Smithfield’s Town Council is again seeking state funding, this time by appealing to state Sen. Emily Jordan, R-Isle of Wight, for its one-mile share of a long-planned walking and bicycle trail that would connect Nike Park in Carrollton with Windsor Castle Park downtown.

The town submitted a $23 million proposal last year for the fifth round of Smart Scale, a Virginia Department of Transportation formula that allocates state funding based on a project’s cost versus regional benefit, but the project scored poorly at 258th out of 394 applications statewide in 2023.

Jordan recently wrote to the council asking for a formal list of legislative priorities she should take to the General Assembly on the town’s behalf when the legislature reconvenes in January. The council is scheduled to vote the first week of October on its legislative priorities, which, according to Town Manager Michael Stalllings, must be provided to Jordan no later than Oct. 11.

Isle of Wight County completed its 3.1-mile portion of the trail, from Nike Park to the corner of Battery Park Road and South Church Street where Smithfield’s TowneBank branch and a Royal Farms gas station are located, for $8.6 million in 2021. What’s driving the cost of Smithfield’s 1-mile share through the roof is the widening of South Church Street to include a center turn lane.

In 2022, Andrew Farthing of the engineering firm Kimley-Horn told town officials that the two-lane stretch of South Church Street was too flat to accommodate curb-and-gutter drainage infrastructure for the proposed bicycle and pedestrian path. To allow water to flow off the road rather than pool at its center, the street would need to be reconstructed with artificially created high and low points.

At the same meeting, Farthing proposed achieving the needed drainage by widening the street to include a center turn lane, which VDOT had considered in 2008.

“We’ve been kind of trying our best to figure out the mechanics of how to get the three lanes from (Cypress Creek) Bridge to TowneBank included with the multiuse, multipurpose pathway,” Mayor Steve Bowman said at the Town Council’s Aug. 26 committee meetings. “I think this might be a good way to start. If we don’t ask, we’re not going to get it.”

Bowman said he’s already discussed the matter with Jordan and with one of Virginia’s deputy secretaries of transportation.

Had the project ranked higher in the Smart Scale formula, it would have received 100% state funding and would have been added to VDOT’s six-year improvement plan. But that’s not the only option, Bowman contends.

“There are some funding mechanisms that are out there” that “may require some type of match,” Bowman said.