BATON ROUGE - Who is in charge of repairing a sidewalk on Plank Road? Is it the city or is it the state? That's what one business owner in the area has been trying to get answered for several years.

"The city blames the state and the state blames the city and they keep telling me they'll get back with me," said Brian Ford.

The broken sidewalk is at the corner of Plank Road and Clark Street in the Brownsfield area of East Baton Rouge Parish. Ford owns a self-service car wash and plans to open a snowball stand at that same corner.

He has watched trees and weeds grow out of the broken sidewalk for several years. Ford is concerned about his neighbor, Jason, who is in a wheelchair and has to divert off the sidewalk onto Plank Road to avoid the area.

"I was cutting it at one time but if I keep cutting it that's just putting a band-aid on it and there's still a big hole that he wouldn't be able to go across," said Ford.

Looking back at Google images, the sidewalk looked new in 2016, but started to fail in 2019. In March 2021 the concrete sidewalk was removed and and orange barricade was placed around the area. That barricade has been replaced several times since and the vegetation continues to grow.

"I would love to have it fixed," said Ford.

Both the City of Baton Rouge and DOTD have been notified about this issue and are working together to investigate.