Ed Board takes on airport, police chases, more
January brings the opportunity for reflection and a chance to look toward the future. It can be a time for honest assessments and fresh beginnings.
On The News Tribune Editorial Board, we’ve recently engaged in a little bit of all of it. In November, we announced the expansion of the board and welcomed two new community representatives: former Washington State Fair CEO Kent Hojem and Amanda Figueroa, an Eastside resident who works in student affairs at the University of Washington Tacoma. Along with former Tacoma City Manager Jim Walton, who joined the TNT editorial board two years ago, the additions represent a commitment we’ve made to better reflect the diversity of the community we serve.
As a newly expanded board, we’ve spent recent weeks getting to know each other while establishing our shared purpose and the principles that guide us. These discussions have been lively and exciting. One thing we all share is a passion for Tacoma and Pierce County and a genuine desire to see people thrive. It feels like a good starting point.
In that spirit, we’ve decided to bring back an old favorite: The News Tribune Editorial Board’s annual civic agenda.
For 30 years, the TNT Editorial Board published its civic agenda each January, identifying the issues and themes its members believed would demand the community’s attention over the coming year. Last published in 2018, the goal, to quote former News Tribune publisher Dave Zeeck, was to “set a tone and also to guide our work.”
In other words, the TNT Editorial Board’s civic agenda is designed to be a rundown of the things its members think will matter most in the coming year: what we think you should be watching, and what we’ll be tracking and advocating for as a board.
Affordable housing and homelessness
A building is under construction to become affordable housing units for members of the Hilltop community and people of Tacoma at 1124 Martin Luther King Jr. Way on Thursday, March 24, 2022 in Tacoma, Wash.
New sales tax
It should come as no surprise that attacking Pierce County’s severe shortage of affordable housing while also addressing homelessness and its root causes top our list of priorities. The two crises go hand-in-hand. You can see the impact every day, whether it’s long-time residents getting priced out of their neighborhoods or the explosion of unhoused residents seeking refuge along our streets and sidewalks.
So what can we do about it in 2023? While these complex societal problems are unlikely to be solved over the next 12 months, there are two specific local actions that would put us in a better place by this time next year.
First, the Pierce County Council must find a way to come together and pass a one-tenth of 1 percent sales tax to fund affordable housing and related services. By county charter, passing any new tax requires a supermajority of council support. Reaching the threshold of five votes might not be easy, but it’s essential.
Here’s why: According to the county’s Housing Action Strategy, Pierce County must build roughly 50,000 units of housing affordable to individuals making 50% of area median income or less by 2044 to meet the need. Of those 50,000 units, over half must be affordable to households earning 30% or less of AMI. For perspective, Pierce County’s household AMI is roughly $80,000 annually. There’s simply no way that the private market alone will build the affordable housing we need. Whether we like it or not, a local affordable housing sales tax — which in Pierce County would cost taxpayers roughly $16 a year while bringing in $20 million annually in revenue — is one of the few tools provided by the state Legislature to help.
Luckily, there’s good news (or at least a reason for hope): In mid-December, the County Council was given the opportunity to pass the affordable housing sales tax but voted instead to continue its discussion in March. While that might sound like a letdown, it was South Hill Republican Dave Morell — perhaps the most likely to side with the Council’s four Democrats to reach a supermajority — who made the motion to extend deliberations.
In the past, Morell has shown a willingness to support new taxes, provided the county does its legwork and has a firm plan in place for how the money will be spent and how taxpayers will be protected from waste. As he said after the December vote, Morell is well aware that “affordable housing is part of the solution in addressing the homelessness crisis in Pierce County.”
As a responsible steward of public resources, Morell isn’t wrong to demand accountability and clear accounting from the county before taxpayers face an increase. It’s his job.
But we’re confident that any lingering concerns about the proposed tax — which has been passed by nine counties and five cities across the state — can be adequately addressed here in the coming months.
Pierce County needs the revenue, and it needs it fast.
Micro-home village
Continuing to address Pierce County’s crisis of homelessness will require bipartisan cooperation in 2023.
That’s why Pierce County Executive Bruce Dammeier and the Democratic majority on the County Council must put egos and power struggles aside this year and find a way to work together to make the county’s proposed micro-home village for the chronically homeless a reality.
There’s a lot to like about the proposed community, which is essentially a large-scale permanent supportive housing project. It would provide a home to more than 250 chronically homeless people, according to the County Executive’s plans, while providing them with jobs, services and — perhaps most important, in the estimation of the executive’s team — a sense of community and direction.
Modeled after a program based in Austin, Texas, the county’s vision is bold and transformative — precisely the kind of urgency the crisis of homelessness requires. There are roughly 1,600 individuals experiencing chronic homelessness in Pierce County, according to counts that are likely low, and there’s no doubt that long-term housing and support services are desperately needed for one of the most difficult populations to serve.
