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Klein Urges Yelm City Residents To Ask The City Questions

Amid several current blunders by the Yelm City Council, Yelm watch dog and blogger Steve Klein urges Yelm Residents to ask the City of Yelm Council some hard questions about pressing issues.

Directly from Yelm.com

YELM RESIDENTS SHOULD DEMAND ANSWERS FROM CITY OFFICIALS!

The number one responsibility of elected officials and their staffs of our municipalities is to protect and serve the constituents in their communities – looking out for their interests. Sure, being honored as Citizen of the Year, Best Community Volunteer, or Best Elected/Appointed official is a wonderful acknowledgment for all of the service to the town.

That doesn’t quite equate to the “protecting” part of job. Yelm residents & especially tax-paying property owners should be holding City of Yelm officials’ feet to the fire on two key questions as to why this Mayor, City Council and their Staff have not protected the interests of their own people with two simple questions:

1. HIGHLANDS DEFAULT LEFT UNPAID TAXES & FEES

Why has the City of Yelm NOT filed liens against Thurston Highlands, LLC. to attempt to recoup owed back-taxes and contractual fees for citizens after the Highlands’ Fall, 2008 default, totaling in the hundreds of thousands of dollars?

I am also a City of Yelm property owner and posed this question City Administrator Shelly Badger. After an e-mail exchange, she has not answered this question. Her lack of a response IS the answer in and of itself. This IS the 1,000 pound elephant in the room the city does not want addressed!

That city officials do not like me or my question does not matter, nor is the issue.

Where is the common decency in working on your citizens’ behalf to protect their tax money?

All of the community-volunteering acknowledgments pale next the lack of aggressiveness on this matter!

If Mrs. Badger provides a response, I will pass on to you.

2. WATER RATE INCREASE

Why has the City of Yelm raised water rates 69% on their residents, as outlined in the city’s Draft Water System Plan, when that plan has not been approved?

How can city officials pass on water rate increases to its residents for a Water Plan that involves expenses for a major Multi-Planned Community (MPC) when that MPC has defaulted and is out of the picture is just one question that has never been answered? And, the plan has not been approved and may not be viable.

Another 1,000 pound elephant in the room the city does not want addressed!

UPDATE: Dec. 8th, 8pm

The Yelm City Council authorized spending $37,000 tonight to craft a response from a Dept. of Health letter to the city dated October 20, 2009 regarding the Water System Plan & provide additional “analysis regarding the city’s water portfolio in light of the recent denial of the McMonigle water right.”

Ed. Note: Will that be all [$37,000]? Probably not!

Stay tuned!

Further, regarding the 2010 Sewer Rates on the City Council Docket tonight:

Grant Beck gave the Staff Report on the record saying that due to his heavy work load, the city’s 2009 Sewer Rate Plan has not been updated, so was asking Council to carry-forward the 2009 rates into 2010 and eliminate the deposit.

That was interesting and what especially caught my ear was a follow-up warning to Council on this from City Administrator Badger, who said that if the Budget Committee finds the City’s Budget is not on their targets in the 1st quarter of 2010, Staff will be coming back to ask for a COLA [Cost of Living Adjustment] rate increase for Sewer Rates, as the city will not have their 2009 Sewer Plan done until the latter part of 2010.

I wrote in the NVN last week that I knew the city was going to have 2010 budget issues & Badger basically gave that warning last night to Council, on the record.

I encourage you to write to City officials and ask them these 2 simple questions.

Send me the answers you get & I will publish them here.

Mayor Ron Harding = ronh@ci.yelm.wa.us

City Administrator Shelly Badger = shellyb@ci.yelm.wa.us

City Community Development Director Grant Beck = grantb@ci.yelm.wa.us

ALL YELM RESIDENTS SHOULD DEMAND ANSWERS FROM THEIR CITY’S LEADERS!

Southeast Thurston Regional Fire Authority

On February 9, 2010, all registered voters in the City of Yelm and County Fire Districts 2 and 4 will get an opportunity to vote on the merger to be under one umbrella of the Southeast Thurston Regional Fire Authority. The merger will eliminate several redundant administrative expenses and allow the Fire Authority to operate more efficiently.

Yelm City Council approved placing the Regional Fire District Consolidation measure on the ballot on December 8th, 2009 .

Ballots will be mailed the week of January 18, 2010.

The video below is posted on www.setrfa.com

From their website

In the late 1990’s Yelm and the surrounding communities began to see steady growth. Increased population and development in urban and rural settings resulted in greater demands on area fire districts; Yelm Fire District #2, which included City of Yelm residents, and Thurston County Fire District #4 (Rainier). The City of Yelm has no city fire department and has been contracting with the Yelm Fire District #2 for the provision of fire and emergency medical services for many years. Fire service and emergency medical services, which were provided by predominately volunteer fire departments, struggled to keep pace with the increase in emergency calls.

