Amendment offers greater safety, flexibility for daycares

The Moscow City Council voted Monday to unanimously approve an amendment allowing more flexibility for daycare loading-area placement, a change that could also lead to increased safety for children.
Community Development Director Bill Belknap said the amendment allows for greater flexibility for daycares by removing the prohibition of backing movements in private parking lots.
“There was no language referencing backing movements in on-street areas,” Belknap said. “The presumption is that if it isn’t explicitly prohibited then it is permitted.”
Belknap said backing in private parking lots was prohibited, but the language was not particularly clear. The primary motivation for the amendment was to improve clarity and allow for better focus on the issue being addressed, which was to provide a safe environment in which parents could drop off or pick up their children.
“For example, there was a daycare that was going into the old grange building between the Moose Lodge and Hahn Rental,” Belknap said. “They have a private parking lot where a loading space could have been located. But because of the language contained in the code, the loading area got placed on what is essentially North U.S. 95 when in reality it would have been safer for that loading space to be in that private parking lot.”
He said the code in their view was pushing loading areas into places that were potentially less safe.
According to a memo Belknap wrote, instead of prohibiting backing entirely in parking lots, the amendment would instead make sure the travel path from the loading space to the building entrance does not cross the travel path of vehicles.
City Attorney Randy Fife said they made other changes to clarify the code by removing complex language to focus on the parking issue. There was originally language concerning fencing that could and could not be in a parking area, but it was taken out.
“We decided that a code about parking should focus on parking and not things like fencing,” Fife said.
Fife also said part of the reason for the amendment was to make the code more business-friendly by allowing the city engineer to determine whether or not a daycare loading facility was safe. Fife said that one of the primary reasons for the amendment was to make the code more flexible.
“I think this will provide greater flexibility in where daycares can be located, and assure that safety is managed so that the pedestrian travel path does not cross that of vehicles,” Belknap said.
Andrew Deskins can be reached at [email protected]

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