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Missoula City Council has authorized emptying the 1995 open space account, after more than two decades of spending the $5 million voter-approved bond.

The ten members present Monday – representatives Jon Wilkins and Michelle Cares were absent – voted unanimously to spend the remaining $389,533.99 on the 12-acre Montana Rail Link property on Johnson Street that will complete the Bitterroot Branch Trail’s run from East Missoula to Lolo, and offer a new park for residents of the Franklin to the Fort neighborhood.

Elizabeth Erickson, Missoula’s open space bond acquisitions attorney, said the money has been saved since 2006 for just such a purchase – a park in that very neighborhood.

“Per capita it is one of the lowest-served neighborhoods in terms of (parks) acreage available,” she said. “This is a great step in the right direction.”

Ethel MacDonald, a member of the Open Space Advisory Committee, said she’s happy to now give people simple directions to ride their bicycles from downtown to Hamilton.

She used to have to explain the several-step process of linking the broken halves, from North Avenue to near the Southgate Mall on South Avenue, but now she can tell them to just follow the trail.