School district and city work together to complete Garden Lane project
Badger feet in Garden Lane sidewalk (Photo by Rose Shababy)
BONNERS FERRY — The city received a $200,000 grant from the Local Highway Technical Assistance Council to turn Garden Lane from a dead end to a through street but found themselves short of the funds needed to fully fund the road construction.
The Boundary County School District stepped up to make up the difference.
The project bid at $269,000, $69,000 over budget. The city was able to make up $30,000 from the state of Idaho’s surplus funds which were dispersed earlier this year along with keeping part of the project in-house to reduce cost. This still left them $30,000 short of what they needed to complete the project.
That’s when school district officials entered the picture. The school district owns the west portion of Garden Lane, so the board met on July 26 and voted to offer the remaining money from a Safe and Drug Free Schools grant and general fund dollars. The grant is designed to create safe walking and driving routes for local students as part of a continuous plan to increase safety.
Superintendent Jan Bayer said she felt the funds, which were designated to help construct a 6-foot wide pedestrian sidewalk, were a perfect fit for the project.
Garden Lane previously ran from Alderson Lane to Garden Court, terminating about 300 feet short of Fry Street. Once completed, Garden Lane will run along the high school soccer field and connect Fry Street to Alderson Lane.
According to City Administrator Lisa Ailport, the lack of through streets in Bonners Ferry creates heavy traffic on U.S. 95, particularly around the middle and high schools during peak times of the school day. The city and the school district hope that turning Garden Lane into a through street will help reduce traffic and relieve some of the pressure on the highway.
Ailport wanted to do something to acknowledge the school district for its contribution and found a way to do so that will last for years by branding the concrete with badger footprints.
Bayer called on the help of the Kootenai Wildlife Refuge, who created molds of genuine badger paws in honor of the high school mascot, which the city used to make imprints into the sidewalk along Garden Lane. She made sure to emphasize her appreciation for the refuge and their help with the project.
Workers took care creating a path of the paw prints through the wet cement while Ailport, Bayer, and district business manager Cal Bateman watched.
Ailport and Bayer stressed their appreciation for the working relationship between the city and the school district, saying that they “look forward to that continued relationship.”
Anyone who would like to see the badger paws can find them imprinted in the sidewalk in front of the LDS church along Garden Lane.