Connie Lambert used to walk to Sprouts, a grocery store less than a half-mile from her Hillcrest senior-citizen apartment complex, but stopped when she fell over broken sidewalks along the way.
The weekend after Lambert’s photos of the sidewalks were featured on The Stumblr blog, the sidewalks had a fresh coat of asphalt over them, smoothing out their rough spots. Sprouts is a go again.
“I, for one, can now resume shopping there without the fear of a catastrophe,” Lambert said.
Other broken sidewalks have also been repaired after appearing on The Stumblr.
Two weeks ago, Rachel Laing, who works for a local lobbying firm, sent The Stumblr a photo of a tree that crashed into a Point Loma sidewalk.
This week, Laing sent another photo. This one showed the city removing the tree.
“It’s being taken care of at last,” Laing said.
Bill Harris, a spokesman for the city’s transportation department, said The Stumblr has given people another way to express frustrations about sidewalk conditions.
“This is a benefit to all of us, residents and city workers alike,” Harris said. “More information is always better information when deciding how to allocate our limited resources.”
It also probably doesn’t hurt that the city’s legal liability for a sidewalk trip-and-fall kicks in once the bad condition is obvious, something an entry on a shoddy sidewalk blog would make clear.
So if you’d like some help getting your sidewalk problem fixed, keep your photos coming to The Stumblr. Email a picture or two, along with the block where the sidewalk is located, to me at liam@vosd.org.
Liam Dillon is a news reporter for Voice of San Diego. He covers how regular people interact with local government. What should he write about next?
Please contact him directly at liam.dillon@voiceofsandiego.org or 619.550.5663.
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