Yelm City Council roundup: SRO contract with YCS approved, biennial budget amended, more

Yelm City Council took action on several items, including a contract agreement with Yelm Community Schools for a school resource officer (SRO) for the 2026-27 school year and a budget amendment to the city’s biennial budget, and Mayor Joe DePinto celebrated Voter Registration Day with a mayoral proclamation during a Yelm City Council meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 8.

Yelm Police Chief Rob Carlson took to the podium on Tuesday, Sept. 8, to seek approval of a contract agreement between Yelm Police Department and YCS for an SRO to serve throughout the district during the 2026-27 school year.

“It’s that time for us to renew the school resource officer contract between the City of Yelm and Yelm Community Schools,” Carlson said. “A couple differences in this contract is that we’ll have one officer as a school resource officer. The schools have agreed to pay $80,000 for that officer versus the $75,000 it was from the previous years. Their duties will continue as they have — providing education, ALICE training, active shooter training, crisis prevention and critical incident responses.”

Carlson added that because YCS will only be utilizing one SRO, YPD patrol officers will be making regular stops into schools within YCS to try and minimize the lack of resource officers throughout the district.

Yelm City Council unanimously approved the $80,000 contract between YPD and YCS.

The council also unanimously approved Ordinance No. 1157, which amended several lines into the 2025-26 City of Yelm biennial budget.
Stephanie Nanavich, Yelm Finance Director, noted the amendment in the ordinance is “very short,” and went line by line with councilors through the changes.

The amendment to line item one is in the general fund, Nanavich stated. She said Yelm received a grant for $15,000 that YPD will spend on trackwire software.

“This is actually a tribal grant that the county received, and they passed to us $15,000 of the grant,” Nanavich said.

Line item two is also in the general fund, according to Nanavich. She noted that Yelm received a $5,000 grant from the Parks, Art, Recreation and Culture (PARC) Foundation for recreational purposes.

Nanavich added that line item three is an expenditure of $10,610 to the general fund for the purchase of a new court rollup window.
“I’m not sure if their previous window was damaged, or I don’t think it would close or something like that,” Nanavich said. “So, we had to replace it.”

Line items four, five and six, according to Nanavich, will include a transfer of $500 each from the water fund and the sewer fund into the IT fund to purchase Microsoft Project software.

Line items seven, eight and nine, according to Nanavich, will create the master planned community fund, or fund no. 305, for the development of the 640-acre project.

“In order to contain the costs and revenues of that project, we’re creating a separate fund,” Nanavich said. “We will transfer $100,000 from the Municipal Building Fund into the new fund to give it a start-up cash. That will be reimbursed to the city as that project develops.”

Lastly, DePinto aimed to recognize Voter Registration Day through a mayoral proclamation and deemed Tuesday, Sept. 15, as National Voter Registration Day in Yelm.

“The goal for the 2026 National Voter Registration Day is to create awareness of elections and motivate eligible citizens to vote in coming months; and whereas, the strength of our democracy depends on the willingness of our citizens to participate by choosing the people who will lead us and by voicing their opinions on important matters that will come before the voters on Election Day,” DePinto said. “Now, therefore, be it resolved, that I, Joe DePinto, Mayor of the City of Yelm do hereby recognize September 15, 2026, as National Voter Registration Day in Yelm and encourage all eligible county residents to register to vote.”