By CHRIS MEYERS
Staff writer 

    For the past few years, the Town of Churubusco has hoped to try to provide residents with paved or mulched walking paths in town and to town from surrounding areas.
    Those plans hit a snag this month when town council members learned a deadline for a grant application had been missed.
    Not to be deterred, council members plan to press forward in hopes of having all needed data gathered for when the next chance to get a grant rolls around.
    “I’d really like to see them happen within the next three years,” Viv Rosswurm, town council president, said recently regarding the project.
    Getting the funds is no easy task however, with a strict grading system in place to decide what municipalities receive the grant money.
    As Tobby Steffen of Butler Fairman and Seufert Civil Engineers told the town council recently, officials from the Indiana Department of Transportation and Department of Natural Resources play a key role in doing on-site visits of where the proposed trails would be built.
    Sometimes the length of the trail can help or hinder the receiving of a grant as well.
    Grants awarded under the transportation enhancement program are usually only given for long stretches of trail projects.
    “They’re looking for two miles, one mile or large phases,” Steffen said of the TE grants.
    Region III-A currently works on most of the town’s grant applications, but Rosswurm said letters of interest may be sent to three other firms and organizations that can also help the town get the grants in an efforts to speed up the process.
    One of the projects at the forefront is a proposed path from the Thresher’s Ridge subdivision located north of town to the park and Smith-Green Community Schools.
    The town may have an easier time getting grant money for that project under the Safe Routes to Schools program funded by the Federal Highway Administration.
Steffen told the council the town will have a better chance of getting the grants if there aren’t any right-of-way issues to hold up the project.
    Council members said at their most recent meeting that the prosed path which would run to the school from Thresher’s Ridge would go on land that belongs to the town.
    “Right now what we’re more interested in is from Thresher’s Ridge through the park to the school,” Rosswurm said.
    Should that project be completed, the town may try to apply for more grants to build paved trails in a loop around town and possible out to Blue Lake.
    To get to Blue Lake, however, the town would also need permission and possible assistance from the county because it would go on land that doesn’t belong to the town.
    Despite the setback of not getting a survey done in time for a grant application, Steffen said the town could still make the deadline for the TE grant program.
    “You still have plenty of time to get something done,” he said.