerk's office shortly well thank you so much for your time everybody have a great rest of the evening you too bye

Next up, we'll have Christopher. Hi, is it Christopher?

Yes, it's Chris. Hello.

Hi, welcome, Chris. Welcome to IPS Committee. I'm going to pass you to Chair Walker to begin your interview.

Okay, thank you.

Hi, Chris. Good to see you.

Hi, Chair. Thank you. Good to see you.

Welcome. Hopefully you can see we're all four in person today. And I know you've done this a couple of times. So just to remind you, you've received the three questions ahead of time. You have three minutes to answer those questions. And then afterwards, we'll have up to five minutes for follow-up. So can you see the timer on your screen?

Yes, I do.

Okay. Whenever you start, we'll hit play on them.

Great. Well, hello, Chair Walker. Thank you, and thank you to the IPS Committee for your leadership for fighting for Tacoma's light rail connection to the region. Why do I want to continue serving on the Tacoma Planning Commission? Well, the decisions we make now will shape this city well into the second half of the 21st century. I want to help get those things right, shaping the station areas, the connecting services, and the affordable, complete neighborhoods that thousands of Tacomans will live in and rely on every day. I also want the Planning Commission to keep setting the standard, not just responding to it. Home in Tacoma has shown that our city can lead on issues like ADUs, ground floor retail, and expansion of walkable corner commercial, and there's more of that type of work ahead in the next few years. So what unique characteristics do I bring? 20 years of engagement with people who do not or cannot drive through the Sound Transit Oversight Panel, the Pierce Transit Advisory Board, and others. I know that people who do not drive are more numerous than most people think, and they tend to be vulnerable and in need of elevation for their concerns to be heard. During the Home in Tacoma and One Tacoma plan update, I read roughly 1,500 pages of public comment and sought to elevate those voices, from comment cards written in Spanish about how parking minimums were a barrier to starting a small business, from kids asking for sidewalks to get to school or a bus stop safely, and from renters who were asking for more shade trees and air conditioning for apartment living. Those perspectives ground every decision and every question that I posed to staff on the Planning Commission. So this past term, as chair, I helped finalize Home and Tacoma Phase 2, strengthened the Tideflats subarea plan, and sent forward the One Tacoma plan update. In terms of what Tacoma's greatest opportunities and challenges are, I still think that our greatest opportunity is continuing to build a city where more households can get where they need to go without a car, retaining connections to jobs, housing, schools, parks, and healthcare, but without potentially the financial burden of having to purchase and fuel a second vehicle. done well working with transit partners and meeting TOD obligations is how we build towards such a future. With respect to challenges, state mandates under House Bill 1491 will push Tacoma toward greater density within one-half mile of light rail and commuter rail stations. And how we meet that density mandate through building height, lot coverage, or some combination is precisely the kind of decision the Planning Commission will need to balance community priorities that also need rooms such as trees, vehicle access, utilities, and stormwater, much like we did it with home and Tacoma. So I welcome your questions, and I'd love to renew my offer to serve in the public transportation seat on the Planning Commission. Thank you.

Great. Thanks, Chris. We'll start with Councilmember Diaz with questions in the room.

No, just thank you for interviewing today, Chris.

Thank you.

I'll keep it really short. I was on the Planning Commission when Chris was the chair, so I have worked with him in several capacities. I guess maybe the question I have is, why do you want to keep doing this? It's a lot of work.

Yeah, it is. It's an enormous amount of work. And I mean, essentially, looking at the Togoma Dome Link extension draft EIS, that was having to review 10,000 pages of documentation within a 30-day period in order to try to produce a comment letter back to Sound Transit. But this is a real passion of mine. Public transportation is an enormous passion of mine. And I just want to see Tacoma thrive into the coming decades. And I want us to see, I really want us to make sure that we get all of the details right, everything that we possibly can in this short window for development of the project so that we can keep us on track for a 2035 opening.

Well, I thank you for all the work you've done so far, and I appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you. That's all right. Thank you, Chair Walker.

Thank you, Chris, for interviewing for us today. The question I've been asking all the people about, it'll be rephrased a little bit because you're on the current planning commission, but one of the challenges of a planning commission is balancing the multiple different competing interests of a city, right? We're not making new land. We have to determine how we're going to fit it all in the same box. Yeah. So I guess my question would be for you is, Talk through some of the competing interests. You've already done this a little bit, but some of the competing interests you've been working through as a planning commissioner. Maybe how you've come to decisions around that. I'm just really getting an idea of your thinking as you approach the work.

Yeah, so that's a great question. Really, I think where we start with that kind of discussion is to first understand, you know, what are the compliance mandates with the Growth Management Act? You start there, and then from there, you bring in the other types of goals and policies that are in the comprehensive plan, as well as the goals and policies and the... the structure that is from the regional perspective, from the Puget Sound Regional Council. And so we try to bring those elements in and then try to listen to the public as much as possible. sort of at every step of the way. So during project scoping, we start with sort of big ideas. And we try to successively, with staff, try to work from the policy down into specific code options that can then be used to determine what is our best possible way forward that sort of maximizes our benefits while also trying to mitigate some of the concerns. And really, once we go to public hearing, that's when we We tend to start hearing what those concerns are and how those concerns need to be mitigated. A lot of the times, what we're doing is we're offering amendments to those pieces of code that have been provided to us by staff at that point in time. We work together and sometimes in groups of two or three to try to produce amendments that try to speak to those concerns from the community. Thank you.

Great. Thanks so much for being willing to serve again, Chris, and for coming in today. We are interviewing many other people today, but we will make a decision on all the positions, so you'll be hearing from the city clerk's office shortly.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Yeah, thanks for being here.

Bye-bye.

Next up, we'll have Alex. Hi, is it Alex?

Hey, yeah. Good afternoon.

Good afternoon. Welcome to the IPS committee. I'm going to pass you to Chair Walker to begin your interview.

Okay, great. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Hi, Alex. Christina.

Hey, how are you?

Good. I'm the chair of the IPS committee, and if you can see on the tiny square, all four of us are in the room today. You received the questions at the same time. I think you know you have three minutes to answer those questions. Can

I can. Yes.

OK, great. So whenever you start speaking, we'll hit the play button on that. And then after that, we will have up to five minutes to ask you follow up questions.

Sounds good.

Get started as soon as you're ready.

