EDITORIALS: Happy trails to all

How to complete the greenway

— FOLKS UP in this part of the state might want to hold off on that new bicycle and set aside the backpacks, at least for a while longer. It looks like that much-anticipated 36-mile system of bike trails linking Fayetteville with Bella Vista won’t be getting that $15 million in federal helpafter all.

Aw, shucks. It seems the $15 million is part of the $61 billion in spending cuts being considered by the Republican majority in the U.S. House. What does Steve Womack, the newly elected congressman from the state’s Third District, think about that? While he favors the trails, he says he’ll vote for the cuts anyway. Because, well, the country is drowning in debt.

Good reason.

But losing the federal funds is going to disappoint a lot of folks in these parts-civic leaders and business people and construction workers as well as bicyclists and hikers.

So what now?

Let’s consider resorting to an old American practice that a Frenchman named de Tocqueville noticed-and praised-in his still highly relevant study of Democracy in America. (“In no country in the world has the principle of association been more successfully used or applied to a greater multitude of objects than in America.”-Book II, Chapter 12.) So let’s get togetherand raise the money for the trails ourselves.

Americans, as our French visitor noted in the 1830s, have a tendency to form citizens’ associations to achieve things without waiting for big government to act. This would be a good time, when the feds have got the countryinto one heckuva hole, to revive that practical tradition right here in Northwest Arkansas.

Sure, $15 million is a lot of money. It’ll take organization, leadership, initiative and hard work to raise it. But didn’t those use to be American virtues? Much like the true grit Arkies are supposed to absorb with their mother’s milk. Whynot build those bike trails ourselves? M. de Tocqueville would surely approve.

Rogers is showing the way. Its city government is completing a section of the bike path near Ajax and 26th with money it had on hand. And its parks and recreation commission is raising money to improve its offerings by charging everyone a fee for the use of the city’s ballfields and pavillions. Why not use the fees for bike trails, too?

This new trail is going to be built the old-fashioned way-we’re going to do it ourselves. Via city and county governments plus bake sales, car washes, yard sales and all the other good stuff volunteers can do when they’ve a mind to-and are eager to get out there on those new bike trails.

Editorial, Pages 14 on 02/21/2011

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