Viviana L. Russell: What’s with the crumbling sidewalks on county roads?

At all levels, one of government’s core functions is to build, modernize and maintain the water, sewage-treatment and transportation infrastructure we all rely on in our daily lives. For far too long, however, Nassau County has shirked a critical component of that responsibility — sidewalks on county roads — and a recent media report illustrated the urgent need for dramatic change.

Last month, News 12 Long Island interviewed Bellmore resident David Kay, who said that poorly maintained sidewalks on Newbridge Road force him and the motorized wheelchair he relies on into traffic. The section of Newbridge with those damaged sidewalks is owned and maintained by the county — but county code places the burden of sidewalk repairs on the owners of adjacent properties.

The county’s response to News 12’s reporting was to state that it would contact property owners and direct them to make the repairs, and if they didn’t, the county would do the work and send the residents the bill.

That is an onerous burden for those property owners, because in many cases they have absolutely no control over the infrastructure the county constructs. Moreover, such an approach may solve the problem for the time being, but it glosses over fundamental flaws in government that must be corrected in the interest of both public safety and fairness.

Conversations with my colleagues have made it clear that this issue isn’t restricted to any one ZIP code. In one particularly egregious example, property owners were being pressured to repair sidewalks behind their homes — sidewalks they had no access to and derived no benefit from. In response to this outrageous demand, my colleague proposed a local law that would place the burden where it belongs — on the county — to maintain sidewalks behind homes abutting county roads. The current county administration, however, has repeatedly cited state law as an impenetrable barrier to doing so. I have been working with minority caucus counsel to investigate the veracity of that claim.

In the meantime, the frequency with which this is occurring demonstrates the critical importance of a new approach in which the county takes responsibility for the condition of sidewalks on its own roadways.

On March 26, I wrote to County Executive Bruce Blakeman to formally request that the county embark on a comprehensive infrastructure audit and analysis. This exercise would  inventory all county infrastructure assets, including roadways, sewer and drainage systems and traffic-control devices, and evaluate them based on age, condition and performance.

If we added maintenance of all county road sidewalks to our maintenance portfolio, an infrastructure audit would be critically important, because it would equip us to prioritize repairs and upgrades. Such an approach has proven to be effective: During my time as a North Hempstead Town Council member, we undertook a roadway assessment that made it possible for the town to identify which roads required repaving, repair or full reconstruction, and make the improvements based strictly on merit and without partisan consideration.

Completing an audit would also ensure that projects are coordinated, and that taxpayer dollars are used efficiently — by, for example, preventing a recently repaved road from being torn up to address a water or sewer project. Moreover, a clear, data-driven approach to how and where we invest taxpayer dollars would strengthen public trust, something that we would all benefit from doing our part to rebuild at a time when chaos at the federal level fuels skepticism and distrust at all levels of government.

While I have not received a response to my March request for an audit from the Blakeman administration, I have received verbal responses from Department of Public Works officials to several of my outstanding inquiries regarding infrastructure, traffic studies and safety concerns, and am awaiting a formal written report.

With the Legislature’s July 27 vote to approve a new capital plan — one that I am grateful to note includes tens of millions of dollars in new commitments to improvements throughout the communities of District 2 — it is more critical than ever for Nassau County to recommit itself to an equitable, data-driven approach to managing its infrastructure.

Viviana L. Russell represents Nassau County’s 2nd Legislative District.