Kootenai crosswalk connects community

KOOTENAI — OK, so maybe it’s not an “official” crosswalk, since it doesn’t have road striping. But the flashing strobes and the iconic crossing signs have managed to do what generations of children here were never able to accomplish on their own — cross Hwy. 200 safely from Ponder Point to Kootenai Elementary School.

The highway project never would have happened without the persistence — a mother’s persistence, it should be added — of Anna Butler. Her mission to get some type of crossing in place began in the fall of 2011, when the number of kids biking or walking to school started to spike.

Her own boys, she said, were always excited to make the one-mile trip to school on their bikes and more of their friends were joining that two-wheeled trip to-and-from school every day. The gathering of bikers, skateboarders and scooter riders had climbed so high by spring of 2012 that parents decided to try the same “orange flag” crossing technique that Sandpoint had in place along Fifth Avenue.

“The numbers kept growing and growing and we had a group of parents who, every morning and every afternoon, were there to help cross them,” Butler said.

The Ponder Point mom had been working with highway department officials to get an actual crosswalk in place, but hadn’t made much headway. As the bike-to-school faction grew, so, too, did the number of close calls on Hwy. 200.

“On a Wednesday, my kids came home from school ghost white,” said Butler. “They said, ‘Some kids almost got hit by a car.’

“Almost every day I’d hear the same thing: ‘We waited and waited and the cars didn’t stop.’”

Apparently, a cluster of school children waving orange flags as they obviously waited to cross the highway was not quite obvious enough for some drivers. Butler continued to lobby the highway department for a crossing upgrade and was told that funding was a sticking point. Who’s going to pay for it? Who maintains it after it’s there? And, no, it’s not an option for you to paint it yourself, she learned.

The mom kept up her slow and steady entreaties until the day she saw the skid marks — a long pair of angry, black lines that scarred the asphalt and raised both ire and alarm in the community.

“Those skid marks were from a car that almost plowed into a group of kids,” she said. “There were a lot of residents who were really angry when they saw that. And that’s when my drive, my passion, really kicked in.”

Butler marched back to the highway department carrying the only documentation she felt was needed to tip the balance toward getting a crossing built. She had no traffic count statistics, no catalog of speed limit infractions — just a cell phone photo of two skid marks, blown up and printed out to prove her point. The response was polite, but not what she expected.

“They told me we should have the kids walk down the railroad tracks to McGhee Road and use the crosswalk there,” she said. “Either that, or put them on the bus.”

Suddenly, the freedom her boys enjoyed when riding their bikes was in jeopardy. Butler reacted by taking her pleas to state and city officials. Though sympathetic, they also voiced concerns about cost and liability issues. If those officials expected this fired-up mom to shrug and disappear, they were in for a surprise. She adopted the motto that “a smile goes a mile” and stayed positively, stubbornly in place.

“I made it very clear that I was not going away,” Butler said.

Other voices joined the choir at this point, including teenagers and elders who needed to get to the other side to catch the SPOT bus. Butler continued to make the case for student safety, as well her owns kids’ right to visit friends across the highway during the school year or ride over to buy fishing worms in the summer.

“I never wanted to give up,” she said. “That was never an option. To me, it turned into, ‘This is for the community.’

“On the flip side, when those kids almost got hit and I said, ‘No more riding your bikes to school,’ it was like I took their freedom away,” Butler added.

As the 2012-2013 school year approached — one year almost to the day that she took the skid mark photo — Butler was driving along Hwy. 200 when she saw a highway worker building up the side of the road.

“I rolled down my window and said, ‘Excuse me — you wouldn’t happen to be building a crosswalk, would you?’

“When he looked up and said, ‘Yeah,’ I jumped out of my car and did a happy dance,” she said. “Later, when the strobe lights went in, that was my ‘anything is possible’ moment.”

Since the project was completed, Butler estimated, more than 50 students, SPOT bus riders and non-driving residents have been using the flashing lights to navigate the crossing on a daily basis.

“For me, it was never about how many people were going to use it,” said Butler. “It was that moment when my son gets to ride his bike to school in second grade, because the excitement on his face was so cool.”

Beyond that were the lessons she learned from tackling the job of convincing people in charge that something needed to be done. As things turned out, passionate interest trumped intractability and persistence won out in the face of financial concern.

“You can turn any negative into a positive,” Butler said. “I’m really proud of them for doing the right thing and building the crosswalk. And I feel privileged to have this opportunity to tell people that, if you’re told ‘no’ 50 times, don’t let it scare you. If you want to do the right thing and you’re passionate about it, you can do it.

“We might not have a sign like Sandpoint’s that says we’re a walking town, but now that there’s a crosswalk as soon as you come into town, maybe drivers will be more cautious and aware.”