Trail on trial: To York leaders, it’s a dream. To neighbors, it’s something else

YORK, Neb. (AP) — It seemed, at first, like such a smooth ride.

Two years ago, the federal government awarded the city of York $15.6 million to do a thing many smaller Nebraska communities fundraise for and dream of – add a walking and biking trail through town.

It’s the kind of project, including 9 miles of trails, a pedestrian bridge over busy Highway 81 and other walking improvements, that would normally take decades for the city, population 8,174, to complete. It’s the largest federal grant of its kind York has ever received, says Mayor Barry Redfern.

But this ride has hit a serious speed bump. What once seemed to the mayor and others as a no-brainer project has spawned serious controversy, complete with accusations, counter-accusations and legal ultimatums.

Nearly 200 yard signs stuck in lawns around town declare “Protect Don’t Connect.” Opponents, many of them residents along the proposed route, cite fears of crime from nearby Interstate 80, anger over the use of eminent domain and the feeling that city leaders have ignored their concerns.

Opponents point to emails between city officials scripting responses during public meetings as proof that there’s a lack of transparency. Supporters, including city leaders, say opponents are acting in bad faith.

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Now there’s the looming threat of a lawsuit and suggestions that drawn-out legal action could imperil the project, though Redfern believes it will ultimately happen.

“I don’t feel like I need to give up land for locating a trail in a bad spot,” said Greg Bergen, who may lose part of his pasture to the project. “I guess I just don’t want it in my backyard.”

Says the mayor: “It has to go next to someone, or you’ll never be able to have another trail, sidewalk or road ever again, anywhere.”

“Asking for trouble”

“Yeah right, go ahead,” Redfern told city administrator Sue Crawford when she asked about applying for a new federal grant in 2022. “Like we’re going to get that.”

The Department of Transportation was planning to dole out $1.8 billion as part of the federal infrastructure law, funding that could potentially build a wish list transportation project in York, though it seemed to the mayor like a longshot.

Months later, Redfern got a phone call from Crawford.

“We got what?”

York already has one trail in the northeast corner of town, and another that crosses Lincoln Avenue, a main north-south street.

Connecting those two trails has been a goal for two decades, Redfern said. York’s 2017 comprehensive plan describes a trail system running through the city and reaching the RV campgrounds and hotels near I-80.

It would be a recruiting tool for employers, says City Council member Tony North. It would give kids a safer route to bike to school and baseball practice. And it would offer York residents and visitors a car-free way around town.

It also could help solve a problem long felt in York and other small Nebraska towns along I-80. York’s city center is 2 miles from the interstate, which means motorists tend to stop for fast food, gas or a hotel stay without ever entering downtown.

The city’s forever trying to reel people into town, Redfern said. A trail would help.

But that segment of the trail – the 2 miles connecting interstate hotels to downtown York – is at the core of the current dispute.

The current proposed trail runs along an old railroad, heading through wooded areas behind large south York yards, cutting through cornfields and then connecting to a proposed pedestrian bridge over Highway 81.

Those 2 miles of trail would require buying land from two residents and one business and would border the land of two other properties. In total, the city must purchase land from 21 different property owners.

“It’s a pretty nice, smooth straight line into the community,” North said. “It’s very accessible. It’s very ready to go. That’s the most logical way for it to go.”

But some residents who live along or near that 2-mile stretch of the planned trail call it “a liability,” something just “asking for trouble,” and a plan that “makes no sense.”

That area’s too isolated, said Amy Lehman, who lives on South Grant Avenue. It’s not well-lit. A trail connecting the interstate to York’s schools, parks and her backyard feels to her more like a safety hazard than an amenity.

Lehman’s three children, ages 7, 11 and 14, play and pick berries off the mulberry tree in her backyard. The tree is too far to see from her house. But it’s close enough to the proposed trail that she wouldn’t feel safe sending her kids out to play if it’s built, she said.

The acres behind Bergen’s home include enough pasture to feed his three horses. Losing a slice of his property to the trail would mean having to buy hay or lose a horse, he said.

“That’s why we have that property, for a certain lifestyle,” Bergen said. “We’re close to town, but we’re not bothering anybody out here.”

