To the editor:

The photo accompanying a story about damaged sidewalks (June 14) shows Bob Mikesic trying to negotiate the disintegrating path along the side of my house. The sidewalk in front of my house isn’t in much better shape.

I know that Kansas law requires me to maintain the sidewalks, and the sidewalks have bothered me for years. I can afford to repair them. So why don’t I?

The sidewalk in the photograph was damaged before I bought my house seven years ago by a city crew installing a new water meter. The sidewalk in front of my house was torn up about five years ago by a Southwestern Bell crew installing a utility access pit. As much as I regret these problems, I don’t feel much responsibility for them.

The city will probably find it easier to force me to pony up for sidewalk repairs than to pay for them itself or to hold Southwestern Bell responsible. If it does, I’ll fix the sidewalks. Then they can get torn up again in the fall, when the city plans what it facetiously, or at least euphemistically, calls “improvements” to the intersection where I live.

Bradley Kemp,

Lawrence