Carrollton City officials and Carrollton City School administrators have yet to get together to discuss how a possible widening of Ben Scott Boulevard and the Greenbelt trail might affect the school system’s future expansion plans and cross-country course, but Mayor Wayne Garner is not optimistic about the outcome.

“As we continue to look at this thing with the Greenbelt being shifted, and it looks like we aren’t going to be able to make the road cut in enough that it’s not going to affect the cross-country track,” Garner said. “It may be a situation where the cure for the problem is worse than the pain.”

The city was able to deliver a copy of the plans to the school system administration office Thursday, but Dr. Kent Edwards had not been able to look at them as of that afternoon. He did say the system was not going to give up on improving the traffic patterns even if these particular plans aren’t practical. The system’s priorities are on the school campus and preparation for future growth and that future growth could mean more traffic congestion. Hence, the need to widen Ben Scott Boulevard.

“We continue to struggle with our growth and our roads and traffic problems on a daily basis,” Edwards said. “We don’t see that changing unless we look at our alternatives.”

However, neither the city nor the school system are willing to jeopardize the cross-country track or the state meet that is held there. That one meet has an economic impact on the city of between $500,000 and $700,000 that weekend. The meet brings a lot of visitors to the city who stay in local hotels and eat in local restaurants, said Jonathan Dorsey, executive director of Carrollton Area Convention and Visitors Bureau. All the hotels were at capacity the night of the meet, he said.

“We would want to look at alternate traffic plans as opposed to alternate cross-country plans, because we’re pretty much land locked on that cross-country course,” Edwards said.

The city also gives priority to the Greenbelt trail, a project in which the city has invested hundreds of man hours and has already received grants and donations of more than $2 million. It needs to be built, Garner said.

The first phase of the Greenbelt has finally received approval from the Georgia Department of Transportation to start construction. All the city is waiting for is the school system to grant easements on their property to put the project up for bid.

However, if the Greenbelt has to be shifted to accommodate widening the road, the trail will have to go through another environmental impact survey and be re-approved by GDOT, pushing the project back yet again.

In addition, the road project would cost an estimated $700,000, which wasn’t budgeted for this year. Scraping together enough money would be possible using special purpose local option sales tax funds but it would be a stretch, Garner said.

In fact, paying for the project may be the issue that dooms it.

Assistant City Manager Tim Grizzard said the plans created by an engineering firm for the city showed how all the pieces would fit together and it looked like everything works fine together.

Grizzard said he understood the school board’s hesitation to grant the easement without seeing how all the pieces would fit together and it was the right decision.

“They just needed to see that on paper,” Grizzard said. “We had an engineering firm put all that on a document so that they could see it and everybody would be clear what was going on.”

On paper it looks like everything works fine together, he said.