Tacoma council District 2 seat is up for election. Here’s Q&A with candidates

Tacoma City Council District 2 – which includes the North End, downtown and Northeast Tacoma – could see a new leader in 2026.

Incumbent Sarah Rumbaugh has held the spot since she being elected in 2021 to replace two-term council member Robert Thoms. A longtime Washington resident, Rumbaugh has a background as a city planner, has consulted with the Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber of Commerce and runs a fundraising-consulting business. She’s often a center to moderate voice on the council, though it rarely votes in split decisions. As of Sept. 30, she had raised $33,434.17 for her campaign and spent $17,593.60.

Her opponent is a political newcomer. Ben Lackey has spent 27 years working in software, data science and financial services, according to his website. Both Rumbaugh and Lackey have said they’re focused on addressing homelessness and the city’s budget deficit, but Lackey has criticized Rumbaugh’s leadership, saying he’s running because of her.

“I’ve had numerous interactions with her,” Lackey wrote of Rumbaugh on his website. “They’ve been extremely frustrating. I don’t think she should be in office.”

Lackey has not reported spending any money on his campaign, having opted for mini-reporting instead. That’s a tool for candidates who plan to raise and spend under $7,000, and as such are exempt from typical reporting requirements.

The News Tribune sent all candidates for City Council and mayor the same 10 questions to respond to in the same time frame.

Here’s what Rumbaugh and Lackey told The News Tribune:

What’s your full name and age?

My full name is James Benton Lackey III. I go by Ben. I’m 44.

Sarah Hyman Rumbaugh, 57

How long have you lived in Tacoma?

Rumbaugh: 20 years

Lackey: I first moved to Tacoma in 2015. I bought a townhouse just off 6th and really liked hanging out at a bunch of now deceased restaurants — Masa, Sluggo and Half Pint among them. The area reminded me of Broadway in Seattle circa 1999.

Since then, I’ve moved around Tacoma, once up to Seattle and then back to Tacoma. Currently my wife Apple, son Olive and I live in Stadium. Baby #2 is on the way and expected Oct 6. I’m hoping to live in Tacoma for a long time and would like it to be a nice place for everyone, including our family.

What is your favorite restaurant in Tacoma?

Lackey: I really like Hanks and Parkway Tavern. Spar chips are excellent. Pho Bac. Indita Mia. Cloverleaf. Katie Downs. The Salmon Lovers roll at THEKOI is a top pick. Last night we had Gateway to India. The vindaloo and the okra are my favorites. I have a soft spot for Taco Time.

For coffee, Curran is a favorite. Lander, Bluebeard, Brewer’s Row and Manifesto are all high up too.

Rumbaugh: I have a lot of favorite restaurants, so this is tough. I love going to the Spar because they have great music and their Mediterranean salad is the best. I have always loved Primo Grill, and since Charlie McManus and Jacqueline Plattner sold their business, I have made sure to go back and support the new owners. Who doesn’t love Wooden City? Enough said. Indita Mia is my favorite Mexican restaurant. The food is authentic and I love their location next to the Museum of Glass. My husband and I also love going to Hanks. The pattern you see is that I am only including restaurants in District 2. And if your restaurant isn’t on this list, know that we go to a lot of places, but I could only fit so many in this answer. One more; I love Red Star Taco. And I look forward to visiting additional restaurants I have not yet been to try.

Why do you want to be a city council member?

Rumbaugh: I currently serve as the Tacoma City Councilmember for District 2. I have worked hard to make a difference on homelessness, and I feel there is more we can do. My walking away from this job right now when we are in our worst budget crisis in years sends a bad message to the people of Tacoma, since I believe that it is my job to stay and work to meet the needs of our community. We are struggling with a structural deficit that is about $25 million dollars, and a shortfall from the federal government of about $70 million dollars. These dollars go for essential services, so we will need to work hard to make the budget work and reduce the impact on services to the community.

I look forward to hiring our next city manager and police chief. These will be the leaders taking us into tomorrow. It is important that these individuals have a strong sense of where Tacoma is going, which is forward not backwards. We are a city that has embraced our diversity and appreciates that we are working together as a community. I don’t want people to think we are fine with how the federal government is treating cities like ours, and we are fighting back. The horrible treatment of people in ICE detention center, promoting intolerance of women’s choices and ignoring LGBTQ rights are unacceptable.

Lackey: I’m angry. Things are broken and no one is fixing them. Despite rising revenues, the incumbents managed to create a deficit. Impressively, they’ve simultaneously failed to perform basic maintenance on roads and fund basic services.

Worse, some of our incumbents have little interest in who they govern. When I reached out to the incumbent in District 2, Sarah Rumbaugh, about homeless camps in the park behind my house, I was given the run around. When I tried to talk to her after a council meeting, I was told that wasn’t a good time. That’s not what I want in an elected official. I can’t imagine it’s what others want either.

