Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Ready on this? Yes. Okay.

Select to call to order the infrastructure planning and sustainability committee meeting of 10/22/2025. Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Vice chair Diaz? Here. Council member Hines? Absent. Council member Sadalgay? Here. And chair Walker? Here.

As always, we will start with public comments. 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 and the last four digits of your phone number will be called out when it is your turn to speak.

Two minutes. Okay. So when you're called, please state your name for the record. You have two minutes to make your remarks, and please be mindful of the time. So you can

go ahead

and come to the table, and we'll Anna will start the timer as soon as

he starts speaking. So go ahead.

Would you like me to stand? Or

No. No. Whatever you're more comfortable with. We should we usually sit.

Mike's over there.

Wait. Maybe closer to the mic.

Get

Get on the phone

now. Perfect.

Good afternoon. My name is Stuart Messman. I'm a resident at Tacoma, and I live at 1536 South Fernside Drive in the Narrowmore neighborhood sort of on the West Slope. And the reason I'm here this afternoon is, one, I wanna be in support of the traffic calming group and the division of public works, and I've met a couple of those individuals before. I'm speaking on behalf of myself, but I wanna express our neighborhood concerns about high rate of cut through traffic through our neighborhood, which is increased.

I've lived in the area for thirteen years now, and it's dramatically increased in the last couple of years. And two issues with it, the high speed of the traffic and also the failure of most of the traffic at certain intersections to pause and watch for cross traffic on the uncontrolled intersections. And I wanna bring up one in particular as an example. It's the intersection at the corner of South Carl Johan Drive and Sunray Drive, and I happen to live at that corner of that intersection, so I'm intimately familiar with every day watching the traffic. I'm just concerned that I would want the city to do what they can as soon as they can to go about trying to put in measures or remedies that might reduce the speed and also alert people to the need to be much more aware of the intersection because it is uncontrolled.

So I'm available to answer any of your questions. I think I represent the interests and the wishes of most of our neighbors there that are a part of the West Slope neighborhood coalition representing their more neighborhood. So thank

you very much for your time.

Great. Thank you for being here. Appreciate it, and we're looking forward to getting into that conversation later in the meeting.

Thank

you. Did anybody raise their hand online, Anna? No. Okay. And I think that was the only person on in person? Okay. Great. We'll go ahead and close public comment. As always, if anyone sneaks in that wants to speak, we will reopen it at the end of the meeting. We have three briefing items today, and all very big and exciting and interesting things that this committee has been waiting to talk about. So we are so glad you're all here and we're gonna try to squeeze it all in to one meeting. But we're gonna kick it off with the Planning Commission twenty twenty five to 2027 work program. And Brian, good day. The floor is yours.

Thank you, chair, council members. Brian Gooday with planning development services, and appreciate having the the chair of the planning commission also here as part of this. You look familiar was here two weeks ago when you guys had the discussion about the annual report from various CVCs. So this is the discussion about the Commission's work program. We'll talk a little bit about the why we're doing this as well as what is in what the planning commission has put forward in their recommendation, and then the intent is hopefully to get feedback, first of all, and then concurrence with the work program.

Somewhat uniquely so, the planning commission, you know, the code for it specifically identifies putting together an annual work program that's done in collaboration with council. So as the committee members are aware, this is kind of an annual check-in about what the planning commission has coming up in the next year plus. So we're looking forward to going over that as well as any feedback that you have. We the one thing that I will note, certainly, opportunity here for feedback, noting not only on the work program itself, the the what's in there, but also specific items as we walk through. If there's anything in particular, most of what you're gonna see here are items that are fairly early in the process.

Some of them, undoubtedly, will continuing to check-in with the committee or the full council, but as we're, in many cases, in kind of the scoping phase almost for these, obviously, if there's any thoughts that council members have about particular item or things that you would

like us and the commission to make

sure that we're exploring, please feel free to put that out. So as we look forward to the the work program, I think you're well aware it comes from many sources. One of the unique things this time around and why it's highlighted on there, the reality of staffing right now is that we're not in an expansion stage. We're in somewhat of a retraction stage. It is the truth.

So as I think council is well well aware of our last budget cycle as well as we look forward to the next one, there certainly are some financial challenges for the city. PES is feeling that as well. We have lost a number of staff. We've got some programs cut like the neighborhood planning program. And in general, we have not been filling those positions to make sure we have space in the budget.

So this work program will be a little bit smaller than probably some that you've seen in the past. And because of that, it's also much more oriented towards mandated items, to be honest with you. So partly because of this the resource reality and partly because the state has been pretty active over the last few years, particularly on housing related, but also some other use bills as well. So just quickly noting none of these are gonna be a surprise. In fact, the first one you just finalized last night. So adopting the code updates to distort preservation code and bringing that moratorium to an end. So that's thank you very much for that. It's nice. We actually don't have any moratoria right now.

So I will not say that word again for a long time.

And the type five solar plan also, as you know, coming to conclusion here over the next month or so. Yeah. Public hearing actually scheduled for next week on that. As we look forward to 2026, a number of items, again, largely focused on mandates. In addition to the item itself, you'll

see in most cases some note

in there about where it comes from.

So in many cases, there's

a state law associated with that, the senate bill or house bill, or resolutions or other actions by the council that is identifying specific projects. So critical areas preservation, ordinance update, something we've been talking to council and the planning commission about. I think at this point, planning commission probably is finishing its work in December or January on that, and it'll be coming to council early this next year. As we know, the Pacific Avenue corridor sub area plan still in progress, probably the first or second quarter of of next year item as well. And then we have our annual amendment package.

You can see items on there. Again, a number of state mandated items that will be coming forward, as well as the special needs housing item that was put forward by council a couple of years ago to address some new state licensed facilities that we're starting to see. Capital facilities program is a required component of the budget process. Parking code amendments, this also was a state bill adopted recently, and this is one for which will be coming back, but you can think about a little bit. And if there is thoughts on this, I think it begs an interesting question for the city.

We started the conversation also with the planning commission as well. The recognition that over the last twenty five plus years, the city's been in kind of a constant move of reducing partner requirements to the extent of zero in the downtown, zero in numerous other areas around where we have mass transit. It's got expanding as part of the Tacoma process. The state is continuing to mandate more and more items for which either have to be reduced or or exempted. And at some point, it begs the question, I think, at a large policy level about whether or not the city is interested in just kind of getting out of the parking regulation game to some extent.

So any thoughts on that? If if that should be part of the conversation or shouldn't, certainly open to it when we talk about that. And then the landscape treatment update, that that one we're expecting. Obviously, this is came out of the council resolution, but it's a levels came from this committee. We're expecting planning permission probably to finish that up at the end of next year, the council, but right after that.

So you actually see it kind of spilling over the two years here. Home in Tacoma, we talked about that just recently with council, the possibility of that amendment package coming forward here starting up this next year. We'll continue to be tracking permit activity in there to see whether there are some some bumps in the road that need to be addressed on that. You can see preliminarily some items for 2027 in that annual limit. Again, a lot of items partly coming out of South Tacoma, the industrial transition conversation, as well as state mandated items there as well.

And then the last thing I'll sort of just make note of is we look forward a little bit more this time over the over the couple years out in part because there are some huge projects that are out in sort of '27 to '29 mandated by the state sort of time frame. So we got a shoreline master program update. We've got a new climate element, new climate element that's mandated, which we have many of the components of. Obviously, the city's done a lot of climate work, but there is a new mandate there. The mid cycle review that we'll have to do that may result in some changes again, the trends are in development, DOD, bill that the legislature adopted, which will require some some pretty massive upzoning in the city.

