Here's a quick rundown of tonight's City Council meeting:

A consent agenda adopting various meeting minutes passed unanimously.

No one signed up to speak at public comment.

Three purchasing awards -- for chip seal rock, Ford automotive parts and improvements to the landfill's gas flare station -- were passed together unanimously.

Ordinances adopting pay raises for 32 police and fire employees, extending paid military leave from 15 days per year to 21 days and clarifying the application procedure for disability retirement each passed unanimously.

An ordinance to authorize the Board and Director of the Tacoma Employees' Retirement system to execute contracts was put off (date uncertain). Mayor bill Baarsma mentioned at a Committee of the Whole meeting earlier in the afternoon that some issues had been raised by lawyer-types about the phrasing of the ordinance.

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The Pierce County Council this afternoon rejected a call to scrap poll voting this year to save money.

By a unanimous vote, the council rejected Auditor Jan Shabro’s proposal to conduct the August primary and November general elections exclusively by mail.

The plan would have saved Shabro’s office nearly $144,000 at a time when the county is cutting costs to balance its budget.

But council members said they want Shabro to search elsewhere for budget savings, citing the popularity of poll voting with many of their constituents.

“Thousands of voters have said they want to go to the polls in Pierce County,” said Chairman Roger Bush, R-Graham. “It’s an investment in democracy as we’ve practiced it in Pierce County for 100 years.”

Like other county departments, the auditor’s office is scrambling to cut costs. The council recently approved $8 million in spending cuts and other budget adjustments. More are expected this summer as sales tax and other revenues plummet. And 2010 looks even worse.

Shabro said she was trying to save money while preserving jobs in her office. She already has cut more than $326,000 from her budget and is looking for ways to trim more.

Shabro proposed scrapping poll voting for this year only, arguing that turnout would be low in off-year elections.

She found some sympathy on the council. Councilman Dick Muri, R-Steilacoom, proposed meeting Shabro halfway by eliminating poll voting for the August primary but keeping the polls open for the November general election. That proposal would have saved the auditor about $72,000.

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The Washington State Liquor Control Board will meet Wednesday in Lacey to propose a $1.05-per-liter increase in the price of booze to replenish nearly $80 million the Legislature took from the board to balance the state budget.

Representatives of the liquor industry claim state lawmakers are forcing the Liquor Board to "raise taxes" because they couldn't come up with the two-thirds majority vote in the House and Senate to raise taxes themselves.

But Legislature is cleverly circumventing provisions of Initiative 960, which requires a public vote or a two-thirds vote to raise taxes, said David Wojnar, vice president of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States.

Wojnar called it a "stealth tax."

"Legislators aren’t pulling the wool over anyone’s eyes here – this is a tax," said Wojnar said. "By forcing the agency to raise prices on liquor, state legislators have craftily avoided leaving their own fingerprints on what is essentially a major tax hike.

"This stealth move violates the spirit of I-960 which would have required a two-thirds vote by the Legislature to enact a liquor tax increase," he said.

Brian Smith, liquor board spokesman, said Tuesday that Liquor Board members are moving quickly to replace the money the Legislature tranferred from the liquor board's revolving fund. The board notified suppliers of the proposed increase, which would take effect Aug. 1.

The $1.05 per liter increase would raise $78.6 million if it remained in effect until June 30, 2011, the end of the 2009-11 budget cycle, he said.

The Legislature took $60 million to help balance the state budget. The remaining $18.6 million would have gone to local governments.

Rep. Kelli Linville, D-Bellingham, chairwoman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said the transfer from the liquor board account was necessary to balance the budget and help fill a $9 billion shortfall.

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For some, the words "regional transportation planning" are the public policy equivalent of melatonin. I'll admit I'm not much of a transportation wonk myself.

But Tacoma Mayor Bill Baarsma put its importance this way at a City Council study session this afternoon: By 2040, Tacoma is going to be the size of St. Louis.

Yowza.

