Kalispell considers sidewalk crackdown

The Kalispell City Council wants to crack down on substandard sidewalks.

It's just not sure how.

At a Monday workshop, council members were upset by a city staff report that 64 percent of the sidewalks built in eight subdivisions did not meet city standards for thickness and quality.

"These people have signed documents and building specs to meet a certain standard, and they should be held to that standard," council member Tim Kluesner said.

According to council member Hank Olson, "There should be a fine involved. Somebody has got to pay because they did not meet a standard. … We as a city have done a terrible job of letting this happen."

Jim Hansz, city public works director, said an underlying cause of the problems was developers rushing a huge load of work in a short construction season.

"There's no conscious effort to cheat the city," he said.

And until last summer, the city did not have a construction engineer on the payroll to inspect the quality of the sidewalks.

When the city staff recently inspected and tested 40,568 linear feet of sidewalks in eight subdivisions, it concluded that 25,903 feet did not meet the city's required specifications.

Some 7,666 feet of those sidewalks in front of 41 homes are of a poor enough quality - less than 3 1/2 inches of concrete or less than 2 inches of base materials - that they should be replaced without question, the city staff concluded.

At the council's request, the staff is preparing three options to deal with the problem:

-Ordering all substandard sidewalks replaced. Council and staff members worried this would affect a large but yet-to-be-calculated number of homes.

-Ordering the worst 7,666 feet replaced and assessing a total of $61,671 in penalties on developers for the remaining substandard sidewalks. That money would likely go into a fund to fix those sidewalks in the future.

-Leaving all sidewalks in place and assessing additional penalties to go into a fund for future repairs.

The council will decide later which course to pursue.

"People are basically cheating homeowners," council member Randy Kenyon said. "I think they're getting off easy with the scenarios that we're looking at here."

Council members wondered if there are more substandard sidewalks in other subdivisions beyond the eight that were checked. And they wondered whether after a potential initial round of penalties there should be a zero-tolerance policy requiring replacement of substandard sidewalks in future construction projects.

Mayor Pam Kennedy and council members Bob Herron and Kluesner worried about the city government's tendency to set rules and then grant exceptions without much fuss - contending that pattern should not be repeated in this case.

Developer Charles Lapp and engineer Bob Stauffer asked that contractors have the opportunity to do their own samplings of the disputed sidewalks to either confirm or refute the city's conclusions about the quality of their work. The council and staff agreed.

Lapp also asked that the city look at setting up an inspection system that would check sidewalk specifications prior to pouring concrete.

The eight inspected subdivisions were Ashley Park, Phase 7; Blue Heron, Phases 1 and 2; Empire Estates, Phases 1, 2, and 3; Glacier Village Greens, Phases 17 and 20; Leisure Heights, Phases 1 and 2; Stratford Village, Phase 3; Sunnyside, Phase 2; and Three Mile Subdivision.

City officials said the Cottonwood Subdivision recently passed its inspections.

Reporter John Stang may be reached at 758-4429 or by e-mail at jstang@dailyinterlake.com