Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

and Sustainability Committee meeting on June 10th. It's not June 10th. It's July 8th, 2026. Thank you, Mayor Bushnell.

Present.

Councilmember Diaz. Absent. Councilmember Hines. Absent. Moving on to public comment. Do we have anyone on the list for public comment before we move on? Okay, I'm going to skip over reading that then. Is somebody saying they can't hear us?

Well, no, it looks like they saw a little wrist out there.

If she was off mute, then we'd be hearing the echo. Okay, so if anybody does come in looking like they're here for a public comment, we will circle back to that. But we are going to move right into our briefing items. We are starting with the Renewable Natural Gas Facility Update, and we have Matt Torrey, Nathan Crane, and Dominic Greco from Environmental Services come on down.

All right.

Good afternoon, Chair Walker, Vice Chair Stalge, and IPS Committee members. My name is Dominic Rucko. I'm a Business Services Manager on the Environmental Services Rates and Budget team. With me today are two of my colleagues, Matt Torrey, who is an engineer on our Asset Management and Technology Services Division, as well as Nathan Crane, who is a Senior Business Services Analyst, also on our HR team. Next slide, please. We're here today to provide an update on the renewable natural gas facility located at the city's central wastewater treatment plant. We will walk through the program's history and highlight several operational, financial, and admission-related challenges our department is currently working through. To set the stage, it is helpful to briefly revisit how the city entered the renewable natural gas business. The central treatment plant utilizes a process called anaerobic digestion, where microorganisms break down solids and neutralize pathogens to treat the city's wastewater. This digestion process creates a biogas byproduct, which is partly made up of methane, and carbon dioxide. Biogas presents a safety, odor, and environmental issues. Methane in particular is a potent greenhouse gas with roughly 30 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide. Since we don't want to release that directly into the atmosphere, we have three options to manage it. The first is to burn it using a flare, similar to what you'd see in an oil field operation. The second is to combust it on site to generate heat. for other treatment processes, and the third would be to refine it and sell it as a renewable natural gas product. With the construction of the RNG facility at the central treatment plant, we now utilize all three of those options. Next slide. The core intent of the RNG facility is to capture the energy produced during the treatment process and convert it into a sellable product to offset the use of conventional fossil fuels. In simple terms, We are turning a waste byproduct into a renewable fuel that can generate revenue. As we move through the presentation, you'll hear more about how the facility operates and how it's performing against original projections. Matt will walk through the facility's functions and operating targets. I will jump back in to cover the financial performance. Then Nathan will close us out to discuss the emissions and flaring impacts. With that, I'm going to hand it over to Matt.

Thanks, Dominic. Next slide, please. simplified process diagram for our biogas facilities of the central treatment plant. Our main unit process is up there, our anaerobic digesters, our RNG upgrading facility, our biogas flares and our boilers. Each of these are interconnected and if there's any kind of issue or any kind of change with one of these unit processes, we see that impacting the other ones. So our RNG plant takes our raw anaerobic digester gas that is developed as we dispose of and treat our solids that eventually becomes Tegro's, the city's Tegro product. Before the RNG facility was constructed, our digester gas was burned in our boilers for heat, which assists our process and the waste or excess gas was sent to our flares because methane is such a impactful greenhouse gas. It's much better environmentally to burn it and release CO2 instead of raw methane, which is what our flares do. So, as part of the upgrade process that the city undertook several years ago, we outed the RNG facility in the box there. That takes off a proportion of our raw digester gas. We clean it, we scrub it, we remove contaminants, and we ultimately send that product out as renewable natural gas. from that sale as well. So, you know, our natural gas that you can see in red up there, that was something that was added in as part of the upgrading project. During the upgrading process in our RNG facility, we clean and scrub the gas and we have this waste stream of waste products and other contaminants that we cannot send to PSEs. and we have to do something with that waste stream. So we upgrade it with natural gas, we get it to a burnable set point, and then it is put back in to the digester gas system and is ultimately burned in the flares or boilers. I think an important part to know is after the upgrade, based on the mass balance of the system, basically burn one unit of natural gas to produce one unit of renewable natural gas. And that's just kind of inherent in our new system. Next slide please. So here's a timeline of the city's RNG program at the central treatment plant. This is actually our second renewable natural gas plant that we've had at the central treatment plant. back in the early 90s. Actually, in the late 80s is when the design began for our first RNG plant. It came online in the early 90s. Our first plant predated the RIN credit, or Renewable Identification Number credit, which is a federally administered program, which is our main revenue stream, which we'll get into later. But it predated that. So all the gas that was upgraded was actually stored on site, and the intent was that would be used in the city's fleet. So we create this gas, clean it, scrub it, store it on site for our fleet. That never came to fruition. And just due to operational challenges, it was shut down. The city, once again, had an interest in using this. for its highest and best use. So we hired a firm to investigate and ultimately hired that same firm as our design build contractor to design and build our current RNG plant, which is our second iteration. And yeah, we've tried to use a lot of the lessons learned from our first process, like not storing on site, which is a really big safety challenge. triggers a lot of legal issues and whatnot, storing that large amount of gas on site. So as part of our second process or second facility, we constructed a pipeline so we could sell that gas and deliver into Puget Sound Energy's distribution network. Our second process, we got lots of attention in the industry and As of this point, it's operating and we've been facing some challenges in that operation with costs exceeding our revenues and some other maintenance challenges, which we will get into on the next slide, please. So some of the problems that we want to bring to light to the IPS is Um, some inefficiencies in our unit processes that are installed, uh, just, uh, siloxanes. So, uh, siloxanes are a derivative of personal care products, uh, from silicones. Uh, so a lot of personal care products and pharmaceuticals and, uh, things of that nature, those come, come into the treatment plan and, uh, end up in our digesters and end up in our digester gas and. Puget Sound has the strictest siloxane limits for renewable natural gas in the country, us in Southern California. So Puget Sound Energy has mandated very, very low levels in our discharge flow out to them, and that's created a lot of challenges for us. And it's kind of been a single point of failure ever since the city took ownership of our current facility. you know, our regulatory environment, it's not yet mature for renewable natural gas and REN generation. Um, so it seems like every, every fiscal year, there seems to be kind of a increasing burden as far as paperwork and documentation and, um, the number of different consultants that need to be involved to help us with that documentation. Um, and lots of long lead times for a replacement when equipment breaks in that process. So this has kind of resulted in excessive downtime in our actual mechanical upgrading process. Our production hasn't reached our design intent and our design goals, and that's led to increased costs for the city. Next slide, please.

So the RNG facility cost $15.5 million to construct, and $2.8 million of that was financed through a 20-year loan from the Department of Commerce. At the time of the design, as Matt kind of touched on, it was projected to produce 46,000 MMPTUs of RNG annually and eventually reach a revenue-positive position. The RNG facility generates revenue through two sources. The first is through the actual sale of the molecules of gas. And the second is through renewable identification numbers, also known as RIN credits, which are issued by the EPA to producers of renewable vehicle fuel. These credits make up 90% of the revenue generated from this facility. What we're seeing are really three main issues that are currently driving the financial performance of this facility to not meet the revenue positive position that we're originally projecting. The first is lower than projected production. So less gas produced means less gas sold. And that also reduces the amount of RINs we're generating. And all of this is really directly correlated to the operational impacts that Matt has talked about. We're also seeing lower than anticipated RIN pricing. So the RIN market has really been down and is somewhat highly volatile. And when you combine that with the lower production, the two revenue impacts kind of stack on top of each other. And the final one is we're seeing higher operating costs. So when you combine the higher operating expenses with lower revenue, it's really quite difficult to meet that initial production. That being said, if we exclude debt service, which we have an obligation to pay, we're starting to reach a point where revenues and operating expenses are nearly in alignment. And that is just the direct result of the significant efforts our operations and maintenance and engineering staff have done to increase the system uptime and efficiency. And that's highlighted in a six-month period last year where we saw the facility produce 24,000 NMVTUs. And if you extrapolate that over a year, we would meet that target performance of 46,000. So our department is committed to continue optimizing operations and maximizing gas production as those are the mechanisms we have control over to improve revenue performance and reduce those operational expenses. Next slide, please. Now I'm going to turn it over to Nathan to kind of walk through the facility's emissions performance.

