Cache County moving closer to organizing coordinated trail system

It’s no secret that many Cache County residents love trails and now it looks like a Regional Trail Coordinator is in the county’s near future. Cache County Councilmember Val Potter is chairman of a committee appointed to look for a full-time Regional Trail Coordinator and also look for ways to fund the person chosen for that job.

Potter says the position has now been posted and money for the salary has come from several sources: Logan City, Cache County, and the Cache Metropolitan Planning Organization.

Smaller cities are also being asked to pay a portion of the coordinator’s salary.

“What people who use trails want to do is start in Smithfield and go to Providence on these trails for biking, or hiking, or walking, or running,” Potter says. “That’s what I’d love to see is some real coordination there.

“If we don’t coordinate those trails now development will gobble it up. We will never have access to many potential trails.”

Potter says the Regional Trails Coordinator will coordinate the trail system between the cities, the county and work with landowners, canal companies and others in the trail development.

“It seems like every city has their own trail plan but very few of them coordinate and connect,” Potter continues. “This person’s job would be to designate areas where trails should be considered, or if they are already underway connect between the various communities and have a county-wide trail system that makes sense.

“It’s fairly broad. We’re looking at mountain trails (as well as) urban trails and discussion of canals.”

Potter says the trail plans of the cities need to be coordinated and the Regional Trail Coordinator’s job would have a focus on that objective for the first year or two.

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