St. Joseph City Commissioners have approved the annual sidewalk replacement program for the year to ensure pedestrian walkways are kept in good repair.

City Engineer Tim Zebell told commissioners Monday the city does sidewalk repairs by dividing the community into quadrants.

“So we get back to each one of the quadrants once every eight years,” Zebell said. “The replacement project this year is in Quadrant Two. That’s east of Main Street and north of Harrison Avenue. The criteria within the quadrant is a tripping hazard of one inch or more.”

The city previously used a more stringent standard for doing repairs, but funding issues have resulted in following the one inch rule.

Zebell said the city only got one bid for the work, from Anlaan Corporation of Grand Haven at a total cost of $250,675, noting it’s hard to get contractors for this project when it’s done every two years.

“In 2018, things kind of took a turn for us where we had to advertise the project three times just to get a single bid. This isn’t a project that contractors are clamoring for. It’s very inefficient, moving around, hard work, that sort of thing. So we almost have to beg contractors to bid it.”

That’s why Zebell proposed a new pilot to bring sidewalk repairs in-house.

“We would like to run a pilot project parallel to the 2026 replacement program, and that is to determine if it’s economic or feasible for us to do this, take on the full program in the future. The project would include pulling about 30 squares from Anlaan’s contract. We would grind several of the squares and we would replace the remaining squares, and we’ll track that replacement and repair rate costs using CityWorks.”

If insourced, the sidewalk program would likely occur each year rather than every other year, and Zebell does estimate it would require some new hires. Commissioners said they were interested in the idea of bringing this program in-house.

“I’m very interested in the idea of in-housing this, and can we do it ourselves, and expanding what we can do ourselves,” Commissioner Michael Fernandez said. “So, very much looking forward to that.”

Commissioners then approved the contract with Anlaan, along with the pilot.