Gary and Sheila Oliver sculpted a private retreat out of a property that used to be the party place.
Every window was broken when they bought the home, built in 1914, on Parkview Road. The kids who’d partied there had tried to set it on fire.
Gary spent more than two years bringing it back to life. Now, those windows overlook a rolling lawn, where a wooden stake and a pink flag mark land that the county and state want for a trail.
The Olivers aren’t against the concept of the Salt Creek Trail. They just didn’t envision it being in their backyard.
They weren’t even sure where it might go until about a month ago, when the stakes appeared in the lawn.
“We’re not here to stop progress,” Gary told the Brown County Commissioners last month. “We’d just like to be included in the decision somehow. No one had ever met with us to say, ‘Here’s where this bridge is going to be.’”
The stakes went up within days of when the Indiana Department of Transportation wanted a response from them. They offered the Olivers $7,800 for about a quarter-acre. They said no.
“This is not just any piece of property,” Gary said, flipping through the photo album that showed the house in shambles, then resurrected.
“Who has made this decision?” he had asked the county commissioners. “Who is in charge?”
The plans
Planning for the Salt Creek Trail began in 2002 with a committee of volunteers, a mix of public officials and private individuals.
When finished, it’ll connect Brown County State Park with downtown Nashville, the Brown County Schools campus downtown and the county’s Deer Run Park.
The first three-quarter-mile phase, between the CVS and the YMCA, was completed in fall 2013.
So far, funding, land or both is missing on every other phase.
The “DNR Phase” is one of the middle parts, between the state park and the school district’s Eagle Park where sports events take place. It is fully funded through a $900,000 Indiana Department of Natural Resources grant, given in 2008.
That’s the phase that cuts through a corner of the Olivers’ yard and Brown County Schools property.
The land INDOT marked off at the Olivers’ is where a historic iron bridge would go. Late last year, INDOT granted the Brown County Commissioners two bridges from a road reconstruction project in Clay County.
The other end of the bridge would go on the school district’s Eagle Park property. Last month, INDOT offered the school board money for land, too.
School board members haven’t given an answer yet; they want more information.
At their July 20 meeting, the school board questioned the amount INDOT offered them — $13,700 — and bristled at the “strong language” used in the letter. “If you do not accept this offer, and we cannot come to an agreement on the acquisition of your property, the Indiana Department of Transportation has the right to file suit to condemn, and acquire the property in the county in which the real estate is located,” the letter said.
“I need to learn — we need to learn, more about how that next step in this puzzle works,” Superintendent Laura Hammack told board members and the Olivers, who also attended the school board meeting.
“I think we were just as surprised as you all were when we were, you know, dropped off these documents to say that you know, this was happening.”
The school board hasn’t had a representative on the local trail committee since 2012, when a school board member lost her re-election bid.
Former superintendent David Shaffer had thrown his support behind the trail in 2008. In his Superintendent’s Corner column, he wrote about students being able to safely travel to school, athletic fields and two parks using it.
Making those connections also was the goal of the trail committee and the county commissioners when they pitched the project for federal funding more than 10 years ago.
In 2014, the school board asked for assurances that the trail phase linking the YMCA and the schools campus downtown would get done eventually. As of this spring, that phase was still not funded.
The Olivers also voiced concerns with the school board about the trail being on school property. They mentioned student safety and the recent murders of two girls on a trail in Delphi; possible vandalism; and interference by trail users in school sporting events.
Hammack said school district leaders share those safety concerns, and they want to make sure that appropriate lighting, security and fencing are worked into the plan. “We were very pleased to hear during the last board meeting that the schools would be invited to planning sessions in the future,” she said.
District leaders also see safety benefits in having the trail on school properties. “Currently, we have sincere concerns about the safety of our boys and girls when they are on foot/bike in the community,” Hammack said. “Having a safe and secure trail option would be a great benefit to our students to access programming at the Y, Eagle Park and Deer Run.”
To connect with the existing trail at the YMCA, planning for another section is underway as well. Phase III would go between the Y trailhead and the Olivers’ property. The exact route is not known, but it could affect at least two other private property owners: Chuck and Joyce Snyder and Colton Magner.
County commissioner Diana Biddle said an alternative that’s been discussed for Phase III is to run it alongside State Road 46 East where the state already has an easement.
County commissioner Jerry Pittman and Sheila Oliver both asked why that couldn’t be done with the DNR phase as well, putting the pedestrian bridge closer to the existing highway bridge on State Road 46 and leaving the Oliver property out of it.
Sheila Oliver remembered seeing a proposed route similar to that in the early 2000s; but since then, wetlands were built near that spot on Eagle Park property, to replace wetlands that were disturbed during the building of the first trail phase.
“Because of the bridge and hydraulics involved, a different location may not be practical,” INDOT answered through email from a spokesman, Harry Maginity.
