Safety, school needs clash in this fast-growing Idaho city

When 64-year-old Debbie Taylor-Cramer’s brother had a medical emergency last fall in their small residential neighborhood in Star, Taylor-Cramer did what anyone would do: She called for emergency medical assistance. But she started to panic as minutes passed and the sound of nearby sirens seemed to stagnate — then start to fade.

It was just after 8 a.m. — school drop-off time — and the two-lane road that provides access to Star Middle School and to Taylor-Cramer’s subdivision was in total gridlock. It took 10 minutes, she estimates, for responders to reach her brother.

“My brother was dying,” Taylor-Cramer, a retired nurse, told elected officials and fellow residents at a Star City Council meeting on Feb. 4. “The ambulance and the fire truck could not get to our home … If it had been any longer, he wouldn’t be here today.”

The council was considering a proposal by the West Ada School District to build a new elementary school next to Star Middle School on Pollard Lane — the road where emergency responders got stuck. Taylor-Cramer and others testified that the road is in such poor condition that it couldn’t safely support a new school, as needed as the school may be for the small but rapidly growing city.

New school proposed in ‘epicenter’ of growth

David Reinhart, West Ada’s chief operating officer, presented the request for a conditional-use permit that would allow the school district to build the school in an area that was previously zoned for residential development. The school would be the first new elementary school in Star in almost 50 years, and the district’s first since Pleasant View Elementary opened in Meridian in 2020.

The school would be located north of Star Middle on the west side of Pollard Lane in northeast Star not far from State Highway 16, according to plans filed with the city. It would sit on roughly 10 acres of a 37-acre parcel the district owns and enroll up to 700 students in pre-K through fifth grades.

Reinhart told the Idaho Statesman that the school is needed in Star, which is 10 times larger than it was in 2000, having grown from fewer than 2,000 people to almost 20,000, according to Compass, the Community Planning Association of Southwest Idaho. Compass data shows Star is Ada County’s smallest city but has been its fastest-growing in the last four years. It was Idaho’s second-fastest-growing city from 2020 to 2023, the Statesman last reported from Census data.

“According to what we observe, there are hundreds of students who need seats in Star,” Reinhart said in a phone interview.

In the Feb. 4 hearing, Reinhart testified that the city’s only elementary school, Star Elementary, is about 100 students over its capacity of 625. Reinhart also noted that the school district has to bus about 20% of Star’s elementary-school-age children to Eagle for school, a roughly 30-minute trip each way. He later told the Statesman that’s about 120 to 150 kids.

Though the school district’s total enrollment has slowed in recent years, the Statesman previously reported, Reinhart said that future developments approved in Star are expected to add 333 school-age children near the proposed elementary school in the next three years.

Mayor Trevor Chadwick told the Statesman in an interview that he doesn’t expect growth in his city to slow.

“We’re at the epicenter of the growth,” he said, noting that developers filed over 1,000 residential building permits with the city in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, plus 349 since. As of the end of 2024, Chadwick said, the city has about 7,900 residential units. Compass estimates that the city will gain more than 2,400 additional people by 2050.

Reinhart told the City Council on Feb. 4 that the school district has not only a need for the school, but also the “opportunity” to make it happen — thanks to a $1.5 billion school-facilities fund passed by the Legislature in 2024 to help school districts across the state to repair or replace aging buildings.

Gov. Brad Little’s office estimated that West Ada stood to receive $140 million from the fund, the Statesman reported in March.

The elementary school would be fully paid for by this state fund, Reinhart told the City Council. “House Bill 521 … gives us the ability to do this without passing a bond or a levy or putting another tax on your residents,” he said.

But several Star residents at the hearing, including Taylor-Cramer, were conflicted.

Residents voice ‘grave concern’ over safety, traffic

“We know we need another school,” Ann Kuck, who lives half a mile west of the proposed elementary school, said at the hearing. “We fully support that. What we don’t support is the school in its current design and iteration.”

Kuck and five of her neighbors submitted a letter to the city detailing “grave concern” over conditions on Pollard Lane and the safety of students and residents who use it.

In Kuck’s testimony, she noted that Pollard Lane has only two lanes and no sidewalks, and it is lined on one side by a deep irrigation ditch, which she described as “an attractive nuisance for children.”