Thank you, Dominic. Thank you, Chair Walker, Deputy Mayor, committee members. So two main points to kind of keep in mind as we look at the emissions picture here. The first one is that, as my colleague Matt covered in the system design slide, the facility uses roughly one unit of utility natural gas to produce one unit of renewable natural gas. And that's due to the requirement to supplement our waste gas after renewable natural gas is extracted. to a point where it can be used by our boilers or flared. So this brings online substantial new natural gas loads that were not present at the city before the facility entered service. That's the first main point. The second is that in carbon accounting, emissions benefits are accrued by the end user of a renewable fuel, not by the producer of that renewable fuel. So on our side of the ledger, as the producer, all we had is the emissions penalty associated with the energy required to produce the renewable fuel. So we have those things working against us in the emissions picture. And how this affects our a graphic that shows one of our climate action plan targets. We have a target for a 30% reduction in carbon emissions from municipal facilities by 2030 relative to a 2019 baseline. And so the way we kind of calculate and track that is we sum up all of the natural gas and all the electricity that we purchase from the utilities that provide those. So Puget Sound Energy and Tacoma Power We calculate the emissions associated with those energy types, sum them up on a year-over-year basis, and we compare those emissions each year to our baseline emissions in the year 2019. In 2019, the baseline year for this target, importantly, is before our RNG facility entered operation, which means that any added emissions associated with the operation of that that were not accounted for in our baseline year. And you can see in the graphic as well, if you have good eyesight at least from where you're sitting, we distinguish between commercial facilities and industrial facilities for this target. So commercial facilities are really the vast majority of our facility portfolio event venues, this building, most of our buildings. Industrial facilities are really just our two wastewater treatment plants, Central Treatment Plant, which of course hosts the Renewable Natural Gas Facility, and North End Treatment Plant, and then a couple of landfill cash-related buildings at our solid waste campus. And you can see commercial facilities are making excellent progress toward the target, so they are currently on track to do even better than the 30% reduction that we have set projects mostly where we take old natural gas equipment and replace it with electric heat pump equipment but also some energy efficiency projects for example at the Tacoma Convention Center so we're making good progress there now in industrial facilities on the other hand you can see that we are headed in the wrong direction and this is essentially entirely attributable to the natural gas So if you remove that natural gas use associated with the RNG facility, industrial facility emissions are essentially flat over the same time period. So you can also see that the magnitude of emissions for our industrial facilities is unfortunately more than enough to offset the progress we've made on the commercial facilities side. And once again, this is due to the carbon intensity of the natural gas supplement our waste gas to make it combustible. And that is just a feature of the system design. Now this high natural gas use also impacts the calculated or assessed emissions attributes of the renewable natural gas. So by one way of measuring carbon intensity, which is a calculator we used for the federal tax credit, our RNG has roughly the same carbon intensity as fossil natural gas, which intuitively makes sense because we're using essentially one unit of fossil natural gas to produce one unit of renewable natural gas. So, of course, we don't qualify for that tax credit for that reason. And a final outcome or consequence of these required natural gas inputs is that we're really not able to meet our objective of reducing flaring. at the central treatment plant, and this is because prior to the renewable natural gas facility being in place, as my colleague Matt mentioned, we have a certain quantity of biogas coming out of our digesters that is available for use by the boilers on the site, but there is more biogas coming out of the digesters than demand is exceeded by maybe maybe a factor of two to one and so that excess gas goes to the flares and that gas we were flaring when this reboot of the RNG project was initially being discussed was kind of a target for renewable natural gas we said instead of flaring this gas it would be preferable to capture it and sell it for beneficial use now that the RNG facilities in place, however, we do extract methane content as gas enters the renewable natural gas facility. However, for each unit of that natural gas we extract, we are left with a byproduct that is approximately 20% methane and 80% carbon dioxide. We can't combust it because the methane content is too low. So we re-inject natural gas into that to bring it up to combustion grade. But to do that, we put it essentially at the same concentration as it was when it came out as biogas from the digesters. So the mass balance there is roughly equal. It's the same amount of gas left over after the renewable natural gas So on the emissions side, unfortunately, this facility has not met its objectives, and this is certainly not down to how the facility is being operated by operations and maintenance staff. It is simply an outcome of the design of the system being so heavily reliant on natural gas inputs. And with that, next slide, and I will pass it back to Matt. Thanks, Nathan.

We wanted to share the current status on the goals that were initially set as part of the design, including our generation quantity, our uptime, covering our revenues, covering expenditures. I think we've touched on all of these, but We're still working on trying to get our production to meet the design goal, getting our uptime to meet the design intent. And our costs are still exceeding our revenues, unfortunately. And as Nathan just covered, our emissions are higher than originally anticipated. And as our process is designed, we physically cannot reduce our flaring. We have come a long ways in the last year, like Nathan alluded to. We have an awesome maintenance team and just getting more accustomed to this process. It's much different than a municipal treatment plant process. So it's like a whole different animal than what our teams are used to. And so we made big strides in this. The numbers look better than they would have six months or a year ago. Um, but we're not meeting our goals because of our gas production is lower. Our efficiency of the process is lower, uh, than designed. Our uptime is lower, uh, as Dominic alluded to our rent credit pricing is volatile, um, and the natural gas input. And, um, you know, we're, we're trying every day to make these numbers look better and we're still, still, uh, still making incremental changes. So with that, I'll hand it off to Dominic to close us out.

And next slide, please. To summarize, we feel as a department, we've made a lot of real progress on operations and working within the design constraints. But we recognize there's a need for a deeper, longer-term analysis. And we'll continue to focus on efficiency improvements and bring And that would conclude our presentation today. I'd like to open it up for questions and comments from the committee.

Great. Thank you so much for the presentation. What questions do we have for the staff?

Thank you, Chair. Thank you for this presentation. I know that a lot of work has gone into, over the years, a lot of research and just work. I just appreciate it. I think it's really, you want to try these things out because you just never know until you try, right? And sometimes the practicality and the concept doesn't always meet reality. And so I think we're kind of seeing that here. I do have a couple of questions. And one of them is for the, you remember that you mentioned that 20% methane mix, that's not high enough concentration combustible. Is there a market, a separate market for that low level of methane that we could potentially sell to? Maybe it's not enough to recoup costs, but I don't even know. Is there like a low density methane market out there that I'm not aware of? Do you want me to take that one?

Yeah, thank you for the question. Unfortunately, there is not just because it's not, it's methane and also other contaminants. And just based on how our process, you know, equipment and how it was designed as part of this upgrade project, it would take basically a redesign and redo of all the equipment that was installed a couple of years ago. So we're always, you know, talking with others in the industry, in the wastewater industry. There are some various... partners out there and groups that meet specifically for renewable natural gas at wastewater plants, talking with our consultants. We're always open to new ideas and opportunities to improve what we have, but there's not a feasible way to deal with that low BTU content gas that we're aware of at this point.

