Town Approves $65,000 To Reconstruct Heavily Used Trail at Waveny

The Board of Selectmen at its most recent meeting approved an approximately $65,000 contract to reconstruct a pedestrian trail at Waveny.

The trail that runs near a southwestern corner of the park—from where the road that runs through Waveny meets Lapham Road, along the stone wall toward the Merritt Parkway— “doesn’t have the preferred surface that we have in certain areas,” according to Public Works Director Tiger Mann.

Instead, it has larger crushed stones and would serve the public better if it had the same surface as the pedestrian trails that run along the Waveny road on the South Avenue side of the park, officials said.

“It’s what we’ve been utilizing on all the new trails in Waveny,” Mann told the selectmen during their Sept. 10 regular meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference.

First Selectman Dionna Carlson and Selectmen Steve Karl and Amy Murphy Carroll voted 3-0 in favor of the $64, 515 contract with Sound Construction.

Karl said, “There’s so many people that use these trails. It’s so important that we keep them up. You could be there in the middle of January and people are walking those trails. It’s amazing.”

The selectmen asked just where the trail in question is located (opposite the leaf mulch site), whether it’s natural stone (yes), how wide the trail is (eight feet), whether any trees have to be removed (two that are “in disrepair,” Mann said) and whether there are drainage issues (yes, there could be crossings installed).

Mann said, “With just some minor repairs here and there, this should give us good longevity. As long as it [the new stone material] doesn’t get swept off the trail, there isn’t much else to be done with it. So there are minor repairs that have to be done for, say, a drainage washout, but we haven’t really had to repair any of it that we’ve put in recently.”