Folklorico dancers and colored balloons waving in the breeze captured the fervor as work began last week one of three creekside hike-and-bike trails planned on the West Side.

What began in 2000 as a vision for an “emerald necklace” of linear parks and trails running primarily along Leon Creek to the west and Salado Creek to the east has expanded to include neighborhood paths, such as the 0.65-mile Martinez Creek Linear Trail, now under way near Interstate 10 at Woodlawn Avenue.

Cosima Colvin, who represents the area on the city’s Linear Creekway Parks Advisory Board, said the trail will restore neighborhood pride and cultural ties to the creek, where children once frolicked and gathered crawfish. If voters extend a tax to build more creekways, the 10-foot-wide path, to be completed by December, could someday connect to trails along Alazan, Apache and San Pedro creeks to the San Antonio River.

“And at that point, we’ll have access to the Mission Reach and beyond,” said Colvin, who sees the project bolstering efforts to revitalize the Fredericksburg Road corridor.

After 15 years of planning, acquiring land and soothing local concerns about safety, proponents of Proposition 2 believe San Antonio’s creekside greenway system is beginning to sell itself. With 46 miles of trails built and 40 more miles in development, extension of a 1/8-cent sales tax in the May 9 election would elevate funding for the system to $80 million, up from $45 million in each of the propositions passed in 2005 and 2010, and $20 million approved in 2000.

As early voting begins Monday, officials say passage of Proposition 2 will not complete the 130 miles of potential trails so far identified. But it could add another 25 miles of paths, to connect neighborhoods and advance the circuit around the city.

Brandon Ross, special projects manager with the Parks & Recreation Department, said the Howard W. Peak Greenway System — a “young system” named for the mayor who proposed the idea — has already reduced trash and contaminants going into creeks and rivers, and made San Antonians healthier.

“We’ve preserved quite a lot of natural habitat. The creeks were largely forsaken,” often targets for illegal dumping, Ross said. “We’ve got people saying they’ve lost weight using the trails system. It’s restorative from a recreational standpoint. It’s also a great opportunity to get outdoors.”

As San Antonio keeps growing, the greenways can ensure preservation of delicate riparian zones that support birds and other wildlife, Ross said.

“We’re going to build more trails, better trails, with this money,” with “high-use” sections up to 12 feet wide, he said.

What began as an ambiguous concept in the late 1990s has become“better than any of us could have imagined” said Charles Bartlett, a longtime Salado Creek advocate in his 10th year on the linear creekway board. The 11-member panel appointed by the City Council works with parks and city officials to decide which segments are next to be funded and built, based typically on land costs, connectivity and potential number of users.

“As people have been so excited every time a new section opens, at every board meeting, people would show up from different neighborhoods,” Bartlett said.

The greenway program, initially tied together on a single ballot item with the city’s Edwards Aquifer protection program, was the only one of four “Better Future San Antonio” propositions that passed in 2000. Similar tax initiatives for San Antonio River improvements, Kelly AFB redevelopment and economic development and a ¼-cent tax for a VIA Metropolitan Transit rail system failed that year.

The greenway tax, paired with aquifer protection but listed separately on a ballot, passed again in 2005, and had an unprecedented voter approval of 66 percent in a November 2010 mid-term election.

As more have seen the benefits of converting flood-prone land to places to walk, run or bike for exercise or mobility, the system has been expanded to the West Side creeks. The city recently completed the Olmos Basin Greenway Trail on the near North Side, running nearly a mile and linking Olmos Basin Park to the Alamo Quarry Market. Trails along Culebra and Huesta creeks, smaller tributaries that flow into Leon Creek, are under construction.

Peak, who drove efforts to start the system while serving as mayor, credits the city staff, San Antonio River Authority, Texas Department of Transportation and others with bringing his vision to life. Standing on a vacant lot by Martinez Creek, where houses had been flooded and razed, he said he came to embrace inclusion of the West Side creeks, which were not part of his initial concept.

“This little creekway represents an opportunity to find ways to advance improvements for this area,” Peak said.

The West Side, which for years suffered from adequate flood control, has a half-mile trail on the Alazan under construction, set for completion this year, and a three-mile stretch along Apache Creek to open in about a year.

Julia Murphy, executive director of the Green Spaces Alliance of South Texas and former board member of the linear creekway board, said the greenway system also is advancing pedestrian and bicycle linkages that reduce reliance on cars — another of Peak’s goals when serving as mayor.

“To see it coming to fruition is so fulfilling,” Murphy said.

A recent phone survey of 400 voters conducted for the Nature Conservancy in Texas showed Proposition 2 polling well, though slightly less favorably than Proposition 1 for aquifer protection, with 48 percent of voters saying they were “definitely for” the measure, and 19 percent “definitely against.”

Security has been a concern on the creekways, especially after two murders, two suspicious deaths and muggings, burglaries and an attempted rape were reported in 2014. City Councilman Ron Nirenberg has called for a “direct and proactive strategy of prevention” as “part and parcel to the development of the creekways.”

The parks department and linear parks board are studying lighting, solar light fixtures, call stations and increases in security or volunteer patrols, Bartlett said.

“We’ve needed to answer questions about safety,” he said.

Nirenberg said he expects recommendations to be considered for the greenways in May or June. Safety concerns have not diminished his support of Proposition 2.

“It’s done the opposite. I’m even more enthusiastic about this solid brand of open space that we’re bolstering,” he said.

Greenway construction costs have risen slightly due to increasing land prices; a public art component at 1 percent of total construction costs, added to the program a few years ago; and higher standards for water-quality features such as bank restoration, erosion buffers, gabions and rain gardens, Ross said.

But Bartlett said the return on investment has exceeded expectations, leaving the parks department as a primary point of contact about trash, vagrants, overgrown vegetation and brush piles. The water in the Salado is no longer brown and muddy, because of erosion control measures along its banks, he said.

“The water is clear for the first time in 40 years,” Bartlett said.

He fears that funds in the current program will run out in 2016, possibly delaying work on a few miles of trails on private property and CPS Energy right-of-way near Camp Bullis that would connect the Leon and Salado greenways to the north.

To the south, a path extending northeast from the Medina River Greenway, past Mitchell Lake and to the Mission Reach of the San Antonio River, near Mission Espada, is planned to link the system with the San Antonio River, which runs a few miles south before converging with the Salado.

Colvin said the program has gained enough momentum to begin making proximity to a local creekway an asset for people looking for apartments, houses or a place to open a business.

“It’s really getting national attention now,” she said. “People in Austin and other cities are saying, 'What’s going on in San Antonio?’”

shuddleston@express-news.net

@shuddlestonSA