At a special meeting on Oct. 12, council accepted a bid for a less expensive uncovered bridge. The bridge will be paid for with a grant and money raised by the Delaware County Friends of the Trail.

Mary Kerr, representing the DCFT, appeared at the Oct. 26 council meeting to protest the decision. She said a covered bridge would increase the life span of the bridge from 50 to 100 years.

"First of all, it would be a very lovely attraction and destination point to Galena for a lot of people. But second of all, it reduces your maintenance costs considerably and it has a great deal of longevity as compared to an uncovered bridge," Kerr told council.

"So, you're paying one way or the other. You're not really saving a great deal of money by building an uncovered bridge, it doesn't last as long and the other reason to build a covered bridge would be it offers protection of the surface in (bad) weather," she added.

Although the village was awarded $148,000 for the project, it will need only about $62,000 to build an uncovered bridge, Mayor Tom Hopper said.

But council members said they did not want to return the remaining $86,000 and would re-consider their options.

Council president David Simmons on Oct. 30 said he opposes covering the bridge.

The bridge design doesn't include a truss, he said. The main reason for a cover would be to protect the truss, he said.

He also doesn't want the village to spend $18,000 in engineering costs for the bridge, which he feels is a low priority for residents.

He also said he favors a design by Everett S. Sherman, a bridge builder from the 1800s.

Kerr said she also was upset that council had waited until the last minute to act on the grant, which expires at the end of December.

DCFT submitted a grant application to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources in 2008 to construct the bridge. The grant for 80 percent of the costs up to $148,000 was awarded to Galena in April.

Matching funds of about $8,000 came from the DCFT, a nonprofit group that works to build and maintain multi-use trails.

The bridge is part of the Ohio-to-Erie Trail, which runs from the Ohio River to Lake Erie. When completed, the trail will connect cities, towns and villages throughout the state.

Currently, only the base for the bridge exists, with decking and sides still needed, said Bob Kane, a supporter of the Ohio-to-Erie Trail. The bridge, 160 feet long and 10 feet wide, will be for foot and bicycle traffic only, said public service director Scott Jamison.

The bridge's construction design and management was bid out and awarded to Jobes Henderson engineering firm, Newark, which designed two versions of the bridge, one covered bridge and the other uncovered, Hopper said.

Because no contracts have been awarded, council agreed to take another look at the project. Council will either go forward with the uncovered bridge design, re-bid the project to find an affordable way to build a covered bridge, or expand the work to include construction of a connection to the trail as opposed to just the bridge, Hopper said.

The expansion of the work would use up more of the money and might be include creating a trail connection to the bridge on the west side of Big Walnut Creek, he said.

Council member Nancy Feole told Kerr, "I think we've worked with you in the past and I think this is the first time you have been unhappy with the decision of council."

Kerr agreed, but suggested the DCFT go through Delaware County for future grants. Council opposed the idea.

"I, for one, would not be in favor of the county administering the grant. I'm rather vehemently opposed to that," Feole said.

Simmons agreed.

"I think we owe the Friends of the Trail a great deal of gratitude for the amount of money that we have gotten from the state and I would certainly not see any reason that we can't work with the Friends of the Trail. I can't imagine any reason why we would not want to," Simmons said.

At the meeting, Hopper warned council to be cautious with their next move.

"I just want to be sure that council, if we are to look at going down certain roads, we want to be very careful that council knows what they want to do before we get there because we don't want another moment in time where we get there and we don't know what we're doing. ... I do not want to go to that place again," Hopper said.

calexis@thisweeknews.com