Development concerns on Boe Drive

One of the designs for improving areas of the town under former mayor Larry Suchor was the continued development of Boe Drive on the west side of town, connecting the as yet unfinished dead end road with Pendleton Drive. In the interest of this idea, Rancher Skip Waters donated to the town property through which said road would travel.

The current council, under Mayor Bill Cunningham, is moving forward with the transference of title, ensuring the town’s recorded ownership of the property. “

This council is going to re-plat that lot because that property was given to us,” Councilwoman Karla Brandenburg explained to the audience. “You guys are already driving through there anyway [across private property]; we’re just making it so it belongs to the town by doing all the paperwork in the county.”

Of the four homeowners on Boe Drive, more than one attended last Tuesday night’s meeting of the governing body to voice their concern over and disagreement with any further attempt to complete and connect the drive. They brought the notice of an application for a mitigation grant to widen and connect Boe to Pendleton Drive that they received in September 2018.

The application was denied, according to the group’s spokesperson, but they told the body of documentation from the town’s engineering contractor, HDR, discussing the cost of materials and equipment, “so we are very much concerned about the future”. The group spoke of deceit and concealment regarding the actions taken without their awareness.

The home owners expressed, too, their worries that they will not be informed before action is taken in the future and their practical hesitation to develop the roadway. The results of that same type of improvement of Lakeview became a disaster, according to the group’s speaker.

“Lakeview is one of those places that originally had local traffic only and it turned into such a zoo with out-of-towners that town residents made such an outcry about dust clouds and such that they ended up putting down magnesium chloride and speed bumps and everything else and we still had problems,” she said.

She also noted that, with the two drives connected, the access to the lake will become “a straight way where the out-of-towners could get up to 40 miles per hour”.

The council spoke candidly to the anxious citizens, “We really don’t have any intention of building a road right now,” Brandenburg stated, “maybe in the future and that’s not in the near future and you’ll be notified when that time comes.”

This assurance was supported by the mayor. The improvement of waterlines for fire suppression is the main concern at this time, according to Brandenburg. The body advised that a future council may decide to further the improvement plans but, for right now, there are no plans to pursue the development of Boe Drive.