His comment came as the Council watched a presentation by the Puget Sound Regional Council that laid out scenario for how we might grow and change transportation systems in the four-county region over the next 30 years.

I'm not going to recap the entire 40-slide PowerPoint presentation, but you can follow this link to a two-page overview of the proposals and there's plenty more at the PRSC's Web site.

Here are a couple of key ideas and interesting points that were raised in the presentation:

* Best case scenario, wait times are still going to go way up on freeways and arterials. But if we do nothing they're going to go way, way up.

* In the next 30 years, we're going to be adding the equivalent of Portland, Ore. to what we've already got.

* In order to better use freeways, we could see HOV lanes go from being for 2+ riders to 3+.

* In our region, transportation accounts for about half of the carbon emissions, so it will be a major front in the battle over climate change.

* Between 1970 and 2000, Pierce County had 11 percent of the new jobs in the area. Between 2000 and 2040 that's expected to grow to 15 percent. Councilman Mike Lonergan (right) pointed that out that's not a four percent increase -- that four percentage point increase is really a 36 percent increase. Which means we need to get busy growing our economy by something like 80,000 new jobs, he said.

The PSRC has come up with five alternative scenarios of how the region might proceed in a unified way. The various plans put different emphases on transit, system management, tolls (including one scenario that has tolls on arterial roads) and environmental protection.

There's clearly a lot more to the issue than I can tackle in a blog post. I'll try to get a copy of the full presentation e-mailed to me so I can add it to this post.

Update: As promised, here's the full presentation.

Tony Tortorice will become the new director of the state Department of Information Services. He starts July 1 at an annual salary of $147,000. He replaced Gary Robinson, who retired in January.

Gov. Gregoire announces appointment of new DIS director

OLYMPIA – Gov. Chris Gregoire today named Tony Tortorice, a California Information Technology executive with more than 25 years of IT experience in both the private and public sectors, to head Washington’s Department of Information Services.

“Tony brings the unique background and wealth of experience required to be successful in this role,” Gregoire said. “Our state, like any other business, has to make technological advances if we’re going to be successful. I am confident that Tony’s strong technology experience will greatly benefit Washington as we develop strategies to streamline state government – which will better serve our communities while improving our bottom line.”

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Set wonk alert to condition three throughout the system.

Tacoma is holding a workshop and walking tour Thursday afternoon as it puts together some Complete Streets Design Guidelines. The public is invited to attend and participate.

In English: Tacoma is trying to make city streets appealing to more than just drivers. That means putting in sidewalks, bike lanes, turn lanes and so forth. (Think Bridgeport Way in University Place -- which is listed as an example on www.completestreets.org, the online HQ for the national movement.)

The improvements also include "green" features, such as trees (natch!) and rain gardens to capture and use storm water, said City of Tacoma planner Elliott Barnett.

Why are the principles behind complete streets a big deal? What good to they do besides getting urban planners' pheromones pumping?

According to the organization's Web site, the benefits are myriad:

* There's an economic benefit to property values and to shops from increased pedestrian traffic.
* The streets are safer for walkers and bikers.
* More walking and biking makes people healthier.
* It can ease traffic congestion -- "In Portland, Oregon, a complete streets approach has resulted in a 74 percent increase in bicycle commuting in the 1990s."
* Decreased car traffic means better air quality.
* And Complete Streets will bring about world peace.

(Ok, I made that last one up.)

Barnett puts it this way: just as mixed-use planning aims to make private property development more "livable," the Complete Streets approach does the same thing for public rights of way. So it's natural to apply it first in Tacoma's mixed use centers.

Everything you've ever wanted to know about Complete Streets in Tacoma can be found on the city Planning Department's Web site.

Here's the schedule for Thursday's events:

Meet at the Tacoma Municipal Building –
747 Market Street, Room 248, Tacoma

2:00 to 2:30 Introductions & Overview
2:30 to 4:00 Walking Tour
4:00 to 5:00 Workshop (Room 248)

(Photo: illustration from Oregon Department of Transportation, posted at CompleteStreets.org)