By Joshua Schuetz
Three communities in Southeast Minnesota were awarded a total $135,000 in Safe Routes to School Design Grants thanks to CEDA. The cities of Hayfield, Rushford Village and Spring Grove will each receive $45,000 in funding to design walkable and bikeable routes to their schools.
CEDA team member Rebecca Charles wrote all three grants and said the projects are critically needed in each community. “In Hayfield, the school is located on the corner of Highway 30, which is a very busy intersection,” Charles said. “In Spring Grove, there’s a highway that goes right through town and the school is located on that highway, so there’s no way for it to expand and it’s not connected to the neighborhoods that have sprung up around it.” Rushford Village is a former township that became a city and is mostly rural. Housing developments in Rushford Village are not connected to the City of Rushford, where students attend school.
Charles said Hayfield and Spring Grove already put together trail and sidewalk plans for the project through a Safe Routes to school Planning Assistance grant and Rushford Village worked with the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse to create its own trail plan. All three communities received assistance through a planning grant for Safe Routes to School and the design assistance grant will help bridge the gap between that and the larger infrastructure grant. “To apply for the infrastructure grant, you need plans and other information that includes pricing and engineering,” Charles explained. “The design assistance grant provides free design and engineering services for these communities, so we’ll have a kickoff meeting in each community, so each town gets to pick four locations or corridors they want specifically addressed and the engineers will identify four potential options for each corridor.” When the plans have been formulated, Charles said stakeholders from each community will be brought together to make a decision on which sets of plans to approve.