Not quite at the geographic scale

of home in Tacoma, but from

a size perspective, significantly larger. It's pretty big areas. And then the the Tacoma continuing review that was put into the. So like I say, here to check-in with the committee, hopefully get concurrence and take any feedback that you have. And the chair is also here, like I said, if you have questions or questions or

Great. Thank you, Brandon. Just a

small list of projects there.

Okay. Colleagues, what questions do we have for chair, cradle, or Brian?

Go ahead.

What is the threshold to which we should

try to restrain ourselves from adding anything to this list?

The thanks for the question. I mean, the reality of adding things is that it's a trade off, to be honest with you. I mean, like I say, I I think there has been conversations in the past about whether or not the the commission was sort of the limiting factor on how much time they have and ability to go through things. I think we're definitely in a place where, honestly, the staffing resources are the limiting So the the realities of adding something is is taking something else away instead of you know? And and, unfortunately, the challenge is that, as I say, many of the items that are on here are sort of foist on us anyways, not necessarily. This isn't the dream list necessarily.

This is the hand to us list in most cases. So Okay. So then I guess maybe the other side of that question is, will you be flagging for us when we're gonna need to take something off if we're trying to add something, or do we need to be mindful of that? I mean, we can be mindful of it, but, like I see. Someone will someone also, like, flag on the glass?

Yes. We do. Yeah. The other thing I

would just say in in general,

I mean, there's, like, a project. You know? The other thing is that we've tried to do to be as efficient as possible over the years is where there are issues that pop up. Sometimes there's ability to incorporate those into various places. Like, I mean, that happened in home but there were kind of two or three other items. The small business stuff,

I mean, you'll recall, right,

that could have been a project in and of its own, but got incorporated in there, which enabled

it to happen much faster. So Great. And then the other question I have sort of in this vein is might be for Rob, but is there anything that the planning commission wants to do that's not on the list that we should I'll be hope you guys work on?

In terms of where the rest of the commission was, we unanimously voted on this work plan. One of the conversations that we've had, like Brian said, is with limited staffing time, we have to be more strategic about where we get some of our priorities. So I've been meeting with commissioners to sort of identify some of those places where we can talk more about certain priorities, with some of the things that are coming up. We always have a list of fun things that we'd love to talk about if we had time, but I think that the reality of where we're at with staffing is this work plan is probably most feasible for what we can do with the with the staffing support that we have.

Okay.

If there's one wish that I would have, it'd be to bring back the neighborhood planning program. Like, that was the best program that we got feedback from. So just any opportunity I have to just say hire those people and get that program back up and running and get us back into the neighborhood planning business, the better.

I I would build on that just slightly. I mean, I I agree. I think one of the things is sort

of like geographic focused planning. Mhmm. I use the term sort

of generally, but part of that, I mean, we've long we're a real desire to do more stationary planning or corridor planning where we know we're gonna have, like, mass transit investments and things like that happening. And I think neighborhood planning also is very

much a component of that.

You know, we're sort of doing a lot of the citywide conversation, which are important, but sometimes don't resonate as as directly with the community itself. So K.

I think I have a similar version of the question for statues or anything on your cutting room floor that we should be aware of?

What do you want for? I don't know.

It's a little bit cold. Yeah.

I mean,

I I I could make many of the same comments about you know, I I think there was I I think it's unfortunate that

you know, I don't I don't wanna

cry too much about neighborhood planning, but I think there there's there's a challenge here with going through the planning process and changing code. And sometimes we have struggled for a long time as an organization and certainly as planning your own services on the implementation Mhmm. And so I think that's it's a tough spot, I think, for most folks. It's like, yeah, you work on the code, you work on this big policy document, all these things. And, like I said, that only connects with people so much. I mean, some people conversation, but

not a lot of people won't come out for

that conversation as opposed to when you're talking about their neighborhood. Mhmm.

A lot more people will come out.

So that's just because those plants have quick weight. It still tips them too, that, like, immediate re immediate return on investment.

And then, otherwise, I'm very.

Great. Thank you, councilor. Thank

you. I have a real quick question. Just remind me of the '20 the slide that has the 2027, very preliminary, the home Tacoma code adjustment package, that's not the three year review. Is that is that, like, the earlier potential changes? Or

It's it's a bit of a placeholder right now. Honestly, we're expecting some relatively minor things to happen as part of the annual amendment this year, the kind of coat cleanups. So there's some simple things there. I think as you've probably heard, there's an interesting conversation about, in general, like, how long do you wait before you start making more significant changes? How much data do you need? How much

is it

one year in, two years in? I've heard different perspectives on that. So if it ends up that we get a year in, you know, we start getting to next February or so, right, at a point where we feel like we have at least a little bit of understanding of what the on the ground reality looks like of this new development. And there seems to be a lot of issues that we're tripping over. It may be the council wants to move quicker on it. But Yeah. So my feedback on that one is knowing that

we have a three year o'clock, that's really twenty twenty eight. Mhmm. That would be like, instead of TBD, I'd say, if emergent. Right? Because that would be the one thing that's it's important. Home to go is really important. We need to be, you know, tracking it. We have a plan to potentially put some things in sooner rather than later. To me, that may be the one that I would say is potentially the one that would be low priority 2027 because we're gonna have a 2028,

like, required review on it. Yeah.

I know there's been some discussion.

That is not me giving Heinz an opportunity to add something.

It's gonna be two years away.

No. It it very well could be that two year at the two year point, we start a one year process to make the changes.

Got it.

Yeah. That's that's the kind of middle ground of what three years might actually mean. It's probably start the conversation in two anyways. So okay.

Well, then that makes more sense.

Yeah. Okay. That That's that's a good question.

Alright. I think that this is not a planning commission item, but I just wanted to flag or ask. There's been a lot of talk in the types of area plan about the I think we call it the green economic study, and then there were pieces in there that we didn't tackle in types of area plan that were potentially gonna come out of that or be a part of the next steps of implementation. And, again, I think it's not a planning commission item because it's not code related. The code's done now. It's implementation, but I just wanted to check fact check that with you.

Yeah. I honestly, I'll have to look back a little bit. It's the green economy strategy. Yeah. The yeah. I think my recollection of a lot of that, I mean, we've done some modifications. The type of suburb plan at some level does some of this by, you know, eliminating assuming depending how it gets adopted, but eliminating some of the the the worst options. You know, in South Tacoma, obviously, we made some progress on that as well as part of the groundwater protection district. So those are clear moves in the right direction. My sense is that much of the green economy strategy is about greening the economy, the existing users,

and the ones that come in, which

is a little bit more economic development, outreach, and engagement probably than it's a zoning conversation person.

Okay.

We are talking about some of the, like, transitional zoning requirements from industrial zones into neighborhoods, and that came out of the South Tacoma amendment on the groundwater protection district update and the economic Green Zone. So

Okay.

I'm glad that we brought that up because one of the other sort of, like, things I'd love to see more progress made on is Economic Green Zone sort of activation in South Tacoma, and a lot of that stuff is community and economic development for the attracting and retaining low and no polluting industries to that area. Something that the neighborhood would really like to see. So we're doing what we can on the zoning, landscaping code side of things, but there's other things that are outside of our purview that are still needed for that structure.

Okay. Great.

And then the other question I had was, I I am

very excited about this parking code. Mhmm.

And then and I know, Chair, you had said when you were here two weeks ago, how can we communicate back and forth on those things? That feels like one that we should have a conversation ahead of time. Yeah. How do you see that happening? Do you think would it be helpful if the council wrote a letter if we thought about it ahead of time? Or

I think what would be helpful is if council or even just this committee sent a letter with just just high level options that you would like us to explore and vet out more, that'd be great. As Brian said, we could just pass new code in the city that says we're getting out of the parking game altogether, or we could continue to just sort of meet the bare minimum letter of the law that comes down from state mandates Mhmm. And just that incremental approach. So we can look at both of those and provide some pros and cons as well as our recommendation for which path to go down. There's a third path that you all are considering that we don't see right now that would also be helpful to have in the letter just so that we can vet out more of the things that you're interested in and provide you with a a more robust recommendation about the different options that you want us to explore.

