WADSWORTH, Ohio — Wadsworth leaders are coming up with a new plan to fix the city’s sidewalks faster after residents have faced difficulties with them.
On Nov. 18, Jim Renacci, councilman at-large, plans to present a resolution at a Wadsworth City Council meeting, asking Wadsworth leaders to develop a plan to inspect all city sidewalks.
Once approved, he hopes the city can give the council a plan within a few months to hopefully get these sidewalks fixed in a couple of years.
“What I'm hearing is that the citizens just want to know when their sidewalks are going to be completed,” said Renacci.
Those residents include people like Belinda Malcolm.
“They definitely need some attention,” said Malcolm. “To have our sidewalks safer and more accessible for even ADA community members, would be a great improvement to our city.”
Even Braeden Scates, who’s only been living in the area for two years, said the city’s sidewalks need to be fixed.
“A lot of them [are] either too elevated or too under elevated, so you can trip occasionally, which gets pretty annoying,” said Scates.
In the last five years, City Engineer Glenn Davis said the city has spent just under $300,000 – roughly a year – to add new sidewalks, fill in gaps, replace broken sidewalks and fix walkways that have been uplifted due to overgrown trees.
Davis said this is the result of a nine-year program Wadsworth leadership created to update all the sidewalks.
“It’s really a never-ending battle to try to get those sidewalks to be safe,” said Davis.
But now, there’s a special request coming from city council members like Renacci to speed up the remaining years.
“What we're really asking for is the city to come up with a comprehensive plan to look at all the sidewalks in the city and just come up with a plan of fixing and correcting the issues that are really scattered throughout the city,” said Renacci.
As far as funding, Glenn said the city is exploring different options.
“We’re going to be coming back to them with some ideas for how to make that program a little bit faster potentially,” said Glenn. “To accelerate the sidewalk program is to essentially to spend more money, and so then then the question is going to be where do those resources come from?”
If people see a sidewalk that needs to be repaired, Glenn says you can contact the city to have them try to put it on the list.
