Yelm City Council weighs options for hazardous waste management plan ahead of vote

One week ahead of Yelm City Council’s vote on whether or not to implement Thurston County’s Solid Waste Advisory Committee’s (SWAC) hazardous waste management plan, all seven councilors, along with Joe DePinto, mayor, and Todd Stancil, city administrator, deliberated on an upcoming vote regarding implementation of the plan in a study session on Tuesday, Dec. 2.

No official action was taken during the study session and Yelm City Council will have the opportunity to vote on implementing SWAC’s hazardous waste management plan. If the council fails to pass the implementation of SWAC’s plan, the City of Yelm would then have to create its own plan — becoming the only Thurston County to have an independent strategy.

Yelm City Council initially rejected adopting SWAC’s hazardous waste management plan on Tuesday, Aug. 12, after a 4-3 vote. Councilors David Johnstone, Joshua Crossman, Joseph Richardson and Tracey Wood each voted no, while councilors Terry Kaminski, Brian Hess and Stephanie Kangiser each voted in favor of adopting Thurston County’s hazardous waste management plan.

Several Yelm city councilors cited their reasons for voting against the measure as due to “inaccurate” population growth estimates for the city within the plan, and language regarding a “crisis level” of racism — also referenced in the plan. You can read Nisqually Valley News’ previous reporting of the initial vote in August at https://tinyurl.com/YelmHazardousWastePlan.

During the study session on Tuesday, Dec. 2, Stancil told councilors that he submitted questions they had from the Aug. 12 meeting to SWAC and that it took several months to receive answers from the committee.

“We only have one more option to adopt this next Tuesday. It does have to be adopted by the end of the year unless we want to develop our own plan for solid waste,” Stancil said. “It’s just an estimate based on the size of the Thurston County plan. We would be the only city that’s not part of that plan.”

Stancil added that Yelm would be sitting around a cost of $20,000 to create its own plan, rather than implementing Thurston County’s plan through SWAC.

According to councilor Joseph Richardson, one of the biggest dilemmas in approving the plan back in August was when councilors asked questions and didn’t initially receive answers, and had to wait several months to receive those answers.

“As far as adopting the plan, I feel like that’s a possibility,” Richardson said. “We would just have hope that next time SWAC, in the future, sends someone who represents them and can answer questions on the spot.”

DePinto told councilors that if the measure isn’t going to pass during the Tuesday, Dec. 9, Yelm City Council meeting to let him know so the city could begin preparing to find a consultant and begin creating their own plan. He added that the timeline is early 2026 to receive responses for requisitions for qualifications (RFQ).

Stancil, following DePinto’s comments, spoke about the need for Yelm to fill their seat at the SWAC table and attend those meetings in order for concerns to be answered sooner rather than later.

“I know that we’ve had some changes on council and we haven’t been able to have anyone at the SWAC table. I know Mr. Mayor is going to do committee assignments next year. It may be helpful down the road if we’re involved in those conversations at the table with SWAC so we may be able to interject with some of these concerns at those particular meetings,” Stancil said. “I just want to put that out there that we do have a seat at the SWAC table. Just due to different challenges with scheduling, we haven’t been able to have someone there in a little bit of time.”

Councilor Tracey Wood said SWAC “states very clearly” that there isn’t a regulatory requirement to include DEI information in the hazardous waste management plan, but rather an executive order declared that.

According to information in the Yelm City Council agenda packet for the Tuesday, Aug. 12, meeting, Thurston Board of County Commissioners (BoCC) “declared racism a crisis through Resolution No. 15995, and the Board of Health proclaimed racism a public health crisis in March 2021. In December 2021, the BoCC passed Resolution No. 16097 establishing the Council on Racial Equity and Inclusion. The purpose of the council is to advice and engage the BoCC, Board of Health and elected and appointed officials on matters of racial equity and inclusion within county services and the policies, processes and practices used to accomplish the mission of Thurston County government.”

For Wood, the language is concerning.

“I don’t understand why this is even a discussion with the county on this. It feels so defeating,” he said. “It seems like there’s a whole lot of language here that isn’t necessary in order to get this thing handled.”

Councilor David Johnstone asked Stancil if there’s any particular reason why Yelm’s City Administrator will be presenting the topic next week to council rather than an SWAC member.

“Kathy (Linnemeyer) was communicating back and forth. I think it was just a matter of the timing of it. We had to come tonight and we had to come next Tuesday. When we said that was our window to bring it back, they just said they didn’t have anyone available,” Stancil said. “That was the excuse they used.”

“If we wanted to pursue looking into building our own plan down the road, we have the ability to get out of this plan. We’re not locked in,” Stancil continued. “There’s no financial commitment forcing us to be part of this plan. We just have to have a plan in place.”