Conservation board awards Pollmiller trail bids

LEE COUNTY – The Lee County Conservation board is moving forward with a project to repave the trail through Pollmiller Park.

At Tuesday’s regular meeting of the LCC board meeting, the board unanimously approved a bid from Jones Contracting of West Point for approximately $329,000, which is under the engineer’s estimates by almost $100,000.

The Pollmiller Trail Phase 1 will put a new 10-foot concrete path on the trail through Pollmiller Park. The trail will have earthen shoulders and will require pulling up the current asphalt surface, milling it, and then laying it back down as a subsurface with concrete to be poured over the top.

The project was originally slated to just entail repaving the trail, but at the current width of eight feet, it wasn’t ADA compliant.

Funds for the project are coming from conservation funds and the county.

West Point officials are currently working on a connector on city property where the trail comes out on Eighth Street. The city has committed REAP funds to that project and is applying for a Wellmark Large MATCH Grant as part of the Wellmark Foundation’s grant program.

The County is also applying for a $50,000 grant from the Wellmark Foundation in collaboration with the City of West Point. The county did not get awarded a grant for Phase 1, but would use the Wellmark funding as a 1-to-1 match to relocate the end of the trail west to the parking lot so people using the trail would not have to walk down the two-lane road on a blind curve.

The new trail head on the east side would add about 600 feet to the trail and bring the trail out at the parking lot, across from a path on the north side of the lot.

That additional trail length would cost about $102,000 and could be done in coordination with the current phase 1 project, since that project has been tentatively set for completion in September.

If West Point and the county were to use the same contractor for each project they could be done in conjunction with one another. County officials submitted the grant application on Wednesday.