by Frank Lee
operations@thenewsleaders.com
The St. Joseph City Council re-affirmed its financial support of extending the Lake Wobegon Trail from St. Joseph to Waite Park provided other area cities and the county chip in to help cover the cost of the planned project.
The council unanimously approved it at its Jan. 9 meeting, agreeing to spend $200,000 to cover a funding shortfall of $823,802 to extend the trail, and the governments of Waite Park and St. Cloud also agreeing at separate meetings on Jan. 9 to assist with $200,000 coming from each city.
“At one point, there wasn’t a contribution from anybody other than St. Joseph,” St. Joseph City Administrator Judy Weyrens told members of the council at the meeting before the vote. “Now, if we all divide up the shortfall, the trail can be built this year.”
The Lake Wobegon Trail is a 46-mile long, 10-foot wide, bituminous-surfaced hiking-and-biking pathway that opened in 1998 and extends from St. Joseph to Osakis.
“If the three of us pay $200,000 each, Stearns County will pay the difference,” Weyrens said of the almost $233,000 the Stearns County Board of Commissioners was supposed to approve to extend the trail 3.3-miles from St. Joseph to River’s Edge Park in Waite Park.
The Lake Wobegon Trails Association recently made sure to keep the memory of St. Joseph native Jacob Wetterling alive by honoring the 11-year-old boy with signs along the trail, urging trail users to practice the traits Wetterling valued. Wetterling was abducted and killed in 1989.
“Everything is done with all the properties they had to purchase?” council member Matt Killam, who sits on the St. Joseph Park Board, asked of Weyrens regarding the proposed trail extension.
“No, there is one the county is meeting in closed session tomorrow (Jan. 10), so if there is an overage cost, that will get added to the county’s portion,” Weyrens told Killam.
The Lake Wobegon Trail has been very well used since its construction, both for family and individual bikers and for many group events and fundraisers. For example, it was part of the 17th annual Caramel Roll Ride held June 11. The ride started on the trail in Albany, but participants could choose their own routes and bicycle their way to Holdingford, Bowlus and the Blanchard Dam, to Freeport or to Avon and St. Joseph.
Among the last items discussed at the Jan. 9 meeting of the St. Joseph City Council was what to include in a time capsule to be stored at the new St. Joseph Government Center.
Last year, the St. Joseph City Council authorized the issuance and the sale of $4.28 million in bonds to build a new government center that will open next month near Colts Academy.
“We’re down to a point where we need to put what we want in there,” Weyrens said of the time capsule, a wooden box that would be located behind the new building’s dedication plaque. “We can put issues of the Newsleader in it.”
The 18,000-square-foot new government center will provide more space for the police department and city administration and may someday be connected to Colts Academy, which is slated to be converted into a community center.
“They (will) put the time capsule behind the dedication plaque because if the building is taken down, that’s the first place they would look,” said Weyrens, who suggested the city council decide within a week what to store in the time capsule for future residents of St. Joseph to discover.
City Administrator Judy Weyrens prepares to administer the oath of office to Mayor Rick Schultz at the St. Joseph City Council meeting Jan. 9 after smiling and looking at someone in the audience. Schultz was re-elected with more than 2,600 votes, or about 97 percent of the total votes cast, in the Nov. 8 general election.
