Montour Trail-Letter

Volume 13, Issue 4

July/August, 2002

For four weekends in April and May the idea of FITness took on a whole new meaning on the Montour Trail. On those Saturdays and Sundays a group of hard-working men and women in a program known by the acronym FITS cleared over four miles of unfinished trail in Mt. Pleasant and Cecil Townships in Washington County. The brush, tree, and railroad tie clearing was in preparation for the construction of the section of trail between the McDonald Trestle and the intersection of routes 980 and 50 to begin in late summer 2002.

The acronym FITS stands for Furlough In To Service, a program within the Community Services Office of the Probation Services Department of the Washington County court system. The program provides an opportunity for non-violent offenders serving work-release and weekend-only sentences in the Washington County Correctional Facility to leave the facility during weekend daytime hours to work in supervised community service projects in Washington County. The program's clients are carefully selected and must maintain good work records to remain in the program. FITS has completed such projects as the rehabilitation of two houses for the Washington City Mission, the building of a playground in Centerville, the remodeling and painting of the old Venetia School for conversion into a community center, the painting of 19 fire halls throughout the county, and bank clearing and flood control on hundreds of miles of streams in the county. During its five years of existence, FITS has provided communities and organizations with the manpower to complete difficult and labor-intensive projects the organizations would be otherwise unable to afford and has created for its clients a closely-monitored, positive and meaningful way to pay their debt to society.

FITS projects can be scheduled for any community or non-profit organization, such as the Montour Trail Council, operating within Washington County. As the program's popularity spreads, requests for weekend work are expanding to fill the calendar. The 2002 weekend schedule is already full through November. Indoor projects such as painting are scheduled during the colder months.

FITS is directed by Dr. Barrie Wight, who came to the program after 25 years in higher education administration. Day-to-day scheduling and coordination are performed by Gregg Thomas, retired City of Washington Chief of Police. The weekend work parties are supervised by Scott Dever, a full-time Washington County Community Services employee. Dever's weekend duties run the gamut of everything from assigning and overseeing the workers, to servicing the tools and equipment, to driving the school bus used to transport the clients. He is assisted on the weekends by Tom Shrum, a Fayette County Children and Youth Services case worker, Joel Guthrie, who hopes for a career as a police officer, Chris Hawk, a teacher and counselor at Pressley Ridge, and Bob Kepics, a Monongahela City councilman, who has just replaced Foreman Hawk. While these individuals carefully monitor the clients' labors, placing strong emphasis on worker safety, it's not unusual to see them pitching in to work alongside the individuals in their charge.

Every Saturday and Sunday for four weeks these men and women showed up on the Montour Trail in their own school bus, accompanied by a van and trailer carrying the necessary tools and equipment for the job – chain saws, pole pruners, brush cutters, fuel, and safety equipment. Ten to 15 workers arrived each Saturday and more than 30 workers were on hand on Sundays. Many of the clients work regular jobs on Saturdays and are only available for FITS duty on Sundays. Their efforts cleared a 20 foot right-of-way for over four miles of overgrown trail of everything from trees to the nefarious multiflora rose. In addition, they removed several hundred railroad ties from the drainage swales along approximately a mile of the trail.

Thanks to the efforts of Washington County, the personnel of the FITS program, and the FITS clients who provided over 1000 man-hours of volunteer time to the project, the Montour Trail Council is one step closer to realizing its goal of 47 miles of continuous trail.