Many years have passed since the City of Auburn last updated most of the ordinance that relates to installation and maintenance of sidewalk areas within city public right of way.

How many years? Try 61.

From 1957 to now, from Eisenhower to Trump, in that span of time you can bet the farm that state law, and other outside regulations and practices have done a lot of changing.

Indeed, as state law now addresses a significant part of the code that then related to the creation of a Local Improvement District (LID) process for sidewalks, some code is irrelevant, obsolete, and by its very presence, creates potential snarlings with state law.

Here’s good news: On March 5, the Auburn City Council finally got around to squaring its whole sidewalk thing with the new millennium.

“We felt that 61 years later was time to amend the code,” said Councilman Claude DaCorsi

Among other significant revisions are: clarification of the definition of a sidewalk; maintenance, installation and replacement responsibilities of adjacent property owners and the City; and the allowance for private irrigation systems within the public right-of-way for better maintenance of landscaped areas.

“This code (revision) if you read through it, there are many, many strikeouts to provide the update, but there are a lot of new provisions in that code that give us the current standards, [tell us] what we should do and how we should do it related to local improvement districts

“It allows the city to have no conflicts with the state and clarification of definition of sidewalks, maintenance, installation and replacement,” DaCorsi said.