There are roadblocks and nagging unanswered questions, as The News Tribune Editorial Board explained late last year.
For starters, despite spending months studying the project’s proposed site on 27 buildable acres just off Spanaway Loop Road, in November an unexpected zoning challenge was discovered — just days before the Council was scheduled to vote on the release of $22 million in American Rescue Act money to help fund the micro-home village. We’re not entirely sure how that’s possible, but it doesn’t matter much at this point.
Here’s what we do know: The site’s original review led county officials to believe only a conditional-use permit would be required, but it’s now clear that a code change will be necessary to construct the project where it’s been envisioned. Democratic County Council members Ryan Mello and Jani Hitchen have also rightfully demanded that difficult environmental mitigation questions be answered, which county staff remains confident can be tackled. If the site that’s been selected is truly the best location for the micro-home village, all of these challenges would need to be navigated in a bipartisan fashion.
The long-term financial viability of the proposed micro-home village also provides a reason for pause. As pitched by the executive’s office, the project relies on ARPA funds the council conditionally set aside in 2021 and millions more in grants and private investments. Particularly in the current economic climate, banking on philanthropy money and the eagerness of local providers to pitch in and help is risky. In our view, a project of this scope and ambition requires more public investment.
If Pierce County is willing to spend more than $20 million in one-time money from the feds because it believes in the project, it should be willing to identify a dedicated source of public funding for years to come.
The project is simply too important to shortchange.
New Puget Sound airport
We won’t bury the lead: We’re not sold on the need for a massive new airport to serve the Puget Sound region, and we’re even more skeptical that building one in rural Pierce County is a good idea.
If there’s one thing supporters and critics should be able to agree on, it’s that putting an airport capable of serving 20 million travelers a year near Graham and Roy would forever alter the local landscape. A decision of this magnitude demands careful consideration of the potential regional benefits and the steep local costs. In our view, that has yet to happen.
The state’s Commercial Aviation Coordinating Commission has spent nearly three years trying to identify the best possible location for a new airport and is currently set to make its final recommendation later this year. That’s a lot of time and a lot of effort. None of that is lost on us.
Still, we believe the process should be started anew in 2023. Of the four locations the commission identified as finalists last year, two are in rural Pierce County and another is in Thurston County, northeast of Tenino. Notably, lawmakers barred the commission from putting a location in King County on its list of finalists, eliminating from consideration a site near Enumclaw that the state Department of Transportation has identified as perhaps the best possible fit for a new airport.
Last week, Commercial Aviation Coordinating Commission acting chair Warren Hendrickson told lawmakers that sites identified as commission finalists in Pierce and Thurston might have “showstoppers” that could make them not viable. These developments alone provide ample reason to hit the brakes.
Here’s the larger picture: We all know the area is growing, and we can all appreciate projections that suggest Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and Paine Field in Everett won’t be large enough to meet the needs of travelers and commerce in the coming decades. But that’s not to say that the premise for building a new Puget Sound regional airport shouldn’t be critically questioned. There’s no such thing as an eco-friendly airport, despite suggestions to the contrary. And there’s no way to prevent an airport from forever altering the local landscape, wherever you put it.
Are there less environmentally catastrophic ways for us to meet the needs of travelers and commerce without building a massive new airport in some community that doesn’t want it — like investing in high-speed rail infrastructure to heavily traveled regional destinations?
Have all the potential alternatives really been considered?
A new airport would obliterate rural Pierce County.
That’s not a decision to be taken lightly.
Crime and public safety
Police pursuit
If there’s a theme in our 2023 civic agenda, it’s a familiar one: the need for genuine, bipartisan cooperation.
Making our communities safer in 2023 while working to address the underlying factors that contribute to crime will require it.
In 2021, the state Legislature passed a host of police reform bills. In the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of law enforcement in Minneapolis and Manuel Ellis’ in Tacoma, all of them were well-intentioned efforts designed to address a legitimate problem in our society: biased policing and continued patterns of excessive use of force, particularly against people of color. For instance, a ban on the police use of chokeholds, no-knock warrants and certain kinds of military gear was long overdue.
But two years later, one change — which sets strict limits on when police officers can pursue a suspect — has clearly been a mistake.
It’s time to fix the error, with lawmakers, advocates and law enforcement setting differences aside and doing what’s best for the people of Washington.
While parsing crime data is difficult and precise cause-effect conclusions can be dangerous — not to mention fodder for political warfare – the spike in Washington car thefts is illustrative. According to many in law enforcement, including Pierce County Prosecutor Mary Robnett, limits on police pursuit have contributed to the problem. It’s one reason why Steven Strachan, executive director of the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, recently urged the Legislature to make changes to the law this year. It’s the same thing The News Tribune Editorial Board heard from political candidates on both sides of the aisle during the 2022 election endorsement cycle: the law has had unintended negative consequences.
