Sneak Peek: Tacoma City Council This Week

The City Council will be back up to full speed this week, with a full agenda, and quite a few important issues to deal with.

Budget Review

This week’s study session promises to be action-packed, or at least packed chock full of status reports. Most notably, we’re expecting to hear a presentation of the independent financial review of the City’s budget. We’ll see how those numbers measure up next to the numbers that staff and Council have been operating on to date. Unions, employees, and Tacomans in general will be hoping to hear that the budget shortfall will be less than the $31 million forecasted.

Layoffs

Also on the agenda, and related to the budget status, is a review of the status of the layoff of non public safety City employees. Layoffs were scheduled to take effect last week, and more than a dozen employees won’t be returning to work this week (14, according to a TNT article on Friday. This is significantly fewer than the 67 positions originally proposed. The City has been able to save some jobs by transferring the work to non-general fund supported departments, demoting some employees, and offering early retirement buy-outs to others. According to The News Tribune, 39 non public safety employees accepted $12,000 early retirement offers, reducing the number of actual layoffs significantly. That’s the good news. The bad news is that this is just the first round of layoffs. When the dust settles, there will probably be a few more people without jobs; the question is how many. We’ll hear more on Tuesday.

Elks on Broadway

Also due for a status update is the Elks on Broadway Project. Things have been a little quiet on that front recently, so we’re looking forward to learning how the project is progressing.

Down the road…

The Council will also be setting several public hearing dates for upcoming topics. Some not so exciting (alley paving, etc). Some likely to draw a bit of attention (downtown off street parking regs). And one little item we’re guessing at least a few of you will want to put on your calendars; the proposed amendments to the Land Use Regulatory Code regarding large retail uses. Tomorrow the Council will hear a resolution to set Tuesday, January 31st as the public hearing date for that bad boy.

After all that, the regular agenda is relatively short, with the highlights being the public hearing for the establishment of a Transportation Benefit District to fund and make improvements to the City’s transportation system, and the first citizen’s forum of 2012.

Welcome to 2012 … here we go!