Okay, appreciate it. Thanks. Well, thank you. I'm Alex Morganroth, and I appreciate the opportunity for the interview for the Planning Commission. Yeah, I'll just run through the questions. So as far as why I want to serve on the Planning Commission, I guess one reason is that I am termed out of the Landmarks Commission in three months. I need something to do in my night times. Um, so, uh, all jokes aside, I do, I did really enjoy my time and do enjoy my time in the Landmarks Commission, um, have been interested in the Planning Commission for a long time. Um, you know, Tacoma, I, you know, I guess the two main reasons are I love Tacoma and I think, um, my experience, which I'll get into in the next question, um, can add value to some of the review and decisions that the Planning Commission does. Um, Tacoma's, and I've lived here for about 10 years now. I absolutely love it. My wife and I, Um, and I have a desire to kind of contribute back some of my skills, hopefully, um, to the, um, to the planning, various planning issues that, uh, are always ongoing in Tacoma. Um, I obviously don't, I don't work for the city. Um, although I wish, I wish I did. I'd love to be a planner for the city because it's got so many interesting things going on, um, and so many interesting aspects. Um, yeah, I said the main reason again, it's just, I think that I can add value to the commission based on my, um, My experience and skill set, which I'll get into next. I'm currently a principal planner for the city of Renton. I'm sure you all know where that is, but just a suburb just south of Seattle there, about half the size of Tacoma. I've worked here in Renton for about 10 years. And before that, I was a planner in a smaller city in the Midwest. And so I've got a little over a decade of planning experience, both in the public and private sector. I've actually been staff liaison to a couple of planning commissions, to landmarks commissions. So I've actually been on the other side of things, which I think is helpful as for someone serving on the planning commission to kind of understand where staff is coming from and maybe some of the constraints that they're dealing with over there. Again, I've been on the Landmarks Commission for, I don't know, seven, eight years now, three terms there. I've had an awesome time. Ruben's a great person to work with there. I think that's added some value just that I kind of understand how Tacoma's commissions work and some of the expectations and things like that. And then as far as Tacoma, I mean, opportunities and challenges. I mean, these are the same opportunities and challenges that a lot of communities in the Puget Sound are dealing with, including Renton. So opportunities are obviously related to housing, especially, you know, Tacoma was way ahead of the curve on passing home in Tacoma. We're just doing some of that renting now with the middle housing provisions. But yeah, as far as Tacoma, you got transit oriented development and more transit with the light rail connection, you know, creating more walkable communities is something else, an opportunity. And then some challenges. I think the biggest one is our infrastructure, keeping up with the pace of growth that we've seen. That's something I'm very interested in. And then another 1 is obviously just housing affordability and then displacement as some of these more units come online, but also rents continue to rise.

Right Thank you. Perfect timing. We'll open up the questions in the room with council member.

No questions. Thanks for interviewing.

Vice chair.

Hi, Alex. Thank you. I was actually just looking through your resume. And, you know, I actually appreciate the fact that you've also been a planner in a different state. So maybe my question is, you know, given your background as a planner in more than one municipality, how do you think that that would translate? Does that give you a strength in coming to the Planning Commission?

Yeah, great question. Certainly. And I think, you know, like you noted, more than even just a different municipality, it's at a different state. So that was in the Midwest. I'm from Wisconsin. And so I worked for a couple of jurisdictions there. Totally different type of planning there. Much, much less complicated. regulatory power for both commissions and governing bodies, whether that's council or town boards or county boards, as far as making land use decisions. So coming here was definitely an eye-opening experience just to how many regulations we have that are generally well-meaning and generally I think a lot of us, like on my other side of things as staff, we try to create these regulations and standards to make places more livable and a better place. But it's also, it's been kind of eye-opening that sometimes some regulations can have effects, unintended effects. And that was something I didn't really see in my previous jobs. But yeah, I think it's been, it's helpful just from a perspective, to be honest, I've been on here for so long now, 10 years, it feels like forever. That it seems very normal, kind of all the way that we do planning out here with the Growth Management Act and all of that. But there's certainly some aspects and just people in the Midwest feel a little differently about land use regulations than they do here. So I think that was helpful for sure when I came out here and just kind of dealing with folks that have different maybe expectations of staff, plan commissions, decision makers. Thank you.

That's been nice. Thank you, Alex, for being here and for interviewing the Planning Commission. Great to see you. The question I've been asking each one of our applicants is, when you think about the Planning Commission, one of the critical pieces of it is the competing interests that exist, right? There's always competing interests on what we do with the land moving forward, how does it all fit together? And so my question for you would be, can you identify, when you think about the rule, what are some of the competing interests you'll have to navigate as a Planning Commissioner? Maybe give us an example of where you fall on some of those one of those competing interests. So can we understand your thought process in approaching your role?

Yeah, great question. Yeah, nice to see you too. I would say, I mean, there's always this competing interest from Obviously, the develop from a developer, the applicant, the real estate community, whether it's the master builders or some or a smaller developer that has certain interests. There's the interest, obviously, of of the neighbors, you know, the folks that are going to be directly impacted just at a tangible physical level by by whatever the project might be or the regulation might be. And then there's obviously the kind of the city as a whole, you know, so there might be a project that would benefit the city as a whole, but you've got, you know, maybe a certain people that live nearby the project that are against it. I think we all kind of see that with housing, with larger, you know, mixed use projects, things like that. And to be honest, that's hard to balance. I mean, as a staff, and then I guess, obviously, as a planning commission, um, you are, you know, you've got to kind of balance, balance all of those. And I guess as far as where I would come down on a certain issue, um, you know, I guess one of the, you know, the most popular issue right now is just densification, which again, Tacoma took on really early, which is, which is awesome. Again, we're now dealing with that and a lot of others, including Renton, a lot of other places, it's kind of, um, you know, a little behind on that, which is why the state did what the state did. But yeah, I would say as far as growth, I'm, you know, we got to have more people in our urban areas where there's already amenities and the infrastructure to support it. And so that includes all the neighborhood centers in Tacoma, but also areas maybe that we didn't foresee having, you residential. So just not at Tacoma, but here at Renton, we have an area that was maybe, was a little more warehouse industrial and we're working right now on, you know, how we can see more, get more residential units and kind of make it more mixed use walkable and all that. And I think Tacoma has some opportunities like that too. So yeah, I would say balance, obviously you got to balance people's, you know, people's concerns that are right near a project or maybe are, you know, directly impacted by a critical area regulation or whether it's The tree code, the developers are impacted by how many trees we make them keep. But really, you got to look at what is going to benefit the community as a whole and make decisions that a lot of times I find a good decision is one that maybe not everyone's a little annoyed at. But in general, they agreed that we did the best we could. And it was for the better of the city as a whole.

great thanks thanks alex for coming and spending time with us thanks for your service on the landmarks commission as well um we are interviewing um eight people tonight but we will make a decision on all four of the open positions so um we will hear from the city clerk's office shortly understood for coming in yeah thanks for your time thank you guys have a good night next up we'll have anthony

Hello, is it Anthony?

It is.

Welcome to the IPS committee. I'm going to pass you to Chair Walker to begin your interview.

All right.

Hello. Welcome, Anthony. Good to see you. Good to see you. You can probably see or hopefully see in the tiny box, there's four of us here in the room today. And you know the drill. We have three questions that we've sent you ahead of time. You have three minutes to answer them. Can you see the timer on the screen?

I do. I do. I need to turn up my volume so I can hear you.

Okay. So once you start speaking, we'll hit play on that three-minute timer. And then after that, we'll have up to five minutes to ask follow-up questions from the committee. So you can go ahead whenever you're ready.

All right. Well, first question, of course. Why do I want to serve on the Planning Commission? I've enjoyed serving on the Planning Commission. It is a place that I have always thought of, and it's proven to be a place where I can engage the community and the community. the public to give a voice to and an ear, not just a voice, but an ear on this particular commission. It also is a place where I enjoy being able to engage other commissioners and so I enjoy serving on the Commission because it gives us more time to actually look over particular issues and and sometimes issues that are tough to to tackle but it does give us a great opportunity to do that and I also enjoy serving on the Planning Commission and because it also gives a voice to other communities that would not normally engage the city or any of its projects it also gives us an opportunity to have those other discussions inside and outside of the Commission the second question of what unique experiences that I have. One, of course, already serving on the Planning Commission and being a commissioner for, I think, four or five years now, also serving as the vice chair as well. But I also bring the perspective of living in one particular district and working and owning property in both districts, also engaging the not only residential, but also the business community. So I bring a lot of experience. Also, I engage the community on a day to day basis. And so I get to hear everything and I've got my ear to the ground all over the city of Tacoma. As it relates to the third question, yes, there are some challenges and some great opportunities. I think they actually share the same things, and that is one to continue to not only to grow Tacoma, but also to meet its challenges head on by maintaining its own identity. And I believe that we've got a number of projects to tackle. Um, I've got a lot of pet peeves that I really would love to tackle, but we only have three minutes. So there's my three minutes.

