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consensus building...or not

Last night Bobby attended Garner's Town Council meeting. One of the items on the agenda was the building permit for Bryan Rd Elementary School.  NC DOT at this point is refusing to pave the road; Wake County BOE will pave the part in front of them (because they want to straighten out a curve) but not the rest of the road. Garner TC does not want to grant a building permit unless the road is paved, saying that their town should not have a brand new school on a dirt road. The matter was postponed until this next Tuesday, hopefully giving DOT and the county time to reach a consensus.

Personally, other than the dirt created by all the construction vehicles moving on a dirt road, I think the state would cave and pave the road within a few months of the school opening. The monthly scraping and quarterly deposit of gravel on the road would not be sufficient to sustain the level of traffic they are talking about. And as slick as a dirt road is after heavy rains, it would only take a few school buses and a few minivans rushing in and sliding off the road for something to be done. There's actually a school bus that comes down this road now, and it does not go slow. I can only imagine how fast they'll actually go once the road is paved. Between parents complaining and the increase in traffic creating more frequent trips for road scraping, I think the cost in maintaining this road will become so high that they'll have to pave it. But that won't satisfy the pride of the town, and so the bickering continues.

Here's the layout of the proposed site
See that road at the bottom (the "parent entrance")?  Our driveway will be about 10' from that. If the permit is approved next week, our life is going to start radically changing in a few months.


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