Sidewalk Fix Floated

Waiting for the city to repair your cracked sidewalk? Your alderman may get newfound power to help you.*

*(If you live in an even-numbered ward, along several main roads being repaved with federal funds, your sidewalk is a safety risk, and your ward didn’t have any sidewalks repaired last year.)

City Chief Administrative Officer Rob Smuts made that caveat-studded offer Thursday night, as he pitched a set of ​“objective” criteria to determine the order in which sidewalks will be repaired. The occasion was the first of three City Hall workshops convened by an aldermanic finance sub-committee to discuss an ordinance proposed by Wooster Square Alderman Mike Smart.

Smart has proposed dividing up the city’s paving, sidewalks, and tree-trimming budgets equally between the city’s 30 aldermen, who would each then have the power to determine which streets, sidewalks, and trees get attention in their wards. At the suggestion of the administration, Smarts modified his plan slightly, so that on even years the annual budget would be split between the aldermen in even-numbered wards; on odd years between odd-numbered wards.

When Smart proposed his plan, he said re-doing streets has been used as a way for the mayor to reward or punish aldermen, a charge the administration has disputed. Smart’s plan would instead give aldermen control over a major deliverable to their voters.

Mayor John DeStefano did not reject the move; his administration has moved to incorporate it.

CAO Smuts Thursday night proposed some modifications to Smart’s plan, to accommodate the need for emergency repairs and cost-effectiveness.

The committee did not vote on the matter. Two more meetings are scheduled, to discuss paving and trees. The focus Thursday night was on sidewalks.

Smuts said he would like to develop some ​“objective criteria” for determining which sidewalks will be repaired. The city has done that for street paving, he said. The city hired a consultant in 2009 to rate the condition of each street in the city, data the city now uses for paving triage.

The first step to equitable sidewalk repair would be to undertake a similar study of the city’s walkways, Smuts told Aldermen Smart, Evette Hamilton, Doug Hausladen, and Jeanette Morrison. He later said that such a study would probably cost about $50,000.

The city has some 400 miles of sidewalks, Smuts said. At a cost of $120 per linear foot, it would take about $253 million to replace all the sidewalks in the city. The city’s proposed annual sidewalk-repair budget for the next fiscal year is only a tiny sliver of that amount — $1.4 million. And that’s double what it is in the current fiscal year.

The city chooses to maintain sidewalks, but it’s technically not the city’s responsibility to repair them, Smuts noted. Almost all the city’s sidewalks are privately owned, except those in front of city buildings. The city is only responsible for repairing sidewalk damage caused by city infrastructure, including snow plows and growing tree roots that buckle the concrete, Smuts said.

But while the city doesn’t own the sidewalks, it is liable for injuries caused by people tripping on them, Smuts said. The city can make property owners carry the liability, but only if the city makes them fix the sidewalks, which is a cost the city hasn’t wanted to pass on to owners, Smuts said.

“Unless we’re going to take a hard line” on people repairing their sidewalks, ​“the liability for a trip hazard is something we’re going to have to worry about,” Smuts said.

Short of putting in a completely new sidewalk, the city has a couple of ways to patch up bad walkways. ​“Slab-grinding” can take down high spots that people might trip over, and asphalt fills can smooth over low spots. It’s not always ​“elegant,” but it works, Smuts said.

So, how to split up that $1.4 million?

Smuts proposed dividing it in half between ​“main roads” and ​“side roads.” The money would then be spent according to a set of ranked criteria, which are slightly different for main roads and side roads.

In each case, funds would first go toward addressing ​“objective safety issues.”

For main roads, sidewalks would then be repaired where the city is receiving federal, state, or regional money for repaving, according to Smuts’ proposal. It’s easiest and cheapest to do sidewalks concurrently with road repaving, Smuts said. This summer, Davenport Street, Dixwell Avenue, and Grand Avenue are slated for re-paving with federal dollars.

If no outside money is earmarked for the repaving of a main road, sidewalks on main roads would be repaired according to Smart’s even/odd alternation, with adjustments if the order has been messed up by federally funded projects in an even ward in an odd year, for example. And the work would be done between ​“logical stopping points” even if they cross ward boundaries, which would require further adjustments in the following year.

For side roads, after safety issues have been addressed, sidewalks would be repaired according to the even/odd system, with consideration, again, for ​“logical pieces” and with adjustments to ​“even out differences” caused by any of the criteria above.

Smuts also suggested it might make sense to do repairs by neighborhood, rather than by ward, since it would be easier to work with larger chunks of the city. For instance, four Fair Haven aldermen could get together and decide what sidewalks to repair in that neighborhood.

“I’m not really a fan of that,” Smart said later. Aldermen could always choose to pool their sidewalk money together if they wish, but it should be divided up individually to start, Smart said.

At the metting, Smart (pictured) said there needs to be a well-defined way for aldermen to shape the decision-making.

Hausladen suggested that process might be further democratized by a ​“participatory budgeting” process in which neighbors have a direct say in where money is spent.

Morrison said she is interested in that idea but worried it would take too long. The sidewalks all need to be brought up to basically the same level first, she said. The walkways in her Dixwell ward for instance, are terrible compared to those downtown in Hausladen’s ward, she said.

Downtown looks good partly because the business owners there contribute annually to the Town Green Special Services District, which sweeps the streets and takes out the trash, among other things, Hausladen said.

“You guys live in, like, a big old condo complex,” Morrison marveled.

“We have a lot of agreement on the basics” of sidewalk repair triage, Smuts said as the meeting wound down.

Smart said his main concern was still finding a clear way for aldermen to have input and control over the process.

“I think it look like it’s moving in the right direction,” Smart said later. ​“Obviously we’re still in the draft phases.”

The sub-committee will meet again Tuesday to discuss trees and paving — and grind out the remaining rough patches of sidewalk triage.