Comments on: July 1, 2013 Ann Arbor Council: Final

By: Jim Rees

Jim Rees — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 12:29:09 +0000

Dave, sorry for the late reply, I’ve been out of town.

The Fair Street path connects the two halves of Fair Street, and runs from the intersection of Fair and Glendale to the parking lot of the Westwood Apartments. It actually shows up on Google maps as a thin gray line.

And I must have had my brain disengaged when I wrote that. The Fair Street path was important to me because its status was the least clear and it was (and still is) in the worst shape of the footpaths used by Eberwhite kids. For the kids, the most important path is probably whichever one they use to get to school.

We recently lost another path to urban encroachment. There used to be a path across a vacant lot from Elder Street to Seventh, but houses have now been built over the path and I don’t think you can get through there any more.

By: Dave Askins

Dave Askins — Sat, 06 Jul 2013 22:47:26 +0000

Re: "I'm curious about ... " John, in case you mean "curious" in the sense that you wonder what the full-on remarks actually were as opposed to the super-brief summary, the link in the update above, repeated here, goes to the blog entry where Briere lays out the whole thing in its entirety.

By: John Floyd

John Floyd — Sat, 06 Jul 2013 22:37:50 +0000

Glad Sabra has found something nice to say about everyone. I’m not sure what she meant by the comment on the mayor, and I’m curious about the remarks to Lumm, Taylor, and Kunsleman.

By: Dave Askins

Dave Askins — Sat, 06 Jul 2013 18:41:04 +0000

Re: “The most important one for Eberwhite kids is the Fair Street path.”

Jim, could you describe where that path runs? (From looking at Google Maps I wasn’t able to come up with anything – partly because there’s too many trees to see much of anything at the scale of a cross-lot path.)

By: Jim Rees

Jim Rees — Thu, 04 Jul 2013 16:20:27 +0000

I’m happy to see these footpaths discussed. During my six years on the Eberwhite Safe Routes to School committee we tried many times to get the status of the footpaths clarified, in particular who is responsible for maintaining them and clearing the snow. In spite of the best efforts of City staff and a few councilmembers, we never did get this figured out.

There are a few other paths not mentioned here. The most important one for Eberwhite kids is the Fair Street path. As far as I can tell it’s strictly private property, in spite of signage obviously installed by the City.

By: Jack Eaton

Jack Eaton — Tue, 02 Jul 2013 14:31:22 +0000

With regard to the proposal to change the definition of “sidewalks”, the article notes: “The impact of the definition change would make the paths eligible to be repaired by the city using sidewalk millage funds.”

The illustration used as an example for this article shows three walkways from public streets to Dicken Elementary School. Two of those walkways (PED-00014 and PED-0032) were repaved by the City last year without regard to ownership or the definition of sidewalks.

I wonder whether those projects were funded with sidewalk millage money or some other source. If the City can address these two walkways without running afoul of the sidewalk definition or the limits on using the sidewalk millage, why can’t the “four paths in dire need of repair” be paved before the definition is changed?