The Culver Town Council discussed the possibility of providing snow removal services for certain commercial areas of the town, Tuesday night.
The matter was discussed during a work session prior to the Town Council’s regularly scheduled meeting. Town officials were approached by representatives of the downtown business community to explore the possibility of performing sidewalk snow removal.
Town Manager Jonathan Leist says the town is capable of using its own employees to perform the work, but is likely to contract the service.
“With employees, whenever it snows, we’ve also go to plow and to divide them up, one is going to go a lot slower if we’re trying to do both,” says Leist.
The idea is to centralize the service to avoid inconsistencies in sidewalk snow removal. Individual businesses perform the work at different times or simply not at all, making walking conditions difficult.
How to pay for the service was under question, Tuesday night. Seeking contributions from individual businesses and major stakeholders in the community was also considered as a possibility.
Culver has gained a couple of quotes in the neighborhood of $1,000 per “weather event” for sidewalk snow removal. Helping businesses with the project was not the only point of consideration, the Town is also considering future steps to require residents to remove snow from their individual sidewalks.
The logistics caused a few problems for Council members. Council President Ginny Bess Munroe wondered if it would be better to simply require individual snow removal, and provide incentives such as fines.
“It’s truly not fair to the other businesses, I don’t think it is, that you have three or four that aren’t doing it, affecting foot traffic, etc. etc. and safety,” says Munroe.
The Culver Town Council agreed to retrieve more information before proceeding with the service. Ordinance changes are anticipated at some point in the future.
