Walking in New York City is a bipolar experience these days. Many sidewalks are pristine and easily navigable, even if the space between snowbanks is narrow and suddenly there's an unhinged jogger breathing down your neck because you won't dive into a snowbank to accommodate his workout regimen. But other sidewalks are icy Valleys of the Shadow of Death winding treacherously through snow-capped garbage mountains littered with broken hips and strangled joggers. Who are these inconsiderate so-and-sos who don't clear their sidewalks, and how can we get them to act like decent human beings? One Brooklyn lawmaker thinks he has a solution.
“Right now, you get a fine — you’re still not clearing your sidewalk,” Councilman David Greenfield (D-Brooklyn) points out to the Daily News. Indeed, the $100 summonses don't seem to be much of a deterrent to many property owners, who simply use them as kindling to burn their buildings down and put up deluxe condos. So Greenfield is proposing a law that would empower city-contracted laborers to shovel sidewalks that remain buried under snow, and then bill property owners $250 for the service.
If the bill becomes law, the city would hire more seasonal snow laborers, paying them $12 to $18 an hour to shovel sidewalks, the News reports. "My constituents were sick and tired of walking down the street and slipping and falling because some obnoxious homeowner has decided that they're exempt from cleaning their ice," Greenfield tells CBS 2. And it's not just homeowners who are obnoxious—the dangerous DUMBO sidewalk depicted above has gone unshoveled for weeks. The building it surrounds is used by the NYPD.