Okay. Great.

And I

I would wonder whether or not it's something that makes sense

to go to the full council to talk about it.

The idea of getting out of parking regulations is definitely a policy choice. I mean, there's no perfect answer there, and there's plenty of controversy in that whole discussion.

Well, parking is one of our top commented on things that he didn't sell. Yeah. So

that would be my question. Whether or it's like, is this a reasonable study session Mhmm. February or whatever. You know? It's like, let's get the whole council in the conversation about what's the scope of this project. Do we want how many options do we want on the table and update the council interest in billing? Because if we're gonna go all the way, honestly, we can cancel somewhat on board with that. So

Yeah. I don't want you see the planners out there. You know?

Great. Well, we will flag that for next year. Thank you. This is great. Got plenty of work ahead of us. So if there are no other questions, I will take a motion to move to concur with the planning commission's work program for 2527.

I move to concur with the planning commission's work program for 2025 through 2027. Second.

Alright. It's been moved and seconded. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. The motion is declared adopted.

Thank you both.

Thank you

so much.

Sharon, thank you for spending two Wednesdays.

Happy to it.

Appreciate it. Thank

you. And we passed it, so.

Alright. Our next, briefing item is the transport neighborhood traffic program, and Brennan Kidd and Shi Chen are here from Public Works. First welcome.

Thank you. No. Try to stick to the

time when you're here. Good evening. Hi. Good evening, chair, vice chair, community members. Thanks for having us this evening. My name is Brennan Kidd. I'm assistant division manager in transportation within Public Works. I also serve as an

area of city traffic engineer right now.

With me this evening is Qi Chen, the transportation division's engineer that's supporting, the city and the division's new transformed neighborhood traffic calling program.

I know we're on a tight timeline tonight, we'll do our best to get our information as efficiently as we can.

Alright. A quick overview. This presentation is just informational only,

so there are no formal recommendations or ask that

we're including with tonight's discussion. But we're we are hopeful that the community members will be able to use this content to better understand the program, support city services, and or support the service to your constituents. And with that mind

with that in mind, I

will give it over to Chi to to walk or jog us through the background instruction the instruction of the program. So take a look at it.

Thank you, Brandon.

Yeah. Oh, here we go.

First, a quick introduction of the neighborhood traffic calming program. This program has a relatively long history in the city given that it was established back in 1988. Currently, its administration administration is within the Public Works Department Transportation Division, and this program is actively managed by the traffic operations and safety section. The primary purpose of traffic calming is to support the livability and vitality of residential and commercial areas through improvements in non motorized safety, mobility, and comfort. Those objectives are typically achieved by reducing vehicle speeds or volumes on a single street or on street network.

Because the purpose of residential streets is local access, the traffic calming strategies and tools employed on residential streets will be different than arterial. The city's neighborhood traffic calming program is focused on residential street only. In Tacoma, we have about 530 miles of non arterial streets and roughly 2,700 residential intersections. As shown in the pie chart on the slide, about 70% of Tacoma Street network is non arterial. So here is a screenshot of our internal request tracking application.

This is a GIS tool that helps us record and track requests we receive. Each dot on the map represent a request submitted through various sources such as three one one, which also called cyclofix. Email, phone calls, different color represent the current status of each request. The majority of the requests are submitted through 311, where we have established the traffic calming category in 2022. By the end of this past Monday, we have received 1,014 total request with 671 for residential street.

So the next two slides help to explain the new program structure that have been developed in the past year and a half. One of the major changes is that we have adopted a data driven approach to transforming this program. The flowchart on screen shows our working process. We will go through this flowchart step by step. The first step is called eligible streets, which means this program focuses on non arterial streets and intersections as we discussed earlier.

The second step is called block scoring, and this is where the data driven approach really comes into play. This step assigns every street a score indicating how much it could benefit from potential traffic calming features. Block scoring allows city staff to rent over 500 miles of residential streets based on four groups of factors, which are collision history, equity, community features, and infrastructure condition. The program identifies streets by assessing whether their currently in poor infrastructure condition have been historically underserved and whether there have been reported crashes in last five years, etcetera. All factors are carefully selected to make the scoring process as efficient and fair as practical.

Each category is also assigned to a specific weight to further emphasize its importance. When determining weightings, we referenced peer agencies, including the city of Austin and the city of Philadelphia, and also to make sure our strategies were consistent with our peer programs like Vision Zero and the ZipRecrucial School programs. The total score of this is a sum of all weighted factors, and the maximum possible score is 100 points. So the previous block scoring step serves as an essential screening to identify locations to for improvements by assigning each street a score with the scores two evaluation tracks are identified. Track one is community based.

Track two is program initiative. Both tracks lead to similar processes, including engineering reviews, project design, community outreach, construction, and finally post construction evaluation. The key difference between those two tracks is how program get proposed. Track one projects focus on locations suggested from resident reports if locations have higher scores from the program rankings. Track two projects don't necessarily need to be associated with existing requests and are initiated by the transportation division.

The purpose of establishing two tracks is to balance several considerations. One is the need to address current traffic coming requests We value resident input and responding reacting to public concerns, help maintain and improve our level of service. Secondly, we recognize not every neighborhood has equal access to file their concerns. Lastly, the importance of partnering with other city programs to make up the best of our program fund. For example, we can save some overhead costs like mobilization, temporary traffic control costs, better bids from contractors, and most importantly, save funds from needed infrastructure included in the partner project such as ADA compliance ramps.

Ultimately, the project scopes and locations are determined by engineering judgments to support successful traffic calming outcomes. Projects may not be always limited to originally requested locations. The city conducts neighborhood outreach to share proposed designs and receive feedback through postcards, letters, or community meetings. At least one post construction evaluation will be conducted at one minimum a year after construction to assess the improvement.

Alright. Thanks, chief, for going through the basics of the new program. We'll give you a break and kind of walk through our traffic calming toolbox. So the term traffic calming is intended to cover a manner of treatments and features which engineers can consider to address neighborhood concerns regarding safety, livability, and general mis you know, use or property use or misuse of neighborhood streets. Our toolbox is represented on this slide and the next one.

It includes some examples mostly from Tacoma locations. General cost is shown in the in the price tag with each of those. These costs, mind you, are not all inclusive, but are instead meant to show a relative expense from one toolbox or tool to the other. For example, they don't they do not include any analysis of design related costs and actual costs could fluctuate based on project parameters and contractors' bids. Additionally, there's continued maintenance costs for for most of

these items as well.

And so here's the the final three. These are some of the the more common ones that you'll see throughout Tacoma and other municipalities. But yeah. So, like, yeah, speed humps, race crosswalks, traffic circles as a lot of you have seen and experienced firsthand. So with that, I will turn it back over to Gia to round us out on the presentation.

The program has successfully funded, and delivered multiple projects across the city, and all of, project information is available on our web page. We can come back to these slides if we get more questions. So with so many changes being adopted to our city's program, it's helpful to compare our programs with those from other cities to help understand where we stand. We selected three West Coast cities for comparison, two in Washington and one in California. The chart on the slide presents some simple comparisons across several divisions, including population, the type of street each program covers, annual funding, and funding sources.

Due to the time constraint, I won't go over the details, but I'm happy to answer any questions in q and a section. This slide summarizes the next steps and goals for the neighborhood traffic calming program. We will continue to look for partner opportunities with other city programs. We will continue and complete development of our track one project, and we will work with council to share new process and manage expectations and stay informed about any additional funding sources. That concludes our presentation today. Thank you so much for your time and attention.

