By Jason C. Mattox

Lower-than-expected bids will allow a long-planned walking trail in Batesville to extend to three-quarters of a mile instead of the half-mile that was originally planned.

The walking trail, at city-owned Trussell Park, will be part of a municipal park that will eventually include exercise equipment and basketball courts.

Trussell already includes softball fields and tennis courts.

Completion of the walking trail has been delayed by rain and inclement weather, Parks Department Superintendent Robert Lightsey said last week.

If not for bad weather, the walking trail would have been completed in 2009, he said.

“We wanted to get started with this back during soccer season, but half the soccer season got rained out,” Lightsey said. “If we can get a dry spell, it shouldn’t take that long to get the walking trail installed.”

The original plan was to construct a quarter-mile walking path, but the new trail will actually be closer to three-quarters of a mile.

“Our bids came in low, and it is going to allow us to extend the path to three-quarters of a mile,” Lightsey said.

Lightsey added that the track will allow bicyclists as well as walkers.

“According to the terms of the grant, we will allow walkers and cyclists to share the path,” he said.

The grant requires a 20-percent match by the city, which will be done as in-kind with city workers handling a large portion of the labor.

“We were lucky to get the grant that we did,” Mayor Jerry Autrey said of the $100,000 the city received from the state Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks.

Lightsey said he discussed the project with Autrey but neither could give an official start date.

“It will all depend on the weather,” he said.

“If it had been dryer last summer, we would have opened it this spring, but now it looks like it might be sometime in the late summer or early fall at the latest.”