The Park Ridge City Council’s Public Works Committee Wednesday night recommended the city throw out a 5-year-old policy banning residents from adding items to their parkways.
Instead, the committee recommended a set of guidelines that would allow the city to judge on a case-by-case basis whether the objects in the parkway present a hazard.
The committee also recommended the city pay to remove objects from parkways when warranted.
“Staff believes we’ve gone too far with that policy,” Public Works Director Joe Saccomanno said.
“We have to define what really is a hazard.”
The committee’s recommendation comes as a Nov. 1 deadline approaches for about 800 homeowners to comply with the parkway policy.
“We don’t really need some of these items removed because they don’t constitute a hazard,” Saccomanno said.
Adopted in 1995, the policy bars almost everything from city-owned parkways except grass and trees in order to limit the city’s liability in an accident.
Homeowners with banned objects on the parkways were given five years to remove them.
Many homeowners, in an effort to beautify their property or protect parkway lawns, add timbers, logs, boulders, stones, cobblestones, fencing, shrubs, automatic sprinkler systems or private drains.
The City Council is expected to vote on the recommendation Nov. 6.