It's fine. Twenty seven seconds, but

I I one of my side is That

was super impressive, and I I feel bad that you

Hold on. It's fine.

Had to

be but that was really Any information, it it really Yeah. I'm really impressed.

We would

have learned to expound on the programming

more. Maybe we can

No.

This is

perfect. This is perfect. I just say that this traffic calming toolbox is, like, the singular most helpful two slides I've ever seen? Like, we're just the questions we get Yes. All

the time.

And we don't know if they're 2,000,000 or 2,000. Like, genuinely, like, just get just getting us in the ballpark is amazing. Sure. I wanna ask a really quick question about your program structure. So slide five. Okay. This is super helpful. It helped me understand how this works. How does a project get into that initial bucket of eligible projects? Is that three one one, or is that are you analyzing every single intersection in Tukoma?

Yeah. So we the eligible street just means they are on Arterial Takoma Street. So, basically, each individual resident street has a score. Yeah. So we analyze over 500 miles.

So even if nobody requests it, it's on a list somewhere, and you can see that it's the highest scoring project. Okay. Great.

And so one of those tracks we could

and and we'll figure out the balance between the tracks where one track is kind of partnering and finding opportunities

so we can make make

the best use of the the program's funds. The other track is more kind of discretionary where we might go look and find out what is that top 10 the top 10% of of roads and and road segments and decide that we're gonna

make an engineering judgment to go do a a, you know, an assessment of that and figure out

if there's some traffic on that could

be proactively placed there without needing to have anybody tell us if we need it.

We'll we'll certainly as as g mentioned, part of it will be outreach outreach.

So so we're gonna just drop in there, say, we're gonna do this and not get any feedback. But at least we'll tell them, hey. Why we're interested in this? You know? Have you seen something? Not everybody uses 311. It feels like they can call the city or

or send an email. So that's our way of trying

to balance out the the kind of give and take of all this.

Great. That makes a ton of sense. I just have one quick comment, and then I'll open it up. The map slide, I think, just reinforces what we always hear is everybody wants traffic calling on their corner, and everybody thinks their corner is the worst. So, generally, we know people want traffic to call. So it just reinforces the need for the program. Alright. We'll go reverse order this time. Councilman Gisellega, you wanna kick us off?

Yes. But I'm not gonna answer ask all the questions I've written. I will maybe do a separate meeting on that. Sure. A couple questions I had is where is there, like, a list of all these streets, and where does that reside? Is that something that's, like, open for public to look at, us to look at?

Or worse? Yeah. I mean, it's it's just a it's a geographic, you know, information database, and so it's

Is that on, like, one of our open portals or something if people wanted to look at what the scores are?

We I no. Not presently.

Okay. We can certainly consider that.

That it needs to be. I'm just asking you this. That's all.

It's not out there right now.

Couple other questions. Love the slides that have the the cost. I do think you probably need to make your way bigger, but that it's probably, like, $2,000,000 plus that number. You you probably have to do a lot of engineering if that this is what it is just for that. Like, I'm not saying 2,000,000, but, you know, there's probably more. Question on that one was, I didn't see bulb outs. I hear about bulb outs everywhere. Would love to know what the Yeah. No. Permanent bulb outs, not the temporary ones.

Yeah. Term I was told that permanent boat lots are one of the more kind of important things. Love to know what the cost is around that. Sure. And and I think I know the answer to this, but you got you know, not you, but I'm talking about, like, the world of traffic engineering. Traffic signals and stop signs are not considered traffic coming from what I understand.

You're correct.

Thanks for bringing that up. Yeah. So those are those are called traffic control devices, and they are their use is managed by the federally mandated manual for traffic control devices. We tried to be cognizant that traffic calming measures and treatments are just those measures and treatments. They're not devices, and therefore, they're not under that purview that federally mandated.

So they don't they have generally industry practice kind of criteria for when's best to use them, how frequent to use speed on some things like that. That's all just industry practice and and information there. Stop signs, yields, traffic signals, those sort of things are are actually official control devices, therefore, they have specific criteria for when and when you when you can't use them. And specifically, stop signs, for instance, are called out in that manual is not a form of trying to control traffic speeds or volumes. It's for trying to assign ambiguous control at an intersection, and, again, has a whole set of criteria for when when you should consider them.

Okay. That's that's an important distinction for me to help talk to constituents because often we'll have things like there's so much. But it is a consideration. I just understand that it's not in this program because as we grow the city, I'm sure we have certain requirements where we end up hitting threshold where we need traffic control devices and to the layperson that is traffic calming, but it's not actually in the definition.

It's a different sort of a different shoot of activity within our division and section. And

just so I kind of under did you have a question? Okay. Just so I I kinda understand, our our traffic control, like, is really about identifying all these places, but we don't have dedicated funding for each program. We're active each thing we're using other funding to kind of do it or, like like because you had a slide that said it's $50,000. Right? Right. And then Spokane is $23,000,000. Like, I wanted to understand what the difference between the 50,000 and 2 point whatever million

Yeah. That was up there. If we wanna try and go back

to that slide just because we just had to kinda breeze through

it a little bit. It could be some value. Well, while we're waiting for that, yeah, we felt that that was important to try and give you some context. Like, you know, is is the 50,000 that

we get, you know, annually for this program, is that

is that on par with others or not? Sort of, not really. But as you can see from this table

Is that 50,000, like, $50,000 worth of ball outs and, like, other things, or is that for the personnel for, like, just doing things or, like, part of a FTE?

There's There's a little bit of mixture in there too, but we're we're trying to preserve as much of the program's fundings for actually implementing things as best as we can. We do have to support you know, she is the program engineer for this program, so we need to, you know, be able to cover her costs too. But but, yeah, we're we're trying to make the most out of that money as best we can. The program the program was in kind of a hiatus because we didn't have any staffing that dedicated to it. So we do have some built up funds just from it being a supported program over the years even though we've not been able to utilize those funds and actually try and implement things. And that's just because of lack of staffing and, basically, not having the program updated to be, you know, in line with current kind of data driven approaches.

But the idea is as we identifying these high, let's say, scoring areas that we would partner with existing or future projects to kinda incorporate traffic coming in at the moment until we have a large enough pool of dedicated funds, which is our job here. Right?

Yep. Okay.

Yeah. I mean, that's the two track kind of structure to it. We can you know, if we have more opportunities like we we have in the, you know, kind of launch of this transform program, we found quite a few. The the achievement slide, you know, which showed that we found quite a few already projects in the process that we just, you know, kind of said, hey. Can we throw just the funding for the materials or this labor and and get this incorporated?

Should I think about it that basically track to whichever the track is where it's community based, I forgot if it was one or two, whatever that one is. Sure. Am I to assume then that track basically only has $50,000 to work with?

Pay all tracks. Like, track two projects would pay all of the traffic common features if that's what's your question.

Well, that that $50,000, is that for track one or two or both tax?

Or It's both. It's for both. Okay. It's So even

it's even a little thinner. Yes. But, again, we're trying to, you know, we're trying to use the funds. We have some built up funds over the past, but, you know, if we if we find a lot of good projects, a lot

of good

partnerships, that'll start to diminish pretty quickly.

Okay.

But but right now, track two is our most efficient use of the the program's funds because we don't have to pay for all the you know, as as she said in her, you know, discussion, we basically get the the parent project to be absorbing all

the Yeah.

Project management costs and all the other kind of things. We just have to give our contribution for our part, which is what does the speed hub cost, what does the bolt out cost. And in that way, track one would be the program carrying out a new contract to go build 10 speed hubs or something like that. And then the program is bearing all of those costs to to put that that contract down.

Understood. I will yield the rest of my time to we're running late. I will probably ask questions Sure. Offline. Absolutely.

Thank you, council member. Council member Mintz.