Would increasing the boiler size make any difference? It sounds like we're losing a significant amount of potential gas there, but I don't know what an upgrade costs for, you know, reducing the amount of flaring. But I don't know if there's size constraints or other constraints, but I mean, still trying to get it clean enough is another issue too.

Yeah, exactly. We have ideas for what that process would look like, but it's not to a point that we'd be comfortable really sharing or we don't have cost numbers necessarily identified for even what that upgrade would look like. But yeah, that's something as time goes on, if there's something that makes sense to do as far as changing out equipment, how that factors into our capital improvement

Do we know how much is left on the initial loan? Because it's supposed to be paid back over X amount of time.

It's 20 years, so it'll be 2040. And it's roughly $750,000 a year. That's what we pay in debt service.

And are we just kind of... Obviously, we're still paying the full amount of debt service, but in terms of the expectation of the payback, it's not necessarily keeping up with that debt service amount. So I'm assuming it's a net negative in terms of... As of right now, yes. Gotcha. And then also, just based on the graphs that you showed me, we're looking at the big picture here. Like, this is actually emitting more, it's more carbon intensive than if we were just flaring it off in the first place.

I could maybe take that one. I think it depends on where you set the boundaries of your emissions analysis. Conceptually, the way I think of it, at a high level is at some point there was a fleet out there that was operating their vehicles on fossil natural gas while we were consuming biogas to run our boilers. We've essentially traded with them. We are burning their natural gas and giving them our biogas. At the margins there may be better or worse emissions. I think there are some efficiencies where potentially we can combust at While the biogas is coming out at 60% methane, we can re-inject natural gas up to, say, 58% methane. That's why I always say approximately or almost. We're not quite using one part natural gas to one part biogas, potentially. At the margins, there may be a slight emissions benefit or a slight emissions detriment, because on the other side, you have the embodied emissions in all of the facility equipment that was manufactured and installed but i i would hesitate to say that the overall global if you want to say emissions picture is worse because we've essentially traded who is combusting fossil natural gas and who is combusting biogas refined biogas now when it's sold as rng so certainly from the standpoint of our climate action plan which looks only at utility emissions, purchased natural gas, and purchased electricity, we are in a worse place. But the amount of carbon going into the atmosphere, I wouldn't necessarily say this project is pushing that up, if that makes sense. Gotcha.

All right, I'll stop there. I'm sure I could probably keep going, but I'll stop.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor, Councilmember Sedave, Vice Chair Sedave.

Councilmember Hines had his hand up.

Why don't we get yours first and then we'll go online.

That's true. Thank you. I was looking at the memo that you sent that had some of this additional information. It seems like RIN credits are really the linchpin here. That's the only way. There's two accounting things that we're looking at. One, carbon credits that go towards our goal. There doesn't seem to be a scenario in which that ever goes down in the use of this facility. Is that true or not true?

Yeah, I think that's a fair statement.

Yeah. In the use of this facility, as we count carbon credits that go to our actual goal of reducing down to 30%, the more you use it, the more that number goes up. That is just the fact of what it is. Whether it is a globally neutral thing or not, because we're trading it with the people who produce it, correct?

Correct. I would only clarify that in the Climate Action Plan, we're not counting carbon credits. We're actually looking at the metric tons of carbon. Metric tons.

Emitted tons of natural gas. Emitted, but the way the accounting works, it's still kind of the same.

Yeah, your statement is accurate, yeah.

Okay. And so we have a facility that would pay $780,000 a year. We're going to pay that through 2040 no matter what. And it appears that we don't even actually make money on selling this stuff, correct? Right. I mean, we made money in 2024 producing less because for whatever reason, rent credits were more valuable, I guess.

So in 2024, what happened and why you're seeing higher rent credit numbers there is why the facility was being registered through the EPA. We were banking rent credits from production in 2022 and 2023. So we issued all of those in 2024. That's why the rent credit in 2024 is so much higher than the rest of the years.

Got it. But if I add 2023 and 2024 and look at the costs, it still hasn't even hit close to neutral on rent credit.

You'd have to exclude debt service.

Yeah. Excluding debt service, you're kind of almost there. You're pretty close. um so then the question is does then going so if you did 30 whatever 36 000 uh btus at 64 efficiency you're supposed to go to 85 initiative i'm guessing that goes to like 42 43 000 would that get us a lot more ring credits that would even Like, is it per BTU? Like, how do we get those? And like, my question is, even if we hit the numbers that this was designed to hit, do we break even?

There's a lot of factors kind of at play there. Um, because there is the production piece, which you've kind of touched on, but there's also the rent market. And when the original projection was done, it was projected at a much higher rent price because in 2022, 2021, the rent prices was significantly higher. We're looking right around 225, 230 right about now. But in the projection, we were closer to maybe 350, 375. So the projection itself may not even be obtainable because the rent pricing is going to be so much lower.

Got it. And rent pricing is set by a market that the federal government is managing?

Correct.

A federal government that may not care about these things. You don't have to answer that. Yeah, I just don't know a world in which we keep operating this thing. Like, it really makes no sense to me. Like, is there a world in which this could ever even pay for its operating costs? You barely got to it.

Take that one. You want to take that one?

Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate your question. So this process, operating this process, requires... half a dozen or more different contracts with different entities. One of those is our RIN broker. So we work through an arm of British Petroleum. They are our RIN broker. So they take our RIN credits to market for us. And that is how we're able to generate revenue. We have a contract with our RIN broker that I believe it's a 10 year contract and it expires in 2032 and they have a provision in their contract that if we cancel early, we have to pay them. We have to pay a significant amount to our rent broker and their lost revenue. Cause they get a cut of everything we generate where we'd have to pay a significant sum to get out of that contract before it expires in 2032.

So we'd love to know offline what that is just to get an understanding. I get it. There are always contracts that say, hey, you know, we're bargaining on the anticipation that you do a long-term contract, et cetera. I do think there are times when – the world of municipal government when there is no end times, that you just get these ridiculous ones. But that's a different statement. Is there a world in which you can only operate this at times when rent credits are over a certain price, or is there not a way to do that? Like, one of the answers is, hey, we only operate it when we make enough money to, like, call it breakeven. I have a feeling that that wouldn't really work operationally, but I'd like to know if there's even an inkling, or maybe that's something you guys can think about in the next year before you come back.

I don't know if that's something we can even do operationally.

Yeah, that's something we can look at and bring back when we present in about a year on the status at that point. But that's definitely something we can look into.

What is the source that pays for this? It's not General Fund, obviously. It's Wastewater Fund. Wastewater Fund comes in. That's through, like, utility? Correct. Got it. I did actually tour it, by the way. It was one of my first tours that I... Hey, were you there? When are you there? Anyway, it doesn't matter. I remember just seeing it.

I think Matt and I probably were both there.

You were there when I – so I actually saw what it kind of looks like, and it was – you know, it seemed like it was a really good idea. We put a lot of investment in it, but it's not panning out. You know, I almost wanted to say, hey, as long as it's reducing our, you know, our side of the ledger on our – on our climate commitment kind of goals, maybe we just call it the cost of doing business. But it seems like it's a double whammy at this point, which is we do kind of have to consider whether it is worth, you know, doing. So I look forward to seeing, you know, additional kind of ideas that you have.

Great. Thank you, Vice Chair. Council Member Hines.

Thank you, Chair Walker. I think that's what you're talking about most of my answers to the question. So about how long we're locked into these contracts, also about who is paying the nexus on the fact that it's losing money or that it's costing more than it's bringing in. I think my question would be, does this also generate – when you think about the Climate Commitment Act, so we're generating – impacts, are we paying for that too? Or are we exempt from the Climate Commitment Act and some of the carbon components of that? Maybe that's a follow-up question somebody can answer for me later.

