02-18-2015, 03:36 PM
(02-18-2015, 02:04 PM)ookpik Wrote:(02-18-2015, 10:36 AM)MidTowner Wrote: If you're curious about private snow removal, I know from experience that it will run a little over $200 to hire a service to clear snow from 40' of sidewalk near downtown Kitchener...Thanks for the number but note that that's an upper bound. The snow removal service has to make a trip to your 40' section. That takes time, labour, gasoline, etc. It's probably much more costly to the service than the cost of spending 10 seconds to clear your sidewalk. It should be a lot cheaper if the city sends out plows to do everyone's sidewalks. My guess would be that a blanket clearing of all sidewalks would cost 10% or 20% of that.
I'm hoping that if this was properly costed out and meant a $50 or so increase in taxes that the vast majority of people would be willing to pay for the convenience as well as for the indemnity of ever facing a bylaw infraction and fine for this. Yes, there will be people on low income who will still find this amount to be onerous. And yes, there will be people (if I can call them that) who use silly logic like, "I don't use the sidewalks. Why should I clear them?" or "I live on a street where's there's no sidewalk on my side so why should I pay?", etc.
(02-18-2015, 11:11 AM)plam Wrote: It's just a standard auto-mail-your-representatives page: http://contact.tritag.ca/sidewalks/Thanks. I'll fill it out and submit.
+1. I should certainly hope that people would agree to a $50 increase in taxes because 1) it's the right thing to do and 2) it reduces their own personal costs and liability for snow removal, as well as increasing their freedom. I explicitly mentioned in my note that we have no sidewalk outside my place on our side of the street, and yet I would still support it.