Tacoma Mall TOD upzone
Rezone the 1.4-square-mile Tacoma Mall Transit-Oriented Development corridor for true mid-rise mixed-use. Eliminate parking minimums within a half-mile of any Pierce Transit Stream BRT stop.
Every position below names a program, a dollar amount, or a date. If you want to know how I'll get it done, the email is at the bottom of the page.
Tacoma greenlit 1,944 new units in 2024. Seattle did 7,800 with twice the population. We are short-staffing our own future.
Rezone the 1.4-square-mile Tacoma Mall Transit-Oriented Development corridor for true mid-rise mixed-use. Eliminate parking minimums within a half-mile of any Pierce Transit Stream BRT stop.
City contributes surplus parcels and a $40M revolving fund as ground-floor equity in mixed-income builds with a 20% deeply affordable set-aside (≤60% AMI).
A 5% annual assessed-value tax on ground-floor commercial space sitting empty over 12 months in Hilltop, Stadium, Lincoln, and Eastside. Proceeds fund tenant improvements for new small businesses.
Triple the rental-housing inspection staff. Mandatory escrow of rent on units with open Class-1 violations until repairs are certified.
Pierce Transit fares are $2 a ride. The 1 comes every 38 minutes. We can fix both inside one term.
Eliminate Pierce Transit fares. Fund through a 0.45% corporate-payroll expense tax indexed to firms with annual Tacoma payroll above $7M. The math pencils. The model is Seattle's JumpStart.
Restore Route 1 frequency to pre-2019 service: 12-minute weekday peak, 20-minute off-peak, 30-minute Sunday.
Hold Sound Transit accountable to the 2018 ST3 promise of the Hilltop Link extension. Use the mayor's seat on the ST board to keep it funded.
$60M over four years for the Pedestrian Master Plan. Heated bus shelters at every Stream BRT stop. Tactile paving at every signalized intersection by end of term.
Tacoma PD takes an average of 14 minutes to answer a 911 call. We are spending $90M a year on a system that is not actually keeping anybody safe.
Stand up a 24/7 mobile crisis-response team for mental-health, welfare-check, and substance-use calls. Pierce County 988 already has the dispatch backbone. Model is Eugene OR, in operation since 1989.
Full body-cam release on any use-of-force incident within 30 days. Civilian Police Oversight Board with subpoena power and a hire-and-fire vote on the chief.
$8M/year into community-violence-intervention programs. Funded YMCA after-school programming through HS in every Tacoma Public Schools zip with above-average juvenile arrest rates.
Tacoma cleared 49% of 2024 homicides. National average is 53%. Adding 12 detectives and outside DNA-lab contracts to push above 70% by end of term.
Commencement Bay rises 3.2 mm a year. Our 2040 Climate Action Plan is missing every benchmark. Time for plans that bind, not plans that aspirate.
Pass a binding municipal ordinance: 50% cut in citywide GHG emissions from 2015 baseline by 2032. Annual audit by an outside firm. Penalties on city departments that miss interim targets.
Use the city's leverage on the Tacoma LNG facility re-permitting to phase it out by 2034. Fund job-transition packages for every worker on it.
Tacoma's tree canopy is 19% city-wide and 8% in Eastside. Mandate cool-roof retrofits on commercial > 50,000 sqft. Plant 25,000 trees in canopy-poor zips first, by end of term.
Establish a managed-retreat fund for Tideflats residential and small-business parcels in the 0-3-ft sea-rise zone. Buy-back-at-fair-value pilot in year one.
I taught at Lincoln for four years. I know what it costs when a city decides school is somebody else's problem.
Launch a city pre-K program with 22 sites by end of term, sliding-scale to free. Funded by a 0.1% real-estate-excise-tax bump on sales over $1.5M.
Subsidized after-school care at every Tacoma Public Schools elementary, every weekday until 6 p.m., capped at $40/week per child for households under 80% AMI.
Universal free breakfast and lunch at every TPS school regardless of income, funded by the city if Olympia keeps stalling.
Reinstate the Mayor's Summer Jobs Program at scale: 2,200 paid placements per summer for 14-to-19-year-olds, $19/hour, with real career pathways into city departments and partner trades.
I started a wholesale supplier in this city in 2024. I know exactly how many windows of permit I had to climb through.
A unified small-business-permit portal that runs business, building, fire, and health in parallel, not in series. Hard 30-day clock with auto-approval if the city misses it.
Every permitting interface, every form, in Korean, Spanish, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Russian. Bilingual case manager assigned at intake.
Set aside 25% of city procurement under $250K for businesses headquartered within Tacoma city limits. Quarterly published scorecard.
Up to $30K matching grants for ground-floor improvements in Hilltop, Lincoln District, and Eastside business corridors. Priority for first-generation immigrant-owned and Black-owned small business.
Sign up. We'll email the full 38-page policy book next week.