@Lyle I'm our city's transportation commission and board of public works. Sidewalk installation always bring out a small but very loud number of people in opposition. Thankfully, our city has a longstanding policy to install sidewalks, with very few exceptions. But those meetings are never pleasant.

One thing that has helped: #MadisonWI changed the assessment policy for sidewalks a few years back: Property owners no longer are assessed the cost of the sidewalk when a street is reconstructed.

@haraldkliems @Lyle as the president of a neighborhood association in an area with few sidewalks and lots of street reconstruction, that change made my life so much easier.

@Tim_Eagon The Southeast Area Plan was at the Transportation Commission yesterday, and yeah, there were a lot of missing sidewalks! And some differing opinions on them. https://madison.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=14991698&GUID=68154790-C00C-44B7-AC31-A06E4F4C6A17

@haraldkliems When I moved into the Glendale neighborhood, we had the highest percentage of seniors in the city, so the issue of sidewalks was very sensitive to them. Plus, the neighborhood was split between Districts 15 and 16 at the time, so it was easier to push back on city staff with two alders covering the neighborhood. A lot of the changes to how the city assesses sidewalks were driven by the District 15 and 16 alders because of complaints from Lake Edge and Glendale.

@haraldkliems I remember talking to David Ahrens about the reconstruction of Dean Ave. At the time, the neighbors were very opposed to sidewalks b/c they wanted to preserve the "rural character of their street" (I hate that argument; we haven't been in Blooming Grove for 50+ years) and the mature tree canopy. Ahrens supported their push back b/c, but I told him that the city had already marked almost every terrace tree for removal because they were ash trees. The sidewalks are nice now.

@haraldkliems Alders Foster and Martinez-Rutherford were/are way more amenable to sidewalks, but the city has slowed down road reconstruction in that area of SE Madison over the past decade (and Lake Edge is so much worse than Glendale, especially north of Buckeye). Now we're focused on the impacts of the Pflaum Rd reconstruction next year.