Sidewalks were an issue when the Pensacola City Council discussed the budget last year. In the mayor’s 2017 Pensacola Resident Satisfaction Survey, city sidewalks received the second worst grade, slightly above city stormwater infrastructure.
Mayor Ashton Hayward was going to change that.
At the final hearing on the FY 2018 budget, City Administrator Eric Olson told the Pensacola City Council that the administration was working on a prioritized list for sidewalks.
“I think it’s reasonable to say that we’ll have that at the beginning of the new year,†said Olson. “What we are trying to do is de-politicize the process so that everybody has an open, fair, transparent way of identifying what the city’s needs are, and then we can address how much money you want to put towards it.â€
Olson explained the process that would create the two sidewalk lists.
“The first step in that is the planning division is creating a series of criteria based on the American Planning Association’s best industry and best practices,†said Olson. “So we’ll have two lists. One is ‘Here are our existing maintenance needs’ and the second list is ‘This is our new construction needs.’ And then the plan was to take whatever funding the council appropriates on an annual basis, and we just attack both of those lists.â€
Olson has yet to present either list to the council, according to the council minutes.