1. Yelm Ave. LID
Quoting page 2 of City Development Review Engineer Jim Gibson’s Staff Report (then click Upcoming Agenda, then 9a.) dated June 14, 2006 to Mayor Ron Harding, “The developers of Tahoma Terra elected to pursue the formation of a Local Improvement District (LID) to construct the required improvements (Killion Rd. with Yelm Avenue). During initial discussion with staff of the Community Development Department and the Yelm Transportation Committee, the city recommended that the improvements of the LID extend to 93rd Avenue along Yelm Avenue West, and north to the proposed 510 Yelm Loop.”

[Ed. Note: Let there be no mistake, the LID was expanded beyond Tahoma Terra’s Killion intersection application to include the already-approved Yelm High School roadwork under the auspices of saving money, yet unduly burdening the city’s own LID contiguous property owners by expanding the initial LID coverage. Oh, and Tahoma Terra requested the LID because that is an existing approved development. The same developers own the contiguous proposed 5,000 home Thurston Highlands land and the LID is really to mitigate that development’s traffic through Tahoma Terra if and when such is built. They can not say the LID is for Thurston Highlands because that is a yet to be existing/approved complex.]

2. Page 7 of this Staff Report says that 209,304 square feet of the “ROW Area Needed.”
Quoting the May 24th, 2006 City Council Minutes (then click Minutes, then May 24, 2006), “Tom Skillings [City hired engineer of Skillings/Connolly] reported that the right of way acquisition budget was $1.5 million and that each property was subject to appraisal and fair market value.” With interest rates and property values still rising, the city may be forced to dig deeper in the pockets and pay more than this budgeted amount.