It’s winter here in Park Ridge, and winter usually means snow. And ice.

Which means plowing. And snowblowing. And shoveling.

Park Ridge, like most suburbs, doesn’t have an ordinance requiring property owners to clear the City’s (a/k/a, the taxpayers’) sidewalks and cross-walks abutting their property – and keep them clear – of ice and snow. In the absence of such an ordinance, there is no legal duty on the homeowner to do so; and some folks have expressed concern that they could even subject themselves to liability by shoveling at all, if they do a poor job.

But most people seem to voluntarily undertake the task and do decent job of it. And many of them will do their neighbors’ walks, especially if they have one of those heavy duty snow-throwers that fling plumes of the white stuff 10 or 20 feet into the air.

Yeah, it’s a “guy thing.”

So far this year we’ve been extraordinarily lucky: unseasonable warmth (global warming?) has kept us pretty snow-free. That’s helped the City conserve money that would otherwise have been spent on plowing and salt.

But a few weeks ago an icy-snowy mixture over a dozen or so hours required several plowing runs by City crews to keep the streets clear. And, as plows are wont to do, they left piles of snow and ice in inconvenient places like curbs and cross-walks.

C’est la vie? Not quite.

A mom whose kids were forced to negotiate a plow-created ice pile in order to wait for their school bus posted a comment on the Park Ridge Concerned Homeowners Group Facebook page. That led to a “discussion” (which appears to have since been pulled for unknown reasons, but which one of our “stringers” o captured before it disappeared so that you can see it here) in which some folks blamed “lazy” homeowners – especially those on corner lots – for not cleaning up what the plows left behind. And, as some parents are wont to do, the blame directed at those “lazy” homeowners seemed to stem primarily from the fact that their little darlings didn’t have a nice clear space to wait for their school buses.

But it was left to our old friend, Kathy Panattoni Meade – one of those corner homeowners taking some of the incoming fire – to react to accusations of laziness by blaming the City’s Public Works Dept.:

“Technically that part of the sidewalk isn’t even my property. It isn’t even in front of or directly next to my house. I honestly think this is a job for the public works.”

Interestingly enough, she raised that “not my job” argument only after she explained how “we shoveled the sidewalk to the street” three separate times. So unless the sidewalk got up and moved or acquired a new legal status following those first three shovelings, it sounds like she was just looking for an alibi to throw in the shovel.

And, frankly, that’s okay because (as we pointed out earlier) homeowners have no obligation to clear the snow from the public sidewalks.

But then don’t throw brickbats at Public Works, especially when it has never, to our recollection, shoveled residential sidewalks for at least the past 25 years because of the substantial additional cost shoveling of walkways and bus stops would add to the City’s (a/k/a, the taxpayers’) budget.

Fortunately, a few commentators were voices of reason, including Martin Mazur, whose “I never ask what can my city do for me, I ask what I can do for my city” unmistakably echoes JFK’s inaugural address of 55 years ago this month.

That, standing alone, deserves a Watchdog bark-out.

But another bark-out goes to Mike Miller, who suggested that “the parents or the kids who have to wait there should pitch in and shovel out where they have to wait. Yeah, the neighbor with that corner could do a better job but this isn’t the city’s problem.”

Exactly.

For those who don’t like Miller’s solution, however, we’ve got another one for you: show up at City Hall this coming Monday night at 7:00 p.m. and tell the City Council why you and your kids are entitled to better snow removal than you’re getting, plus snow shoveling. And don’t forget to remind the Council of what Ms. Panattoni Meade keeps reminding everybody else: “I pay property taxes.”

Even if those taxes are some of the lowest in Park Ridge.

To read or post comments, click on title.