The League of Women Voters Newton have sent the following letter to our city leaders. I’ve added the both emphasis
Dear Mayor Warren, President Lennon and Members of the Board of Aldermen:
The League of Women Voters of Newton (LWVN) strongly supports a strengthened sidewalk snow-clearing ordinance. Since the 1970s, LWVN has advocated for a requirement for residents to clear their sidewalks to reduce the dangers to pedestrians in winter. This would mean all our citizens, including our most vulnerable—the elderly, disabled, and children—can walk on sidewalks instead of in the street alongside cars.
We strongly encourage our elected officials to commit to enforce the residential sidewalk clearing ordinances as well as the snow dumping ordinance. We are hopeful that the possibility of serious penalities will prevent a repeat of past years, when sidewalk-clearing enforcement was essentially unenforceable and sidewalks were blocked with snow.
We thank you for your efforts to keep pedestrian mobility and safety a priority in Newton.
A key component to be added: Make sure that the city plows don’t pile snow onto the sidewalks at street corners…or absolve homeowners from this ordinance if they do.
The League of Women Voters is making the same mistake made by other advocates of a shoveling ordinance that puts the burden of snow clearing on homeowners. This is a job best accomplished in a coordinated effort by mechanized equipment, and the municipality is the entity best positioned to perform the task adequately. By removing the burden from the City and placing it on homeowners, ordinance advocates are assuring the continued inconsistent and inferior results we currently see throughout Newton after a snow storm. Advocates would do well to remember that the objective here is not punishment of their neighbors, but rather a clear network of sidewalks throughout the city. If these proponents have their way, they are virtually assuring continuation of the status quo and this debate for years to come. The City needs to step up to the plate, meet their responsibility, put taxpayer’s dollars to good use, and get the damn sidewalks cleared after every snowstorm.
I think it would be hard to enforce the residents’ sidewalk clearing rules, although I know they need to be cleared, unless the town starts clearing their own sidewalks. (If I’m wrong and these sidewalks are the responsibility of someone else, then the city needs to enforce their clearing.) One example from last year is the sidewalk next to the parking lot in Newton Center on Langley. It was completely blocked so, without climbing, I couldn’t even get on the sidewalk to put money in the meter and certainly couldn’t walk on it, although I got a ticket nonetheless. And with the parked cars taking up more of the road, it was even more dangerous to walk in it. So the city first needs to walk the walk, so to speak.
+1 on Mike Striar’s observation and recommendation.
In my neck of the woods down in the southern part of town, maybe 1 out of 5 residences cleared their sidewalks during last winter. And even if you could find three properties in a row that had cleared their sidewalks, having to navigate an inconsistent patchwork of sidewalks, each cleared to varying degrees, was surely a recipe for disaster – I would often opt to walk on the untouched, virgin snow, which reduced the risk of falling.
Sidewalk snow removal is something that can only be done properly by the city. Requiring residents to shovel their sidewalks is nothing but a token gesture which, in many cases, actually makes things worse. The only real solution is uniform removal by the city sidewalk plows.
I find this topic so entertaining because I live on the Carriage Lane in Newton Centre where almost NOBODY walks on the sidewalks. Day and night, night and day year round people walk, jog, bike and push strollers right up the middle of the lane. I did an informal survey one fine warm Saturday and only 10 percent of the pedestrians used the lovely sidewalk.
I will keep shoveling my sidewalks, and hope to see more people actually use them.
I’m tempted to agree with Mike Striar that the sidewalks are never going to get cleared well enough if we leave it to citizens. But expecting the city to clear everything is unlikely work either. Both citizens and government need to do much better.
WalkBoston wrote an excellent report on the issue, which can be found here:
http://www.walkboston.org/sites/default/files/snowReport.pdf
They list some very well-thought-out recommendations. I think one of the best is “Identify a municipal point person for snow removal.”
The report goes on: “This point person(s) will necessarily call on a variety of resources (municipal, state and private) to resolve clearance issues. The phone should be staffed at least from 6AM to 8 PM, on weekdays and weekends. The point person(s) must be able to answer questions, alert authorities about problem area where public clearance is required, provide assistance to elderly or disabled residents, and get citations issued to private parties who have
not cleared.”
Mike and I do agree on some things.
The city needs to take responsibility for ITS sidewalks. If taxed rise a little, or the salaries of the school administrators who waste our money go down a bit, so be it.
But, I’d note that I live by a sidewalk that the city does plow for kids to get to school. It seems that there are two types of plows. One seems to work like a snow blower, clearing quite neatly almost to the concrete and not screwing up what someone had already shoveled. The other is like a V-shaped plow. It makes a complete mess, especially if the snowfall is heavy, ruins a perfectly good job of shoveling done by a homeowner, and adds to the blockage of driveways already caused by the street plows.
