The City of Yelm will see a $259,878 increase to its general fund, a $62,500 public safety fund boost and upgrades to police firearms from funding by Thurston County’s public safety tax after Yelm City Council approved the first amendments to the 2025-26 biennium budget during a meeting on Tuesday, March 11.
Stephanie Nanavich, Yelm’s finance director, said the amendments for Yelm’s current biennium budget went to committee review on Feb. 11. She said the amendment includes a few new items they weren’t aware of, project carryovers from 2024 and several housekeeping items.
Nanavich said she recently received word from the city’s Local Improvement District (LID) adviser that the Killian Road LID was completely finalized and completed, and that there were no further outstanding payments. The remaining $259,878 in the Killian Road LID fund was closed out and will be transferred into the city’s general fund for city council to decide how it’s spent.
“There is an RCW that says when a LID is finalized, you have to close the special fund that we used. Any money left in that has to go into the general fund. It’s the only place where we can transfer it,” Nanavich said. “We can earmark it for reserves for future growth. That’s a discussion we can have with the next budget amendment we’re going to do next month. Just keep that in mind. We are closing that fund.”
The Yelm Police Department recently received a grant from the Nisqually Indian Tribe for $62,500, and the city is adding that to its public safety budget. Additionally, last year YPD received nearly $210,000 from Thurston County’s new public safety sales tax. Nanavich said the department has a plan for spending some of the funds from the new tax.
“What the police department would like to do with that money in 2025, is they’d like to replace several pieces of equipment. I think they’re firearms and things like that,” she said.
Nanavich said that there was a duplication of a revenue line item, and so the water fund revenue was reduced by $45,000 as the duplicate was removed.
“We just don’t want that in there because we know it was a duplication from an old account code that I didn’t catch,” she said.
In 2023, Nanavich said the city earmarked $7,000 in its general fund for art district development. The funding was not used last year, so the finance department sought to carry the earmark into 2025.
“If our district does come to fruition, we do have that $7,000 that would be used for grant matching funds,” Nanavich said.
The largest budget addition discussed by Nanavich during the council meeting was adding an anticipated $3.5 million grant for a veterans memorial park in Yelm. Though the funds haven’t been secured yet, the City of Yelm is working toward gaining funding to honor local veterans that fought in all wars involving the United States of America.
“So we’re adding that to the budget, and the corresponding $3.5 million of expenditures. If we don’t get that grant, the project won’t begin,” Nanavich said. “But we’re planning for it, so we’re going to put it in the budget.”
