[Vision2020] Downtown Parking

[Janice Willard]

James and other Visionaries,
James said:
> City planners knew that institutions of
> higher learning evolve into land hoards.

It is not just higher education who are land hoards.  For some reason, the
Moscow School District, following the direction of the Idaho State Board of
Education (whom we all know to be such great founts of wisdom), seem to be
pushing the concept that we need 40 acres to have a worthwhile high school,
and are planning a huge, country club, megaplex that will be highly
disruptive to everyone who lives on the north east side of town, will seed
commercial development and urban sprawl, cause traffic nightmares that will
take a huge amounts of money out of the taxpayer's pockets to correct and
destroy our downtown.  Our current downtown High School, which admittedly
needs some improvement, is on something like 5 acres and is conserving land
by cooperatively sharing the football fields and athletic fields with the
Junior High (which they have been doing successfully for a number of years)
and has been scoring with some of the highest test scores in the state--much
higher than the 40 acre country club schools in other locations.  (The real
need is to improve the elementary schools which, supposedly they are doing
in this round-about way).

If the school district goes ahead with this plan, they will be putting
somewhere around 2000 students (over 75% of the school district student
body) (800 at the new High School, 600 at the Junior High, 400 at McDonald,
135 at Moscow Charter School--plus all their attendant staff) *all* on one
corner of town, with D street, F street and Mountain View Rd as the only
access roads. The grid-lock for anyone who lives on that side of town will
be immense, as well as creating dangerous conditions to all of the children
who currently walk to their elementary schools and the Junior High on all
those streets which have no sidewalks, while everyone everywhere else in
other portions of town will have to always commute to get their kids to
things like after-school lessons.  If they had to evacuate all those
children because of an emergency or disaster, it would be impossible to do
so quickly as two of those roads run perpendicular to the other and
intersect with each other.

Moscow citizens will be asked to pay out of their pockets in taxes for all
the needed road improvements. They will also be asked to pay the costs for
bringing all the services (water, sewer, etc.) to the *far side* of the
designated 40 acre property.  Bringing services to a site is usually an
expense paid by the developers, but here development can take off in the
east side of the school site a lot more cheaply because the tax payers will
have paid to bring the services right to their doorstep. Commercial
development will sprout up in this portion of town, effectively killing the
downtown faster than NSA ever could.  Moscow taxpayers will also be asked to
pay the costs for at least one or two bridges to get over Paradise creek to
the high school site, also helping the developers.  And they will be asked
to spend all the money for stream management and control because at least a
quarter of that 40 acres they are considering is in the Paradise creek flood
plain.

This will effectively kill the downtown, and all the quiet neighborhoods in
north east Moscow, quicker than NSA ever could.

And just think--our citizens currently show a great deal of support for our
Moscow teachers.  The last school bond levee was to support a number of
teachers and aides who would have otherwise lost their jobs.  But how
willing will Moscow taxpayers be to financially support our great teachers
after they have been asked to fund a grandiose building and development
plan, new roads, bridges, the increased maintenance needs of the 40 acre
site and flood control?  Will people be willing to shell out money
*additionally* to support our teachers (and we can't look to the State to
adequately support education in Idaho) after they have paid for all this?

Possibly the most damaging thing that we will lose after our centralized
downtown, quiet neighborhoods and safe streets for our children to walk on
to school will be the very quality of education we have here in Moscow.  But
we'll have some mighty nice buildings and playing fields to look at......

JW




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