Trick-or-Treating — and the Truth — in Tillicum

What character are you going to be for Halloween? Will you be a monster, vampire, witch, werewolf, ghost or just a regular creep?

How about going as truth or (environmental) justice?

The truth about how Camp Murray's gate could have been permitted by city of Lakewood staff to be relocated in such a way as to frighten residents whose already life-congested streets will now be treated to all manner of nightmares, including literal (speed) bumps in the night

It's the subject of an appeal filed by the Tillicum Action Committee (TAC).

The appeal, as reported in the TNT, "alleges the city failed to hold a public hearing and formally adopt the environmental study used by the Washington Military Department to justify the gate move.  It also alleges the new location would drive vehicles onto quiet neighborhood streets and block access to the Eagle Point gated community in emergencies."

The TAC has hired the law firm of Gendler & Mann, LLP to represent it in the appeals process. The Seattle-based attorneys argued successfully (8-to-1) before the United States Supreme Court on the public's right to government-withheld public disclosure documents.

If safety impacts were indeed not addressed, as alleged in the Camp Murray appeal, especially on the magnitude of a potential strike at the communications tower of the state's emergency operations center housed on Camp Murray - a tower made potentially more accessible by this gate relocate - would not such a disaster not only be a horrific, monstrous development of major proportions, but also one to haunt those who failed to consider terror but only traffic?

Since the City is requiring a payment from Camp Murray of $100,000 for unspecified future "traffic-calming" projects, what is it they fear has been overlooked?  What "collection of freaks and oddities" lurk unforeseen from which the City would save this community's "innocent souls from being damned"?  And do our council elected representatives, none of whom live here, understand better than those who do, that "something wicked this way comes"?

As in the just completed run of this ominous and foreboding tale at the Lakewood Playhouse, "it will take all the wit and hope" of our community to expose the untold story.  To financially assist in the effort, contributions can be made out to the TAC, care of the Tillicum Community Center, 14916 Washington Ave. SW, Lakewood, WA 98498.