Good idea  

Thank you!

Roads are for cars.  Sidewalks are for pedestrians.  A city should have sidewalks.  We need a separated lane for bicycles.

Here’s an interesting take on the sidewalk dilemma which sounds very familiar.

http://www.pedestrians.org/retrofit.htm

Another interesting article

https://www.popsci.com/politics-versus-sidewalks#page-8

”The resistance goes beyond finances, however, landing somewhere closer to the heart. In Edina, Minnesota, city officials decided to implement an economically feasible plan that would add sidewalks over the next two decades to attract young people to the town. But they found that older residents were “up in arms,” in the words of the local paper, the Star Tribune. “We have a beautiful, natural neighborhood and now they want to citify it,” one local said at that time. In communities like these, sidewalks are seen as threatening the slow-going, car-centric, and, in some cases, closed-off lifestyle many residents value.”

“You see that, especially in wealthier, more suburban areas, [people] feel they don’t need sidewalks and so they don’t build sidewalks,” Loukaitou-Sideris of UCLA says. But, she argues, sidewalks are for everyone, even car owners. “Some people are walking for pleasure, some people are walking for health, and some people walk because they have to,” she says. You may drive to work, but sidewalks allow kids to walk to school, the elderly to exercise, and, most importantly, citizens to mingle.”

I think the first article hit the nail on the head at the end where it says people don’t like change. I think that’s where most of the sidewalk resentment comes from. 

Bellaire doesn’t need sidewalks??  🙄  This lady was totally oblivious to the fact I was behind her. 

I'm with Councilman Verma who said If not now, when? 

And Mayor Friedberg keeps saying sidewalks should have never been lumped together with drainage and maybe that's true but nobody knows if it would have been passed on it's own or not. I'm betting it would have. The 4 million was earmarked for sidewalks not for drainage and if it was separate and passed it would have been spent as such. There would still only have been $20M for drainage. The sidewalk money is not coming out of drainage money because it was included in the $24M bond.

@ditto Agreed!  I don’t think people understand that money is not being taken away from drainage. There was $4 million allocated for sidewalks and $20 million allocated for drainage. I don’t know why they think the city can’t do two things at the same time. It’s not like they’re going to stop working on drainage to put in sidewalks.