photo by: Nick Krug

A crumbling section of a Lawrence neighborhood sidewalk is pictured in this file photo from Feb. 28, 2018.

There was not enough support among city leaders on Tuesday to abandon Lawrence’s contentious sidewalk repair program, but leaders were interested in a few limited tweaks to how the program operates.

Currently, the program generally requires homeowners and other property owners to pay to repair city sidewalks that border their property. As part of a work session Tuesday, commissioners discussed several questions related to the repair program. Those included whether the city should take over maintenance of sidewalks or change its method for determining which sidewalks to fix, and whether the city can administer a sidewalk maintenance insurance program. Such a program would let homeowners opt to pay a small annual fee, and the city would use that funding to make repairs to sidewalks adjacent to their property when necessary.

Under the current program, low-income homeowners and those with more than one sidewalk along their property qualify for financial assistance from the city.

Only Commissioner Courtney Shipley said she was interested in making significant changes to the current program. Several commissioners, however, said they were open to discussing other revenue sources to support sidewalk repairs, such as a voluntary donation program, but did not want to raise property or sales taxes to fund more repairs.

Commissioners also generally agreed that the city should change the way it prioritizes enforcement of the program. Under the current maintenance program, the city has been divided into nine enforcement zones, and each year the city enforces the code in the entire zone. Commissions agreed that they would rather see the city prioritize enforcement based on other factors, such as the need for repairs and whether the sidewalks are part of highly used routes.

Many homeowners spoke out against the approach when the city began fully enforcing the ordinance last year, and the city was holding off on certain steps for the second enforcement zone. Following direction from the commission, city staff said it would continue the process for the second zone and begin to study a different method for deciding where repairs will be made for the next round.

City Commission Meeting 06/09/20