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ST. LOUIS — Scott Green first called the city about his broken sidewalk about a decade ago. Tree roots were pushing up some of the slabs and turning them into trip hazards, and he wanted it fixed.

Every year since, he’s called the city to remind them of his request. And of his elderly neighbors in Tower Grove East who use that sidewalk. And of the kids that walk to Roosevelt High School past his house every day.

“It’s an accident waiting to happen,� Green said.

But that may be about to change.

Flush with cash from federal pandemic relief payments, city leaders are set to spend $6 million to clear a backlog of requests for sidewalk fixes across the city as part of Mayor Tishaura O. Jones’ effort to improve pedestrian safety.

It’s a big undertaking. There are at least 1,500 uneven, cracked or crumbling sidewalks awaiting service from the city’s repair program, and many people have heard help is coming before: At least 180 of the requests date back to 2017 or earlier. A spokesman for the mayor said city officials are still figuring out when the repairs will happen and how many will get done.

Residents are skeptical. The city has struggled to provide basic services as of late: Dumpsters have been overflowing for months because the city can’t find enough truck drivers to empty them. The 911 call centers have been putting callers on hold, sometimes for several minutes. Even the streets seem worse than usual right now, residents say.

Mary Orlando, 81, of the St. Louis Hills neighborhood, said she’s been waiting years for city officials to get her sidewalk fixed.

“I don’t trust any of them,� she said.

But the Jones administration says it is dedicated to clearing the backlog. And even some of the mayor’s erstwhile critics are optimistic about the new outlay.

“I think you’re going to see a bunch of work going on all over the place now,� said Alderman Joe Vaccaro, of Lindenwood Park.

The 50/50 Sidewalk Program runs on a bargain with property owners: They pay half and the city pays half.

It’s never been perfect. Even half-priced sidewalks can be too expensive for some residents, and aldermen have to find the city’s share in a pot of money that also pays for road paving, traffic calming and park upgrades. “We never have enough money for it,� longtime Alderman Marlene Davis, of Jeff-Vander-Lou, said in a committee hearing earlier this month.

In the past few years, there’s been an additional challenge: Requests have been disappearing.

Every year, aldermen are supposed to get a list of all the outstanding asks and an estimate to fix them. Fulfilled requests are supposed to drop off, and unfulfilled ones roll over to the next year.

But in recent years, they weren’t rolling over.

Alderman Anne Schweitzer, of far south city, figured it out shortly after taking office in early 2021. She got her list, budgeted money to knock it out and waited for work to start. But then she heard from constituents whose sidewalks weren’t getting fixed — and weren’t on her list. Some were several years old.

She requested previous lists for her ward and realized what had happened.

“It was clear that people were being left off the list,� she said. “I was thinking, ‘How has this been going on with no one noticing?’�

Later that year, the program manager quit, and officials in the Streets Department began assessing the damage. It was bad: Requests had been falling off the lists for years.

“Once we figured that out, we were kind of in shock,� Streets Commissioner Kent Flake told an aldermanic committee in December.

In the months that followed, staff began piecing together accurate lists, ward by ward, from files the program manager left behind. They found other problems, too: Some requests were duplicates, and others were listed as pending even though they had actually been fulfilled. As they worked, a seemingly insurmountable to-do list of 6,500 requests gradually became more manageable. There were 3,363 outstanding requests on the list as of Jan. 23, with nine wards left to be vetted.

And in the summer of 2022, sidewalks got some unexpected attention. A series of fatal crashes involving pedestrians and cyclists prompted calls for action from residents and neighborhood groups.

The mayor’s office responded with a plan to spend tens of millions of dollars to redesign dangerous intersections, install traffic-slowing devices on major thoroughfares, and shore up the city’s beleaguered sidewalk program.

Some aldermen balked at the sidewalk provision.

Alderman Brandon Bosley, of Hyde Park, wanted to use some of the money to help businesses in his ward and questioned whether the sidewalk program really needed all the money coming its way.

Alderman Shane Cohn, of Dutchtown, said the program is unfair. It most serves those who have the wherewithal to complain and the money to pay their share of the cost — like the city’s more prosperous southwestern neighborhoods. “The sidewalks are falling apart all over north St. Louis and southeast city,� Cohn said. “This is not going to change the sidewalk conditions in our neighborhoods.�

Jared Boyd, the mayor’s chief of staff, said the city has an obligation to fulfill the pending requests.

“If the board is interested in changing the way that sidewalks are funded, we’re willing to be a partner in that discussion and to make that process more equitable,� he said in a committee hearing. “But we are charged with administering a program that has been given to us and that people have put in requests for.�

The bill with the sidewalk money awaits the mayor’s signature. And people with broken sidewalks await service.

Eric Schneider said he saw workers looking at two raised slabs outside his Tower Grove East home a couple of months ago, about three years after he put in the request.

“I hope something gets done,� he said. “We’re holding out hope.