I’m surprised by the lack of data in our decision-making process. Numbers are widely available, but our political candidates don’t quote them. With the city running deficits, we ought to demand specifics from our elected officials — data and specific actions they propose to resolve issues that in many cases they caused.

Our city council largely consists of people who have had little success outside of politics. If not in politics, it’s unclear what they would be doing. People like that need to make a mark with huge amounts of public spending. They use the office to benefit themselves, taking trips abroad paid for by foreign countries as our mayor has. I don’t think those are people we should have in office.

I can pay for my own vacations and study session lunches. I’ve already had 20 years of legitimate international work travel. I don’t need this office to enrich myself. I just want to have the power to fix some of the blaringly obvious problems facing our city.

I want a well run, extremely boring government that quietly gets the job done. I suspect others do too.

If elected, what issues would be your top priority?

Lackey: In the last ten years the city of Tacoma general fund grew from $378M to $641M, a 70% increase. Even adjusting for inflation and population growth the spending still grew 17%. Despite all this money, roads and parks are falling apart. School quality is poor and police are absent. We are spending more money and getting less for it. We need change.

If elected, I will focus initial effort on three key areas.

1. Homeless Camps

I’m fed up with homeless camps in our parks and on our sidewalks. Leaving people to die outside is not compassion. It’s laziness. Let’s get people off the street and into shelters. We should cut programs like anti-homeless rocks and fences. We should get people into shelters where we can provide real help.

2. Basic Services

We’re underfunding basic services. Our roads are so awful they’re the subject of Reddit memes. Sidewalks aren’t much better. Animal control staff was cut from six people a decade ago to two today. Meanwhile, academics in our schools are poor while money is wasted on a fancy new administrative building and vacations at Suncadia.

Basic services aren’t glamorous. They are, however, the basic stuff of running a city and we’re failing at them.

3. Bayside Trails

I want to reopen the entire Bayside Trails system. The trails were built in 1975 for $138,000. They run along Schuster Parkway providing views of Commencement Bay. The city has failed to maintain our trails. Instead of spending thousands per year on maintenance of the existing trail, there’s a plan to spend $115 million (up from $49M a few months ago) on a new trail that runs parallel. There are many examples of government waste in Tacoma but this one stands out. By applying common sense we can do much better.

Rumbaugh: My top issues are funding domestic violence support services, working to find a coordinated approach to homelessness, supporting funding for public safety that will have an overall positive change in traffic deaths, and alternative response, as well as reliable community liaison services for neighborhoods to make our city safer.

The rate of domestic violence has increased since 2022 by 65% in Pierce County. The Crystal Judson Family Justice Center mission has been a part of our community for 20 years, “working in partnership with survivors, professionals and community to break down barriers and advocate for practices which promote safety and access for ALL survivors…” Issues like domestic violence are the canaries in a coalmine, since these occurrences drive higher rates of gun violence and crime. By preventing domestic violence, we can find ways as a community to support families and individuals who have struggled with issues that may involve housing, drug and alcohol counseling, mental health treatment and job opportunities.

I strongly support a $50,000 incentive for TPD to hire police officers that are considering a lateral move to our police force. An increased police force means an increased police presence, improving our alternative response and providing neighborhoods with needed security.

I have championed for shelter options that meet the unhoused population where they are. We need temporary shelters, and I appreciate Pierce County’s updated zoning allowing temporary shelters. Tacoma is unable to continue to provide more than 80% of the homeless services in our county; we need the County to be our partners. We need another low barrier site like the one that was on 35th and Pacific, which provided tiny homes for those who decided to take shelter. I believe more individuals would choose this option if it was in their part of the county.

Tacoma’s 311 line has received hundreds of thousands of inquiries since its genesis over 10 years ago. Today, it receives inquiries that largely fall in the following categories: abandoned vehicles on the street, people living on public property in a motorhome or vehicle and illegal dumping on public property. What would be your plan to address those issues?

Rumbaugh: Our city is vast and action is often complaint based. We have worked to remove abandoned vehicles on our streets, where they need to be moved after 72 hours. We are working to find a permanent solution to the parking of RV’s, such as a place for them to be as is done in Vancouver, Washington. That is proving to be difficult. I think that the answer to people living on public property is not simply solved. This has gone on for sometime, and with our city providing most of the services in the county, it is hard to change something like this overnight, particularly with resource scarcity.

Our existing camping ordinance now lacks the enforcement mechanisms it had when we enacted it, because there are less city sanctioned temporary shelters available. We need another camping ordinance that will help those in need opt for therapeutic and community court choices, as well as drug treatment.

We have a lot of right of way in our city owned by the Washington State Department of Transportation. We are working with them to get funds to help people in these areas get housed. Unfortunately, they move slowly and that is not working right now to get people into housing quickly enough.

