Meet Tacoma City Council candidate Nolan Hibbard-Pelly
Editor’s note: This is one in a series of interviews with candidates running for Tacoma City Council. In each interview, The News Tribune asked every candidate two questions: what they pay in rent or mortgage, and if they could correctly state the median home sale price in Pierce County, which is around $500,000 as of April 2021.
Nolan Hibbard-Pelly is running for the Tacoma City Council District 4 seat, which represents parts of Eastside and South End neighborhoods.
The seat is currently held by Council member Catherine Ushka, who is running for re-election.
Hibbard-Pelly, 21, is a three-year resident of Tacoma, previously living in Olympia, and attends the University of Washington Tacoma studying mathematics. He’s involved with various community groups, including Tacoma Democratic Socialists of America and the Tacoma People’s Assembly, a grassroots group that formed in 2014 in response to the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and to protest police brutality and anti-Black violence.
Hibbard-Pelly, the youngest candidate in the race for City Council this year, said he decided to run after a recent public hearing over expansion of fossil fuel facilities at the Port of Tacoma.
“I decided during one of the recent City Council meetings when I heard other people’s public comments and just how frustrated they were with our representatives on issues where they weren’t really listening,” he said.
Hibbard-Pelly has been highly critical of Tacoma City Council and City Manager Elizabeth Pauli, often speaking out during City Council meetings over what he feels is lack of action to address various major issues in Tacoma, from the death of Manuel Ellis by Tacoma police, the homelessness crisis and response to climate change.
Hibbard-Pelly told The News Tribune that if he were elected, he wants to find a way to fire Pauli. In past public comment during council meetings, he’s called her unfit for the job and that she “has not done any substantial actions for the job that city manager has been expected to do.”
When it comes to climate change, he wants to invest in a local Green New Deal to replace carbon-emitting infrastructure with jobs in a cleaner green industry. He also wants to find alternate transit methods to make Tacoma less reliant on cars and supports the Bus Rapid Transit project in the works by Pierce Transit between Tacoma and Spanaway. He said it’s also important to keep in mind how to connect people to this transportation after it’s created.
Hibbard-Pelly feels the city’s efforts to create an anti-racist city and transform the Police Department aren’t enough. He doesn’t feel placing body cameras on officers is changing their behavior and feels the city’s anti-racist Heal the Heart efforts are just reacting to community response to the death of Manuel Ellis in 2020 and should have happened long ago.
Hibbard-Pelly said he supports looking at ways to replace or defund the Police Department.
“There’s like so many other things, like the library and fire departments and activist programs that should be funded. And reallocating their money is my form of reform,” he said.
In addition to advocating for the arrest of the officers involved in the death of Manuel Ellis, Hibbard-Pelly has also advocated for the resignation of Sheriff Ed Troyer following a confrontation with a Black newspaper carrier in a Tacoma neighborhood earlier this year. He also brought up how a chaplaincy group lost a city contract after people found they had ties to Tacoma police charged in the death of Manuel Ellis.
Hibbard-Pelly said he wants to change who is responding to crime and emergency calls.
“I just think the city needs to cut its ties with the police,” he said. “I know they’ll always be around in some form, but just figuring out a way to just not support all the awful stuff they’ve been doing.”
When asked about the city’s approach to homelessness and affordable housing, Hibbard-Pelly said he believes in a “housing for all” approach, and that money should be dedicated toward more housing as soon as possible. He suggested looking at converting city buildings to housing.
“We need housing now in some form,” he said. “It’s really hard to find anything on the South End.”
Hibbard-Pelly is a renter in Tacoma and said he’d like to own a home at some point, but he is not sure if that will be in Tacoma. He said he’s in support of the Home in Tacoma proposal to increase density and housing types across Tacoma.
What do you pay in rent/mortgage?
“I’m really lucky in my current apartment. I pay $400 because I moved in during the pandemic.”
What is the median home sale price in Pierce County?
“I think maybe $500,000 is average for Pierce County.”
