Curb and Gutter

We live on a very busy street on a corner. Our house and the one just to the south of us have never had curb and gutter. Although we do not want to lose much of our front yard, we are the only 2 houses on this big street that do not have it and we stick out several feet making it not very safe. In addition to that, the city just finished a soccer complex park across the street and now it will be busier than ever. The city has come to us for several years wanting us to do c&g, but our neighbors do not want to lose a huge Blue Spruce tree. It is a LONG story, but we are looking like we will be getting it this year, hopefully, ASAP. However, when they came to stake out where it was going to be, I about flipped! I called and told the city administrator to come and take a look at where they were marking it and as you can see, "that dog don't hunt"! (Something my dad would say) We had a meeting with everyone involved this past Monday and they will redo the drawings and stakes and then have another meeting to see if the home owners agree. Then it will go to the city counsel and hopefully, pass! I will keep you updated. As you can see, we have deliberately not done anything with the north side of our driveway as every year they, the city, want to do this. So why spend any money on landscaping something that will get torn out?

Looking north. As you can see, they wanted to put sidewalk in and this is how much of the driveway we would lose (to where the pink stake is). We don't mind a sidewalk, we just want a curbside one as then it would be about where the end of the driveway is. Also it is because we have very shallow front yards and it wouldn't be great having people walking that close to our houses. They also were proposing to start our corner 3 feet further back than the corner across the street to the north. Not really safe considering that you would have to inch your way out into the street to see past the blue house to see the traffic coming.
The pink stake is in the neighbors yard. The tree closest is our cherry tree and the one to the left is the Blue Spruce. They had to trim the bottom branches up. It would take both of those trees and 2 of our pine trees. (Jeff and I aren't really attached to ours and actually would be glad to see them go as they have a really shallow root system. We have lost 3 already to the wind and 3 from a beatle(s) after Utah Power and Light topped them.
Just another view. They guys were staking this all off while I was trying to get Katey's party ready. Excellent timing, right?!
Now here was the kicker for us. Check out how much we would lose on the north side. It would go down the middle of our parking pad. Now understand, that is with a sidewalk too. We agreed at the meeting to do only c&g on this side. Reason is that there is a sidewalk on the other side of the street and there is no one on this side that has it further west of us so why put sidewalk in front of only two houses? Keep your fingers crossed that this will get worked out. At this point the city is ready to pay for all of it as it is a safety issue with the park and it has to be done eventually. Because our lot is soooooo big, we would have to pay at least half of it, which we couldn't afford, so we would like to get it done now as the city has budgeted for it.