The City of Ladue Looks at Building Sidewalks On Its Busy Streets

There’s an old anachronism in government called NIMBY: Not in my back yard. If a city wants to widen a road, add stop signs, rezone property from residential to commercial, city officials can expect visits at their regular meetings from the neighbors. Sometimes, these crowds become large, and in some cases raucous. Opposition can results in strong push back.

In Ladue, its more like IMBY. Beth Deutsch and a band of residents along McKnight Road joined forces in Novermber to create an ad hoc committee Residents for Sidewalks.

Walking door to door, Deutsch and her group, armed with clipboards registered 673 homeowners in 14 days, urging the the Ladue City Council to bring safe sidewalks to the folks who live on Dromera Lane, Greenbriar Drive, McKnight Lane and a host of other streets.

The quick action of these citizens caught the attention of Mayor Anthony Bommarito and his council members. Some city officials reside on their streets.

One community member pointed out the most powerful voice in Ladue belongs to the parents of elementary school children. As this individual surmised, once children get to middle and high school, their parents tend to branch off into other interests.

But this is not so of the Reed and Conway school parents of Ladue. These households, for the most part, are young and include two wage earning parents. Unlike other generations, these young parents are into healthier eating and exercise.

Any school day of the year, you will see a number of parents who live on Willow Hill Road, on Lorenzo Lane and Hacienda Drive and other streets and neighborhoods walking their children to and from schools. These parents want a complete network of safe sidewalks to bridge the neighborhoods, the schools, and in rare cases, the stores on Clayton and Ladue roads.

Resident Dana Pohlman framed the argument well Sunday on Patch. “Yes, Ladue needs sidewalks on its public roads. My family walks and rides bicycles together and it's dangerous along some of the aforementioned streets. I hope that some people will realize its 2012 that walking is healthy and should be safe,” Pohlman wrote.

Pohlman and her neighbors dion’t think jumping into bushes to get out of the way of fast moving cars on McKnight was walking safely along busy streets.

At the same time, city fathers are wrestling with money issues such as an underfunded pension fund for city employees, and funding for a newly proposed firehouse concept. As everyone knows, there are only so many precious dollars to go around. A project of this scope could cost millions of dollars.

Don’t tell that to members of the Ladue Residents for Sidewalks.

Those are only fighting words. They’ve been to meetings, they’ve done their homework, and they’ve found governmental bodies such as the East-West Gateway Council of Governments who could be the gatekeeper for the millions of dollars it would take to connect nearly all major streets along 23 miles of Ladue. Often, government agencies will pick up 80 percent of the cost. That's how Olivette got its new bridge and intersection at Olive Street and Interstate 170.

This could become a daunting task. Putting sidewalks on either side of winding, twisting Litzsinger Road could be an iffy proposition at best.

There are other issues to deal with. Sidewalks will require the removal of some stately trees (environmentalists won’t be happy), which means there will be land acquisition of some homeowner’s property in the right-of-way. Someone has to maintain new sidewalks.

Patch wanted in on this issue. We conducted a (non scientific) survey asking three questions: Should Ladue find money to build sidewalks?

• Should the City of Ladue build more sidewalks?

• Would you support a bond issue to build sidewalks?

• Is the project too costly to consider?

A total of 229 people voted. Voting systems allow for just one vote per URL address.

• One hundred and thirty individuals (56 percent) said yes to sidewalks.

• Fifty three individuals (53 percent) said they would indeed support a bond issue to pay for the project.

• Forty six people (20 percent) said any project would be too costly.

That means roughly 80 percent of those who voted strongly support the project.

The article drew 25 additional comments during the voting period.

The results of the survey were forwarded to the mayor, Ladue administrators and the city council members for consideration.