By Ryan Berry

DailyAdvocate.com

GREENVILLE — With the second phase of the City of Greenville’s sidewalk program set to begin in the next few weeks, Greenville City Council continued to hear complaints about the first phase of the project. The council met in regular session on Tuesday, Sept. 3.

Shane Applegate Addressed city council on Tuesday to shared he has been dealing with the effects phase one of the sidewalk program for nearly a year and is disappointed with the quality of work performed by America’s Decorative Concrete (ADC). “You guys, through the government, make it almost impossible to obtain a bond if you’re not a licensed contractor or so on. I tried to replace my sidewalks to begin with. I was not able to replace my own sidewalks,” he said.

After the work was completed by the contractor, he said he talked to someone in the city’s planning and zoning department. Applegate asked if the sidewalk would have been acceptable in front of the city building. The answer from the city was “absolutely not”. Although the sidewalk is not acceptable for the city, Applegate said he is forced to pay for it. “You charged a premium price for a subpar product,” he said.

She shared that ADC finished the pour on his sidewalk with dry bags of concrete because they ran out of concrete on the truck. The sidewalk is already cracked and because of the way they removed the slabs of concrete, Applegate was forced to pay for three sections instead of the two sections that were marked for repair and the contractor broke the sign box in front of his home.

The city offered to send the contractor back out to make the repairs, but because of the issues Applegate had with the contractor, he refused the city’s offer. “I said no. I do not want anything to do with this guy. I seen what went on,” said Applegate.

The resident said he has spoken with the mayor about the issue and asked if he needed to come to the council to “rattle some cages” and get something done about the problem. He relayed that the mayor told him, “No, I will schedule someone on Tuesday.” Applegate said he was home on Tuesday, and no one came. “It’s been an ongoing battle for something I could have done myself. You would have had beautiful sidewalks in this town.” He said his sidewalk is rough and equated it to rumble strips next to the interstate.

Safety Service Director Ryan Delk was asked by Council President John Baumgardner as to where the city was at on this property. Delk responded, “The last time I spoke to Mr. Applegate, I offered to have the contractor come back out and repair it. He didn’t want them on his property. I said, ‘Okay, what do you want me to do?’ He said, “I just want you to realize the next time you go to hire this contractor how bad of work they do.’ That was probably the last time we spoke.”

Baumgardner asked if they could repair the sidewalks with street department employees. “We could,” said Delk. “If he’ll (Applegate) agree to that. That’s the biggest thing”

After hearing numerous complaints from residents during phase one of the sidewalk replacement, the city council recently agreed to use ADC for phase two. Delk, at the time said they had numerous discussions with the contractor and what was expected from them. Delk reiterated those conversations during his address to the council on Tuesday. “I talked to the contractor last Friday and they are going to start within the next few weeks,” said Delk.

“I’ve already had a lot of conversations about Mr. Applegate’s, some of the concerns or a lot of concerns that we’ve had and expectations and kind of been working through that. And then we’re going to schedule a preconstruction meeting and go over everything again and set our expectations, so we don’t have problems like that on phase two,” stated Delk.

To contact Daily Advocate Editor Ryan Berry, email [email protected].