Joe Hanner, Guthrie County Conservation director, stands on a deteriorated portion of the Raccoon River Valley Trail between Yale and Panora that will be resurfaced with federal economic stimulus funding.

PANORA, Iowa, March 10, 2009 – Federal “stimulus” funding of $945,000 has been awarded for rehabilitation of the worn-out, five-mile section of the Raccoon River Valley Trail between Panora and Yale — the last original piece of the RRVT that has not been resurfaced.  The announcement was made Tuesday in Ames, where the Iowa Transportation Commission approved a total of $5 million in the stimulus money for specified trail projects across the state.

“I’m extremely happy!” said Joe Hanner, director of the Guthrie County Conservation Board, the agency named as the recipient of the federal funding. “We’ve been working six years trying to find enough funding to get this resurfacing project done.”

Now it will happen this year and next, under terms of the stimulus program.

The RRVT is one of four trails around Iowa that received $1 million each, or nearly that amount.

The others are the Sauk Rail Trail, $1 million for paving the current crushed-rock surface on that trail from Maple River to Carnarvon; Wabash Trace Nature Trail in southwest Iowa, $1 million for rehabilitation of the trail leading to the new Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge and also to pave the portion of the Wabash Trace between Mineola and Malvern; Rathburn Lake Multi-Use Trail, $995,000, for trail development; and the Prinicpal Riverwalk in downtown Des Moines, $873,235 to move that riverfront trail toward completion.  Also, the Iowa Great Lakes Trail in northwest Iowa will receive $186,365 to resurface an original portion of that trail along Lake Okoboji and East Lake Okoboji.

Iowa DOT commissioners were told on Tuesday that the agency had received 121 applications asking a total of $87 million in stimulus funding for trail-related projects from local governments across the state.

IDOT staff then evaluated the projects  based on four factors — “1) location on a statewide, regional or local trail system; 2) level of readiness to be constructed in a timely manner; 3) potential for tourism and economic development, and 4) geographic location.”  The five trail projects that are receiving stimulus dollars now, including the RRVT for the resurfacing in Guthrie County,  received the highest evaluations.

The RRVT’s proposed 33-mile “North Loop” project did not get funding in this round of stimulus funding dispersal.

But that larger project is believed to be still under consideration by two other state government entities.  One of those is money that the Governor and Iowa Legislature might assign from direct federal stimulus grants or from a new state bonding program that might or might not happen.  The other is the Vision Iowa Program, where the RRVT’s big project is now “in negotiations” for a possible Community Attraction & Tourism (CAT) grant.

The actual “North Loop” is expected to cost a total of just more than $5 million, and about $3.9 million of it is already secured. That project will extend new trail through the towns of Dallas Center, Minburn, Perry, Dawson and Jamaica, and that will bring the total number of communities served by the RRVT to 14. The RRVT already extends on east through Clive, Windsor Heights, West Des Moines and Des Moines.

Tuesday’s announcement of the grant for resurfacing in Guthrie County is a big lift for the overall expansion project on the RRVT, said Mike Wallace, director of the Dallas County Conservation Board.

“Ultimately, this is all one big trail and one big trail project, so having the resurfacing in Guthrie County covered means we’ve made a significant gain on our overall goal,” Wallace said. “It’s especially good because it’s always been harder to find money for resurfacing and maintenance projects on trails than it has been to find funding for new trail projects.  And our actual ‘North Loop’ will all be new trail.”

Hanner shows a 3-inch crack that has been filled and re-filled.

Hanner said he and others in Guthrie County had been successful in raising “about $168,000″ toward the resurfacing in recent years, including commitments from the county board of supervisors, the conservation board’s foundation and several other smaller donors.

“But our county got hammered by flooding last year, and we’ve got a whole lot of roads and bridges that need repair,” he said, “and that was going to make it harder to get county and local government funding to resurface the trail.”

He also noted that having the trail resurfaced between Panora and Yale “is going to be huge for the towns up the trail in Greene County, too.”  He said that as the five miles of trail surface crumbled the last few years, many bicyclists were deciding not to ride north of Panora.  Once the new surface is completed, they’ll be more likely to ride all the way to the north trailhead in Jefferson.  That’s because the trail north of Yale is in good shape.

Wallace added by being able to reduce the RRVT asking for Vision Iowa/CAT funding — to reflect the receipt of the $945,000 in stimulus dollars now going for the Guthrie County resurfacing — it should make it easier for the Vision Iowa board to help fund the “North Loop” part of the expansion.

And three state senate leaders whose districts are along the RRVT — Matt McCoy, of Des Moines, Staci Appel, of Ackworth, and Daryl Beall, of Fort Dodge — said earlier they favor trying to rapidly complete the RRVT project as soon as possible, using economic stimulus dollars, funds from the bonding program that has been talked about, or CAT funding.