The city should use the better snow-clearing device for the sidewalks.
Sidewalk clearing ordinance is the most ill conceived, ridiculously ambitious, cheap way out. Use tax money to buy machinery that clears sidewalks and get it done. Let’s stop the nickel and dime approach to public safety. Not to mention it’s unfair to physically handicap, old and physically weak people.
Just knock it off. I don’t care if you clear your sidewalk. Here’s a medal. You don’t represent the whole population of Newton.
The loudest of the current political wave seems to be saying they don’t want to live in a gated community, or anything close to it. I can’t see this mayor or any mayor in the near future saying out loud that gov’t should make up for public lazyness and clear 300 miles of sidewalk every time it snows.
Here’s a compromise that doesn’t cost anything: The City buys the equipment and enlists a troop of residents that is willing to be hired to use it. Then the City takes complaints from the 311 portal and if the complaint is valid, the citizen plowers clear the snow and leave a bill for say $90. The rich homes that take extended vacations probably won’t care (about the fee), and for everyone else it’s incentive to do our part. (Issues: (i) insurance and (ii) the ability of the city to force a financial transaction on a resident.)
$90 for plowing the sidewalk in front of someone’s house???? That’s not a fee. It’s a fine. And it requires due process.
The city should do it. It takes the plow about 30 seconds to pass a house. If it’s doing one house after another, that’s 12o houses per hour. Admittedly they probably average less. If it’s 60 houses per hour and they pay the guy plowing even $30 per hour, that’s 50 cents per house. If a private contractor did it and charged say $60 per hour, that’s $1 per house. Not a bad deal. I couldn’t hire a middle school kid to shovel my sidewalk for $1.
The work is done much better and cheaper if done continuously by the city than individually house by house.
@Kim, I completely agree with you. The city owns the sidewalks, and it is the city’s responsibility to maintain them. If we value clear sidewalks as much as we say we do, then the city should step up to the task instead of shifting an ill conceived, patch work approach to clear sidewalks onto the residents.
On the one hand I agree with the comments above that the best way to ensure that the sidewalks are cleared is for the city to take this over. Pedestrian infrastructure really gets the short end of the stick in Newton and should be closer to parity with the streets. And the city plows the streets, so why not the sidewalks?
On the other hand, I think it’s pretty freakin’ sad that people who make the effort or pay to clear their driveways cannot be bothered to clear the sidewalks as well. I doubt that many people stand on principal and refuse to clear the last few feet of their driveway where it crosses the sidewalk and enters the street because “the city owns it.” Boston puts the responsibility on the property owner and seems to have better success – why can’t we do it here?
Although a much smaller problem than snow, I have also noticed that many property owners allow tree branches and other vegetation to partially or entirely block the sidewalk, and some do not clear leaves from the sidewalk either (this typically occurs when a fence borders the property and the owner can “get away with” leaving the leaves on the sidewalk without them drifting onto the property – I slipped on the wet dead leaves in such a place last spring). I suppose those who feel the city is responsible for the snow would want the city to pick up leaves and trim vegetation as well. And those silly people who plant flowers or keep the grass trimmed in the berm really should just leave it to the city.
Back to the city’s failures, many sidewalks are cracked, uneven, or discontinuous. In many cases where utility poles have been replaced, the sidewalk was never repaired around the pole (most streets have poles in a berm between the street and sidewalk, but many lack a berm and have them in the sidewalk). All of these factors further complicate using a large machine to remove the snow.
I would like to see someone come up with a cost estimate for the city taking over all sidewalk maintenance. Then we can all argue about how to pay for it. I predict one side will point out that we need a tax increase which would be better spent on schools or other services. The other side will imagine that it can be paid for by reducing “wasteful spending”, which although it undoubtedly exists is not just going to magically disappear, regardless of who is running the city.
The problem of impassibility is not caused just by those people who don’t shovel, it’s also a result of people not clearing the sidewalk to the required standard. The standard is handicap accessibility, and it’s ridiculous to suggest that homeowners have the capability to deliver a network of handicap accessible sidewalks throughout the city. The people who suggest it can be done, simply don’t understand the logistics and planning required to move massive amounts of snow over a large geographic area. Their incessant harping about “enforcement” of the snow clearing ordinance is counter-productive, and has done nothing other than given city officials an excuse for failing to provide clear sidewalks.
So here is my frustration. I plow my sidewalks. My neighbor next door HAS NO SIDEWALKS. Just a berm. My neighbor down the block has no sidewalks AND PARKS ON THE BERM.
