Following a three-and-a-half-hour hearing on Wednesday, the commissioners told the school district to return on Friday, Sept. 19, with evidence that students will be endangered by all other alternate routes to the proposed school.
At issue is 1.2 acres of farmland on which the commissioners hold a conservation easement.
The School District of Ephrata wants to pave over that land in order to provide a secondary access to its planned new Lincoln Elementary School, just inside Ephrata Township, between Market Street and Meadow Valley Road.
Commissioner Chairman Paul R. Thibault said safety is the only issue that could get him to vote to allow part of a preserved farm to be taken out of an agricultural use.
"I haven't heard enough about safety,'' Thibault said at the end of the hearing.
He called on the school board to return with testimony about student safety from its traffic engineers. County planners also will be involved with studying the information related to safety.
Commissioner Pete Shaub said the vote by commissioners will set a precedent, a "very risky one,'' for the county's agricultural preservation program, which is the second largest in the nation.
Shaub agreed with Thibault that safety should be the only reason the preserved farm could be encroached upon.
Using the Meadow Valley Road access has to be "essential, indispensable'' to the plans, he said.
With the testimony given so far, Shaub doesn't believe that access is essential.
Commissioner Ron Ford disagreed with Shaub about the real effect of their decision on agricultural preservation efforts.
"I do not personally think by granting this access road that we are setting precedent,'' said Ford. But he added: "The farm will still be in ag preservation, but public perception is a different subject.''
The commissioners are caught between the school district and Ephrata Borough and Township officials, who support the school plan, and the county's agricultural and land preservation groups, which oppose it.
"This should have been addressed years ago,'' Thibault said. "Now, the three of us would like to run for the hills.''
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