Letter to the editor: Sidewalk ‘ownership’

To the editor:

As a sidewalk “owner,” I would like to tell you a little about having a sidewalk.

On “our” sidewalk, we see joggers, dog walkers, kids going to school, oldsters from a nearby facility, young moms and dads pushing baby strollers, etc. Great!

In addition, every single passing dog pees on our property. The grass in their favorite spots in our yard is D-E-A-D as a doornail. Due to the violent, instinctive scraping of large male dogs, I have lost whole flower beds. We also get to clean up big steaming gifts when dogs’ owners aren’t conscientious about picking up.

If my husband and I (in our 70s) don’t shovel the snow off the walk, we get a hefty fine. We do the shoveling ourselves so far, but one of these days, we’ll have to start hiring one of those expensive companies. But surely everybody loves spending money this way.

We love children, but having a sidewalk means watching kids pedal their bikes and trikes furiously along the sidewalk from one driveway to the next, bamming willy-nilly into our garage door and others, leaving everlasting dents.

We are required by the city to plant trees in the front yard, but when an errant tree root lifts up a section of sidewalk we are required to repair it.

Just to replace one little section of sidewalk can cost from $750 to $1,000.

Personally, I would gladly give “my” sidewalk to the neighbor across the street if I could.