On 06/21/2021 the Municipal Services Committee voted to approve updates to the city’s Sidewalk Maintenance Policy.
For reasons I don’t understand, Item #21-0870 “Approve updated Sidewalk Maintenance Policy” appears in the agenda packet and was discussed and voted on in the committee meeting but for some reason it doesn’t show up on the meeting minutes. You either have to go into the bowels of the city’s Legistar page to find out what the vote was or watch the video of the meeting to find it out. I mention this just so that anybody who’s checking out the meeting details and minutes doesn’t think I’m simply recapping a fever dream. This discussion and vote did actually happen and are in the meeting video even if they’re not reflected in the minutes.
Director Paula Vandehey explained to the committee that city staff had worked with the Attorney’s Office on updating this policy. She said they wanted to review the language and soften it to make sure they were not setting any expectations that they might not be able to meet due to a lack of allocated resources or funding. She also said the Attorney’s Office also gets a little anxious when policy’s use the term “will” because that sets the expectation that, regardless of the available resources or funding, the city will be doing this particular thing. As a result, as they’ve been reviewing their policies, they’ve really been paying attention to making sure that they’re using words like “will”, “can”, “shall” and “may” in the right situation. They’ve also been paying attention to gender neutral language.
She said that another big change is that, at one time, they had decided that the sidewalks in the Downtown core area would be reviewed annually, and they were not proposing to no longer do that because the result had been that, over time, the Downtown area was being held to a really high standard while other areas of the city weren’t getting as much attention as they should. Going forward, they would like to treat the Downtown area just like any other neighborhood in the city. She said that, there were a lot of folks in the Downtown area so if anyone complains about a sidewalk needing to be fixed the city will address that just like they address any complaint. But they felt that they didn’t need to continue separating the Downtown area out for special review and want to treat it like they do the rest of the city.
Alderperson Chad Doran asked if they needed to have the language in the Response Time section about sidewalks being respected and repaired “within a reasonable amount of time”. He wondered if they needed to define what a reasonable amount of time was and said it seemed pretty vague.
Someone from the Attorney’s Office who sounded like Attorney Behrens but wasn’t explicitly identified so I can’t be positive, answered that “reasonable amount of time” is often left up to a fact-finder to determine. It’s an accepted and recognized standard. He also pointed out that the language was not being added but was already in the existing policy. He also said that with the policy they were trying to balance a level of flexibility for the department to decide what areas needed to be addressed and when with the needs and wants of residents to have problem areas addressed. He thought that leaving that language in there would demonstrate that the expectation was that the department would respond within a reasonable amount of time. That response would be up to the department’s discretion based on what they find when investigating a complaint and also whatever other situations they may be facing. For example, if a big storm had just gone through and a lot of resources had been tapped cleaning up that storm, a complaint about a sidewalk square in disrepair might not be handled as quickly as during a time when staff were readily available. Bottom line, it was a fairly standardized term that allowed for the flexibility the department needed.
Alderperson Joe Prohaska (District 14) agreed and thought they should leave it in there because it gave people some sense that an issue would get fixed and that it wouldn’t take 5 years to do so.
Alderperson Brad Firkus (District 3) had a question not about the policy per se but wanted to know more generally how the city decided which which sidewalk projects to prioritize.
Director Vandehey said that they had a bunch of different things going on at the same time. They have a Green Dot map which is an area in the city where they proactively walk all the sidewalks and repair and replace any sidewalks that meet the criteria for being repaired or replaced. That was funded by one bank of money. In the meantime, they also have people throughout the city calling and reporting sidewalk issues such as a sidewalk getting raised up because of a tree root. Those repairs are funded by another bank of money, and in that case it is first come first served. They have an allocated amount of money for the replacement program and they just work through that until it’s gone. They also have a sidewalk grinding program. They grind sidewalks in response to complaints they receive, and they also have a proactive grinding area. Grinding sidewalks allows them to now have to replace them.
Alderperson Firkus said that was good to know and wanted to confirmed that the different groupings and criterias she outlined were because of different funding sources.
Director Vandehey said the way the manage things was their attempt to be both proactive and reactive. They have their Green Dot map so they can actively go out and attend to the sidewalks but if they put all their money into that then they would not be able to address people who call in problem areas and it might be years before they got to those.
There were no more questions and the item was approved unanimously.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=859284&GUID=765DEFC6-4104-46C7-AC95-F5445C5C27A0&Options=info|&Search=
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