Complaints getting Northampton’s attention on sidewalks

Audrey Easter makes her way across State Street from her home at St. Michael’s House in Northampton, navigating cracks and broken sidewalks along the way. Easter, who fell when her walker hit a crack, explains: “The fall changed my life; my legs hurt and my teeth have moved. I just hate to see people get hurt.”

Audrey Easter makes her way across State Street from her home at St. Michael’s House in Northampton, navigating cracks and broken sidewalks along the way. Easter, who fell when her walker hit a crack, explains: “The fall changed my life; my legs hurt and my teeth have moved. I just hate to see people get hurt.” STAFF PHOTO/CAROL LOLLIS

Audrey Easter makes her way across State Street from her home at Michael’s House in Northampton.

Audrey Easter makes her way across State Street from her home at Michael’s House in Northampton. STAFF PHOTO/CAROL LOLLIS

Audrey Easter demonstrates how her walker hit the crack in the sidewalk on State Street and came to a stop causing her to fall. “This summer it was all green with grass,” she explained. “It looked flat, I didn’t even know it was there. The fall changed my life, my legs hurt and my teeth have moved. I just hate to see people get hurt.”

Audrey Easter demonstrates how her walker hit the crack in the sidewalk on State Street and came to a stop causing her to fall. “This summer it was all green with grass,” she explained. “It looked flat, I didn’t even know it was there. The fall changed my life, my legs hurt and my teeth have moved. I just hate to see people get hurt.” STAFF PHOTO/CAROL LOLLIS

Audrey Easter makes her way across State Street from her home at Michael’s House in Northampton, navigating cracks and broken sidewalks along the way. Easter, who fell when her walker hit a crack explains, “The fall changed my life, my legs hurt and my teeth have moved,” she said. “I just hate to see people get hurt.”

Audrey Easter makes her way across State Street from her home at Michael’s House in Northampton, navigating cracks and broken sidewalks along the way. Easter, who fell when her walker hit a crack explains, “The fall changed my life, my legs hurt and my teeth have moved,” she said. “I just hate to see people get hurt.” STAFF PHOTO/CAROL LOLLIS

By ALEXANDER MACDOUGALL

Staff Writer

Published: 10-28-2024 6:13 PM

NORTHAMPTON — Audrey Easter, an 82-year-old resident of St. Michael’s House senior living on State Street, had left her house when her walker jammed in an uneven layer of sidewalk pavement, causing her to fall and sustain numerous injuries requiring hospitalization. Among the damage included the loss of a tooth and the development of several blood clots.

“I had never fallen before that,” Easter said. “It’s just not me, either. If you ask anybody, anywhere the sidewalks are terrible.”

Indeed, Easter is not the only one complaining about sidewalk safety across the city. Several residents have identified key areas where sidewalks are in dire need of repair, bringing their concerns to the city and to the Department of Public Works.

In Northampton’s Ward 3, a group of six residents has begun meeting regularly to discuss the state of the city’s sidewalks around the area of Williams Street, Holyoke Street, Montview Avenue and Pomeroy Terrace. The group began meeting after discussing issues related to the sidewalks on a listserv for Ward 3 residents.

“It just felt like this corner of the city has been ignored in terms of roads and sidewalks for a long time,” said Oona Coy, a member of the group. “This is not an issue that’s unique to our neighborhood. There are lots of parts of the city where people feel ignored.”

Among those raising the alarm most loudly include disability advocates, saying those using assistance to get around such as a walker or wheelchair suffer the most when it comes to poor sidewalks.

“I’ve lived in Northampton for 20 years, and from my perspective as a wheelchair user, the sidewalks have always been on the decline,” said Jeremy Dubs, a city councilor for Ward 4 who uses a wheelchair as a result of having a rare condition known as brittle bone syndrome. “I’ve had my wheelchair get stuck multiple times on streets where the sidewalks are really bad. I’ve had to ask people for help to get past a spot that I couldn’t get past.”

