The Morgan County Parks and Recreation board expects construction to begin on a new trail as early as next month.
“I’m really excited,” Hale said. “It’s been nine years in the making.”
The 10-foot-wide paved trail will offer riverfront access to fishing and will eventually connect to other trails and destinations such as local schools.
“My big thing is making all these connect,” he said, which includes connecting to trails in other counties.
The Waverly trail will put old materials to a new use, as well.
“It will actually be a lot of the asphalt that was pulled up from Waverly,” he said.
The board also discussed use of — and responsibility for — a trail that runs parallel to Landersdale Road in Mooresville. The under-utilized trail isn’t widely known yet, partially because the board is uncertain whether they have the right to call it theirs.
Board members expect they will take over maintenance of the trail, which was funded by a federal grant, but need to make sure doing so aligns with the expectations of other county entities.
“We also have to be given the (financial) capacity to take responsibility,” board president Joe Tutterrow said.
The next step will be to meet with other groups to define roles and responsibilities of specific county entities, he said.
In the meantime, though, the board decided to post information about area trail systems — including the Landersdale trail as well as those at Burkhart Creek Park, Morgan-Monroe State Forest and Martinsville and Mooresville city parks — on the county parks website, www.morgancountyparks.org.