Winter Walking and Cycling

[MidTowner]

It is concerning, to put it very politely, that a city councillor, who believes he has heavily researched an issue, who VOTED on this issue, and presumably read the staff report which he presents as evidence of the projects success, is unaware of this fact.

@the_councillor would you care to revise your position in light of this?

Nope.  Good try though.
From the same report...

Look, I was the one you made the clarification to, because I honestly believed that the bylaw officers were working in the whole city. I understand that they can't possibly inspect every single stretch of sidewalk on any given day, but I'm left now wondering: did they do mine, or any other given neighbourhood? Did the neighbourhoods I walk in fall within a pilot area, or not? If they did, my feedback is that the efforts did not dissuade the habitual scofflaw property owners who simply do not clear their sidewalks.

I would suggest that it is within the city's power to make the existing bylaw work. Respond in a timely manner to complaints. If it's possible to levy punitive fines, do it, and make them high enough that no property owner would risk receiving a second fine. If that's not possible, refer those sidewalks to contractors in a timely manner, and add any property referred to a list that gets proactive inspection so that it will be referred again.

It seems to me that it's politics that prevents that from happening. Of course, you'll get complaints from property owners who tried their best, or thought they did, or thought their reason for not clearing was good enough. Or you'll have complaints from people who couldn't cope with the weather. It seems like that's what happened last year: we had an icy winter with variable weather that made clearing more difficult than it might have been, so eventually bylaw changed its standard to "passable" (which still has never been defined) so as to avoid generating work orders for contractors that would have angered property owners.