Wednesday, January 06, 1999
Property owners slide out of sidewalk duty
BY TANYA ALBERT
The Cincinnati Enquirer
If you thought the roads were in bad shape from the ice and snow, check out the sidewalks.
Cities and counties aren't responsible for cleaning sidewalks, so pedestrians' safety is left to the mercy of individual property owners.
Maurice Scott earns his living going in and out of downtown businesses for a mail pickup service. He shoveled the walk in front of his own Mount Auburn house so he and his neighbors could reach the bus stop. But after spending the day on icy sidewalks downtown, he noted that not everyone is so nice.
“A lot of places I go to, I wonder why they didn't do anything,” he said.
Each land owner is responsible for the sidewalk in front of his or her property. In Kentucky, some cities have ordinances saying the sidewalks need to be shoveled, and the
courts have said people have a duty to clear the way. But in Ohio, nobody can make that happen.
In 1993, the Ohio Supreme Court said, “winter has its inherent dangers.” And perhaps people should shovel and salt sidewalks, but the homeowner doesn't have a “common-law duty to remove or make it less hazardous.”
It's been decades since Cincinnati has enforced its law that says snow has to be removed four hours after it stops snowing or accumulates after daylight: “The courts wouldn't enforce them,” assistant city solicitor Jim Ginocchio said.
From Newport to Newtown and Mason to Mount Airy, sidewalks are clear in some spots, sheets of ice in others.
Unless property owners get out there with a shovel to chip away at the ice, it's going to be there until temperatures finally rise.
Metro bus drivers are picking up riders waiting in the streets. Cincinnati parking enforcers gingerly walk around to check for expired meters. Men and women on downtown streets walk like toddlers balancing with their arms. Mail carriers trudge up walkways that haven't been cleared.
“A couple of times I did a pirouette, but I didn't go down,” mail carrier Bob Burke said Tuesday after finishing the Clifton route he's covered for 15 years. “It's treacherous. Where people have walked before it froze, there are craters.”
Unshoveled sidewalks were even a factor in some school closures Tuesday.
“When I was driving around to check parking lots at the schools, I noticed that at least 50 percent of the sidewalks were not shoveled,” Finneytown Local School District Superintendent Don Schmidt said. “It would have been very difficult for the kids who walk to school.”
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