Winter Walking and Cycling

[danbrotherston]

I threw in my two cents in favour of doing this for the entire city, every year. And that's in spite of the fact that condo dwellers would significantly overpay under this scheme. (We spend about $180/unit for the entire snow removal budget, and sidewalks are only a small part of that.)

"overpay" is relative, and again implies that the benefit is that you don't do the clearing.

I too would "overpay". Right now, I actually pay the city to clear the sidewalks around the building I live in. Every tax bill has a separate line item for snow clearing, and we get a very high level of service. It's 5 dollars a year. That's cheap mainly because of the efficiency of a dense downtown core, the wasteful suburbs is what would drive that cost to 50 or 100 dollars a year.

But that's not what I'm want to pay for. Right now, I pay 5 dollars a year to save some money on our snow clearing. But I would gladly pay 100 dollars a year in order to have safe clear sidewalks to walk on all winter. The benefit to me is not that the sidewalks around my building are clear, they'd be clear whether the city did it or not, the benefit is that I can walk safely and freely in the winter.  For basically the price of a pair of shoes..seems like a good deal.