I think I can take that, Councilmember Hines. I believe that the Climate Commitment Act only requires those payments from emitters over a certain level. The natural gas use is substantial relative to what we have in our municipal facility portfolio, but it is not substantial enough that it would require CCA payments that I'm aware of. So there's not an additional regulatory penalty on that I'm aware of.

Okay. No, I think most of the questions that were asked by my colleagues kind of highlight some of my concerns, right? Just about the cost, operate, the kind of long-term nature of the commitment, and some of the issues that were pointed out. And I guess my... I see our initial goal and I see our current status. So I'm really curious. I'll be very curious when you all come back from a year to see, I would love if the chart would show whatever you presented to us right now, where you are a year from now, and then where our goals were. Did we, and I don't think I heard this, maybe you did say this, with our initial assumptions of starting this up, did we, had we predicted that it was going to be revenue neutral if we hit certain objectives, or was there a period of time by which we were going to be, it was going to be costing more to run the facility than it was going to take in?

I'll take that one. Good question. So when the original projection was done, there was a ramp up time where we would see the expenditures exceed the revenue. But the long term plan, and maybe Matt can remember the actual the year in which it was going to be revenue positive, it would eventually, you know, make money and generate money for the city and be an additional revenue source for the wastewater fund.

Okay. I think that's I think that the broader question for me is, I will look forward to this coming back in a year from now, but I think the question I have is looking critically at about a year from now or two years from now, like, all right, is this continuing to be a cost? a loss leader for us? And do we need to start thinking about how we potentially address that sooner rather than later? I understand we're in contracts with 2032, so this is way past my time. But, and, you know, and I really am curious to know kind of when you come back from here from now at that third level of like, here's where we were in July of 2026. Here we are in July of 2027. And here's where we're going to go. So thank you, Chair Walker.

Thank you, Councilmember Hines, and thank you all for the presentation. To be very clear, it sounds like you all are leading us towards a decision point in a year from now. But we're saying it's an update in a year from now, but it feels like there's a point at which we have to make a decision on this thing.

Yeah, I definitely think in the next year, we'll run the system, try to continue to make it, you know, have the operating expenses be offset by the revenues. We are going to treat the debt service as kind of just a cost that we're committed to. We have that obligation to repay it. So I think that's the approach for the next year. And then I know that the engineering team is going to take a long look to see if there's any sort of improvements we can make to the design and kind of then weigh that cost benefit of how that would work to see if we could make this work. or not, so I do think sometime the next year there will be a decision point made. The big thing is that contract with BP, we are under contract until 2032, and that rent payment would be pretty substantial.

Okay. Can you, when you come back with that information, also, could we know? Is it possible to know what the costs are of shutting things down? Because I assume that's not a zero sum operation either. We will bring that in the next presentation. Great. Well, thank you so much. Thanks, Chair. Go ahead.

Sorry. Thank you, Chair. I think it's more than just a cost thing, because there is this really big other thing of whether we're hitting our climate goals. And we also have to be cognizant that it looks like the rest of our facilities have done things that have are, are aiming down. And this thing is basically negating all that. Right.

yeah thank you for that council member i completely agree that i what i what i don't want to see is um this particular facility's emissions overshadowing all the good work we're doing across many other facilities it's not just one commercial facility that's kind of carrying the load on the emissions reductions it is a commitment to replace natural gas equipment opportunity arises, as well as pursue energy efficiency projects. And on the fleet side as well, the progress has been excellent. And so I think that there's a really good emission story to tell. It represents a lot of effort by a lot of city staff and an actual commitment to realizing our climate goals. And so this is a bit of a pall over our facility emissions, certainly, and I think that if the facility's emissions sort of stay steady where they are, it's hard to visualize how we could reach the facility's 30% emissions reduction target.

Yeah, so in a year from now, let's talk about, you know, the fact that we want to celebrate all the good works in like the 99 other things that we're doing, but this one big thing is kind of you know, potentially overshadowing that because we don't want that to negate our ability to do other good things. Thank you.

Well, thank you all so much. We'll look forward to that. All right. Our second briefing item is the City Right-of-Way Design Manual Process Update. We have Burning Fitting Chris Johnson here for the update.

All right. Good evening, Chair Walker, Vice Chair. All right. Deputy Mayor Bushnell and Council Member Hines. All right. Thanks for having us tonight so we could talk to you about the city's right-of-way design manual. My name is Brennan Kidd, and I'm the Public Works Transportation Assistant Division Manager and also the city's traffic engineer. Joining me tonight is Chris Johnson from Plain Development Services, and we're part of the part of the team that's leading the update cycle for the current right-of-way design manual and the past cycle that has, with the current version, or update version of the design manual. So with that, go ahead and next slide. So I think we, you know, this is an information-only presentation, just per, I think, Chair Walker's request that to have another touch point on this process and get a little more clarity on information for the committee and its members for going forward. We'll go through a little bit of the background of what the design manual is just to refresh everybody's understanding. And then we'll touch on what's already been completed as part of one update cycle. We'll get into what we're working on with the current update cycle. And then we'll get into the actual update process and what that kind of typical timeline looks like so the committee and others can see those, yeah, see it all in one kind of visualization and look for those opportunities to weigh in on the process. Next slide, please. So, yeah, what is the right-of-way design manual? It builds on other design sources such as AASHTO and, you know, the Washed Out Local Agency Guidelines Manual, the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, and the Department of Ecology to basically convey projects and design requirements to help ensure we get consistent and inspected improvements tailored to our local needs and preferences within the right-of-way or our public right-of-way. Why do we have the manual? There is state law, RCW 3578-040, that does speak to a need for us to have design standards that we must be followed by municipalities. Doesn't mean we have to have a design manual, but if we don't, we basically have to be able to say, well, what are you using for your design standards? And so that would mean we would be subject to saying, well, we follow Washtenaw and we follow Pierce County, so. If we have our own design manual and our own standards and everything that comes with that, then we get an opportunity to tailor what gets built and how it gets built within our city. So based on this requirement, the city has had a right-of-way design manual for the foreseeable past, but it was only during its last complete update in 2016 that the municipal code was added, well, we added to the municipal code to better make it clear what the intent is into the law for subsequent updates. So in TMC 10-22-020, it's excerpted to say, the manual applicable to construction of all street and right-of-way improvements as adopted by the Director of Public Works in effective honor of January 7th, 2016, and any amendments, updates, or revisions made thereto are on file with the Public Works Department. So that's basically our, administrative authority to perform these updates, but we don't want to do them in the vacuum, nor is that the best way to do it. So that's why we're, part of the reason we're doing this presentation is to show where there is opportunities to influence the process or learn about the process. Apart from the legislative needs for having and maintaining the manual, the document also helps us ensure consistent designs. So we don't need to do custom designs for each and every project that comes through our doors. It helps us with the review of designs and the staff that does that. And it helps for safe, effective implementation of infrastructure. It's used by staff and outside services alike in designing city projects and private development projects. Having the manual helps in reviewing those private development improvements that are taking place in the right of way. And it is a valuable reference for any liability and risk mitigations that we might encounter. And it's required as part of our APWA accreditation that we are due to keep in good standing every four years, I believe.

Okay, next up, next turn.

Yep, yep, so. All right, with that, I'll turn it over to Chris to talk about the recent update that was completed.

