Move new sidewalk funding decisions to the Planning and Transportation staff. While the staff has been focusing on evaluating projects with objective metrics, the result of the Sidewalk Committees involvement shows apparent bias towards steering projects towards the districts of the committee members. This in turn led to a wealthier, less-dense part of town being overrepresented in how many new sidewalks were funded there. This is not a "bad apple" case. By design, City Council members advocate for their districts. This is a systematic design flaw. There is no requirement for the Sidewalk Committee to exist. The Sidewalk Committee was created in 1992 by Ordinance 92-06, which prescribes how funds from the Alternative Transportation fund must be spent. Section 15.37.16 of the ordinance only requires that "Expenditures from the fund shall be approved by the Council".

Move towards using the LIDAR scan of our complete "missing sidewalk map" as the basis considering sidewalks to add.

Automate as much as possible. As mentioned above, to consider all missing sidewalks, the evaluation system needs to be automated.

Add race and income census data as variables in an Equity Matrix to support the City goal to rebuild with equity... and compensate for overrepresenting wealthier neighborhoods with sidewalk projects in the recent past.

Improve project selection transparency. The public should have access to an official "missing sidewalk map" and the criteria used to select the next sidewalks that are funded. The criteria are currently included in the PDF funding reports of the Sidewalk Committee, but a hosted map that includes missing sidewalks and historical and current sidewalk projects would be more accessible. This information could be included in the Open Data Portal here: https://data.bloomington.in.gov/dataset/sidewalk-maps