Illegal dumping happens in every part of the county. A combination of penalty and an increase in choices for free removal of items might dissuade people from doing illegal dumping. Some of the illegal dumping comes from people living in the county who do not have Call-2-Haul like the city does so they dump illegally. With Call-2-Haul you get two times a year where you can have items taken away from your house for free. They even have this service at multifamily properties.

Lackey: First off, we have a problem with 311. The city has customized our 311 system to avoid accountability. Comments have been disabled for many tickets. Tickets are closed without resolution and reopening has been disabled. Hilariously I opened a ticket on this that was closed without resolution. We need to enable comments and reopening tickets to ensure accountability of our government to the citizens it exists to benefit.

The question mentions three cases: abandoned vehicles, illegal camping and illegal dumping.

For abandoned vehicles, the solution should be ridiculously obvious. We tow them. We impound them. We sell or destroy them if they are not collected. We can enforce our laws once more. We simply have to choose to.

If someone is illegally camping on public property in an RV or car, things are slightly more complicated. Nonetheless, those people should be subject to the same laws we all are. That is the hallmark of a civil society and a necessary precondition for a democracy such as ours to exist.

That brings us to illegal dumping. Tacoma has a litter problem. An enormous amount of that litter is related to homeless camps. As we’ve given up on laws, a second problem has emerged — the “Alice’s Restaurant” mentality of “if there’s already a bunch of garbage, what’s it matter if I add to it?” Let’s enforce our littering laws again. Let get police out of the station and back on the streets patrolling like they used to. That minor step will solve a lot more problems than just litter.

I’ve been frustrated by political signs discarded post campaign, littering our public spaces. I’ve picked many of them out of homeless camp bonfires. You won’t see any signs with the name “Ben Lackey” because I don’t want to contribute to that garbage.

Are you in favor or against the workers bill of rights?

Lackey: There is already a workers’ bill of rights. It is called the bill of rights. I dislike the proposal just for its rather grandiose name, seeming to imply that rights don’t exist without it.

The actual policies within are more debatable.

I’m broadly in favor of rising minimum wages. The minimum wage in Tacoma has risen very quickly in recent years. That benefits lower end workers. It also creates inflation. Minimum wage is one tool to narrow wealth gaps that are the death knell for any democracy.

How fast a minimum wage should rise is enormously debatable. I think we need to take care not to raise ours too quickly as doing so will reduce employment. The flip side is that raising it too slowly perpetuates a wealth gap that is otherwise avoidable.

Many entry level jobs are already paying more than the proposed $20 minimum wage. The Panda Express on 6th was recently paying $22.

The WBR has some odd ideas baked into it about minimum wages for different sized companies. Over the last 50 years Tacoma has lost many of its larger employers — Weyerhaeuser, Russell Investments and State Farm to name a few. These were good jobs and now they’re gone.

The numerous provisions of the WBR are all going to reduce employment. They’re nice things but mandating them is going to increase overhead, reducing the jobs available. To me that seems a poor idea, particularly in a rough economy with a vacant downtown core.

Rather than spending time and resources inventing new regulations, our local government should focus on making sure the budgets are balanced. The government should ensure the basic services a city normally provides like passable roads, police, fire and animal control are properly funded and functioning. Right now, none of that is happening.

Rumbaugh: Unfortunately, I have been told not to answer this question because of ongoing litigation involving the city.

Do you believe the workers bill of rights belongs on the November ballot this year?

Rumbaugh: Unfortunately, I have been told not to answer this question because of ongoing litigation involving the city.

Lackey: Ultimately, the voters can determine if it belongs on the ballot. If it gets signatures, it does.

If the council votes on it, I’d vote against for the reasons above. The WBR is rife with unintended consequences and we’re not executing on the basic parts of government so have no business futzing with the advanced bits.

If elected, what specific actions would you take to address the following issues: housing and homelessness, Tacoma’s budget deficit and public safety.

Lackey: Two things determine house prices - supply and demand. No amount of rent control will make that untrue. Demand is increasing and will in a functional economy. So, we must increase supply. Our current city council passed HIT, attempting to increase supply by demolishing single family homes. An unintended consequence of HIT is the replacement of low cost starter homes by larger and higher cost homes. A much better solution would be to incentivize construction in our rather vacant downtown core.

Homelessness is a largely distinct issue. There is a solution. It is not complex.

The homeless in our public spaces should all be offered shelter. During the summer we have enough beds. We could fund the winter delta by ending the programs that aren’t working (HEAL, NCS, anti-homeless rocks, the $5M for anti-homeless fences) and using the money for inexpensive and, crucially, temporary beds.