Thank you, Anthony.

I'll open it up to questions in the room. Councilmember Diaz. I wasn't going to ask anything, but now I know what's the top pet peeve.

Well, one of my pet, my pet peeves is that, um, We spent a lot of time on the Planning Commission talking about housing, of course, being in that space, designing home into coma and the likes. But I'm often interested in what are we going to... How are we going to tackle economic development? How are we going to tackle the spaces for business so that we can have complete neighborhoods and not just walkable neighborhoods, but complete neighborhoods? And for all and not just not just for some districts, but for all districts so that that way we can actually have that that great conversation on equity.

All right. Most cheers to Dahlia.

Thank you, Anthony. Anthony Steele became vice chair when I started on the Planning Commission. I actually don't have a question for you because my question would have been why do you want to stay and you covered that. I will say that in the time that I was there and even since I have appreciated the perspective that you brought to the conversation and you brought an important perspective and well reasoned and thought out position. So I've always appreciated that. So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Anthony. For reapplying, I also just want to comment that I appreciate your point about the planning commission being about more than just housing, which is all anybody really talks about. The planning map is a lot more than just housing. My question would be, and I'll ask this because you're on the commission, is kind of What despite what you brought up before, but what are the competing interests, you think about when you think about the planning Commission, you know what are the competing interests that you are navigating and trying to figure out. And then maybe give us an idea of maybe one of those features that you where you've landed on like what you're thinking, so we kind of understand your approach to the work of the plan.

Well, well, I mean i'm. You know, my colleagues on the commission, they have their issues that they're passionate about. And I understand that, whether it's transportation, environment, trees, housing. I'm just a person that not only looks at it from the planning commission, I look at it from the From the public's perspective and to have a complete neighborhood or you know or city um there's a there's some. areas where we really need to to address and like I said. Certainly with commerce, we have to address those in a number of areas. to complete those neighborhoods because they do affect then transportation. They do affect the environment. And so, you know, those are issues that, you know, we're talking about PAC-AV. You know, you can't talk about PAC-AV and walkability if You know, if we're not talking about the fact that we got to find a remedy for what occurred with Fred Meyer. So, you know, those become the kinds of things that complete all of what we're doing and what we want to address. So that's me. I try not to put too much opinion on it, but yes, there it is.

All right. Thank you. Great, thank you so much for coming in Anthony and for your service over the last few years. We are interviewing eight people today, but we do plan on making decisions on all four of the open positions. So you'll hear from the city clerk's office soon. Thanks for coming in.

Thank you.

Our last interview of the day will be Bobak.

Hello.

Is it Bobak?

Yeah.

Welcome to the IPS committee. I'm going to pass you to chair Walker to begin your interview.

Thank you.

Hi Bobak. Welcome to the IPS committee. I'm Christina Walker. I'm the chair of the committee and all four of us are in the room today. Hopefully you can see us on the tiny screen. You've been sent the questions ahead of time. So you have those three questions. You have three minutes to answer the questions. Can you see the timer on your screen?

Yeah, I can. Thank you.

Okay, great. So when you start speaking, we'll hit play on that. And then after you're done, we'll have up to five minutes to ask follow-up questions. So you can go ahead whenever you're ready.

Great. Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks for the opportunity to interview for this seat for the Planning Commission. Again, my name is Bob Actalabi. I use he, him pronouns. The reason why I'm really interested in this position is because I truly believe that planning is a powerful tool. I've studied and practiced in this field for over 20 years. And the reason I do that is because I think planning is the way to create meaningful outcomes for communities, people's lives, and their livelihoods. This includes experience in land use, long-range planning, and environmental planning. And through this experience, I truly think that the planning commission plays a really important role for decision makers in the city. The commission has a responsibility to be informed and to inform those decisions. The city has an incredible outline of goals laid out in one Tacoma comprehensive plan. And this really just gets me really excited to have the opportunity to play a small role in really helping the city carry out this really ambitious vision. Um, I've got a strong public service ethic and, you know, contribute to helping the city is something that I, you know, I really want to, and feel like I have the opportunity to in my, in my life right now. Um, you know, I've experienced and benefited from this planning as a resident here in Tacoma and I see incredible opportunities, um, again, to contribute my expertise and, and, uh, and knowledge to this effort. Um, You know, I've had firsthand knowledge also working with the city through my professional career. And, you know, I see the Planning Commission as an opportunity here to, through a volunteer lens, to really accomplish some incredible goals with the city. I believe I bring unique experience to this role, representing, you know, diverse perspectives, I think is a really important and critical to the Planning Commission to make sure that all voices are incorporated in the local government decision-making Not only do I contribute to this diversity, but my experiences in my professional career also bring broad perspectives, ideas, understanding of the landscape at a broader state level. And I think that's really one of the true values that I bring to this is those experiences and connections and examples. I see some incredible opportunities for the city, and I also understand there's some big challenges. I think the biggest strength right now is that you have a unified vision that is incredibly comprehensive. And I see, though, you know, the greatest challenges are in the details of implementation. I know that as a planner. it's often really hard to be able to balance the different interests when the rubber really hits the road with implementation of plans and being able to utilize the different tools and resources to accomplish those goals. So thank you, and I'll be happy to answer any questions.

Great. Thank you so much. We'll start with questions in the room with Councilmember Diaz.

Yeah. I am wondering, just because you mentioned in your application that your civic engagement was prompted by city planning decisions that were affecting your neighborhood.

I'm wondering if you can tell me what that was about.

Yeah. Yeah. That was when I was, uh, you know, I was very young and, uh, you know, we lived in a a hundred acre area, protected wetlands in a little neighborhood, and I'm not sure how our neighborhood got approved, um, to be developed, but it did. And, you know, um, as a kid, those, those areas and wetlands were our playground. And at an early age, we saw proposals for future development in those wetlands and engaging with the city of Kirkland in those areas and, you know, hearing the different perspectives and understanding the challenges between growth and the need for growth. And then also, you know, protecting the environment. And that's really what triggered my level of civic engagement. And I think I listed in my application that I actually joined the Kirkland Youth Council because of that. And, you know, that theme has kind of persisted in both my professional career as well as my personal interests. And again, you know, I've been really focused on my personal career. And right now I feel like I call City of Tacoma my home, and I want to contribute in a volunteer perspective too. Thank you.

Very cool, given that you do a lot of things for ecology now.

Cool circle. Great. Vice Chair Savelle Gage.

Sure. Hello. Hi. Very impressive background. Thank you for everything you do, actually, because you do quite a bit. And so that's going to be the core to my question is, you know, the Planning Commission does take a fairly large amount of time a time commitment, which I didn't know about before I was put on it, quite frankly. And let's face it, you have a job right now where you're the regional director of an agency. As far as I can count, there's 11 counties and 14 tribal nations, and you have a lot of affiliations. Do you have the time to do this?

Yeah, that's a strong consideration that I made when I applied for this. And I do feel like I have the time and I'm able to have flexibility in that schedule. And I think we're all encouraged within my other professional job that we engage in our communities. And I feel strongly supported with that. I've already talked to the director about that. And, you know, I think there's an opportunity here and I'm at the stage of my life where I feel like that's appropriate. And, you know, I think, um, I see a huge responsibility, you know, working with planning commissions through my land use career. I know how important they are and I wouldn't, you know, I don't take that lightly. Um, so my, you know, my commitment is that, uh, you know, when I applied for this, I am serious about it. And I, and I feel that responsibility to be committed.

Thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much for everyone's today.