Yeah, thanks, Brennan. So it doesn't look like we followed any order. We didn't do the entire manual. So reasoning behind that and the look As Brennan mentioned, in 2016 was the last update, which was over 10 years ago. When we started talking about an update, we said, there's got to be a better way. Because it seems to be driven by, it's not a, whereas Apperson, I think you've dealt with the stormwater management manual, where it's driven by a five-year process. There's not something similar to that. APWA recommends every five years that review it to see where it's at but we don't have an official process it's usually driven by staff wanting to get it done or man we really need to make some changes or very large policy changes that requires to change the design standards we do have a standing standards committee that sits and talks about our specifications and our standard drawings and ideally would also do a review but it is made up of 20 to 25 people across the entire city and it's very a cumbersome process and so we kind of needed a strike force to go in and look at the manual. And we had some really real deep needs to address things that were coming from the design community and others where we needed more clarity around that. And so when we talked about it, we wanted to address chapter four initially. And looking at chapter four, a lot of the development community design options were also identified really in chapters two and three, including the variance process, which director wanted us to beef up and have a very clear process for that so chapter four and then we moved into one two and three and then we had multiple stakeholders that said hey we've got big policy things going on around trees we've updated the stormwater manual several times and oh by the way water we'd like to water wanted to talk about a bunch of things that they had in the manual so before we knew it had grown great uh large as to the change but not to the whole manual yet But very consistent with what staff had decided, which was we wanted it to be a living document. We wanted to every year be able to go out and do any updates that needed to be updated based on what we discovered as we were going through it. So that was what the process we embarked on in 2023. But we were building the airplane as we were doing it because we didn't have a process in place yet for how we wanted to approach it. As we move forward, we identified that we think Because this is a very deep dive. We literally read every word to each other, the four or five of us that are in on this. We ask, does this make sense? Our goal is to keep it at, essentially, my wife's a teacher, so it's usually at an eighth grade level. Even though the engineers are dealing with it, it's very technical. We want people to understand what we're asking for and the design made on it. It's explained that way. It is implementing what the policies are that come from council, essentially, and through the code. In our process, it ended up being about a two-year process to get to October of 2025 when it was actually adopted. We were even learning the public reach-out process and stakeholder process that we wanted to go through. We worked continuously with the Standards Committee as far as giving them updates on things. We had subject matter expert groups that we brought in to look at specific items. We talked to the Transportation Commission in 2024. February of 2024. We met with the Tacoma Permit Advisory Group in June and in October, came to IPS in October of 2024. And then the end of it or the end of the process we worked through was in October through the end of, through January. We did a lot of public, we did two different versions of public comments after we had talked to all the stakeholder groups. Once we had what we felt was a fairly good draft, and that allowed our stakeholders to know that they were out there and met. We actually went back out again for public comment after because of some of the feedback that we got, just because there were people that were concerned about certain things and wanted to see changes and wanted more time, honestly, to look at it, which we were happy to do. We wanted to encourage that. In retrospect, we would like, we should have probably had somebody who is, versed in the communication portion of the plan and working with media services for what should be our overall communication plan for the manual. So that's something we want to implement this next go around as we move forward. But we felt like it was successful because we did get a lot of good comments and we're happy with the product. And we're also happy because we dove into the next update with this in mind and are already seeing that timeframe that was two years now starting to compress down. We think we can get it almost to a year, Next slide. This is to dazzle you with all the issues that came up or things that we tried to address. What I've highlighted in the bold comments here are just items that were specific to the development community that either we wanted to clarify things, alley improvements, when should an alley be paved or not paved was one. We had a standing requirement for streetlight conduit. that was there in our design manual that people didn't know about. So that became a big topic of conversation through the public comment period. The actual basis for geometric design, what design vehicles did they design for, turning movements, speeds, all of those needed to be updated. And so we did some extensive stuff there to provide that. Things like what are the radiuses or curves that you have to use that weren't in there for certain things. And then we have the, as we said before, Chapter 9 for trees and right-of-way trees had been significantly updated. And then the stormwater manual, we had a lot. We always go through and do that as part of those updates. And then the water design section, what they had for when they were asking for permits with that. But as you'll see, there's also variances in standard requirements that we added and a lot of other things that I could go into. to help the development community and also, so I haven't answered any questions around any of those items, but it was, some of them were asked of through the permit advisory group or for clarity. We were seeing so much of it, why we were almost desperate to get this one done was to help us in our communication with the development community around what our standards are and really give some intent behind it too. So, next slide.

Yeah. So that was the update that culminated in October of last year, it being published. And that was the first attempt at this more cyclical take, more bite-sized approaches at doing this update, rather than the 2016 update, which was an update after the manual had become 10 years old and was significantly outdated. So we're still figuring this out, as Chris kind of alluded to, and we're now going to, as you saw in one of those slides, we didn't touch on all the chapters, so now we're We're into the second kind of a second update cycle to address those remaining chapters. And that's what's showing on the screen there. So that's what's on our plate for now. We've already started this process. We got the first of these cyclical updates done in October of last year. We got through the end of the year and then we resumed or started the The same process, again, on the remaining chapters in late January, and we've been working on that all the way through. And there'll be a graphic at the end of the presentation that shows you kind of the grand timeline. But the current update is already in progress, as I said, and it's following the general plan that we established from the first cyclical update. Shown here are the remaining chapters, which include some brief examples of highlights of the topics that will be part of reviewing and updating these chapters for what they need. Chapter five, six, and seven are all in-depth design considerations, mostly related to transportation and transportation infrastructure elements that are within our public right of way. But we'll also, part of the intent, even though they will be very technical, we will be trying to do the overall theme of these updates to the design mail to make it a more, not only a living document, but a more usable document for whoever the designer might be, whether they're internal or external. and whatever the type of project they're working on in a private development or a capital project so that we have that consistency of what everybody's, you know, designing a building is what everybody else sees and it's all the same level of expectation. Chris, you want to touch on the remaining chapters that are part of this current update?

You covered five, yeah. For chapter... So we did talk about sidewalk widths in chapter four for the actual design standards. But in 2016, there was a lot more attention through the American with Disabilities Act and the Department of Justice around how the city implemented the program around that. And so we implemented basically what's called our curb ramp matrix or our curb replacement strategy or criteria. And in doing so, we provided an entire chapter. pedestrian facilities, talking about what the amenities zone is and what the actual pedestrian accessible routes are or the path for pedestrians, what that width is and what it means, and then how to design for curb ramps too. Talked about that in depth, I think it's like 30 pages, but it's only been updated once in 2016 and hasn't been updated since. A lot of that information is pulled from the WSDOT standards essentially in their manual on ADA, and that was just recently updated. So part of why we waited on that, even though we were doing the sidewalk width piece in Chapter 4, was because we wanted to see what WSDOT had and what was coming out of the ProWag guidelines for RideAway 2, which is the federal guidelines that we follow. So now that we know what some of that is, our intent is to dive into that and also evaluate our matrix for what essentially tells people what they have to do, when they have to update a curb big deal for our developers because our developers end up having to do that entire intersection so that's one of the things that comes to me a lot is why do i have to do this why do i have to do the receiving ramp on the other side it's partly because of federal requirements but our curb ramp matrix describes how the city interprets that proact so this will be a big deal for the development community and the advisory group. And so we anticipate some discussions around that and also discussions with policymakers to make sure we're consistent as we're interpreting what the federal policy is. Shared use pass kind of goes with that because while they're shared use, they included the accessibility piece, but also what we're doing in our bike planning and everything else. So we updated that at the same time. That was possibly existed, I think, before 2016. So our hope is now to take another look at that as we're moving for maturing in that area on short use paths. And then chapter 13 is just an add-on that talks about construction easements and some of those things. Our intent there is to not have a chapter 13 from a luck perspective, but actually to move it into other chapters and to have those items addressed somewhere else. We also anticipate chapter nine being updated again due to some of the additional tree code conversations that are occurring We also think we're going to be looking at traffic impact fees and also the system development charges, at least some minor discussions about those in the manual so that people understand what we're using them for and where that occurs, basically how that fits in the process. Because of that, and we bring that up, is because it helps us in the living document discussion about now that's where we can go back in and tweak it as we go, as these things come online each year, which two years ago, maybe we wouldn't have anticipated, oh, they're going to be talking about traffic impact things this year. And so, you know, when should we have taken care of that? Well, we don't want to wait until 2036 now to do that. So that'll really help us.

