ACHD opts not to ask taxpayers to widen a bridge serving commissioner, her donors

The Ada County Highway District has decided not to spend $30,000 to widen a one-lane bridge in Southwest Boise that would have served only four families, including an ACHD commissioner and her employer.

Also off the road is land owned by Donald Barksdale and Charles Fawcett, as well as the WDM Marital Trust, where Jeffrey Moore is listed as a trustee — meaning that about half the land beyond the fence is owned by the Moore family.

The bridge joins two sections of Thomas Drive in a semirural area near the intersection of Franklin and Cloverdale roads.

ACHD has already spent $25,000 on the project for design and consulting fees, according to ACHD public information specialist Natalie Shaver.

“To me, all it does is serve a private subdivision,” said ACHD President Sara Baker at a commissioners meeting Wednesday. “Don’t spend any more money on that.”

Arnold did not attend the meeting.

In an email to Baker and the commission, brothers Tucker and Clancy Anderson expressed concern at the project’s use of public funds to serve a just a handful of private owners, including some who have donated to Arnold’s campaigns.

But Arnold said the bridge needs to be widened for fire and emergency access.

“ACHD created the problem by building a substandard bridge,” she wrote in a message to the Statesman on Wednesday. “Should the fact that I moved to that neighborhood two years ago mean that the residents of the eight residences there are not entitled to safe access?”

“There also isn’t sufficient room on either side of the bridge for maneuvering or multiple vehicles,” she wrote in a reply to the Andersons’ original message.

ACHD did not receive any official notice from the fire department about the safety risk the bridge poses, Baker said at the meeting.

ACHD built the bridge in 2001 using a design that went against the recommendations of its own maintenance and operations staff, according to a report by ACHD Director Bruce Wong.

Arnold’s relationships with the fellow private property owners on Thomas Drive raised concerns. The Moore family has consistently donated to Arnold’s campaigns, with Winston donating $5,000 between 2012 and 2017. During her 2016 election, she also received contributions from Skinner Fawcett LLP, workplace of her neighbor Charles Fawcett, and Jeffrey Moore.

Earlier this year, Arnold helped to organize meetings between Winston Moore and Wong to inspect the bridge area, according to emails obtained by the Andersons in a public records request and shared with the Statesman.

In June, Winston Moore asked Wong to install the “Dead End” sign currently at the head of Thomas Drive before the bridge, emails show.

In an email to Winston Moore and Wong, Arnold wrote that a sign “might cut down on the number of vehicles that come up Thomas Drive and end up turning around or backing out.”

In a message to the Statesman, Arnold said she always tries to help members of the public with issues and directs them to appropriate ACHD staff.

“Not once have I ever checked to see if the caller was a campaign donor,” she wrote. “I think most of the elected officials in this valley would do the same — help our citizens regardless of their status or participation in campaigns.”

“Anyone who knows Mr. Moore would find laughable any idea that he would feel the need to go through me to contact the District about anything,” she wrote, noting that Winston Moore has built working relationships with ACHD over the past 40 years.

At Wednesday’s meeting, Baker said ACHD will consider a future motion to vacate the land that the road and bridge are on and return it to the private landowners, who can then spend their own funds to widen the bridge.

ACHD General Counsel Steve Price told the commission that ACHD and the city had looked into vacating the roadway and bridge a decade ago, but that the city had decided against returning it to private owners in the case that the property become developed.

Although the road past the bridge is closed to the public, it is owned by ACHD. The district classifies that section as “unmaintained,” which allowed the property owners nearby to apply to ACHD to place gates there.

Now that residents have raised a potential safety concern, Price said ACHD should take precautions to conduct a safety analysis of the bridge. Otherwise, if emergency responders could not cross it, the district could be liable for knowing about an unsafe bridge, he said.

This story was originally published November 14, 2018 at 1:45 PM.