Visionary leadership often requires driving a project down the road less traveled.

Those sorts of roads often have a few bumps and ruts.

The occasional bumpy ride, however, is a small price to pay for getting something meaningful done, particularly if the “something” is a creation that will benefit generations of youth in the community.

That’s a lesson members of the Concordia Parish Recreation District No. 3 board are learning as they begin to tweak plans for a new recreation facility to be build in Vidalia.

Effectively, the bids came back higher than anticipated, so the recreation board is working to figure out ways to save some of the project’s costs.

Rising oil prices — which greatly affect the cost of asphalt and other building materials — are largely to blame.

We applaud their efforts and know they’ll be successful.

Although at least a year behind the parish’s efforts, Adams County’s recreation commission is wise to stay in tune with what their parish counterparts are doing and learn from their experience.

Doing that is similar to closely following behind someone on a bumpy road. If you watch where they drive, you can see the bumps and ruts before you hit them.

In the end, we know that the drive to rebuild our community’s recreation infrastructure will prove successful — on both sides of the river.

Eventually, today’s ruts and bumps will be viewed as simple obstacles that built the foundation of the projects.