Happy fall, Tacoma! 

As many of you know, this is my favorite time of year. While I’m always a little sad to see summer come to an end, I love the change of seasons, the return of football, the start of a new school year, and everything that comes with settling back into a more predictable routine. 

The last month of summer was a busy one for the Hines family, with plenty of soccer tournaments, baseball games, and community events keeping us on the move. I’m not sure my kids are quite as excited as I am about getting back into the school-year schedule, but I think we’re all ready for it. 

It was also another busy month across Tacoma, with lots of great things happening throughout our city. I’m excited to share a few highlights from the past month and get you caught up on some of the work, events, and conversations that have been keeping me busy.

I'm also pleased to share that the City Council will be hosting our first in-district Council meeting at the STAR Center on September 30, starting at 6:00 p.m. Hope to see you there! 

This is a generational investment in Tacoma’s streets and sidewalks. Over the next decade, Connect Tacoma is expected to support approximately $320 million in transportation investments when voter-approved funding is combined with grants and partnerships. I’m thankful to everyone who participated in the conversation and to the voters who supported this work. Now comes the important part: making sure we put those resources to work responsibly and deliver the safer, better-connected Tacoma our community expects. 

You can learn more about Connect Tacoma here: tacoma.gov/connecttacoma. 

I’ve been a strong supporter of automated enforcement for a long time. Back in 2021, I traveled to Olympia to advocate for giving cities more ability to use this tool, and I’m excited to see that work becoming reality. We absolutely need to continue investing in safer street design, sidewalks, crossings, and other infrastructure, which we will be doing through Connect Tacoma, but we also need tools that encourage people to slow down today. These cameras are used for traffic enforcement, with state law limiting images to the vehicle and license plate, and they are one more piece of our larger effort to eliminate fatal and serious crashes on Tacoma streets. My hope is that as we learn from these first locations, we can continue looking at other parts of Tacoma where speeding and dangerous driving remain persistent concerns.

Learn more about Tacoma’s Vision Zero and automated enforcement work at tacoma.gov/automatedenforcement.

Tacoma Public Safety Partnership 

Public safety is also about more than enforcement. It’s about making sure residents understand what their Police Department is doing, why decisions are made, and having meaningful opportunities to ask questions and share their own experiences. That’s why I’m also excited about Police Chief Patti Jackson’s new Tacoma Public Safety Partnership, an 18-month pilot that will bring community members together with Tacoma Police leadership and employee representatives for regular conversations about policing and public safety. Participants will learn more about department operations, policies, training, accountability, and real-world cases while also bringing their own questions and perspectives to the table. 

I’ve been deeply impressed by Chief Jackson’s leadership and her focus on building stronger relationships between the department and the people it serves. Tacoma has incredible officers doing difficult work every day, and I think this partnership creates another opportunity for residents and officers to better understand one another. We may not always agree, but transparency, education, communication, and honest dialogue are all important parts of building trust and keeping our community safe. I’m excited to see where this effort goes and encourage anyone interested in participating to learn more and apply. 

Learn more or apply for the Tacoma Public Safety Partnership at tacoma.gov/TPDcommunity.

A Regional Approach to Homelessness 

Housing and homelessness have been some of the issues I’ve been most deeply engaged with throughout my time on the City Council. From supporting the tiny home village at 6th and Orchard next to my home, to working on encampment response, investing in shelter and services, and serving on the Pierce County Opioid Task Force, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how we better connect people with the help they need. 

One thing has become increasingly clear to me through that work: homelessness is bigger than Tacoma. It doesn’t stop at our city limits, and Tacoma cannot solve it on its own. That’s why I was pleased to support the Council’s decision this past month to join other jurisdictions across Pierce County in moving forward with a Unified Regional Approach to reducing homelessness. The goal is to create a more coordinated regional response, with participating governments working toward shared approaches to services, data, prevention, shelter, and other interventions. 

I’m cautiously optimistic about what this can accomplish because adopting a resolution and agreeing to work together is only the first step. To me, this shouldn’t be about creating another layer of bureaucracy. It should be about creating better alignment. We already have cities, Pierce County, nonprofits, service providers, outreach workers, volunteers, and many others investing tremendous amounts of time and resources into this work. The challenge is making sure those efforts connect with one another and that fewer people fall through the cracks. The regional effort is specifically examining issues such as common access to services, consistent operating practices, and better coordination among jurisdictions and providers. 

I’ve said something similar for years in our work around opioids: we need to get people the right service, at the right time, in the right place. I think that same principle should guide our response to homelessness. If this regional approach can help us better coordinate the resources we already have, intervene earlier, and help more people move toward stable housing, it will be worth the effort. There is a lot of difficult work ahead, but I’m hopeful this gives Tacoma and our regional partners a better opportunity to do that work together. 

