Street Lighting & Sidewalk Survey - Avrum Lapin

I took advantage of my medically required daily walk to survey the lighting and sidewalks in the Pleasant View historical district.

Lighting

I found 6 non functioning street lights and reported same to Edison. We will see how soon they are repaired.

Most of our lighting seems to be mounted on fortuitously located power poles. Since most of our power poles run through the alleys that gives us up to 2 lights per block if the power pole is located near the street. There are some free standing light poles at the corner of Washington Blvd., probably remnants of grade crossings for the Red Cars or ATSF trains. The other free standing poles mid blocks are probably the results of local rabble rousing or the location of the homes of former city counselors or their financial backers.

Most of the functioning street lights are buried in the tree leaves. One cure would be a massive amputation of tree branches (not going to happen). The other cure - new lamp posts etc - will require one of two painful choices

a) agree to creation of an assessment district and pay the additional tax

b) raise buckets of money and elect a city council more in tune with our local desires.

Sidewalks

I found almost 3 dozen hazardous sidewalk conditions and reported them to the public works department (copy sent to you) Note these were big hazards (someone not looking down or an older person (not me) shuffling along might trip). I did not report what I considered functioning asphalt patches or relatively smooth humps and dips. Wasn't as bad as I thought

Code enforcement

I didn't see that many bad spots. Most of the bad spots are located at vacant (and probably foreclosed) properties. I think that the city needs a much more punitive ordinance before we see any results.

Curbs

I didn't inventory those. There are spots where the curb has totally disappeared but there other areas where either the masonry cap or a few stones are gone. There could be fixed either by volunteers or perhaps a semi skilled city worker using court referred community service people as assistants.