The Soldotna City Council on April 28th voted on a consent agenda resolution that would support the efforts of the Tsalteshi Trails Association to secure a recreational trails grant from the state of Alaska. The Tsalteshi Trails Association states that the storage facilities behind Skyview Middle school are no longer adequate to securely house grooming machinery and equipment, and are located in an area that detracts from the full use of Skyview sports fields.
Tsalteshi Ski Trails Administrative Coordinator, Jenny Neyman, “This is not, admittedly, the most exciting project Tsalteshi has ever done. It is not going to create a brand new trail for people, but we feel like freeing up space on that field is going to be huge for the thousands of people that use that trailhead. Every major event at Tsalteshi happens at Skyview and right now, they have to route around our stuff. You can’t see from one side of the field to another. We block the security camera views, it’s just not a workable solution for the future. If we are able to get this grant, and make this move, we will still be able to be working on the trails while events are happening. We’ve got 35K of trails out there and most events use, at most, five to ten kilometers but we can’t work on the rest of them because we can’t get to our stuff and get back to the trails without having to drive right through a racecourse and crowds of hundreds of people.”
The consent agenda item supports the efforts of the Tsalteshi Trails Association to secure funding to construct a storage facility on land adjacent to an existing loop of the Tsalteshi Trails. The grant would provide a new weatherized building facility that would provide better protection for the equipment used to groom and maintain the trails.
The City of Soldotna has supported the Tsalteshi Trails Association for over eleven years with the first appropriation in the city budget in Fiscal Year 2010. Between FY10 and FY15, the city appropriated $10,000 annually. Since FY16, the city has provided $15,000 to support the trails utilized by many across the Kenai Peninsula.