But could alternatives be explored, and could the county commissioners direct that work? Those questions weren’t answered right away.
“We need a meeting,” Biddle said.
Who’s where
Who’s in charge of what aspect of the trail has been debated and questioned at multiple public meetings.
The Salt Creek Trail Committee still meets but not on a regular basis, member Bob Kirlin told the school board. He said the committee has no authority on its own; it only advises the county commissioners.
Gary Oliver told the commissioners he was under the impression the trail going through their property was “pretty much a done deal.” He wanted to know why no one had talked to them about this earlier.
“We have nothing to do with it,” commissioner Biddle told the couple, describing it as a project the current commissioners “inherited.”
INDOT and the Indiana Department of Natural Resources are directing the DNR phase of the trail because it goes into state park land, and because the bridges belong to the state, Biddle said.
There also are rules about when conversations can happen with landowners when federal funds are involved, she said.
Maginity said those talks had to wait until the environmental review was done, and it’s now done.
Commissioner Dave Anderson said he’s had almost no involvement with the trail project, and Pittman, who was elected in 2016, said he’s “totally in the dark.”
Gary Oliver said the state had told them differently. The INDOT rep who came to their door said INDOT was acting at the direction of the commissioners.
INDOT considers this a “Brown County-sponsored Local Public Agency project,” Maginity said in an email in late July. The local public agency is responsible for right-of-way acquisition in those projects, and projects can’t move forward until all needed land has been acquired, says a 214-page document on INDOT’s website solely about LPAs.
The Brown County Commissioners are listed on several documents related to the trail; they applied for one of the initial grants in 2003-04. But the project has now spanned 15 years and several elections, and the commissioners who gave the initial approvals are no longer in office.
Biddle started attending trail committee meetings more than two years ago, and she helped to get the bridges for Brown County when another county also was seeking them.
In 2015, the commissioners signed a letter taking responsibility for the second section of bridge — the one between the Olivers’ yard and Eagle Park — for at least 25 years.
If the county doesn’t follow through with this project, it could be liable to pay the state back for all the work it’s done on it, Biddle said.
The estimate she gave last month was $4 million to $7 million.
Eminent domain?
Spreading his arms wide in his back yard, Gary Oliver takes in the whole span of his house. “How beautiful is this?” he asks.
The couple bought the property expecting it not to change except of their own doing. They’re not sure what to expect now.
He said the term “eminent domain” was used in his communication with INDOT. Like “condemnation” which was mentioned in the schools’ letter, that’s the right of a governmental unit to take private property for its use even the owner does not grant consent, with compensation.
But whether or not that would happen — and on whose order — remains unclear.
Biddle compared the trail project to the Yellowwood Road project, which was another one that a previous board of commissioners started. INDOT and the DNR are also directing the Yellowwood work, buying property from private owners to widen and straighten the county road.
The commissioners have had little ability on their own to change Yellowwood Road plans, but they have been successful at advocating for meetings with the project leaders to get changes made because of requests from landowners in the Yellowwood area.
About the trail project, Maginity said that “if eminent domain is pursued, it would probably be the county.”
The commissioners said they are against using eminent domain for a trail. Pittman sympathized with the Olivers; his family had farmland taken to build State Road 46 decades ago and he’s still sore about it.
They plan to schedule a meeting with the engineering firm and the trail committee, but it hasn’t happened yet.
Maginity suggested the county consider offering the Olivers a different land appraisal. “This is the ideal location for the trail,” he said.
Money isn’t the point, Gary Oliver said.
“This is America and I’ve lived here for 70 years. We don’t want it there, OK? It can be moved,” he told the commissioners.
“I’m not against the trail. I think it’s a great thing. But to take one’s property for a walking trail, it’s really hard for us to understand.”
[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”Salt Creek Trail phases” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
Phase I
Span: Nashville CVS to Brown County YMCA, 0.75 mile.
Status: Opened in November 2013.
Cost: About $1 million, by a 2004 INDOT grant and a 20-percent local match.
Phase II
Also called “the DNR Phase”
Span: Brown County State Park to Brown County Schools’ Eagle Park.
Status: Funded. Land acquisition in progress. Groundbreaking could occur next year.
Cost: About $900,000, by a 2008 Indiana Department of Natural Resources grant.
Phase III
Span: Brown County Schools’ Eagle Park to Brown County YMCA.
Status: Funded, but route and land acquisition undetermined.
Cost: About $1.9 million, by a 2014 Indiana Department of Transportation grant and a 20-percent local match.
Phase IV
Span: Brown County YMCA to Brown County High School/intermediate school/junior high campus.
Status: Not funded, route undetermined and no land acquired.
Cost: Undetermined.
Possible Phase V
Span: Nashville CVS to Deer Run Park.
Status: Not funded, route undetermined and no land acquired.
Cost: Undetermined.
Source: Bob Kirlin, Salt Creek Trail Committee member, spring 2017
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