Article published Wednesday, October 14, 2009 Wauseon Council divided over trail facilities By DAVID PATCH BLADE STAFF WRITER
WAUSEON - A project to build restrooms and other "trailhead" facilities at the entrance to a city park is on the ropes after a city council vote last week, with an $89,200 state grant at stake if officials can't bounce it back.
The 3-3 vote to approve suspension of council rules, so a resolution directing city administration to put the Rotary Park Trailhead out to bid could pass as an emergency measure, revealed a council divided deeply enough that the proposal was dropped pending further discussion at a buildings and grounds committee this week. Five affirmative votes were needed to approve the rules suspension.
The primary obstacle was council's decision nearly two years ago to expand the project by adding police training and storage space to the facility, boosting its cost from $25,000 to about $125,000. Several council members didn't recall approving that decision and objected to the additional cost at a time of fiscal austerity for Wauseon.
"A lot of it was so far ago that people just didn't quite recall" what had been approved, Mayor Jerry Dehnbostel said afterward.
After council's initial approval, construction drawings for the proposed building at Rotary Park's entrance from the Wabash Cannonball Heritage Trail were prepared during the intervening months before the project came back up for the bid award.
Tom Hall, the city's housing and zoning director, said emergency passage was proposed so the project could go out to bid as quickly as possible before the $89,200 state grant for the trailhead portion of the building expires in July.
Mr. Hall said he "still can salvage" the project if city council brings it back soon, but "I can't wait until December to start bidding."
Karen Krumm, Don Mathews, and council president Doug Shaw favored the trailhead project in the vote last week, while Jeff Stiriz, Kathy Huner, and Shane Chamberlin voted against expedited passage.
"I'm trying to put it back together," Mr. Mathews, chairman of council's buildings and grounds committee, said later in the week.
The split vote, Mr. Mathews said, "was somewhat of a surprise, really, but I'm just as guilty as anyone. It [the project] had just sort of slipped our mind. I'm embarrassed, because I forgot about it, too."
The committee was scheduled to convene yesterday.
Mayor Dehnbostel remarked that the city's 2009 budget contained a $200,000 line for the project, and nobody nominated it for cuts when council took a scalpel to city spending in March.
But if the project comes back before council, he said, it could be the original version, without the extra space for the police department to conduct training and repair and store its patrol bicycles.
"We'll probably look at the original design," the mayor said.
While the multi-use facility "would be nice to have," it could be a luxury in the current times, Mayor Dennbostel said. But the basic project should be built to take advantage of low construction costs, he said.
Mr. Mathews said the trailhead could be built with an eye toward adding the police space in the future, such as by pouring a concrete foundation slab big enough to accommodate the full-sized structure.
"I have confidence we'll get something done," he said. "It doesn't make sense to me that we would give back $89,000 in grant money." Permanent Link
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