Lemon Grove seeks improved sidewalks

LEMON GROVE Strapped for cash for infrastructure improvements, Lemon Grove has been seeking innovative, cost-saving ways to fix existing sidewalks and bring more sidewalks into several of the city's corridors.

The Lemon Grove City Council on Tuesday shared ideas about how residents and the city might work together to make it safer to traverse city streets.

Also, City Manager Graham Mitchell offered, there is "anecdotal evidence that homes with sidewalks tend to have higher values."

One idea the City Council considered was a neighborhood assessment district, which would ask property owners to pay for sidewalk improvements over 10 to 20 years. A matching incentive from Lemon Grove could be added to the program, City Manager Graham Mitchell told the council.

Another idea was to require participation only if an entire section of a street segment agreed to participate. A third possibility was to offer no- or low-interest rate loans to property owners to finance the sidewalk installations. Loans could be paid over a five- to 10-year period. The city could also offer a matching incentive to encourage the installation of larger sections.

"As we look (at options) the first step has to be coming up with the money," City Councilman Jerry Jones said. "As we begin to crawl out of this recession, there is some opportunity to re-prioritize how we spend the increase in revenues."

Lemon Grove resident John L. Wood said that while "curbs and sidewalks are definitely needed in this town," he didn't think people in the city would want to pay for the maintenance of the sidewalks once they were put in.

"The city putting sidewalks in is fine, but I'm not going to be (held) responsible," Wood said.

Most of Lemon Groves housing development occurred before the citys 1977 incorporation, when the county managed the growth and development standards for housing. The county required sidewalk installation in the majority of its housing developments, but even to this day, many Lemon Grove neighborhoods do not have sidewalks.

During the preparation of the city's last General Plan update in 1996, Mitchell wrote in a report, "this was an issue of community debate some community members pushed for sidewalks while others wanted to maintain a rural feel by not installing sidewalks."

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Lemon Grove seeks improved sidewalks