By Daniel Winningham
After a lengthy and at times spirited discussion, the Perryville Board of Aldermen approved a proposal that gives city officials guidance when planning for sidewalk installation.
In a 4-1 vote, the board chose to install sidewalks when a street is newly constructed or an existing street is reconstructed.
Aldermen Larry Riney, Tom Guth, Curt Buerck and David Schumer voted in favor of the plan while alderman Prince Hudson cast the lone dissenting vote. Alderman Doug Martin was absent.
“The idea was to not do any more sidewalks so we could do more streets because streets is what we need to fix,” Hudson said. “Whenever you do ADA sidewalks, and if you do sidewalks they have to be ADA (compliant). I understand that. If we’re doing a street that doesn’t have sidewalks, I don’t think we need to be doing sidewalks. We need to just do the street.”
Hudson sought clarification on the engineering of street repairs.
“It seems to me like we’re reengineering the whole street project. If we’re not going to build sidewalks, there’s no need to do that.”
Potential cost savings could be used for more street repairs, according to Hudson.
However, city surveyor Tim Baer said the older engineering plans do not have a center line established for existing streets, nor an elevation, making them unusable in many cases.
“There ought to be an easier way to fix that problem,” Hudson said.
Alderman David Schumer said many variables go into the determination of sidewalk grade, including matching driveways with existing roadway as well as drainage issues.
“Grade presents a problem at times,” Schumer said. “We talk about putting sidewalks in where we don’t have a sidewalk now. That is the easiest time to put an ADA compliant sidewalk in, when there’s no sidewalk to match.”
Schumer said the city could look at requiring new subdivisions to install ADA compliant sidewalks when the homes are built.
The cost of sidewalks equates to about 16-20 percent of the city’s street project costs, according to Brent Buerck. In recent years, this has been about $50,000.
The updated portion of Edgemont has been made ADA compliant. However, there are other areas in the city limits in which getting sidewalks up to ADA regulations may not be possible.
“I could probably make an argument that our sidewalks are a lot worse than our streets,” Schumer said.
Prior to Tuesday evening’s discussion, city staff took part in an ADA planning session to gather additional insight.
The city has been updating sidewalks when it obtains the right-of-way as part of other street repairs, said city administrator Brent Buerck.
The way he sees it, it’s better to have a road torn apart once rather than multiple times.
“We’re going to do new subdivisions and new streets with sidewalks,” Brent Buerck said.
The Board appeared to reach a consensus that in cases of new construction, the improvements would include ADA compliant sidewalks, though Hudson said “unless we have to buy a whole bunch of right-of-way like we did that costs the city a bunch of money.”
Hudson further pointed out if a study was conducted on recently constructed sidewalks, it likely wouldn’t be a high traffic area.
While the city periodically does traffic counts on roadways, Brent Buerck said it doesn’t have a reliable system in place to monitor sidewalk usage.
For sidewalks improvements on Sycamore Road (also referred to as Perry County Road 801), Buerck said the had to obtain right-of-way in order to install sidewalks.
On other sidewalk issues, the consensus from the board is that for street reconstruction where sidewalks already exist, the sidewalks should be improved and gaps filled when the adjoining street is worked on. For portions of the city that do not have sidewalks now and the city does not own the proper right of way, sidewalks will only be added if the city is able to secure all of the required right of way needed to establish a complete path.
In his meeting agenda notes, Brent Buerck sought to have the aldermen take up the measures separately. The only vote taken Tuesday was for guidance on street reconstruction when sidewalks do not exist but the city has the necessary right-of-way.