If a homeless person does not want to go to a shelter, they should be offered the choice to either leave town or be jailed for camping illegally on public property. We should not spend tax dollars endlessly shuffling the homeless from site to site while they slowly die of substance abuse.

Enforcement is key. Only 14% of the people NCS contacts go to shelter. Any solution will involve a mixture of services and law enforcement. Peter Moskos covers this in his most recent book.

Our goal should be to get people back on their feet and contributing productively to society.

Rumbaugh: We need to make it easier to create more housing in Tacoma. We’ve worked hard to do this with Home In Tacoma 2, which has helped. We appreciate it when community members give feedback and provide their priorities. Besides expediting the permitting process, we need to assess the Landlord Fairness Code Initiative (LFCI) for modifications that make it easier to rent property and help with housing availability. There are developers and property owners who have chosen not to do business in Tacoma because of the LFCI.

I serve on the Unified Regional Approach to Homelessness (URA) and believe solutions to homelessness need to be broader than just the city providing most of the services and shelters. The URA is an opportunity to work with elected leaders and staff on the best approach. We’ll all have to collaborate on this issue, as it is expensive. We need to figure out how best to support any plan brought forward with the resources available.

Tacoma has shouldered an excess of the burden on this large, county and statewide issue. We are asking a lot of our residents and businesses. I think it’s time to look at another camping ordinance that will help people better utilize opportunities like mental health support, community court and therapeutic court.

Expanding the Tacoma Rescue Mission will provide double the number of homeless men a place to find shelter and be off the street.

I’m aware of how critical it is that we work to find solutions to our structural deficit and the shortfall we’re presently experiencing from the federal government. We must find and consolidate duplication in services, establish more ways to collaborate with partners and create new revenue sources that make sense while dealing with inflation and rising prices.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Rumbaugh: I love this city and believe that having clean air and water is important. The passage of the Tideflats Subarea Plan will be important to providing predictability for business, but also an opportunity for the city to do a more robust job in enforcement. As someone who cares about our community and the health of everyone who lives here, removing rendering plants and not having a pulp mill polluting our air and water every day is a significant upgrade. But there is more we need to do. We still have businesses that do dirty work in our Port and Tideflats, so we need to use every tool to improve this situation.

Trees need to be a priority in our community. There seems to be this wrong-headed idea that you can’t have development and trees. We need to, and can, do both. If every project that gets built is allowed to skirt the tree requirements, we will be back where we started, with areas of the city with lots of trees, and fewer trees in other areas.

Additionally, we must support the next street initiative plan so we have the funds to build safer streets that provide multimodal transportation opportunities. I appreciate our model of a 15-minute city, but that means people need to be able to get around our city by walking and biking. Currently, we are missing many connected sidewalks, trails, and other ways for people to get around our city. While I support trails through our greenspace, this is something we need to consider in partnership with Parks Tacoma.

So if you have room, plant a tree. The city will even help pay!

Lackey: We are spending money on programs that institutionalize homelessness. Purple bag provides garbage service to homeless camps. We recently expanded that and are now spending money on five gallon buckets with seats and small tents, a sort of pseudo porta potty that will be the breeding ground for the next cholera epidemic. We spend on anti-homeless fences and rocks.

Other countries have pursued the Nickelsville model to its logical conclusion. India has slums, Brazil has Favelas and South Africa has Townships. These places trap a segment of the population in perpetual poverty. One group lives with laws and opportunities. Another has neither. It is a model that has no place in this country.

We should have the ambition to eliminate homelessness in Tacoma. We should zero out funding on programs that institutionalize homelessness and redirect the funds to getting people off the street. Ultimately, we must cut the Gordian Knot. We need to take common sense incremental actions that build toward broad solutions. That is true both for homelessness and restoring the basic services we all rely on our government to provide.

I was born into an America that was ambitious. The moon landings were a decade in the past, the environmental and civil rights movements had changed our country. On a local note, Tacoma had just built the Bayside Trails. As a country, we were doing well and trying to figure out what was next. Four decades later we’ve forgotten our ambition.

Books such as “Abundance,” “The Once and Future Liberal” and “How Countries Go Broke” present valid overlapping hypotheses for what went wrong. The solution starts with ambition.

More detail is available at benlackey.com.

Democracy works through discussion. I am asking my opponent, Sarah Rumbaugh, to answer voter questions on Reddit with me here: https://www.reddit.com/r/TacomaPolitics.

Isha Trivedi

The News Tribune

Isha Trivedi covers Tacoma city hall, Pierce County government and education for The News Tribune. She has previously worked at The Mercury News, the Palo Alto Weekly, the Chronicle of Higher Education and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. She grew up in San Jose, California and graduated with a bachelor of arts in journalism and anthropology from the George Washington University. She is a proud alumna of The GW Hatchet, her alma mater’s independent student newspaper, and has been recognized by the Society of Professional Journalists for her work with the publication.