Lawrence residents ask city to reconsider requirement that property owners pay for sidewalk repairs

This spring, 243 homeowners got a letter from the city telling them to fix their sidewalks or else have them condemned and fixed by the city at their expense.

On the receiving end of one of those letters was Sarah Farthing, who since then has joined with other residents in Northwest Lawrence to ask the city to halt the implementation of its recently established sidewalk maintenance policy. The policy, adopted by the Lawrence City Commission last year, requires property owners to fix sidewalks that run adjacent to their homes or businesses that are deemed hazardous.

The city considers a sidewalk hazardous if it has a vertical separation of more than half an inch or a horizontal gap or defect. Farthing told the commission at its last meeting that the sidewalks in her neighborhood weren’t causing problems and that the city needed to redefine what constitutes a hazard.