Supervisors give OK to trail paving

<p>Deciding to finish a trail that was started nearly two decades ago, Sonoma County supervisors voted Tuesday to approve asphalt paving of a 2.1-mile section of the Santa Rosa Creek Trail from Fulton to Willowside roads.</p><p>Work is scheduled to start in September on the 8-foot-wide path running along the north side of the creek atop the creek’s flood control levee. The south side will remain gravel.</p><p>“This is the opportunity to complete a huge part of the trail system,” said Steve Rabinowitsh, bike enthusiast and former Santa Rosa city councilman who was a leader in the effort to restore Santa Rosa Creek. “Since 1989, this was to be a multi-use trail.”</p><p>Over the years, however, hikers, horse riders and nature enthusiasts became accustomed to using the gravel surface on both sides of the creek and opposed laying down pavement.</p><p>“We appreciate having a little bit of untouched county left,” said Rose Morgan, an Olivet Road resident who said she walks the pathway a couple times a day. “It will turn a natural setting into an asphalt jungle.”</p><p>Supervisors said they sympathized with residents who wanted the north side trail to be left alone. However, they said the south side trail would remain gravel while people on bikes and in wheelchairs would gravitate to the paved north side path.</p><p>Board chairman Paul Kelley was absent, but supervisors Efren Carrillo, Valerie Brown, Shirlee Zane and Mike Kerns said they favored proceeding with paving.</p><p>“This is part of a long term vision of connecting communities,” said Efren Carrillo, who recalled hiking the path to the Laguna as a 12-year-old.</p><p>Regional Park planner Todd Holmes noted that the county already has spent about $700,000 on construction of three bridges in 2006 across Piner, Peterson and Wendel creeks as a prelude to linking the Prince Memorial Greenway in downtown Santa Roa with the Laguna de Santa Rosa.</p><p>An hour-long public hearing Tuesday attracted about four dozen people with more than half the speakers calling for paving the trail as part of the county's long-term goal of a route to the coast.</p><p>Much of the $750,000 in funding will come from state and federal money available through the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which requires that the project be accessible to people with disabilities.</p><p>Several bike activists called for paving the trail, but so did some wheelchair-bound residents and disability rights advocates who pointed out that only 20 miles of trails in Sonoma County are accessible to them.</p><p>“Adding two miles is the least that we should be doing,” Zane said. “If there is an issue where we don’t have handicapped access parking nearby, then we maybe should build that, too.”</p>