A HOMEOWNER was furious after being charged thousands of dollars to fix a sidewalk that isn’t part of her property and discovered she isn’t the only one.
Terri Shearer of San Francisco, California, was shocked when she received a bill from the city for $3,000 after a contractor was hired to repair the sidewalk in front of her home.
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“I was upset about it,” Shearer said The San Francisco Standard.
“It’s not my property, it’s the city’s property, the sidewalk, but still…they’re passing those repair costs onto the owner.”
It turns out the problem affected many homeowners in the state in the early 20th century. law assigns responsibility for the cost of such repairs to adjacent property owners.
Several major cities, including San Jose, San Diego and Oakland, have given residents responsibility for sidewalks.
Whenever cities tried to take on the burden themselves, they faced enormous costs to maintain the walkways.
There was an initiative in Sacramento in 1973 that returned responsibility for sidewalks to the city, however, it only lasted three years after officials faced widespread calls for repairs.
Cities in other states have successfully done this, such as Washington DC and Ann Arbor, Michigan.
In Chicago, city officials share the costs with property owners, while other cities will finance repairs by charging residents an assessment fee that is set aside specifically for sidewalk maintenance.
BOTTOM LINE
Another resident, Nick Espiritu, was also charged $3,000 to repair the sidewalk in front of his property, but his neighbor contacted a private company to make the repairs.
Espiritu compared prices and discovered that the private company could have carried out the repairs at a deep discount.
“The city is going to charge a lot,” said Roberto Valdez, owner of Big Blue Construction.
Valdez explained that he can offer much lower prices for sidewalk repairs because he is not bound by bureaucratic rules like city officials.
Public Works spokeswoman Rachel Gordon said the department is following state and local laws when charging residents for sidewalk repairs.
She added that with the way the funding is, the agency would not be able to maintain the sidewalks on its own.
“It’s a resource issue, ultimately,” Gordon said.
“We don’t have the resources to take care of this, and it is, and has been, the responsibility of the adjacent property owners.”
There is an exception when sidewalks are damaged by city trees, something San Francisco has paid for since a 2016 ballot measure made it so.
Local ordinances recording sidewalk repairs are part of the rules residents need to keep communities safe, said Public Works Director Carla Short.
“But sometimes we don’t want to pay for it when we’re in trouble,” she said.
“So I think we just need to remember, in general terms, that it takes all of us to pitch in to help keep San Francisco safe.”
However, many residents argue that repairs are not fast enough.
Richard Matzinger told the outlet that he often finds broken sidewalks in his neighborhood, marked with paint to show that repairs are needed.
But he says the work takes so long to complete that the paint fades before the contractor arrives, if he ever does.
“If it’s a dangerous place, then someone has to be responsible for it and someone has to fix it,” Matzinger said.
“Pedestrians are all at risk until they do so.”
According to Public Works data, the city takes an average of about 477 days from sidewalk inspection to repairs.
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This story originally appeared on The-sun.com read the full story