Changes in the laws governing firefighter health and safety and increased difficulties in recruitment and retention of qualified volunteers required a more consistent staffing plan. This led to the hiring of three (3) career firefighters by Yelm Fire District #2 in February 2002.

In 2001, Thurston County Fire District #4 (Rainier), contracted with Yelm Fire District #2 to improve emergency response capabilities. The two (2) districts share personnel, equipment, and apparatus as a condition of the contract. This arrangement improved service and administrative efficiency in both districts. The combination of districts is called “S.E. Thurston Fire & EMS” and includes City of Yelm residents regarding emergency responses. Each fire district maintains its own Board of Fire Commissioners, which meet together on a monthly basis. City of Yelm citizens are unable to vote on or participate in fire department issues under this arrangement.

In 2008, the districts signed an Interlocal Agreement. With this agreement the two (2) Boards of Fire Commissioners, Yelm and Rainier, agreed to operate jointly and to pursue the formation of a Regional Fire Protection Authority (RFA) in conjunction with the City of Yelm.

The RFA Planning Committee was established and is comprised of three (3) fire commissioners from Thurston County Fire District #4, three (3) fire commissioners from Yelm Fire District #2, and three (3) appointed Yelm City Council members.

The challenges and needs of all citizens in the S.E. Thurston Fire & EMS area were assessed and addressed by the RFA Planning Committee through a series of meetings. This plan is the result.

Olympian Reports On Permit Problems In Yelm

The Olympian ran a story titled Permit process gone awry creates nightmare in Yelm detailing the struggles of Andy and Cindy Smith who are unable to move into their new house because of the City of Yelm’s mismanagement of the building permit process.

The city issued a building permit for the home despite a development condition that prohibited it. Now, to uphold a second condition, the city refuses to issue an occupancy permit to the Smiths because of water use issues.

It seems a lot of the blame is being placed on the developer Steve Chamberlain and Dan Lee, the builder, despite the fact it was the city that issued the permit in the first place.

A commenter adds

This is the same developer, City Dev. Dir., Mayor & City Council that has the City of Yelm in alot of hot water:

- Chamberlain was one of the developers of the now-defaulted 5,000 home Thurston Highlands that left the city holding the bag in hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid taxes & contractual fees for services rendered. The city never obtained a contract with Highlands developers to get reimbursed for their pro-rata share of a Water Study on developers land.

- Thurston County Superior Court ruled against the city’s policy of issuing permits to developers without proving water availability until the building permit stage, rather than prior to plat approval, in a suit against Chamberlains Tahome Terra.

- The City may be overpumping their Ecology-allocated annual water limit & has spent $200,000 in legal fees attempting to acquire the McMonigle Water rights, in which Chamberlain was involved, now being acquired through eminent domain.

The city never admits their mistakes!

City Of Yelm Threatens To Evoke Eminent Domain To Seize Water Rights

On October 26, 2009, Mayor Ron Harding signed a a letter stating the City Of Yelms intent to evoke Eminent Domain to seize the McMonigle water rights that were key to the Washington State Dept. of Ecology’s June 20th decision to reverse the the Thurston County Conservancy Board Draft Water System Plan approval of Yelm’s much criticize Mitigated Determination of Non-significance (MDNS).

Eminent domain is the inherent power of the state and local municipalities to seize a citizen’s private property, expropriate property, or seize a citizen’s rights in property with due monetary compensation, but without the owner’s consent. The property is taken either for government use or by delegation to third parties who will devote it to public or civic use or, in some cases, economic development. (from Wikipedia).

Steve Klein broke this story and gives an excellent time line of the City’s struggles with its Water Plan on Yelm.com is a post titled CITY OF YELM SEEKS TO CONDEMN CITIZEN’S WATER RIGHTS.

JZ Knight Posts Yelm Water Plan Details – Map and Print Ads

JZ Knight, owning property just over a mile from the location of the new wells outlined in the City of Yelm’s Water Plan, launched an aggressive media campaign to get information out to the residents of Yelm and the surrounding areas concerning the City’s practices regarding the Water Plan.

The post on her website states:

The City of Yelm is trying to substitute a Mitigated Determination of Non-Significance (MDNS) for an Environmental Impact Study (EIS) regarding their proposed five-fold increase in water withdrawal quantities. By doing this, City officials are sidestepping their obligation to get the opinions of the public and independent professionals about the environmental impacts of such an action.

Your well water level could drop 23 feet and leave you dry

When this happens, when you least expect it, who’s going to pay you the $15,000 it takes to drill you a new well and replace your pumping equipment? Are you going to enjoy the surprise of having no water?

You have until this Friday, May 22nd to send your comments into officials for an appeal.

It also includes a downloadable PDF and contact info for sending in comments.

The PDF is much like the full color print ad in the Olympian today (in the A section).

The deadline for public appeal is Friday May 22nd.

Below is the map from www.jzknight.com, showing the area affected by the proposed drawdown.

Yelm Community Blog Finds City of Yelm Negligence

The below is from a press release sent today, May 7th, 2009.

