City Receives Funds for Trail Design, Construction
Along with a $1 million federal grant to help design the Ecusta Trail, the city of Brevard will receive $700,000 from the state that frees up money to help build a short section of the Estatoe Trail.
BREVARD — The city of Brevard has recently learned it will receive $700,000 in state transportation funds — easing a financial pinch it faced earlier this year — as well as a $1 million federal grant to help pay for the design of the Ecusta Trail.
This contrasts with bad news about funding the Brevard City Council received last winter, including notice from the state Department of Transportation that the city was on the hook for $700,000 needed to complete a long-planned replacement of the Railroad Avenue bridge over King Creek.
Though city staffers didn’t sound hopeful at the time, they said they would ask the department to reconsider.
It did, said Finance Director Dean Luebbe.
“We were notified on May 5th that NCDOT would be paying the extra balance on the bridge,” Luebee wrote in an email.
This freed up $700,000 in funds the city had previously devoted to the bridge construction. And on Monday, Council agreed to use $315,000 of this money to supplement a state sidewalk project near Brevard High School, creating a short but crucial link in the city’s Estatoe Trail system.
Notice of the state’s contribution was followed, last week, by news the city had been awarded $1 million from the Federal Lands Access Program to help pay for the design of the Ecusta Trail, which will ultimately run 19.2 miles between Brevard and Hendersonville.
The program, as the name states, funds pathways in and out of nationally owned properties, Planning Director Paul Ray wrote when the Council voted to team up with the Land of Sky Regional Council in applying for the grant in December.
“The Ecusta Trail will connect to the Estatoe Trail, giving this regional trail system a connection to the Pisgah National Forest,” Ray’s memo to Council said.
The city also applied, last month, for a much larger, $15.1-million federal grant that would cover most of the costs of building the trail in Transylvania County. The city expects to hear the results of this application in August.
Earlier this year, Transylvania County Tourism pledged $1 million to the trail project if the city receives this grant, and the state contributed $7.5 million in funding for trail construction.
Some of the money freed up from the bridge project will allow the city to cover another unexpected cost from the state.
The state, which is rebuilding sidewalks in front of the high school as part of its upgrade to North Country Club Road, is committed only to constructing a path four feet wide, Interim City Manager Steve Harrell told Council on Monday. The city was recently informed that it had previously agreed to pay $50,000 to widen this path to 10 feet, which would allow it to serve as part of the Estatoe.
The state’s plans also leave a gap needed to connect this short stretch of the Estatoe to Gallimore Road, site of an existing section of the trail.
Harrell suggested a plan that would devote a total of $315,000 to fill the gap and widen the sidewalk. The remaining funds from the bridge would be used for the city’s ongoing street-repaving program and improvements called for in the Downtown Master Plan.
Council agreed to Harrell’s proposal, though it also requested that staffers ask the state to cover the cost of widening the trail and Duke Energy to help with the most expensive feature of closing the gap, moving electrical utilities.
This commitment to the trail follows a vote by Council, at its May 2 meeting, to spend $1.2 million from a variety of sources on the Estatoe, including the section from the soon-to-be-completed Mary C. Jenkins Community Center to US 64.
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Gréât News- thank you for the update