Last week, the Downtown Tacoma Partnership’s Safety and Clean Teams were honored at the 36th Annual City of Destiny Awards, receiving the Group Award for teamwork on a project that benefits the community.

“These awards recognize active examples of compassion in action,” said Mayor Victoria Woodards. “Each recipient’s dedication to service showcases how we all have the power to impact the lives of our friends, families, and neighbors and make Tacoma a more connected, resilient, and caring community.”

Since 1987, more than 300 outstanding local volunteers have been honored through the City of Destiny Awards program presented by the City of Tacoma and the Events & Recognition Committee. The awards were held in-person for the first time in 2 years at The Pantages Theater, where the community was welcomed to join the celebration for this year’s award recipients.

Here at the Downtown Tacoma Partnership, we’d like to thank the City of Tacoma and the Events & Recognition Committee for awarding our hard-working Safe & Clean Teams for the stellar work that they do for our community. As the only group focused exclusively on making Downtown Tacoma amazing, we know how important it is to keep Downtown safe, clean, and welcoming for everyone.

We are lucky to have two incredible people who have truly helped Downtown thrive over the last few decades. Jim Burgess leads our Clean Team, which removes over 120,000 pounds of debris and 2,000 graffiti tags from the streets of downtown each year. We have been fortunate to have Jim keeping our streets clean and vibrant for over 30 years. John Leitheiser has been leading our Safety Team for over 20 years, and under his guidance, the Safety Team supports Downtown stakeholders by addressing 4,000 community incidents every year. John sees everything from noise disturbances to people requesting safety escorts as he works to keep downtown’s public spaces feeling safe. 

Jim and John, alongside the Downtown Tacoma Partnership’s Executive Director, David Shroedel, were proud to accept our City of Destiny Award. We look forward to continuing to serve our community in the years ahead.