Pacific targets West Valley Highway improvement

By Chris Chancellor • January 3, 2017 1:30 pm
The City of Pacific would like to improve tattered West Valley Highway and has allocated $428,150 this year to do so. REPORTER FILE PHOTO

A smoother drive through Pacific.

That again is a significant item on Mayor Leanne Guier’s agenda for 2017.

The largest individual appropriation of the City’s nearly $28.5 million budget, which the City Council approved in December, is for the West Valley Highway improvement project. There is $428,150 allocated for that this year.

“It’s like a roller-coaster over there,” Guier said. “That one is a challenge. We will be working on that for a while to find the funding for it.”

Pacific also has separate road and street improvement funds in this year’s budget, which total more than $2 million. Guier said the City aims to finish projects that include Butte Avenue to Skinner Road and Chicago Boulevard to Frontage Road.

“There’s a lot of cracks and it’s kind of bumpy when you travel on both sides,” Guier said of Frontage.

Along with those projects, Guier said there will be chip sealing “in some targeted areas in the city.

“It would be nice if we could do something with the Transportation Benefit District (TBD) to have more road projects,” she said. “There’s a lot of streets that need help. It’s finding the money to get it done.”

On July 15, the City Council authorized the formation of a TBD, which allows the City to charge an extra vehicle registration fee and sales and property taxes to fund street projects through the Revised Code of Washington. Any money raised through a TBD must be used for road projects. But the council has not reached an agreement on how to fund a TBD yet.

This year, the City’s most substantial project was the completion of Pacific’s mile-long portion of Valentine Avenue, which runs parallel to State Route 167, all the way to Sumner. According to Jim Morgan, public works director, the City’s share of that project was $7.7 million.

In December 2015, the Stewart and Thornton Road Improvement Project was completed at a cost of $3.3 million. That project added one new lane of traffic in each direction between State Route 167 and Valentine Avenue; a turn lane between Thornton and Valentine; a new sidewalk along the south side of the road; a 10-foot-wide, separated bike-pedestrian path on the north side of the road; new street lighting on both sides of the road; replacement of the water main; stormwater drainage improvements; and new landscaping.