Editorial: HURA should address traffic problems
The City's road infrastructure hasn't been keeping up with growth and HURA's $5 million can help
Traffic is a real problem
The citizens of Hayden want HURA (Hayden Urban Renewal Agency) to fix real problems—not to spend hundreds of thousands (or millions) of dollars on parks and a community center.
Over the course of the past year of Hayden City Council and HURA meetings, citizens of Hayden have frequently commented on frustration with roads, traffic, and the health and safety risks our current roads pose to our community and our families at intersections like Government/Honeysuckle and Government/Miles (mostly in the district) and Hayden/Ramsey (potential district expansion target).
Money in the bank
HURA has ~$5 million in the bank today (and an estimated additional ~$7 million by 2029). They can spend this money on infrastructure improvements in the district. HURA should seek to improve the traffic problems faced by our citizens by supporting the purchase of right-of-ways and building needed roundabouts and traffic lights.
While a community center and parks are attractive ideas, the HURA board needs to ask itself the question:
Is it more important to build vanity projects with taxpayer money or to address the city's critical infrastructure problems?
HURA doesn’t exist to meet the desires of HURA’s board; it exists to address infrastructure problems for our city and should be held responsible to Hayden City Council and ultimately the citizens of Hayden.
Thank you for reading
We’ve enjoyed seeing steady growth of our site since it started. Many citizens of our community have joined our email list or follow along on Facebook and Twitter. The Hayden Citizen is meant to inform members of our community and has benefited from the work of our volunteers.
If you have questions or comments, you can leave those directly on the site, message us on social media, or email us (contact at haydencitizen dot com).
HURA has already spent Millions of dollars on Road "Infrastructure" in Hayden. They have converted government way, the ONE AND ONLY functional North-South thoroughfare through Hayden East of 95 into a cutesy, intentionally narrow and slow-moving, "small-town" main-street, with trees, wide sidewalks, park benches ,and center islands. Now the City Council has decided that Hayden should triple in size, and that Government Way should be redeveloped and packed with high density "Mixed Use" housing, as far as the eye can see. These are two irreconcilable visions. We cannot "FIX" traffic until we have a coherent vision of what it is we are trying to fix---That Actually conforms to the desires of the current residents. We are No Where Close.
Yes, traffic is a problem, but $5M barely, if at all, converts maybe a mile of two lane road into four lanes. To meaningfully address traffic with construction takes a LOT more than $5M. That WOULD build a really nice community center that could be useful to the community for decades to come.