Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Highway 44 Pel topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Middleton presses ITD for more data, mitigation after Highway 44 PEL study
Summary
City staff and councilors said they lack the background data used in the Idaho Transportation Department’s PEL study for Highway 44 and directed staff to submit draft comments and convene a special meeting with ITD and Highway District 4 to seek clearer mitigation commitments.
Middleton’s City Council on Sept. 3 moved to send formal comments to the Idaho Transportation Department questioning the PEL study that lays out possible improvements on Highway 44 and to schedule a special meeting with ITD and Highway District 4 to press for more information.
Jason Van Gilder, the city’s public works director, told the council the city has only a draft of the PEL recommendations and has not received the background reports and data that produced the study’s response‑time and mitigation analyses. "Nobody's everybody's excited that somebody wants to spend 300,000,000 to fix traffic in Middleton," Van Gilder said, "The challenge is that we want to make sure that it does not otherwise negatively impact the city." He urged that mitigation items be accounted for in the NEPA process.
Council members raised similar concerns about study methodology and public engagement, saying surveys and open‑house tallies were not clearly separated between Middleton taxpayers and non‑taxpayers. One councilmember said the public outreach produced a skewed result because the survey aggregated views from people who would not bear local tax impacts.
After discussion, the council voted to have staff present the City of Middleton's draft comments to ITD and to send the letter as part of the record. Separately, the council authorized scheduling a special meeting with ITD and Highway District 4 so governing boards can speak directly about intersections and signalization rather than routing questions through staff; councilman Murray volunteered to help secure board attendance.
The council’s action requests that ITD provide the underlying data used for response‑time calculations and that mitigation commitments be clarified in any NEPA review. No funding appropriation or route selection was decided at the meeting; the city explicitly sought more information and written assurances before endorsing any preferred alternative.
The special meeting was tentatively scheduled for Sept. 25 at 10 a.m. in chambers (with alternate October/November dates offered by ITD), and council members asked staff to track responses needed for the draft comment letter.
Next steps: staff will finalize the draft comment letter incorporating the council’s edits, transmit it to ITD and AIC as appropriate, and follow up to schedule the special‑board meeting.