You can learn more about the Unified Regional Approach, including the work underway across Pierce County, at unifiedregionalapproach.com.

Join in a Citywide Litter Cleanup

On Saturday, September 19, the City of Tacoma is partnering with Litter Free 253 and Oscar’s Enemies for a citywide community cleanup from 10 a.m. to noon. Volunteers can choose from locations across Tacoma, with bags, gloves, and litter-picking equipment provided at each site. I’m really excited to see the City working alongside the community groups and volunteers who are already doing so much every day to keep Tacoma clean. 

When I started working on Tidy-Up Tacoma back in 2021, one of my goals was not only to find ways for the City to do more to address litter and graffiti, but also to better support the people who were already doing that work. Tacoma has some incredible volunteers and community organizations that spend their own time cleaning up our streets, parks, and neighborhoods, and partnerships like this are exactly what I hoped Tidy-Up Tacoma could help build. 

I’ve said from the beginning that the City can’t keep Tacoma clean on its own. It takes all of us. To me, picking up litter is one of the simplest and most direct civic contributions anyone can make. So many of the challenges facing our city can feel complicated or overwhelming, but this is something we can literally get our hands, or our litter grabbers, around. You can make the block in front of your home, your neighborhood, or another part of Tacoma a little cleaner and more welcoming, and the impact is clear and visible right away. 

I’m looking forward to joining volunteers on September 19 and maybe even adding a few new entries to my ongoing list of the weirdest things I’ve picked up during a cleanup. If you’d like to join us, you can find cleanup locations and sign up at tacoma.gov/tidyup.

Preserving What Makes Tacoma Special 

This past month, I was proud to support adding the North Union Avenue Greenway to the Tacoma Register of Historic Places. I’m especially grateful to the neighbors and community volunteers who brought this proposal forward, did the research, participated in the public process, and helped make the case for recognizing what makes this part of Tacoma so special. 

Tacoma is growing and changing, and I want us to continue being a city that welcomes new people, new housing, and new opportunities. But as we grow, we also have to be thoughtful about preserving the places and features that give our neighborhoods their identity. North Union Avenue is one of those places for me. I grew up around this part of Tacoma, spent years walking through it as a young person and later as a student at the University of Puget Sound, and now have the privilege of representing the area on the City Council. Its broad, tree-lined medians and park-like character have always made this corridor feel distinct. The historic designation recognizes the median layouts and their park-like character and use. 

I don’t believe growth and preservation have to be in conflict. Part of building a great city for the future is understanding what is worth carrying forward from our past. This designation is a small but meaningful way to celebrate Tacoma’s history, protect some of the character that makes our neighborhoods unique, and recognize what can happen when residents see something they value and get involved to preserve it. 

Pedal with a Politician 

This month, I joined Pedal with a Politician, an annual bike ride hosted by Tacoma On the Go that brings residents, city staff, and elected officials together to explore Tacoma’s bike infrastructure. It’s one of my favorite events, not just because it gets us out riding, but because it sparks meaningful conversations about what’s working, what’s missing, and how we can build a safer, more connected city. 

Good bike infrastructure isn’t just good for cyclists, it makes our neighborhoods safer for pedestrians, drivers, and transit riders, too. I’m grateful to Tacoma On the Go and 2nd Cycle for organizing this ride and continuing to push for a more accessible, people-centered transportation network. Events like this help us imagine what’s possible when we invest in the kind of city we all want to live in. 

Building a Better Animal Welfare System 

Animal welfare has been an important part of my work throughout my time on the City Council. From banning non-therapeutic cat declawing, to updating Tacoma’s animal control code, to launching the Pet Mayor competition to raise money for animal welfare, I’ve tried to find practical ways we can better protect and support the animals in our community. 

The recent case involving 61 cats found living in unsafe conditions on an abandoned sailboat near Owen Beach followed by over 100 cats being removed from a NE Tacoma home was deeply troubling, and unfortunately it was another reminder that we need a different approach to animal overpopulation. Our Animal Control officers, shelters, rescue organizations, veterinarians, and volunteers are doing tremendous work, but we cannot simply ask them to absorb more and more animals after a crisis has already happened. If we want a response that can truly scale, we need to prevent more of these situations in the first place by expanding access to affordable spay and neuter services throughout Tacoma and Pierce County. 

That’s why I’m working to bring together shelters, veterinarians, nonprofit organizations, local governments, and others who are already doing this work to look at how we can increase those resources and make them easier for people to access. There are already many dedicated people doing everything they can to help animals in our region. My goal is to better coordinate those efforts, identify where the gaps remain, and find practical ways to expand capacity. Animal welfare will continue to be an important priority for me, and I intend to keep pushing this work forward for the remainder of my time on the Council.