The question I've been asking applicants is when you think about the Planning Commission, one of the major roles is balancing a lot of competing interests, a lot of things that the city is trying to balance. So I'd love for you to take a moment and maybe talk through what do you see as some of the competing interests that you'd have to balance as a Planning Commissioner? And then if there's one, typically you could weigh in kind of where you land on that one and to give us an idea of your thinking as you would approach some of those kind of more challenging conversations on the Planning

Sure. Yeah, I might approach this at different scales, because I think different levels of decisions are going to have competing interests at different scales. I think one example here in my own neighborhood is the Cushman Station. And engaging in that process, it's pretty clear how big of competing interests there are with Cushman Station. Also understanding the city's position on the budget constraints and the landscape of that is not getting any better. So I'd say competing interests at that scale, when you're talking about site-specific design and land use, I think is going to create one set of challenges. I think another set of challenges, just being involved with my role professionally in the South Tacoma neighborhood, even trying to support an overburdened community, there's always gonna be challenges with the distribution of those resources in other overburdened communities. And then when you add the full spectrum of the city on top of that as an overlay, equitable distribution of those resources is gonna be something that's gonna be really challenging. especially with the city's ambitious goals around equity and accomplishing those missions. I think that that's going to be different scales, again, of competing interests and You want to make sure that you're supporting everybody's livelihoods in each little neighborhood. But I think that's when you run into some of the challenges with a budget that's set and making hard decisions about how you actually implement an equity plan and make sure that all communities are served and have voices in that conversation.

Thank you very much.

Well, thank you so much for coming in and spending time with us. We did many interviews here. Our last 1, we did many interviews today, and we are going to make a decision on all 4 positions. So you'll hear from the city clerk's office shortly.

That's great. Thank you. I have a little horse voice. It's been a long day for me too. So I appreciate it. And thank you so much again for the opportunity.

Yeah, thanks for spending time with us. Okay, so we do have the handy sheet of paper that the clerk's office has given us that has the motions on it, and it does under each one show who is qualified in each one. is a good and bad thing but everyone only fits into one category so we can't do any of the shuffling it makes this easier but it also makes it harder um so i will just give like one minute um if everybody wants to sort of organize their thoughts and their paperwork as i always have to do uh and then we'll go ahead and have discussion and before we take motions

I just wanted to get clarification because there are four individuals that live or reside in district one but only two of them can be considered for District 1?

You know, that's a really great point. That is incorrect. So anyone who lives in District 1 would be eligible for the District 1 position.

OK. So in that case, Erin Anderson could have a District 1 next to her on eligible positions, and so could Anthony Steele. I think those are the two additions. And maybe I can get confirmation from Nicole on that.

Yeah, that would look to be right. I don't know, Steve, if you have any other to add.

Okay. Thank you for catching that. Okay, any initial thoughts on candidates? Anyone want to start?

You know, I'm just looking at it in terms of payers. For me, you know, the amount of work and experience that Christopher Carnes brings, I would choose Christopher Carnes for that position. I really like Maria. I actually think she would be a really good Transportation Commission candidate, given where she is. But I think Chris Carnes has a wealth of knowledge and history and leadership on this commission. of the two that are available for public transportation, that's the one I would choose.

Any thoughts on other candidates? Or do you want to just stick to that one?

I will give you the other thought is, you know, it is You know, I actually was really impressed with Lyle Cruz's background with the diversity of background from development, teaching, organizing. I think that's a really good wealth of experience. I know Lyle only fits in the development community world. And so this one's difficult for me because I also really did appreciate Anthony Steele's contribution. So that one's a little difficult for me. I would love a world in which we could have Mr. Cruz and Mr. Steele on, but then that would necessitate that Mr. Steele would have to be in the District 1 position and Mr. Cruz would have to be in the development community position. I don't know if that's something people are open to. And in terms of architecture, historic preservation, urban design, Um, that one, honestly, I'd look to the rest of the, uh, commit, uh, the, the board here, um, uh, committee here. I'm sorry. Um, because I mean, you have two really well qualified, uh, candidates that have already worked on other boards before. So I know they can do the work. Um, you know, I guess I would give a slight edge to Alex. Morgan Roth only because he has planning experience that spans different states and locally, but it is not that high. It is kind of a flip for me on that one. I really appreciated Nick Anderson's application and answers. Quite frankly, I think normally any time we would consider that. And I was very impressed with Bobak's background. You know, this is just a really difficult one. We have a lot of really qualified people as we have recently. So it is not a knock on them in any way why I said their names.

I really like all the interviews. I think it's unfortunate that we brought really distinct different backgrounds. One of the things that's really sticking out to me is that I always worry a bit about Morgan. She's the only woman on the planning commission, and so I'd really like to be able to bring in Erin, Maria, or both. I think we need to help balance that out. I also really like the idea of moving Anthony over to the district from the seat so that we get to appoint Lyle. I think that also helps round us out. in another way. They were very different backgrounds in the city. My only reservation I think around Lyle is that he doesn't live in the city. He owns property in the city. And I don't know if staff has any idea what the precedent around that is obviously qualified, but have we had planning commissioners in the past who don't live in the city?

Do we know?

So first of all, the Can you come to the table just because we've had trouble with the mics?

Yeah, absolutely. We did confirm. Oh, thank you. Steven Atkinson, Planning Development Services. The happiness of the question. Per city charter, Planning Commissioners are required to be city of Tacoma residents. Elizabeth Wing did reach out and confirm with Lyle his residency at South 12th Street. That was a point of confusion in the application whether or not the place of residence was still in evening, it sounds like he's confirmed South 12th Street in Tacoma.

Okay. So it's just reflected? Yeah. Okay.

That helps.

Stay here in case there's any other questions. I was wondering, since we do have a couple of folks who are seeking reappointment and some strong applicants who are not seeking those positions that are for folks who are seeking reappointment, I'm wondering where the Planning Commission is in terms of their work. How flipping the table would this be to take two other people out and switch them in for new people if we did that?

Great question.

This is an OK moment. However you want to answer that.

Yeah. No. So this is not uncommon. Typically, the first meeting in July is when the new commissioners come on board with the Planning Commission. This was probably the case once upon a time with Council Member Pisadolfi when they joined the Commission. So typically we just, we will understand like their first meeting on July 1st, they will be likely taking action on several items on their current work program. So we usually try to meet with them early to do an initial onboarding on process over on work program. And then as they have those initial actions that they're taking, do prep work before those commission meetings to get them up to speed on what they're taking action on. So we do typically have a plan in place. This is probably a larger number of potential open seats than we have had, I think, at least in the last couple of years. But it's something that we definitely just put a plan in place on how we bring people on board.

MS. Good. Thank you. Yes, one more question from Councilman Reitz.

Thank you, Chair Walker. so many more amazing candidates that we have spaces for them. So, you know, I think absent Councillor Schlage's point about moving Anthony Steele into the District 1 spot, I think my initial thought was I really didn't like Nick Anderson. Just, you know, initially having kind of like service and understanding kind of how the city works and fits together, I didn't really like him for District 1. I know I am open and we're fine with the conversation over the issue of one slot. If that opens up possibly for Lyle Cruz, I would really hope that we have pre-confirmation of the city of Tacoma before we go down that kind of path. But it sounds like we haven't. So I think those two are fine. I think Lyle certainly does bring up a good perspective for the development community to be thinking about how that balance is in there. And I really like his answers to the questions Um, for the, um, the other, so that was, so that's, if Anthony still moves to Dish 1, Bob Cruz moves into the, um, into the development space. Then we move to the next, I don't think, I don't have my, I moved the page and I lost the cheat sheet somewhere. Anyways. I do, I really did like Maria Buchanan. I thought she was really good. I'm happy with her in there, but I also recognize that Chris has been doing this job for a long time, and it brings a lot of value. So I either, I think we win with either one of them. For the last one with Aaron or Alex, again, I think they're both really good candidates. I do, if it's the architecture, historic preservation, urban design, alex said was he on landmarks preservation commission before this so that is a valuable kind of perspective that you could bring into that role especially as you know we've had some tension points with the landmarks preservation commission and planning commission interactions on some decisions lately so having someone who has that experience coming in in that historic preservation or resignable i think would be really valuable So those are my, I'm open for further conversations about any of those, but those are kind of the ones I'm thinking about. There's a wealth of District 1 talent, so I'm happy with any of them.

