City will send notices to property owners, waive fees, quicken approvals
By David Garrick
A new San Diego campaign to accelerate sidewalk repairs across the city includes notifying thousands of property owners that they are responsible for repairs near their properties, waiving a $2,200 permit fee and streamlining a bureaucratic approval process.
The goals of the campaign include encouraging residents to help cover an estimated $238 million in needed repairs and reducing city payouts to people injured by crumbling sidewalks.
City officials are delaying until at least 2026 more drastic measures under consideration, such as a possible city law making property owners liable for sidewalk-related injuries and requiring that adjacent sidewalks be in good condition before properties can be sold.
The City Council’s Active Transportation and Infrastructure Committee voted unanimously last week to approve the fee waivers and the streamlined approval process, which will allow property owners to self-certify their repairs.
The notices of responsibility the city will begin sending out to property owners this winter will alert them that they are responsible for damaged sidewalk that could lead to an injury lawsuit — but no enforcement actions are planned.
City officials say they hope people will be spurred to act when they become aware of the damaged sidewalks, the temporary fee waiver through June 2026 and the streamlined approval process.
Instead of the current process, which requires property owners to submit a repair plan that faces multiple reviews by city officials before and after, they will now be able to simply hire a contractor to do the work and send in before-and-after photos.
“We want to educate property owners about their risk and make it easy,” said Bethany Bezak, the city’s transportation director.
Council members said they expect to get flooded with calls and complaints when the first wave of notices get issued. City officials said they plan to issue roughly 200 per month citywide.
Because sidewalks can seem like just as much a public responsibility as roads, storm drains and other parts of the public right of way, many property owners are unaware that state law has a special designation for sidewalks that makes adjacent property owners responsible for repairs.
San Diego officials say they need property owners to become financial partners, because the city is facing a daunting backlog of roughly 40,000 repairs to its 4,550 miles of sidewalk.
They say it would take about $16 million a year to effectively tackle the backlog, but the city has been spending an average of $1.6 million annually on sidewalk repair since 2018.
City officials say being proactive is crucial. They say it costs an average of $6,600 to repair a damaged sidewalk, while the average payout for an injury claim is $46,000.
City officials stopped sending out notices of responsibility to property owners a few years ago because most property owners were simply ignoring them.
“Even when homeowners have wanted to take action in the past to address their sidewalks, they face thousands of dollars of repair permit fees on top of repair costs,” Councilmember Kent Lee said. “I think there’s no doubt that tends to be a huge deterrent.”
City officials say the new campaign will prioritize sending notices of responsibility in neighborhoods where people walk the most, a designation that tends to somewhat overlap with the city’s low-income areas.
The city has set aside $300,000 to pay the full cost of repairs when notices of responsibility are issued to property owners in low-income areas, which are officially called communities of concern. Officials say the money should cover 60 such sidewalk repairs.
Patrick Hadley, the city’s deputy director of streets, said San Diego has been trying to repave sidewalks as quickly as possible since a 2015 assessment found 85,000 damaged areas.
Since then, the city has completed 16,000 asphalt ramp temporary repairs, 63,000 slice repairs (in which a sidewalk square gets cut and partly replaced), and 3,500 full-square replacements.
Residents with questions about damaged sidewalks can call (619) 527-3941, visit sandiego.gov/safesidewalks or send an email to safesidewalks@sandiego.gov .
david.garrick@sduniontribune.com
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