City Ponders Condemnation of Property to Gain Easement for New 19th St. Sidewalk

A two-month deadline has been set for property owners on 19th St. between Bryant and Lillie to sign over easements permitting the city to put down a sidewalk before legal condemnation proceedings begin.

The sidewalk project, which hasn’t amounted to much more than talk over the past five years, was approved in September and made a priority in October, when the city council discussed capital improvement projects, placing an emphasis on infrastructure.

Six months after approval, City Engineer Karl Bednarz provided council with an update on the project in March, identifying problem areas that had hindered progress and effectively stopped the project in its tracks. With only two feet of right of way, the city was eight feet short of the space necessary to lay a sidewalk down the street.

In order to acquire the space needed, easements from property owners would have to be signed donating that land to the city. After six months, only a few of the property owners had been identified and contacted, prompting West Texas Organizing Strategy (WTOS) senior leader Jerry Sea to call the city out on the lack of progress and offer his services. Sea had already made contact with many of the residents in the area and volunteered to once again “walk the street” securing the easements.

“That was a part of the reason why we’ve gotten some of the more recent responses that we have,” Development Services Director Patrick Howard said of Sea’s efforts. “He’s been rolling up his sleeves and really assisting in trying to help us in that effort, so that has occurred.

On Tuesday, Bednarz returned to the council chambers with an update on the project and the property acquisition.

“We’ve identified 27 parcels of land that we need to have some access to to put the sidewalk on,” Bednarz said. “Today we have 14 license agreements from property owners out of the 27.”

An additional four license agreements were signed in the interim between Bednarz’s last meeting with the city’s legal department and the council meeting, bringing the total to 19. The remaining eight, he anticipated, could take some time to acquire.

“That leaves us eight more, and of those eight, I’m sure they’re going to need some work because it’s taken us this long to get them. I’m sure it’s going to take a little bit longer,” Bednarz said. “Some of them I know were involved in a trustee situation, so we have to identify the people there and work through that.”

Following Bednarz’s update, the question on councilmembers’ tongues was how long. Howard explained that property acquisition is not something that can really be predicted, and that the next step would be condemnation, which the city would like to avoid.

Not satisfied with extending the duration of the project to completion, councilman Don Vardeman suggested that a “drop dead date” be instituted, at which point the city would proceed with condemnation. The proposed period was set at two months, with an update to be heard at the council’s first October meeting.

“This project has been going on for five years and it’s just never ending, we can just never wrap it up,” councilwoman Charlotte Farmer stated. “I think the citizens that walk and shop in that area are deserving because of the high amount of traffic that we need to make it a priority.”

City Real Estate Administrator Cindy Preas, who has been working with the city’s engineering and legal departments on the project, said staff have had personal conversations with several of the owners and are confident that they will reach an agreement in the coming weeks.

“I feel like two months—we hope to have them all tied down by that time,” she said. “We do have some heirs that we’ve never notified, so we have identified the hiers now and are reaching out to a spokesperson for the family in the hopes of having that spokesperson contact the heirs that or assign their interests through some kind of power of attorney…”

Lysia Bowling, Attorney for the City of San Angelo expounded upon the statement, explaining the problems with estates and the time associated with legal proceedings.  

“What we can’t control are the property owners whose property is tied up in an estate, so therefore we would be required to commence condemnation, so that would give a longer time frame,” she said.

In the meantime, city engineers are completing the surveying and are now ready to begin the design phase of the project, Bednarz said. An initial projection for the length of the project once all property had been acquired was three to six months.