City presents Fifth Street plan that would cross Battle Ground School District land; board seeks more data on safety and property loss

City of Battle Ground public works staff presented a design for a proposed Fifth Street connector that would cross the north side of Battle Ground School District property and asked the district to dedicate right of way needed for the project.

City Public Works Director Mark Herzig and Associate Civil Engineer Dan Holland told the district at a May work session that the Fifth Street project is one of six projects funded through the Connecting Washington program and that the city was awarded $7,700,000 for the overall program in 2016. Herzig said the Fifth Street portion is scheduled for construction in 2026 in the city’s best-case timeline, after design and permitting are finished. “Project has been in the plans for at least 20 years,” Herzig said.

The city described several safety elements it plans to include because the roadway would run adjacent to school property: a raised pedestrian crosswalk with a rapid rectangular flashing beacon (RRFB), guardrail locations, a masonry (CMU) screen wall in front of recently installed modular classrooms, fenced stormwater basins, and a continuous public sidewalk along the south side of the new roadway. “We are thinking about the safety features, and it's been something that's very much so at the forefront of what we're trying to do,” Holland said.

City staff told the board that the project is grant-funded in phases: about $1,000,000 in the 2015–17 biennium, $3,800,000 in the next, and…