Butler is hoping to crack down on its sidewalks.

City council will be looking into its sidewalk ordinances over the next month with hopes of amending the ordinance to have more clear guidelines.

Property owners in the city own the sidewalks and are responsible for maintaining them. However, the city has specifications on how the sidewalks should look.

One of the biggest concerns of the city is the increasing use of black asphalt to pave in lieu of concrete.

“We need to come up with a philosophy of how we want our sidewalks to look,” said councilman Richard Schontz Jr.

The city is looking to require any newly paved sidewalk to be 4 inches thick and cement.

The city also is taking steps to repair some sidewalks of its own.

One particular focus is along Zeigler Avenue.

The city voted Thursday to install “No Parking on Sidewalk” signs on the sidewalk above the street’s intersection with Short Street.

Schontz said cars pull halfway onto the sidewalk to make room for passing vehicles on the road. But the parking causes excessive wear, which leads to safety concerns.

Schontz said the city will soon be repaving the sidewalk and council doesn’t want taxpayers’ money to be wasted by having it quickly destroyed.

The sidewalk was previously paved with asphalt, but Schontz said council wants to set a paving example for the city.

The signs will be installed on a 90-day trial basis. One of the things that will be considered during the trial is whether the parking ban will cause the lane to be too narrow for two-way traffic to safely pass by parked vehicles.

Council also voted Thursday to approve a sidewalk and curb replacement project for the West New Castle Street Plaza.

The $13,600 project will be done by Joe Palmieri Construction.

The project stems from state Department of Transportation specifications given to the city when it first decided to temporarily close the block for a plaza a couple years ago.

PennDOT gave the city a couple stipulations on what had to be done with the redesigned block. The new curb would extend the southern corner of Main Street and West New Castle Street in an arched shape. The new curb would expand the length of the corner to the center of the street. The rounded corner will bend back to the existing curb along the parking spaces on the side of the street.

The center of the new arched corner will feature a landscaped area.