Does your neighborhood have a missing sidewalk?

Photo courtesy of here.

Have you ever been walking through your neighborhood, and arrived at a stretch of road with no sidewalk?  Was it still safe to continue walking?  If not, what must one do to get a sidewalk installed?  And, is there anything politicians can do to make it easier for concerned citizens to work towards increased pedestrian safety in their own neighborhood?

I have a simple solution that could benefit every City neighborhood—and even neighboring municipalities—that wish to have better sidewalks.

As it stands now, abutting property owners are responsible for paying to have a new sidewalk installed.  But times are tough.  Forking over construction costs for something like that might not be in everyone’s budget! 

So is there a way to still get sidewalks without unfairly burdening abutting property owners?  Besides, the walking public will use the sidewalks just as much, if not more, than the house that pays to install a section of walk.

I think City Council should make a slight change to Cincinnati Municipal Code, allowing citizens to place the question on a neighborhood’s ballot.  If a neighborhood would like to see sidewalks installed, a modest amount of signatures from area property owners should be all that is required to take the question to the vote. 

Let’s say a stretch of road has twenty property owners, but a whole neighborhood has thousands of properties.  Splitting sidewalk construction costs equally among all property owners would make the bill negligible, as opposed to making each homeowner pay for the stretch in front of his or her house.

If the issue passed on the ballot, property owners would receive a small one-time sidewalk construction charge on their property tax bill, and the neighborhood would have improved walkability without unfairly burdening single homeowners.