It seems that the newly enacted sidewalk shoveling ordinance is having a positive effect–at least as much, I think, as the “pick up your pet’s poo poo proviso”. Walking around the village, it seems that more people are shoveling their front sidewalks and steps. This just has to make the package, postal and Wednesday Journal delivery people happy.
What about our alleys? The village does a good job plowing the alleys. Go east of Austin or south of Roosevelt if you don’t believe me. But this plowing buries the trash and recycle containers, and the “sanitation engineers” have to drag the heavy containers over the walls of snow and ice to the middle of the alley to unload them. Multiply this effort by hundreds of households a day, and one can see that this can get very tiresome.
So when you do your civic/neighborly duty by shoveling the front sidewalk, take five minutes to go back to the alley, shovel out the refuse containers and do the sanitation workers a favor.
Brent Borgerson
Oak Park