Boardman Lake Trail in Peril
Fri, Jun 3, 2005 - By Bob Otwell, TART Trails
Hello friends,
The proposed work on the Boardman Lake Trail this summer is in peril. We need friends of our community trails to come out and strongly support the trail at this Monday nights City Commission meeting.
Construction bids were received this past Wednesday and the low bid was considerably over the engineering estimate. The city has $660,000 in grant funds along with funds already committed by the three partners (Traverse City, Garfield Township, and Grand Traverse County). The grant funds would be lost if the trail is not built this summer.
We would like you to consider doing two things:
- Call or visit any city commissioners you may know this weekend and talk about the importance of this trail to our community, and
- Come to Monday nights meeting at the Governmental Center. The meeting starts at 7:00 PM but I would guess the BLT won’t be on the agenda until at least 8:00 PM. TART is also on at the start of the agenda, presenting a $15,000 check for the BLT at 7:00 PM. If you can come, please ride your bike, come early, and park right in front.
Thanks for your efforts. The Boardman Lake Trail is the fourth trail in our quartet of trails. It is the trail in city and county master plans before any of the others, but the one that has not gotten started yet. Years and years of work by trail advocates and local units of government have gone in to putting this trail corridor together and gathering funds. If we loose this opportunity, I think it will be some time before we can get this back on the table again. This important east side segment gets the loop around the lake started, and opens up access to the whole Boardman River Valley.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks - Bob
Bob Otwell, Executive Director
TART Trails, Inc.
"Enriching the Traverse area by providing an interconnected network of trails,
bikeways, and pedestrian ways; and encouraging their use."
232 East Front Street - PO Box 252 - Traverse City, MI 49685
231-941-4300
[email protected] - http://www.traversetrails.org