Yeah, that's where this new cyclical approach gives us that flexibility and nimbleness to, yes, our focus is going to be those six chapters, but if something has come up in the time since the last cycle or some other policy or something that we want to address. Even back in the last cycles update, maybe there was something that's not getting interpreted correctly or we need to further refine it. Just having these cycles at set times allows us those opportunities to jump back into something else. We don't have to stick to those chapters, even though that is the primary need and focus of this current cycle. But each of these cycles will be able to have that kind of flexibility to jump into something, make an update rather than waiting for some kind of critical mass of well, we don't have enough to mobilize everybody to start doing an update. So, yeah, an important characteristic of switching to this new kind of strategy for updating the design manual. If we could get the next slide, please. Thanks. So here is the process leading up to it. We've got it distilled down into four steps. The first one is the editor's group review, so that's what Chris and I are currently part of, and we have three others that are from uh engineering and planning and development services to help us with that that kind of perspective and that um you know cross-cutting kind of information of reviewing these uh basically the group you know we assess the needs for past updates and recent city related changes and perform editorial views to basically set this up to pass the baton off to what will form subject matter expert groups that will take on certain chapters in whole or topics within chapters, depending on their expertise, and basically dive in and see, wow, this is really out of date, and she's stranded, it's not this, our city policy is not this, what do we need to do to actually update the content?

The temptation with the editors group, if Brendan and I could, we'd love to run, give it to the most green staffer, but In the instance of this, we really think at the level of people who've been around for a while, leaders who are dealing with it, that the editors group is really going through and reading it and dealing with all the inputs and say the director's getting or you all are getting because they come to us anyways. Ultimately, we have to respond. That helps us to address those things and say, hey, we're seeing a lot of conversation about complaints about, say, with the sidewalk or something like that. How can we incorporate or provide additional guidance on that design or talk about it if it needs to be a policy change at that stage? But from a manual perspective, just can we be clearer? Are we seeing confusion in that? And we just don't think that the newest engineer on staff at that stage, it's not that we're not using that as a training opportunity when we break into our subject matter expert groups, but just that we can kind of make sure that we've got a bigger picture and can see the force what the actual design detail is then. And so we've been pretty religious about staying on this group and bringing in the people who are really dealing with it on a broader scale versus some of the, and then trying to train some more people up now with this next go around is what we're going to do once we've gone through it. Sorry.

No, no, that's fine. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, ultimately this is just the, we are currently in the second attempt to try to do this process. So we're, We were trying to refine things and make it as solid as possible as we're moving forward. So we get those groups working on the specific chapters and topics and doing their thing within their expertise levels. They touch base with the editors group on questions and progress and things like that. We keep them on track. Meanwhile, the editors group is trying to do the outreach to the CBCs and the public at the appropriate points where we have information to share. So that's where having kind of a more regimen timeline and flow and waypoints that I think was the impetus for wanting to start talking about this is critical to making sure we're touching base with the right people at the right time to get that input so that they feel engaged, especially since this is an administrative process and there's not going to be a time where a counselor is going to have a formal presentation and a point to say, wait a second, what are you doing? Yeah, so we've got to do it kind of in pieces and parts, and that's fine. We don't mind doing the roadshow, so to speak, but we need to make sure we're hitting all the right stops along the roadshow. And so that's step three, and that kind of runs in the background once there's a handoff to the subject matter expert groups. And then step four is kind of pull it all back together. Again, a smaller, more focused editor group that can then take all the content that's been updated give it a thorough kind of editorial review, ask questions of those groups like, why are we changing this? Hey, did you think of this? That kind of stuff, just a kind of a checks and balances approach in that step to be sure what we're putting out is what we really intend and try and anticipate any unintended consequences or ramifications from making those changes. That's also the kind of checkpoint for, all right, what did we hear from all the CBCs that we visited? Are we addressing everything that they want to? If we're not, Are we prepared to tell them why and why not, and be ready to do that regroup? Let's go ahead and move to the next slide, because then I can speak to the timelines here. So a little bit small there, but this is where we are currently in the current update. So in the middle-ish to the left, there's the present update process IPS. That's where we are today. You can see our step one, the editor group review, started back at the end of January. It is continuing. We're getting pretty close to the handoff point to give it to our subject matter group experts on the various chapters and topics. So that'll be coming up in the next few weeks and then they will run with it. Hard to say how much time it's going to take. It's how out of date is chapter six versus seven versus whatever. So we'll have to, it's a little bit of flexibility, but again, this is only the second cycle that we were running through. So we'll get that more refined as And frankly, the heavy lift is on the first couple of cycles because that's where the data is the most out of date. As we get the living document up to speed and we come back cycle after cycle, we're going to find that the scope should really get narrowed down and narrowed down. We're just focusing on what changed since the last cycle. Is anything in here even applicable or is there something that happened at the city organizational level that's spurring, okay, we need to go revisit that topic with with this new kind of lens applied to it. So hopefully these will get more, you know, easy, I'll say, as we go. And it's just these first couple or three that will kind of set the tone going forward. So, you know, that'll continue for a few months. And then, you know, like I said, the step three of the editors kind of checking in with the various committee groups to give them updates of where we're at, share some of the updated things, say what kind of topics are we already finding, are out of date or need to be brought into compliance with current city policies, that's running in the background through that same time. And then the handoff back to their group with a cushy time there shown for trying to bring it all together, put it in published, make sure everybody knows about that, but that could be shrunk down depending on what kind of feedback or deliverables we get from our expert groups. But yeah. This timeline is about an 18 month process. Again, I think on the next cycle, we'll be able to kind of pare that down yet again. I think ultimately we'll try and get this to be trying to apply one of these update cycles within a given calendar year, so 12 months or less, so that we can just stay within that, not have it span over years or over bionics or what have you. So right now we're tracking, it's not very clear from that timeline, but we're tracking maybe May? maybe June at worst for, sorry, and that's May or June of 2027 for having this next cycle updated. Once we have that, then we will have all our chapters being reviewed and updated, you know, spanning from basically October 2025 to May to June of 2027. So a lot better than, you know, what we've done in the past where it's been 10 years to get the full thing updated. So with that, that's all we have. And we're happy to clarify anything or answer questions you might have.

Great. Well, thank you. And thank you for mentioning at the outset that I did request this presentation. What I found over the last couple of years is so many of the constituent requests that I got and other policies that I was working on pointed back to something in the design right away manual. So I wanted it to be an awareness for council. both that it exists, because I think sometimes we don't all know that, and also where we can weigh in. And I appreciated your comment, Chris, about you hearing and sort of collecting those comments over time of like, oh, we're hearing this a lot. And so I think also that flagged for me to connect with our constituent relations person, Carissa, because she does have a list of all the things she's hearing. And so if she's hearing about Tomato plants in the right of way, like, that's going to rise to the top. So really appreciate just having this, this knowledge and also knowing which chapters you're digging into this year. So we will do the opposite this time and start with you council member hands. If you have any questions or comments.

