Gene Floersch, 74, has lived on Portland Avenue South in Minneapolis since 1968, but he's never seen anything quite like the glacier that occupies the sidewalk near his home. The source was a snowplow that sloshed the gelatinous muck from the Christmas snowstorm out of the way of cars and into the path of pedestrians, where it froze into "ice rocks." He suggests "sensitivity training" for lead-footed plow drivers. In the meantime, he wants action. "None of the citizens living along these sidewalks have the equipment to remove this frozen, deep, lumpy ice from the sidewalk," Floersch told me.
This one hits home for me, I must say, given that I nearly toppled into the street while scaling the snow berm at my bus stop this morning. Floersch and I learned simultaneously that his initial frustration with the city of Minneapolis was misdirected - responsibility for plowing his street lies with Hennepin County. Mike Legg, the county's district maintenance supervisor, still thinks it might have been somebody else's plow at fault, because his workers are instructed to give up a little road width rather than sacrifice the sidewalk.
"Our policy isn't to bury sidewalks," he said. "From the picture he sent, it certainly looks like it's an isolated spot."
After Whistleblower forwarded Floersch's complaint to the county, Legg said he'll send a crew, possibly as early as today, to attack the terrestrial ice floes with a Bobcat Skid Steer. But clearing sidewalks, he wanted to emphasize, is the property owner's job.
Still, if cities want to encourage walking instead of driving, shouldn't they do more to clear paths for pedestrians?
