I have been complaining about the horrible shape of the sidewalks and curbs on our city’s main retail corridor for a long time, and I am an able bodied pedestrian, imagine riding a scooter down this bombed up war path;
“I was expecting that the study would have been done, or it would have been enough to say that this fiscal year we will be doing this, this and this,†Santee said.
Crews from the federal agency cited 26 pages worth of ADA violations in Sioux Falls.
The city has four areas to work on.
The FHWA is asking Sioux Falls to enforce ordinances for private property owners, maintain sidewalks, correct public right-of-ways that are currently not compliant, and take immediate action to correct about 11 miles of sidewalks and curb ramps that were not built to code during overlay and reconstruction projects from 2009 to 2013.
The city’s response outlines studies and evaluations for each of these areas asking for up to nine months to lay out a plan.
This worries Santee.“Will we live long enough to see anything happen,†he asked.
The city did cite a project in the design phase that would bring curb ramps into compliance on Minnesota Avenue from 18th to 33rd Street.
“I was hoping something might get done in the interim period between when it was filed and the Letter of Finding finally came out, that the city would start doing some stuff,†Santee said.
The irony of all this is that if the city just handed out code violations to the adjacent business owners, they would have to pay for the upgrades, not the taxpayers. Not only that, you would think that if you had a business on the busiest retail corridor in the city, you would want your curb appeal to look good and be safe? There is also the hypocrisy of the city going after (private) citizens for 8.5″ grass and an inch of snow on their sidewalk, but not bothering to hand out violations to businesses for crap sidewalks. Talk about bad neighbors.