City May Crack Down on Property Owners Who Don't Shovel Snow

By Chuck Sudo in News on Oct 27, 2011 3:30PM

Among the possibilities the the city is looking at to help generate revenue is enforcing the often unenforced city ordinance requiring home and business owners to shovel snow from their sidewalks.

Yesterday, Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Tom Byrne testified before the City Council's Committee on Economic, Capital and Technology Development that existing Blackberry technology could be used to ticket home and business owners $50-$100 for violating the ordinance. Committee chairman, 44th Ward Ald. Tom Tunney, said the city is adamant on cracking down on people who violate the ordinance, but only after the proverbial stern warnings.

“The complaint we have when we go to community meetings is, ‘Who owns that property? We’re trying to walk down the street, and everybody seems to be doing a good job except one or two property owners.’ A ticket here or there [and], all the sudden, the snow will be removed on a timely basis,” he said.

“We need to use some street smarts before we go up and down the block trying to ticket. That’s not necessarily good for business. It’s not good for residents. It’s not good for politics. But at a point, we need people to abide by the municipal code.”

5th Ward Ald. Leslie Hairston countered that the ordinance should only be enforced on business owners. “I don’t think we need to be patrolling citizens who do not shovel their sidewalks. Some of them may not be able to,” she said.

Fair enough. But the technology could also be used to enforce the even less rarely enforced ordinance that explicitly states you cannot be sued if you put forth a good faith effort to clear your walk from snow and ice.

As the Blizzard of 2011 (exhibited by the photo to the left) shows, residents across the city had to negotiate passages of shoveled sidewalk their dogs couldn't comfortably fit between.