Estatoe Trail Funding, Once $1 Million, Is Now $36,425
Some of the drop in available funds for Brevard's multi-use path is due to spending on trail work. But the new total also reflects the loss of grant money and the settling of a longstanding deficit.
BREVARD — A “News Flash” posted on the city of Brevard’s website last year announced “exciting news on the extension of the Estatoe Trail.”
The city, the press release said, was ready to spend a total of $1 million on “extending the Estatoe . . . from Depot Railroad Avenue Park to the Rosenwald Community.”
Not anymore. Or at least not for now.
Because of several factors, including the expiration of a $240,00 grant from the Pisgah Health Foundation and a decision to pay off a $380,000 deficit in the city’s Multi-Use Path Project Fund, that $1 million total has dwindled to $36,425, Finance Director Dean Luebbe told City Council at its meeting last week.
“We were told with great fanfare that we had $1 million for the multi-use path a few months ago . . . but now that has basically disappeared,” Council member Aaron Baker said at the meeting.
Some of the money has simply been spent or committed to trail work, according to documents provided to Council. That includes $160,000 for a bridge to extend the trail over the Davidson River and $144,000 to complete the ongoing job of linking Railroad Avenue to West Main Street.
The city has also spent $67,000 on surveys and other preparations for the next portion of the trail, from Main to the Mary C. Jenkins Community Center in Rosenwald.
The trail is envisioned as connecting schools, parks and neighborhoods throughout the city to Pisgah National Forest and the planned Ecusta Trail, which in turn will link the city to Hendersonville.
The first section of the trail was completed in 2003, but construction stalled for several years after 2006. Though Council passed a resolution pledging to extend the trail to Brevard High School in 2018, there is currently almost no money available to build it past Main.
Baker, a longtime critic of the slow progress on the Estatoe, was most concerned about the two biggest reasons for the drop in available funding — the loss of the grant money and the multi-use path fund’s deficit.
In 2016, Council voted to allow this fund to borrow money from the city’s general fund for a sidewalk project on West Probart Street and to reimburse the general fund with annual payments of $45,000.
In an audit of city finance statements last year, this deficit was flagged under the heading, “Stewardship, Compliance and Accountability.”
Luebbe said he brought this to the attention of interim City Manager Steve Harrell, who decided the deficit should be cleared. “We would both like to have no findings” in the audit, Luebbe said.
The Pisgah Health grant, received by Conserving Carolina for construction of the Estatoe in 2020, expired at the end of 2021, before work could begin on the stretch of the trail it was earmarked to fund — the link between Main and the community center.
City leaders knew or should have known about the grant’s expiration, and clearly knew about the multi-use fund’s deficit when the press release was posted on the city website, said Baker, who was elected to Council in November.
“To come out and announce that you have $1 million when over half of that $1 million is not actually there is a little disingenuous,” Baker said this week.
Council Member Mac Morrow, the chair of the Council’s Parks, Trails and Recreation Committee, said last spring that he expected the stretch of the trail to Main to be be completed by Thanksgiving. It has been delayed, he said this week, by supply-chain problems that have plagued many public construction projects.
He said he had “no idea” the grant for the trail’s next phase was set to expire when he attached his name to last year’s press release.
But Baker is right about one thing, he said. Considering that the deficit was the subject of a public vote, it was no secret.
“Everybody agreed with that and everybody was excited about it,” Morrow said of the decision to borrow money from the general fund to allow work to begin on the sidewalk project.
He framed the decision to make the loan to the multi-use trail fund as a function of the management style of the city manager and finance director at the time, Jim Fatland, who recently retired. The decision to resolve it, likewise, reflects Harrell’s approach.
“It’s just different ways of looking at it,” he said.
Mayor Maureen Copelof agreed, emphasizing that deficit is merely due to an internal loan.
The amount of money in city coffers has not changed, she said, “but how we account for it is changing.”
She also said that she has talked to Pisgah Health President Lex Green about the possibility of applying for another trail grant in the future. Though “there are no guarantees” the city will receive this funding, she said, there is support at the foundation for the path “and the door is open for the city to ask for more money.”
She said that because of difficulties in acquiring right-of-way and managing stormwater on the next phase of the project, it might not have been built this year even if funds were available. She expects Council will soon discuss options for proceeding on trail construction that may include leapfrogging to begin work on another stretch.
Luebbe, who was hired late last year, said he and Harrell will look at alternative funding sources to present to Council at an upcoming meeting.
“Even though neither of us has been around that long,” he said, “we know this is an important project.”
Another example of county managers playing fast and loose with funds. Just like Kevin Shook took money donated to the animal shelter for animals veterinary treatment and spent it on shelter maintenance leaving none for treatment. There’s no accountability.