No one has officially called a new homegrown repair program for sidewalks a “rescue operation.” However, when crews from the Community Services Consortium of Polk County started tearing into bad cement walkways in Independence and replacing them with good ones, the term seemed to apply.
Last spring, the Independence City Council turned thumbs down on a proposal by public works that would have given 27 local homeowners 60 days to redo their sidewalks, according to the presentation at their April meeting. The property owners had been sent city-generated letters about their defective sidewalks – and informed that they needed to undertake repairs or face the possibility of a city-imposed lien.