On Monday the Burr Ridge mayor and board of trustees held its second budgetary hearing for the next fiscal year budget.
This was the final hearing where the public could speak and weigh in on the village’s priorities and, unlike the last meeting, a handful of residents did turn out to push the village to develop more sidewalks, especially in the Garfield Street and 79th area.
Chasemoor resident Margaret Jeka Marrs said she’s been pushing for more sidewalks since 2020 and said it’s a safety issue as runners or walkers have only the street or badly rutted dirt to use. She said if it’s an issue of money, the village could perhaps partner with Willowbrook to pay for a sidewalk.
“We’re not going to wait for an accident or a fatality,” Marrs said. “I’m trying to walk on a shoulder that’s broken asphalt or mud. There needs to be a shoulder.
“I’m asking for you to put in a sidewalk on the north side.”
Village manager Evan Walter said there have been plans to actually add a sidewalk, but then it was tabled prior to the pandemic. Walter said there should be surplus funds they could use for the project, but he also noted there’s been pushback against sidewalks in the past from residents who don’t want their landscaping torn up by a sidewalk.
” (Public Works Director) Dave (Pressig) and I haven’t received direction from the board,” Walter said. He added that any project would still take about three years to complete.
Marrs said she’s hardly the only one who wants a sidewalk.
“I’m not a committee of one. Our association president, Mrs. Lowry, has written letters to the board. It is truly a safety issue.”
She then noted the cars often speed along the 79th as it is, exceeding the legal speed limit.
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“I’m asking for some sort of safe pathway so that people don’t have to walk on the shoulder in truck ruts,” Marrs said. “It’s not a make it look pretty issue. It’s a safety issue. We’re talking about speed. We’re talking about safety.”
The length of the sidewalk would be about the length of a football field, and Marrs pointed out that’s not such a long stretch of sidewalk.
“It’s really not much,” she said.
Mayor Gary Grasso said he’d keep her suggestion in mind and seemed open to the idea. The mayor asked the chief of police for any statistics on 79th street accidents, and Walter pointed out that Marrs was correct and there have been letters from Chasemoor residents.
Another resident, a man, then agreed with Marrs.
“There’s no safe way for our community to use that,” he said of 79th Street ad Garfield.
Another resident, Anne Maria Trafino, said she’s been in the area for 23 years and collected a petition with 130 signatures demanding a sidewalk.
“For us to cross over on our bikes, I have six points of traffic coming at me at any one time,” she said. “I can’t stress this to you enough and it’s a sincere plea to you, but somebody is going to get hurt. It’s a disaster in the making. And we have 130 people saying the same thing.”
Trustee Guy Franzese said he lives in the area, and he agrees that traffic is bad and it’s only gotten worse in recent years while Walter added he would again look into the sidewalks.
After the meeting, Jim Marrs, Marrs’ husband, said he has hopes the village will finally do something.
“I hope so. I hope so,” he said. “I think the board is pretty good and pretty professional.”
Still, he said the board should be more considerate of the needs of residents and of long term infrastructure than it is.
“I think they need to focus more on the residential needs,” he said.
Jesse Wright is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.