The ditch also poses a logistical challenge for any efforts to widen the road.

Taylor-Cramer said she worries that if a student or teacher had an emergency at the school during drop-off or pick-up hours, responders might not be able to arrive quickly enough.

She told the Statesman in an interview that she has seen near-miss car accidents and unsafe bus-driving near the school, as parents and others cut through her subdivision to beat traffic on Pollard Lane. She said her subdivision and several others nearby consist largely of residents over the age of 50, whose safety she worries about, too. She and others told the City Council that they have to schedule medical appointments around school hours, including her husband’s chemotherapy treatments.

And Taylor-Cramer believes the traffic will only worsen with 700 students in the new school.

“How can you build an elementary school, when they haven’t made any resolutions for the existing school that’s been there?” Taylor-Cramer said.

Improvements to Pollard Lane — such as widening the road and installing other traffic-control mechanisms like stoplights — would “definitely help,” she said, as would creating an emergency response plan for the school parking lot. Picking a different location altogether, she said, would be “the answer.”

ACHD plans for Pollard await traffic study

Star City Council members echoed concerns about the state of Pollard Lane but emphasized that the Ada County Highway District — not the city of Star — has jurisdiction over roads in the area.

“The unfortunate problem that we have, which is unique to this county, is we do not own our roads,” City Council President David Hershey said in a second hearing on the proposed elementary school on Feb. 18. “Roads and infrastructure will never move … until the rooftops are basically there, bringing the tax dollars in … It will not go the other way.”

“It’s always in a deficit,” Hershey said.

Chadwick told the Statesman that widening Pollard Lane to three lanes, with curbs, gutters, sidewalks and bike lanes, is among the city’s top-five priority requests to the highway district for the next five years.

Widening the road to three lanes is on the school district’s top-five requests as well, Reinhart said. He anticipates the district will rank it as the third priority on the list it plans to send ACHD in March.

But beyond advocating the necessity of these road improvements, Chadwick said the city has a limited purview.

“ACHD ultimately makes the decision,” Chadwick said at the Feb. 4 hearing.

As a condition of the school’s approval, the City Council can require that the school adhere to requirements from the highway district. But the highway district has yet to set those recommendations, in part because it is still waiting on a traffic study from the school district, according to Rachel Bjornestad, a public information officer for ACHD.

“We are waiting for that to come in,” Bjornestad told the Statesman in an email. “This study examines bus routes, walk routes, parent drop-offs, etc. We then use that information to provide conditions of approval.”

Bjornestad noted that a traffic-impact study is required by Idaho law for any new school before it is built.

Reinhart told the Statesman that the traffic study is almost complete and that West Ada is “committed to working through” traffic concerns in partnership with the highway district. He expects the study to be complete in early March, at which point ACHD would review it and make recommendations.

“We know, because we live there and we work there, of the traffic challenges,” Reinhart said. “ACHD has their own process, and we’re following that.”

Reinhart said at the public hearing that the school district would comply with any conditions from the highway district once the traffic study is complete.

City officials say infrastructure ‘always in deficit’

But the Star City Council can legally do little more than require that compliance. The city cannot place its own road-related demands on the school district’s proposal, because the school district, like the city, has no control over the roads.

Still, City Council Member Kevin Nielsen told his colleagues and the public at the hearing that he’d rather wait for the traffic study results and to receive more “input” from the highway district.

“We need ACHD as a partner, not always a wild card,” Nielsen said.

Nielsen said he sat on the City Council in 2015 when the middle school on Pollard Lane was approved, though at the time he did not anticipate the traffic and safety concerns that would come as a result of such rapid growth and the fact that far fewer parents opted to bus their students than the school district predicted they would.

“That has weighed heavy on my conscience,” Nielsen said. “I’ve been waiting for nine years, hoping that nobody died over there.”

He said he agreed that the proposed elementary school is needed but said he wanted to see “solutions” on Pollard Lane before a new school is built, not the other way around. “I can’t have that on my conscience again,” he said.

He noted that the school district’s state funds through the facilities bill do not expire.

