My sidewalk was tagged last year/maybe the year before – two slabs. I had a heaved section that wasn’t tagged and dithered about deciding whether to replace 6 slabs or 2 and did nothing. The two slabs that were tagged were minor hairline crack violations.

Anyway, I was re-tagged this year as was another non-compliant neighbor. This time it included the heaved section, which should have been tagged the first time around.

I let the city do the work; I got a survey about how happy I was with the work/contact/etc. However, I haven’t gotten a bill, nor has the charge shown up on my tax records.

My work was done about 6 weeks ago; the neighbor who also opted to let the city do the work (we had to have our own contractors done/inspected by June 16th) has not had any work done yet.

My suspicion is that non-compliant owners will slip through the cracks. Or, they may just get a free sidewalk job.

Considering the nearly unanimous view that the present “good luck finding a contractor” non-system has been an unmitigated disaster, I expect the sidewalk millage will only pass if the City apologizes to the citizens and guarantees that only the City will be responsible for repairs if the millage passes.

Mr. Pirooz’ “clear message from voters” on the sidewalk repair issue includes:

–one survey response breakdown on whether the millage amount is “good value” which is a 50/50 toss-up (and therefore inconclusive by any polling standard): strongly agree + agree (35.3, 14.0 = 49.3%) vs. neutral, disagree + strongly disagree (25.1, 12.4, 13.3 = 50.8%). I would hardly call this a “clear message.” Conclusive is binary: yes/no, true/false. What does “good value” mean? Isn’t that irrelevant to the question of whether it’s the RIGHT TIME to assess a millage?

–another survey response breakdown is to a question entirely in the subjunctive tense, the plain English of which says nothing about whether respondents favored paying the millage or not, or within what timeframe: “I would prefer that the City were responsible”. 70% of the people responded positively.

Of course! I, too, would prefer that the City were responsible for something. (How about my mortgage payment?) But as I have been “made” responsible very recently to the tune of $1000, my support for such a proposal would be subjunctive AND conditional: if the City were to credit my repair amounts against my millage assessment for some period of time, then I would prefer to support the millage.

Seriously, how much did the City pay Alexander Resources Consulting, LLC for this dreck? We have the finest survey expertise in the United States here at U of M at ISR, whose consumer sentiment survey is cited by every news organization on the planet as authoritative. Maybe they would have been free or at least very cheap if this were integrated into an ISR or Ross Business School case study for an appropriate class.

Why let respondents choose “neutral”? Why not just “strongly agree-agree-disagree-strongly disagree”? (When it goes up for a vote, there will be no “neutral” factored into the results).

Does “neutral” on a question in the subjunctive mean “I don’t care whether the City adds this to my taxes” or “I’m not sure whether I would prefer if the City were responsible” for these kinds of things? I’m not sure I even know what that means and even in a town of an average of 1.25 college degrees I’m not sure most of the “neutral” respondents had any clue about parsing that. All things being equal (meaning, I’m in a situation where I didn’t just spend $1000 to comply), I also would prefer if the City were responsible.

However, now that the 5-year “Sidewalk Repair” plan has come and gone –and some people complied and others did not — and the City did a less than competent job of administering and closing the plan out — I’m only in favor of a sidewalk millage as long as:

–Noncompliant owners are brought into the system before they can take advantage. This is a basic fairness issue. Existing properties that were marked within the 5-year period and did not comply within the period should have the average cost of repairing in compliance added to their property taxes, amortized out over some period of time. Maybe 5 years, since that was the length of the program they didn’t comply with.

–Property owners who obeyed the City’s mandate and complied and repaired within the last 5 years should be allowed to amortize the cost of their repair as a credit against the millage. Once again, a basic fairness issue. Responsible property owners should not have to pay twice.

–The U should have to pay the millage for all sidewalks adjacent to its properties using some type of baseline assessed value for calculating the millage.

At that point we have a “clean slate” go-forward to begin fairly and equitably collecting taxes for future maintenance.

IF the City were to make these additional points an unconditional and explicit part of the millage proposal wording then come November I would prefer to support it too.

Good lord. I’m tired of excuses. The man takes credit for everything and the responsibility for nothing. Pathetic.

I had the same confusion as you, but ultimately went with Dave’s quote (seemed like a quote at the time) of Mr. Heiftje.

I recall hearing of a science fiction B movie from the ’50′s called “Attack OF the 50 Foot Woman” (emphasis mine). I don’t think the film was about lilliputian men trying to drag the protaganist into an alley – that would be “Attack ON the 50 foot woman -but rather, as your reading of this sentance structure would suggest, a rogue,tall, female.

In any case, jumping women is no joke, nor is fear of being jumped. After his cuts to public safety, I can see why Mr. Hieftje wants to change the subject.

Now that that’s settled, can we talk some more about our lack of progress with public art?

The new handicap ramps being installed around town are not paid for by the property owner, but by the City. These ramps are the outward signal that the City lost a lawsuit *and* that the City is attempting to guarantee handicap accessibility throughout the sidewalk system. The retaining walls are being installed where the slope for a wheel chair would be too steep; the City is supporting the adjacent lawn while building a long incline.

These curb cuts will not be paid out of a sidewalk millage, were one to pass.

It seems the definition of “Capitol Improvement” and restriction of these fund withdrawals only to newly imagined projects would keep the sidewalk millage from being an unending source of funds, or unlimited trough, for the Arts program. As an example, it seems the new sidewalk from fraternity row to Arborland would qualify as a source of money for the program, but routine maintenance and repair of existing sidewalks would not. Since the new millage language as it currently stands states the millage will “provide a total of up to 2.125 mills for sidewalk trip hazard repair”, then it cannot be construed as a capitol improvement fund, unless it is misappropriated.

That being said, I still wonder about these retaining walls I have seen, especially near the newly installed handicap ramps. Some of these walls are quite tall and extensive (2 feet high by multiple slabs wide), and some have been incorporated into existing rock retaining walls. It brings up questions about whether some of these have drainage systems included, and there can be no doubt they include more labor and skill than simply pouring sidewalk slabs. To me this seems to go way beyond sidewalk repair and into a realm where the city is doing capitol improvements to private property—who is paying for this?

I should note that the BOC rarely had (in my day) much public commentary. There were a couple of regulars and some very long nights when a particular issue came up, but usually it was just one or two people who commented.

I thought it a good inclusion.