Hollister forced to shelve proposed bike/pedestrian path
A proposed multi-use trail along the San Benito River has been
shelved indefinitely after the state froze its portion of the
funding.
Dubbed the San Benito River Greenway Project, the original plan
was to mix state grant money with city funds to purchase land along
the river from the Nash Road crossing north to the Fourth Street
bridge crossing to create a pedestrian and bike path.
Hollister forced to shelve proposed bike/pedestrian path
A proposed multi-use trail along the San Benito River has been shelved indefinitely after the state froze its portion of the funding.
Dubbed the San Benito River Greenway Project, the original plan was to mix state grant money with city funds to purchase land along the river from the Nash Road crossing north to the Fourth Street bridge crossing to create a pedestrian and bike path.
In December 2008, the state froze all general obligation funding, including a $500,000 grant that the city of Hollister was awarded in 2002, which effectively killed the project – at least for now.
“The initial hope was that this was a temporary freeze and the situation at the state would be worked out in a timely manner,” Hollister Engineering Manager Steve Wittry wrote in a report to the City Council. “Unfortunately, that has not been the case.”
Escalating land values forced the city to scale back the original length of the riverside project to a 4,000-foot trail on city-owned land from Fourth Street south to Apricot Lane.
“The price of the land [along the entirety of the original project] was more than was expected,” said City Manager Clint Quilter, adding that stipulations of the state grant funding meant that landowners along the river path had to be willing sellers, meaning land acquisition by eminent domain was not an option for the city. “We got [the length of the trail] down to something more manageable.”
City staff continued working on the project with a goal of having it completed by the grant’s June deadline, but the state funding freeze also froze those plans.
“We got the project designed and were prepared to go out to bid when the state had its budget problems and froze all funding,” Quilter said. “We can’t go out to bid if we don’t have a source of money. The problem we run into is during the time the state has our money frozen, our deadline on the grant money runs out. We’re hoping that the state will extend the deadline by an equivalent amount of time that they kept the funding frozen. We’re hoping they take that reasonable approach.”
Wittry said that Hollister does not have sufficient park impact fees or other non-General Fund dollars available to complete the proposed project without the grant money.
“Staff is hopeful that the state will ultimately come through with some sort of solution to the dilemma,” he reported to the council. “However, as it currently stands, there is no guarantee that the grant will be funded in the future.”
The city, Quilter said, would like to eventually have a river park project extending from Fourth Street south to Union Road.
“There’s already a stretch of bike path near Tres Pinos that it could tie into,” he said, adding that a proposed bike path from San Juan Bautista to Anzar High School could also eventually connect with a Hollister-area bike path.
“It would be nice to intercept that trail, but that’s not anything in the next five to 10 years,” Quilter said.
City officials plan to advise state legislators that freeing up the funding for the San Benito River Greenway Project “is important to us,” Quilter said. “We want them to be supportive of [reinstating the grant money] if and when it gets proposed.”
Last month, the City Council approved an environmental impact report on the greenway project “because if money gets freed up we can keep the project shovel-ready because we’ll already have our environmental work done,” Quilter said.
