Groups working on the Salt Creek Trail to link Brown County State Park with downtown Nashville now have another hurdle to cross. There is no land-use easement on file for the “DNR Phase” of the trail, which goes through Brown County Schools’ Eagle Park, the district’s lawyer says.
County commissioners Bill Austin, Blake Wolpert and Stephanie Yager had signed the document in 2008, but the school board had not.
Superintendent Laura Hammack said the lawyer found the easement problem while looking into the Indiana Department of Transportation’s recent land acquisition proposal. INDOT has offered to buy a piece of land at the Eagle Park sports complex where it would place a historic iron bridge to cross Salt Creek.
The easement needs to be in place before land acquisition is discussed, she said.
“At this point, we kind of feel like a step was sort of missed and we don’t have that easement yet for the trail,” Hammack said.
“Legally, for us to enter into an agreement about the bridge, it would not be in our best interest.”
The district’s attorneys will work with the Brown County Commissioners on securing an easement for the trail, she said. That document should also set out details dealing with trail security on school property, such as fencing and lighting, she said.
The commissioners will present the board with an offer for an easement much like INDOT did, she said.
The school board had been approached by local couple Gary and Sheila Oliver last month because the same phase of the trail will also cut through a corner of their property. Gary Oliver also attended the Brown County Commissioners meeting Aug. 2 to ask if those county officials could help prevent the trail from going through his yard.
“Can’t you say, ‘We’re for the bridge, but let’s move it downstream like 50 feet?’ That’s off of my property. It seems pretty simple to me,” Oliver said.
Commissioner Diana Biddle and Brown County Highway Superintendent Mike Magner both said that the decision is up to INDOT and the INDOT engineers behind the phase.
“The project affecting you right now is no longer under the scope of the county commissioners. … This now has to do with the Indiana Historic Bridge Relocation project that INDOT has signed a contract on,” Biddle said.
“INDOT has taken over that whole section. That’s the way they explained it. … The Salt Creek Trail local committee is in charge of from Parkview Road over to the existing trail. That’s the local, county section of trail.”
INDOT’s communications with the school district and the Olivers mentioned using some form of eminent domain to acquire property for the trail, the school board and the Olivers said.
During the meeting, Oliver quoted minutes from a Nov. 8, 2004 joint meeting of the county council and commissioners. They say that a Salt Creek Trail Committee member told the boards that if the committee doesn’t get voluntary cooperation from property owners, the project would stop.
In a May 2014 story in the Brown County Democrat, then-county commissioner Joe Wray also pledged that the county would not use eminent domain for the trail.
“That applies to the county portion, but now that the state has come in and taken over some of those portions. The county doesn’t have control over those,” Biddle told Oliver in the meeting.
