Institute for Technology Development

"CMaP in the News"

Polk Middle School students trail proposal to be used by city

Five Polk Middle School students are seeing their dreams become a reality after only six months.

In May the small group of students presented a proposal for a walking trail near Furneaux Creek to city employees. Now the city has taken their ideas and tweaked them to make it possible and work should begin on the walking trail in February.

The city presented the trail to the students on Thursday.

A project of this magnitude would normally take the city years to complete, Carrollton Capital Improvement Coordinator Andy Combs said.

The mile long trail would run along the northwest area of Furneaux Creek near Frankford and Josey intersections. This area of the trail will be part of a four-mile long trail system running from Frankford to Peter 's Colony, eventually linking to trails in neighboring cities.

Sarah Pritsker , Jonathon Russell , Nathan Schiferl , Dorathy Scrudder and Matthew Zettler were the original members of a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) club, established last school year.

The students started the project by looking at a map and plotting the points for the trail in November 2004. The group also went to the creek to take pictures and check out the topography of the area.

Now all of their hard work will pay off.

"[They] have saved us a bunch of money and given us some fantastic ideas," Combs said.

The trail the students proposed consists of six entry points, a parking area, bridges, restrooms, phones and benches. Handicapped accessible playgrounds were also part of the proposal.

Although the city is laying the trails, there is not enough money right now to place additional items like lighting and water fountains, Combs said.

"We are not able to do all of it right now but we will use the designs as a type of master plan for the area," he said. "It may not have all the bells and whistles but it would not have been built for another year without the plans."

In order to put in all the bells and whistles the city is pursuing grants and donations, Carrollton GIS Manager Charles Neely said.

"We are getting a lot of private response about this," Neely said.

The city is hoping through private response, either donations or grants, the five Polk students will eventually see their plans complete. Russell even mentioned having their own fund-raisers to help out with the project.

The GIS club might add a 4H club to the mix to help with developing the area with things like butterfly gardens and possibly solar lighting.

The students are excited about the prospect of what could happen while the city is grateful for the head start this student project has given them.

"A lot of people are not going to know you, but they will be grateful to you," Combs said.

Read more about this project on our CMaP Gallery.

Read the original article at Star Community Newspapers by Crystal Forester, Staff Writer