Thank you chair Walker. No, I mean, so. Brennan, this seems very subject matter expert-driven, right? So where do we plug in on this? If I say something like, I think there need to be more streetlights per street as part of this, is that valid feedback for me to share with you all? Or what level of input are you looking from us? And as I was coming through this presentation, I was thinking through, what do you need from us? Probably nothing, but where could we be part of the conversation? Sure.

No, that's fine, Council Member Hines. I think, yeah, again, we're not going to be very limiting in our input sources as we're trying to figure out this process. If anything, we're going to cast a very wide net and see how that works. I think just, you know, and we could reiterate this with some follow-up after the meeting, you know, where this current update is focused on as far as the chapters of what kind of topics are in those chapters. So we could give a little more in-depth back to you all. So you're like, oh, what is, you know, illumination? Okay, streetlights. So what's in there, what was it talking about now, currently in the version, and therefore what would be subject to an update or a change. That way you're not just kind of like, what should we be talking about? So I think giving you that scope of what we're focused on with this current update. Obviously, as we've said, anything that's in the design manual, even in a past cycle that we've done an update in, update two is still fair game because of this new approach that we're taking, but Um, we certainly want, you know, to make sure that the chapters that we haven't updated are getting their, uh, you know, their just amount of review and updates as well as, uh, tackling the other items. Um, yeah, so, you know, and that could be, you know, personal experience of what you're noticing within our right-of-way or what you're hearing from your constituents as far as, you know, uh, you know, requests or complaints or what, whatever the form might be.

Okay. Council member, I might need. jumping here and out a little bit too, you know, while maybe not the most exciting topic, it is an important document. This is the design manual that sets the standards for all city projects, both private development as well as any department that builds a project. And so the input from council, one of the important things is the policies that are passed by council. This document or this manual will incorporate those policies into the standards, and those standards are set for each and every project. I'm happy to have input from council through policy decisions for sure.

All right. And then, I mean, I think the other component of this right is a bunch of this is also guided by federal and state law too. Right? So that. The amount we're able to actually control is small and is smaller. Correct?

Correct council member basically, you know, like. industry standards, design standards, all those things are pretty much set. Council definitely influences the policy with regards to land use design standards, for example, landscaping, trees, types of markers, local authority type of decisions.

and then if i'm looking at the completed chapters already so if i go up and i see that chapter three is site development permit and right away construction plans is completed we're not reopening that at this point in time if i have feedback or if i have issues that fall into those categories are we reopening them so or are we staying on the ones that we're working on right now which is the the six chapters you've identified uh council member heinz uh i

My comment would be is we're always open to getting feedback on anything that you have concerns about. We would investigate if we need to update. That's why we want to make it a living document. The focus is for the editor's team to get into the weeds and really chew on a section. But we want to keep those other open opportunities every time we do an update. Because when you update a document, why not, right? So if you said we needed to change our offsite requirements and there's a section in there about that, we could certainly do that. It's just that we're not going back through right now and reading unless a policymaker such as yourself wants us to investigate that or we really see the need.

All right. Perfect. This is okay. Sounds good. Well, I guess I'll thank you, Chair Walker, for indulging me with my questions so I could actually ask the right questions. So I'll throw some sentence fragments out and just see if anything – you all decide if anything actually is something we could do here. I am – Specifically, if I look at the current update, the construction-related permits and easements is something I'm interested in, especially since I'm talking to a lot of developers who are building in the city of Tacoma and thinking about how the right-of-way manual interacts with some of the things we're requiring from them. A broader component of the right-of-way manual that I am trying to get a handle on as I'm talking to the development community, thinking housing specifically, is the nexus of proportionality between the project and how much infrastructure I have to rebuild in the right-of-way as part of it, right? So when we think about off-site improvements, I... developers all understand or we all understand you have to do the budding property. But the question becomes that I get is at what point am I asked to continue to build infrastructure that's not mine but tangential to my property? And where do we draw the lines on that? So if I build a house in the middle block, I have to sidewalk over the intersection, then I have to do the intersection, then I have to do the intersection across the street. It continues to to go. So that's, I guess, a question. I don't know where that fits in here. It's probably pedestrian facilities and what's required around that with sidewalks. It's more likely than not the permits and easements. It's also site development are things that I'm interested in. And what I'd really be thinking about in this question that I'm asking going forward is Because the policy choice in my mind is what are we required to do by state law and federal law? And then where in our policy manual are we requiring more, right? Are we requiring to go above and beyond the state and federal requirements when it comes to the right-of-way manual? And then that's where I want to think about where the policy choice is, right? Because at the end, a long conversation I had recently, ADA requirements related to sidewalks when I do development. We're never going to be in a world where we're not going to ask developers to do ADA improvements when they do development, right? It's required by federal law that ADA compliance component. If we are asking for more than what the federal law is saying or more than what state law says, I'd really love to be able to kind of target or understand that because I think that's a good policy conversation for us to have as a choice. Is this something we want versus are we willing to say we're okay with not having this in order to achieve some other elements? The alley paving conversation comes up a lot. So is one that we ask for the right-of-way manual with new development. But beyond that, I think those are the, that's what I'm thinking about. So I guess I would say I'm mostly focused on how the right-of-way manual interacts with kind of new housing we're looking to try to allow in our city and the nexus between the two. So a long-winded wind up there, Councilor Walker, or sorry, Chair Walker, but I'm happy to answer any follow-up questions. But that was my thought.

Great, thank you. And these are just exactly the kind of conversations we're trying to generate with this presentation, so that's great. Deputy Mayor Bushnell, I just called you by his chair because you're in the spot.

No, I appreciate the I actually hear about this offer from my wife because she's a civil designer. She shared some frustrations with me about AE. Especially when it comes to ramps and the angles. Especially when it comes to how the angles coincide with street angles. because then in the grain, so there's just like some confusion there. So I'm glad you guys are looking at updating that because she, we were walking downtown all the time. She was like, look at this.

It's like, yeah. You don't get to go on vacation. Yeah.

I think there's some opportunity, especially as you had mentioned, or as Council Member Hines mentioned for us to kind of weigh in on how that could look like. We went to Salt Lake City not too long ago, and they had done their their ramps were really far on the intersection, kind of a bulldog situation, but it didn't include a curb. So that way, if large vehicles like fire trucks or others still needed to make that turn, they could. And I don't necessarily, I've heard of that as being an issue, especially for some of our larger fire apparatuses, but I don't think our design manual really allows for that currently. But it seems like there's a design choice in there to kind of find a happy medium where we're still getting the benefit of a bulldog without... uncovering some of these larger vehicles that could potentially like like like fire trucks can't handle the kind of thing so but I'd just be interested in having those conversations as councilman behind mentioned but yeah I don't have any additional questions but comments on that well you sound like you're gonna do that one yeah so I you know so that kind of particular design element was part of the chapter four which was really the the impetus of this hey we've got to get something updated because

we're hitting a lot of these things and, you know, industry standards are changing expectations. So that's why chapter four was kind of the nucleus of, of the last update. So we have introduced new kind of, uh, uh, expectations or allowances for designs to, um, uh, contemplate things like you just described. And that's through, uh, change our kind of basis for our geometric design from something that was more appropriate to the times of back in 2016 versus now where. So now we have the concept of what we call either designing for accommodating, uh, uh, design vehicles and re about redefining what that design vehicle is rather than just using the stock, you know, large vehicle because, oh, well, you never know if that's gonna come through. So that, that starts giving our designers both internal and external abilities to start, you know, reimagining some of these intersections and corners where, okay, I don't have to make it. So. wide open because the city only allows for us to consider a certain design vehicle. I can now consider a smaller one because the larger ones will come through as often. So we've tried to start forming that foundation to allow for more innovative designs and designs that ultimately should help for pedestrian comfort, safety, multimodal activity, and all those good things.

