Sidewalks
July 17th, 2008 by 
Alica
Do you have sidewalks on your street? I live in Richland Park, and I think it was one of the first neighborhoods in Brandon to have sidewalks. They are nice, but are too narrow. These days, sidewalks are wider.
I grew up in Brandon Park, though, and we didn’t have sidewalks there. (Actually, we didn’t have paved roads back then either.) We played and rode our bicycles in the street all the time. Of course, Brandon’s population was less than 1,000 back then, not 8,000 like it is now.
If you don’t have sidewalks already, would you like them? According to city officials, any resident who wants sidewalks can go ahead and hire the work done themselves, and pay the bill. If all the people on one street go together, they can have sidewalks any time they want. There are a few regulations on where they’d need to be placed, but the city doesn’t have to be involved in the project itself.
Is this something the people on your street would be interested in?
Or, the city can handle bidding the project and paying the up front costs. But then the city will assess the cost back to the landowners. Usually this happens over a five-year period. But either way, the landowners end up paying for the sidewalks.
Posted in Uncategorized | 
July 18th, 2008 at 5:14 am
Off subject..Where was Med-Star for the call. I thought they always claimed they would have an extra rig for calls?
July 18th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Rural Metro no longer has a contract with the city of Brandon, how is it they can come here? Is there a signed agreement at city hall? So in reality we have a licensed service that didn’t respond to a 911 call and an unlicensed one that did?
What would have happened if Rural Metro couldn’t have covered for MedStar? What if they had been with their own calls? How can the service we HIRED be UNAVAILABLE, we are talking about 911 service aren’t we?
Where were the FOUR other MedStar rigs??
What would have happened had it have been 3 teenagers on their way to school with all three seriously injured?
When you are in the 911 emergency ambulance business you don’t get to say you’re unavailable. Unless we have a city/countywide DISASTER. (which we didn’t) Medstar and the city got lucky this time….what about next time?
July 19th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
I re read the blog about SIDEWALKS several times and never found the mention of ambulance. If you will look directly to the left of your responces there is a list and on this list there is a catagory that says AMBULANCE. Try posting there.
July 19th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
THANK YOU #3. Are developers putting in sidewalks to the new neighborhoods? If so, is it feasible for the city to regulate that sidewalks be added to all neighborhoods, maybe as part of a city-wide improvement plan? If homeowners decided to put in their own sidewalks, it seems like that would be asking for alot of inconsistency. I remember back when…the uproar was who was going to pay for the street paving. I grew in the only house that was on our block, but I can’t remember who paid for, or what the split was.
July 19th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
sorry, Responses is the proper spelling.
July 20th, 2008 at 9:08 am
#1 & 2..Not sure what you are talking about. Could you enlighten us - maybe in the ambulance area.
July 20th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
copied to the ambulance archive, it may be viewed there.
July 21st, 2008 at 1:14 pm
I live on S. Cardinal Drive and I see kids in the streets every day! I also see them fly out into the street without looking for oncoming traffic at all! While I am concerned for the safety of all the kids in our community I am also realistic about the fact that it will not keep kids out of the streets!
I see the very parents of the kids using this street drive way too fast every single day and I feel it really comes down to the enforcement of the speed limits and education of the kids to use safety precautions when outside. Another great option would be speed bumps! Since most of the streets in the older part of town have slight inclines or declines people’s speed tends to rise when entering these areas and speed bumps would be something that would definitely serve to slow them down!
July 21st, 2008 at 3:20 pm
If speed bumps were installed, they would have to be removed in the winter so the snow plows wouldn’t scrape them.
July 21st, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Speed bumps can be “temporary”. The ones down by the ballfield/swimming pool can be removed. I lived in an area of Brandon a few years ago that tried to get some speed bumps put in due to speeding veicles. No go on the part of the city - police dept. This is despite the fact that EVERY homeowner in the area wanted the speed bumps put in - we even volunteered to pay for them.
July 21st, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Those are big spikes that put those speed bumps down, they’re not meant to be pulled up and put back down. You’d tear up the street and then everybody would be complaining about the street breaking up.
Everyone in Brandon is free to pay to have sidewalks put in. We all knew when we bought our houses that there weren’t any.
July 22nd, 2008 at 10:05 am
I have an idea, lets get the parents out from in front of the TV set and have them go outside and do something with / watch their kids. Maybe they could get license plates of the speeders so it could be passed on to the police? Or just step out and ask the “speeders” to be more careful? Then maybe they would know someone is watching their actions.
July 22nd, 2008 at 10:45 am
#12 When we were having issues with speeders in our neighborhood a few years back, we did just as you suggested. We talked to the speeders, gave license plate numbers to police, and we were watching our kids. It didn’t help at all. I actually had one person (after talking with them) swerve their car to “pretend” to hit me as I walked across the street to the mailbox. The city and police were of little help. We ended up moving. The only thing that did help, a bit, was to set up the portable speedometer.
July 22nd, 2008 at 11:44 am
In response to Alicia:
Without sounding facitious, how then do they maintain the speed bumps that are elsewhere in the winter? I would think it would be better than ripping half the trees in the older part of town, not to mention being less expensive to the elderly in these neighborhoods! We’re talking a ton of money with all there would be involved to put in sidewalks, in my humble opinion.
July 22nd, 2008 at 3:04 pm
To #14: I’m trying to think of where there are speed bumps, and the only place I can think of is in Aspen Park. And I know they take those up every winter and reinstall them every summer.
If a homeowner wants a sidewalk in front of his house, there’s nothing stopping him from putting one in. All he has to do is call a cement guy and order the work done, and pay for it.
If a homeowner wants sidewalk all down his side of the street, all he has to do is talk all his neighbors into ordering the work done on their lots at the same time.
The city has guidelines so all the sections of sidewalk would be uniform and line up.
July 22nd, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Alica is correct Aspen park is the only place there are speed bumps other than the high school parking lot and neither of those places are public streets.
I really don’t think you can put speed on city streets. The speed limit is between 25 and 30 MPH on city streets and you sure can’t go the the speed limit with speed bumps, you have to crawl over them. Can you imagine if all the streets in Brandon had speed bumps! No way.
July 22nd, 2008 at 8:07 pm
I have lived several different places — that had a winter/snow season and some of the neighborhoods had speed bumps/humps that weren’t ‘pulled’ up in the winter time.
I do believe if the town would force everyone to have sidewalks if would be a financial hardship to some that have corner lots in the older parts of town.
July 23rd, 2008 at 6:43 pm
There are speed bumps all over the US on PUBLIC streets. They are quite effective in slowing down traffic.
July 24th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Anon I believe I read in a previous post of yours that you have moved out of Brandon? Why are you on every blog that deals with Brandon? Get a life!
July 26th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
#19 “Out of town” does not mean I don’t live close to Brandon. My kids attend school in Brandon, our church is in Brandon, we shop in Brandon, we bank in Brandon, etc. Believe it or not, many people live “out of town” but still have the right to have input on issues that affect us.
August 2nd, 2008 at 10:04 pm
I’m wondering what plan the City has for planting/sodding on either side of the new sidewalks from the watertower property to the H.S. property North driveway. At this time there are weeds 1 ft. high growing. It really detracts from the beauty of the new streets & sidewalks. Also, the trees just north of the watertower need to be trimmed badly. AND who is responsible for mowing, pulling weeds, etc. along the new sidewalks. Weeds are growing over the edges of the sidewalk. I commend the City Planners for the beautification along Holly, but it must be maintained.
Thank you.