Our View: Ordinance needed to ensure better streets

Havre City Council has considered a proposal to beautify and diversify the city by encouraging developers and contractors to build streets that are more attractive and designed with sidewalks and bike lanes.

Those actions would beautify the city and increase use of bicycles that could encourage healthy living and energy conservation.

Going into it, city officials are well aware that in a lot of cases there is no room to build bike lanes or add other attractive features that might make life a little more pleasant. But there is near unanimity that some sort of action like this is necessary. People would like something on the books to prompt people to keep bike paths, sidewalks and other amenities in mind before work begins.

Just how much of a prompting is at question.

Mayor Tim Solomon and several council members would like to see the legislation in the form of a city ordinance that carries a little more weight than a resolution, which some others favor.

There is no doubt that no matter what the result, in many cases there just won’t be room for sidewalks, bike trails or anything else.

But we think it’s important that the city go on record as strongly urging that developers meet some pretty high standards when it comes to creating new neighborhoods or restoring old ones.

The new streets will be here for generations. We ought to do our best to ensure that they are designed as attractively and as user-friendly as possible.

We need an ordinance to help ensure quality.