SIOUX CITY, Iowa (Iowa Media Wire) – Sioux City engineers have started making their rounds tagging uneven sidewalks. Property owners in Whispering Creek and Morningside may be in the sidewalk inspection zone this year, but that shouldn’t keep others from maintaining their sidewalks.
“If a citizen has any question or concerns or complaints about the sidewalks in the neighborhood, call us up, we’ll go out there and inspect that,” city engineer Gordon Phair said. “It doesn’t matter if they’re in that inspection zone that year or not.”
City inspectors said a variety of issues could cause your sidewalk to fail inspection.
“We look to make sure all the sidewalks don’t have any elevation change over three quarters of an inch, or gaps, or that they’re all broken up with a bunch of weeds growing through them,” Phair said.
Smaller repairs may be handled by the homeowner.
“Sometimes the homeowners can do it themselves,”Azucena Beanda with A&F Construction LLC said. “So sometimes the city will mark out like just a little piece of hole in the concrete, and you can just fill it up with caulk.”
But larger areas may need some extra help from a contractor.
“There are clients where they’ll have big projects and sometimes it can take us three to four days,” Beanda said. “Usually that’s a regular, the normal.”
If you wait too long to repair or replace, the city will take matters into their own hands.
“It’s not so much a penalty, but if they don’t call in and they don’t fix it, our contractor will go out and replace it,” Phair said. “We don’t patch. They just go out and take the concrete out and put in new and we bill you.”
So if you’re looking to hire a contractor, it’s better to call sooner rather than later.
“We recommend calling them right now because there’s some contractors that are pretty booked and you’ll have to wait sometimes until the end of the year,” Beanda said. “But otherwise, if you see a contractor working on your street, talk to them right now before they leave because it’s a lot more affordable.”
City engineers said property owners have until next May to fix their tagged sidewalk before the city steps in.