Plans to close the Manitou Incline this month for repairs may be endangered by funding issues.

“I’m very cautiously optimistic at this point,” Karen Palus, director of Colorado Springs Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services said late last week, as a contract had yet to be drawn up for workers to repair the upper part of the mountainside stair stepper, perhaps this region’s most popular trail.

The city had expected to have a contractor in place by the end of July, as outlined in its request for proposal. But the timeline has been thrown off by recent snags in the process to ensure reimbursable funding for the anticipated $2 million project.

When the Incline reopened Dec. 2 after repairs, city officials announced a third and final phase was selected to receive that money through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery program. The funding would cap a roughly $5 million effort to build erosion-mitigating structures along the steep stretch of railroad ties.

But now that funding appears to be in question. The state department administering the grant program told The Gazette on Monday that the city’s request for proposal returned one bid, raising eyebrows among federal granters who require an open and competitive process.

Read the full story at Gazette.com.