The Dakotas both put sidewalk repair on the abutting owner, but they wrote it down very differently. North Dakota built the most complete statutory machine in our 43-state database, guardrails included. South Dakota compressed everything into a nuisance clause with teeth.
North Dakota: the full machine, with two clauses that favor you
NDCC 40-29-02 states the duty plainly: "The owner of any lot or parcel of land adjoining any street, lane, or alley in any incorporated municipality shall construct, reconstruct, and maintain in good repair such sidewalks along the street, lane, or alley adjacent to the owner's lot or parcel of land as have been constructed by the municipality or as have been ordered constructed by ordinance."
The enforcement chain is familiar: notice by certified mail or delivery (40-29-03, with the deadline set in the notice itself), city does the work on default (40-29-04), cost assessed against the benefited lot (40-29-05), and the assessment becomes "a permanent lien upon the property... precedence over all other liens except general taxes" (40-29-21). Snow and ice get their own parallel track (40-29-18).
What makes North Dakota unusual is the two clauses that run the other way. First, 40-29-11: "All assessments for sidewalks must be payable in equal annual amounts extending over a period not exceeding twenty years." A sidewalk assessment in North Dakota can be a two-decade installment plan, the gentlest payment term in any statute we have read. Second, 40-29-17 inverts the whole power structure: if two-thirds of the resident owners on a street petition for a sidewalk, "the governing body shall levy and cause to be collected by tax" the money to build it. In most states the city orders and you comply; in North Dakota, enough owners together can order the city.
South Dakota: your sidewalk, your nuisance, your liability
SDCL 9-46-2 does in one sentence what other states need chapters for: "Any owner of real property who fails to keep the sidewalks abutting or adjoining the property in repair creates or maintains a public nuisance and the owner is liable to the municipality for any damage or injury caused by neglect and responsible for the costs of abating the public nuisance."
Note what that sentence does: it classifies the broken sidewalk as a public nuisance, and it makes you liable to the municipality for damage or injury caused by the neglect, the same duty-plus-liability fusion we found in Nebraska's Omaha statute. The repair mechanics follow in 9-46-2.1 (a "resolution of necessity" naming its own deadline) and 9-46-4: "If the sidewalk is not constructed in the manner and within the time set forth in the resolution of necessity... the governing body may cause the sidewalk to be constructed and make assessments," with the machinery running through the general special-assessment chapter.
What to do
- North Dakota: ask about the installment plan. The 20-year equal-annual-payment term in 40-29-11 is statutory. If the city presents a lump-sum bill, the installment option is worth invoking before the lien lands.
- North Dakota: the petition works both ways. Missing sidewalk your street actually wants? Two-thirds of resident owners can compel it under 40-29-17, tax-funded.
- South Dakota: treat the nuisance framing seriously. A tripping pedestrian in South Dakota is not just the city's problem; 9-46-2 points the liability at you. Fix fast, and loop in your homeowner's carrier if anyone was hurt.
Sources: NDCC Chapter 40-29 (official Legislative Council PDF, quoted verbatim, full chapter read) and SDCL 9-46-2 with 9-46-2.1 and 9-46-4 (via Justia's code archive, disclosed per our methodology; the official sdlegislature.gov pages would not serve statute text). City rules live in the complete city guide.