Yelm City Council is working to update the Yelm and Thurston County joint comprehensive plan to accommodate for future urban growth in Yelm.
The council unanimously approved the recommendation to update the Yelm and Thurston County joint comprehensive plan to comply with the growth management act. The recommendation of support was approved during a Yelm City Council meeting on Aug. 8.
Over a period of months, staff from the City of Yelm and Thurston County have created a plan to not only comply with the Growth Management Act, but to reflect shared visions for future development of Yelm’s urban growth area. The initial joint planning commission workshop resulted in minor suggested changes to the initial draft plan. After the changes were incorporated, both planning commissions voted unanimously to recommend approval of the proposed plan at a public hearing on July 10.
The Yelm City Council supports the recommendation of the planning commissions and requested the Thurston County Board of Commissioners adopt the City of Yelm and Thurston County Joint Comprehensive Plan.
Gary Cooper, Yelm’s planning and building manager, discussed the joint comprehensive plan during the meeting.
“The joint plan is a cooperative effort ideally, and, in this case, it’s between the city and Thurston County to plan a comprehensive plan that just applies to the city’s urban growth area,” he said. “The city’s urban growth area is actually the county, but it’s the area that the city and the county have decided will be annexed most likely within 20 years. We had a plan that was put in place in 2017 that the City drafted, but the County, due to staffing concerns, really wasn’t able to participate in that. The way this kind of worked out is the County picked up the plan we drafted, and they started with that as their basic plan. They then modified it to meet some of the things that are specific for the county.”
Cooper said the joint planning commission met for two meetings, including a public hearing where the two planning commissions recommended the plan’s approval. The City does not have final authority to approve the recommendation, which is why Cooper recommended the council sign the letter.
Cooper said both sides shared mutual concerns, but they worked to develop policies that work in collaboration with the way the city and county “do business.”
“It’s a priority for us, and we said that to them because the way Yelm is growing, we don’t want the county to be approving things that are rural that will eventually be a part of the city,” Cooper said. “Right now they have their county codes. They have planners in urban growth areas for Tumwater that need to know the Tumwater codes. There’s planners who have to know the Lacey codes, the Olympia codes, and so they need to now have staffing so they can learn Yelm codes so they can adopt and implement the codes according to what we want.”
