Sandy Springs staff recommends raising gap‑fill sidewalk threshold to $100,000 and seeks public outreach

Wesley Waters, a Public Works staff member, told the Sandy Springs City Council on Feb. 4 that staff recommends increasing the Capital Sidewalk Program's gap-fill project limit from $50,000 to $100,000 and is seeking council consensus to begin public outreach asking residents for nonbinding letters of intent to donate right of way.

The recommendation is intended to make more short, low-cost sidewalk gaps eligible for quicker delivery. "We haven't been able to execute a single project under $50,000 in a few years," Waters said, noting staff had considered a $75,000 threshold but favored $100,000 to capture more candidates.

Waters said the city is advancing about 20 sidewalk segments through T-SPLOST 2021 funding, roughly $12 million in work, and that a drafted priority-scored list of candidate segments (about $60–70 million worth of scored candidates) will be posted to the city website for public review. He said the list is intended to feed the Transportation Master Plan update this year; the city's traffic unit will use the ranked segments when planning future funding rounds.

The draft scoring uses a 60-point scale, with 10 points allotted to right-of-way. Waters described the mechanism for residents…