The Mexico City Council will consider a sidewalk ordinance possibly next week but it won’t include suggested changes by the Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z).

The council considered changes to the ordinance at a regular meeting on Monday, Sept. 25, and came to a consensus to bring the ordinance back without the suggested changes after listening to a presentation by Public Works Director Drew Williford and a lengthy discussion.

This all started in August when two separate developers asked for exemptions from the city’s sidewalk ordinance for new subdivisions. The P&Z gave its approval but city council members stopped the process and sent it back to P&Z. The commission looked at it again and decided to send it back to the council with suggested additions to the exemptions the city allows.

The two exemptions wouldn’t require a developer to put in sidewalks if the nearest sidewalk was more than 1,000 feet in a public right-of-way walking path or if an adjacent subdivision didn’t have sidewalks.

Council members did make a compromise with only requiring sidewalks on one side of the road if that road is an interior road of the subdivision and isn’t connected to a street on the city’s master trail plan.

“I’m all for giving up a sidewalk to help a contractor,” City Councilman Chris Miller said. “I’m not necessarily interested in giving up sidewalks because I think we’re going backward.”

The complaints about requiring sidewalks by developers mostly center around the costs. Williford said he did some research and came up with a cost of $26 per linear foot on a typical sidewalk. On a typical 80-foot lot the cost of a sidewalk would be about $2,080.