Puget Neighborhood Meeting - Looking At Trails

            The Puget Neighborhood Association will gather for a general membership meeting on Thursday, Nov. 15^th at 7 pm, and will feature guest speaker James King, the director of Parks and Recreation for the city of Bellingham. 

            Mary Chaney, Puget neighborhood association president, hopes to steer the discussion towards the problem of poor trail marking and maintenance throughout the neighborhood. 

            “We in the neighborhood would like to have greater clarity as to where the trails are,” Chaney said.  “Most park trails are identified by those wooden posts with the golden yellow bands around them.  But we don’t have them everywhere.  Some [trails] are marked and lots of them are not.  Some are just weed brambles, and they ought to be cleaned up and cleared out and marked.”

            Director of Parks and Recreation for a year, James King is still learning about the neighborhoods’ primary issues and hopes to learn more about Puget on Thursday.

            “I will give an overview of the Bellingham Parks and Recreation Department and upcoming projects,” King said.  “I will also answer questions, and I hope to get a feel for what issues are important to the neighborhood.”

            Tim Wahl, the Greenway program coordinator of nearly 35 years, said that smaller trails within the neighborhoods are often overlooked by the city of Bellingham because the departments of Public Works and Parks and Recreation are focused on larger projects.

            “Generally, there isn’t a plan to mark the little trails better.  I wish there was, but the city basically operates on larger projects that are given funding in larger lumps,” said Wahl.  “But when you have these smaller, neighborhood-oriented things, it doesn’t matter whether they’re parks or trails or whatever, we here [at the department level] have to survive, so we tend to pick bigger projects.”

            According to both Chaney and Wahl, some of the primary culprits of confusion are Puget’s small easements, connecting cul-de-sac with cul-de-sac and providing a quick path between parallel but not linked streets.  An easement is a piece of land dedicated by the developer for use by the general public, such as a trail or a greenway; however, most of Puget’s easements fall on the edge of property lines and are often mistaken as private property, said Chaney.

            “When you get a little link that was created by an individual property owner and dedicated to the public and then the neighborhood grows up around it, it gets forgotten,” Wahl said.  “With streets, the developer’s required to build them.  But when you just do a dedication and no one’s in charge of building it [the trail] then people are surprised by it and don’t maintain it.”        

            Puget’s trouble with poorly marked and maintained trails has been ongoing since 2005, when the article “Losing Ground” appeared in the Bellingham Herald, describing this same trail situation.  Due to lack of interest and lack of a sufficient number of board members, the Puget Neighborhood Association still has not been able to address the trail problem as it should like to, said Chaney.

            According to Wahl, the city is not obliged to do anything with the easements so long as the environment remains unaltered.

            “The city has no obligation if it’s not doing anything – if it were building something or selling something or changing the land, then it needs to do a survey and know exactly where it is,” said Wahl.  “But if nothing’s happening, then it’s all up to the party that wants to make something happen.”

            Chaney noted that there had been one recent case of slight trail marking, inspired by a new neighbor on Edwards Court who renovated the easement along her property line. 

            “Her side yard abuts a trail right-of-way.  It was kind-of grown over, so she and her husband, being young and ambitious, started to clear the blackberries out,” said Chaney.  “She did get the parks department to come out and look at it and put some sort of sign up.  And we’d be happy for more of those.”

            Wahl said that persistent neighbors, such as the woman from Edwards Court, are exactly what the city needs because they express the importance of the particular needs of the neighborhood to the otherwise unaware departments.

            “It really requires the folks in the neighborhood to get behind it, and then if they are squeaky wheels, so to speak, we can mark it [the trail],” Wahl said.  “Until someone jumps up and down and writes letters, there’s not much we can do.”

            According to Chaney, these poorly marked and possibly overgrown trails are what link the neighborhood together, especially for pedestrians. 

            “Makes you want to get out your gas-powered weed-whacker and zoom!” Chaney said.  “We’re not just run by cars – we’re people who have feet.”

            King also recognized the importance of maintaining and improving upon the system already in place.

            “Many in the community place a high value on having, maintaining, and improving the parks, greenways, and trails as well as the recreation programs,” King said.  “[I hope] that the neighborhood can learn more about the park system and I can learn more about the neighborhood [at the meeting].”