Service Excellence
City services can have very different impacts when delivered with compassion. Every interaction with businesses, visitors, and residents is an opportunity to build trust in local government and influence our reputation as a city. How we do what we do is important. Conducting the routine processes or providing services with care while seeking to understand community members and coworkers can vastly improve outcomes.
Engaging the Power of our Diversity to Spur Innovation
Tacoma is a city, like many across the nation, grappling with issues such as climate change, homelessness, equity, and housing affordability – nuanced issues with immediate system-wide impacts which lack tried and true answers. Diversity is a key driver of innovation. Finding successful paths forward in these uncharted areas will require engaging the power of our diversity and constructively communicating across differences to develop new approaches.
Success requires us to be able to put all ideas on the table: Compassion is not refraining from speaking your truth. In fact, it can mean speaking up when it is unpopular when what we witness is at odds with our values. It is about dropping the weapons that often come with our words, and speaking our truths with the kind of love described by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Compassionate Tacoma Aligns with City's Goals from the Tacoma 2025 Strategic Plan
By promoting action in alignment with these principals, this initiative will advance the following goals from the Tacoma 2025 Strategic Plan:
- Embrace Tacoma’s diversity of people, places, and cultures
- Grow and enhance the vitality of Tacoma’s neighborhoods
- Increase neighborhood safety
- Improve services to youth and vulnerable communities
- Engage residents, stakeholders, and partners in the future of Tacoma
Compassionate Tacoma will move the needle on these Tacoma 2025 indicators of opportunity:
- Increase the percentage of residents who believe they are able to have a positive impact on the community and express trust in the public institutions in Tacoma
- Increase the number of residents who participate civically through volunteering and voting
- Increase positive perception of safety and overall quality of life