Clear your snow, citizen!

Yes, Master. Shall I re-pave the road, as well?

From our local paper, Public Opinion:

People living in Chambersburg will clear their sidewalks of snow this winter, or borough workers will give them a ticket, have it done for them and send a bill.

Chambersburg Borough Council plans to pass a new policy next week outlining how snow removal issues will be handled this winter and revise its ordinance to increase the fine for borough residents who do not shovel their walks or clear ice following a storm.

The borough already has an ordinance requiring sidewalks be cleared within 24 hours of a snowstorm, but in the past it has been enforced only when someone complained.

"This year the ordinance is going to be enforced," Assistant Borough Manager David Finch promised council when reviewing the proposed ordinance Monday night.

Under the proposed policy, the borough will send teams of inspectors out to check sidewalks throughout the borough, beginning 24 hours after the end of a major snowstorm, according to Finch.

These inspectors will post brightly colored warning notices on the front doors of properties where sidewalks have not been cleared and the next day inspectors will be back to check the sidewalks a second time. If those sidewalks have not been cleared, a ticket will be issued for the violation of borough ordinance.

After that ticket is issued, no further action will be taken during that first snowfall, Finch said, but if the ticket is not paid, a citation will be issued.

(See also the Editorial and Reader Comments.)

They added Haloscan to the online version of the paper, so that's kinda neat. It's jaw-droppingly startling, though, how statist the thinking is of the average commenter. If the gov't does or says something, it's gospel, principles of liberty be danged!

How anyone could not take the five seconds of rational thought necessary to realize that forcing a property owner to maintain a public thoroughfare at his own expense is wrong, is beyond me.

Especially troublesome are these lines:

"...the borough will send teams of inspectors out to check sidewalks throughout the borough, beginning 24 hours after the end of a major snowstorm...

These inspectors will post brightly colored warning notices on the front doors of properties where sidewalks have not been cleared..."

Are you freaking kidding me? Teams of inspectors? Give the useless bureaucrats a shovel, for Pete's sake! And, if I lived in the Boro (I don't), and some meddling waste of carbon came stumbling up my sidewalk to put a sticker on my door, that diptard would be wearing a sticker back to HQ.