Area of Focus – Childcare and Expanded Learning Opportunities: Build a comprehensive system easily navigated by parents of school-age children that brings a network of service providers together to offer equitable and affordable arts, enrichment, science, nature, fitness, and sports programs.

Lead JMAC Agencies: Metro Parks, Tacoma Public Schools (in partnership with Greentrike and other partners)

Community Networks: Whole Child Community Partnership/Childcare Alliance

• Targets/Deliverables:
  • 35 elementary school sites with after-school enrichment opportunities
  • 11 middle school sites with after-school enrichment opportunities
  • Identify/secure sustainable funding to maintain service after one-time federal ARPA COVID-relief funds run out
  • Expand access from school age to preschool/early learning needs.
  • Expand the model beyond the Tacoma Public Schools system.

     

Area of Focus – Community Outreach: Improve and align community outreach and engagement to underserved communities.

Lead JMAC Agencies: Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department (TPCHD), Metro Parks, City of Tacoma

Community Network: Equity Action Collaborative (housed at TPCHD)

• Targets/Deliverables:
  • Create a customizable “Health in All Policies” tool to help decisionmakers consider health, equity, and racial justice when making policy decisions.
  • Create policy/program templates for each organization to consider in the areas of pay differentials for dual/multilingual employees; language access plans to deepen community outreach; setting priorities when surplussing unneeded public land; and compensating community members for participating in public processes.
  • Share community engagement tools and data via an online platform called Social Pinpoint.
  • Leverage shared resources.
    
    

Area of Focus – Homelessness: Support Pierce County’s Comprehensive Plan to End Homelessness, which aims to document the scale of need and design a system to achieve “functional zero” – a state where any person starting a new episode of homelessness has immediate access to shelter and a permanent housing intervention.

Lead JMAC Agency: Pierce County

Community Network: Develop a Unified Regional Approach model by early 2023

• Targets/Deliverables:
  • Create a unified homeless response system, including central decision-making authority of funding and services.
  • Ensure outreach and support programs are truly effective for all populations.
  • Prevent homelessness.
  • Ensure adjacent systems address needs of people experiencing homelessness or who are at risk of homelessness.
  • Meet immediate needs of people experiencing homelessness where they are becoming homeless – not requiring them to leave the support networks in their communities to access services.
  • Expand the permanent housing system to meet the need.

Area of Focus – Vision Zero: Eliminate traffic fatalities and serious injuries by addressing safe routes to public amenities.

Lead JMAC Agency: City of Tacoma

• Community Network: Vision Zero Action Committee
  • Targets/Deliverables:
    • Eliminate fatalities and injuries by 2035.
    • Significantly increase investments in active transportation projects (such as sidewalks, crossings, and bikeways) and ensure that every transportation project is approached as an opportunity to improve safety.

    
    

Area of Focus – Local Business: Improve local business access to contracts for work with local governments, with an emphasis on addressing the historical underutilization of minority and women-owned business enterprises (MWBE).

Lead JMAC Agencies: City of Tacoma, Metro Parks, Tacoma Public Schools

Community Network: Tacoma Anchor Network procurement work group (City of Tacoma, Metro Parks, Pierce Transit, Tacoma Public Schools)

• Targets/Deliverables:
  • To be determined; the workgroup formed in 2022. The group’s first tasks are to draft a Problem Statement and produce a comparative analysis to identify themes in practices and policies.
  • Some initial concepts include finding a way to display local governments’ performance in awarding local contracts (ideally via a community dashboard) and identifying laws and administrative rules that present barriers for small businesses to access government contracts.
  • Adopt policies and protocols for quickly paying vendors.
  • Examine improvement opportunities within capital projects (public works) and contracts/services, which have different regulations in the public sector.

Area of Focus – Youth Employment: Improve and boost alignment and coordination of youth employment and apprenticeship pipelines.

Lead JMAC Agencies: Tacoma Public Schools, City of Tacoma

Community Networks: Tacoma Professional Pipeline, WorkForce Central

• Targets/Deliverables:
  • Created the JMAC 2-5-3 Jobs Challenge: sponsor two SEED internships (Degrees of Change), five Jobs 253 internships (City of Tacoma), and three Next Move internships (Tacoma Public Schools).