It’s easy to understand neighbors’ concerns about a proposed bus-maintenance facility on U.S. 40 in Blue Springs, but it appears that the city and the Blue Springs School District have offered a reasonable plan and have gone through the proper procedures.
The school district wants a new facility on the south side of U.S. 40, just west of Adams Dairy Parkway. The site is currently largely undeveloped. The facility itself, for fueling and repairing buses, would be about 18,600 square feet, not a whole lot bigger than a typical Walgreens drug store.
Some residents have raised concerns about noise, air pollution, traffic and how all this might affect property values. They also claim the city hasn’t followed its own zoning rules, something the city stoutly denies. Opponents say they plan to go to court, and they are to be commended for standing their ground and working through the system to be heard.
If you eyeball the area – as we have – it’s easy to see that site sitting there unused for quite a while even though it’s zoned for business. It is not, for example, where the city has put an emphasis on attracting new stores and shops. This might be the best sort of development the site will attract. The school district would be well advised to do whatever it can to screen neighbors from the sights, sounds and smells of the facility.
The City Council has heard all of these arguments, and Mayor Carson Ross eased up on the usual protocols and let opponents speak to the issue. (The speeches were severely time-limited, an annoying and undemocratic habit many of our local governments have, but that’s an argument for another day.) The council in the end sided with the city’s Planning Commission and gave the go-ahead.
If this were a bus storage site, it might be a different story, but it seems that the impact on the area will be reasonable.