Fears in the neighborhood also turn darker, as residents worry that hiking-and-biking travelers coming from I-80 hotels and truck stops will be people they don’t want near their homes.

“We’re worried about drug issues, and we’re worried about human trafficking,” says neighborhood resident Dalane Epp.

In a letter to the City Council, an attorney representing the Lehmans noted that York County is tied for the highest rate of admissions to Nebraska prisons in the state.

But Crawford, the city administrator, pointed to the number of reported crimes near the interstate. In three years, the stretch of road leading to downtown York has seen a total of zero homicide calls, zero kidnapping calls and two sex offense calls, she said.

“The argument that people who stay in our hotels and work in our interchange area are inherently dangerous and not worthy of being a part of our community is troubling to say the least,” Crawford wrote in an email to a council member.

Residents have suggested what they see as a compromise, proposing that the trail instead run through their front yards on South Grant Avenue. A letter from a lawyer sent to the council last week reiterated this request, and the willingness of residents on that street to negotiate an easement.

“I would have liked to have thought that in a small town like York, when we started raising concerns, we’d be able to sit around a table and talk about those concerns,” Lehman said.

But federal regulations make things more complicated, city officials said.

While past proposed trail maps showed routes running along Lincoln and South Grant avenues, those routes were dreamt without the help of engineers, they said.

“It was literally just us being like, ‘Oh hey, let’s put a trail over here,’” North said.

Putting the route through the front yards on South Grant Avenue would require acquiring land from more property owners. The road has deep ditches and utility poles. The two-lane county road will likely be widened in the coming years, Redfern said, as York’s outskirts develop.

“If you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars putting a trail next to it, that would then have to be destroyed if you made that wider. That doesn’t make sense,” Redfern said.

And there are federal rules to follow, Crawford said. Projects like the trail must go through a public comment process and environmental compliance before finalizing a cost-effective route that’s most beneficial to the community.

Once the path is finalized, the city can then negotiate property acquisition and whether to install things like lights or fencing, she said.

“Part of all this is to be fair to everyone,” Crawford said. “You can’t treat people differently because they send a threatening letter.”

Information roadblocks

Opponents don’t feel like this is a fair fight.

At council meetings, residents are allowed to speak for five minutes if put on the agenda. But the council won’t answer any questions, Lehman said.

The council has also recently closed committee meetings – long open to the public – a move that frustrates opponents, though it’s allowed by state law.

After an attorney representing opponents filed a public records request, Lehman and other residents found emails from Crawford listing out what Mayor Redfern should say during a March council meeting – a typed-out script if opponents or Vicki Northrop, a project skeptic and council member, asked trail questions.

“I was shocked,” Northrop said. “It was basically scripting the council meetings … I feel like if we have an open meeting, we need to be able to discuss openly on questions.”

In an interview, Crawford said the city is being careful not to give citizens incorrect information. Instead of answering during council meetings, city officials take down questions, check information with project engineers and the state, then share answers both with the person who asked and on the city website.

“The nature of the questions early on was much more an effort to embarrass the council than to find information,” Crawford said. “How do you have good public dialogue when the questions coming your way are accusatory, not informative?”

As for the emails sending a script to the mayor: “It was a stressful, snowy day,” Crawford said, and she wanted to make sure he was prepared. “One of the things you do when you prepare for a public meeting is try to brainstorm ways it might go that you’re not expecting it to go.”

Northrop also said she’s now unable to easily talk to the city attorney about the trail project. Previously, she reached his office directly with questions, she said. Now, she’s been told that questions must be routed through Crawford.

Crawford says this was to prevent council members from asking duplicate questions, since the city attorney is paid by the hour.

“I am not anti-trail. I am not anti-grant,” Northrop said. “But I am anti-the way the people that are being directly affected with their property have been treated. I don’t think that’s fair.”

Chuck Griffith, past president of the Nebraska Trails Foundation, said to lose a $15.6 million trails grant would be “tragic.”

He says he’s often seen the “not in my backyard” attitude since he started working on building trails in 2006.

“Especially in Nebraska, people like their privacy. They like their open spaces,” Griffith said. “But that’s also why people love to get out on trails.”

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This story was originally published by Flatwater Free Press and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.