– The Yelm Business Association (YBA) on Yelm’s Comprehensive Plan updates.
The Yelm Business Association (YBA) Board of Directors submitted the following comments to the City of Yelm during the public Comprehensive Plan updates comment period, which closed on March 1st.

General Comments:

• This is not a plan in the traditional sense of comprehensive planning. This is more of a brainstorming or “shopping list” of general items, and the way in which they are written, would have no force of law even if adopted into ordinance.

• There is no list of priorities or set of objectives.

• There is no timeline when any Comprehensive Plan item would be implemented.

• There is no estimated dollar amount to implement many of these items, many of which the city would not have the resources to enact.

• Action verbs are mostly missing. Passive verbs such as “like, support, encourage, participate, and allow” need to be replaced by “shoulds” and “shalls.”

• Which one of these will become part of Yelm’s Municipal Code (YMC) in 2016? In 2017? In 2018?

Here are a few specific comments as examples:

• Page 1, Goal 7. “Support public and private local food systems to increase community resilience, health and economic prosperity” – yet the City was well-known for putting up roadblocks to have the Yelm Farmer’s Market within the city limits, forcing them to relocate outside of the city limits, and have inhibited their return. Please delete.

• Page 4, Sustainable Community Guidance. Why does the city of Yelm not follow Policy 2.2 Building with Green/LEED standards, when the city purposefully chose to downsize the Community Center to avoid LEED standards in that structure?

• Page 8, Goal 11.11 Why is the city “Planning at the neighborhood level to increase housing density,” when this town no longer has the updated and/or expanded infrastructure to support such, i.e. roads, water, sewer.

• “Changing the zoning of the commercial location.” Changing commercial zoning area is not recommended. This requires a comprehensive community-wide discussion on the effects on the community, with the involvement of present land owners required.

Respectfully submitted,

Dan Crowe, Executive Director Yelm Business Association
Cynthia Schmier, President
Steve Craig
Bill Hashim
Steve Klein
Marian Licxandru
Read more published in the Nisqually Valley News (NVN).


– Ed Wiltsie’s remarks to the Yelm City Council 10 years ago still pertinent today.
On October 24, 2006, Professional Engineer Ed Wiltsie (now deceased) gave a riveting presentation to the Yelm City Council amending the Yelm Comprehensive Plan. He spoke brilliantly about traffic and water issues, which this Blogger noted. Until his passing, Wiltsie was an outspoken champion to the City of Yelm in following the process, rather than ignoring statutes and ordinances in-place to guide this town’s growth.
Read more of Wiltsie’s comments.


Blogger Klein is a Yelm Business Assn. (YBA) founding Board member.