Bentonville Schools Seeking Traffic Study Help

Monday, March 31, 2014

— The School District hopes Benton County and Centerton will share the cost of a traffic study to help prepare for the opening of Bentonville West High School.

The county Quorum Court's Finance Committee will hear information on the study at its meeting Tuesday. School District officials will be on hand to answer any questions the committee might have, said Michael Poore, superintendent.

AT A GLANCE

Bentonville West High School

Voters approved Bentonville’s second high school in September. It will cost about $86 million. The state will contribute $13 million to the project.

The School Board has not decided on attendance boundaries for the two high schools. A boundaries recommendation likely will be developed by School District administrators through a study that looks at the entire kindergarten through 12th-grade landscape. The administration has proposed doing the study this summer and making a boundaries recommendation to the board by September.

Source: Staff Report

"I think it is a cooperative type endeavor in terms of trying to look at the impact of traffic," Poore said. "I think the community expects us all to work together."

Peters and Associates Engineers, a Little Rock firm, has been contracted to do the study for $24,500. The cost would be $8,167 for the district, county and city if split three ways.

The study will examine traffic volume expected to be generated by the school and how traffic conditions are expected to change within two years, 10 years and 20 years.

Bob Clinard, county judge, said the district approached him about six weeks ago about paying for one-third of the traffic study.

"I said, 'Well, I've got the money in my budget, but I'm not going to appropriate it until I approach the Quorum Court,'" Clinard said. "And the court decided they didn't want to participate. (The district) asked if they could come talk to the court Tuesday night and make their case."

Construction of Bentonville West is expected to begin this summer on a 91-acre site on Gamble Road in Centerton, just south of Centerton Gamble Elementary School, which enrolls about 650 students. Bentonville West is scheduled to open in August 2016 with a capacity of 2,250 students.

County roads make up much of the roads that will be used to access the high school, even though the school will be within Centerton. Some of those roads, such as Keller Road to the west of the site, are unpaved.

The city has committed $1.4 million to road improvements in the area, including the widening of Gamble Road from two to three lanes and the paving of Seba Road, which is just south of the school's property.

Bill Edwards, Centerton mayor, said the city is open to helping pay for the study, but he wants to see what the county decides first.

"We'll decide what we want to do. We think the county will participate," Edwards said.

County planning regulations require any land developer to pay for any off-site road or other improvements that might be necessary. In this case, however, there's a difference, Clinard said.

"It's not a for-profit development. It's a school," he said.

Tom Allen, chairman of the Quorum Court's Finance Committee, said he voted against helping pay for the traffic study when the issue was first presented to justices of the peace. He said last week, however, he's willing to listen to district officials.

"I felt like they needed to communicate with us," Allen said. "It should have been part of the process when they selected the site. So I think we're all glad they're coming to talk to us."

Clinard said he believes the largest single traffic issue in the area of Bentonville West will be the intersection of Arkansas 72 and Herbaugh Road, which is about a mile northeast of the high school and will be a popular route for school traffic. Both the highway and Herbaugh Road are two lanes.

"There just have to be some turning lanes put in there," Clinard said.

Edwards agreed the turn at that corner is "awfully tight."

Clinard said a turning lane also likely will be needed to accommodate high school traffic at the intersection of West Centerton Boulevard and Keller Road, which is about two miles southwest of Bentonville West.

Also certain to need expansion is the intersection of Gamble and Seba roads, which is just south of the high school site, Clinard said.

"That intersection is going to be a killer," he said. "That's going to get a lot of traffic."

Edwards said there will be turning lanes at that intersection.

The district hopes the study will convince the state highway department to get moving on any needed improvements before the high school opens.

"The state philosophy is they don't want to get ahead of any (building) project," Poore said. "It's tough for them to be proactive with limited resources. They want to see a building finished. We'd like to see the state be more proactive. One thing that helps is to see if a traffic study has been done."

Poore pointed out, even though the school doesn't open for two more years, traffic will start to increase in the area when construction begins this summer.

Mike Clifford, a Bentonville resident and close observer of the Benton County Quorum Court, said he doesn't think the county should have to pay anything for the district's traffic study.

"That should have been part of the cost of the school in the first place," Clifford said.

The School Board chose the Gamble Road site for its second high school last year over another piece of land the district owns in southwest Bentonville. That area already has two elementary schools, one middle school and one junior high school. The traffic situation was one of the reasons board members declined to choose that site.

NW News on 03/31/2014