City councilors Devin Romanul (Ward 7) and Ryan Williams (at-large) have co-sponsored an ordinance which proposes to update the city’s current ordinance on snow and ice removal from public sidewalks. Currently, the ordinance is unclear as to whether or not homeowners are obligated to shovel the sidewalks in front of their homes, and the maximum penalty for commercial property owners who do not shovel their sidewalks is a one-time, $50 penalty. As we understand it, this ordinance is rarely enforced. Each winter, we receive many complaints from residents about the small minority of owners who do not clear their walks.
Please find our letter of support below. If you support updating the ordinance, read more about it here, and contact the city council.
January 12, 2025
Re: Ordinance 12279-Snow Removal
Dear Members of the Legal & Legislative Committee,
We are writing to support Councilor Romanul’s ordinance replacing current City Ordinance Section 177-12 (Snow and Ice Removal) with revised ordinance language to address property owner responsibilities for snow and ice removal. One of our committee’s chief goals is to encourage better walking conditions within Melrose, and every winter, we receive messages from residents asking us to help with property owners who consistently make no efforts to clear their sidewalks after snowstorms. For too long, Melrose has lacked effective means to compel repeat offenders to clear their walks. Clearing your sidewalk after a snowstorm is one of those responsibilities that property owners in a walkable community need to get behind as a point of civic pride. We believe this ordinance can be an effective tool to nudge along the small minority of property owners who are not currently taking that responsibility seriously, and our committee encourages you to recommend this new ordinance for passage.
It should go without saying that when property owners do not clear the sidewalks, this creates unacceptably dangerous conditions for pedestrians. This is particularly true for our elderly residents, our residents with disabilities, and our families with small children. Anyone can see this in action by visiting the streets around downtown – Foster, Essex, Grove, Upham, etc – following a snowstorm. Despite the fact that our downtown area has boasted excellent sidewalks for multiple generations, you will invariably witness people walking in the street to and from the pharmacy, the grocery store, etc. Not only is it a hazard for any pedestrian to be in the roadway for any amount of time, but uncleared and poorly-cleared sidewalks pose major fall hazards as well.
Melrose, which is the very definition of a walkable, transit-oriented community, should take care to ensure its ordinances reflect a pedestrian-friendly point of view. Over the past decade, similar ordinance changes have been debated by the council at least three times. Each time, the council has failed to pass these changes, bringing us further and further out of standard with the majority of neighboring communities who already have these sorts of ordinances on their books. Oftentimes councilors who vote against tougher snow-clearing ordinances cite resourcing and budget concerns. But cities throughout the commonwealth, and indeed the country, face many of the same resource constraints that we do. Those challenges do not mean we should put pedestrian-friendly policies on the backburner. Instead, they mean we must always make sure we are prioritizing the aspects of our community, such as walkability, which draw people to Melrose in the first place.
The majority of people in Melrose do clear their sidewalks, and our DPW crews not only work hard after every storm to maintain the sidewalk plow routes to the best of their abilities, but they also revisit these routes from time to time to make sure they capture common walking destinations. But they can’t capture every destination, every school route, every bus stop. Nobody expects that DPW, or the police, will now drop whatever they’re doing after every snowstorm to fan out across the city inspecting sidewalks and writing tickets. As a matter of common sense, residents expect that this would function similar to the city’s existing noise ordinances. Residents who repeatedly see problems would be able to ask DPW, or the police, to pay a visit to a property owner, just as they do from time to time for noise violations. It then becomes the responding individual’s judgment to issue a ticket if a violation is found.
Of the city’s existing property owners who consistently do not clear their walks, many of them would likely start doing so if they received a mailer stating that a new ordinance had passed and they would now be subject to fines if they don’t change their behavior. Still more would be incentivized to change if they do receive a fine in the future. Repeat offenders – and hence, repeat draws on city resources – will be a very small number of people, and when measured over time, this ordinance will make great progress on fully-cleared walking routes with very little marginal resourcing being reallocated from other things.
It’s time for Melrose to have an effective snow-clearing ordinance on the books. Thank you for your time, and your consideration of this ordinance.
Melrose Pedestrian & Bicyclist Advisory Committee