One thing I sorely miss about Belleville when I’m living in Waterloo has to be municipal sidewalk clearning.
9:30am the morning after a spectacular snowstorm and the sidewalks are clear and easily walkable. All of them. Everywhere.
I know that by the time I’ll have to walk to work in the morning, I’ll still have to trudge across unshoveled sidewalks and risk my back (again) on the ice. It’s awful. There are people who *never* do it. I suppose I could call the by-law enforcement people on them, but honestly, they might be bed-ridden old people for all I know. Yeah, it’s their responsibility, but it’s a shitty system.
I don’t even have a sidewalk in front of my house and I think municipal sidewalk clearing is an absolutely blessing.
Go ahead, raise my taxes!
Errr…
They just finished the sidewalks up here tonight. (Like after 3:30 PM type thing…)
I hate snow!
I live in a duplex (one of two identical duplex buildings sharing a common center yard with connecting paved walkways) and usually shovel both my walkway plus the shared walkway (from all 4 units) leading to the street, plus the neighbor’s walkway (the other in my unit, not the other building). ‘Cause, yeah, it’s a little old lady with a walker, who lives with her daughter who is quite mentally retarded and incapable of shoveling (I know this to be true as I watched her attempt it last winter. It was…sad). So I feel guilty if I don’t pitch in to help my little “community”. But I don’t feel too badly leaving the walkways to the other building units alone–the folk who live there are perfectly capable of shoveling! And of the two, one usually does (eventually…), and the other never does. But, pretty much only the postman uses those walkways, anyway. Our carports are in back, not the front! And there is no pedestrian sidewalk fronting the street on this property, either. So I do this mainly out of a sense of tidyness and that it ought to be done, even if it benefits virtually no one.
Good exercise, shoveling. Bit of a pain to make extra time to do it before leaving for work, tho’. And from where I park for work, I then walk almost 3/4 mile (it’s the closest free parking, I work in a downtown core area), and it is very hit-or-miss whether any part of any of the sidewalks will be cleared or not. So that 3/4 mile can become quite a sloggy tromp! Another workout, perfectly free, soon after the one from shoveling. :D
Matt, okay, maybe I’m exaggerating the efficiency, but at least it got done. I still had to slog through unshoveled sidewalks on the way in this morning. I’m sure I’ll have to do it some more on the way home tonight.
I ended up taking a pick-axe to Ellen’s sidewalk last year (she can’t do it herself, and the lazy-ass maintenance people she was using last year didn’t bother showing up for a while between ice storms…), lest she be served a fine for not keeping her sidewalk cleared. I’m nice like that. :P
I hate trudging through snow. It’s murder on the back. I ended up walking on the roads most of the way home last night, since the sidewalks weren’t cleared. (Of course, the roads were cleared. Can you imagine the uproar if they weren’t?).