RICHMOND, Va. β Patrick Pearson was at his wit's end when he reached out to CBS 6 for help in October with cracked and buckling sidewalk sections near his Richmond home.
As we told you then, service requests to the city about the tree and sidewalk right in front of his house dated back to June of 2018.
"It's extremely frustrating. You just kind of feel like you are screaming into the wind," Pearson said.
Byrd Park man raises concerns about city trees cracking sidewalks
We asked the city about Pearson's concerns, and they took action. Within weeks, the city removed the tree in front of his house and worked to repair that stretch of sidewalk, as well as sections of sidewalk he noted around the corner.
"We addressed that. I think we addressed it in a timely manner," said Torrence Robinson, Deputy Director of Operations and Maintenance for Richmond's Department of Public Works.
Robinson agreed to do an interview with us after we heard from an increasing number of residents like Pearson who said they were not satisfied with how quickly the city addresses sidewalk maintenance issues.
When asked what he could say to Pearson and others who argue nothing is done without contacting the news, Robinson responded: "I thank him for his patience, and just to be patient with us. We are doing things. We are working behind the scenes."
For example, we found a location on Kensington Avenue in the city where a resident wrote on 311 that they were making their fourth request for a sidewalk repair. They wrote that a school bus stop is at the corner, and they feared someone would be seriously injured.
The city wrote that it inspected the location and found 25 feet of damaged sidewalk and that the location would be "repaired with the rating system and the safety hazard concerns." But there is no indication of where on the priority list of sidewalk repairs this one might fall.
"We evaluate every request that comes in, we prioritize it, and then we try to address it as quickly as possible," Robinson said.
When told there seems to be a sense from residents that they might put in a work request and the area is assessed but that it stops there, Robinson acknowledged the challenges his office faces.
"I think the first step is evaluating. We do have to evaluate every location, and then we do have to prioritize it, because we have over 800 lane miles of sidewalk that we have throughout the city, and some are higher priority than others," Robinson said.
DPW acknowledges there is a backlog of about 2,200 requests for sidewalk repairs in the city dating back to 2017. Robinson says his department bolstered staff over the past several years to try to address the requests.
"We've recently ramped up our internal staff. We've hired more contractors too to try to bring down that number, but as you know those requests come in daily," Robinson said.
Still, he said he needs 10 more people to adequately address the backlog.
"We would ask residents that they would have patience with us as, again we are an older city and there are a lot of factors impacting a sidewalk β trees, heavy equipment, cars parking on them," Robinson said.
Expanding tree roots buckling the sidewalks is one of the top contributing factors to the need for repairs. The city is experimenting with a new type of permeable sidewalk that will allow roots to expand without damaging the sidewalk. DPW just had this type of sidewalk installed in Shockoe Slip.
"We are in the process right now of evaluating its use. We think it's going to be useful, and if it is something we use in the future we will train in-house staff to do it which will bring down the costs," Robinson said.
When asked if it's possible this could be implemented in neighborhoods, Robinson said "potentially."
"We want to see how resilient the material is," Robinson said.
CBS 6 is committed to sharing community voices on this important topic. Email your thoughts to the CBS 6 Newsroom.
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