The Tillicum community will hold a rally at the Lakewood City Council meeting on Monday night to oppose a revived proposal to move the main gate serving Camp Murray.

The Tillicum Woodbrook Neighborhood Association and related Tillicum Action Committee will use the gathering to demonstrate to the City Council the community opposition to the proposal due to concerns about a lot of traffic driving down a major residential street.

The meeting begins at 7 p.m. in the council chambers of Lakewood City Hall, 6000 Main St. SW.

David Anderson, the neighborhood association’s president, pledged that the group would exhaust its appeals if the project moves forward.

“We only have one approach to this: no gate move at all,” he said. “It makes no sense.”

City Manager Andrew Neiditz said the city is receptive to moving the gate to the location it initially objected to after a recent traffic analysis showed little difference in traffic impact between moving the gate there or to the city’s preferred alternative — a block south at the end of Grant Avenue.

He said moving the gate would be “non-starter” for the city without mitigation the military department will pay for to deter pass-through motorists on the residential street, Portland Avenue, which connects to the Interstate 5 interchange serving North Thorne Lane.

“The status quo, leaving the gate as it is, is just not acceptable,” he said.

The Washington State Military Department, headquartered at Camp Murray, has proposed moving the main gate from the intersection of Berkeley Street and Union Avenue to the intersection of Boundary Street and Portland Avenue. Officials there said the current gate’s proximity to a busy intersection, Interstate 5 interchange and a rail line that could see increased use is unsafe for its citizen-soldiers, employees and visitors.

Neighbors worried that the new location would be unsafe for their community. The most recent traffic analysis estimates an additional 900 vehicles a day would travel down Portland if the gate were moved either to Boundary/Portland or Grant.

In September, talks collapsed after the military department was unable to commit federal money budgeted for the project by the end of the federal fiscal year because the city of Lakewood declined to issue a right-of-way permit for the Boundary/Portland location. The city said it would issue a permit for the end of Grant Avenue — a block to the south — if the state agency complied with numerous conditions. The permit is required to connect the new gate to the public street.

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Tacoma/Pierce County Habitat for Humanity is in a tight race for the $25,000 top prize in American Home Shield’s “Challenge for Change” website click-a-thon. Supporters can visit the site and vote once every day.

The 15 Habitat entries each propose a project that will refresh a run-down community. This one started with the City of Lakewood’s 2009 announcement that it would use its federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program funds and team up with Habitat in Tillicum.

The plan is to build 12 new homes and repair and refurbish as many older ones as possible. Volunteers from Habitat and …

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The state Department of Transportation announced today that it will review the effect of the Point Defiance Bypass project on its surrounding communities after all.

DOT will conduct a project-level, Environmental Assessment of the $91 million project, something for which Lakewood officials have repeatedly asked the state.

It isn’t clear how the environmental assessment, which officials say could take up to two years, will affect the $590 million the state received this year to improve passenger rail along the Interstate 5 corridor.

The state must build the bypass by 2017, or it could potentially lose the federal money.
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The City of Lakewood will honor local veterans of the Vietnam War with a special ceremony at Monday’s City Council meeting.

Mayor Doug Richardson will make a proclamation to recognize this month as “Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Month,” in light of the city’s large Vietnam veteran population.

The city’s proclamation comes on the heels of the U.S. Senate declaring last Wednesday as “Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Day.” The last U.S. service members left Vietnam 35 years ago, on April 30, 1975, the day the American Embassy was finally vacated.
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Lakewood may be on the hook to pay for maintenance of its fire hydrants – an annual expense to the tune of $195,000 annually.

City Manager Andrew Neiditz said this week that the Lakewood Water District — citing a 2008 state Supreme Court decision that placed the responsibility of fire hydrant maintenance on local governments — wants the city to pay for maintenance.

“This is certainly a major cost, a cost we have never covered,” he said.

“This is not good news,” he added.
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Lakewood City Manager Andrew Neiditz announced Monday night that the city will have to trim its budget another $500,000 this year.

That’s about 1.5 percent of Lakewood’s $37 million budget, and it comes as cities across the South Sound are reducing expenses in the tough economy. Staff is proposing to eliminate two positions – one in the administrative and the other in the community development department — and make other reductions in expenses.

But staff also proposes to stagger the timeline to fill the positions of the four Lakewood police officers who were gunned down in a Parkland coffee shop Nov. 29.
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University Place and Lakewood fire officials say merging the two districts makes sense financially, but some residents are questioning whether their tax dollars would be spent wisely.

On Tuesday, about 60 people attended the University Place Fire District 3 board meeting to discuss the proposed merger.

Some residents said they support the move; others argued against it.

“I firmly believe this is a good deal for Lakewood,” said Scott Stephen of University Place. “I do not believe this is a good deal for University Place.”

Bill Bush, UP’s former fire chief, said the two districts have common interests. This isn’t the 1990s either, he said, referring to previously failed efforts to merge the districts.

“As far as a ‘them-us’ mentality — please. We’ve been down that road before and it serves no purpose,” he said.
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Residents interested in the proposed merger between the Lakewood and University Place fire districts can attend the first of two open house meetings tonight.

The meeting starts at 6 p.m. today at the Evergreen Primary School cafeteria in University Place, 7102 40th St. W.

On Jan. 25, the Lakewood Fire District Board of Commissioners voted in favor of a merger following a yearlong study of regionalization options. Central Pierce Fire & Rescue, East Pierce Fire & Rescue and South King Fire & Rescue made similar mergers.
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