All right. Great, thank you, Deputy Mayor. Just a couple follow-ups. The Urban Design Board doesn't create design elements. They are using the Red Boy Design Manual to implement specific things at specific size projects, right?

Is that the ? I've got to be honest. So I think they utilize other standards than the right-of-way design manual, but we can certainly follow up on that.

Yeah, just how those intersect. Part of the reason I ask is that one of the discussions we're heading into at the Urban Design Board is how they're going to review the new transit stations as they come in. And is there a conversation that should happen in the right-of-way manual about specific to transit stations, which I know a lot of it is the other pedestrian access points, but just making sure I understand how these things fit together. So yeah, we can follow up on that.

Yeah, for sure. And I would just say one of the delicate balances we deal with with the design manual is referring to the planning documents that are out there. We have a 2016 manual that's still pointing to design documents that have been updated or modified. That's one of the struggles that we have. The other thing is the dialogue around the planning document versus the implementation document. And we're having active conversations about we say we want 10-foot sidewalks, but where the right-of-way isn't wide enough in the downtown plan, how do you want us to approach that? And unfortunately, sometimes we have review engineers working with the design engineers out there, figuring it out as we go. And that conflicts with the predictability and flexibility that the advisory group and others are looking for in the development community. So we're trying to find our way through that a lot of the times. And so from a policy perspective, the questions that Council Member Hines was asking are really good for us to be thinking about. And that's where, what Cory will always tell us, is we don't set the policy. That's where we need to figure, and that's one of the things we need to figure out is how to even push those policy discussions back to curb ramps being one, which is PROAG says you have to have an existing receiving ramp that's compliant. What we don't talk about is a lot of times we're ripping out ramps that were compliant at some point and putting in brand new ones. And so is there maybe a different policy decision there that we could make? that would change how we implemented it in the manual, but right now we don't see a way to do that. But it's risk-based. I think you mentioned the risk-based discussion, and so far the city hasn't wanted to take on the Department of Justice around risk. Sure, sure. But that could be a conversation that could happen.

Great. And I think that you touched on my other question is when there are conflicts between other documents in this document or even between chapters because one of the things that I've asked a lot of questions about is we say that we require a certain size sidewalk and we say we require trees and there's often not space for both of them and so what do we tell developers, including our own projects, what to do in that situation? So I'm glad to hear that conversation's happening and it feels like there's a lot of opportunity here to sort of hash some of those things out and provide greater direction because this is the document on the ground in the design room that's helping people get to the final answer. And then I think to your point about flexibility, no right of way is the same we know that about our city and i'm talking about options giving the engineers options that fit to the particular right of way we're talking about the particular project the uses we know are going to be part of it um would love to chat at some point about kind of how we balance that that flexibility with the direction because i know both are true, right? We really want to give people clear direction and we have to provide some flexibility because we know there's odd situations on every corner.

I know the directors for both EPW, Environmental and Public Works, used to say that after 30 years, and then Planning and Development Services both have an expectation that we're education first. The thing that we run into a lot in the plan review side of things is And we use the manual and that's why it's so important for us to continue to get more information in there to help people understand is we see 200 and something just commercial permits a year. A lot of the development community that comes in does 20 from their firms. And so the expertise of my staff, the ability to say, help them find ways through it is really good and we're able to really help. And so I continually fight against, we don't want to be regulatory. with what we're doing. We don't want to be in that, no, bring me another rock. Instead, it's tell them the color rock, tell them the shape of the rock, or at least what the goal of the rock needs so that they know what they're designing to. And so that's the part that we're continuing working on on the customer side, is how can we get to that point that we're helping people through it? And Peter and Corey are both asking us, shoot for two review cycles. We want that first review cycle to tell people, hey, this is where our successful permitting for the city is that we're getting permits out quickly so stuff can get built, but also meeting all of our design standards is the continued thing. So we're always trying to be better. And I think that the tool and us having a living document where we can be more flexible is part of where we can get there and help. But absolutely, any of those conversations around where you're hearing things or the constituents or where you think we can be. The conflicts with trees and sidewalks, I chuckle not because It's funny, but yeah, absolutely, that's the one we're struggling with right now because of the discussions. And engineers want to pave the world, and biologists want vegetation everywhere, right? But actually, our job is to find a good balance for that in the permitting world, and that's what we're trying to do. But we've got a lot to learn still. We're excited we got an arborist based on what council allowed us to do. So we hadn't had that before, so doing permit review, and that's been really helpful.

fallouts in the pedestrian crossings, you know, that was something we understand and we learned, you know, that short lane pedestrian crossing is really important for pedestrian safety. And at the same time, we can't make, we got to make sure that we're not restricting emergency table access. And so we have to find this balance to do both, which I think part of this process is intended to

Great. Well, thank you both so much. I'm hearing you say you'll take input anytime, but just to be really specific, it looks like in your process in step three is really the time that's really valuable.

We as leaders are always taking that. Anytime you bring up a conversation, I'm like, okay, notes. Okay, we need to think about that. But yeah, the formal process will be when we either come to the CBCs or when we put out a public conference.

So I think we're forecasting, and maybe even, I don't know, if the opening is still there. I think relatively early in December there might have been an IPS opening. So I don't know if we've officially told Marvin that we would like to pencil us in for there. But, you know, that may seem like, you know, quite a ways away from now. But I think we're not going to be so far along that we're going to be like, we don't want to hear anything more.

We're not ready to wrap this up.

So I think that – Again, for this being a process that we're just trying to get into a more regimented expectation, I think that works fine for you all having some time to think about. Again, we can follow up and say, hey, here are the chapters we're dealing with. Here's the kind of things that are in these chapters.

Go ahead and we can reach out for some of the notes that you gave us to see what's already been put out there and get those queued up for our groups to look into.

Ultimately, December will be a chance for you to be like, oh, all right, we'll be able to present some draft content, maybe highlight the big things that we encountered and like, hey, we're going this direction now and we see possible ramifications here. So you'll have another kind of guaranteed touch point in December. And then between all that, as part of step three, I guess, we'll be trying to hit the other places, like the transportation commission, try and hit the permanent folks. And then probably with the content of the chapters that we're looking at in this cycle, we'll wanna go before BPTAG, we'll wanna go before PTAG maybe, and get some feedback from those communities and those folks that have their kind of specialized interests.

Great. Well, thank you both so much. This was really...

all right a couple quick things before we sign off for the day topics for upcoming meetings with marvin griffin our committee coordinator so july 22nd stormwater discharge permit on tribal land stormwater comprehensive plan update and then the pfos treatment evaluation update then august 12th transportation commission interviews and the tree and landscaping code update and the urban forestry priority action plan update August 26th, Automated Traffic Enforcement Expansion Update, and the Mountain Division Rail Future Trail Project Update.

Great, thanks so much. I do want to just note that the committee received a letter from the Tacoma Climate and Sustainability Commission on the Climate Action Plan. That letter was sent to us from staff, but also was included in today's meeting materials and will be available to the public on Legistar after the meeting. Just want to check quickly with my colleagues if there's anything from that letter that you wanted to highlight or discuss. Okay, seeing none. Anyone visited one of our committee's boards or commissions since the last meeting? I have not, but I did have my check in with the Climate and Sustainability Commission and I just want to publicly say how much I appreciate that commission setting those up with council members. And for our staff setting them up, that's probably the hardest part of that whole thing. Just really great to check in with our CBCs once a year and understand their priorities and get their feedback. So appreciate that. All right. Any other items of interest? I will entertain a motion to adjourn.

Move to adjourn.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye.

Thank you.

See you.