PANORA, Iowa, May 10, 2006 – The badly needed resurfacing project on the 10-plus miles of the Raccoon River Valley Trail in Guthrie County received a major assist this week when the Iowa Department of Transportation committed 175,000 dollars for it.

“I’m glad I was sitting down when I got the phone call,” said Joe Hanner, Guthrie County Conservation Board director, who thought he had about exhausted all possibilities for receiving state funding for the resurfacing. “I’m so happy for all the local people who have worked so hard on this.”

That money comes from the IDOT’s State Recreational Trails Program.

The total cost of the resurfacing is expected to be about 600,000 dollars.

Hanner said he has 100,000 dollars already saved for the project in a trails maintenance account he has slowly funded in recent years from donations, trail pass receipts and other sources. 

In addition, the Guthrie County Board of Supervisors earlier this year boldly committed another 100,000 dollars to the project, hoping to leverage financial participation by state government.

Meanwhile, Guthrie County residents were writing dozens of letters, making many phone calls and personal visits, asking for help from their elected representatives on the state and federal levels, as well as from state government departments and agencies.

“Good news!” Chris Arganbright, secretary for the trails committee of the Panora economic development organization, wrote to members after the grant was announced. “Our efforts have paid off!”

Hanner’s earlier grant applications to the Iowa DOT for help with the project had been turned down. Department officials explained they were putting a higher priority on funding construction of new trails and also on networking the state’s existing trails. But several letter writers told state officials that Guthrie County had committed as much local funding to the resurfacing project as the county could possibly come up with, and that additional help was needed.

Even with the new 175,000 dollar grant, another 225,000 dollars is still needed to cover the 600,000 dollar total cost of the project.

Hanner said he, regional Council of Governments grant writer Chris Whitaker and others are now studying all possible funding sources. The conservationist said he would like to have the resurfacing completed by the fall of 2007.

That would mean the southern two-thirds of the RRVT would have received new asphalt surfacing within the previous three years. Prior to resurfacing, much of that portion of the trail still had the original asphalt, put down in 1989, and the 10-to-12-year life expectancy of it had long ago been surpassed. The northern third of the RRVT, from Yale north to Jefferson, has a surface that is from five to nine years old and still is in good shape.

The resurfacing in Guthrie County will be an important prelude to a new “north loop” of 33 miles being added to the trail in the next couple of years. That loop will go east from the current trail at Herndon, on to Jamaica, Dawson and Perry, then southeast to Minburn, Dallas Center and connecting to the current trail at Waukee.

– Chuck Offenburger

Article Published: 05-10-2006