SEQUIM — Try walking down the south side of Fir Street, around one of the many utility poles stuck in it.

“If you turn and put your elbow out, you will hit a car that’s passing,” Bill Bentley warned.

“There just isn’t any room [for strolling].”

Bentley, the Sequim School District superintendent, was describing Fir’s shortage of sidewalks and abundance of telephone poles, which interrupt the pavement where 270 children will walk daily once school starts Sept. 3.

On Monday, Bentley urged the Sequim City Council to consider making Fir pedestrian-only from Third Avenue to just east of Second Avenue.

If the council closes off that nearly three-block stretch of the street, it will not affect the Sequim Avenue intersection nor the parking lot for Leslie Van Romer’s chiropractic office, Bentley said.

He and Tom Schaafsma, chairman of an 11-member school-facilities review committee, laid out their case for street closure and discussed the future of two Sequim schools.