The Soldotna City Council and Planning & Zoning Commission will hold a joint work session to discuss the Safe Routes to Schools Draft Plan tonight at 4:30 p.m.
We spoke to Soldotna City Planner John Czarnezki for more.
Czarneski: “It’s going to be a joint meeting between the council and the planning and zoning commmision and it’s really a work session to take a look at the recommendations and priorities that our consultant has come up with for our Safe Routes to School Plan. Basically that plan is designed to take a look at how kids get to school, in particular what kind of impedments are there to kids walking or biking to school. So it aims to identify those things that are being a problem as far as kids having a safe way to get to school other than getting dropped off or taking the school bus.
Czrnezki said this requires involvement from more than just the City itself.
Czarneski: “The other thing to keep in mind is that there are a number of jurisdictions or agencies that are going to have a roll in this. Obviously the schools are located, the ones we’re looking at anyways, are located in the City of Soldotna but many of the improvements might be on the school grounds themselves, so the School District would be involved. Likewise some of the streets that may need to be crossed could be city streets, borough streets, or the state highway.”
We also asked how this project could be affected by the Binkley St. Improvement Plans.
Czarneski: “We are going to be looking at those two intersections on Binkley that probably get most of the traffic for Soldotna Elementary and Soldotna Montessori and that’s Park Street and Corral Street. So we’re going to look at the existing traffic signals there and how we might be able to improve it so that kids can get across those streets a little bit safer.”
The meeting will be held in the Council Chambers at City Hall, 177 N. Birch Street, Soldotna, Alaska.
For information contact the City Clerk’s Office at 907-262-9107.