2026 Civic Agenda: TNT’s editorial board is keeping an eye on these issues
Three years ago, the News Tribune set out to restart its tradition of putting out an annual civic agenda. It was a chance to reintroduce ourselves to readers and tip our hand on the issues we would follow closely in 2023.
That effort was followed by a four-part series in 2024, which delved even deeper on problems like police reform, youth violence, tenants’ rights and what really deters crime.
While many of the issues we flagged in those civic agendas remain thorny problems in this region, some things have changed and evolved, and new issues have become more urgent than they seemed in the past. So we figured it was time to restart the restart.
Among the things that have changed: the makeup of this editorial board. A few community representatives have moved on to other endeavors, and we lost an esteemed and beloved board member in Matt Driscoll, who was this paper’s opinion editor until his death in July 2024.
The current community representatives on the editorial board are: Bart Hayes, who is retired from the Tacoma Police Department and now works in law enforcement training; James Walton, former Tacoma city manager and longtime Tacoma booster and civil rights advocate; and Justin Evans, a Bonney Lake-based commissioner on East Pierce Fire & Rescue who also works in manufacturing.
Also new: Laura Hautala, who joined the News Tribune as opinion editor in April. She and Stephanie Pedersen, the paper’s editor and president, round out the editorial board.
We all joined in a conversation at the start of this year to pinpoint some of the most pressing issues facing Tacoma and Pierce County right now.
We didn’t have a shortage of topics to consider. What we boiled things down to was this: we’re a region under pressure. Essential aspects of daily life feel less reliable in these parts. Perhaps the most fundamental example we chose was the deterioration of bridges and road infrastructure in the region, amplified over the past year by both sudden emergencies and creeping neglect.
There’s also the intertwined problems of housing and homelessness, which are entering an era of change when it comes to who pays for services, shelters and new housing, and where people can find them. The possibilities for local cooperation are higher now than they have been in recent history, if our leaders can take advantage of them. Meanwhile, uncertainty about federal funding also looms.
And finally, we zeroed in on the watchword of the past year: affordability. Households in the region continue to feel pain from the prices of food, fuel and other necessities. At the same time, local and state governments face structural budget pressures, and this inevitably leads to conversations about new or higher taxes.
Put together, these issues will lead to hard conversations about how best to pay for the kinds of services that make our communities worth living in.
This isn’t a simple list of solutions, because none of these topics are simple. It’s also not a four-part installment of in-depth editorials like the board put out back in 2024.
It’s more of a watch list. Here’s what’s at stake with these three topics, and all the basics you need to follow the conversation locally.
It’s also the start of a conversation. We expect to say a lot more about these things in the year to come. We’d love to hear from you what part of these issues needs greater attention, nuance or critique.
Housing and homelessness
Looking at issues of homelessness and housing, 2026 could bring a lot of changes to where people get help. Tacoma’s government has long expressed its wish for Pierce County to step in and offer more services and shelter, saying the city takes on more than its fair share of these efforts.
The city may well get its wish. Pierce County has moved, slowly but steadily, toward being able to offer more shelter and services that can help people already dealing with homelessness as well as groups who are at high risk of winding up without a roof over their heads.
Last summer, the Pierce County Council passed a zoning ordinance allowing tiny home villages to go forward outside of Tacoma. It culminated a process set in motion in 2023 with the passage of a 0.1% sales tax aimed at funding affordable housing in the county, and that Democratic council members specifically said was needed for tiny home-style cottages planned in Spanaway.
A lot rides on how well the county can scale up these services at a time when Tacoma’s ability to help has waned. The city lost shelter capacity and expanded the areas where camping is not allowed in 2025.
On the affordable housing side, the city is in the grips of debating renters’ rights policies. Any changes must strike a delicate balance between protecting people from losing their homes and making sure affordable housing is financially viable to build and rent out in the city.
Tacoma city council has already started amending a tenant’s bill of rights that voters approved two years ago. The law’s multiple layers of eviction protections proved unpopular with private landlords, but also affordable housing developers who said their ability to finance future projects could be impaired by too much unpaid rent.
