Neary-Sighted

Tonight's City Council study session, 7 p.m. at City Hall, will focus on a federally-sponsored study to look at the traffic and other effects of Joint Base Lewis McChord. What the city was tasked to do, paid by federal dollars, was to help come up with a Joint Base Lewis McChord Growth Coordination Plan. This has been a huge example of collaboration in looking for ways to help quality of life for everyone in and around the base: collaborating not only with the base but all sorts of surrounding entities such as the cities of Tacoma, Steilacoom and Lacey; the Clover Park School District; and even the U.S. Postal Service and Pierce Transit.

This becomes all the more real as we happily welcome back 15,000 military personnel from Iraq and Afghanistan. JBLM supports 125,000 military personnel, civilian employees (including Mrs. Neary) and family members. JBLM is the largest military installation on the West Coast in terms of square miles: the third largest employer in the state and, as a staff report puts it, "the largest single point source of traffic in the state."

You're welcome at the session; I hadn't even realized until I wrote this post that there's a website up about the growth coordination plan, so that's another source for more information. It wouldn't surprise me if public interest was muted until the federal government identified how to pay for some of what the study will call for. There need to be some major traffic solutions in this area: if you add in Amtrak's plans, and Camp Murray's apparent plans, the issues just grow more and more complex. The Department of Defense, Office of Economic Adjustment (OEA) is to be commended for, as the website says, the effort to "proactively address the effects of existing and anticipated growth on communities surrounding the base through the development of a JBLM Growth Coordination Plan."

Link to a News Tribune story earlier this summer
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