Tax Levy Gives More Money to Trails

Jim Lucore, 53, a longtime Lake Ridge resident and former charter pilot, remembers this area before construction in the 1970s and early 1980s turned the wilderness into the suburbs.

“Dillingham Square and the surrounding neighborhoods used to be Woodbridge Airport and, in those days, I walked my dog from Occoquan past the airport on a trail that no longer exists,” Lucore said.

Now some want to restore a bit of that community feel with trail rehabilitation all over Prince William County. At the April 26 county board meeting, the board voted for a new tax levy, and will be funding the trails with $763,000 in July, and with another $2.5 million in August.

“It’s been a long time coming,” said Zoe Vitter, president of the Prince William Trails and Streams Coalition. “The board has been cutting for quite some time, and trails have been one of the projects that has been in the wings waiting for some years now.”

Occoquan district supervisor Mike May was one of the dissenting votes at the April 26 meeting. Though he is a supporter of trails in the county, he felt that the county should try to give their citizens a bit of tax relief.

“Right now we’re trying to stuff the pipeline, but we’re still in the middle of a fragile economy,” he said in a later interview. “Parks and trails are very important, but all I was pushing for was a delay to make sure we’re going in the direction we want.”

The coalition, which began in 2006 and was incorporated in 2008, has put in 12 miles of trails throughout the county, using primarily their own funds. But putting in bridges across the streams is more expensive.

“The coalition pays for trails, but one of our major expenses is the expense of building bridges over streams for trails,” said Occoquan Mayor Earnie Porta, who serves as treasurer for the coalition. One of the crossings that needs work is the Hooes Run Crossing.

“The parks and trails affect Occoquan,” he said.

Right now the coalition installs “fair weather crossings,” such as stepping stones that people can use when the stream isn’t too high.

“But a mom with a stroller isn’t going to be able to use that,” Vitter said.

A real bridge would cost anywhere from $20,000 to $25,000, depending on the length, she said.

The trails need other work as well.

“The trails in have been around for decades, and there are serious erosion problems,” Vitter said. “They’re all just natural surface trails--just dirt. The Prince William County Park Authority and the coalition put in a number of culverts, and we widened the existing trail a little bit and put stone dust on the top of it. Now we don’t have the standing water problems that we had before.”

The benefits of rehabilitating the trails include greater community health and pedestrian access, Vitter said.

“The ability to get to things without having to get out and get in your car,” she said. “We sit in traffic an awful lot. It’s all about linking our community with the citizens. Right now what you have is sidewalks in the community, but they end at the [Lake Ridge Park] entrance, so people walk on the sidewalks until they get to the park entrance and then they walk on the road until they can get to a trail.”

Lucore continues to use a surviving segment of the original trail, which runs from the Lake Ridge Marina to a point near the end of Hedges Run Drive on Aegean Terrace. Lucore’s wife, Patti, trains on the trail for the annual Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure event. This October will mark Patti’s third time participating in the three-day walk, which she accomplishes in memory of her sister.

For local runners, trail rehabilitation would enable longer training sessions. Laura Passos, 37, recently began running on the Lake Ridge Marina Trail with some of her children after being prompted by her brother. Her passion for trail running led to participation in two races, including the 2011 Spring Thaw 5K, one of several regional Revolution 3 Adventure Series events. The Passos family looks forward to running on the proposed McCoart-to-Occoquan trail segment.

The McCoart-to-Occoquan segment will probably involve a joint effort between the county and the . In February, the association polled residents on an agreement to lease LRPRA common ground to Prince William County in an effort to connect trail segments from the McCoart county government building to the town of Occoquan. Only 16 percent of Lake Ridge homeowners answered the ballot question, resulting in 893 votes in favor of the proposal. Votes against the proposal totaled 234, with an additional 35 abstention votes. Favorable votes represented 77 percent of the ballot count.