Editor,
With the welcome melting of this season’s first snowfall accumulation, a serious accompanying problem has surfaced which causes one to wonder what possessed the municipality to start using a sidewalk plough that is considerably wider than the sidewalks.
There is major damage to grass verges on both the street and property sides of many sidewalks. We may be the only town to have a sidewalk plough that doubles as a sod harvester. The machine does not roll up the sods of course. It pushed the broken sods into berms, and in many cases drops clods back onto the sidewalks themselves.
The vast majority of residents who enjoy the privilege of a sidewalk are quite co-operative in maintaining the grass verges which are on municipal land, but which blend into their own lawns. Should the Town decide not to repair the damage, these residents will have an onerous task in the spring due to the wanton damage inflicted by a really poor decision.
Since the damage is already as bad as it can be, no mitigation is feasible this winter.
I understand that the previous sidewalk machine, a blower, had mechanical problems.
However, an individual in charge of sidewalk maintenance should not need any industrial engineering experience to realize that before using a successor machine, it could be fitted with a narrower plough blade. Such a blade would be at least 10-20 times less expensive than repairs will be.
Mike Robertson, Meaford
