The Tacoma City Council unanimously voted Tuesday night to create an Office of Sustainability, an attempt to improve the city’s environmental friendliness.

The office will coordinate the city’s environmental efforts, provide oversight for green projects and recommend city policy. The office will report to the city manager.

An 11-member sustainability commission will work with the office.

The council also voted to turn most parks over to Metro Parks in the next decade. Then council members cut the meeting short because of strange fumes in City Hall.

The idea for an Office of Sustainability was generated from the Green Ribbon Climate Action Task Force, a coalition of two dozen citizens charged with finding ways to reduce Tacoma’s carbon emissions. The task force came up with more than a dozen recommendations, with the sustainability office as the core.

Mayor Bill Baarsma said the office was necessary to coordinate all the city’s environmental efforts.

“We’re doing some good things. We have a number of (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified buildings,” Baarsma said, including the planned $40 million Center for Urban Waters on the Thea Foss Waterway.

“What we really need is an office to kind of pull all this together,” he said, for a “coherent, focused approach.”

Jake Fey, who has worked closely with the task force, stressed the importance of city governments in climate change initiatives.

“That’s why it’s important that we focus our activities, because there’s a lot that we could do,” Fey said.

In a council meeting earlier in the day, Fey praised the city for going ahead with the plan despite a tough budget year. The city plans to set aside $240,000 for the office, but no mention of that figure was made during the evening meeting.

“This is important,” he said.

Ryan Mello, a Metro Parks commissioner and member of the task force, said the office will help create “green collar” jobs in Tacoma, increase noncar transportation options for citizens here and in the long run, and save money and energy for everyone.

Also Tuesday, the Council voted to transfer responsibility for city parks to Metro Parks over a 10-year period.

The parks were initially supposed to be transferred to Metro Parks, which manages most of them, over the previous five years, but the city and Metro Parks couldn’t reach an agreement during that time.

Over the course of the 10-year agreement, the City will slowly ratchet down funding for Metro Parks – by $100,000 a year – until the end of the agreement.

The city currently gives Metro Parks about $3.87 million for maintaining parks. That amount will decrease to $2.87 million over the decade-long agreement. The premise of the agreement is that it will give Metro Parks time to find and raise that amount of money on its own.

Mello, the parks commissioner, called the agreement a good outcome.

“Hopefully, it takes less than 10 years” to raise enough money, he said. “We will work really hard with you.”

Most city-owned parks will be transferred over the course of the decade, with some exceptions, including the Chinese Reconciliation Park and Fireman’s Park, according to City Manager Eric Anderson. Anderson said those parks serve as important symbols to the city, so they didn’t want to hand them off to another government entity.

Tuesday’s meeting was cut short after a glue-like odor was detected in the council chambers.

Mayor Baarsma stopped Planning Commissioner David Boe in the middle of his presentation on the city’s review of mixed-use centers. Before he was stopped, Boe said the Planning Commission won’t likely have the review done by year’s end, as had been planned. He said building height adjustments have proved to be more controversial and time-consuming than they’d originally thought.

The cause of the odor was undetermined, but security officers said it was much stronger in council chambers.

Niki Sullivan: 253-597-8603

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