City won’t pursue snow removal program

After hearing from the public, the City of Rhinelander has decided against moving forward with a proposed sidewalk snow removal pilot program at this time.

At the end of Monday’s common council meeting, city administrator Patrick Reagan reported on the two public meetings held earlier this fall after the council authorized city administration to explore the idea of creating a sidewalk snow removal program that would involve a special assessment.

Reagan referred to the feedback received during the two public meetings as “mixed at best” and noted that majority expressed opposition to the idea. 

In his written report to the council, Reagan elaborated on the public response to the proposed program.

“Late last month and earlier this month, we held two open meetings for residents to attend based upon the concept of the City removing snow on sidewalks in certain areas with a special assessment helping to defray the costs. As you will remember, this was to be a pilot project to see how the program might work and, if successful, it would be extended out to other areas,” he wrote. “We had approximately thirty (30) residents show up for the two meetings combined. We also had approximately 20 property owners call or email with their thoughts and opinions on this program. In short, I would say that the feedback received was mixed, at best. Most of the attendees of both meetings had questions and were not in support of this project. I would also say that the majority of people that called or emailed were not in favor of this program either. One aspect that did stand out from the meetings, however, is that the City needs to increase our efforts at enforcement of property owners removing snow from their sidewalks after a storm. With that said, enforcement isn’t an issue of not trying — instead, it’s an issue of numbers. We have one Code Enforcement officer to perform this work, and he had 153 work orders last year for snow removal by the Streets Department. Frankly, we need to be more aggressive with our enforcement if we truly want a walkable community.”

In his oral report to the council, Reagan indicated that he thought more people would attend the public meetings “but there was what there was” and the discussion was beneficial.

The target area for the proposed sidewalk snow removal program was: Lincoln Street, from the bypass to Oneida Avenue; Courtney/Thayer Street, from Oneida Avenue to Timber Drive; Pelham, from Courtney to Anderson; Stevens, from Pelham to Iverson; and Timber, from Stevens to Coolidge.

The idea was for the city to hire an employee to clear these sidewalks and fund the program using a special assessment, based on the amount of public sidewalk on each property in the affected area. For example, if a property owner in this area has 60’ feet of public sidewalk abutting their property, and the Council were to set an assessment rate of $3 per foot, the property owner would be assessed $180 for snow removal for the entire year. 

“This means that if it snows 3” or more ten times during the winter — and city forces must clear it 10 times, that property owner would ostensibly be paying $18 for each clearing of snow on public sidewalk abutting their property,” Reagan wrote in an earlier memo outlining the concept. “This assessment would be necessary to cover the costs of hiring an individual to perform this work, maintenance on equipment used during this work, fuel for this equipment, and replacement of the equipment used in future years.”

The goal of the program was to ensure that these heavily-traveled walkways are cleared of snow in a timely and uniform fashion, boosting the community’s walkability, city officials said.

While the proposed program did not receive a favorable response from the public, Reagan stressed that those who are not clearing their sidewalks in a timely manner must do better.

“We need to just work on the enforcement a little bit more and ask for people’s patience with us and ask for their help with cleaning their sidewalks,” he said.

As the discussion wound down, it was suggested that the council consider shortening the timeframe for clearing sidewalks and step up enforcement of violations. The council is expected to review the policy at a future meeting. 

Heather Schaefer may be reached at [email protected].