Several cracked, broken and buckled sidewalks have shared space in this column in previous weeks, with the usual answer from city officials saying the problem has been added to the list of repair requests.
But one observant reader noted that the Star has written past articles about sidewalk problems and has given a different answer.
Allison H. Jones remembered the city code states property owners are responsible for keeping the sidewalks in front of their properties in good condition. She's right, even when the sidewalk is on city property abutting private property.
So Jones asked: "Why is the city repairing sidewalks at its own cost?"
"We're kind of caught in a gray area," said Jim Glock, city transportation director.
The city code requires the adjacent property owner to pay to repair the sidewalk, and have appropriate city permits to do so, he said.
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But the city has been giving some people a pass.
"If it's clear that the sidewalk failure was not due to the adjacent property owner's negligence, then yes, we are going ahead and handling those," Glock said.
It's usually obvious when someone has been driving or parking on the concrete or allowing a tree to grow close to the sidewalk, situations indicating the property owner has failed to keep the concrete in good repair.
"Lately with some of the buckled sidewalks that we've seen, they were sidewalks that the city recently installed, and we're still puzzling over the cause of the failures because they shouldn't be doing that so soon," Glock said. "We've been addressing those when it's clear it wasn't the property owner's failure to keep them in good repair."
