Last updated June 12, 2026
In June 2022 the City awarded $66,148.66 in Community Preservation Act funds to rehabilitate the Volunteers Bridge — all work “to be completed within one year.” Four years later, this sign is what visitors get instead. And the developer’s new 27-page filing does not mention the bridge once.
— What this bridge is —
In 1997, Ward 7 Councilor Steve Dibble and more than 100 residents built this 200-foot, 6-foot-wide boardwalk across the Forest River salt marsh over two weekends, with their own hands. It was named the Volunteer Bridge in their honor, and volunteers have provided the labor to build and repair it ever since.
It sits about half a mile down the main walking trail — the destination of the wheelchair-accessible stone-dust path the City built in 2017. From its decking, you can see two worlds at once: a still salt panne on one side and the flowing, brackish Forest River channel on the other.
And it works for a living. For years, Salem Sound Coastwatch has brought about 200 sixth graders a year from Saltonstall and Collins Middle School to the marsh, where the bridge is “the only possible and appropriate location” to set and retrieve fish traps for the Salt Marsh Study field trip. Preschoolers from the Greenhouse School, Salem State biology students, and teachers in summer training all use it.
Sources: Salem News, “Into the deep woods of South Salem”; Salem Sound Coastwatch CPC Funding Application Narrative (2022), pp. 1–4, on file.
— Follow the money —
The Conservation Commission and Community Preservation Committee jointly fund a professional trails assessment by Kyle Zick Landscape Architecture and Childs Engineering. Its conclusion on the bridge, as quoted in the City’s own later grant file:
“Severe deterioration and lack of guard rail would prevent the bridge from meeting current code.”
The assessment found the boardwalks could not be considered ADA accessible due to loose boards and non-level entries, and explicitly recommended the Volunteer Bridge be replaced and guardrails added. Guardrails are required whenever a boardwalk is more than 30 inches above the ground — and every FRCA boardwalk exceeds that limit.
Source: Forest River Conservation Area Trails Assessment (KZLA + Childs Engineering, Feb 2016), as quoted in the SSCW CPC Application Narrative, pp. 1–2.
The City Council approves the Community Preservation Committee’s recommendation to award $66,148.66 in CPA funds for “Volunteer Bridge Rehabilitation, Forest River Conservation Area” — to the City’s own Conservation Commission, with Salem Sound Coastwatch as implementing partner. The award letter’s terms:
July 1, 2022
Work commences
One year
To complete all work
Nov 10, 2022
First quarterly report due
The 2022 plan was the same one that built the bridge: paid materials, volunteer labor. The application pledged roughly $150,000 of in-kind volunteer construction labor, and noted that two engineers on the Conservation Commission had already inspected the existing pilings and found them still in good condition — reusable. The funds were revocable if no project activity occurred within six months.
Sources: Volunteer Bridge Award letter, City of Salem Dept. of Planning & Community Development, June 30, 2022; SSCW CPC Funding Application + Narrative (2022). All on file.
Walk out to the bridge today and you will find patched boards on an aging frame — and still no guardrails, the exact code failure the City’s engineers flagged a decade ago. The comprehensive rehabilitation the grant paid for — reframing on the existing pilings, full new decking, guardrails and toe-boards on both sides, accessible ramps at both ends — has not been done.
Meanwhile, the developer redeveloping the land at the bridge’s doorstep filed 27 pages of supplemental plans on June 9, 2026 — trail connections, plantings, benches, signage. The Volunteers Bridge appears in that filing zero times.
Source: Supplemental Submission to NOI, Goddard Consulting LLC, June 9, 2026 (DEP File #064-0825).
The question Salem deserves an answer to
Was it spent? Partially used? Did it lapse? Was it reallocated? The award required quarterly reports, the first due November 10, 2022. Those reports, and the answer, belong to the public.
And one thing this is not: a budget problem. Community Preservation Act money is legally walled off from the City’s general fund — it cannot be touched by deficits and it exists for exactly this kind of project. “We can’t afford it” does not apply to a repair that was already funded.
The realistic path
Volunteers built this bridge in 1997 and have patched it for nearly three decades. But a rebuild that meets today’s code — guardrails, new decking, accessible ramps — is professional construction work, and it is time the City treated it that way. The 2022 plan leaned on roughly $150,000 of pledged volunteer labor to stretch a $66,148.66 materials award. Take the volunteers out of the equation and the funding gap is plain.
The party that should close that gap is standing at the bridge’s doorstep. The developer about to profit from this land promised, in its winning proposal, to upgrade the trail area “in concert with the Conservation Commission.” Here is what that looks like: the 2022 award plus a developer contribution, built to code by qualified contractors. The Commission can write it into the June 16 Order of Conditions.
And if the developer’s answer is that the June 9 plan is the full extent of what it will do? Then the Commission can put the guarantee in writing: require a dedicated bridge-repair fund, held in escrow, as a condition of the Order. Money set aside in an account that can only be spent on the bridge, deposited before construction begins. The construction money is in hand before the first board is lifted, and a promise made to win this land becomes a line item instead of a talking point.
A city that funded this repair in 2022, and a developer that promised trail resiliency to win this land, should not both be standing on opposite banks watching the bridge rot in between.
Sources for this page: Volunteer Bridge Award letter, City of Salem DPCD, June 30, 2022 (CPA award $66,148.66; one-year completion; quarterly reporting; six-month activity clause). Salem Sound Coastwatch FY22 CPC Funding Application and Narrative, March 2022 (1990s volunteer construction; 2016 KZLA/Childs assessment quotes; piling evaluation by Conservation Commission engineers; ~$150,000 in-kind volunteer labor; School-to-Sea programming). Salem News, “Into the deep woods of South Salem” (1997 construction, $87,500 accessible-trail grant). Supplemental Submission to NOI, Goddard Consulting LLC, June 9, 2026, DEP File #064-0825 (no mention of the bridge).
— Tell City Hall —
Residents who ask the City about the bridge are being told a feasibility study is planned for next year. But the feasibility work is already on the City’s own shelf: the condition was assessed by engineers in 2016, the pilings were inspected and found sound in 2022, and the repair was scoped and funded in 2022. A new study would spend another year and more public money repurchasing answers the City already owns.
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