City Council Work Session

Nick Soucythank you miss sanford mayor council the first one we will talk about is the wilcox and trail extension formerly known as the george snyder trail extension so if a little bit of very quick background is is looking here as the george center trail extension project we made it through i guess the the green step through the funding application process on the roadmap funding approximately 9.5 million dollars was allocated or it has been made available through VDOT smart scale program and with the cancellation of the George Snyder trail earlier this year in May staff came to council and council authorized a feasibility study to look at alternatives for how can the goals of the original project still be met and still

Catherine Readby voiceis that we've got 27 projects, but at any point any of these can be canceled. Is that correct? And I say this because, I say this because, this dais did cancel two projects, the Country Club Hills Connector, which was at concept design stage, and the George Snyder Trail, which was about to be awarded. So with a vote of four, four people can cancel any project, and with a vote of three, you can simply not appropriate the funds. And that actually happened. So I'm asking, with the rotating cast of characters that we have every other year, every two years, there are new people sitting here. Of the 27 projects, is it a possibility that people could be on this dais next year and decide that they want to cancel these?

Correct. And that's what I think is kind of like we're not discussing the fact that we can or four people on this dais can simply vote to kill a project, three can vote to not appropriate, and that there are consequences where we have spent the money. But these are long, multi-year projects. Some of them have already been in the pipeline for a very long period of time. And I just think we need to be realistic based on the fact that I think we gave about $31 million of funding back between Country Club Hills and George Snyder Trail, including $3.5 million of taxpayer money. It's great to talk about these. I think they're great. I know staff and consultants and our funding partners have put a lot of time, energy, and effort into these projects.