City councilors Jamison and Anderson announced on Monday during a council meeting they would be looking at the city ordinance that determines what gets planted in the boulevard. They are proposing revoking it as it is currently (only sod and grass) and allowing plants, landscaping, rock, boulders etc., with a few provisions, such as setbacks, plant heights and allowing utilities to be dug up with no responsibility to the utility companies to replace the destroyed plants/landscaping.
Now is the time to contact your councilors about the proposed changes and give them your input.
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They need to limit the size of the rocks, or put in some sort of language to prevent the rocks from going into the street and storm sewer. This will cause huge problems both in safety (cars hitting rocks and sending them flying), and efficiency of our storm sewers. Common sense!!!
The rocks in the boulevard issues arose 20 years ago when people were putting pea rock and washed river rock along curb in place of grass. Many of these well meaning citizens did not understand the need to recess or dig out the dirt so the rock would not wash into the gutters. It was bad. This is not the same thing as immovable rock such as boulders setback by sidewalk or paver stones properly permanently installed along curb to ease people getting out of their vehicles. As former Sioux Falls City street engineer John Smith explained to me back in the day. The materials must not interfere with the storm sewers or snowplows. Very simple.
Any loose material above the curb height should be prohibited to prevent damage to the plows and plugging the sewers. These were in the previous rules and should be retained. Beyond this simple measure, Theresa’s efforts are right on.
Once the mike-row managers in city code enforcement get new tighter rules we should demand the big trees like the one Theresa is standing behind be cut down because they can block vision. Big brick mailboxes should be yanked because they might bloc vision. While we are at it, prohibit cars parking on the street because they block vision. To make it easier to leave your driveway, why not require everyone to back into their driveways so they can better see to pull into traffic?
See how absurd these rules can get to be? It would be easy to fix any problems with boulevard plantings by using the simple John Smith era rules and let’s get on with life.
BTW, if you are driving so fast through a neighborhood you miss someone backing out of their driveway or can’t see someone trying to cross a street, you are driving too fast. This is beginning to sound like a police traffic control issue, hmmmmm……
Why not slow down and smell the flowers.
Two considerations:
1) Plantings should be “low-profile,” especially at street intersections, so as to not cause visual obstructions for traffic.
2) The current restriction to “sod and grass” doesn’t include trees. Trees are present in many boulevards, especially in older neighborhoods (where trees were once *required* to be placed in boulevards, I’m told). Keeping my point 1 in mind, we’ll need a new ordinance to clarify whether trees are allowed, disallowed, or disallowed but “grandfathered”.
One of the reasons signage is NOT allowed on boulevards is because it can obstruct the line of vision for drivers.
For the same reason, the Council needs to include height requirements for anything placed or planted in the boulevards in the new ordinance.
So are you suggesting we cut down all the large trees in the Boulevard, say in McKennan Park, because they block line of vision? Because they obstruct view more then any tall plants do.