City Requirements for Sidewalks and Rain Gardens

We’re now on week 8 since submitting our building permits. We have been patiently waiting to hear back from the city on two issues – storm water management and sidewalks. While we’ve been waiting the house has been completely demolished and we now have an empty lot.

I was finally able to talk to someone from the city last week and was able to set up a meeting with them last Friday.

Owner Responsibility for City Required Sidewalks

The neighborhood where we are building has no sidewalks. We have seen two different houses that are being built within a mile of where we are building that do not appear to have sidewalks going in. I’ve talked with two people from the city and they both insist that we have to put in sidewalks as part of some city code that was put into place to get in ADA compliance.

The women I spoke with on Friday said that people have been suing jurisdictions because the sidewalks are not ADA compliant. In our current neighborhood they just put in a bunch of ramps to comply with this. I understand the issue, but there are no sidewalks where the new house will be built, so we will have a sidewalk that leads to the grass in our neighbors’ yard on both sides. I also mentioned the other houses that we’ve seen and for different reasons she said that those houses did not need sidewalks. One reason was that one of the streets did not have a curb, and she said that there was not enough room for a sidewalk at the other house. It does not make great logically sense to me, but she would not budge on the topic.

We’re going to continue look into a way to avoid putting in sidewalks but for now we needed it on the site plan so we can move forward with permits.

City Rainwater Management System Requirement

The other issue that we needed to address was the plan for storm water management. Our contractor found the old drainage system during demolition. The question was if it was actually hooked up to anything. From the research he had done they had re-done the street a few years ago and as a part of that, they did an “improvement” to the storm water system and there was no documentation that the system from the lot was ever hooked up to the new system. Without knowing exactly where that goes, the city won’t let us tie back into that.

There was an exception to needing a storm water management that says; if you’re replacing an impervious area for the same purpose that you would not need this requirement, but since we demolished the current structure they are saying that we do not qualify for this exception.

After going through the options of what we could do, the easiest thing to do seems like making a rain garden, of course the city has specific requirements on what they will allow and what plants can be planted. I had done a lot of research and it makes it seems like you just make a garden and direct the rain water from the roof to go into the garden, but the city makes it much more difficult than this.

We had to complete an Operations and Management form and have it notarized and then recorded with the county for $87. A small fee in the grand scheme of things, but it seems like an unnecessary fee for the city/county to make more money. I also had to create a plant scheme showing what plants we would be putting in and how many of each plant. The last requirement was that we needed to have the site plan updated with the location of the proposed rain garden.

It’s been a little frustrating working with the city and waiting for them to give us answers, but I think we finally have things figured out. It’s going to be a lot of extra money, which we unfortunately did not plan for. The biggest frustration is that months ago, when we were first looking at building on the lot, I had asked specifically if we were going to need sidewalks or storm water management; and I was told that we would not need either because we were replacing a current structure and there were no sidewalks in the area. Now, we did not budget for these items because of what we were told.

Hopefully, once we get the supplemental information everything will be approved soon and we will have permits. It feels like it’s going to take a lot longer, but everyone says it shouldn’t be much more. I’m not keeping my fingers crossed.