Lansdale may soon be helping residents get out of their ruts.
Specifically, the borough is considering resuming regular maintenance
on the town’s extensive alleyway system — 23 miles of often pitted, rutted, car-scraping gravel and blacktop running behind many of the town’s homes.
Lansdale Borough ended its regular alley maintenance program about five years ago under threat of litigation, Borough Manager John Ernst told the Administration and Finance Committee at its monthly meeting Wednesday. And, while the liability issue hasn’t changed, the condition of the town's alleys has.
"Since the borough stopped this routine program,” Ernst said, "the amount of complaints we have gotten from residents about the condition of the alleys has multiplied. And our lack of routine maintenance has created an opportunity for a trip-and-fall hazard to happen in an alley that is not maintained."
Ernst said, "In the past the liability has been there, and that is not changing. We are not taking on any more or any less liability if we were to start this routine maintenance program again.”
"You can get sued for doing something,” noted Borough Council President Denton Burnell, "or sued for not doing something.”
Problem is, the borough neither owns nor has legal responsibility for the care of alleys. Unlike the town’s dedicated streets, the burden of maintenance falls on landowners. While individual deeded property lines do not include slivers of alleyways, those unmarked roads are legally the common responsibility of adjacent owners.
But, neighbors being neighbors, they don’t always agree on remedies or costs. And absentee landlords can compound the situation. A number of the alleys have become increasingly impassable since Lansdale ended its previous program.
"I think it's long overdue,” says Council Member Carrie Hawkins Charlton. "Being in a neighborhood that has a lot of alleys, and with people driving by who don’t even live on those streets, it's frustrating to say the least.”
"Please understand, we are not trying to make the alleys perfect,” said Ernst. "Our goal is to make the alleys passable.” He noted that borough utility vehicles, as well as emergency fire and ambulance traffic, need to use the alleys on a regular basis. "And obviously trash trucks have to get down the alleys, and I’m starting to see Amazon deliveries using the alleys. Vehicular traffic continues to wear on our alleys.”
Admin/Finance Chair Leon Angelichio pointed out that restarting the program wouldn’t mean that the borough is on call to repair every rut as it appears, or that ownership or responsibility would change. "What I don’t want to see is for this to spiral into, ‘Hey, you just fixed my alley yesterday, and it’s messed up again. Come on back out here,’” he said.
Both he and Ernst added that the law allows the borough to assess homeowners directly for reimbursement of the cost of repairs — although they noted they have no plans to do so. Angelichio also anticipates some pushback from taxpayers who are not affected by the alley issue.
But Lansdale Public Works Supervisor Rick DeLong said the costs of restarting would be minimal. No increase in staff would be needed, and the department still owns the grading equipment. "As far as manpower hours, we’re already at work. I don’t know that there would be any fluctuation in that.” He and Ernst said it would just involve a shifting and rescheduling of duties. The main cost would be in fill-rock; DeLong had no estimate of materials that would be needed.
And DeLong assured Wednesday's Public Works Committee meeting that the entire alley system could be handled in a couple of months each year, "absolutely” smoothing out every alley annually.
While Ernst sees resuming the care of the alleys as a simple operational staff decision, he nonetheless asked the Public Works Committee to recommend to full council that they vote to direct him to work with Lansdale’s Borough Solicitor on drafting a resolution authorizing the program.
"Because this has been a very visible topic and that it is an allocation and a shifting of manpower,” he said, "it is something that we want the public to be aware of that we are doing. The solicitor’s office feels it might be a good idea to get a resolution from council.”
Public Works passed a resolution to send the recommendation to council, which will likely take the issue up at its regular monthly business meeting on July 17 at 7 p.m. at Borough Hall.