Yes, go ahead.

As everyone was talking, I did notice that Erin would bring a lot of transportation background as well as architecture. And so if there was a world in which we chose Erin and Maria, you'd get more representation, like Councilmember Diaz would be looking for, and we would have a wealth of transportation kind of background that could potentially not be there if we didn't repoint Carnes. I just noticed that while I was kind of looking over there, so that is something that I think I could level as well.

Great. Well, thank you all. I think, obviously, these are all really great candidates. You go through the list, and even going through the entirety of the list of applicants was really hard to get to eight, and you sort of hope that they won't all be great because it makes the decision too hard. So thank you to everyone who applied. I think I agree with everyone, I know not everyone has come together around specific answers, but I do lean Aaron only because I absolutely agree with Councilmember Diaz, we need a little bit more gender balance on the Commission, I think. And I appreciate Councilmember Zadalga the comment about her bringing that transportation background, which is also a balance point on this. I like the idea of appointing Lyle. I think he brings a different development background than Anthony did. And I think that that's really important and frankly missing on here. And I like the solution of moving Anthony to the district one seat, I think that helps keep some of that of that other different perspective that isn't specific to to developing so. I like that i'm really, really struggling with the last one, because, like. Many of you have said, I really liked Maria. I think we do need to balance our gender diversity a little bit. I am a huge fan of Chris Carnes. He's been incredible leadership on this planning commission for a lot of years and through a lot of really, really hard processes. I also know that he won't stop the work that he's doing and letting us know how we can connect, especially with the data on public transportation. Um, I also, we went through the, um, on the incumbents on how many years, cuz they both fill the, uh, vacant seat. Um, so it's not an even number or an even set of terms. So, um, Nicole, I pulled up the information, but just to confirm Chris Carnes is at seven years on the commission and the, um, term limits are 10, right? 10 years.

Yeah. My understanding, this would be the last term.

Okay. So he could still serve another three-year term within those bounds, but we have been able to enjoy his leadership for seven years. So while I struggle with this one a little bit, I think I kind of lean towards inviting Maria in as a fresh set of eyes. Yeah. Yeah.

I was just going to ask if you wanted me to start making

I am really worried about losing Chris's institutional knowledge as much as Maria's probably one of my favorite interviews. I am wondering if it's worth giving him a last term to round it out. Only I guess my question for staff is what's the makeup of who all else has been on the commission? No one else has served as long as he has, right? So everybody else is within the last five years or so, maybe? What do you guys think about that?

I believe you're correct.

Ooh, full eyeball number.

Yeah, I don't have the numbers specifically.

I think you're right. Yeah, I think you're right.

Chris is a senior member of the commission. If I'm not mistaken, Morgan? Because I'm pretty sure Morgan, Rob, and Brett have been there about the same time, about five or six years.

Yeah, so I think Chris and then Commissioner Steele are probably longer serving. And then, yeah, we have a sort of cluster in that five or six year period.

They're cohort.

Yeah.

Sorry, not to complicate your questions, feel free. I just wanted to ask a question.

I think that's a really valuable point. I think that's a really valuable point. I did not help. I will just say, to your point, I think that we should keep Commissioner Carnes. I think we should. Okay, Vice Chair Siddaghi, if there's no other comments, would you like to start making motions?

Sure. First one, okay. I move to recommend the appointment of Erin Anderson to the Architecture, Historic Preservation, and Urban Design position on the Planning Commission to fill an unexpired term to expire June 30th, 2028. Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Any final comments, questions? All right, all those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? The motion carries.

I move to recommend the appointment of Lyle Cruz to the development community position on the planning commission to serve a three-year term effective July 1st, 2026 and to expire June 30th, 2029. Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Any final comments, questions? Question?

If for some reason anything comes back weird from the clerk, do we need to come back and make new motions next time or should we make motions now?

um yes the clerk will let us know because we also have to confirm this with the full council so okay we'll hear this will be our our recommendation to the council and we'll revise if needed great question uh any other questions yeah i mean i think it's my my question would be if he is on if he if we have to remove him that means that there's no one that can fill that role unless we should we have to touch them back

So I guess there might be a, we'll deal with that later.

Yeah. And we can do that at our next meeting and still get someone to your first meeting in July. Okay. We'll make it tight, but it was, yeah.

Just in case we'll add it to the agenda. Perfect.

Okay. All right, all those in favor of recommending Lyle Cruz to the Development Community position, signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries.

I move to recommend the appointment of Anthony Steele to the District 1 position on the Planning Commission to serve a three-year term effective July 1, 2026 to expire June 30, 2029. Second.

Any questions or comments? Seeing none, all those in favor please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries.

I move to recommend the reappointment of Christopher Carnes to the public transportation position on the Planning Commission to serve a three-year term effective July 1, 2026 to expire June 30, 2029. Okay.

It's been moved and seconded. Any final comments or questions? All right. Seeing none, all those in favor please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. All right. Thanks, team. Thanks, Nicole.

Chair Bronco.

Yes.

Our friends from Parks and Recreation, they go next on the agenda.

Sure.

Thanks so much.

We'll now move on to item number three, local jurisdiction conferral for proposed gulf property acquisition. We have Terry Youngman from Parks and Recreation here.

Hi, good evening. Thanks for having me here. My name is Terry Youngman. I'm the District-wide Capital Improvement Program Manager for Parks Tacoma. What we bring to you tonight is a local jurisdictional conferral. Essentially, this is us coming to a city entity to let them know about a potential acquisition. It's a requirement of the RCO grant process that we confer with our local government on that property acquisition. So we go to the next slide. Some background here. We submitted a grant application in the last month to the Recreation Conservation Office for funding through the WRP local parks grant category, a common grant category for local parks agencies. If awarded, the funding would help support the purchase of a 3.4 acre site in the Eastside community. We call it the Galt property. It's the former Galt Middle School property, currently owned by Tacoma Public Schools. Once it's acquired, we would then move into a process of community engagement to establish this as a neighborhood park for the Eastside community. And the RCW 79A-15-110 and RCO policy requires applicants to confer with the city government that has a jurisdictional control over the project area. So next slide, please. The golf property, you can see the big star here is giving you a general location of where this property is in the city. This is surplus property that's owned by the Tacoma Public Schools. We work very closely with them on surplus properties and having right of first refusal on acquiring these properties as neighborhood parks. They are going to be moving their Idea High School to this location. There's actually two properties that are adjacent to one another. The Idea High School will be on the western property and the opportunity here is the eastern play field. That's currently being developed as a mini-pitch as part of the World Cup festivities that are going on around the Puget Sound region. Address is 3537 East L Street in Tacoma, and this is zoned as Urban Residential 1. Go to the next slide. This gives you a sense of the property. Large open play field generally been used as open space for the local community, although it hasn't been managed as such. Primarily you see people walking their dogs and things like that in the site. The development you see there at the end of the property is brand new. This is a mini pitch. This is something that if we were to acquire the property, we would inherit this facility and then manage as a public recreational element. We go to the next slide. We've come up with a very basic schematic conceptual plan for the property, things that we're thinking about for the property, children's play, open play lawn. Obviously, we have the mini pitch here, perimeter walking trail, things that are typical to a neighborhood park development. So we would meet with the community to establish those needs, kind of hear from them as to what they would like to see in this park space, and then work on a neighborhood park development project to support that. Grant funds only fund the acquisition of the property. All future development would be something that we keep looking at through the 2026 bond that just recently passed. If we go to the next slide. The conferral requirements. Parks Tacoma must review the proposed project with Tacoma City Council and provide proof of that conferral. We use the meeting minutes of this meeting to show that proof. And then the jurisdiction may submit a letter to RCO stating it's either support or opposition to the project, and there's a sample letter that you can pull from. And that would then show proof that we conferred with the City of Tacoma. As far as the timeline, if we go to the next slide, we've already submitted our pre-application. We did our initial review with RCO. They looked very positively on the project, so it puts us in a pretty good position through the final application to actually get this funding. Today here at 610, the conferral presentation, we would ask for comments or the either letter of support or opposition by the 24th of June. Final application is due on the 15th of July. And then we move into the evaluation process. And then we would hear back from RCO sometime in August as to what the results are going to be. So yeah, that is the timeline for this process. If you go to the next slide, I can be the primary point of contact if you have any questions about the park side of that project. And we've also included our RCO grants manager, Hannah Pauley, who gives you any questions about the RCO-related process. And I'm here to answer the questions you may have.

