Illustration by Tabitha Walters
More than ten years after the first complaint on A2 Fix It, a sidewalk on Third St. will finally be fixed next year.
At the southwest corner of Krause, the sidewalk climbs two concrete steps. “Please make ADA compliant,” an anonymous user wrote in 2014. That post has since been viewed more than 9,000 times—and in October, the city responded that it’s finally being addressed.
“This has been a technically challenging location to make compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA),” the post said. “Staff has completed the surveying and developed a design, and construction is currently scheduled for 2025.”
Why did a decade pass between a complaint on the citizen-reporting app and a solution? Ed Vielmetti, who’s been posting about the problem for two years, thinks “it just fell through the cracks.”
Robert Kellar, the city’s public services communications specialist, disputes that. He emails that it’s typical for problems to take years to address due to funding, legal issues, or simply other needs taking priority.
“This project has been on staff’s radar for a long time,” Kellar writes. “While we appreciate the community’s comments, projects aren’t given more attention based on the number of complaints. There are several factors at play, including funding, priorities, staff availability, etc.”
Kellar says this one is “far from typical. … Replacing defective sidewalk slabs can be quick, but to remove stairs from a location like this takes a substantial amount of work in design and then in construction. … The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) states maximum values to which a sidewalk can be sloped. So simply removing the stairs and replacing that segment with a sloped section of sidewalk would exceed this value and create an unsafe (and non-compliant) sidewalk.”
Kellar writes that a survey and mock-up design were done this year once “staff availability allowed for it.” The work is estimated to cost around $75,000.
Vielmetti is glad to hear it. “I wish them luck,” he emails, “and look forward to seeing the dirt move!
“Not every sidewalk in town is perfect; not every road in town is perfect,” he says. “You don’t expect everything to be perfect. But you kind of do expect that if someone is rolling along in a wheelchair, that they will not tumble down the stairs.”