Thank you. I agree with councilor Walker that the traffic calling toolbox is is very good. Just a visual to share with the public because I think in their minds, I hear right about speed bump. Mhmm. A or b. There's other pieces that are here. I will just say, when I was looking at this, I was joking with the chair. I said, the plastic veneer says $800. And I I saw there was a case. I was like, wow.

Why is that $800,000?

It's only 15. Like, wow. That must be a really nice classic stick there.

Anyway

Or government bureaucracy gone awry. Horribly awry. Anyways, so that that's very good. I appreciate that. And just kind of looking through that. I work I don't wanna jump the jump the shark or jump the conversation to the next one, but looking at slide 10 and the funding, I can't help but notice how worse Spokane is. I'm really tired of Spokane, like, eating our lunch in so many ways. But I'm excited to see how that conversation goes because I I I do think that's a good nexus to think about is how we can utilize, you know, traffic calming. Well, unfortunately, to really support programs like this to kind

of really get to what we really wanna see.

I guess the question I had was just one is from request from a constituent. Right? So someone says, hey. Carter's speeding down my street to, like, seeing something. What's the average timeline on something like that? Is it all depend on how it's I mean, like, once we get to the process?

Yeah. It's it's yeah. It's not gonna be very rapid. Okay. You know, on top of just the you know, let's say that request was already in our top 10 or whatever. That top 10 may not align with any other program

work that's going on or project work that's

going on. So that means we're on track one. So we

don't have the benefits of track two both

financially and, for scheduling. So we are into, you know, alright. Here's track one. We have to build this from scratch, build it up into the contract, go through all that, put it out to bid, and get it constructed. So we've got all the buildup time plus the time of actually putting a contract together to actually get a realization on on that particular request. And that's that's only if that request was in that top, you know, x percent.

Okay. Anyway, we've talked about

this with the LID process. Is there a way for residents to buy these things, like, if they wanted to? So, like, let's say I want a roundabout in an intersection. Could the property owners join property owners doing LID or do a process by which they can pay for something like that?

Yeah. Anyone.

Oh, yeah. We explored this option with our LID program, but it was it's hard for them to access. Like, so the LID program is they have to justify the actual feature can help with or in impact the surrounding home values, and it's hard to justify how traffic calming feature impact the home value. So now we're working on our own policies, just a private funded speed homes. So we will start with private speed homes.

Now we are working with our planning, permitting team to come up with a solution to help residents if they wanna pay for a certain speak home at certain location, we will review and help with them.

Okay. Is is that requirement around directly impacting the property value? Is that a state law requirement? Is that a state policy requirement or

We're just we're relying on our experts to to kinda interpret that and how, you know, how they run and put together LIDs. And I think it's just like she said, I think it's it's they have trouble converting what the presence of a traffic circle or speed answer or roundabout has, you know, how does that convert to a monetary Yeah. Landing stuff?

Versus, like, a paving an alley or Right. Just curb sidewalks.

Okay. Exactly.

That's I guess, you know, I hear from enough folks that are interested enough that I would be curious, like, the private funding conversation, especially if we develop some kind of matching funds or things like that to support those programmings, you know, to push people in is good. I think the the last question then that I had, and I know the chair is, like, speed up council member Hines, is not part of traffic calm. Traffic calm. We're trying to stay calm. This is I got it's a question for somebody in this room, but I I get a lot of emails about the fact that people can't turn left on materials anymore. There's, like, a lot of concrete being poured in the middle of 6th Avenue in multiple places. Is that related to this, or

is that completely separate to to this?

No. It's separate.

By only just the fact that that's

an arterial stream, I mean, it is. That that is related to a grant program that is, attuned to trying to address safety concerns. So there were some safety concerns that allowed us to get that granted by simplifying those intersections both for vehicle vehicle conflicts and vehicle pet pedestrian conflicts, we get that safety benefit. Yes. It creates a little inconvenience for accessing neighborhoods and certain businesses and adjacent properties, but if that's if that's the trade off for some overall safer operation of that intersection, then then that's the way we're headed.

Yeah. I mean

okay. Yeah. I can't turn left to the MSN anymore, but I understand

that. I think

if you're coming from the East, I think you can turn

out and make it. A good Thank you. So Those

are all my questions.

That's a real talk. If I can send just one caveat to the privately funded this does not mean that somebody can come down to Municipal Building, dump a bunch of cash on the table and say, go build my screen counter at this location. It still has to go through our engineering vetting to so that we know that they're putting it in an appropriate place. Maybe they wanna put it on an arterial. No. We can't do that. You know, maybe they wanna put it right, you know, next to an intersection.

You know? We don't need that.

So it still gets some bedding, but, obviously, it has a different funding source, and and that kind of helps make it a little more flexible and possible.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. I

think just to follow-up on that, then it would also probably go through some of that in the community outreach too.

Because we want Yeah. Because if one

neighbor has I've got speed help money

Sure.

Would you not talk to the other neighbors as well?

Yeah. It it it it's basically just it it helps focus where we need to assess, but we're still gonna treat it as if this is one of our candidate sites. We just don't have funding to make it possible. Yeah.

Okay. Because that was one of my questions on the the diagram here on slide six is I think they both end up doing some sort of community outreach. Just slightly different. I'm wondering what the parameters are around the community outreach. Like, how do we how do you guys decide how far out from the thing you go out and talk to neighbors?

Yeah. We're we're still kind of working through that. Right now, we've you know, with a lot of our projects that have benefited from the program's funding have been on that track to kind of path, and therefore, that pro those projects already have their kind of outreach steps and things like that. I think it would depend on what we're considering for the traffic calming feature. If it's speed humps, yeah, I can see that certainly the people on that street would be interested in that, but also the street next over or two over because, you know, where does that traffic might go?

You know? And those are things we're also thinking about before we even consider what the traffic holding feature might be is are we just kicking the can or kicking the traffic literally on this next Mhmm. Next street, and maybe maybe what seems like a simple two or three speed humps on roadway x now becomes, you know, six or 10 because roadway is y and z also needs some help.

Okay. Because I think it brought to mind not just that chart, but also the toolbox, this half diverter at AM 84th, we heard from several neighbors who weren't told about it. So I'm just wondering if we can create some sort of a uniform how we're gonna do the outreach if that's in the pipeline. So I think everybody south of it heard and no one north of it, and no one's north of it are the ones trying to turn all. Okay. So there was a discrepancy there.

Yep. And and some of these that we've noted here and whether there was a full participation or or some participation from this program are are spanning a a a a length of time where we may have had, you know, not as great, you know, outreach protocols as part of our projects. And and now we've, you know, public works is really focusing on that, and we can do that better going forward. So, yeah, we're we're gonna have some of these kind of historical ones that didn't go off so well, but our intent is to do it better going forward.

Okay. And then I think, anecdotally, I think that's probably another good plug for the neighborhood planning program. I would imagine some

of this might fit into

that should we bring that program back. It could be a part of the discussion. I'm wondering I don't really understand what the raised regional raised diagonal diverter is. Is there not an example in Tacoma? Is that why you have a Seattle example?

Hey. Well, it's on my acreage. I'll show you.

There's a one.

Isn't that on his 34th And East Side?

Is that a raise? Oh, no. That's gonna be that half diverter.

Oh, that's the half diverter.

So a diagonal diverter basically just Yeah. Severs the continuity of whatever the the residential street is. So when you get to those diverter, you're gonna either, you know, forced to turn left or forced to turn right and go down.

So kinda like Yakima around 45th, but that's a whole the whole road map. It's not just there.

No. This yeah. And this would be exclusively within a neighborhood. It's basically that would be a type of traffic calming feature that we would do on a to break up a a long street that's just getting a lot of cut through traffic. And and we can make those designs that they're still permeable for for bicyclists and pedestrians and all that. But but, basically, it would force vehicles to kind of go out of direction, and, therefore, hopefully, they would be like, oh, well, maybe I should go get back on the arterial and, you know, wait my turn,

you know, through the congestion.