Great. Thank you, Terry. Any questions from the committee? Vice Chair Scoggins.

Well, thank you very much. I live nearby. This has been something that the community has been interested in. They've asked a lot of questions and can't answer it until we go through the process, so I really appreciate it. Real quick, you're not asking for an action from us as IPS, but as a council eventually, or what's...

Basically, you're allowed to submit comment. Got it. The requirement through RCO is that we come and present and give you an opportunity to comment on it. You can take no action, and we still have what we need to be able to submit the application, but it's an open process. You can submit comments to us if you have feedback for us about the project or want us to keep something in mind as we move forward with the acquisition process. You can submit those comments to us, or you can likewise submit a letter of support or opposition. Any of those options are fine.

Got it. And I also assume because this is a property that's being acquired, it wasn't included in your initial bond package, so any improvements would have to be on a future bond that parks would potentially.

We left ourselves some flexibility. So the acquisition fund was established in a generic enough way. We actually had sites, we have several sites that we've been working on with Tacoma Public Schools that are surplus properties, and so those are some that are identified in the bond for potential acquisition. Galt is one of those sites. For the future development, we left ourselves flexibility in the bond program to potentially address things like this. I think we have to get into the bond and see how projects go and see if things are over and under budget and how much funding is left as we meet the promises that were made to the community through that bond process. So I would say TBD on the future development side. Could be in this bond program, could get deferred to the next bond program.

And then the last question, because this has been really big in that particular community, which is thank you for also having a very updated picture. Like you took it like yesterday because it has the finished soccer field over there. You had mentioned that this is a grant application to allow you to purchase the property and therefore on whatever day you close, Park-Sacoma would then be responsible for that facility, the soccer field. Yes, you have that correct. Okay, thank you.

Council Member Diaz. Yeah, I was wondering if Since this RCO grant that you've applied for is only for property acquisition, there's nothing in the rules that doesn't let you apply for future RCO WWRP funds, right? That's correct.

So we could apply for the same program, the WWRP Local Parks Grant Program, for development dollars.

Great. I used to advocate for that. So they fund like-for-play things.

We submitted an application for Wapato Park Playground, among some other projects in this current round.

Super duper. Thank you. Other questions?

Great. Thank you so much for coming in, Terry.

Appreciate the time and thanks for letting me know.

I will speak for Eric, but I think it's okay.

Yeah.

Okay. Our last briefing item today, our parking citation fine structure and adjudication process with Eric Kesey, our Assistant Division Manager of Public Works for, as I say, the parking.

Thank you, Chair Walker and committee members. Great opportunity to talk about parking. Again, for the record, my name is Eric Hughesby. I'm the Assistant Division Manager in our Public Works Transportation Division, and today I'll be representing our parking system and our parking enforcement adjudication process. Go to the next slide. So today's an informational only presentation. I will note that you guys were provided also a we're running a little bit long, but realistically, this is really kind of a deeper dive into our adjudication process and say, meeting in April. I think he saw kind of how the mechanics of that worked and that was why it prompted us to come here today. So we'll be looking at an overview of the citation process, a little bit of the enforcement pillars that we utilize and the intent and our enforcement efforts, and then ultimately kind of the challenges and opportunities that we might have coming out of some of the deeper dives that our PTAG kind of helps any staff with. So the next slide.

Before you Go too far, did you say what PTAG stands for?

Parking Technical Advisory Group. Okay.

Just for the record.