All of this is taking place as the region spends the last of the cash injection it received from the federal government’s pandemic-era American Rescue Plan Act funds. Magnifying the problem, the current federal administration has made it clear it wants to take away funding the region has received for 20 years to help some of its most vulnerable people stay housed.
If that happens, the region’s governments will need to get even more serious about cooperating on housing. Either way, Tacoma can’t spend all its time arguing about where people can and cannot camp. That’s not going to solve the root of the problem.
It also has to keep trying to reach as many people as it can. The city’s own data isn’t encouraging.
Recent numbers show the city’s Homeless Engagement and Alternatives, or HEAL, team getting a higher percentage of the people they talk to into services compared to the past. But a closer look shows they spoke with fewer people overall. The total numbers of people getting shelter in the third quarter of 2025 went down compared to the same time period in 2024.
That’s not a trend we want to see become the norm in this county.
Bridges and infrastructure
There’s nothing much more disruptive to daily life than an essential bridge going out. The residents of Fairfax and Carbon Canyon know all about that, as they were essentially stranded in their remote East Pierce County communities when the Fairfax bridge closed permanently due to structural damage.
It’s not the only bridge out in the county. Some have been taken out of commission for similar deterioration, and others saw sudden outages from storms, flooding and vehicle crashes.
That makes it sound like we’re dealing with two different kinds of bridge problems: inadequate maintenance and emergencies. But there’s a lot of overlap between the two. The key is preparation and steady attention.
While the slow deterioration of bridges isn’t the kind of event that qualifies for FEMA funding, it’s still an emergency. It’s just one we’re allowing to happen every day. For the Fairfax bridge, years of inadequate WSDOT funding and the slow response process is the emergency.
That’s why we’ll be watching not only how the state follows through on efforts to speed up a new Fairfax bridge, but also how it funds other local maintenance efforts, too.
And even though flooding and intense storms are sudden, we know we need to prepare for them. Orting appeared to benefit from advance planning and a 2014 levee project during the December rains. The city didn’t suffer any bridge damage, even as the waters eroded older levee systems.
The same wasn’t true in Sumner, where a major bridge on the White River went out for two weeks. It was a different river with different factors at play, but it’s incumbent on the region’s leaders to see what they can learn from local success stories.
Affordability
We’re going into this year with two problems that make for a bad combination. Residents’ expenses are too high, and the city, parks and school districts have structural deficits, and the county has made budget cuts that county executive Ryan Mello says are needed to prevent a structural deficit in the future.
That means tax revenue is needed at a time when people are even less open to new taxes than usual.
The last year or so saw local pushback against taxes. For example, voters rejected a Tacoma roads tax last year, and Puyallup voters didn’t come out in enough numbers to pass school bonds twice in a period of less than three months. But Tacoma’s roads need repairs, and Puyallup’s schools need bond-funded construction to ease school crowding and update failing facilities.
In some ways, this problem is not new. In Washington, where we tax almost anything but income, most taxes tend to hit people with fewer means harder. Excise taxes on gas, fees for parks services and passes, and even business and operating taxes can make things more expensive.
The twist now is that mounting sales taxes and prices that stubbornly inch higher make the pain of inflation and stagnant wages worse.
We’re not arguing to stop funding vital services like schools, core infrastructure like roads or the things that make our communities liveable, like parks. We’re looking for careful stewardship of public money and very clear communication from our public agencies on how they’ll use new taxes.
That includes the park bond proposition voters will consider in the upcoming April special election. It also applies to all the taxes state lawmakers floated in this short legislative session, and could come back in the fall.
From a “millionaires tax” to more complicated changes to sales tax on products like nicotine and cannabis, the state budget process underway right now must debate potential sources of revenue with transparency.
One way to strike a balance is for lawmakers to focus on taxes that help people who need it most while bringing in enough money to make a difference. And while championing them, be honest about who pays a tax, and be clear about who or what it’s for.
That’s always a policy-maker’s job. With everyone hurting for cash, it’s more important than ever.
This story was originally published March 3, 2026 at 5:00 AM.
