Tom Erickson feels like someone is taking a bite out of his front yard.

A 12-foot-wide strip of lawn will become part of a multi-use path, which he says will reduce his front yard by about a third.

“It’s incredible to me that they can just grab your property,” said Erickson, who is fighting Woodbury city officials over the plan to create the path along Commonwealth Avenue.

He admits that the city has the legal right to use land along his street just as it does with right-of-way easements along every other street in the city.

The problem — as Erickson’s situation shows — is that homeowners often don’t understand how easements work.

Easement agreements allow a city to use parts of private property. Homeowners maintain the property by mowing, watering, maybe installing a sprinkler system. Some plant trees and gardens. Homeowners eventually see their yards as untouchable — and are flummoxed when the city starts to build something.

Tony Kutzke, Woodbury’s principal engineer, said that streets are flanked by invisible buffer zones, which the city can develop.

Easements allow cities to build sidewalks without having to buy land from every homeowner on a street. Easements are where power and water lines can run. They also let cities control planting, keeping trees away from streets to minimize leaf cleanup. Related Articles Angie Craig asks supporters to vote for her anyway despite postponement of election

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In the case of the trail, said Kutzke, the city has long wanted to build a link between two pathways near Red Rock Elementary School. In fact, it was one of Erickson’s neighbors who requested the link.

“There is a really important message here — we need to provide a safe pedestrian way to get to school,” said John Bradford, deputy director of engineering and public works for the city.

The city plans to move the existing curb out several feet, making the street narrower. Then an 8-foot-wide buffer zone and an 8-foot-wide trail will be built.

Bicycle-pedestrian trails crisscross Woodbury and are regarded as a citywide asset, said Bradford. They are almost always built with cooperation from affected landowners.

“We do what we can to be collaborative,” said Bradford. “We pride ourselves in being able to work with folks.”

NEIGHBOR AGREES

Susan Goodman is a neighbor of Erickson’s and agrees with him that the trail should be stopped or at least changed.

“To make this 8 feet wide is ridiculous,” said Goodman, who moved into her house in 1997. She said the trail will decrease her property’s value because it will shorten her double-wide driveway.

Both Goodman and Erickson said they knew about easements when they bought their homes but had only a vague understanding of them. They didn’t expect, they said, that an 8-foot-wide path would ever be seen from their front doors.

Erickson said the trail is going to wreck his front yard, and he is trying to get officials to build it somewhere else.

“That land was never meant to be developed,” he said.

The trail will mean that walkers and bikers will be passing by daily — much closer to his house. The trail will cross his driveway, so his sons will lose parking space. The city will clear it of snow in the winter, which means equipment rumbling by.

The trail might be legal, he said, but it lowers his property value.

“I never would have bought this house if someone had said, ‘There is an 8-foot trail going into your front yard,’ ” he said.

But officials say the time for protests has passed. Related Articles Lakeland mayor fined $250 over missing disclaimer on campaign material

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The project has gone through the usual steps and public hearings and has been approved by the City Council.

Erickson said he was out of town on business for most of them. Erickson, Goodman and other neighbors say they attended some — but not all — of the meetings and hearings to make their objections known. Other residents have spoken out in favor of the new trail.

The project will begin soon, said director Bradford, and will take about six weeks to complete.

Meanwhile, Erickson continues to try to block the trail, either through legal action or further pleas to officials.

Pacing his shrinking yard last week, Erickson pointed out the spray-painted stripes on his lawn — surveyor’s markings for the trail. To dramatize what it would mean to his front yard, he parked his pickup truck on the lawn, right where a passing snowplow would run on a future trail.

“So many things aren’t right about this, on so many levels,” he said.