New Woodburn Community School

JUDGE’S DISMISSAL PROVIDES AN EXTRA OPPORTUNITY TO BLOCK THE INTERSECTION MILEGROUND SITE

Judge Jennifer Bailey provided a fair hearing of the lawsuit seeking to block the Mileground intersection site, corner of WV 705 & US 119.

Though she dismissed the case, she did not do so “with prejudice” – as both the State and Mon Schools asked, which would have prevented a lawsuit from being filed again.

Instead, she pointed out that the WV Attorney General must have 30 days to decide the issue before the courts can weigh in.

So, within about a month, the WV Attorney General could rule that the Mileground intersection site is prohibited.

Or not. If the Attorney General does not so rule, then the case will simply be refiled in Kanawha County Circuit Court, where a judge should at last rule on its merits.

State Board of Education Policy 6200, which is legally binding, prohibits new school sites that are not “located away from”:

• • “arterial highways”
  • or “traffic and congestion”
  • or “heavily traveled streets”
  • or “the possibility of risk of entrapment”
  • and so on.

The would-be intersection school site violations:

• • access and egress directly at the intersection of two “principal arterial highways,” by federal and state classification
  • borders arterial highway with 25,000 vehicles per day and rising, and borders intersection with a second high traffic arterial highway
  • borders arterial highways and intersection with the worst and second worst possible federal/state rankings for congestion, levels E & F, “approaching gridlock”
  • borders worst levels of congestion thus experiences at least “the possibility” or even the reality “of human entrapment” every school day

Such features at the would-be new school site violate the legally binding state policy four times over.

Much more could be said….