Easement costs cancel bike path plans
City is out $40,000 with nothing to show for it
BY DAN PARKER SOUTH JETTY REPORTER

The city of Port Aransas has paid about $40,000 toward the cost of building a new bike path, only to cancel the project without an inch of the path actually being built.

The Port Aransas City Council voted unanimously on Thursday, May 17, to drop the project after hearing from city staff that the costs of obtaining easements for the path will be too high to make it worth trying to finish the project.

The council also directed City Manager Michael Kovacs to try to retrieve some of the $40,000 that the city has paid for professional services to Naismith Engineering - the Corpus Christi firm that has been handling engineering work on the project. Some council members said Naismith should have notified the city earlier, before all that money was spent, that such severe obstacles to obtaining easements would exist.

In interviews with the South Jetty, Naismith officials said their company's work has been done properly under contract with the city. They said Naismith has no plans to return any of the money.

The city won a $270,000 grant from the Texas Department of Transportation in 2003 to build the bike path. The city's share was to be about $70,000. To date, about $40,000 of that $70,000 has been paid to Naismith for professional services, according to city staff.

Initially, before Naismith signed on, the bike path was to extend along the entire length of the Cut-Off Road, from the ferry landing to Alister Street. However, plans for that route were abandoned after it was determined there were too many utilities and driveway entrances that would have to be relocated, said David Parsons, the city's director of planning and projects.

The replacement route was to extend about seven tenths of a mile - from Ellis Memorial Library east down Avenue A and south on Sixth Street, crossing Cut-Off Road before continuing down Ross Avenue before ending at Port Aransas Community Park.

Naismith signed a contract with the city in early 2006 to do the engineering work required for the path.

Parsons said it was not until early this year that Naismith provided detailed information on exactly where the city would need easements for the bike path. City officials then learned they would have big problems obtaining enough easements for the bike route, Parsons said. The main problem was at the corner of Sixth Street and Cut-Off Road, he said.

If the path continued to parallel the roads at that intersection, the turn would be such a hard angle that it would violate federal safety standards adopted by TxDOT for bike paths, Parson said. To soften that angle, the path would have to cut across one corner of some private property at the intersection. That would mean the city would have to obtain a few thousand square feet of easement on the corner, Parsons said.

The property owner has said he will not donate the land for the path, Parsons said. The city has not discussed purchasing the easement because city officials know the cost would be too high to merit continuing with the project, Parsons said. The grant amount would not cover it, he said.

"I don't think we can go forward," Parsons told the council. "We don't want to keep throwing money at this."

Council members Keith Donley and Rick Pratt said the city should try to get at least some of the $40,000 back from Naismith.

"It seems reasonable this should have been discovered with an initial look," Pratt said.

As part of the motion to drop the project, the council voted unanimously to have city staff seek money back from Naismith.

Immediately after the council meeting, City Manager Michael Kovac said in an interview that he would not bother to seek about $15,000 of the $40,000 back because the city could not dispute that Naismith had to spend at least that much to get started on the project. But, he said, "we'll talk (with Naismith) about the rest of it."

On Monday, May 21 - four days after the council meeting - Kovacs said city staff communicated with Naismith and that the firm made no promises it would return any money to the city.

"At this point, they're saying no," Kovacs said. "They think that they performed everything they were supposed to and fully intended to deliver something we could use."

David Sullivan, Naismith's project manager on the bike path, said his firm acted in a reasonable amount of time to provide the city with details on where easements would be needed. The information was passed on to city officials in late December or early January, he said.

Naismith had to do a lot of preliminary work before it could get to the stage of advising the city on specifics about where easements would be needed on the bike path, Sullivan said. That preliminary work included surveying, communications with TxDOT, environmental assessments and coordination with various government agencies that have interests in determining the possible environmental impacts of such a project, Sullivan said.

Naismith kept city officials informed generally on what land would be needed "all along during the entire project," Sullivan said. "But it's not until you have a schematic design that you know precisely which properties you need right of way on and how much." The schematic was finished in December last year, he said.

It is the city's responsibility, not Naismith's, to obtain right of way for the project, Sullivan said.

Since the city set aside $70,000 for the bike path, and $40,000 of that amount has been spent, about $30,000 is now left over. Kovacs said that money will be available for street projects.

Easements became an issue in the bike path project partly because state standards handed down by the federal government for bike path dimensions changed, requiring greater amounts of easements, after the grant was awarded, Kovacs said.

"These are very, very complicated projects, and (it's more difficult) when they change the standard midway through the game," Kovacs said. "Even under the old standard, it's hard to build these kinds of trails in existing, builtout city right of ways."