ORONO – Two projects designed to draw more people downtown took steps forward Monday night.

The Town Council voted 6-0 to submit a grant application for funds for two proposed walking trails and also accepted the terms of a bond sale to help fund the town’s new library.

With the council’s approval of the application for $96,000 in grant funds, town planner Evan Richert will submit the application to the Riverfront Community Bond Program.

“This is a concept that has been in play for several years,” Richert told the council. “Now we have an opportunity to … seek funds to begin to implement it.”

The proposal consists of a 1.4-mile trail system consisting of two interconnecting loops: a downtown “lunchtime” loop along the Stillwater River and downtown Orono and a “riverfront” loop along the lower Stillwater and Penobscot rivers to the Basin neighborhood, which would loop back to the library site on Pine Street.

Richert said the town should look at the proposed trails as an opportunity for education and ecotourism.

The project would fund the development of a town-owned site on Summer Street that will be used as a waterfront access park, a neighborhood pocket park on the Penobscot River off Broadway, trails and the refurbishment of sidewalks on Pine Street.

The Summer Street park would have a small parking area, benches, lights, signs with information about river restoration and a launch for canoes and kayaks. The Penobscot pocket park would have a seating with information signs at a scenic setting that looks at the north end of Ayers Island.

Several residents, local business owners, representatives of the University of Maine, the Orono Land Trust and the town’s trails committee spoke in support of procuring the grant money.

Town manager Cathy Conlow assured residents that landowners had granted the town easements of 10-foot-wide strips of land for the paths.

The council also voted on the terms of sale of $500,000 in General Obligation Bonds for the new library. Conlow presented the council with a Maine Municipal Bond Bank debt service schedule and the interest rates on the bonds, which were priced in early October. Interest rates vary from a low of 2.075 percent to 5.575 percent with a premium of .075 percent in years further out.

The council had approved the sale of the bonds last month.

The town broke ground on the new library Sept. 23, and some construction has started on the site.

jbloch@bangordailynews.net

990-8287