From the City of Bellaire:
The Bellaire City Council will continue discussions about sidewalks at the following City Council meetings. IIf you would like to sign up to speak at a City Council meeting, please contact the City Clerk at tdutton@bellairetx.gov.
September 17 – Bellaire City Council will be asked to consider construction-related contracts for the Phase 1 sidewalk program. There have been objections from residents of 4500 Teas, 5300 Pine and 5100 Pine.
September 24 – Bellaire City Council will decide whether to proceed with all or a portion of the Phase 2 sidewalk program. The City has received petitions from residents of 4800-4900 Spruce, 5200 Laurel, and 4800-4900 Cedar. The Cedar petition involved the cul-de-sac.
September 24 – Bellaire City Council will decide whether to proceed with the 500 Bolivar portion of the Phase 2 street/drainage/sidewalks project. The City has received a petition in opposition to the sidewalks on Bolivar.
October 1 – Bellaire City Council will consider amendments to the current approach for requiring new residential construction to install sidewalks.
The meeting dates are subject to change. Please check the City of Bellaire’s website at www.bellairetx.gov for updates on the scheduled meetings.
For more information on the sidewalk projects, contact Cristin Emshoff by email cemshoff@bellairetx.gov or by office phone 713-662-8157.
Please visit this link to see the map of the Phase 1, Phase 2 and Phase 3 sidewalk projects: www.bellairetx.gov/2016BondSidewalkProjectsMap
Please visit this link to see the map of the Phase 1, Phase 2 and Phase 3 of the streets/drainage/sidewalks projects:www.bellairetx.gov/2016bondstreetsdrainagesidewalksmap
Putting Sidewalks on both sides of the street of 3 feet would be the prudent, economical and efficient use of city monies.
River Oaks has 3 feet sidewalks, Houston has 3 feet sidewalks in residential neighborhoods similar to BELLAIRE.
5 Feet is unnecessary and invasive of green space.
5 ft sidewalks used by Cities listed below as justification for 5 feet sidewalks in Bellaire is not sound reasoning.
Sugarland population 88,177 (2016) census
Missouri City population 74,561 (2016)
Pearland population 113,570 (2016)
Bellaire City population 18,593 (2016)
We have 4 foot sidewalks on our street and they work just fine for people to walk side by side. I don’t think there is a need for 5 foot just because other cities are doing it. I believe that West U has a good network of 4 foot sidewalks because they adopted a policy and stuck with it. The problem I see is that over the years different councils change requirements and the policy changes. Even the city manager said we need to have policy standards in Bellaire. I think they should stay with the sidewalk program. I am so happy that we got sidewalks in a previous phase of this project as they were very needed on a block that had some newer, some in terrible shape and some yards with none.
I wish this could be put to rest! Sidewalks were on the ballot, people voted for them, so there is only one surprise here and that is increasing them to 5 feet. I have no idea why the council would interject the idea of 5 ft sidewalks with all this sidewalk argument going on. Why don’t they just build the sidewalks already voted on at 4 ft and then change the standard?