MARYSVILLE — The city of Marysville’s citizens seem to be split evenly on what should be done with 84th Street (also known as Getchell Hill Road) and 88th Street (also known as Ingraham Boulevard) in the wake of a neighborhood meeting to solicit public input on June 17.

City of Marysville Public Works Director Kevin Nielsen explained that the original plan for Ingraham Boulevard was that it would become the primary east/west arterial between State Route 9 and Interstate 5, while 84th Street between Ingraham Boulevard and 67th Avenue would be downgraded from an arterial to a local access street. However, at least half of the local residents who attended the June 17 public meeting had other ideas, according to Nielsen.

“It was just about the most 50/50 split I’ve ever seen,” Nielsen said. “Half the residents wanted 84th to stay open as an arterial, while the other half were more inclined to see it reduced to a local access road. It was pretty divided.”

To that end, the city had already supplied more than a dozen different options for dealing with the conflicting issues of 84th Street’s traffic volumes still being higher than what Nielsen and other experts would like to see for a local access designation, while at the same time 84th Street poses significant hazards of steep grades, challenging winter access and a degraded roadway surface for arterial motorists.

“The city knew that something would have to be done about 84th back in the 1980s,” Nielsen said. “It’s been a long time coming, before my time. The issues with 84th were why Ingraham was built in the first place. We had to leave 84th because it took us a while to get permits for certain parts of Ingraham, which created some odd timing.”

Due to the public input that the city of Marysville’s Public Works Engineering Division received on June 17, Nielsen explained that they’re going to be spending the next couple of months soliciting even more public opinion, both online on the city’s blog at http://marysvillewa.gov/Blog.aspx and through another public meeting that will be scheduled roughly two months from now. The options that were presented to attendees of the June 17 meeting are also available online, via PowerPoint presentation, at http://marysvillewa.gov/Blog.aspx.

“Probably none of those designs will be the final one, though,” Nielsen said. “We sent out about 1,300 fliers for the last meeting, and we’ll let people know, through fliers and the city’s website, about the next meeting coming up. We should have some design ideas formulated from the input we receive between now and then.”

Nielsen elaborated that the goals of any potential modifications to a yet-to-be-determined section of 84th Street would include decreasing or eliminating eastbound and westbound cut-through traffic, maintaining local access to and from Getchell Hill, reducing traffic volumes on the street, and maintaining full pedestrian access and emergency services, including access for police and fire units.