County Grants Belmont $5,000 to Build Walking Trails

The Get Healthy San Mateo County Task Force has awarded a $5,000 grant to Belmont for the to build walking trails throughout town.

Belmont received the grant on Dec. 8 from the county's health task force, which aims to reduce and prevent obesity and other health risks among children in San Mateo County.

Belmont Parks and Recreation Director Jonathan Gervais said the money will go toward helping build some of the city's top 10 paper trails, which were identified and brought before the Parks and Recreation Commission earlier this year.

Paper trails, Gervais said, are potential walking trails throughout Belmont that have yet to be turned into actual paths.

Many of the paper trails, shown in the attached PDF, originated when the city was designed. Gervais said the long winding roads of Belmont prompted the early designers to add space for walking trails, but the trails were never built.

The city recently started looking at some of those trails and compiled their top 10 list of the ones that would be most beneficial to residents, including near schools, the and Carlmont Shopping Center.

"The goal is to get people out walking, to encourage walking in the community," Gervais said.

"We [also] want to see if we can reduce the number of cars, especially for the short number of trips in Belmont," he added. "We'd like to try to connect these [paths] to areas that have a lot of congestion."

He said the money from the county will be used for planning, design and materials. Belmont expects to move ahead with two segments in 2011.