Fridays with Eric

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Every Friday (or nearly every Friday) City Manager Eric Anderson sits down with media types from the City of Destiny and answers any questions they may have. While usually these journalist gatherings boil down to John Larson from the Tacoma Weekly, Jason Hagey from the Trib and myself — with the rough and tumble Rob McNair-Huff acting as referee — that’s not to say they aren’t exciting. And shit, I’m the new kid on the block. This afternoon marked only my second such meeting. Maybe one of these days the drugs and hookers will come out. That’s what government is all about, as I understand.

What you are reading is a new feature here on the Weekly Volcano Spew. Every Friday that Mr. Anderson meets with the press, we’ll report back with what he had to offer. He’s a very important fellow, after all.

Quick Hits

After an extended break from these press briefings, Anderson was back this afternoon and looking relaxed. He’d been on “vacation” the two weeks prior, and I started by asking how it was. While he avoided specifics, it doesn’t sound as though Anderson was sunning himself in Acapulco. “It wasn’t much a vacation,” he said.

Today being the 8th Frost Park Chalk Challenge, I thought it fair to ask whether the city was facing any extra cleanup burden because of the weekly chalk centered gatherings. Anderson had no problem with the events, asserting that the chalk being used comes off in the rain. To his knowledge no extra work was being put in to clean up.

I had heard that there had been preliminary discussions about fencing off Frost Park, perhaps helping to inspire the Take Back the Park movement. Anderson revealed no such plan, and said that there’s no specific effort on the city’s part to cleanup the intersection where Frost Park is located — besides from the overall effort to cleanup the entire city. By cleaning up we’re talking about getting rid of hoodlums and troublemakers — and probably a few homeless, but those are my thoughts not Anderson’s.

Speaking of the homeless, Anderson discussed Tacoma’s ongoing search for a shelter provider to take over for the MLKHDA. As has been well reported the MLKHDA is looking to get out of the homeless shelter business, and while their operation isn’t a city controlled shelter, it is largely funded by Tacoma. This means the City of Destiny is playing a large roll in finding an organization to fill the MLKHDA shelter’s void once Felix Flannigan and Co. move on to other things. Tacoma will likely issue what’s known in the city government biz as an RFP (Request for Proposal) to find a new organization to run whatever shelter ends up materializing. According to Anderson, there has been interest expressed by a few possible providers, but all interest at this point is very preliminary. Still, he branded the search so far as “very productive,” and said it’s the end goal of the city to find a new provider, with no reduction in services for the homeless, no discontinuation of services or break in services, and perhaps in the end even improve things. Naturally, at this point the biggest hurdle is probably money, said Anderson.

“We’re trying to find a solution that provides consistent service, without an interruption in service, and allows Felix to withdraw when we have an adequate provider in place,” said Anderson.

As you may have heard Tall Ships is coming. The topic came up this afternoon, and there’s a good chance you’ll see police from a few different jurisdictions manning the waterfront during the Tall Ships Tacoma that coincides with the Freedom Fair along Ruston Way on the Fourth. Officers from Tacoma’s sister cities as well as the Washington State Patrol are expected to pitch in. “We’ll have adequate security,” promised Mr. Anderson.

There has been no talk, according to Anderson, of changing zoning codes to restrict where social service agencies or homeless shelters can build, or of consolidating or relocating shelters out of their current location. “I think there’s generally a pretty large consensus saying it isn’t a good idea to spread (services) around,” Anderson said.

Recently, the Tacoma City Council has been kicking around the idea of a Transportation Benefit District to improve Tacoma’s residential streets and transportation infrastructure. The way the state program is written, a Transportation Benefit District would allow the council to impose up to a $20 tax on vehicle registration without a public vote, or up to $100 tax with voter approval, and use the cash to improve the city’s transportation issues — possibly anything from fixing up residential streets to introducing streetcars. While Anderson said that a TBD is just one of many funding options, and that creating one is up to the City Council, he did identify several pressing transportation problems in need of addressing, and said that with or without a TBD the city is working to rectify them. The problems included improving residential streets (Anderson said were in “crying need” of help) and taking more than cars into consideration when designing and planning Tacoma’s transportation infrastructure of the future. He refers to the approach as “complete streets,” and the transportation corridors Anderson envisions include bike paths, pedestrian sidewalks, crossings, light rails, busses, and possibly even street cars. “It isn’t that we’re standing still,” Anderson said in regard to the city’s transportation plan. “We’re up and moving. We just haven’t hit our stride yet.” 

That’s all for this week. Check back next Friday for more of the inner most thoughts of City Manager Eric Anderson.