Public has final chance to review highway expansion
Megan Strickland
Members of the Ronan City Council hear from Public Works Director Dan Miller about plans to expand Highway 93.
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After decades of planning and spending the past six months in a political tug-of-war with the state and federal government, representatives of the City of Ronan said last week that most of the town’s preferences for expansion of Highway 93 have been met, including one aspect that will save the city’s taxpayers an estimated $75,000.
A public hearing to discuss the final details of the proposed project is scheduled for May 28 at 6 p.m. at the Ronan Community Center. The city council will consider the public feedback before it signs a letter of de minimis, which grants federal and state authorities permission to complete the project.
“It is one chance we have, and we’re going to have to live with it for the rest of our lives,” Councilmember Cal Hardy said of how important input for the project is.
The city council used the letter as a bargaining chip in the past half year, as it tried to obtain mitigation for impacts to Bockman Park that included lost parking and anticipated changes in people’s use patterns of the green space.
The city lobbied for construction of new parking spaces close to the park to make up for spots lost when the proposed southbound couplet replaces the current First Avenue. The northbound couplet of the four-lane highway will lie where the current roadway is situated.
Federal officials tried to mitigate this impact by providing more parking spaces in the downtown area. Mayor Kim Aipperspach pointed out in multiple meetings that the federal mitigation wasn’t useful for park-goers who would have to walk several blocks to access the public resource.
Project managers adamantly said there was no way to get the parking spaces any closer because federal law prohibited the conversion of park land into parking spaces. In plans presented on May 12 to the Ronan City Council, a neutral solution to the city’s demand was found.
Instead of converting park land to parking spaces, the project managers agreed to create a parking lot on a piece of property on Buchanan Street that was already in negotiations for purchase in the project. There will also be new restrooms with flush toilets installed – something else that was adamantly refused at first.
Ronan Public Works Director Dan Miller was also able to save the city from having to pay 25 percent of the cost of utilities to be installed under First Avenue. The estimated $75,000 to $100,000 cost was non-negotiable under current state law, project managers said. Miller was able to dig through hundreds of pages filed in the past 10 years to get the city a more favorable deal.
Buried in an appendix to an environmental impact statement issued in September 2003, the Montana Department of Transportation agreed to pay all of the cost for utilities.
After Miller presented the state with the document, the engineers agreed to honor it. Miller said while $75,000 might seem like pocket change in the midst of the $40 million scope of the project, that would have been a major expense for the city’s small budget.
“Our job is to make the people’s tax dollars stretch as far as possible,” Miller said.
The city will have visual aids available at the May 28 meeting.
