Pictured is the city’s housing committee, who discussed the clearing of sidewalks during their meeting on Monday. P-J photo by Sara Holthouse

Following the most recent winter storms and receiving some complaints, two of the City Council’s committees are looking to remind city residents of their responsibility to do their best to keep the sidewalk in front of their houses clear.

During Monday’s housing committee meeting, Director of Development Crystal Surdyk noted that the clearing of sidewalks is in the city code, but it is really not her department’s purview.

“We did receive some complaints, and it’s one of those grey areas and one of those things we are asking our consultant to look at as they’re looking at our entire code and making recommendations for when we are ready to update it,” Surdyk said. “We don’t really have language that allows or appoints code enforcement or DPW to enforce it.”

Surdyk said reminders are being issued to people, some in the form of door hangers, reminding them that it is their responsibility to clear their sidewalk. She acknowledged that the weather has made it rough to try and do that. Councilman Joe Paterniti, R-Ward 4, added that the lack of salt in the city currently is not helping either.

“There’s not a bag of ice melt or salt in the city,” Paterniti said.

Councilman Bill Reynolds, R-Ward 5 and chair of the Housing Committee, said it has gotten to where people are walking in the street instead of sidewalks and it is getting dangerous. Surdyk said that this winter season has been a longer and harder one than she could recall.

“I probably have three or four inches of ice in my driveway,” Surdyk said. “My shovel was frozen in the ground this morning. So, we did put out a number of reminders on a handful of streets, entire streets that we were made aware of.”

The issue was also brought up at the Public Safety committee, and Reynolds said while it is not the Department of Development’s priority, maybe there was something the Public Safety committee could do to help issue reminders to people.

“I know it’s hard with four inches of ice and no rock salt anywhere at any store to manage that right now, but when the ice melts and the snow comes back maybe we can encourage people to do what they can so people can walk on the sidewalks,” Reynolds said.

Specifically, Reynolds said this is important for kids walking to and from school and in specific areas such as Forest Avenue. He said on Forest Avenue it has become a challenge to avoid pedestrians along with some of the alternate parking violators. There was a discussion of sending out a press release or public service announcement to help remind people, along with posting it on social media or the city’s website.