Greene County conservation director Dan Towers was asked to spend some time at the proverbial drawing board when he talked with the county board of supervisors Monday about the next project on the Raccoon River Valley Trail.
Towers and the conservation board want to pave the 11 crossings of gravel roads on the Greene County portion of the trail. All crossings are now paved in Dallas County, and only five unpaved crossings remain in Guthrie County.
“We’re going to have pressure from trail users if we don’t keep pace with the surrounding trails. If we’re going to attract people to Jefferson off of the loop, we’d better have the best quality trail we can have,” Towers told the supervisors.
Estimated cost of the project is $59,000. The conservation board received a grant of $14,750 from the Greene County Community Foundation, and also recently received a $1,400 donation for the project from the Cyclists of Greene.
Towers told the supervisors there are other needs on the trail. “We don’t want to spend all this money on trail crossings and then let the rest of the trail go to pieces. There are small segments that need to be addressed. We’ve been trying to put ‘band-aids’ on them, and crack sealing and small patches here and there, but it’s 14 or 15 years old. It’s lived its life expectancy without expecting some work,” Towers said. “There are some issues we need to be aware of.”
Supervisor Guy Richardson asked for comprehensive planning before going forward with work on the trail. “We need to have a comprehensive plan as we’re getting more to the place where we need to spend money on the trail. I think that’s every bit as important as getting the crossings paved. We don’t want to go all in on one big project and then find out we need a whole new one. We need to have a comprehensive plan,” Richardson said.
Towers said Snyder and Associates will do design work on at least two of the crossings – Winkleman Switch and Murphy Hill – and suggested those consultants could suggest other things that need to be addressed.
County engineer Wade Weiss also wants planning done before moving forward. “I think we need to have something in writing to say ‘this will work. This has been used somewhere else.’ This deal of just going out and installing stuff… just doesn’t work,” Weiss said.
“It’s not that we want to delay this, but there are things we have to pay attention to,” Richardson said. “We may look at this a little differently after June 12. If we get approved for that (referring to a casino license), there will be more sources of funding for things like that.”
Towers said the requested engineering and comprehensive planning would likely cost the entire amount of the Community Foundation grant. He said that if funding allows, he’d like to see one or two crossings done to show the trail users their needs have been heard. Richardson suggested signage that a project would be coming.
“This has been talked about for three years, but now with the awarding of this grant, people are keeping track. They at least know we’re working towards it,” Towers said.
