Federal money will be used for Utah County trail

PROVO — It was a great relief for Lindon Mayor Jim Dain when the Utah County Metropolitan Planning Organization decided last week that Utah County cities would no longer be paying for a portion of the Murdock Canal Trail.

Lindon was going to have to pay close to $100,000 to help build the trail, but other cities, such as Pleasant Grove, were looking at spending more than $400,000.

"We didn't know where we were going to get the money," said Pleasant Grove Mayor Bruce Call. "We were scrambling to see how we were going to pay for it."

Instead, the board voted unanimously to use federal money rather than city funds for the trail project.

The 16-mile trail from Point of the Mountain to the mouth of Provo Canyon will cost about $17 million and will take a couple of years to build, said James Price, a Mountainland Association of Governments transportation planner.

The Utah County Metropolitan Planning Organization already was getting $10.5 million through a federal earmark for the trail. The county was then going to pay about $4.6 million of the cost, and each city the trail ran through was supposed to help pay for rest of the trail, depending on population and trail length in each city.

But Andrew Jackson, the Mountainland association's executive director, said some cities were having a tough time getting the money.

"If we had the economy we had a few years ago, we wouldn't be having this discussion," Jackson said. "The economic downturn has made us rethink things."

Now, the county planning organization intends to use $3.9 million from the federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality improvement program, which helps fund projects that reduce traffic or improve air quality. The county will then only have to pay about $2.4 million. The rest of the money that was set aside by the county for the project will instead be used for south Utah County projects, the board decided.

Orem Mayor Jerry Washburn said he thinks the decision was a sound one. Money that Orem was planning on paying for the trail project will remain in the general fund, Washburn said.

Highland Mayor Lynn Ritchie also was excited about the decision, calling it a "win for all the cities."

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