And then that is very different than, say, making a whole piece of street and then just making that, like, one of those triangles that we have around. That's not traffic calming. That's a different animal. Right? Like, the little triangle park we named up here in Hilltop, like, that's not traffic calming. That's just a piece of land that is left. Oh, okay. The way the streets are drawn for Mhmm. Yeah. So, I mean,

we can build on those things. You know, you know, the bulb outs, you know, maybe, you know, we start with that and, you know, maybe the road is still fairly wide and we try and make enhance some pedestrian crossings that are associated with that area.

You know? So we can

kinda springboard from that and depending on what the situation is to to enhance it with some traffic calming features if that's what's called for.

Okay. I think the last question I have I apologize. All my questions are further in the weeds. What is the difference between these two on the right hand side here? I don't really know I don't understand what the bottom one is doing.

Okay. So per state law, there's a certain distance that you're not allowed to park with in proximity to unmarked or marked crosswalks or intersections. Mhmm. Unfortunately, a lot of our drivers don't know that. Mhmm. They you know, in certain areas, especially along greenways and other projects where we're trying

to enhance their multi modal

use and safety, we have to kinda make it a little more obvious to them and basically delineate it and try to physically prevent somebody from using it. So the term is called daylighting. And by doing that, we keep people from parking too close to the intersection of the crosswalks, and it basically gives a little more visibility to everybody using the crosswalk, whether it's a driver, a walker, a roller. And and that and, again, we're not we're not precluding any use of the right of way beyond what state law already says. Mhmm. Hey. You're not supposed

to be part of the civil city.

So it is a visual aid much more than it's a slowing people down from driving?

It is a visual

aid, but even some of

the traffic calming features do rely on visual kind of effect. You know, there's a chicane, which is basically if you do it on both sides like Faucet, South Of 15th Street. We did a grant project where we have some chicanes that that basically take take the place of the the on street parking and kind of visually narrow the road so that someone approaching it, it's wide enough for them, and it's wide enough for two people to go. But, visually, they're like, woah. You know, what's happening here? It slowed down. So so even visual effects, you know, can have a positive effect.

Okay. So that's why it's a traffic call.

It's more

than sort of a parking spot

marker. Yeah.

Okay. Cool. Thank you.

Sure.

Alright. Well, thank you so much for this presentation. This is really super helpful and also sets us up well for our future budget conversations because I think this is

something we all wanna see happen.

Thanks so much for having me.

You're welcome.

Alright. Moving on to our next briefing item. This is automated traffic enforcement expansion updates.

And we

have Carrie Wilhelm and Eric Huseby here from Public Works. Welcome.

Alright. Ready? Yeah. K. My name is Carrie Wilhelm.

With me is Eric Huseby. We are half of a

team that has been focusing on, the work to expand automated enforcement. Part of our team is also Grayson Reem and Rachel Olvera who, have been working together and also unofficially she who's been helping us, extensively looking at crash data as part of our methodology. This is an informational presentation to continue the discussion we began in April. Today's goal is to provide an update on our proposed expansion. We're going to start with our brief background, always good because there's so much to automate enforcement, but a background on the current AE program.

And then we will review the proposed methodology for identifying new camera locations, cover the program financials, so how our revenue and expansion expenses are managed within the city. And finally, we'll highlight our equity considerations and how they are being integrated throughout the program. So while no formal action is requested today, this is an opportunity for discussion and feedback, which I do wanna emphasize given this is kind of the idea we're thinking moving forward. So I'd like to have this conversation now or follow-up later. Tacoma's automated enforcement program began in 2008 and initially was fully managed by the tow Tacoma Police Department.

In 2021, program administration and financial responsibility was transitioned to the public works department, although the police department does support the program still through administration of reviewing the citations. The city contracts with an automated enforcement vendor to provide and operate the photo enforcement technology, including cameras, software, and processing systems. The vendor also mails citations approved by the enforcement personnel. So the vendor supports program administration while the city retains all oversight and directs the revenues towards safety improvements. As we know, automated enforcement has been around for many years in The United States, in Washington, internationally, and research shows automated enforcement technology can have a positive traffic safety impact and deter dangerous driving.

It helps establish and reinforce community norms around safe driving through visibility, predictability, and accountability. In Tacoma, on average, 8088% of drivers receive a citation do not re offend, highlighting strong behavior change after a single violation. And a report that recently came out has that same statistic for Kirkland and Seattle as well. An initial analysis by the Washington Traffic Safety Commission of our Bay Street speed camera found that the share of vehicles traveling 10 miles per hour over the speed limit 10 miles per hour or more over the speed limit after it was installed dropped to less than 1%. So month after install, they subtracted for eleven months, and the total number of violations, so people receiving a citation, issued over that eleven month period decreased by approximately 62%.

So at first, it started at 6,700 we're getting a ticket, and then it went down to 2,500. In 2024, the legislature passed house bill two three eight four, which broadened the authority for local jurisdictions to use automated enforcement. The bill expanded eligible camera types and locations beyond school zones and red light intersections, with Tacoma having the only speed camera in the state up until that point. It but I wanna real quick clarify. So we can all have speed cameras, though the state did cap it by population.

So we can have 22 speed cameras. It also established new statewide guidance on transparency and equity, including conducting a preinstallation analysis and crash data, a safety justification such as speed data, and equity considerations. The legislation also established new financial rules, which Eric's gonna go into more later in the presentation. Public Works created an automated enforcement task force in early two thousand twenty five to bring community voices into the conversation about how and where Tacoma should expand the program. The task force provided input on topics such as location, public education and outreach, and our equity considerations.

The task force included community members representing a broad range of perspective perspectives, including the Tacoma Area Commission on Disabilities, the community's police advisory committee, transportation commission, bicycle pedestrian technical advisory group, and the Tacoma Pierce County Health Department making sure we had geographic diversity. Staff from the Office of Equity and Human Rights, the Tacoma Police Department, and Public Works participated as well. Over the course of six meetings, the task force members discussed balancing equity and effectiveness. While we have heard best practices caution against disproportionately impacting neighborhoods, and that was brought to the task force attention, the task force emphasized that withholding proven safety tools from communities with higher crash rates could perpetuate inequities. Overall, the task force strongly recommended a data driven approach to site selection and clear consistent communication and outreach to support transparency, build trust, and educate the public on the role of automated enforcement and improving safety.

So very briefly, I wanna touch upon privacy as this is often raised as a concern. So state law has built in safeguards for privacy and data protection. Cameras can only capture the vehicle license plate. It cannot capture people. The data can only be used by the city for its intended purpose and cannot be used in an unrelated court case. And there are also limits for how long that data can be kept. It must be deleted when it's no longer needed for processing or legal purposes. So it can only be used for red light camera if

that's the red light.

And then once you're done with it, it's gotta go away. Methodology post methodology. So the focus for the first phase will be speed cameras. Speed cameras offer the greatest safety impact and aligns with the data. For speed camera analysis, streets with the highest number of killed or seriously injured crashes were prioritized.

Using wash dot crash data from 2020 to 2025, the 15 streets with the most fatal and serious injury crashes were identified. While fatal and serious injury crashes also occur on other streets, their total numbers and concentration are generally lower and less severe. Next, the methodology applied a weighted crash score to represent crash severity. Fatal and serious injury crashes were assigned three points while minor injury and non injury crashes were assigned one point. This weighting aligns with VisionScale's priority of addressing fatal and serious injury crashes which are not only the most severe but are also the most strongly associated with speeding, the behavior targeted by our speed cameras.

