That 2,000-house subdivision just proposed in Kuna? ACHD says it can’t afford roadwork
By 1 p.m., Ada County Highway District Commissioner Kent Goldthorpe was already exasperated.
He sighed, looking at the project before him at the public meeting he was taking part in: a master-planned community with nearly 2,000 homes and 370 apartments, planned for 761 acres of farmland on the edge of Kuna’s city limits along Ten Mile Creek Road and Five Mile Road.
“Based on current budgets and current forecasts, it is unlikely that we would be able to complete the necessary mitigation to the north and south corridors during this time frame,” Goldthorpe said, measuring his words.
It was the latest daunting challenge for Goldthorpe — a second-term Republican commissioner representing Meridian and Kuna — and his four elected colleagues.
ACHD, which controls the county’s roads, had hardly begun to plan for road improvements in Kuna’s east. Kuna’s past plans envisioned the area remaining as farmland, so ACHD had seen little need for road improvements there.
But last summer, the Kuna City Council overhauled its comprehensive plan. That opened the farms and pasture land east of the city to be annexed and further developed.
Now ACHD officials are wondering how they will pay for Kuna’s decision to grow far beyond its city center.
In a phone interview, Commissioner Jim Hansen, a Democrat representing southeast Boise and the Boise Bench, warned of the costs of sprawl.
When cities approve developments on the outskirts of town, rather than near existing infrastructure, ACHD must pay for the roads to serve that area, And not only that: As those shiny new roads deteriorate, all taxpayers end up paying to maintain them.
“The taxpayers of this county are not obligated to pay the infrastructure costs of just putting this housing ... wherever,” Hansen said at the meeting Wednesday. “It would be beyond my fiduciary duty to say that I am recommending this.”
The 2,000-house subdivision, named Spring Rock, is far from a done deal. As a first step, developers submit a development application to the city Planning and Zoning Department. Planners then ask various other departments and agencies — such as ACHD — for comment. The city uses these comments to help decide whether to approve a subdivision and what conditions to set.
The question before the commissioners on Wednesday was simple: Did they approve of sending the comments ACHD’s staff had written to Kuna?
The report said that, because of the proposed changes from rural land uses to urban ones in Kuna, ACHD would need to widen many of the nearby roads more than previously anticipated.
Approving the staff report, Hansen said, “will be interpreted by Kuna that we can handle the transportation impacts of this new development.”
For Hansen, the meeting represented a running conflict that has pervaded ACHD’s relationship with the cities it serves, which have the sole authority to make land use decisions. Often, cities approve developments expecting that the highway district will keep up.
But it can’t, Hansen said. These land use decisions often force the highway district to pay for new roads it doesn’t have the money for, on top of the old roads it is required to maintain. Widening a road can cost $3 million to $8 million for a single mile.
Commissioners say ACHD does not have enough money to pay for all the highway widenings and improvements that growth requires, even as developers foot part of the bill. The commissioners asked voters in November 2018 to raise vehicle registration fees to help close the gap, but voters turned them down.
To accommodate traffic from the Spring Rock project, for example, ACHD would need to spend tens of millions of dollars to widen 16 miles of mostly two-lane road segments listed in the staff report:
- Cloverdale Road between Amity Road and Hubbard Road: Widen from three or five lanes to seven. (3 miles)
- Pleasant Valley Road between Gowen Road and Ten Mile Creek Road: Widen from two lanes to three. (5 miles)
- Columbia Road between Meridian Road and Cloverdale Road: Widen from two lanes to five. (3 miles)
- Hubbard Road between Five Mile Road and Cloverdale Road: Widen from two lanes to five. (1 mile)
- Five Mile Road between Ten Mile Creek Road and Hubbard Road: Widen from two lanes to five. (1 mile)
- Kuna Road between Meridian Road and Eagle Road: Widen from two lanes to five. (2 miles)
- Kuna Road between Eagle Road and Cloverdale Road: Widen from two lanes to three. (1 mile)
ACHD is already planning to widen Ten Mile Creek Road in the future to three lanes, regardless of whether Kuna approves Spring Rock, according to the report.
Commissioners Sara Baker, Mary May and Rebecca Arnold took no issue with approving the staff report as written to send to Kuna. But they agreed to add a special note from Goldthorpe expressing concerns with ACHD’s ability to finance the necessary road widening.
Dave Yorgason, one of the three developers working on Spring Rock, said he expects to pay for some road improvements to some of the surrounding streets.
“We are trying to be cooperative partners in the community,” Yorgason previously told the Statesman in a phone interview.
The Spring Rock subdivision could help quell the Treasure Valley’s increasing demands for housing, Yorgason noted. Commissioner Sara Baker agreed.
“They say, if you build it, they will come,” she said at Wednesday’s meeting. “But we’re at the point where they’re coming, and we better start building.”
