The News Tribune Editorial Board’s Civic Agenda is a tradition. For three decades, it was published early each year. The goal was always straightforward: provide readers with an assessment of the issues and themes we believe will demand the community’s attention over the coming year.
Forced into hibernation in 2019, last year the current iteration of the TNT Editorial Board brought the Civic Agenda back — largely at the recommendation of community representative Jim Walton , a Tacoma civil rights icon and a former city manager who joined the board in 2020.
Mr. Walton was right, as he so often is. Readers responded to the Civic Agenda’s comeback in a big way.
While the needs in Tacoma and Pierce County are sizable, this year The News Tribune Editorial Board’s Civic Agenda focuses on four timely and pressing concerns.
We’ve chosen to present them as four big questions for all of us to wrestle with over the coming year.
- How can we fill the critical need for youth and young adult development programs in our communities?
- How can we reduce crime and increase public safety long term by investing in people and systemic change, going beyond the tired debate over hiring cops or slashing law enforcement funding?
- How can new approaches and evolved thinking help us solve Tacoma and Pierce County’s long-standing need for affordable housing — fast?
- Finally, how can Tacoma — as a whole, together, community wide — achieve real progress, change and genuine collaboration in the aftermath of Manny Ellis’ death and the acquittal of three local officers charged with killing him in police custody?