So on the screen there you have the four enforcement pillars that we generally lean on when we're talking about our parking enforcement team. So the first one is clear communication. That's generally signage, good striping, those types of things. I will note that we're not doing, none of these we're doing absolutely perfectly, but we kind of strive to continue to kind of push the needle on these. The second one is equitable and fair. Our officers have quite a bit of discretion out in the field. It's also manifested The third one is efficient and effective. We're a small team. It's six FTEs overall to support the entire downtown, a bunch of business districts, citywide ADA and citywide EV enforcement. So trying to be as efficient as possible with those six staff members. And then ultimately kind of the invisible thread throughout all that we do is kind of being data informed. That's a lot of our ability to be able to analyze, to be able to manage, occupancies, be able to take a look at where our resources are allocated. And so that's what you'll see probably in the supplemental stuff is really kind of a deeper dive into the data, but really that is kind of the invisible thread on how we manage our systems. Next slide, please. So on the screen there, so we have, again, I mentioned the parking technical advisory group. This is a group when they're at full strength as 12 members. We help city staff develop parking policies. We kind of vet these, you know, we might have an issue, we bring it to this group and they help kind of vet us out. It is a very deliberate process. So generally speaking, over the last several years, what they will do is they'll take a first half work item and really kind of chew that from start to finish. So you'll see here that they started this process in February. February, March, and April were a lot of just pulling different data and trying to understand those objectives. So February is our citation data, so our enforcement folks, what we do on the front end and how many citations we write. And then we started to look at the payment data and what was coming back into the system from a payment standpoint, both on the court side and some other resources. And then ultimately in April, we started to look at the court data as it related to adjudications, right? And how they process those citations. With May and June being, May being a draft recommendation that comes out of that group. And then June was just actually just last Thursday, they finalized their recommendations. So that's fresh off the, will be fresh off the press. If we go to the next slide, we can kind of talk about the key findings out of that effort. So there are really kind of four key findings. The first was time limit compliance on the front end. There's some challenges with just downtown, if you talk about the pay or the timed parking areas having high-level compliance. Generally, what we would want to target is about 10% violation rate. In some cases, we're seeing up to 50% in certain areas, so that's problematic in large part of that. resources are expending or some of the backend challenges that we're having with the process. The three highlighted there are ones that we'll go in a deeper dive on. So one thing that we did find was repeat violators or scofflaws within the system generate a significant amount of citations. So a relatively small number of vehicles, 831, out of almost, I think, 18,000, folks are kind of pushing in the face of compliance. The second thing there is unpaid citations. So overall, about half of our citations remain unpaid. That means there's absolutely no engagement with the courts. So when a parking officer writes a citation, those citations are uploaded to the courts, and that's what we see. We see about 50% of the citations remain trying to dig into that and see what kind of contributed to that. And then finally, the group kind of looked at the appeal process and acknowledged that there's not really any administrative insight on the appeals. So if you happen to get a citation and you want to dispute it in one way, shape, or form, you go up to the courts, you have a conversation with the courts. They're not really informed as to the back end of that. So they can come in and say, well, there was no sign here, there was this, that, whatever. And the reality is there's nothing informed that process. So I will note on this slide, I mean, your supplemental packet, that 80% number, it's actually 75%, so that's a typo on our part on this particular slide, but your supplemental packet has the actual 75% citation dismissal rate. So go to the next slide. So with those key findings, the group really kind of delved into two kind of overarching goals. So the first set of goals is really on the front end of the process. So the stuff that operationally we potentially control. And so again, the directive there would be to deploy tools that drive the compliance. So we're really trying to drive the compliance there with the goal. I think I mentioned that we want to have non-stay and overstay violations or non-payment, excuse me, and overstay violations at 10% of us. That's really kind of the target there. And so the group was very, very strong on wanting to keep that in place. The second strategy, strategy 1B, is discourage repeat violations. So the group had recommended that we create a new category of citations, an abuse category, where it's an escalating fine for folks who are in that scofflaw category, which is five or more violations. And then the final one is standardizing the fine structure. So right now it's kind of a hodgepodge of rates that you'll see. being you know parking on a crosswalk so it didn't really have a lot of continuity or fidelity between citations and so they recommended that we standardize that so you have in the packet it shows that there's three different categories they're just kind of parking access there is safety categories the parking access would be a $30 fine structure safety violations would be 40 and then the abuse category would be 50 so very streamlined easy to understand easy to communicate so That's the set of goal ones, again, on the front end of the process, the operation that we can kind of control. And then the group kind of acknowledged, if we switch to the next slide, that there's kind of a wall and everything beyond the wall is at the core level. So these are opportunities for improvement that we don't have a direct influence at this point, but PTAG took an opportunity to say, well, if you don't have good backend support on this, what does that look like on the front end and maybe actually impacting some of your compliance? So again, the objective here would be to create a cost-effective and flexible customer focus this collection process, both to increase compliance and then kind of try to reduce some of that friction that the end user might experience. What we're shooting for here is to reduce the overall unpaid citations by 25% or less. we would really want to approach. We did a small study of peer cities and found that generally speaking they're in the 75-85% range as far as payments are concerned, so we feel like getting to that number is very achievable if we have the right tools in place. And so they developed four The first one is to reestablish a collection agency contract and ultimately the referral to the Washington Department of Licensing for TAB restrictions. So right now that is a missing element within our adjudication process. Right now we have a mounting balance of unpaid vehicles with some level of impunity can park and not have to worry about any sort of consequence. Strategy 2B would be to improve the awareness and appeals process. So this group is very big on outreach and making sure that we communicate that. So that's just more of a targeted opportunity for us to consolidate where all these all this information is relative to fine structures, what your appeal process might look like, late fees, penalties, those types of things. I will note that in yesterday's study session, Councilmember Scott did daylight a little bit of that, right, where she got a citation, didn't realize she had one. So this is part of that is for us to work in the courts and lean into them about better communication when it comes to that. And we certainly think, again, we have a selfish interest on Um, strategy to see is to expand citation payment options potentially. Um, and so the idea that when you get a citation, can you pay momentarily QR code on your citation and scan that pay through an app and you paid through the pay stations, um, the group contemplated even some incentives when it comes to that. So we pay within 24 hours to me, um, drop the rate by $5, just to be able to incentivize that. that compliance function and make it just a little bit easier for people to pay. What we've heard a lot of is there's not that immediate ability to pay, so they go home, they forget about it, and then they get into this vicious cycle. And then the final thing, strategy 2D, was to look at and just kind of analyze whether or not there are opportunities to streamline the collections and the appeals process. So in your packet, there was just a rough template of the concept, and again, we'd have to kind of work with the courts and understand on PTAC's part to kind of explore this. Is there an opportunity for us to actually create an administrative window? So there's actually city staff controls more of that process before it goes behind the wall. And so that may look like propping up a custom, you know, there's a parking office where maybe the front end of the citations are sent over to that office for customer service. Folks would call that office if they have any issues. And then we would utilize, we could either, A, we could be the ones who present the collections for any undue or unpaid citations. Or if there are needs, there's going to ultimately still be a due process. to the courts. So everything here was really the acknowledgement that there's not much we can actively do, that really they asked a PTAG was to say, can you guys start having some of those conversations and work with the courts to try to develop some of this. So a lot of it will be exploratory, but at least it gives us the opportunity and experience to have that conversation. And then the last slide will be next steps. Generally speaking, so last Thursday, PTAC finalized these recommendations, so that generally will manifest itself into a letter to the city manager saying, here are the recommendations, and the city manager will sign off on it and comes back to our group to work on and start implementing. We have our presentation today. I would suspect the next touch point with council would be any of the code updates that we do for the fine structures, so we would expect to come back to IPS as a first blush look from there the December that we would potentially get it on council agenda with ultimately implementation hopefully by January 1st so the other aspects that we talked about the engagement with the courts if those kind of happen off to the side and then depending on how those those conversations tease out you may be coming back with more status updates depending so and with that I will open up

Great, thank you. Eric, who would like to start with questions or comments? Also, thank you, Council Member Siddalgette, for bringing this.

I want to thank the rest of the committee for being here this late. Because this was my fault.

No, that's not. Great. And staff, of course. Council Member Ruggine. Eric, a question and a comment.

Okay.

On slide five, I think, was the one where it said how many citations we had. The number was, what, 800-something, 831?

That's the number of repeat violators. So that's the number of folks who have more than five citations over the six-month period that we're analyzing.

Do we have a way to figure out how many of those are city staff?

Maybe. I don't know. I mean, that would take a little bit of digging into it. I don't know if we can get to that in detail.

The goal not being to know which staff, but the goal being to know what percentage of it is city staff. I ask that because I've asked the city manager repeatedly how we can get to a place where city staff have access to parking permits or ways that they can get out of getting these parking tickets. I don't think they should be ticketed to come to work. It really bothers me. So if there's a way that we can figure out how we can solve for that, that is not the point of this presentation, but I wanted to raise it to you as our parking hero.

I think, theoretically, it's possible, you know I mean part of it is that our that that would require us to work through the courts and there's a whole department licensing thing and how and where they're registered and kind of cross represent well we'll we'll take a look at that it may be something that is. elusive but we'll take a look and see.

Can you answer that question might not be the thing that impacts the policy for staff, but what I am interested in is how do we get to a place where. staff isn't penalized because they came to work, their meeting went over, right? Like a front-end park could have got a ticket because he was stuck in here with us, right? Like any number of these things that I think is out of sight of someone's control in their workplace doesn't sit right with me. So a thought that I constantly have. So we figure out maybe that's a thing that PTAC looks at that's separate from this. Just not a question, but a comment I wanted to make was on the strategies. I really like the idea of, see, I am one of those humans who will get a parking ticket and immediately lose it. So there's a way to pay it right there. I think that that would be really helpful for getting some of this money back into the coffers and get people out of the court system. They can pay it right then. Like, man, I should have paid the dollar instead of now I pay 40, but they'll pay their 40 here, whatever the fee is. Thank you. Great presentation. Great. Other questions?

I was going to go in a different direction. I want to know how many of those people issue citations. Are we suspecting that they're living in your vehicles or that they're ? Oh, I don't know. Well, I would say this. When you look at the high, you probably can answer the question, but my answer is no. It's these high numbers of people doing it over and over again. Are we able to divide? Dice bifurcate him from, hey, look, the entitled business owner is like, I'm going to partner for my business no matter what. You keep taking me. I'm not going to pay. It was like protesting versus the city employee who runs over versus the person who's living in their vehicle, and they just keep getting shuffled around the city. They keep getting taken everywhere they go.

