A Florence man who uses a wheelchair asked Florence City Council members when something would be done about the sidewalks near his home on Weaver Road.
Rick Hopple worked with Florence’s volunteer fire department in the 1970s. Now retired and living on Weaver Road for the last eight years, he gets around using a mobilized wheelchair, but he said the lack of sidewalks for a large portion of the road makes it difficult to get around.
He attended the city council meeting on Tuesday and spoke during the public comment section before the meeting adjourned.
“In the winter, when they plow the road, there’s nowhere to go,” he told the council.
There is a sidewalk on the southwest side of Weaver Road, but it ends at Ridgeview Drive. Guardrails and steep ditches beyond that point would make it impossible for Hopple’s wheelchair to move on anything except for the road.
Council members said there has been an ongoing effort for safe pedestrian travel after a car struck and killed a grandfather and two children, both 1-year-olds, in 2015 while they were on a walk on Weaver Road.
The former firefighter said he has asked for answers on who is responsible for that section of road. He said he has been searching for answers from the city and the state and discovered that Florence is responsible for the sidewalks, while the street is the state’s responsibility.
Public Services Supervisor Eric Hall told Hopple in the meeting that a project to extend the sidewalk in that area was recently bid out by the city, but it came in $1 million over budget. Hall said the bid came in so high out of the necessity for “specialty work” in the area. He said because Weaver Road is also State Road 842, overnight work would be required for the project and that alone drove up the price.
Hall said the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet has “loosened” the restrictions for work in the area in an attempt to make the project’s cost more manageable. The project is going to be put out to bid again in the coming weeks, and the city expects a bid closer to its budget.