City officials: snow-removal ordinance not enforced

CELINA - As the icy grip of winter clutches the area, city council members this week were told to prepare for a flurry of complaints about snow-filled sidewalks, especially downtown.

Police officers do not enforce an ordinance requiring building owners and occupants to keep their sidewalks, curbs and gutters free from snow, ice and other debris because it would be too time consuming, city administrators said at Monday's council meeting.

Violations are supposed to be considered a minor misdemeanor.

"We got a couple of merchants downtown ... that are continually complaining about other merchants that don't clean off the sidewalks in front," Mayor Jeff Hazel said. "Where do you start and stop? We can't give a ticket to someone downtown and not give a ticket to everybody else in the community."

The ordinance, Hazel said, is particularly cumbersome because it mandates the clearing of gutters and curbs as well as sidewalks.

"But now when you look at it, it also says you've got to do the curbs and gutter line," he said.

Councilman Bill Sell, who noted the ordinance would be a nightmare to enforce in its current form, believes the curb and gutter mandate needs to be removed because it's burdensome, particularly for the elderly.

But the city, he argued, needs to have something on the books to deal with residents who habitually refuse to clear their sidewalks.

"At least there's something that we can say, 'Hey, we're not going to throw you in jail but why don't you clean your sidewalks?' " Sell said.

Probably 80 percent of the community doesn't have clear sidewalks, Hazel said.

"And then if it gets really cold and they get ice, then they can't move the ice off the sidewalks," he added.

If police officers talked to everyone who didn't clear his or her sidewalks, they wouldn't have time to do anything else, Hazel said.

Councilman June Scott said the city dealt with a similar issue when council in November 2013 voted to eliminate a two-hour downtown parking limit because the law wasn't being enforced.

"If you're going to have an ordinance, you better be able to follow up on it or drop it. That was just not that long ago when we discussed it," he said.

Scott said it's a catch-22. If the city enforces the law, city safety service director Tom Hitchcock won't have time to do anything else. If the city doesn't enforce it, property owners could face liability issues.

"If they clear it and somebody slips, they're going to get sued, probably; if they don't clear it, there's an ordinance that we have that says you should be clearing it, so you're going to get sued," Hitchcock said.

"For those who have complained about this, my suggestion to them would be worry about your own property because you're not going to be liable for the other guy's," Scott said.
Council members will discuss the issue further at a committee meeting scheduled for 6 p.m. Feb. 9 on the second floor of the city administration building on Main Street before the regular council meeting at 7 p.m.
They also will discuss whether to continue making some residents pay for sidewalk improvements or pick up the tab for everybody.

Residents living on streets undergoing a major grant-funded reconstruction project get new sidewalks at no cost while others must pay for upgrades. According to a city ordinance, property owners are responsible for the upkeep of sidewalks and curbs.

The city's sidewalk program has been on hold since 2009; plans to reinitiate it in 2012 were scrapped after an assessment of sidewalks in Ward 3 - the southwest part of Celina - showed $320,000 worth of replacements or repairs were needed. The city had only $40,000 earmarked at the time to pay costs upfront.

"When we did the sidewalk program, the city would contribute 2 percent of the total cost as the public good, and 98 percent of that cost was (taken care of) by the homeowner," Hazel said. "But to my knowledge, at least for the last several years, the homeowners have never been assessed for the curb or gutter, but that's what (the ordinance) says."

Hazel believes, at the very least, the part about curbs and gutters needs to be changed.