The St. Joseph City Council heard public comments during Monday night’s meeting regarding potential city hike and bike trail improvements.

The improvements would be funded only if the city is awarded funds through the Transportation Alternatives Funds Program. The council approved the grant application Monday night. 

St. Joseph Mayor Bill McMurray said the city is submitting the application with a tentative plan for a trail to run from Cook Road to Blackwell Road.

McMurray said during the public comment on the hike and bike trails, one St. Joseph resident was opposed to the possibility of the trail running through his property.

“Trying to balance all the competing interests is what we’re going to be doing down the road, no pun intended, but right now it’s, if we can be awarded this grant going from Cook Road to Blackwell Road, point A to point B, then we’ll have to figure out the details of how we get there.” 

McMurray said the grant is for $200,000, with the city contributing matching funds of almost $86,000. He adds the CIP money will help fund it, which was approved by voters.

Also at Monday night’s meeting, the council passed the $178 million budget for Fiscal Year 2020. The vote was 7 to 2. According to McMurray, one council member voiced concern during the meeting about seven public works employees being removed and McMurray said he wants to point out it was seven overall positions removed.

“We just took two off the Parks crew, two off the Streets crew and half a position out of Water Protection and half a position out of HR and we removed one accountant and we removed one Capital Projects coordinator,” McMurray said. “Several of these positions were vacant, so we didn’t have anyone losing employment as a result of that, we just didn’t fill these positions in the new budget.”

The budget goes into effect July 1st.

To view the entire meeting, click here.