Winter Walking and Cycling

[ijmorlan]

It's quite literally the only service we ask of those physically able.[/font][/size][/color]

And what we keep trying to tell you is, we (large fraction of us) would rather pay a tiny amount of money to the City to do the job for us. And if we discount the opinion of anyone who is against the City doing the job but who doesn’t currently maintain their sidewalk to a reasonable standard, we’re probably at 90%+ support for City sidewalk clearing.

Here’s another idea: allow any property owner with sidewalk to opt out of City sidewalk clearing, and get an appropriate rebate on their taxes. Now to anyone who complains their taxes are going up you can just point to the rebate.

Of course, this would make enforcement really easy: bylaw would just visit the opted-out properties and ticket them. The snow plow operators could observe the state of such properties: raise the plow blade at the property boundary, put it back down at the other side of the property, and let bylaw know if the property owner hasn’t cleared it yet.

How many people would actually opt out? So few it wouldn’t be worth running the opt-out program, making it a thought experiment, not a serious proposal.

And in a sensible world, the idea of having everybody clear their own sidewalk would be a thought experiment, not a serious proposal.