Communication stressed at weekly SR 305 meeting

Published 3:00 pm Wednesday, August 9, 2006

POULSBO — Puget Sound Energy provided an unanticipated shock to Monday’s State Route 305 project meeting.

With little notice, PSE announced plans to have flaggers posted at the intersection of SR 305 and Lincoln Road to close traffic in all directions for up to 15-minute intervals that night and into Tuesday morning.

The proclamation was made by Washington State Department of Transportation assistant project engineer David Garlington as he read a note from project engineer George Titterness, who was on vacation.

Poulsbo City Engineer Andrzej Kasiniak and Public Works Director Jeff Bauman said they were unaware of the closure and asked if PSE could delay the work until later in the week, so the public could be notified.

However, Garlington was informed that PSE officials said any delay would have “significant impacts” on the work, and Garlington in turn asked Bauman and Kasiniak for their recommendation.

Bauman expressed his displeasure about the situation and said he saw no choice other than to allow the work to proceed as schedule.

“I don’t like it, but I can’t see that we have much of choice,” Bauman said. “Let’s not make this a habit in the future.”

After the meeting, Bauman said it was fortunate that the work involved only four periods of time when crews needed to cross the road.

“The vast majority of the traveling public won’t even know it happened,” he said. “No one will miss their ferry because of this.”

In the event that police or fire units received an emergency call during the work, Bauman said PSE crews had been instructed to allow them to traverse the highway.

Even though the city was left with little choice in this situation, Bauman said in the future, similar situations will be handled differently.

“We can work with them on the unforeseen problems that will arise, but it’s the foreseen that I have a problem with,” he said.

The Kitsap Public Utilities District and Comcast Cable representatives did the right thing at Monday’s meeting by discussing the upcoming need to do a similar road closure in the next few weeks, Bauman said.

“That’s the purpose of the weekly sessions,” Bauman said, adding that the meetings should allow all of the parties involved to coordinate their activities.

Kasiniak said it was important that everyone got the message about giving the city as much advanced notice as possible.

“This is the first time this has happened on this project,” he said.

If the situation had been more than five- to 15-minute closures, the impacts could have been far greater, he said.

“We were fortunate this time and like Jeff Bauman said, something that is predictable we should know about,” Kasiniak said.

When informed of the situation, Mayor Kathryn Quade said it was unfortunate and reiterated the need for as much public information about the project as possible.

“It’s obvious the more information we get sooner, the better we can get it to our citizens,” Quade said.