BENTONVILLE -- Benton County officials are trying to coordinate with several overlapping, but independent, entities to improve access to West High School before it opens next year.
How to complete the work on the county roads and Centerton city streets leading to and from the campus remains a work in progress. County Judge Bob Clinard met with state Highway and Transportation Department officials Thursday to discuss improvements on Arkansas 102 and at Herbaugh Road at its intersection with Arkansas 72 where school traffic will enter and exit the highway. Highway department officials were encouraging about possibly widening those highways and adding turn lanes at the intersections, but noncommittal about installing traffic signals, Clinard said.
About West High School
West High School, Bentonville’s second high school, is being built on Gamble Road in Centerton. Officials broke ground on the building on June 23, 2014. The $86 million school is expected to open in August 2016.
Source: Staff report
The county will keep to its schedule and plans to do improvements to county roads next spring, giving the Bentonville School District time to have construction on the site substantially completed, Clinard said. The timing of the improvements was questioned at a recent meeting of the county's Transportation Committee where Centerton Mayor Bill Edwards, some of the county's justices of the peace and Paul Wallace, the School District's facilities director, expressed a desire to have the work done sooner rather than later.
"We're not going to do it this year because they're not finished with construction," Clinard said. "There's an extremely large amount of excavation material that has to be removed and lots of heavy construction traffic. We'll have plenty of time to do it next spring before the school opens."
The city already is working on some of its streets. Plans are to have more improvements done in the second half of 2015, Edwards said. Edwards also plans to ask the Highway Department about a traffic signal at the intersection of Seba Road and Main Street, which is Arkansas 102 Business.
"We hope to have turn lanes and a traffic light," Edwards said. "We think they'll approve it. We're also hoping to do some cost sharing with the state. We're trying to get a grant that would be an 80-20 match with the city putting up 20 percent of the cost. Otherwise it's all city costs."
Clinard has approached the School District about it paying some part of the cost of improvements on the roads and streets leading to the new high school.
"No bond money can be used for offsite improvements," Wallace said. "The state does not allow us to spend bond money on that. On land and streets that are adjacent to the property it's written so that we can do improvements there."
Centerton's commitment to do street improvements near the school played a part in choosing the Gamble Road location, Wallace said. While he would prefer to have the county work done as soon as possible, Wallace believes county officials when they say beginning in the spring of 2016 allows sufficient time.
"If they say they can get the work done, they're more knowledgeable than I am about that," he said.
Barry Moehring, justice of the peace for District 15, said he'd like to see the School District, Centerton and the county work according to a mutually agreed upon schedule. Moehring still wants to see a more detailed plan for the county work.
"If you drive out there by Bentonville High School West you see it's going up," Moehring said. "I'm concerned with that. We need to see what the county's plans are. I would hope we would be on the same page as those other guys. Right now, 2016 seems to be OK. I want to be sure all three stakeholders agree to that. I understand we don't want to pave these new roads and have a bunch of construction vehicles tear them up. I get that. I just want to be sure we're working in the proper cadence with the school construction and the removal of the dirt and the road building."
The work the county has planned should take 45 to 60 days to complete, Clinard said. County officials will watch for "windows of opportunity" this fall when the county might do some preliminary dirt work to prepare for paving in the spring, he said.
NW News on 03/16/2015