08/19/2013 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Minutes of the Regular Meeting of Council Monday, August 19, 2013 Page 12 Committee has spoken about projects are the numbers that fall off the boards because the standards are really very stringent. We have probably gone through two and three different estimates once we really had our pathways set primarily because of the ODOT requirements. They treat this like it were a road, even though its pedestrian. You have to have the weight loads to be able to handle ambulance runs if there were any emergency access issue. Site lines have been straightened out. Those of you who have been on our existing gravel path know that like the farmer's pathway we go around obstacles. With ODOT, they require you to straighten out the kinks and in many places that required our_going through wetland areas, crossing streams. Those are all environmentally protected. They have their own sets of criteria and standards that require permitting. From the time we were able to get all these things in with our easements dialed in, which is a whole other issue because we can't have just licensed agreements, we need to have recorded easements, the value of those, because ODOT required us to do appraisals was over a quarter of million dollars except for one property, we were able to get those donated. I think the contribution of land and then the capital contribution we get through NOACA funding really evidences what we see as a growing movement in the County. We know that NOACA will be looking at this year, I know this because Metroparks is one of the signatories to a consortium of communities. They are looking at fashioriing a comprehensive study for the whole east side greenway network. The County is on board with that. There are probably 14 alphabet soup organizations that have signed on non-profits and communities. We are probably in the vanguard because we are a community that has been able to secure not only the funding but the contribution of effort from such entities as Progressive, the support of the Library, virtually all the businesses that abut the trail on Beta. They were not only happy to work with us but found ways to suggest improvements. We expect they are going to find for their employees uses really even beyond what we expected initially. To Council President Buckholtz's comment, a lot of these projects we expected to evolve. As people get comfortable with it, once it's in, we will gage the community response, but I suspect over time we are going to find a lot of people involved. Frankly we know from data that properties abutting parklands and these kinds of trail connectors improve in value because of the amenity provided. We think we are going to be in effect in the vanguard of communities in Cuyahoga County that are actually putting a project like this together connecting better with our Metroparks and connecting with adjacent communities. I think we will see probably over the next 20 years much more of this kind of community effort and connectivity, as capital improvements as people get away from purely vehicular transportation modes and look much more toward pedestrian and bicycle friendly ways to get people around. We think our community residents are going to like this as well. We got a unanimous vote from NOACA on Friday because I think the Committee recognized that all of the players involved in this in Mayfield Village have come together. Frankly, they were pretty impressed with it. It's easy for us to understate it. From a distance, this may just seem like a glorified sidewalk portrayal, but it was very galvanizing and encouraging to see the feedback we got from a number of communities present at this meeting who took note and took interest. You can all feel really very rightfully proud that this project that will be something that in the long nui will gain a lot of positive attention around the area.