Funds from the Englewood Concrete Utility will once again be used to repair privately owned concrete, including sidewalks and curbs, and public concrete such as concrete alley entrances.
“Our budget is about $498,000 this year and that will enable us to do concrete replacement at about 300 locations throughout the city,” said Larry Nimmo, public works field operations administrator. “The work will start this summer. It will be a little later than usual because the demand for concrete work is so high right now.”
In 1997, Englewood became the first city in the nation to create a concrete utility.
“We know concrete replacement can be a financial burden for homeowners,” Public Works Director Rick Kahm said. “We created the utility and fashioned a concrete insurance policy. Those in the utility pay an annual fee and, when their concrete needs to be replaced, the utility funds pay for it to be done.”
The system has worked well, so well that Kahm said Englewood has provided information on the creation of a concrete utility to a number of cities around the country.
In most municipalities, a homeowner is responsible for the maintenance of the sidewalk, curb and gutter adjacent to his or her property. Before the utility’s establishment, if the city determined a section of concrete was substandard and needed to be replaced, the city notified the property owner to pay the cost of repairing the concrete. If a property owner couldn’t afford to have the work done, the city could contract to replace the bad concrete and then place a lien against the property for the cost of the work, which was paid off when the property was sold.
Membership in the utility is voluntary. But when membership opened in 1997, only 707 of the almost 11,000 property owners in the city declined to join the program. A few more owners join the utility each year, Kahm said, and now only about 5 percent of property owners don’t belong to the utility.
Utility members pay an annual fee based on the amount of concrete around the property. The average annual fee is about $40 for the owner of an Englewood home with a 50-foot frontage
At the same time, the average cost to remove and replace a 10-foot section of sidewalk can be $500 or more.