YELM’S COMPREHENSIVE PLAN TRAFFIC AMENDMENTS PUBLIC HEARING BY THE THURSTON COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS THIS TUESDAY

The Thurston County Board of Commissioners Public Hearing on Yelm’s Comp. Plan Amendments will be Tuesday, December 4 at 6pm at the County Courthouse.

This is a very important meeting to attend to tell the Commissioners we do not accept the City of Yelm’s conclusions about traffic.

If you cannot attend and wish to submit public comment,
Aimee Swenson, Associate Planner for Development Services is the person to write, however you must do so in writing by December 3rd at 5pm.

You may email your comments directly to her at:
swensoa@co.thurston.wa.us

or via snail mail to:
2000 Lakeridge Dr. SW
Bldg.1, 2nd Floor
Olympia, WA 98502

or Fax:
360-754-2939

The Board of Commissioners will have Work Sessions on Dec. 12 from 3 – 4pm and on Dec. 18 from 4 – 4:30pm to review amongst themselves all of the public input on the Comprehensive Plan.
The public is welcome to attend as observers only, however no public comments are permitted at these 2 sessions.

YELM’S WATER POLICIES “AN OLD IDEA & IT’S NOT GOING TO WORK ANY LONGER”
NPR’s Fresh Air Program with Terri Gross aired this fascinating interview on November 27 with Peter Gleick,
a MacArthur Fellow and co-founder of the Pacific Institute. Mr. Gleick runs one of the nation’s leading water-conservation assessment centers.

Mr. Gleick was asked a question about water vs. growth that certainly echoes what is going on in Yelm and says such old-style thinking must change:

“In the past, the answer has been to build it and we’ll figure out a way to get the water there and that worked to some degree in the 20th century, but it’s not going
to work anymore.
The idea that we can grow without thinking about the resources that are available for that growth is an old idea and it’s not going to work any longer.
It’s time that we integrate growth and the concerns about growth with the decisions about water and frankly energy and all the other resources we use.”

[Ed. Note: Nowhere is this exact observation more relevant than Yelm’s City Council quest for growth and where anyone questioning that is called a critic and anti-growth. Yelm’s water availability vs. all of the housing for which the city has accepted applications to supply that water are swiftly coming together in a major confluence. This is as critical as the traffic and storm water runoff issues, all making headlines here. Mayor Harding’s column on growth last week in the NVN demonstrates old-style thinking that does not serve the city’s future. Scroll down to the November 27th entry for more on Mr. Harding’s remarks. And, Yelm Community Blog readers have been kept informed on this issue for over a year and a half!]

STATE’S LEGISLATION CITED FORCES YELM TO STOP USING LODGING TAX FOR HISTORICAL SOCIETY MUSEUM
This writer wrote the following letter to the City’s Community & Government Relations Coordinator Cindy Teixeira and copied the City Council. No answer or acknowledgment by the Council was ever received:

Your Staff Report dated November 19th, 2007 about the Yelm Prairie Historical Society service provider contract said,
“Questions about using lodging taxes for the museum have arisen, however and we recommend (City staff to Council) that museum funding from that source cease until ownership conditions can be met. Clarification and research into appropriate legislation revealed a discrepancy about use of lodging taxes for operation of a museum housed in a facility not owned by the City of Yelm or the Historical Society. Alternatively, we would pay for the contracted services from the General Fund.”

Could you please tell me what the city is going to do with the money it has already collected from the hotel lodging tax?

If legislation revealed a discrepancy about the use of lodging taxes for operation of a museum housed in a facility not owned by the City of Yelm or the Historical Society, then wouldn’t the proper course of action be that the taxes previously collected be held in escrow until a permanent space is found where legislation would permit their use – i.e. a facility owned by the City or Yelm or the Historical Society ?

If the city already spent those taxes against “appropriate legislation”, then shouldn’t the city repay those taxes by putting that amount in escrow until we have a facility owned by the City of Yelm or the Historical Society and those monies can be spent according to the law?

WHAT DO YOU SAY ABOUT THESE ISSUES?