Dear Mayor Harding, Yelm City Council, Planning Staff & Yelm Planning Commission,

In case you do not read the Seattle newspapers, here is an idea whose time has come.
What say you?

Don’t you think Yelm could use a fresh approach as quoted below, as you continue to:

A. Approve more and more development; more traffic, more housing, more noise, more pollution, more demand on our water resources.
B. Are on the threshold of 8,000 more car trips a day with the soon-to-open Wal-Mart Super Center, in a town already gridlocked many afternoons.
C. Rely on a Y-3 Loop for traffic mitigation — a road a decade away from fruition, if at all.
D. Continue to herald your band aid fixes such as a center turn lane and a new side street, without adding any extra capacity; same one lane in and same one lane out.
E. Allow a taxpayer-funded-LID and future road improvements to be borne by your citizens, rather than having mitigation fees that take into full account all development generated expenses that impact the city, which should be paid in full by the development.
E. Continue to permit Grade F to be the norm for some Yelm traffic intersections.

The Seattle Times reports in the September 2nd edition:
“State Secretary of Transportation Doug MacDonald wants to move beyond bureaucratese … to fresh ideas for solving transportation problems and is putting up $1,000 of his own money to reach that goal. It’s called the $1,000 Doug MacDonald Challenge, sponsored by the national Transportation Research Board, an organization with the National Academy of Sciences. The idea of generating new transportation ideas from the public with a contest came to him while he was sitting around one day.
‘Every time we pay consultants, we get the same old ideas, the same old graphs and charts,’ MacDonald said. ‘Maybe there’s a better plan to get new ideas, so I decided to make a modest personal contribution in hopes of stirring up interest. ‘I am fascinated by how we are going to get the public’s enthusiasm about the fact we can keep highways moving so we actually get more use out of highways. In a line of stalled traffic, you don’t get much production of the highway. Everyone wins when the lanes move.'”

To quote Nisqually Valley News Publisher & Managing Editor Keven Graves in his August 28th editorial,
“Give City of Yelm credit for credit that’s due”
this writer absolutely agrees. However there is much work that needs to be done to accommodate all of the growth aprroved here. Let’s not rest on our laurels while this City is fast approaching a crisis with the convergence of traffic, water and quality of life issues here.

Mr Graves states, “While the City of Yelm is often the target of criticism from various factions of the community, there are times when “atta boys” are in order.”

This writer asks, “Why do city administrators & you complain that my comments and others are negative, rather than seeing that all of us are in this together with a desire to preserve this beautiful place we all call home and that we stand up and share, bringing forth concerns, observations and ideas?”

We care just as much as you do!

Doug MacDonald certainly welcomes public input. How about Yelm officials?
This writer and his wife will hereby donate $1,000 to the City of Yelm with “the idea of generating new transportation ideas from the public for a contest” to solicit enthusiasm, ideas and input from our local citizens, like Mr. MacDonald.

Do you accept?