Yelm City Council approves annexation of unincorporated Thurston County properties

During a Yelm City Council meeting on Thursday, Jan. 27, the council voted to approve the annexation and rezoning of several unincorporated Thurston County properties into Yelm city limits.

Councilor Tracey Wood was the lone “no” vote, while councilors Joseph Richardson, Stephanie Kangiser, Griselda Arias, David Johnstone, Brian Hess and Terry Kaminski each voted in favor of annexation.

Gary Cooper, Yelm planning and building manager, said during the meeting that several areas were proposed to be annexed and rezoned within the City of Yelm Urban Growth Area (UGA). He noted that the council and some members of the audience have heard his presentation on annexation before, but for the sake of the record, he wanted to be thorough.

“To preface this, as I’ve said before, the (UGA) was required by the Growth Management Act in 1990. It was created collaboratively with Thurston County, and I think our (UGA) went into effect in 1992,” Cooper said. “A (UGA) under growth management is supposed to be annexed within a 20-year period. So, this being the first time the city and county had done this, they made their best guess as to what would be annexed within 20 years. It’s been 34 years. Theoretically, our whole (UGA) should’ve been annexed a long time ago.”

Cooper believes that it wasn’t a question of whether or not those areas would be annexed, but rather of a question of when. So why now?

“There are two main reasons. One is our housing need. The second, as I’ve discussed before, is to correct some really irregular boundaries within the city. I’ve described the city’s boundaries as looking like a puzzle piece,” Cooper said. “These areas that we’re proposing to annex are more than 60% surrounded by the city, and in some cases, more than 80 to 85% surrounded by the city.”

In 2023, according to Cooper, the state legislature amended the growth management act to say rather than just planning for housing needs, cities must plan and accommodate for housing needs.

“Those two little words made a big difference in terms of what our responsibilities are because they laid out, in that process, the things that we needed to do to accommodate for our housing needs,” Cooper said.

Additionally, based on population projections over the next 20-years, Cooper said Yelm had to determine how many additional housing units are needed through that timeframe.

“That was a process that was facilitated by the Thurston Regional Planning Council. The outcome of that process was that Yelm needs to provide 7,405 new housing units by 2045,” Cooper said. “By law, we’re required to accommodate them by showing, the second part of this, that we actually have the land capacity to do this.”

Cooper added that TRPC did a capacity analysis and analyzed the area and zoning within the city. Based on that analysis, it was determined that under current city limits, Yelm would fall 2,500 homes short of meeting housing needs.

“Based on that, we’re basically out of compliance with state law. That’s a big driver,” Cooper said. “Annexation new territory, we sent to TRPC the proposed annexation area to have them analyze that to see if that would get us back into compliance. They said it would.”

Cooper stated that the boundaries issue is a pretty obvious problem, and believes it’s a matter of efficiency of public services.

“You could be in the city, take a step off the curb into the county, walk 300 yards and be back in the city. That 300-yard stretch is an area that the county has to maintain,” Cooper said. “I would note that the county’s public works department was very much in favor of this annexation because it’s really inefficient for them to try to maintain these little strips and pieces, driving through the city to get to the other side of town to maintain these roads. There’s that reason.”

Cooper noted that the City of Yelm has taken note of and thought about some of the comments they’ve received from nearby residents during the annexation process. He said the city has heard the most from annexation zone eight.

“We’ve evolved in our thinking about that. We’re still recommending annexation, but it is a unique area,” Cooper said. “Mr. Alan McKenzie owns what I would call a heritage property. I was there 16-years ago when I was at the county and he was applying for conservation easements. I know how beautiful it is.

“If you do choose to adopt this annexation ordinance, we plan to immediately follow up with the residents of that zone to actually change the allowed uses in the open space zone so that they can continue the uses they have now,” he later added.