San Bruno is moving forward with enforcing sidewalk repairs as the responsibility of residents, the City Council decided at its meeting Aug. 26.
Under a new program called Clearpath, San Bruno is planning to send out notices to residents who are responsible for paying for sidewalk repairs outside of their properties. If they don’t work with a city-selected contractor or a private contractor of their own choosing, San Bruno will use a public process to repair the sidewalk and include that cost in owners’ yearly property taxes.
The Clearpath program will prioritize lower-cost shaving repairs to damaged sidewalks, sloping sidewalk cracks to meet accessibility standards rather than a full removal and replacement process.
While sidewalks outside of privately-owned buildings have already been the maintenance responsibility of owners per San Bruno municipal code and state law, the change in enforcement might confuse some residents, Mayor Rico Medina warned.
“I would think if we went … around a few streets and said, ‘Who do you think is responsible for the sidewalk?’ They're not going to say them,” he said. “Mostly they will assume it’s the city and that it’s just something else we have now placed the burden upon them.”
The Public Works Department is working to communicate the upcoming change to residents, staff said, including via in-person conversations and social media.
Public and city-owned property remains under San Bruno’s jurisdiction to repair. Because many of those maintenance issues have been caused by tree roots, Vice Mayor Marty Medina cautioned against applying shaving as a one-size-fits-all approach to those repairs. The city will pay for repairs caused by city trees.
“It gets to a point where you’re better off just replacing it,” he said. “As you probably note around town, there's numerous locations where city trees are lifting it up and you’d have to go back.”
The first phase of sidewalk repairs — including high-priority areas throughout the city and the first priority zone — will cost the city and property owners around $7 million with both the shaving and remove-and-replace approach. The city is prioritizing fixing sidewalks in areas with necessary public access, like government buildings and transit stops, staff said.
In addition, using the shaving approach when necessary could save the city over $12 million, staff said. To resolve issues at the 11,500 locations throughout San Bruno identified for potential shaving would cost around $1 million and 75 working days. The traditional remove-and-replace method would cost around $13 million.
(2) comments
Another sign San Mateo Democrats are NOT as "green" as they pretend to be.
Denver now wants to take care of all sidewalks in their city.
A good county would offer solid sidewalks and bike lanes for free but have tolls on their highways.
A bad county invest ONLY into freeways and free on-street private car storage, but homeowners in charge of sidewalk quality and then let cars park on it - never enforcing municipal codes.
If residents are responsible for their sidewalk then they should have the option of not repairing them and instead, yanking out their sidewalks. And for those in “high-priority areas” talk to your local representative and get off the high-priority area list. Or maybe sue the city for selectively enforcing a law they’ve never enforced before. Haven’t they set a precedent by not enforcing the law? Perhaps San Bruno should allocate more funds in their legal budget.
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