Kauai County, HI Sidewalk & Pedestrian Rules: Sidewalk Repair (2026)

Chapter 24, Improvement by Assessment, sits in Title X, Public Works, and is Kaua'i County's mechanism for financing public improvements including sidewalks, bikeways, sewer, drainage and water systems through special assessments levied against the benefiting land (§ 24-1.1(a)). Subsection (b) preserves a separate, older power: nothing in Chapter 24 stops the County from compelling abutting property owners, at their own expense, to construct, maintain and repair sidewalks and curbs fronting their property under any other statute or ordinance, existing now or adopted later. The Chapter's own assessment machinery does not set the trigger, timeline or penalty for such a repair order; it only preserves the County's authority to issue one through a separate enactment.

The neighboring subsection (c) does the same for the Board of Water Supply's power to build, improve, maintain and repair sanitary sewer, storm drainage, street-lighting and water systems, and subsection (d) lets the County and property owners split the cost of a betterment by mutual agreement, with the owner's estimated share deposited before the construction contract is awarded. Elsewhere in the same Chapter, the County Engineer administers a comparable compelled-repair scheme for underground utility lateral connections: certified-mail notice to the abutting owner, a County-performed connection if the deadline passes, and a lien on the property for the billed cost (§ 24-2.3).

On Kaua'i (Kaua'i County), a resident asking who must fix the sidewalk fronting their lot should look to the separate sidewalk ordinance or Public Works directive that Chapter 24 keeps alive, since Chapter 24 itself only confirms the County's power to require it.