The proposed law is based on one that has been enacted in Ithaca, New York. In Ithaca, the Sidewalk Improvement District is a section of the city. In Hudson, city attorney Andy Howard explained, it would be the entire city. He noted that the goal of the legislation was "to mitigate the cost [of replacing and maintaining sidewalks] by sharing it over the entire community." He also pointed out that fees for sidewalk maintenance would be charged to all property owners, even not-for-profits that are exempt from property taxes. Also, it seems important to say, the sidewalk maintenance fee would be based on linear feet of sidewalk and volume of pedestrian traffic not on the assessed value of the adjacent property.
The draft law suggests the following fees: "The annual maintenance fee for non-developable lots and sliver lots is $0; for low foot-traffic lots, it is $70; and for all other lots, it is $140." The actual fees have not yet been determined.
The Legal Committee voted to move the draft law to the Public Works and Parks Committee where it is expected it will be determined how much money will be needed to address the sidewalk problem in the city and recommendations will be made about the sidewalk maintenance fee structure. The draft law will then come back to the Legal Committee, at which time, according to Howard, "we can start talking about bonding"--bonding being seen as an alternative way to pay for immediate sidewalk repair and replacement, desirable because it would provide all the money needed upfront. The bond would presumably be repaid through the sidewalk maintenance fees.
The talk of sidewalks led to talk of street trees. Union Street resident Peter Frank asserted, "It doesn't make sense to address sidewalks without addressing street trees," and expressed the opinion, "Trees should be the property of the City and maintained by the City."
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It's a miracle we finally have a sensible sidewalk plan.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, we've talked about sidewalk trees for decades, including long periods when residents showed no interest at all. Throughout that time, the NYSDEC Urban and Community Forestry Program always encouraged Hudson to apply for grants, though we rarely did so. In the end, the state office would only scratch its head at Hudson's on-again off-again interest in street trees.
Later we failed to establish a city tree committee, although sidewalk trees would become a main focus of the Conservation Advisory Council. Inexplicably, though, even the CAC's interest was highly selective, as when it deliberately excluded from its survey the dead and dying ash trees in the City-owned "Amtrak" parking lot. For the sake of grant-getting, that was not a very comprehensive approach.
As for the DPW, a number of the trees in the quarter-million dollar "green infrastructure" program along Union Street are dying or are already dead (which should surprise no one), though there's little or no no public concern about the moribund trees or the taxpayer boondoggle which made them available to us.
When it comes to trees, my own bona fides are beyond reproach. If we must choose, however, then we've wasted more than enough time and opportunities to replenish our street trees.
Hopefully we can add trees later, but an ingenious idea to fix the sidewalks by bonding and creating a sidewalk district should not devolve into the latest opportunity to revive our fickle interest in trees.
If we must choose between the two, then safe sidewalks are the number one priority for the public welfare.