At their most recent meeting, Kimberley City Council voted to direct staff to apply to the Trans Canada Trail Funding Program: Trail Infrastructure and Major Repairs Stream, alongside the City of Cranbrook, requesting the maximum eligible grant of up to $60,000 to help pay for some of the $184,000 NorthStar Trail Slope Remediation Project.
The North Star Rails to Trails, owned jointly by cities of Cranbrook and Kimberley, is a 26-kilometre paved pathway that connects the two cities. As it was a former railway, the gentle grade of the path makes it ideal for biking and walking.
Kimberley and Cranbrook share responsibility for the overall management of the trail, including trail repairs and upkeep, regulation and promotion as a public asset. The trail is widely used by locals and visitors alike.
Kimberley's Manager of Planning Services Troy Pollock highlighted a 350-metre section of the trail, just up from the St. Mary River crossing, containing rock wall and steep hillside conditions requiring rock scaling,
"There’s some rock cuts and steep walls that have had lots of attention over the years when it was an operating railway and even since then more recently we had done some vegetation removal to help stabilize that slope," he said.
"We had a slope assessment done on there to get some advice on any potential hazards to trail users there and the report takes that section and divides it into five pieces and two of those five pieces are the most concerning. The highest potential hazards, which are the key rock cut areas, that had had lots of work in the past and it’s going to be something to keep an eye on moving forward.
Kimberley and Cranbrook have been working collaboratively towards an overall project to help remediate some of these and other concerns. They've also been in talks with the TransCanada Trail Funding Program and Pollock is confident they'll be able to secure funding to pay for a sizable chunk of the project.
The overall estimated cost of the first phase of the rock-scaling project is $184,000 — $92,000 for each city — and staff hopes to get $60,000 of it funded from the TransCanada Trail Funding Program.
Kimberley's share of the remaining projected cost after grant, roughly $62,000, can be funded from the Rails To Trails Maintenance Reserve.
"We have the Rails to Trails Maintenance Reserve that’s been built up over time and that’s in part due largely to funding that we obtained from the Regional District," Pollock explained. "We get $20,00 from the Regional District each year, $10,000 to each community, so each community has been putting that towards reserve to offset that."
If the project goes forward an amendment to the Five Year Financial Plan would be required. If the final tenders exceed the estimated cost, or the grant application is unnsucessful, the funds will remain in reserve and the project will be revisited next year.
