Ronan signs off on Highway 93 expansion plans
Megan Strickland
Ronan City Councilmember Cal Hardy shows a conceptual drawing made by a citizen of a proposed barrier that will lie between Bockman Park and the future southbound lane of Highway 93.
Megan Strickland
Ronan City Councilmember Cal Hardy shows a conceptual drawing made by a citizen of a proposed barrier that will lie between Bockman Park and the future southbound lane of Highway 93.
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RONAN – Plans to expand Highway 93 are expected to begin moving forward again this month, after the Ronan City Council on June 2 signed off on a letter that the city had held as a bargaining chip for the past six months in an attempt to gain improvements for Bockman Park.
The decision came despite protests from park advocates who worried that legal documents drafted by the city and state highway department to move ahead with the project might be less than binding and not offer as much mitigation as possible to the park.
“The last thing I want to be is obstructionist because this is two decades in the making,” Friends of Ronan Parks and Trails Board Member Ed Vizcarra said. “It’s time to get moving, but let’s make sure the law is being followed and when you sign off on something, it’s what you thought you signed off on.”
The final paperwork the council approved was slightly different than described to the public at a public hearing a few days before. At the hearing and in previous council meetings, Mayor Kim Aipperspach and Public Works Director Dan Miller said that a list of promised park, utility, and street improvements would be attached to a letter of de minimis the city sent to the Federal Highway Administration, but the administration has indicated it will not accept a letter that has the attached demands. Instead, the list of demands will be signed by the local state highway administrator, with the letter of de minimis sent to the federal government.
The letter of de minimis says that there will be no impacts to Bockman Park. This has been an issue of contention among many park advocates who believe that the taking of 411 square yards of park land and placing the highway’s new southbound couplet along the eastern most border of the park is an irrefutable taking of parkland that requires federal mitigation.
Federal and state officials would not concede to most of the city council’s requests for mitigation in a half-year negotiation back and forth. The officials claimed the requested mitigation would break state and federal regulations. The city council refused to back down from the demands, so highway officials decided to put some of the park improvements, like new bathrooms and parking lots, on land that will be adjacent to existing park land.
This circumvented the federal regulations and met many of the city council’s wants, with the exception of some last minute requests submitted by the Ronan Park Board that included a $200,000 park maintenance fund, and construction of a playground.
But how binding the list of demands is was questioned. The document, written in multicolored fonts, shows the back-and-forth negotiations between city and highway officials on what has and has not been agreed to, but doesn’t have any clause requiring the highway department to do anything. It says that the entities will “work together” to complete the list of city council’s wants.
Park Board Vice-Chair Mark Nelson said he would like to see the city attorney work on the document to make sure it is binding.
“I’d like to see you have (the attorney) work on it so it carries enough legal weight that it is worth something,” Nelson said. “Not to say what (Miller) drew up isn’t good, but when I walk into court with my multi-colored email, I would much rather have something that the (attorney) signed off on.”
Aipperspach disagreed.
“I think it’s pretty black and white,” Aipperspach said.
The council instructed the City Clerk to send the letter of de minimis to federal officials after local highway authorities agreed to the city’s list of demands.
