neighborhood news: North side neighbors in dispute with city over who's responsible for mid-block sidewalk

It’s a dilemma many other Ann Arbor homeowners could also be in. 

Ann Arbor City Council Member Sabra Briere, D-1st Ward, said staff is aware of as many as 30 similar anomalous situations where the city might be maintaining property that it shouldn't be.

"I just think the whole thing is arbitrary and capricious,” Gibson said. 

He became aware of the situation earlier this month after receiving a letter from the city’s Sidewalk Program Repair office informing him of his failure to fix the sidewalk. He’d been told of the offending walkway in 2006, the letter stated, and he had until Sept. 7 to fix it.

According to city code, the maintenance of sidewalks, paths, or any “concrete or bituminous walkway, or walkway of other materials constructed in the public right-of-way” is the responsibility of the adjacent property owner. That includes snow and ice removal from the sidewalk and mowing the grass near the path.

Residents can either hire a private contractor to repair a sidewalk, or defer to the city for the repair. The cost to privately repair a slab of sidewalk, according to the city's website, was most recently estimated between $130 and $165 per slab. If the city does it, it will cost between $100 and $120 for the slab plus a $225 administrative fee. 

In an e-mail, Kirk Pennington, a field services supervisor for the city of Ann Arbor, acknowledged the contradiction in Gibson's neighborhood and said the city is reviewing the situation for the four property owners off Manor and Cloverdale.

“In the case of the Cloverdale / Manor walk, parks has been doing the vegetation maintenance for an unknown number of years contrary to the guidance contained in City Code,” he said. “(We are) reviewing all data throughout the city to determine where similar locations exist, what the uses are, who is currently providing maintenance, the level of service provided and at what cost.”

After that is complete, Pennington said city staff will present its findings to the City Council to help determine whether city code needs to be amended.

“I’ll be pushing for answers because this is a murky area,” said Briere, noting she'd like to see the city’s street millage re-written to include sidewalk maintenance, taking the burden off individual property owners.

For now, Pennington said that the walkway between Manor and Clover will receive temporary patching until everything can be sorted out.

If the city decides that, indeed, the homeowners in adjacent properties must fix the sidewalk, the nearby property owners are still unclear who would be responsible for what.

Jamie Coleman, who lives across the pedestrian path from Gibson and received the same letter he did, wondered how the city would decide how much to bill each property. The two homeowners on the Manor end of the sidewalk have not yet received letters from the city as of last week.

“Are we supposed to paint a line down the middle of the path?” Coleman asked.

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Wendy Ochoa is a high school English teacher at Plymouth High School in Plymouth-Canton Community Schools. She is a summer intern on the Community Team for AnnArbor.com. Wendy is a journalism student at Washtenaw Community College, where she writes for the Washtenaw Voice.