The new reality of icy sidewalks

Posted Feb 16, 2012 By EMC News

EMC Editorial - Coun. Doug Black was right.

Discussion at last week's town council committee certainly made it feel like "parking night in Carleton Place."

But by far the greatest topic of conversation was the peril pedestrians face on the icy sidewalks of Carleton Place and, indeed, Beckwith Township and Mississippi Mills.

An area parent was concerned about sidewalk clearing - or lack thereof - along Sarah Street, for students walking to nearby Caldwell Street Public School, as well as for elderly people trying to get downtown.

Coun. Gary Strike had been contacted by an 85-year-old constituent who asked town staff if they could sand the sidewalk in front of his house because he was having difficulty walking on it. No one wants to see an elderly man lying flat on his back in pain after a fall.

But he was told that his road was simply not on the list of main thoroughfares that the town looks after.

It's no fault of town staff who were simply following orders. But it's a darned if you do, darned if you don't scenario for staffers.

Don't appear flexible, and you seem like rigid bureaucrats who can't bend a little to help out a little old man. Help everybody, and you've broken the town rules, and made a run on the road maintenance budget.

Strike is to be commended for showing concern for our citizens, and asking town staff to go outside of the policy and use their own judgment.

Put another way, we know that Strike was asking town staff to be able to use common sense, because, if we can help someone in genuine need, why not?

Still, as Mayor Wendy LeBlanc explained, if you start to provide sanding on demand, that resident will tell one friend. And they'll tell two friends. And so on, and so on, and so on.

As Carleton Place continues to grow, it would be a good idea to consider making room in the budget to follow the lead of the likes of Smiths Falls, who do sand the town's roads and cut back the snow banks so that people can actually put out their garbage without resorting to perching it high atop a snow pile.

Because it appears that this type of weird weather will continue.

Where icy sidewalks used to be mostly confined to late February and March, in future, they may become much more of a winter-long reality in this area, an area which already stands - secondly only to Newfoundland and Labrador - for the amount of freezing rain we get.

Black had attended a workshop the week previous in which politicians and municipal staff learned about living with climate change.

The erratic winters that people like public works director Dave Young have noticed, have been playing havoc with streets and sidewalks? They're pretty much here to stay, is what Black and his fellow attendees heard.

It's gone beyond anecdotal evidence now, of older people saying: "The winters were worse when I was younger."

The winters are changing. And just as Carleton Place changed its parking rules this winter for the first time in 50 years, so too must the town consider changing its rules regarding road and sidewalk maintenance.