L.A. is a KLEPTOCRACY! This is beyond outragous! Villaraigosa and his band of Mexican thieves are getting away with 'legal' grand larceny! Our city is being pillaged and plundered like nothing I have ever seen! Revenue has never been greater, and the city has never been more deteriorated. It's a Mexican slum!

City to pass the bucks on sidewalks?

To address a repair backlog, the L.A. council studies charging homeowners when property sells.By David Zahniser, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 21, 2008

Faced with more than 4,000 miles of broken sidewalks and scarce money to make repairs, Los Angeles officials are weighing a proposal to put responsibility for making the fixes squarely on homeowners.

Under the proposal, homeowners would be forced to replace the damaged pavement -- or pay the city a fee -- when they sell their property, before the close of escrow.

The City Council's Public Works Committee got its first look Wednesday at the "point of sale" plan, which could cost the average homeowner as much as $15 for each square foot of sidewalk, and dramatically shift the burden for such repairs from city government to the private sector.

The proposal is backed by Service Employees International Union Local 721, which said it would address a growing backlog of repairs while boosting economic development in the city.

"It's probably the only way of addressing the problem in a comprehensive way," said SEIU policy coordinator Teresa Sanchez, whose union represents about 11,000 city employees.

Several members of Southern California's real estate lobby hate the idea, saying it would complicate a real estate market already gripped by foreclosures and "short sales" -- sellers unloading their property at a loss.

"To put an additional burden on property owners when they're already suffering is pretty insensitive," said Mel Wilson, legislative advocate for the Southland Regional Assn. of Realtors.

Los Angeles spends $9 million annually on sidewalk repairs, enough to replace a little more than 50 miles each year, said Bill Robertson, general manager of the Bureau of Street Services.

At that rate, the city will fix its current 4,600 miles of broken sidewalks around 2091, he said.

Los Angeles has 6,000 additional miles of sidewalk considered in good condition.

The city also spends about $3 million annually on lawsuits and legal claims stemming from injuries blamed on uneven sidewalks.

Although city inspectors can issue citations to property owners with broken sidewalks -- forcing them to make the necessary repairs -- they have not done so since 1973.

That year the City Council passed an ordinance that said private property owners were not responsible for sidewalks damaged by tree roots.

The legal view turned out to be incorrect, and city officials began putting money toward sidewalk repairs shortly after 2000, Robertson said.

But it never recovered from the backlog that accrued over 35 years, he said.

"The question is, do we want to bear the $1.2-billion burden of those repairs, or do we want to . . . have the property owners share that cost when they sell their homes?" he asked.

The council took a stab at addressing cracked sidewalks three years ago when it created the “50-50â€