A change to city code consolidating and updating sidewalk design standards and setting the stage for a cost sharing program for sidewalk construction is headed before city council.
City Engineer Damien Davis said the update is needed because, as it pertains to sidewalks, there are conflicts between the city’s planning and zoning code and code articles defining sidewalk and street design standards.
It would also provide more options for both property owners building new homes or developments and the city by allowing for a cost sharing program.
Currently, if you’re building a home or development, code dictates you build a sidewalk unless the city permits you a waiver, which, Interim City Manager Emily Muzzarelli explained, can put city administration in a tough spot.
“When you want to build a house on a road and nobody else has sidewalk in front of theirs, the complaints we hear are people who feel like they’re being singled out,” she said.
The amendment to Article 913 — the city’s sidewalk code — would allow for the creation of a process through which the sidewalk requirement could be waived, but 50% of the sidewalk’s estimated cost would be deposited in a fund that the city could direct toward the construction or repair of higher priority sidewalk projects.
“The first thing this ordinance does is change the sidewalk construction process from one where we’re reliant on individual property owners to build the sidewalk network to one where the city can kind of manage that process by the waiver process and the sidewalk fund that’s established …,” City Attorney Ryan Simonton explained.
The changes would also remove sidewalk design standards from Article 913 and place them in Article 909, which established a Morgantown Street Design and Classification Manual in 1981.
The amendments to both 913 and 909 were up for consideration. While council opted to move forward with the sidewalk issue (913), it held back the amendments to 909 until further details were available.
“If you could share what you have now and a general idea of how you plan to proceed. What’s going to be in the manual and what’s not going to be in the manual,” Mayor Ron Dulaney said. “Just trying to understand what’s in the scope of what’s in this manual. Making that available and then coming back and looking at this relative to what that document is.”
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