your sidewalks

For those of you representing communities with detached single family homes AND public dedicated residential streets, who is responsible for maintenance/repair of your sidewalks along the street?

They are listed as a common element in our docs, so we have always assumed responsibility, but we are getting feedback from several vendors now that this is unusual .... that usually in subdivisions, the homeowner is responsible. Obviously, in codos that's not the case.

I'm just wondering if it really is unusaul or not. As a board, we have struggled with how to handle sidewalk issues off and on for several years now because of several ambigious phrases in our docs compounded by the fact that the origional builder told all purchasers some misinformation.

We've gone around this a couple times trying to make heads/tails of it with the city, and will probably be hiring for a legal opinion soon and then clarify our docs from there.

Streets are the township/county responsibility
Township has an ordinance making the area between the curb and lot line the homeowner's responsibility, including the sidewalks (which may or may not trump our master deed).
Our Master Deed says sidewalks are a common element, so HOA responsibility.
Planning department will only clarify to the extent that it is NOT THEIR responsibility -- either hoa or homeowner.

Kind of a sloppy loop that needs to be fixed up through bylaw amendment to clarify responsibility one way or the other. I'm just wondering how other communities with non-private roads handle theirs, since we are getting a lot of feedback that our situation is "odd" from venders.

yep ... I get that.

Trying to get a feel for what most other communities do, since we're getting feedback that this is uncommon for this type of community.

While I don't have strong feelings on the matter, it would be my preference that the HOA still maintain them; however, we need to start reserving for them (versus the small scale yearly repairs we've been doing out of operational budget), which will result in notable increase in annual dues. I've run the numbers both ways and I think over the 30 years, the end cost would be about the same (at least within a couple hundred dollars)either way. The headache of individual ownership, on the otherhand, would be much higher :-)

Dee,

Per our Governing docs, the sidewalks in our HOA are common area property. We are required to maintain them (about a mile) and we have reserve funds for that purpose.

peter