“Recent policies restricting pursuits made driving a car a ‘get out of jail free’ card and creates conditions that empower criminals, jeopardize public safety, and diminishes the rule of law in Washington,” Strachan wrote in the WASPC’s pre-session statement last week. “We can fix the pursuit law to fall in line with Washington State’s duty of care standards and enable more discretion in engaging in police vehicle pursuits in a manner that offers a balance between the risk of the pursuit versus the reasons(s) for the pursuit.”
That balance is key. This isn’t about turning back the clock and returning to the way things were. There are valid reasons for limiting police pursuits — namely, that they’re often not worth the danger they inflict on communities. That’s why Tacoma police already had a policy limiting pursuits prior to the state law being passed.
Still, cops on the street need more discretion than they’re currently allowed under state law to decide when (and if) to engage in the pursuit of a criminal suspect.
Blake decision
Much like the Legislature’s 2021 effort to limit police pursuits, the state Supreme Court’s Blake decision the same year, which struck down Washington’s felony drug possession law, wasn’t designed to create havoc and anguish on our streets. Neither was the Legislature’s subsequent response, which made possession a misdemeanor on the third violation.
In the wake of the clearly failed national war on drugs — which helped to incarcerate millions of Americans and inflicted particular harm on communities of color while doing little to stop or prevent addiction — both provided an opportunity to find new approaches to an age-old but growing societal problem.
Today, these changes to state law have contributed to a perfect storm. We don’t think addiction should be criminalized in a traditional sense and believe that vastly expanding drug treatment and prevention efforts while also addressing the underlying causes of addiction are the true keys to success. But we’re also confident the current status quo isn’t working.
In essence, Washington has done the easy part, acknowledging that the state’s approach to drug use as a criminal matter was deeply flawed. We’ve embraced the de facto legalization of drug possession, but we haven’t created the alternatives, incentives and expanded services people need to turn their lives around.
In the coming 2023 legislative session, there’s little doubt that lawmakers will once again wrangle with the issue. As Crosscut’s Joseph O’Sullivan recently reported, options include making drug possession a gross misdemeanor. If possession isn’t a crime, it’s more difficult to compel people into the treatment they need, according to many lawmakers and law enforcement officials.
It’s a polarizing argument. But at its heart there’s an undeniable truth: simply repealing drug laws isn’t enough.
“I think there’s a diversity of views in the Legislature about what the right approach is,” Senate Majority Leader Andy Billig, a Democrat from Spokane, told Crosscut. “But I do feel like there’s a consensus building to do something that’s public-health focused, but also a little bit of an increased role in the justice system.”
Let’s hope.
Lifting people up
Particularly over the course of the 2022 election cycle, partisan politics got in the way of sincere dialogue regarding crime in our communities and the best way to prevent it.
Candidates and the general public engaged in debates over the need for more cops and stronger laws, while the true causes of crime — poverty, despair, systemic racism and a lack of opportunity — were too often left out of the conversation.
That’s a mistake, and a troubling one. Improving public safety isn’t about sound bites and hot takes; it’s about putting emotions aside and pursuing policies that actually work and improve people’s lives.
That’s why in 2023, we’d like to see a continued emphasis on programs that get at the root of the problem, lifting people up and out of poverty before they commit crimes instead of locking them up after they do.
One local initiative, a partnership between the city of Tacoma, the national group Mayors for a Guaranteed Income and the United Way Pierce County — called Growing Resilience In Tacoma, or GRIT for short — showed promise last year. The program provided 110 local families with $500 a month for 12 months, making it one of the most exciting guaranteed income initiatives in the country.
As Alexandra Yoon-Hendricks of the Seattle Times recently reported, the program — which issued its last checks in November 2022 — is expected to release a final progress report in summer 2024. What we know right now is that the vast majority of the distributed funds, which went to families between 100% and 200% of the federal poverty level, were used on necessities like groceries, utilities, housing and local retail sales.
“When you’re looking at how people are lifting themselves out of poverty, that is a huge game-changer,” Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards, who’s a member of the group Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, told the Times. “It’s showing that it’s possible.”
Another effort — which will be considered by the state Legislature this year — is perhaps even more exciting. Sponsored in part by Sen. Yasmin Trudeau, D-Tacoma, the proposed Washington Future Fund would invest $4,000 for every child born in Washington who receives Medicaid through the state’s Apple Health before their first birthday, or roughly 40,000 babies a year. If the child is still in financial aid when they reach 18, they would be eligible to apply for money through the future fund that could be put toward the purchase of a home, the start of a business or their education. In essence, it would provide lower-income children in Washington with the same advantage many wealthier children are lucky enough to be born into — the financial backing to reach their potential.