As a result of over a thorough 2-month investigation, I have published today
a detailed report outlining what I assert is the negligence of City of Yelm officials
in handling the official business of the city and in keeping this knowledge from public view.

“THURSTON HIGHLANDS IN DEFAULT -

AN OPPORTUNITY TO REMAKE OUR COMMUNITY IN OUR MIDST”
http://yelm.com/2009/05/thurston-highlands-in-default.html

My report includes public documents that support every facet of my investigation
and allows the reader to draw their own conclusions. I will be publishing a follow-up
part of this report with more details in a future entry.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
Thank you for your interest.
Most sincerely.
–
Steve Klein
Host, Yelm Community Blog

Welcome To Yelm

Klein provides links to PDFs of public documents supporting his claims and assertions.

He outlines four key questions.
1. Why is the City of Yelm proceeding with the Water System Plan when the whole premise of the Plan is no longer valid, since the city’s water system expansion is based on serving Master Planned Communities (MPC), the largest one being in default?
2. Why did the City of Yelm, who knew this firm was in default, not tell the public?
3. Why did the City of Yelm not tell their constituents the status of this default or the amount the city was owed by Thurston Highlands, LLC?
4. Why has the City of Yelm done little or nothing to get taxpayer dollars reimbursed?

It will be interesting to see if any large media outlets (Olympian? King 5?) pick this up as a story of city officials mishandling taxpayer’s money should be a hot topic in the current economy.

Construction Budget Impacts Yelm

Washington State $3.2 billion construction budget has money for Yelm projects

The Washington Legislature has approved a downsized $3.2 billion construction budget with Yelm listed in two of the bullet points.

The House, on a 61-35 vote Sunday night after removing $777 million from the budget to help try to meet the state’s $35 billion operating budget. The last step is the signature of Gov. Chris Gregoire to finalize the bill.

In this budget are:
$400,000 in temporary public works funding for Yelm’s Longmire community park.
And
$11.05 million for the first phase of the Yelm bypass highway, which could put contracts out to bid later this year.

The $400,000 is to added to $408,800 that the Yelm City Council authorized in July of 2008 to run water to a park in Yelm…
For toilets. (See Yelm.com’s excellent article on this)

Over $800,000 to run water, which Yelm doesn’t have, to toilets at a baseball park to replace the portable toilets that now exist there.

And $11.05 million for the first phases of the SR 510 – Yelm Loop?

Thanks Washington State.

Yelm Bypass Round Up

With some recent confusion over the status of the Yelm Bypass funding, I emailed Dennis Engel, who is listed as the Project Engineer WSDOT Olympic Region for the project (the SR 510 – Yelm Loop)

Under the current funding we have right of way and preliminary engineering (design) funded. There are three seperate budgets being worked on. The first one to come out was the Governor’s budget. This had no money for the Yelm Loop in the biennium that starts in July. The Senate and House have both issued their transportation budgets that include a little over $11 million for Yelm Loop.

The City of Yelm has been working with the legislature to fund the construction of phase 1 of the project. Phase 1 is a little over 1 mile that goes from Mud Run Road to Cullins Road. The money earmarked by the legislature is potentially for phase 1.

We are currently designing a portion of the Yelm Loop, concentrating on the area within the limits of phase 1. We have purchased almost all of the right of way in the phase 1 area and expect to have all the right of way for the entire Yelm Loop, with the exception of 3 parcels, purchased by the end of June. If the money is approved for construction we are looking at an October 2009 advertisement date.

So the City has motivation to complete Phase One, which would run traffic thru several ‘yet to be developed, but city zoned’ areas north of Yelm, but only to Cullins Road, not even to Canal Rd which could then route some of the traffic around town?

And if the rest of the money is funded, am I the only one who still thinks the bypass is a horrible idea?

I have noticed survey crews out by the 510 Curve North of town, by Mud Run Rd Se, this week. Are they taking measurements in anticipation of the start of a road project that could very well starve the current business in Yelm and put a nine stop bypass around town that runs past existing housing developments, feeding the Industrial Zoned section in Yelm and going past the city park?

Yelm Chamber of Commerce Announces Award Winners

Yelm Area Chamber of Commerce Award Winners

2008 – 2009 Award Winners Announced
Chamber of Commerce 2008-2009 Award Winners to be honored at the Tuesday, May 12, 2009 Chamber forum Luncheon.
Congratulations to the honorees:

Business of the Year (1-5 Employees)
PCI Pest Control and Inspection
Matt Purcell, Owner

Business of the Year (6-20 Employees)
Nisqually Valley News
Keven Graves, Publisher/Editor

Business of the Year (21+ Employees)
Baydo’s
Walt Baydo, President

Chamber of Commerce Volunteer of the Year
John Gibbs Thompson, Project Manager & Property Services
Director, Prairie Park Holdings, LCC

City of Yelm Citizen of the Year
Ron Harding, R&M Remodeling