A majestic red pine twists like a 20-foot bonsai hanging over a 1920s brick pond in Laura Miller’s backyard.
Lining the new sidewalks that straddle her Firestone Park driveway, smaller trees will bloom with cream-colored flowers when spring comes. These saplings, planted by forward-thinking city workers, will grow up, not out like the linden and maple trees they’ve replaced.
The city planted the old giants decades ago. Their roots spread out to match their billowing tops, pushing up power lines and dangling over streets. And now the city spends about $500,000 each year, largely to fix the sidewalks their roots push up.
It’s a beautiful, expensive problem with a bill decades in the making.
“The sidewalk is like a mountain,” said Robert Pluck on Thursday during his daily 2-mile walk with Pandora, an old Weimaraner. The retired plumber, who operated excavators to uncover sewer pipes, pointed to the path behind him. Jointed, 5-foot concrete squares jutted 5 inches above or below one another, almost always in front of an old city tree.
“That’s the way it is in front of my house,” said Pluck, who lives on Dresden Avenue. Pluck had to pay $2,500 to remove a knee-high retaining wall in his front yard because the roots of a great maple, which crack and clog his sewer pipes and cover his emergency water shut-off valve, threatened to topple it into the street.
“And the people who have nice walks like this have to pay,” he said, standing on the flat sidewalk outside Miller’s house.
Need new sidewalks?
The sidewalks in front of 212 Akron properties are scheduled for replacement this year.
That’s according to a list compiled annually by city administrators who receive complaints and monitor walking conditions.
Property owners, at anytime, can call the city’s 311 hotline or contact a private contractor to schedule the work. The bill can be spread across 10 years of property tax bills.
The basic cost is $25.25 per foot, explained John Moore, the city’s public service director. Driveway aprons, priced by the square foot, might cost a bit more. The city sometimes does the curbs and wheelchair access points at street corners, too. (All four corners at Thornapple and Wayne avenues were done when Miller requested her new sidewalks.)
Why they’re replaced
Of the 212 properties slated for this year, about 20 percent of sidewalk repairs are driven by complaints from neighbors or pedestrians.
The other 80 percent are initiated by the homeowner. It’s a growing trend in Miller’s Firestone Park neighborhood. “I think a lot of the neighbors did it because of me, because I had them done and they asked how I got it,” said Miller, who paid most but not the full bill because the city replaced the trees closest to the street and the sidewalks they destroyed.
Miller, 64, supplements her husband’s pension from FirstEnergy by buying and selling homes. She bought her current home in 1987 and called the city more than 30 years later to investigate who’s responsible for the sidewalks.
All told, she pays about $120 more on each of her biannual property tax bills.
Who gets them
The city regularly replaces sidewalks impacted by road or sewer construction. These lucky residents get free sidewalks by virtue of owning the right home at the right time.
But anyone can make a complaint or work through the city to get new sidewalks.
Between 2014 and 2016, the city-run sidewalk program contracted or paid for part of 546 sidewalks. Three-quarters noted a tree problem.
Most sidewalk repairs are clustered in middle-class neighborhoods with high homeownership rates, thick trees and lots of retirees. Of the 546 sidewalk jobs, Firestone Park got 101 followed by Ellet with 91 and Middlebury/Goodyear Heights with 66. Between 40 and 60 new sidewalks have been installed in Kenmore or West Akron or Fairlawn Heights or the Merriman Valley, where sidewalks that frame newer developments have yet to fall into disrepair.
The fewest requests come from the poorest neighborhoods, from South Akron to Chapel Hill.
Sherbondy Hill, formerly called Lane-Wooster, had the least requests, just 30 in the past three years. That many are scheduled this year alone in Ellet or Firestone Park or Middlebury/Goodyear Heights. What will Sherbondy Hill get this year? Six.
“Honestly I don’t get a whole lot of complaints about sidewalks in my ward,” said Councilwoman Margo Sommerville, whose Ward 3 includes Sherbondy Hill — and above average rates for rental units and vacant housing.
Sommerville said it might be time to engage her block watches to identify potential projects.
“One of the biggest things that we’re seeing in our neighborhoods is more renters,” she said. “Because we have more renters that could be a reason why we’re not having as may calls in terms of sidewalk repairs.”
Doug Livingston can be reached at 330-996-3792 or dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow on Twitter: @ABJDoug .