FROSTY RECEPTION FOR CITY SHOVELING ‘SNOW JOB’
Public gets fines, plaza gets pass
Boston residents slapped with tickets for not shoveling their sidewalks the night after Christmas are slamming city officials for failing to clear the sidewalk in front of City Hall until yesterday afternoon and for not penalizing the department responsible for the pathway.
Between the final hour of Christmas Day and 5 a.m. yesterday, code enforcement officers hit 44 properties with tickets for failing to shovel their sidewalks, city data shows. The majority of the residents were fined $50. Two businesses received $200 tickets. All told, $2,550 in fines were doled out.
City law requires sidewalks to be cleared to a 42-inch-wide path within three hours after the snow stops falling. But Jamaica Plain resident Harold Cooper said his family was out celebrating Christmas all day Monday and he didn’t have time to shovel when he got back. His ticket was issued at 2:19 a.m.
And though most of City Hall Plaza was plowed and salted, the sidewalk along Cambridge Street was covered in a half-inch of densely packed snow well into yesterday afternoon, 12 hours after tickets were issued to residents across the city.
While the Boston Planning & Development
Agency owns the plaza, City Hall is responsible for care and custody of the space and city public buildings workers didn’t start salting and chipping away at the snow until nearly 12 hours after Cooper got his ticket.
City departments are subject to tickets if walkways in their care are not shoveled. Departments received dozens of citations last winter.
The Parks and Recreation department received four tickets for not clearing its walkways during the most recent snowstorm.
But unlike Cooper and other Hub residents, the public buildings department won’t be fined because crews had been actively working on the entire plaza since Monday, a spokesperson for Mayor Martin J. Walsh said.
Cooper thought that was a snow job.
“If they’re ticketing the public, they should ticket their own self, especially since yesterday was a holiday,” Cooper said. “It’s crazy.”
Aaron Goldstein, a Jamaica Plain resident walking along the unshoveled stretch of Cambridge Street yesterday, said he was concerned about safety.
“You could always take a wrong step, it does worry me a bit,” he said.
He also faulted the city for going after residents while some of its own paths remained unshoveled.
“For me it’s more in the context of a residential thing, I made a point of shoveling right outside my house on Christmas Day,” Goldstein said. “It’s a ‘rules for me but not for thee’ kind of thing.”