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Comment by StudentStuff | Hacker News Reader

Wow, that sounds terrible, akin to the brown lawn tickets cities like Grand Rapids, MI give out. Why would people re-elect politicians that put horrid ordinances like these in place?

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It's a very common requirement in cities that property owners have to keep their sidewalks clear; the rules are often less well-enforced or not there in more suburban environments. These rules are not by any means new--laws on clearing out the street gutter on your property date at least as far back as Medieval times.

In my experience, it's usually 24-48 hours after the snowfall ends so there's plenty of time to get it done. Also in my experience, it is very rarely enforced. In many places, the sidewalk is the only safe place to walk the street so it's a real drag when someone doesn't clear their sidewalk. You either trudge through the snow or risk life and limb walking in the street. If you own property, you're responsible for keeping the sidewalk clear and it's your duty to the community to do it.

In this city its -6 hours- after the snowfall ends, and people almost wait on the clock to call 311 and get you fined if you don't do it. If you commute away to work, there are possibilities that the timing could be very awkward (unless you like shoveling while its snowing).

Much rather the city use my taxes to do it with proper equipment, like my hometown did... Oh well. Condo ftw.

The ordinance isn't ticky-tack, it allows people to use the sidewalk.

A lot of towns have similar and don't enforce it very much.

And snow plows that my tax dollars pay for are what keep the roads clear for vehicles. Why isn't it the same way for the sidewalk? Why do I have to take care of public property?

Because few people would want to pay the taxes needed to have public workers do it, is my guess. Plowing streets can be done fairly quickly with trucks; sidewalks would probably require more workers.

They make small trucks to plow the sidewalks. It's what cities that do it use. It's quite efficient.

Yep, they are super nice machines too, they do the job super duper fast and really well. My city uses them but only to plow "city streets," or rather "streets not in front of anyone's property and streets in front of city property"

I really really wish they'd do my property. I pay a ton in property tax, you'd think they could afford it.

Either way, it would be more expensive.

I'm not sure if the operators are hourly or salaried but it would probably cost more in manpower to do all the streets, they would probably need more machines too plus there would be an increase in maintenance costs and a reduction in lifetime of the machines.

I still can't see it as being efficient like streets. sidewalks are disjointed, have trees in them, curbs, and any number of other obstacles.

Dunno what to tell you. It works in practice in a lot of cities, including large metro areas that get a shitload of snow.

> Why isn't it the same way for the sidewalk?

Your tax dollars pay to keep the roads clear for the sake of emergency vehicles. It wouldn't be done otherwise.

Trying to plow it from the sidewalk would result in more problems than it solves.

> Why do I have to take care of public property?

Scalability. It's manual work and the city doesn't have an army of shovelers on-hand.

The plough sidewalks in Quebec, it can be done.

West Quebec here. They do indeed take care of sidewalks here. They do on the other side of the river, in Ottawa, Ontario, too.

The thing with local politics is that engagement is low and extremely self-selected. I'm never surprised when local voters and politicians are disproportionately on the busybody end of the spectrum rather than "live and let live".

It's also extremely populist. Since the effect of local politics are...well, localized, people don't notice nearly as much when the mayor screws up in small towns. They just have to wave the "lower rent!" "more construction!" "inclusive!" "think of the children!" flag a bit and people will vote for them no matter what they actually do. Kind of like the federal politics but without the news outlets and Twitter freaking out.

In this particular case, generally renters don't even have to shovel (the landlord does it or hire someone to do it), so most people don't even seem to know its a requirement unless it says in their lease that they have to handle the shoveling. The owner (who does have to handle it) may not be allowed to vote if they don't live near by.

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