By Dan Spalding
News Now Warsaw
WARSAW — The first segment of the trail planned along Old Road 30 turned out to be slightly more expensive than expected.
The Kosciusko County Park Board received five bids for the Chinworth Trail extension, which will head west to Creighton’s Crazy Egg restaurant.
County Park Board President Rob Bishop presented their plan to the commissioners Tuesday morning.
The lowest bid came in at $970,247 but about $400,000 of that will be used to correct a long-standing drainage problem in the area, which Bishop said was brought to their attention by nearby residents.
“We essentially have in excess of about $400,000 increase in our costs due to drainage costs that we did not expect to run into,” Bishop said. “So that left us a little short.”
As a result, the commissioner agreed to cover the remaining cost with EDIT dollars.
The county is using $750,000 for the entire project from the American Rescue Plan Act made available by Congress during the pandemic.
The commissioners previously said they didn’t want to use tax dollars for trail projects but it was pointed out that some of the ARPA money in this project will be used to cover some of the drainage repairs.
Commissioner Bob Conley said they don’t want cost overruns to be common with parks projects.
“A big concern, too, Rob, is ongoing maintenance and that type of thing, that it doesn’t dwarf into something with a full-blown county-wide parks department with trucks and semis and bull-dozers. We’ve seen that happen. That’s one of the things we discussed before we initiated this whole thing. That’s not what we expected,” Conley said.
Bishop responded, “I understand that.”
“That needs to be uppermost in your thoughts,” Conley said.
