KEN SWARNER: IT'S GOING TO GET CROWDED >>>

Want some investment advice?  Buy a bike.  Otherwise, expect long delays on South Sound roads as Fort Lewis’ population numbers spike to their highest rates in a long time.

Most of the post’s units will spend the summer and fall at home beginning next month as the 4th Stryker Brigade and 864th Engineer Battalion return from war deployments to join new units that arrived here last year as well as a growing number of ROTC cadets and cadre here this summer for the annual Warrior Forge.  That translates to 10,000 more troops home this summer than last year.

“It’s going to be extremely busy this summer, and it’s going to stay that way,” Steve Perrenot, Public Works director at Fort Lewis, said during a special meeting of area business leaders, government heads and military officials at the Clover Park Technical College May 1.

The meeting broke into primarily three discussions: transportation, housing and education â€" all of which Perrenot said would be affected.

Transportation
Roughly 42,000 vehicles enter and exit Fort Lewis every weekday, according to figures Perrenot displayed. That number will jump this summer.

As reported in The Ranger earlier this year, traffic mitigation will be minimal due to funding constraints to ease the strain of more cars on the road.

Gov. Christine Gregiore, the keynote speaker for last week’s meeting, said the state would add a traffic signal at Highway 507 and the East Gate to ease traffic congestion there.

Gregoire said the state also will work to fund the Cross Base Highway plus add traffic cameras and real-time traffic updates on the freeway at the DuPont interchanges. Finally, the state will add roving tow trucks to clear accidents during peak hours daily on Interstate 5 around Fort Lewis.

Housing
For years Fort Lewis officials have maintained the same number of homes on post.  Through the privatization of housing, homes have been replaced or remodeled; however, the same number of homes remained constant.  That will change under current plans as officials add 800 more homes to the inventory.
What does stay the same, however, is the percentage of homes. Currently, 30 percent of military families live on post; that ration will stay the same as the new housing comes online.

With 70 percent of military families living off the installation, most soldiers must look to the economy to live.  Add the fact that 30 percent of homes are deemed inadequate by Department of Defense standards, meaning they are too costly or too far from the installation, according to Rob Boisvert, chief of housing at Fort Lewis, and competition will be high.

Post officials expect eastern Pierce County in particular to grow due to an increasing military population.  Currently 7.8 percent of military personnel live in the Yelm, Roy and Rainier areas compared to 23.7 percent living in Lacey, 8.2 percent in DuPont, 16.4 percent in Lakewood, and 10 percent in Parkland/Spanaway.

Education
With more soldiers come more families, and school districts are gearing themselves to handle more students.  Eight hundred new homes on Fort Lewis also add kids to already crowded schools on post.

Hillside Elementary, for example, had 280 students in 2006.  Today, it has 542.

Perrenot said the military must work with the federal government to help find money for districts such as Clover Park that are heavily impacted by a growing military population.

Norma Melo, the school liaison officer at Fort Lewis who serves as a bridge between military families and the 14 school districts in the South Sound that educate the sons and daughters of military personnel, said districts aren’t just impacted by more bodies.  Military children, she said, come with more baggage too and strain the social services schools offer.

“Many of these incoming students have more than two but less than five deployments under their belts,” she said. 

Melo said military kids need more help adjusting to the stresses they feel when a parent or both parents are deployed in the war zone.

Gary Wilson, assistant superintendent for Clover Park, said his district has two full-time therapists to work solely with military kids.

“They’re busy every minute of every day,” Wilson said.

With problems, of course, come opportunities. At the entrance to the technical college’s auditorium, local businesses set up booths to tout their services.  The Tacoma and Lakewood chambers of commerce also organized at Thursday’s meeting.  More troops equal more business, and during a possible recession, that’s good news for the local economy.