Kosciusko County Parks and Recreation Department Board President Rob Bishop, standing, explains the change order to the board’s agreement with Triad Services to the Kosciusko County Commissioners Tuesday. Shown from left seated are county attorney Ed Ormsby and Commissioners Cary Groninger, Bob Conley and Brad Jackson. Photo by David Slone, Times-Union.

By David Slone
Times-Union

KOSCIUSKO COUNTY — A change order approved Tuesday, Aug. 27, by the Kosciusko County Commissioners for the County Parks and Recreation Board’s agreement with Triad Services will cover additional engineering costs for a drain under Old 30.

In presenting the $11,250 change order for drainage work on the Chinworth Trail extension project, Parks Board President Rob Bishop said he was not asking for more money as they have money in their budget to cover it.

“The short answer is, while doing this, we determined there is a clay tile that runs under Old 30 and it dumps into those retention ponds that are right next to the Chinworth Bridge. We want to correct that,” Bishop said. “The last major rain storm, a number of people drove out there and said there was ponding and flooding through there.”

Triad is doing the engineering work for the trail extension project, but determined that engineering for the tile work was outside the scope of their agreement, and Bishop agreed. Triad asked for $11,250 to do the design and engineering work on it.

“Essentially, what we’re going to do, is we’re going to retile that. We’re going to run that down closer to (County Road) 350, and then down under Old 30 and out right to the river, which should cure those drainage issues for the people along there,” Bishop said.

Commissioner Bob Conley asked if it was on the north side of Old 30, and Bishop said yes. Conley then asked if the trail would be on the south side.

“No. The trail now will be on the north side,” Bishop said. “One of the interesting things as we went through this was the homeowners along (Old) 30, both north and south, talked about the number of people — especially from the mobile home park — who are already walking down the north side of Old 30 to get to the Chinworth Bridge area and are doing picnics and stuff out there. So, it really became apparent that that’s where the trail needed to be. We also had potential expenses with building retention walls along the retention ponds to support the trail. There’s also a lift station in the Creighton Brothers parking lot that was going to be a problem eventually, and the other issue was that as we move westward from Creighton Brothers, although the right-of-way is super wide, the road is not in the middle of the right-of-way, and we didn’t have enough right-of-way on the south side of Old 30 to build a trail in conjunction with the railroad property.”

He said they’re going to move to the north side of Old 30 and have a crosswalk right by CR 350. The bid will be to have appropriate lights and signage through there.

Commissioner Brad Jackson asked Commissioner Cary Groninger if that engineering amount sounded reasonable. “To me, engineering amounts also sound high,” Jackson stated.

Groninger said, “Yeah, but we’re talking about — as we’re looking at this — we want to make sure we’re correcting the drainage. It’s a relatively long stretch, as well as the road crossing across Old 30 to get to the river. So there’s a fair amount of engineering that needs to go into that.”

He said there’s been a drainage issue out there for a while, too. As they do the trail, Groninger said they want to make sure they’re fixing the drainage issues out there as well to have not only a nice trail but the drainage issues on Old 30 get addressed.
Conley said the input he’s had from about a “dozen different people” are questions about why they were having people walk across Old 30. Bishop said people are already walking across Old 30, and the crosswalk will just make it safer for them.

“If we continue the trail out westward, we’re going to have to cross Old 30 at some point in time because we simply don’t have the land we need on the other side of Creighton,” Bishop said. “Talking to the homeowners, and again, the people in the mobile home park who are already walking down Old 30, we’re putting the path where people are.”

Groninger said where they’re proposing the crosswalk near CR 350 is where the speed limit is the lowest and where they can have the most control and it’s as safe as possible.

“We’re making sure we’re going to have a third party look at that crossing, make sure we’re creating something that’s not creating a hazard and is giving safe access to our residents who use the trails,” Groninger said.

The change order was approved 3-0