Well, I would say this. I mean, from that perspective. I think anecdotally, we do have some folks who are business owners downtown that will just openly snub and get back to the flow of the citation. There's no real back end to this, no real consequence. So one of the things that we say is, well, you're not going to be able to renew your tabs. Well, if that's not a friction point, we have some folks that will sit there, won't pay for parking, will stay there overtime.

I am just a high school teacher and elected official. I'm not a business owner. But far be it for me to tell someone that I don't think it's probably appropriate to park in front of your business for an extended period of time and take spaces from your customers who patronize your business. But that's the business owner's call on those things.

Well, and I would say this. I mean, since I've been Most business owners get that. Some are still – that's my spot out front.

Yeah. I mean I'm taking private ownership of a public asset right away, but that would be good. I do like the strategies. I mean I do like the simplification and clarification of like getting the very simple, clear tiers of what's happening in parking, standardized fines. i do think setting a higher priority on some of the prolific folks is probably the most important thing um in my mind you know i don't think you've accumulated that many tickets i mean if absent customer he has this point about maybe employees who are just like this is the cost of working here i agree that we should talk about that um but i think looking at some of the prolific folks. One of the challenges I think you find is if it's okay if a few people do occasionally violate the rules, but when it becomes pervasive, when it becomes everybody just knows that I don't have to pay these ever, it all falls apart. So I think that's a component of it. I do, and I really like the reestablishing collection agency contracts, more prolific ones, approving awareness, expanding citation ownership I do think that the phone, and I don't want to say I'm being like, there's a barrier to suffix, but this, that goes off and tells me my parking is going to end at a certain period of time, I think helps a lot with this conversation. And I just, so I think there's some tools that are available we could use to better remind people. This is, Eric and I have talked about another passion project I have about parking that I'm not gonna talk about now, but it's part of the parking advisory task force later. But I do think this is a, not just a, close, because I sound super punitive. This is not just about being punitive, it's about we want people to be able to come to our downtown and find parking so they can patronize our businesses and then So other people would come down to patronize their businesses. And if all of our parking spots are being occupied for an extended period of time, people will not come downtown. And so I think this is not only a public safety kind of border maintenance issue, it's also an economic development issue. So I think we need to take it seriously about that, too.

Thank you. Great, thanks.

Thank you, Eric.

So I don't have a mutiny on the committee. I really appreciate you coming here. I will follow up with a few questions offline. But it sounds like this is an informational and it will come to the committee, or sorry, to the council later in the year. So if there are questions, follow-ups, suggestions, come to you. There's some time as the PTAG works through this. Great. Thank you. Now you can go.

Well, first of all, I want to thank you. I do want to do just one point at the end, because I was really impressed with the total presentation that was given. I do understand this idea of just very few having very many citations, and I think that is an important thing to know. But for me, what I think was more powerful, especially in a world in which we have, you know, budget challenges coming over here is something you had said, which is a peer cities have a kind of a collection rate of about 75%. And we're at 49%. So Of the 18,000-ish or so that you said that the citations we give out minus 800 or so, right? We're looking at 17,000 or almost, you know, 14, 1500 a month. We're only collecting 50% of that. This is not about increasing enforcement. This is just on the actual notice citation. This is after a first, you know, first citation warning. Right. There are still there is this large amount of citations for which we can collect the revenue because we could book the revenue, but we don't have the cash. We don't have the cash. Right. So I would love to maybe talk a little bit more about what are the tactics that allow us to achieve that rate that other municipalities have in a way that is still equitable, that is still fair, that is still responsible. And I think there are ways, and I think that's where the recommendation in 2D was getting to, which is having this kind of in-between. Right now, a citation is given out. We don't see any of the process. That is all up to the municipal court, correct? That's right. And is there a world in which we can get into some... buffer zone before that where some administrative process is attempting to collect that money and then if someone wants to appeal then and only then does it go to the municipal court I think that is something we should be open to because you know the other question is should should a municipal court really be in the business of just collecting fines or adjudicating you know the legality of it right and and so maybe because we have that one difference in what this department is supposed to do, that alone accounts for the lower collection rates. Again, this is not about increasing enforcement, but this is about collecting on fines that have already been done. So that was the point in my head where I was like, wow, this is something really important and maybe something we should think about in a world in which we have some of these serious budget And of that end, I would love to know, do you have any sense of what the dollar value of that 25-ish percentage that's missing is?

Yeah, well, if you look at, so on the supplemental packet I gave you, slide four of that, so it's called revenue gap. It's core costs consume more than half of their collective revenues. What we have extrapolated, and this is actually manifested in some of our budget proposals for this next biennium, A general 10% increase in the collection rate or the moving average.

So going from 49 to 59%.

Yep, is going to be roughly to the parking system a benefit of about $100,000 a year, right? So it's not insignificant. And I will note that you mentioned about the pure cities. One of the things that we didn't know at the time was what tools they had in their toolbox, right? Because there's other tools such as a mobilization, towing, those other kind of more extreme pieces. What was very heartening, what was very interesting is the tools that they have in their toolbox are collections and they refer their folks to the Department of Licensing. So all things are very achievable for us in a very short term. It was no additional tools, no punitive measures as it were. It's just activating and flipping the switches on existing tools that we should be using already. So we feel like just even that will push very conservatively maybe 15% and maybe even get up to that 25% bump to get closer to the peer cities. The other stuff that we've mentioned about the admin window and those types of things, we say that two-fold. One is I think there's a compliance piece of that, but there's also a customer service piece of it, right? And reducing that friction and making it a little bit more accessible. I've had citations. It's not terribly comfortable, and it's intimidating to my engagement is with the courts and understanding that whole process. And we think that there could be a softer approach to that that may help. indirectly influence compliance, but really it's a push to say, how can we do this a little bit better? How can we be a little more accessible to the communities that we're serving? And it seems like it's kind of a weird dynamic to say, we want to infuse customer service after we've written you a citation, but to be able to live in that world as well. So all good stuff. Appreciate the support on that. I know you glommed onto that in April, and that was one of the ones that I think PTAC was most excited about trying to explore.

You should go to the meeting and get free pizza.

What?

I'll get the cat out of the bag.

Don't tell the others.

All right.

Thanks, Eric, to you and your team for being here.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

All right. Topics for upcoming meetings. Which were you? I didn't know you. That's what's on here.

I described them. Barbara is going to take over that one. Okay.

So June 24th, the South Tacoma Tree Canopy Enhancement. And then July 8th, the Central Wastewater Plant Gas Utilization Facility Status Update.

And then the briefing on the update process for the city's right-of-way design manual. And then July 22nd, the NPDES EPA Permit on Tribal Land and Stormwater Competence Effect.

Great, thank you. So we are moving the Urban Forestry Priority Action Plan into August, right?

Yeah, on the agenda. published the agenda before we made the decision to move. So that is for August 12th.

Great. And to all of my colleagues who are anxiously awaiting that update, just know that that's moved into August. Okay, just to close out the meeting, we did receive a letter from the Planning Commission on the Sound Transit Initiative. We have, as you all are well aware, passed the Enterprise Initiative, but a thank you to Planning Commission for sending that. All of those letters were incredibly helpful in making that decision. Any discussion on that letter at this point from the committee? Does anyone want to note any committee board or commission that they visited in the last month? All right. Any other items of interest? I will entertain a motion to adjourn.

I move to adjourn.

Okay. We'll move and second it. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye.