The Public Works Committee of the City of Frederick met on August 25, 2026, to receive a presentation on the completed Sidewalk and ADA Ramp Condition Assessment. The study, performed by O'Connell and Lawrence, inventoried 343 miles of sidewalk (4,649 segments) and 6,196 ADA ramps within city right-of-way. The citywide sidewalk condition index averaged 78 (satisfactory), while 62% of ADA ramps failed inspection, predominantly due to missing tactile warning pads. The committee discussed findings, repair costs, prioritization, and next steps for funding and policy changes.
Congratulations to the flag of the United States of America. And to the Republic for which it stands. One nation, another God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Great. Well, we have one item today. I am grateful for Tracy and her team for having us be able to hear this report. Very exciting. So uh Tracy. Good afternoon. My name is Nicole Harshman. Good afternoon. My name is Nicole Harshman. I'm the manager of projects and inspections at DPW. We have completed the sidewalk ADA ramp condition assessment. And our reports finished. And I'm gonna hand it over to O'Connell and Lawrence. This is Paul. This is Sean, and this is Zayn. They uh they worked on the assessment for us and put together the presentation, and I'll let them take it from here. Well, thank you very much. Uh my name's Paul, and uh I'm with O'Connell and Lawrence, and we performed an assessment of the city sidewalks and ADA ramps conditions, uh, and we put together a report uh that kind of outlines and details our process for that and the outcomes of that, and and so here we are today to kind of give you the uh a presentation of what those outcomes were, uh what our findings were and how we kind of went about doing that. Um so with me I have some colleagues of mine. We I've got Sean O'Connell with me, uh and and we also have uh Zaynab with us, O'Kinasamoyan, Zaynabinisamoyan, and uh Sean was our engineer on this project, and Zaynab was our analyst on this project, and she did all the number crunching. And Sean helped me noodle it out. So uh we uh here's a quick project overview. So the why of this project is that uh that we engaged on this uh RFP twenty-five Q in order to perform an objective inventory of the sidewalks in the city and the ADA ramps. Uh there were uh the uh miles that we surveyed were three hundred and forty-three miles of sidewalk, and that sidewalk on both sides of the road, if there was sidewalk on both sides of the road, or or just one, it's it's either side, whatever sidewalk uh center line in a GIS system that was present, and we would we would survey it. And and we also um inventoried accidentally some uh areas that we weren't supposed to, uh, but we've got that data too. Um we've we've narrowed it down to just the um sidewalks that uh the city uh and is responsible for. So um we went to take a look at the uh sidewalk segments, which I just mentioned are part of this GIS system. Uh and a segment could be a small part of a larger road, an entire road when we kind of have it broken down into segments, and they could be a varying size. There were four thousand six hundred and forty-nine segments that we looked at. Do you are you okay with questions as you go? Sure, that's perfectly fine. So first, that means no HOA sidewalks are included. So that's correct. Okay. And then the second is uh again, a segment. I that's my little brain didn't quite think. So an entire, maybe it's uh a block, a block. They're not necessarily it's not a set distance. So when we say a segment, we base our segments on the GIS center line that Nikki and Tracy's group maintains. So they have a GIS center line of all the sidewalks that the City of Frederick maintains. And some of those segments, they might be a hundred feet long if it's a short street or a short segment between two intersections. It could also be 1,500 feet long if it's, you know, say out like Routson's way or something that goes, you know, way in between two intersections. So a segment is not a defined distance. Um it's a it's a unit of measure, but it's not a defined distance. Sure. Sure. Hi, Tracy Coleman, Director of Public Works.