Medford City Council Approves $500K For Sidewalk Reconstruction

MEDFORD, MA — The Medford City Council approved the First Reading of Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn's request to appropriate $500,000 for sidewalk reconstruction at its April 28 meeting. An amendment, proposed by Councilor George Scarpelli, was added to have the Department of Public Works analyze the cost of establishing a city-run road crew.

The funds will go toward "the costs of repairing, constructing and reconstructing various sidewalks including engineering and design services and the payment of all costs incidental and related thereto and that to meet this appropriation the City Treasurer with the approval of the Mayor, is authorized to borrow said sum under Massachusetts General Laws Chap. 44, Section 7 (1) and issue bonds or notes of the city therefor," according to Lungo-Koehn's request.

Medford replaced 232 sidewalks last year, said David Rodrigues, Lungo-Koehn's chief of staff. The $500,000 appropriation is the second installment of a two-year contract, which several councilors acknowledged they wish to honor. At the same time, many were tepid about contracting with private companies going forward.

"We're not investing in our own personnel and our own institutional knowledge, and we're giving all the control and direction to a private company that we're throwing money at," Councilor Adam Knight said. "We've discussed at length about how when a private company gets a public contract, they feel as though they've hit the lottery, and the work product sometimes isn't as good as we'd like."

The city plans to perform a pavement condition index this summer, which will provide a better understanding of which sidewalks are in need of replacement, Rodrigues said. The list will consider criteria such as the age of the request, the condition of surrounding sidewalks and driveway aprons and how to equally distribute work across the city.

The hope is to spread the work "as far as possible," said Rodrigues. The funding would not crowd out the city's coronavirus-related expenses, he added later in the meeting.

Some councilors expressed concern that the city is behind the issue of repairing its sidewalks. Councilor Michael Marks said that in his 20 years on the City Council, "we've never really gotten ahead of the curve."

Council Vice President Richard Caraviello supported potentially consolidating the work into a city-run road crew.

"I don't think we'll ever make any headway by throwing $500,000 at this," he said. "I would think half a million dollars would get us a crew that would work from April to November non-stop doing sidewalks, because you'll never run out of sidewalks to fix."