Using the scoring system, the methodology then identified concentrations of crashes along each selected corridor. Research shows that speed enforcement cameras are most effective within approximately a half mile downstream of their location, while the strongest effect occurring within the first one tenth of a mile. To reflect this, each corridor was divided into one tenth mile segments and crash concentration within each segment was measured using the weighted crash score. Each one tenth mile segment is assigned a color based on its crash score with darker colors representing more points indicating more crashes and greater severity, and the lighter colors representing fewer points, so fewer crashes and less severity. The darker, more intense sections highlight where potential automated enforcement camera locations may be warranted.

However, these segments serve as a starting point. Starting with those darkest and highest concentration areas, public court staff, or she and Grayson, evaluated the crash type to determine whether a speed camera could be an appropriate countermeasure. So they dug into that crash data and started to eliminate some where it was kinda clear. It might be very much an intersection related crash or something else was going on. Next, after this crash analysis, we started identifying more locations or whittle it down.

Speed data is going to be collected to confirm if speeding is a contributor and to establish the preinstallation baseline data. Speed data will be an important part of deciding if a site is suitable as the RCW authorizes local governments to place cameras at locations where elevated crash with elevated crash risk from excessive speeds. And the last week and to like, up until a couple days ago, we were analyzing crashes. And now next week, you'll see tubes out on the road as we start collecting that speed data. Once we begin to narrow down locations, we will also conduct the state mandated equity analysis for each new potential location.

The analysis needs to consider livability, accessibility, economics, education, and environmental health. The state says we need to connect an analysis. Those are the categories, and that's it that it provides for guidance. There's nothing more out there. It just says look at this. We've looked at other cities to try to get an idea of what they're looking at when doing this equity analysis, and we've gotten the help of the Center for Strategic Priorities to also help us create what that equity analysis could look like for Tacoma. It's very complicated.

Carrie

Yeah. Those criteria completely align with the city's equity index.

Yeah. Joppa is suspicious about it at bit lines. So perfectly, actually. Would you need to introduce yourself?

Oh, how are doing? Good. You bet. Bet.

Thank you, Jesus.

That does not count against our time. Was a great lead in for complications. So again Eric Huseby, Assistant Division Manager for Public Works Transportation. When we met back in April we talked a little bit about financials and I thought we'd meet him a little bit a couple slides to talk about the financials of the program. The next two slides are going to talk through that.

There's a very important distinction though between old program which is what we're living under existing versus the new program which will be the governance of the state and the new expanded system. So we'll first talk a little bit about how the new how the existing program operates and you'll see here that so this is our TEE fund, our traffic engineering education enforcement fund that was created back in 2010. This fund supports broadly those efforts traffic enforcement, traffic education, traffic engineering. And you'll see here that automated enforcement is a component of that. They're a contributor into that fund along with some traditional traffic infractions.

We have some other additional revenues. Ultimately, that fund in 2024 brought in 2,900,000.0, so a lot of reinforcement is a significant contributor to that. And you'll see on the right hand side that those the expenses are absorbed through this program, including in lion shares, the traffic enforcement done through police department. I will note that those are not a one to one ratio with the program. That is the entire we believe it's the entire traffic unit for TBD. So, again, it goes off to offset that. There's a lot of confusion as it relates to why that isn't a one to one. The reality is at the time, there was acknowledgement that the general fund was supporting all those efforts and that this fund should be created and there's revenue streams to be able to offset that. So so there is a little bit of confusion. Sometimes you look at that and you say, okay.

Why is there so much enforcement associated with this particular program? But it's actually at the fund level. So the next slide here, though, talks about what it's gonna look like in the near future when we get an expanded system. So the the new system, the the revenues and expenses are governed by the new RCW 46 dot six three dot two two zero, and it's a very simple equation. Number one, you have to pay for operating expenses and any admin.

So and they have to be directly related to the program. So if you are not touching anything that's issuing the citation or doing engineer any engineer with respect to the program, you are not gonna be able to be offset by any of these of these new revenues. And then after that, after you get to a net revenue figure, all the remaining funds will will go to investing in traffic safety activities including construction we talked a little bit, council member Hines mentioned neighborhood traffic calming or any of those types of efforts so that certainly could be a consideration for these we haven't actually sat down and done that but you think complete streets or speed reducing road design, safety improvement, active transportation, even ADA and accessibility can be used for these funds can be used for. Just take a look over on the right hand side, we got a little bit of a flywheel where we how we think that the program is going to operate. So you start out in the upper right hand corner.

The camera is installed. There's revenue generated, and it goes to pay program expenses. And you invest in the traffic safety investments. Corridor safety is enhanced, and then potentially you take a look at whether or you still need to have that camera. That camera may be pulled out, moved, relocated. It can obviously stay there. But, ultimately, that's the kind of flywheel concept under the new program. We'll take a look at a little bit of an example corridor and how the how the mapping of this might kinda play out a little bit. So this was a corridor. So this is Pacific Avenue from 38 to 40 oh, Portland. Excuse me. Portland. Sorry. From 38 to 44th Street. This is some speed data back in 2022.

We did some extrapolation. And then annually, if you take a look at that segment, the vehicles that are passing through at six mile an hour and above were 450,000 annually so this is not an insignificant problem to have to try to govern. And so our efforts when we are going to roll out this program will start with education and outreach. So there's gonna be, you know, mailers. There's gonna be neighborhood meetings.

There's gonna be social media. There's a requirement to post signs thirty days in advance of any sort of activation of those cameras. After the activation, we are going to be issuing warnings for the first thirty days. All this will be done under the context of a multilingual approach to make sure that people understand what's happening. But if we just do some real quick mapping on that, generally, 450,000, when you talk to consultants and you look at other peer cities, there's about a 70% ish reduction just off the top with the first three or four efforts once people know that the cameras are in there.

And then after that, once you start issuing citations, you drive that down by about another 90%, ultimately, kinda normalizes down there. But if you play those numbers out, what ends up happening is the gross revenue just on a quarter like this would be conservatively about $800,000 a year. Pull out some vendor expenses and admin expenses and those types of things. You're probably sitting at some net revenues in in excess of about $600,000, not just sit in one single corridor. So I think council member Diaz, you had some questions last time about the significance of the revenue coming in here and what could that pay for. And I think everybody's saying we don't even know if we could pay for a crosswalk or whatever. There's there's a heck of a

lot of crosswalks and things that we can pay for some of

those treatments that Brennan and team brought up with this revenue. This is not a significant revenue that we're talking about. And, our emphasis here is more on the safety piece of this thing, right, and and being able to mobilize that revenue in order to invest in that infrastructure. So, potentially you don't need to have those cameras right because we can engineer ourselves into a safer environment for sure. So and then I'll just end with kind of a quick summary.

As Carrie had mentioned we have our five speed cameras that's kind of phase one that we're looking at. We're looking at that the 2026. And then if we start working out all those kinks to make sure we understand how our outreach works, then we're just we're we may just kind of plow through pretty quickly on on additional sites. Equity, as Carrie mentioned, is embedded throughout the program. I think of it in terms of three buckets really where where equity kind of is infused.

One is where we put our camera placements. Right? And so as Carrie mentioned, those are data driven approach. It is it really does mean that the systems are installed for the safety of all users right so there's kind of an equity spin there and communities where these are installed individuals pedestrians bicyclists just all road users are safer So that's one piece of it. The second bucket I think about citations. Right? So how do you try to infuse equity into one if somebody does get issued a citation? So we we did talk about that. There's a thirty day period warning period. There's also for low income recipients of citations.

There's a 50% off the first citation. So right now, our citation levels are a $124. That reduces it down to 62. There's payment plans that that are associated with that. So that tends to be an onerous amount out for your monthly budget. You can certainly look at payment plans. All these citations are considered parking infractions, right, under the heading as a category, so they do not impact insurance or your driving record. So that's another piece of it. And then the third bucket that I look at when we talk about equity, I think really kind of hits it out of the park, it's going to be the infrastructure investments. Right?

