Lakewood residents were voting overwhelmingly to dissolve their 70-year-old fire district and merge with the University Place Fire Department, according to preliminary returns tonight.

If approved, West Pierce Fire & Rescue would become operational March 1.

I’m disappointed about the Pierce Transit results tonight, but I do like these vote results.

This is a great example of how cross-municipal governments can often do better working regionally than working alone. There are often real difficulties in getting these things to happen. But here it looks like the plan was well thought out and with each municipality already having the same tax rate for these service … well, that helps a lot.