BURLINGTON — The Boone County Fiscal Court approved a property purchase for a project that includes a key element that county leaders say no longer exists. The 81-acre parcel on Camp Ernst Road, commonly referred to as the Simpson property, has been connected to the Boone County Gunpowder Creek Trail System project and would be paid for primarily with federal grant money. There is no longer adequate support on the fiscal court or in the community, however, to develop the trail system. Two of the Boone County commissioners who voted to approve the purchase, Matt Dedden and Charlie Walton, said they did so only to ensure the federal funds would not go elsewhere. “If we don’t accept this grant, it’s going to go into a pool and another county is going to get it,” Dedden said.

Walton said the county pays out a lot more tax money than it receives, and this is one way to get some of it back.“If you don’t get the money for your district, all they are going to do is keep taking it out of your pocket, and they are going to give it to someone else,” Walton said. “If we turn that grant down … within the next three months somebody else is going to have that money because that grant is just going to roll over.”