In Lakewood, it doesn’t.
As Lakewood leaders look to create a city of “hipster charm,” what with its $9-million sidewalk proposal around Gravelly Lake and a property tax increase to that end, an opportunity exists by which to express what you, the taxpayer, think they, your elected representatives, can do with those sidewalks.
Image source: http://justsylph.com/2014/02/23/there-is-magic-where-the-sidewalk-ends/From April Fool’s Day to National Honesty Day, April 1-30, the public may comment on the future of sidewalks in the city and other stuff. A public hearing is planned April 20. By May 4 it’s a done deal and after that the concrete begins to be poured – for the poor, presumably, to walk to work, buy groceries, get exercise or whatever else constitutes sidewalks as “needs.”
The Five Year Consolidated Plan ostensibly “identifies housing and community development needs and strategies for meeting those needs.”
Is a $9-million “non-motorized trail” bordering Gravelly Lake Drive – thus a circular path (one that goes in a circle) – a “need”?
And is the strategy to achieve this “need” – which no less than 21-pages address in the City Council packet this past February 21 – that of raising property taxes and how to frame the vote, who votes, where they vote, means to get out the vote, etc., acceptable?
In an article entitled “The People Designing Your Cities Don’t Care What You Want,” author Joel Kotkin describes “the preferred form of urbanism” – that “a city must be primarily ‘a luxury product,’ a place that focuses on the very wealthy whose surplus can underwrite the rest of the population.”
“The rest of the population” of Lakewood is pretty grim as described in statistics provided the council March 9 and as written about previously.
Kind of like the game we used to play as kids – avoid stepping on the cracks – to read between the cracks of the city sidewalk plan is to realize that there is a new version afoot of Silverstein’s “Where the Sidewalk Ends.”
In Lakewood, it doesn’t. Unless you let your representatives know.
I still say that you can walk around Gravelly Lake in complete safety now, as it currently exists, without any so-called “improvement.” Again, it’s at the right price, FREE!
What is the city’s government leaders’ defense for this? Where are their voices?
As I drove the other day, westward on Bridgeport Way, where construction has interrupted traffic flow these many months in that very busy corridor, I couldn’t help but wonder the extended time and cost of this project by adding sidewalks on BOTH sides of Bridgeport! Pray tell me….how many people have you ever seen walking that stretch of highway that would require the addition of sidewalks? Curbing for the roadway, yes, but sidewalks where most of the area is surrounded by greenbelt or apartments where people come and go in their cars. Seems now that the additional license tax has been approved Lakewood is going to be known as “Sidewalk City!” Mercy me!
Ken
I see a lot of children walking to the Oakbrook elementary school on Onyx, which has no sidewalks, nor hardly any shoulder. They also wait for the bus along Onyx. We sure could use some sidewalks out this way near the schools.