Proposed road still raising questions

Brent Bennett of Nelson Engineering attended Monday night's meeting to discuss Moorcroft taking responsibility for an access road the Crook County School District #1 plans to build from Rail Road Avenue to Country Lane.

The problem of regular traffic traveling through school property and around the east border of the student parking lot and meeting the school's existing egress before meeting Country Lane were brought to his attention. After examining a map provided by Bennett, Councilmen Owen Mathews and Dale Petersen reiterated the question of what advantage there would be to the town in accepting what is essentially school access through school property.

"There is no thoroughfare through there," noted Petersen.

Councilman Paul Smoot, too, expressed his concern for the safety of the kids with regular traffic "blitzing across that parking lot". If their engineer cannot "tie into the main drag", meaning Country Lane, "Then the school is going to have an issue."

Mayor Dick Claar advocated the roadway.

"The road needs to be in there because the population of the school is increasing. We need to relieve some traffic on Country Lane. I would like to see it, somehow, become all city property," he said.

"We take over the street, our police department can police it much easier, it's cleaner, rather than have a section in here that doesn't belong to the town that the police have to still maintain."

Mathews stated his admiration for the school creating another way out of the south parking area: "I support their project, I fully support them putting the road in."

However, he said, in his opinion, the only part of the endeavor that the town should accept is Rail Road Avenue, with some kind of cul-de-sac built into the east end for the town equipment to turn around.

Petersen, too, advised not accepting the access road through the school property north of Rail Road, "Because that does not loop to Country Lane, it puts you on that little access road. For me, in order for the town to want to take it as a dedicated street, it needs to be complete up to Country Lane."

Smoot mentioned the possibility of future expansion for the town if infrastructure was created in that area. However, Mathews noted that the property on the east side of the proposed road is the possible future building site of a middle school and the avenue is not a throughway.

"I don't see an expansion of growth out there," he said.

The governing body expressed their willingness to accept the Rail Road Avenue with a cul-de-sac immediately, but not the school grounds. Bennett plans to talk more with his clients to ascertain further direction.