Being informed by the equity index and being able to earmark those investments in areas of need. I will say that the state law does mandate a proportionality kind of look at of the low income environments and if there's a crossover with high collision or crash data it does mandate that we do a proportionate share of that revenue to those environments, but we also have contemplated other opportunities for even if even if there's not that overlap for us to be able to invest in those communities. So next step for council, we we would anticipate coming back in early twenty twenty six. This is a one final touch point before we actually start rolling out the cameras because

we know there's gonna be a

lot of questions. I wanna be able to share with you kind of what we've done for outreach or what we're planning on doing outreach. Maybe even then by then, we'll have some specific camera locations that we kinda talk through to make sure that everyone is aware. We will plan on trying to do that with study session because it's important enough for the entire council to have optics on this on this particular program. So and with that,

we're slightly open.

Yeah. That's great.

Great. Thank you, guys. This is really, really great and exciting progress since the last time we saw it. So council colleagues, you get one question each. And Not a multi part one. This is informational only, so we're not taking a vote on it, and it will come to full council. It sounds like q one?

Yep. That's what we're hoping for.

Yeah.

So timeline wise, what's the earliest we can actually get cannabis on street?

Oh, is it me? Because I have, like, ideas for the location. Just gotta get

that speed data. I think there's

We've been targeting q one. So we've been targeting Yeah. Tail end of q one as cameras in the ground.

Okay. Councilman Redds.

Is there a state law limit on how many red light cameras or school zone cameras we can have?

There is not. Okay. Can I can

I add to that just for some context? Anything on that list with the exception of speed cameras. Speed cameras is the only one that has limitation. Anything else is unlimited. So hospital zones, park zones.

When you showed the well, have a chain.

It's, like,

a lot of intersections. So it's, like, part of it is, like, could

we also have intersection cameras?

But that's that's all I want.

Y'all know I hate these cameras. I I guess my one question, if I only get one, is who owns the company who has the data? Is that all still in Arizona? Is it some other place, and does it connect with other cameras It's not in your systems?

It does not. So I think and and Carrie mentioned the data privacy piece. Right? It's it's pretty well protected person. Identifiable information related. So they follow all those rules. The company that we contract with, I think, is headquartered out of Florida because it's not Arizona. So

because I know the old ones. I think the pipe one is Arizona.

Yeah. I think there's a separate

Is it a different it's a different system than the current cameras? Mhmm. And this one's out of Florida. Mhmm. I have a lot more questions about the data privacy and a lot of concerns about that. I have other questions, but can I ask about more of that? I think you said this, the proportionality around where the fees are raised versus where they can be used. That's step there's a proportionality in it, but it's not a direct if all the camera money is made on Portland Ave, it doesn't all have to be can we spend it only in Portland Ave, or do we have to spend it in other places?

No. There is no restriction on where you can spend it with the exception of that. So that proportionality is you take a look at the lowest quartile income in in the city, and then you overlay that with crash data. And if there's an overlay there and there's an intersection, you have to proportionally invest in that in that community. Mhmm. Anything outside of that, there is no regulation

or Okay. So they're not cap? Nope. Like, we can spend it all on the right for the left hand? Yep. Okay. Thank you.

That was actually one of my questions, so I'm trying to figure out which one.

I know you have one more.

I'll probably just do a a separate meeting with you, quite frankly.

Is that your third separate meeting? Probably. Stay busy.

Did you guys mention that it's not only the I remember seeing the 88% don't get another Mhmm. Ticket, but it's also true that 70% don't live in the area of

speed cameras. Correct? No. Well, let's take let's take

a look at some of

our data from our existing system. Just actually ran these numbers today for the last six months. When you look at within the ZIP code where cameras was issued, about 5% of the citations come from the same ZIP code work.

Wow. That's actually even better because that was one of my my one of my original concerns was are we just are we just ticketing ourselves? Right? And then the fact is the data shows that we aren't. And I'm glad that you picked Portland Ave because it goes to actually, it goes to a comment that our guests put in. Often, it is pass through traffic. Right? Like, Portland Ave has pass through traffic. When there's when there's a backup on I 5, you go to 512 and up Portland Ave, right, to get around it. And then, obviously, people who don't live in the area may not have the same consideration in how fast they go. So that that one was important. So you said 5%? Or

5% within ZIP code. If you were to actually look at that at a citywide level, so how much do we actually talk about? How do we ticket ourselves? Right now, well, last six months was 34%.

Okay.

So Yeah. And then, I mean,

there there's a lot of statistics here,

but one of the other things I would share too is just real quick is, we actually have our vendor do it overlay on the equity index right low to high opportunities of opportunity. System wide right now with the same six month data about 1.4% of the citations end up in areas of very low opportunity which seems to be a pretty good number. If you take low and very low you're at roughly about 6%

and on the flip side of that if

you look at the very high and high, about 60% of the recipients are are in that bucket. So it's about 15.9% between those two buckets. And so, you that's one of the things we hear a lot which is when this thing goes to my neighborhood I'm going to be really hammered and it doesn't the recent statistics don't seem to play that out and we have peer kind of compare that with other cities and it seems to be about that same sort of I mean these are not anomalies when it when it

comes to that. So K.

Great. Thank you. So, again, if you have follow-up questions, we have time before this gets implemented, so please reach out to staff. Thank you so much.

This is

really, really great. Alright. Topics for upcoming meetings with Annalene.

Oh, I can do that. You wanna just stop it? Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. We're gonna move on to other items of interest, and there are many tonight, which is period setting. The committee has received four letters. Three are from the climate and sustainability commission related to recommendations on, number one, transportation impact fees and wastewater and stormwater system development charges. Number two, the stud tide flat sub area plan.

And number three, updating the critical area coordinates. Those are in your inbox, so please take a look at those. And then we did also receive a letter from the transportation commission on transportation impact fees and wastewater and storm water system development charges. Those are all in your email from Anna. The committee also received a memorandum from Tacoma's chapter of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, ILWU, requesting a section of East Alexander Avenue be honorarily named Willie Adams Way in recognition of ILWU's seventh president.

These materials will be available to the public on Legislature after the meeting, and they were sent to you by Anna as well. And I know we have Jared Baker from ILUWU online. Jared, I just wanna pass it over to you if you wanna say a few words about this. And you don't have to if you don't want to. But

Okay. Well, no. Thank you. Good evening. I wasn't expecting to actually speak. So so yeah. No. I mean, that's a really important thing for for the ILW. Willie is a member of Local twenty three beginning in 1978, lasting through 2003. Very influential person in the community. And, yeah, this this renaming would be would be befitting of his stature and what he's done. So I'd be happy to answer any questions. I don't have any any, prepared remarks. So

Yeah. No worries. Thank you for being here, Jared, and thank you for submitting the request. And, Anna, the they've already gone through significant part of the, process on this, and so the next step is just for us to quote to send it to the full council. Correct. Okay. So if there are any questions on this one, otherwise, I'll take a motion.

I move to forward the proposed honor and naming of Willie Adams Way to the full city council for consideration. Second.

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

Aye.

Aye. Alright. The motion is declared adopted. We'll look forward to seeing that in a larger presentation. Again, those materials are in your packet so you can take a look. And, Jared, we'll see you at the poll council.

Thank you very much. Have a great night.

Alright. With that, there's no other items on our agenda. Are there any other items of interest from the council members? Alright. I will entertain the final motion.

We gotta go back.

Great. Thank you, Anna. With that, I'll take your mental motion.

Come on, sir.

Second. Call us a favor. Please say yes. Aye. We'll see you on the jury.

Thank you.