The presentation highlights costs facing cities who expect property owners to pay for repairs to abutting sidewalks and why such programs are prone to failure.
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Session 23: Bringing Sidewalk Maintenance Up to Scale
1. Sally Flocks President & CEO, PEDS ProWalk / ProBike 2010 Paying for Sidewalk Maintenance Whose Responsibility?
2. Well-maintained sidewalks may be one of the most important ways to keep massive numbers of older people in good enough health to not be institutionalized. Dan Burden www.pedbikeimages.org Dan Burden
3. By 2030 one out of five people will be over 60. Most will live an additional 20 – 25 years. www.pedbikeimages.org / Dan Burden www.pedbikeimages.org / Dan Burden
4. One out of three people over 65 has severe disabilities.
6. Public sidewalks . . . are a service, program, or activity of the City within the meaning of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act and are subject to program accessibility regulations. Barden v. Sacramento, 2003 Broken sidewalks also put cities at risk of high cost legal settlements.
7. “ Georgia SW State University . . . was sued by a woman who tripped . . . and broke her jaw and knee. . . . We'll be working on their sidewalks next month. A big reason they [settled the lawsuit] was because they didn't have a proactive, documented sidewalk repair program. Todd Fulk, Georgia Safe Sidewalks
11. Perhaps because sidewalks fail gradually . . . many cities have neglected sidewalk repairs and have let neighborhoods become less walkable.
12. Does gradual decay explain cities’ willingness to neglect sidewalk maintenance? Or is lack of political will to enforce unfair and unrealistic funding expectations a more accurate explanation?
13. Survey of 82 cities in 45 states Donald Shoup, “Fixing Broken Sidewalks” Access , Spring 2010
14. Sidewalks are public assets. Cities don’t ask property owners to repair potholes on their streets. Why, then do they delegate sidewalk maintenance to abutting property owners?
15. Delegating sidewalk repair costs is unfair to property owners. Property owners lack control over what happens on the public right of way. When sidewalks are on just one side of the street, should property owners on the other side get a free ride? Why should owners of corner lots pay double?
16. Should responsibility for sidewalk maintenance be in the hands of those with authority to ticket parking violators?
17. Pedestrians should not have to endure hazardous sidewalks wherever abutting property owners cannot afford to hire a contractor. Delegating sidewalk maintenance to property owners is unfair to pedestrians.
18. Damaged sidewalks often span multiple properties in the same block. Fixing these in a piecemeal way is far more expensive than repairing them on a block by block or neighborhood basis. Delegating responsibility to property owners increases maintenance costs.
22. Many sidewalks in Atlanta have not been repaired since they were built 60 – 110 years ago.
23. In 2004 the City of Atlanta kicked off a program to educate property owners about their responsibility to pay for fixing sidewalks that abut their property. During the four years that followed, the City collected only $200,000 from property owners to pay for sidewalk repairs. At that rate, it would take 1,600 years to address the estimated $80 million backlog.
24. Based on constituent complaints, we know that many of our sidewalks are in poor condition, yet it is a challenge to estimate what the true capital requirements are.
25. The actual length of sidewalks in the City of Atlanta is unknown. Their age and quality is also unknown.
26. The Commissioner of Public Works is authorized to cite a property owner for failure to maintain a sidewalk and – if the property owner fails to comply – can order the repairs and bill the owner for the cost.
27. However, it has been the City policy not to site property owners unless funding is available to execute the repairs; since funding has not been available in recent years, few citations have been issued.
29. “ Atlanta Public Schools is prohibited from repairing and replacing sidewalks on city property due to the constitutional requirement that school funds be allocated only for educational purposes.” What about sidewalks abutting public property?
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32. In Los Angeles, 4,600 of the city’s 10,750 miles of sidewalks need some degree of repair at an estimated cost of $1.2 billion.
33. Despite this backlog, the city fixed an average of only 67 miles of sidewalks a year between 2000 and 2008.
34. Los Angeles followed the state code [requiring property owners to maintain sidewalks] until 1973, when federal funds became available to repair sidewalks at no cost to property owners.
35. Three years later, when the federal funds ran out, Los Angeles was left with no sidewalk repair program.
36. When the city attempted to reinstate the previous policy of citing property owners, owners objected to the “new” mandate and the city halted citations.
37. Short of money, Los Angeles made only temporary asphalt patches to cracked sidewalks or – more often– did nothing at all.
38. “ Portland’s system is pretty good, but the problem is the funding for sidewalk inspections has been cut and cut and cut, so it is not working like it used to. But the way it used to work was great.” Ellen Vanderslice, City of Portland
39. Transportation oversees the maintenance of sidewalks, curbs, and corners, while abutting property owners are responsible for maintaining sidewalks.
41. The City has the responsibility to inspect the safety of over 8,600,000 square yards of city sidewalks. . . . Bureau inspectors assess sidewalks and notify the property owner of needed repairs. In the event repairs are not made by the property owner, Transportation Maintenance hires a private contractor to make the repairs and bills the property owner for the repairs.
42. Billing combined with property tax Provides long-term, low-interest loans Makes repairs prior to billing property owner Rarely/ reactive Notifies property owner of needed repairs Proactive sidewalk inspection Inspects curbs and pays for repairs Code requires abutting property owners to pay for sidewalk repairs Atlanta Portland Identifying, implementing & financing sidewalk repairs Low poverty rate
43. “ I am really struggling to get communities in Georgia to take sidewalk safety seriously. . . .Their favorite answer is "we don't have sidewalk repair in the budget" or "we have to cut our budget next year; so, we can't add any new items like sidewalk repairs to it.” Todd Fulk, Georgia Safe Sidewalks How should cities pay for sidewalk maintenance?
44. The ADA will force cities to do what they should be doing anyway: maintain public infrastructure. Donald Shoup, Fixing Broken Sidewalks Are lawsuits the only strategy that works?
