So, the City Council is concerned about cracked sidewalk
concrete. It’s about time. This is something that’s just not going
away, and will probably get worse before it gets better.
So, the City Council is concerned about cracked sidewalk concrete. It’s about time. This is something that’s just not going away, and will probably get worse before it gets better.
Last May, in a column titled “Sidewalk tree roots, a ‘joke’ that’s no joke at all” I expressed my concern stating “what are the odds the perfect accident is waiting to happen?” That accident potential then was the dangerous condition that many of Gilroy’s sidewalks are still in, with raised sections of concrete protruding way over the limit the city’s engineering department considers unsafe–over one-half inch. Some sections are raised to a death-rendering 3-inches plus.
Apparently sidewalk related accidents are happening more often, enough in fact for the city council to make the colossal decision to “shift a greater portion of the liability for injuries on residents.” That’s just dandy, when most of the property owners did not have any decision in what kind of trees would be planted in the park strip area, especially if they were original home owners. So Gilroy property owners will quite probably be saddled with even more liability for the mistake the city made some 30 years ago, when some city bureaucrat made the decision to plant trees with shallow root systems, without checking into the problems these trees cause with cracking and lifting sidewalks.
But even with the wrong trees originally planted, the city also appears to have missed a comparatively cheap opportunity to have fixed the matter before it became a major problem as it is now. One reader recently told me that the city has never required contractors to use inexpensive collars when trees are first planted. This practice would have cost a minimal amount and would have forced tree roots to grow down when first established and would have eliminated much of the damage we now find.
So here’s another case where an ounce of prevention would have been worth a pound of cure. But bureaucracy triumphs again, the cure will apparently be at the property owner’s expense.
If the good citizens of Boston could organize a tea party so many years ago in protest to the taxes imposed on them, how about the good citizens of Gilroy organizing a Gilroy “tree” party, protesting the unfair burden on property owners having to pick-up more of the sidewalk replacement costs?
Kudos to the recent Red Phone reply titled “Who’s Interested?” to the clueless caller who can’t see any value of a newspaper like The Dispatch writing about local stuff like “trashy properties”, calling such coverage “petty” and of “no interest.” As the reply so aptly stated, “People leaving trash in the city’s alleyways or on their front lawns is news here” and “it’ s all about our city and our people”.
Yes indeed, that’s what a local newspaper should be about. And it was encouraging to see in the Red Phone the number of Gilroy people who support the pursuit of cleaning-up trashy properties. The slobs will always be complaining about how they’re being picked-on. Well get over it. It’s time for more TRASH (unTidy Residences Antagonizing Sensible Properties) nominations, where you the reader, pick the properties that qualify for blight consideration. Remember, I check out these nominations to insure they in fact are valid and not just an “I’ll get even with my neighbor” ploy.
I was amused at letter writer Jack Dwan’s attempted humor in his letter to the editor using the Broadway show “Music Man” terminology with statements like “Citizens, there’s big trouble in Gilroy. Yes, right here in Gilroy”.
While Mr. Dwan makes tongue-in-cheek fun of the fact that “anyone can drive their car or truck down to First Street and actually park along the side of the road”, he misses the point that the parking of cars and trucks with “for sale” signs in their windows has become a traffic safety issue for GPD.
Apparently, some motorists are so enthralled with Gilroy’s only linear used car lot, that they stop their vehicles in traffic lanes on westbound First Street to browse the selection of for-sale vehicles. It will be no joke when an injury traffic accident occurs and the city is sued, because a parking nuisance was not dealt with by the traffic department.
