We need to create an environment that attracts businesses in line with Tacoma’s values and work force.
How many tens of thousands of us have had to commute north to earn a decent wage or to expand our careers? I was one of those who had to commute literally over a hundred hours a month just to work in an environment for my family to flourish.
If there’s one thing that we learned throughout Covid, it was that we could still get a lot of our jobs done from anywhere. I would like to make that “anywhere” Tacoma. I would like to incentivize the corporations up north to open satellite locations in Tacoma. By no means do I want to “Seattle My Tacoma” but I would like to give people back a huge portion of their lives that is spent in the car or on a train.
After spending 20 plus years commuting north, one of the best decisions I ever made was finding work in Tacoma. The place where I have lived for the first 56 years of my existence. I literally felt like I got a new lease on life when I no longer had to commute to the Seattle area on a daily basis. My commute took up a startling 100+ hours every month. That’s a whole lot of living that I had missed out on with my family. If you are doing the same thing, there IS a better option.
One thing that gets missed in all of this is that people spend their hard earned money where they work. If you live in Tacoma but work elsewhere, those are tax dollars that are not being spent in Tacoma. We need that money for our city to function and we cannot afford for the people who live here to spend that money elsewhere. We need them to live here, work here, eat here and spend here.
Remember back in 1998 when Tacoma called itself “America’s #1 Wired City”? The Powers That Be spent millions on infrastructure in the hopes of attracting technology giants of the world to our city. They never came.
What happened? Why did we spend all of that money only to have it never materialize into corporations filling our much-empty business buildings downtown? I believe that our city leadership failed us and had the “if we build it, they will come” mentality. For a multitude of reasons, anchor tenants in Tacoma moved elsewhere. Chances are, they were lured away by cities who offered them incentives to do so. Basically, we lost out to better offers.
Tacoma’s leaders needed to take a deep dive into this problem, not kick the proverbial can down the road. We need to understand what those other cities did that we did not and actually effect change to undo the past. There’s got to be some self examination and evaluation of business practices that have failed and we need to get those businesses back to Tacoma. We need to bring higher paying jobs of all kinds to Tacoma. Fulfill the promises that Tacoma’s leader failed to deliver and the current leadership fails to recognize as a loss.
That’s what Tacoma’s City Government is supposed to provide for us all. Better business opportunities, the promise of a more fulfilling future, and less time in our cars with more time spent with our families. These are all important factors that add up to a more successful city. The people of Tacoma need more from their local government and that’s going to have to start at the top. The Mayor needs to lead the charge for a successful city, not strive for mediocrity. We all deserve that from the people we elect into office.