How to choose how to choose a sidewalk color

How do you like your sidewalks, light or dark?

That is the question at the moment the City is posting through all its channels. The sidewalks that circle AJ Chandler Park on the west side of Arizona Ave look like your basic sidewalk. They have their share of gum and other stains. They were being periodically pressure washed, but this was starting to cause the concrete to deteriorate. Now the city has budget clearance to redo the sidewalks and has the option of using one of two colors, basically either light or dark. The light color looks like particle board, the dark looks like composted mulch.

So how to decide? In the spirit of American Democracy, the City opted to survey the community on the Web. To reach as much of the community as possible, the City deployed several different surveys. You can answer on Facebook. You can vote on the ChandlerAZ.gov website. You can also use a new website the City has setup on MySidewalk.com.

In addition to all this, there is the ongoing General Plan Update currently in progress where Chandlerites are asked to voice their opinion on what the City should focus on in the next 10 years. (Hearings are done at the McCullough-Price House by the Mall on the first Friday of every month for the rest of the year.)

Always an early adopter, I created an account on MySidewalk.com after Mayor Tribshraeny tweeted the link. It is a site that any community or organization can use to communicate with their community, and the City has set up an account for Chandler that users can follow. At the moment, the feed is a list of surveys from [what color sidewalk[(https://mysidewalk.com/posts/4290/choose-your-sidewalk-on-mysidewalk), to what should be the focus for the next 10 years, to What’s your favorite iconic image from the 1980’s?.

It’s great that the City is also quick to adopt new tools. As a builder of a website to connect people to their community, I am hopeful that MySidewalk will work out.

One caveat is that with the default settings after signing up, I didn’t get just the City’s posts, but other unfamiliar organizations that are trying to reach people in the East Valley.

And then there is the part where you have to enter your street address. Our addresses are more public than many of us realize but still many rightfully feel cautious about entering their street address in a website. MySidewalk.com isn’t part of the City Government, it is a private company that gives no details on who they are or where they are based in their About Us page.

MySidewalk.com was previously MindMixer.com, which was started by Socialmentum in 2010 in Omaha, Nebraska.