As the last of January's snows stubbornly cling to Cincinnati sidewalks, hundreds of property owners might find the chill of a fine a far more persistent reality. City Manager Sheryl Long, in a memorandum to Cincinnati City Council, laid the groundwork for heightened enforcement of a decade-old ordinance requiring the clearance of snow and ice. This stance finds a foundation in Ohio Revised Code Section 723.01, granting the city the power to demand that property owners attend to their frosty frontages.
Reported by WLWT, close to 200 letters have been dispatched to residents signaling that action is due, with fines looming at $25 for those who fail to comply. This marked shift appears driven by a need to enhance public safety in the wake of last year's severe winter tempest and the subsequent, sluggish sidewalk clearing. "The City continues to discuss how to operationalize enforcement including what departments must be involved in issuing citations and collecting fines as well as identifying potential departmental funding and staffing needs," Long wrote in the memo.
The current system wields 311Cincy as a platform for reporting languishing layers of snow or ice. Upon receipt of complaints, the Department of Transportation and Engineering (DOTE) proceeds to notify property owners of their statutory duties. As mentioned on FOX19, DOTE is instrumental in sending letters specifically sourced from citizen requests, reminding the inattentive of their responsibilities and the potential fiscal slap that nonconformance could bring.
Despite the legislation's long history, actual enforcement appears about as rare as a snow-free Cincinnati winter. "The city's ordinance for property owners to remove snow from sidewalks has been rarely, if ever, enforced since it was enacted in 1972," City Manager Sheryl Long noted in the memo, as reported by The Enquirer. Not a single citation record for failure to clear snow or ice can be dug up, stirring the city into action. Councilmember Seth Walsh supports stricter measures, stating in an interview, "We all recognize that some people do a great job clearing their sidewalks. Not everybody does. And we all want to be able to walk safely," as WLWT reports.
The narrative is poised to continue, with city leaders slated to delve deeper into the subject of snow and ice policy enforcement in an upcoming Climate, City, Service, and Infrastructure Committee meeting. Residents concerned about unshoveled sidewalks are encouraged to reach out through the 311 Cincy customer service line, a move that could transform a neighbor's oversight into the subject of an official reminder, that their responsibility to remove the snow and/or ice from the sidewalk and the possibility of civil fines if they don’t address the violation, according to Long's memo.
