City of Elma holds Safe Streets 4 All open house

Published 1:30 am Monday, May 25, 2026

May was the month of sharing and listening in Elma, with the city hosting a Safe Streets 4 All (SS4A) grant open house on May 11 and a Downtown Redevelopment Town Hall on May 19.

The focus of the SS4A open house was sharing the timeline of grant deliverables and the findings of the Safety Concern Survey. The grant will fund installation of temporary pilot safety projects to demonstrate their effectiveness and the writing of a Safety Action Plan, which will include permanent safety improvement projects and strategies. Steve Diebol, PE, the project manager and senior engineer, and Jennifer Salemann, a planner, both with Transportation Solutions, were in attendance to answer questions.

“The point of a Safety Action Plan is to reduce fatal and serious injury crashes so there’s a very narrow focus of the goal, but we are looking citywide at where do people perceive safety issues and then looking at where do we find the severe crashes,” said Salemann.

A Subject Matter Expertise Community Advisory Group met on March 30 and April 28, with three more meetings to be held; this group includes representatives from the city of Elma, Elma School District, Summit Pacific Medical Center, Grays Harbor Transit and Grays Harbor County Public Health.

Additionally, a Safety Concern Survey was conducted from March 15 to April 15, which received 119 responses. Among the findings were the downtown intersection of 4th Street and W Main Street and the intersection of E Main Street and Elma McCleary Road as the highest density of safety concerns. Concerning driver behaviors included speeding, running stop signs and failure to yield to pedestrians. General infrastructure concerns that residents identified were potholes and poor roadway surfaces, more flashing lights needed at crosswalks and faded striping for roadway lanes and crosswalks.

The team also did a crash history analysis from 2020 to 2025. Of the 207 crashes ranked by severity, there was one fatality, four suspected serious injuries, 20 suspected minor injuries and 24 possible injuries. Of vulnerable user crashes, five involved pedestrians and four bicyclists.

The project will go on through the end of the year, Diebol said.

“There’ll be multiple other points for people to participate later on as well,” he said.

Beginning this summer the project team will identify and design a temporary safety demonstration project, and in fall, the project will be installed. Examples of safety demonstration projects may be temporary lighting, striping and pylons and planters in the median.

“This grant is unique in that you get a chance to pilot a safety improvement, so it’ll be a temporary installation to test things,” said Salemann.

For more information about SS4A, visit https://www.cityofelma.com/public-works/page/safe-streets-all-ss4a-safety-action-plan.

Downtown Redevelopment Town Hall

For the Downtown Redevelopment Town Hall, the focus was on future use of the former police department building and parking lot, the Visitors Center and alleyway, and the vacant lot where the recently demolished theater stood. Councilmembers Jim Sorensen and Mike Cooper, who are heading up the Downtown Redevelopment Task Force, moderated the discussion.

The topic drew a sizable crowd, with most coalescing on three visions for the former police department building: for use by the Chehalis Valley as a museum, for use by Grays Harbor Search and Rescue to store their equipment and combining the lot with East Grays Harbor Fire and Rescue’s lot to accommodate the construction of a new fire station.

Cooper opened the meeting by assuring the audience that no decisions would be made that night.

“We’re trying to get input on what you all would like to see done with this vacant property and the building that does have some value to it,” Sorensen added. “The next steps will be that Mike and I will be making a recommendation to the council, who then as a full council, will decide what we do with the property and the building.”

Before the public took to the podium for their comments, Cooper addressed one proposed future use.

“There’s been some interest in developing that [theater vacant lot] into a parking lot for downtown parking,” he said. “That’s about a $200,000 project by the time we decontaminate, add drainage and all the things that need to be done to that piece of property. So probably, if we did a parking lot there, the project would be delayed because of the cost and we’d have to go out and do grants for that.”

For the museum supporters, their reason for turning the police department building into a museum is because the Chehalis Valley Museum used to be located in Elma but relocated to Montesano due to rent costs. Most of their collection focuses on Montesano, Elma, Porter, Malone and Oakville.

“We believe that there is potential for expansion of the museum and of the history collection if we’re able to do that,” said Joann Yost.

Jeff Redmond, commissioner with East Grays Harbor Fire and Rescue, shared the future vision of its Elma headquarters that would be possible by combining the lots.

“What we would like to do is build what’s called ‘through and through doors’ so that we could drive our apparatus through one side and out the other side of the building, and then turn this part into an L-shape to where we can park two more apparatus here and then have our office and our living quarters here instead,” said Redmond.

Included in the new fire station design would be space to share with the Grays Harbor Search and Rescue. As for other reasons why a new fire station is needed, Redmond laid out the need.

“Our call volumes are going up year after year. Our QR [Quick Response] patients are getting higher and higher, which means we’re getting sicker and sicker people all the time,” he said. “We’re growing as a population, which is also increasing our call volume.”

Cherie Roberts spoke in favor of the museum using the building.

“I believe that this town is really growing like the fire commissioner said,” Roberts said. “And we need to really maintain our history in this town or we’re going to lose it. And what are we if we don’t have any history to show anyone?”

Deputy Sheriff Trevor Wollen, who is also the lead search and rescue coordinator for the county, outlined the need for Grays Harbor County Search and Rescue to have a centralized location where they could store equipment and deploy from. Currently, the team stores equipment at their own homes.

To the East Grays Harbor Fire and Rescue’s future vision of sharing space with Grays Harbor Search and Rescue, Wollen said, “I think that’d be awesome. For search and rescue, these guys find them, these guys rescue them. So having them close together, being able to work together can be a huge benefit for the community.”

For his remarks, Randy Beerbower gave a brief history of how the Chehalis Valley Historical Society began and why a second museum in Elma is needed.

“In Montesano, the building that we have right now is perfectly suited, but we’re growing out of the building and so that’s one issue we have,” he said. “And probably two thirds of the collection are Elma in Montesano and so it would be better suited if we had a museum here in Elma to display the artifacts in.”

Amy Anderson, president of the Grays Harbor Search and Rescue, gave a brief overview of the organization, which is all volunteer, and what the building could provide.

“This building would give us a place to be able to put our gear, a place to have trainings, a place to have meetings. Right now, we’re doing meetings on Zoom,” Anderson said.

One audience member suggested turning the vacant theater lot into a history or heritage plaza that could serve as a gathering place and also have panels describing the history of the area.

Jeff Smith, fire chief of Grays Harbor East County Fire and Rescue, seconded what had been shared earlier regarding the need for a new fire station and until then, having Grays Harbor Search and Rescue in the police department building “creates a relationship in our community that hasn’t existed, can future exist and flourish with additional trainings and creating that kind of cohesive environment between the two.”

Following other speakers, Cooper outlined the decision-making timeline, and July 20 would be the soonest that the council could possibly take any action.

“We have a lot of things to sort through,” he said.