“Unfortunately, we don’t have that option,” Chadwick told the Statesman when asked about waiting for road improvements before building the school. “With the way that ACHD is set up and the way that the funding is created … They don’t do them ahead of time in Idaho. They never have.”

Chadwick said the new school could be an opportunity to exert additional pressure on the highway district to prioritize improvements to Pollard Lane.

Bjornestad pointed the Statesman to ACHD’s integrated five-year work plan, which includes improvements to the intersection of Pollard Lane and Floating Feather Road such as streetlights, a pathway, and a pedestrian bridge expected to come in 2026, plus widening Floating Feather at that intersection and west of it, though not until 2030 or later.

A bridge removal and replacement is also planned further south on Pollard Lane over the Dry Creek canal, with construction expected in 2028-29. Widening Pollard is not mentioned.

At the hearing, the mayor expressed frustration at the highway district and the process of trying to get road improvements in Star.

“They’ve collected so many stinking impact fees from the residents of Star and utilize them in downtown Boise with bike lanes,” Chadwick said.

“Impact fees, by Idaho Code, are paid at the time of construction, not before it is constructed,” Bjornestad told the Statesman in an email. “This is why, at times, the development comes before the infrastructure.”

But impact fees can’t go toward just anything, Bjornestad said. “Basically, if the roadway needs improvements for reasons other than to accommodate growth, it is not usually impact fee eligible.”

Bjornestad said the highway district has identified several “impact-fee eligible” projects in Star, including a $37.8 million project to improve pedestrian and bicycle access on Star Road.

She acknowledged “frustration in connection with the timing of improvements,” but emphasized ACHD’s coordination with city officials in Star. “For fast-growing communities like Star, there is added pressure to keep up with needs, and ACHD is continuing to find ways to better support the communities it serves,” she said.

Chadwick told the Statesman that the highway district is “in a weird, unique position.”

“They’re trying to represent the county and all the cities in Ada County and all the needs that are going on and the over 5,000 lane miles that they already have to maintain and manage,” he said. “Sometimes I think about us as being, since we’re on the outskirts, that we get forgotten about sometimes.”

Chadwick said the city communicates with the highway district, meeting monthly with Miranda Gold, the commissioner who represents Star, Eagle and North Boise.

West Ada proposes ‘solutions,’ calls need for school ‘urgent’

In the Feb. 18 hearing, Reinhart presented some adjustments to the school’s original design to address traffic concerns. Namely, the school would have a second entrance and exit on the north side, rather than only one on the south. This would allow more emergency access as well, Reinhart said.

The district would also mark off intersections within the school campus to instruct drivers not to block them.

Reinhart also said the elementary and middle schools would have staggered start and end times, which he believes would help mitigate the “surge” of traffic during drop-off and pick-up hours.

“The traffic situation is extremely challenging in every one of our schools,” he said, noting the district’s efforts to manage growth not just in Star but across the Treasure Valley.

By locating the proposed school where it is “central to the growth,” Reinhart said, the school would help relieve pressure on other schools in the district, including Pleasant View Elementary, which is also over capacity.

Reinhart urged the City Council not to delay the process. “We believe it’s that urgent,” he said.

Council to public: Go tell ACHD

The City Council voted 3-1 to approve the new elementary school, with conditions including that the school district present traffic-study findings and requirements from the highway district to the city before it can begin construction. The district will also be required to comply with ACHD’s recommendations.

In his motion to approve the permit, Council President Hershey pointed to “immediate improvements” the school district would make, as well as the limitations of his governing body’s purview.

“The pressure on ACHD is going to have to be imminent and constant, and that is something that we have to all fight,” Hershey said.

Nielsen cast the lone opposing vote. He encouraged the public to voice concerns to the highway district.

“Now, I happen to have faith that ACHD will come to the table,” Nielsen said. “And I hope that if they don’t, that their meetings are the ones that everybody shows up to.”

Reacting to the City Council’s decision, Taylor-Cramer told the Statesman that she is still “very concerned” about emergency access. She said in an interview that she feels “fortunate” that her brother lived but fears that “Somebody’s gonna get hurt.”

The school district is expected to begin construction in June with the goal of opening in time for the 2026-27 school year.

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