During an Oct. 8 meeting of the Northampton Disability Commission, a volunteer commission established by the city to address issues related to disability rights and services, DPW Director Donna LaScaleia presented several areas around Northampton of particularly poor quality that pose a risk of physical harm to vulnerable pedestrians. Areas identified included many of the streets around the Village Hill neighborhood and around South Street, as well as along North Elm Street and Bedford Terrace.

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“I hate to say that we have enough injury reports from people having incidents on sidewalks that we actually pay very close attention to those,” LaScaleia said. “What we have been doing is, we have been compiling a list of priority repairs again based on our inventory, based on injury reports, and based on work orders that are called into us.”

In 2017, the city commissioned a report on the conditions of Northampton’s sidewalks. The study, overseen by Alta Planning + Design along with researchers with the Georgia Institute of Technology, evaluated the roughness, obstructions and potholes along the main sidewalks in the city by pushing a wheelchair mounted with a tablet computer to monitor and record the surfaces.

The information collected in the study broke the sidewalks into around 8,500 segments, with each segment representing 50 feet of sidewalk length, and found that around 30% of the segments had “excessive slopes or widths too narrow” for accommodating wheelchairs. It also found 2,250 sidewalk defects across the city, including uneven surfaces, potholes and debris.

The study also found that among 874 pedestrian curb ramps or curb cuts — the ramps connecting sidewalks to main roads in the city — only 77 were in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), with many having a lack of compliant surface, narrow passing width and sometimes simply missing completely.

During a City Council meeting on Oct. 1, LaScaleia said that conditions of the sidewalks had further worsened since that study.

“We focused on areas close to schools and you know we have priorities based on existing conditions in 2017, which have only deteriorated,” LaScaleia said. “We have not had the funding and the capability to address those areas that have been identified.”

It’s not just the sidewalks, either. According to a separate study by the DPW, more than half of all public streets in the city are in “deficient” or “poor” condition, with the lowest-ranking “poor” roads making up a plurality of 38% of all streets in the city. Many sections of the city that show clusters of poorly maintained streets align with areas identified as having sidewalks in rough shape.

Earlier this month, the City Council voted 7-2 to appropriate more than $800,000 for sidewalk repairs, to be paid with money originally received via a $450,000 municipal purpose loan in 2021 to pay for improvements to the Hotel Bridge in Leeds, along with an additional $450,000 the city appropriated from reserves the following year for the same project. Only $79,000 of those funds appropriated had gone toward the bridge restoration before officials realized the true cost of the project far outran the initial estimates put forth by the city.

“The reality is that this has become an incredibly expensive project,” said Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra regarding the bridge project during the council’s Oct. 17 meeting. “What’s been appropriated is significantly more than what had been the original estimate and then the bids are coming in at double or more.”

One of the dissenting votes on redirecting the money came from Ward 7’s Rachel Maiore, who opposed the measure because the Hotel Bridge is located in Leeds, which Ward 7 encompasses. Ward 3’s Quaverly Rothenberg, who has previously voted in tandem with Maiore in opposing other measures, was the other vote against.

“I am here to represent the people of Leeds, and I cannot say that this is what we’re going to do, that we’re going to take away this money and leave them to take this money, and leave them to watch the literal and figurative heart of their village degrade,” Maiore said.

With the order’s approval, the total amount dedicated by the city this year for sidewalk repair exceeds $1 million, adding from the original $250,000 for repair included in the city’s fiscal year budget. Dubs told the Gazette the extra funding was a good start, but that advocates need to continue to push for more attention to sidewalks.

“This won’t be a permanent solution, because this money is coming from the Hotel Bridge project,” Dubs said. “It’s going to get us started, but it definitely won’t fix everything. It could be years before we fix all the sidewalks on the list.”

For Easter, she said any repairs needed for the sidewalks can’t come soon enough.

“The fall changed my life forever. My legs still hurt and my teeth got moved,” Easter said. “I just hate it to see people get hurt.”

Alexander MacDougall can be reached at amacdougall@gazettenet.com.