Newton really needs to invest in full sidewalks in all parts of town. And for the love of all things holy, why do new homes get a pass regarding sidewalk construction? Any time a major building permit is pulled for any address, the home should be required to install sidewalks, or pay the city to do it for them. Why not make it like water pipe replacement? City pays half, home pays half. But this patchwork quilt nonsense is crap.
And we should fine folks who don’t plow, or have the city do it. Boston does that, and low and behold, most sidewalks are plowed. Is it a tax by other means? Perhaps. Do you have a functioning city? Yes.
I understand that some elderly or handicapped folks can’t plow their own sidewalks. I’m sympathetic. I’ll note that most seem to still drive though, and manage to plow their driveways by hiring someone to do it. The city can also make accomodations and assist certain folks.
As for the corners, that is a tough problem. The snow has to be piled someplace. But I routinely snow plow a path in the snow mountain at my corner…
For those that advocate for municipal responsibility for sidewalk clearing, would you be willing to sign a petition to make it state law for every municipality to clear sidewalks? We do want equal access for everyone, regardless of area wealth, right? So we’ll be willing to pay through the state cherry sheet allocations for great portions of sidewalk plowing in New Bedford, Springfield and Lawrence, right?
Come on now, we have a process which works at least 90% of the cases and needs municipal rules to make it closer to 99%
@Mike Striar – Every time this topic comes up you seem to gloss over a glaring fact. Today the city has the responsibility of clearing only a small portion of the city sidewalks. Every year when people start reporting on conditions on the ground during winter, there are always no shortage of problem spots on those city plowed sidewalks.
I would love for the city to take care of all the sidewalks. However until they can do a good job with the sidewalks they have now, I wouldn’t have much faith in them clearing the entire city.
Jerry,
Why should the city expect that individual homeowners can do a better job of clearing the city sidewalks to their full width? I just don’t understand the logic that if they do a bad job something, lets not ask them to do more. I have a phrase for that which I use with my kids: I call it conscious incompetence and by that I mean purposefully doing a bad job at something to get out of doing more. I’ve absolutely no doubt that the City of Newton could do a bang up job of clearing those sidewalks, if it has the will to.
Fignewtonville: Yes – this is what is needed. If we had complete sidewalks in reasonably good repair, it would be a lot easier to keep them cleared of snow regardless of who is clearing them.
Mike Striar: I have a utility pole in the middle of my sidewalk (no berm) so the unobstructed width is about 18″. So what is the point in clearing the entire length of my sidewalk to the required (30″?) width?
Realted, and to Jerry’s point: My sidewalk is not on the list of sidewalks that the city plows. Inexplicably, after one storm last year the city plowed my sidewalk. Not only did they turn my completely clear but perhaps too narrow path into a wider path covered with an inch of icy snow, but the plow driver assumed there was a berm here and removed about a 6 inch strip of my lawn and several of my neighbors’ lawns. Apparently the city doesn’t even have a record of which streets have berms and which do not.
@Lisap – I think you’ve got it backwards. The logical flaw is seeing the bad job they do now on sidewalks but believing that if we expand their responsibility to the rest of the sidewalks that somehow they will do a good job citywide.
As I said I would love to see the city plow all sidewalks but they would certainly need to overhaul the way they’re plowing now.
@Hoss– My opinion is admittedly based exclusively on Newton. I don’t particularly care about the sidewalks in New Bedford, unless they offer some insight as to how we could do a better job. In my opinion, the challenge we face in Newton is considerably different than downtown Boston [for example], where most buildings are much larger, many are professionally managed, and all have the resources and manpower to effectively deal with snow clearing.
@Jerry– I respectfully disagree with your assessment of the City’s snow clearing capability. In my opinion, the City does a very good job clearing the streets. The Mayor knows his job performance will at least in part be measured by the results after each storm. I think he would have had a more difficult time getting reelected if Newton’s streets were as impassable to vehicular traffic, as our sidewalks are to pedestrian traffic after a snow storm. Why the difference? Well, there is an expectation from residents that the City will clear the streets, but no such expectation as to sidewalks. I blame the discrepancy on those who have suggested the City does not need to meet its obligation, because homeowners should do it for them. If the burden was clearly placed on the City, and elected officials were judged on their performance, I’m reasonably certain our sidewalks would be as well cleared as our streets. It’s my opinion that the City should be responsible for clearing sidewalks along all major pedestrian routes in Newton, and property owners should help with the side streets.
@BruceB– I agree with you. It’s entirely illogical for you to clear the sidewalk in front of your home to a width rendered impassible by a utility pole. My point is that the legal standard for accessibility is established by ADA, and homeowners cannot reasonably be expected to meet that standard.
@Mike Striar – I agree, the city does a good job clearing the streets BUT they do a fairly poor job of clearing the sidewalks that they are now responsible for. Any expansion of the city’s sidewalk clearing responsibilities would need to also fix that.