My neighbor works, and his wife works, and my husband works, and I don't work during the summer, so the task of going down to City Hall and investigating the city sidewalk program fell to me. But I was busy, and the very next week an amazing thing happened: someone painted the crack orange.

I thought my neighbor had painted it, and he thought I had. Then in my walks I saw sidewalk cracks painted orange all over town, so we figured out the city must have painted it. Then Tammy Vickroy took her spectacular spill on a crack smaller than the one between my neighbor's property and mine, and smashed the side of her face, and could only drink smoothies from Taco Bell for a few days, which made the issue seem even more urgent.

So as soon as I had a moment to breathe, which was last Tuesday afternoon, I walked over to City Hall to find out about the sidewalk program. Midway between Finance and Engineering, there was a white courtesy telephone next to a sign that promised to give me recorded information about the sidewalk repair plan. So I dialed the number helpfully provided in the list on the wall, and listened to the spiel about the 50-50 program, but it did not tell me any more than I vaguely remembered from old Dispatch articles.

So I continued to Engineering, where a helpful woman summoned an even more helpful young woman, Laurie Loveless, Engineering Tech/Inspector. I explained about the crack, and she explained about the 80-20 program.

As my neighbors and I had surmised, the orange paint, which is now bleaching white in the August sun, was sprayed by the city. It serves two purposes: first, to catch pedestrian's eyes before the anointed crack can catch their toes. This obviously did not work for Tammy Vickroy. Secondly, the city simultaneously conducted a survey, so now they have an idea of how many cracks need to be fixed and where the worst areas are.

As of July 1st, the 80-20 program has supplanted the 50-50 program. Fear not: the city pays 80, the homeowner 20 percent of the cost to fix the sidewalk. And if trees must be replaced, the city pays. Laurie promised to come out the next day to check my sidewalk. She gave me a list of concrete companies; I have to get estimates from three of them. The city will pay 80 percent of the low bid to fix my neighbor's sidewalk and mine, though I am free to hire any of them if I pay the difference.

Laurie pulled up a satellite picture of my block and pinpointed my house. The picture must have been taken in the spring, because my street tree was not leafed out, but my other neighbor's London plane trees were. When I walked back home, I found another crack in my sidewalk, one the city had not painted orange. It might be small enough to grind level, a fix that Laurie says is appropriate for small cracks.

So my neighbor and I are on the road to getting our sidewalks fixed, and it is not as onerous a process as I had feared. We could wait for Councilman Bob Dillon to get the city to pay 100 percent, but I think we would rather take care of it now and not risk having someone hurting himself as Tammy Vickroy did.

Councilman Dillon says he will fall on his sword, politically speaking, i.e., commit political suicide if necessary to get the city's sidewalks fixed. I think the city should fix the sidewalks, if they can do so without raising my taxes. In the meantime, the city should update the message on their white courtesy telephone.

Cynthia Walker Cynthia Anne Walker is a homeschooling mother of three and former engineer. She is a published independent author. Her column is published in The Dispatch every Friday.