Both programs would lift people out of poverty, and lifting people out of poverty happens to be one of the best ways to improve public safety and prevent crime in the first place.
Education and employment
the Tacoma Community College campus is flooded with students, September 26, 2017.
College and trade school enrollment
To be the place we all want it to be, Tacoma and Pierce County can’t exist as a bedroom community for the north.
To achieve the South Sound’s promise, we need good-paying jobs and expanded access to post-secondary educational opportunities, along with resources to support students enrolled in local colleges, universities and trade schools once they’re there.
In 2023, local leaders should continue to make addressing these challenges a priority. When the pipeline from high school graduation to the workforce is fractured or incomplete, we all suffer.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, struggles with enrollment and a steep decline in incoming students at community and technical colleges have been well-publicized. Statewide, the statistics are jarring. Between fall 2019 and fall 2021, as Nina Shapiro of the Seattle Times has reported, there was a combined 24% drop in enrollment.
Meanwhile, at the University of Washington Tacoma downtown — a local university that serves many local first-generation students – enrollment dropped from 5,330 in autumn 2019 to 4,801 at the same time in 2022, roughly consistent with the 7% drop in undergraduates experienced at public four-year institutions across the state. Combine this with the historical challenges Washington has had trying to increase the number of students applying for federal college financial aid — including in Tacoma, where FAFSA applications dropped nearly three percentage points between the 2020-2021 school year and the 2021-2022 school year — and it’s enough to worry local officials.
The question, then, is what’s to be done about it? While there’s no doubt that college isn’t the answer for everyone— and we need to continue to promote excellent career pathways in the trades — the fact remains: people who earn a college degree or career certificate earn substantially more than those who don’t, on average, while also providing the engine for local entrepreneurship and job creation.
In our view, the focus should be on bolstering and improving existing programs well suited to help address the problem.
Pierce County Strong, a countywide effort to improve college and post-secondary preparedness, enrollment and completion is one of them. Graduate Tacoma’s Pierce County Pathways program is another. Focused on improving outcomes for local high school graduates — and particularly students of color and low-income students — both have shown significant promise.
We should collectively lean into them.
Downtown Tacoma, Washington, on Aug. 24, 2021.
Job creation
Once local students graduate from a Pierce County college, university or technical school — or if they go straight from high school to the workforce — they deserve to also have job opportunities close to home.
For years, that’s been an issue in the South Sound. Prior to the pandemic, thousands of workers commuted to King County every day. While remote work has likely eased commute times, it hasn’t solved the more significant problem: There simply aren’t enough local, good-paying jobs to be had.
In 2023, we urge Tacoma and Pierce County officials to continue their focus on rectifying this deficiency, particularly through the local support of programs designed to boost businesses owned by women and people of color.
Two, in particular, stand out. While both have their origins in COVID-19 pandemic response, they provide a blueprint for what can be accomplished when targeted investments are made in local businesses that deserve it.
In October 2021, the county’s economic department established the Pierce County Business Accelerator program, and the Pierce County Council allocated $5 million in federal funding to jumpstart it. The goal was simple: Provide local small businesses with the training, assistance and support they need to weather the coronavirus and succeed. Of the 200 businesses selected to participate, 93% were minority-owned, 70% were owned by women and 14% were owned by military veterans.
Spanning multiple industries, from personal service and retail to construction and the arts, by September 2022 105 of the participating businesses had raised more than $2.7 million in capital, according to a program status report that month. Nearly 3,000 hours of professional services and coaching hours had also been utilized.
The Thrive Tacoma Business Fund engaged in equally inspiring work. A partnership between the Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber of Commerce, the city of Tacoma and Comcast, last year the program awarded more than $100,000 in grants to 21 small local businesses, all of them BIPOC, women- or veteran-owned. Each recipient received a $5,000 grant along with business-related training and technical support. While $5,000 might not be a king’s ransom, oftentimes support and a small investment are all local businesses need to take the next step.
So what does the future hold, and how big is the need?
Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber president and CEO Andrea Reay recently told The News Tribune that the future of Pierce County’s Business Accelerator program is uncertain; she’s hoping a public-private partnership of some kind can keep it alive.
Meanwhile, 21 small businesses were lucky enough to benefit from the Thrive Tacoma Business Fund, but that number pales in comparison to the roughly 800 local business owners who applied.
In 2023, we should double down on our support of both programs, and others like it.
The News Tribune Editorial Board is: Matt Driscoll, opinion editor; Stephanie Pedersen, TNT president and editor; Jim Walton, community representative; Amanda Figueroa, community representative; Kent Hojem, community representative.