> Actually Mike, most areas of the city have sidewalks except those that
> were already developed when they were annexed or developed in the year
> 1957. All new areas have sidewalks.
I don't really want to get into the question of to what extent city policies do or do not promote sprawl, at least not for now, but rather the narrower issue of sidewalks (which, coincidentally, will be the subject of a neighbourhood meeting I will be attending this evening). We all have a picture of what sprawl neighbourhoods v. walkable neighbourhoods look like, and while sidewalks are very important to have, a sidewalk alone does not make a place walkable and sustainable if there is no place to go within walking distance, and you still have to hop in a car to get to work/shopping/recreation where there is no decent, rapid, and frequent transit service and routes that are not designed to be safe for bicycles.
My question here is about Larry's response about what places should or shouldn't already have sidewalks. My street is hit or miss for sidewalks depending on how old the house is and what was required or not at the time, while many other streets in my neighbourhood have NO sidewalks at all. Empirically, I'm not sure that I understand Larry's assertion that 1957 is the cutoff.
I know that most of the houses in my neighbourhood are not more than 50 years old. Out of curiosity, I checked the assessor's site for all of the houses on one of the streets I know to lack sidewalks. Sure enough, those houses were ALL built in the late 1950s/early 1960s and the OLDEST one was built in 1957. I tried another street... again, most in the 1960s, none older than 1957, and even a handful built in the 1980s, yet even those houses do not have sidewalks.
If 1957 is the dividing line, those houses should already have sidewalks, or should be required to have them. I know that the opposition individual homeowners have to sidewalks, despite the public good, is that INDIVIDUAL homeowners are assessed very heavily for a part of the PUBLIC infrastructure, a cost that should, from an ethical perspective, be divided proportionally among ALL property taxpayers, rather than the current situation in which sidewalks that are available for all to use are subsidised disproportionately by those who are required to have them, while those who are exempt from having sidewalks are complete free-riders.
When I made this point at a previous sidewalks meeting, Larry replied that paying for it through general property taxes rather than special assessments wouldn't be fair because those who have already paid for their sidewalks would be paying again. The answer to that should be simple and easily implemented: if you already have sidewalks already paid for, you can be made exempt from or receive a credit against the increased levy for the life of the existing sidewalk as a transitional period, with everyone phased in after the very newest sidewalks at the time of enactment actually need replacement.
We place a pretty big and unfair burden on homeowners who have sidewalks, so it's not surprising that they resist them knowing that they are going to be stuck individually with the expense of everyone else's public infrastructure. It is much fairer to share it proportionately (provided that you make allowances to those who have already paid for theirs, whether in special assessments or built into the cost of the house).
Now go have a beer,
Bob Paolino
"Are Canadians just Americans who carry hockey
sticks instead of guns,
or is there more to it than that?"
--"This Canadian Existence"
Wisconsin Public Radio
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