Public Works Transportation senior planner Michelle Swanson said Olympia is considering establishing a sidewalk repair program, which includes identifying the party responsible for sidewalk repairs.
Swanson was at the Olympia Planning Committee on Monday to update the commissioners on the research they have been doing on varying policies from different places regarding repairing sidewalks.
Swanson pointed out that the city code states that the adjacent property owner is responsible for repairing sidewalks.
"Most residents are not aware that they are responsible for repairing sidewalks adjacent to their property," Swanson said. "They perceived sidewalks to be infrastructure equivalent to a street and expect the city to maintain them the same way the city maintained streets."
The city's interim approach to sidewalk repair, developed in 2017, includes relying on public reports to identify damaged sidewalks.
Once a location is reported, the crews are dispatched to the site and mark the sidewalk with paint to inform people that there is an uneven sidewalk.
"We take one of few actions where we maintain street trees. We will put the location on a list for city crews to evaluate. Where we do not maintain street trees, we sent a letter to the property owner to inform them of their responsibility, and we asked them to fix the sidewalk," Swanson explained.
Swanson identified tree roots as one of the leading causes of poor sidewalk repair.
The Land Use and Environment Committee recently asked the city staff to explore policy options to improve sidewalk maintenance in Olympia.
According to Swanson, they looked at 13 cities in Washington that have a policy of doing temporary repairs on every sidewalk in their jurisdiction. "The main difference we noticed in the surveyed cities is how they handle the permanent repair. They require the adjacent property owners to do it and how they find out the repairs needed."
She said cities that handle repairs on all sidewalks are Bellingham, Lacey, Cheney, Issaquah, and Tumwater.
Property owners in Seattle, Vancouver, Duvall, and Richland are responsible for fixing the adjacent sidewalks.
Wenatchee, Walla Walla, Centralia, and Auburn have codes that say the adjacent property owner is responsible for the sidewalk. If city government funds allow, they will do the repairs they handle on an ad hoc basis from year to year.
In Olympia, Swanson said, property owners are responsible for sidewalk repairs, but the city handles repairs on a case-by-case basis in certain areas.
According to Swanson, Lacey has a policy of maintaining all sidewalks within the city limits, even though their codes still hold the adjacent property owner responsible.
Each year, Lacey selects one or a few neighborhoods annually to repair all sidewalks, which amounts to around 250 sites. They used public complaints to identify areas that needed repairs. Since 2020, they have done a full inventory of their sidewalk each winter.
This year, Swanson added that Lacey hired a contractor to do a GIS-based inventory to give them updates each. The contract for that is $75,000.
Lacey has allocated $829,000 for sidewalk repair, with $500,000 coming from the Transportation Benefit District (TBD) funds and the rest from their general fund.
Auburn has a different approach to sidewalk repairs, according to Swanson. It involves heavy administration and relies on complaints to determine whether a sidewalk needs repair. If the damage is caused by a tree or something on private property, the owner is responsible for fixing it.
However, Auburn allows the property owner to contract with the city to fix sidewalks. That removes the barrier for residents who wants to fix their sidewalks but do not know how to hire a contractor.
"The advantage of this program is that residents might pay less, making it easier for them. The disadvantage is that it is administratively costly, and you need accounting staff to track payments. Transportation staff needs to coordinate with the property owners on the contract," Swanson commented.
Swanson said their long-term goal is to establish an in-house sidewalk repair program. She presented different policy approaches. The city staff is still developing a Land Use and Environment Committee recommendation.
She discussed different policy approaches, including:
Swanson commented that maintaining the current approach is a considerable cost to the city as it is liable to claims resulting from trip and fall incidents. This approach is deemed inequitable as it fails to address all community members' needs adequately.
5 comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here
pheong
Olympia still bangin' the same drum. It is not the homeowner's property. It is not the homeowner's tree(s) causing the damage. City trees, city land, city responsibility, yet heavily taxed homeowners are responsibile for city property?
Utter Horseshit.
Tuesday, June 6, 2023 Report this
Larry Dzieza
The report was a much needed breath of fresh air as the Council recognized it was way overdue for a closer look.
The table that compares the different policy approaches shows that the "city maintains all sidewalks" option is clearly the better choice.
While the JOLT is a great way to share community ideas, the lack of placing pictures or live links is a downer. But if you cut and paste this URL into your browser you can seen a screenshot I took of the very important evaluation slide.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HWgGDsTKOSgIzN53qbb3BIggyPDpfnWU/view?usp=sharing
Also heartening is that the City Manager found $300,000 in unspent 2022 money that will go towards hiring a contractor to do some repairs.
The city is taking on the actions necessary when we recognize that sidewalks are not just seen as "nice to do" thing but a substantative and multi-beneficial element of an overrall transportation system.
Tuesday, June 6, 2023 Report this
johngreen
The City of Lacey requires owners to plant street trees and maintain them. The city owns the sidewalks and the property owner owns the trees, what could go wrong here? The city has tried to keep up with repairs, but the job is huge. They have helped the future condition of sidewalks by mandating smaller species of trees for street trees, but there are plenty of large species in the street tree inventory. I would prefer to pay more taxes, have more trees and have sidewalks repaired.
Wednesday, June 7, 2023 Report this
BobJacobs
The connection between street trees and sidewalk maintenance has not been appropriately addressed by our local cities.
The cities require the installation of street trees. But those trees inevitably heave the sidewalks. The current solution is to replace the damaged sidewalks, but each time that is done it merely creates a future sidewalk problem. And sidewalk repair/replacement is surprisingly expensive.
It is obviously unfair for cities to require street trees and sidewalks, and force adjacent property owners to make the resulting sidewalk repairs.
The obvious solution is for the cities to pay for the repairs caused by the street trees they require. This is very expensive.
And using smaller tree species can help, but will not fully solve the problem. And will also not provide other benefits of trees as well.
Possible solutions not being considered currently include (1) removing and replacing street trees before they cause sidewalk damage, if that is less expensive than repairing the sidewalks. (2) requiring trees elsewhere on building lots, far enough away from sidewalks as to not cause damage.
Let's get creative about this issue.
Bob Jacobs
Wednesday, June 7, 2023 Report this
JohnOuthouse
Since 2005 Olympia has collected sales tax to explicitly pay for sidewalks. Any discussion about this needs to start with a full accounting of how the city has used the $ it has collected.
Thursday, June 8, 2023 Report this