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Their responsibility
Nobody gives two copulations for their "not our property" nonsense.
Corporate owners are no different than homeowners. You have to shovel along your property. Period.
BMC needs to shovel it and shut up.
And the CIty needs to stop demanding
free labor from private citizens for maintaining PUBLIC property and shovel the PUBLIC sidewalks themselves. If a street lamp on a sidewalk breaks, do we expect the abutter to repair it? No, because that's the CITY's responsibility. Yet, we require abutters to do other maintenance on the City's sidewalks? In a word - silly!
Too inefficient or expensive you say. Perhaps if they fired those overpaid hacks who write tickets to people who DO NOT OWN the sidewalks abutting their properties. And sell off their expensive and needless iPhone and printers that generate unfair tax bills (tickets).
I really wish somebody would challenge this archane ordinance, because it's high time this practice of EXTORTING labor from private citizens be stopped.
Stop wishin' and start doin' then
Why don't YOU be that 'somebody' hmm? Go ahead, we're all rooting for ya.
Good Lord!
Yes, in fact, we do: we expect the abutter to pay property taxes, which pay for the repair crew.
I absolutely 100% guarantee you that my cost of clearing my sidewalk now is lower than it could ever be for the city. I don't need dispatchers, supervisors, HR administrators, a phone system, office space for the dispatchers, employment taxes, and all the other overhead that goes into having city employees or contractors do the work.
Do you think taxation (with representation) is EXTORTION also?
21-year old communications intern
Who knew that they were experts on the laws of the Commonwealth, too?
The real estate version
Of a pop up dropping in between the left fielder and the shortstop.
Sidewalk
It's shoveled. Property owners aren't expected to have warming devices to melt the ice too.
HTH
You aren't obligated to "shovel," you're obligated to CLEAR THE SIDEWALK.
https://www.boston.gov/departments/311/rules-clearing-snow
Shoveling
Strollers....LOL.
Yup!
and walkers, to boot.
What are you talking about?
Anyone who's lived where it snows regularly can tell that sidewalk isn't shoveled, it's clearly been mashed down by the passage of many many pedestrians. And since it's now almost compressed into ice, it'll be the last to melt when the temps gets warmer.
Uneven, slippery and persistent - the worst sort of winter sidewalk mess.
The last sentence of your post cuts to the quick, Jeff F.
This:
is exactly why property owners, whether the properties are residential or commercial, or even independent institutions, should shovel, clear and salt down the sidewalks alongside their properties as soon as a snowstorm or ice storm hits and then passes through this area.
Don't people who are derelict on shoveling and salting down their sidewalks realize that if a person falls, gets seriously injured and decides to sue the property owner for negligence, that the property owner(s) could be involved in a major, expensive civil lawsuit that no homestead would protect them against, because a saavy attorney could get around that with no trouble whatsoever?
Property owners should be aware of that.
but they are expected to put down ice melt
If someone slips on your property, they can sue you so its to everyone's interest to put down ice melt
Worse...
They're claiming that, sure, the building is theirs, but the city owns the sidewalks. Sheesh. Sounds like someone who does not live in the city (or any city) is responsible for their twitter account — and hopefully that's all it is, not something actually they think officially.
From boston.gov:
... as I'm pretty sure everyone here already knows. But, you know, in case you need a reference to send to someone.
$200/day
Multiply that by 2 or more for each address the sidewalk abuts. Ring em up!!
"Owner"
Well, does BU actually own BMC (formerly BCH)? Or are they just the operator of the city facility? If the city still physically owns the building, it could be their job if they didn't write snow cleanup in the lease/operators contract...
Boston Medical Center is an independent institution
It is affiliated with BU, but a separate independent organization and not owned by the City or BU. All of BMC's properties to the north of E. Concord St, including 720 Harrison (the Doctor's Office Building and garage) and the parking lot at 73-79 E Brookline, where the sidewalks were neglected, were never part of Boston City Hospital. They were part of the former BU Medical Center (which was merged with BCH to form BMC). They're actually in the process of consolidating all of their operations to the former BCH campus and plan to eventually sell most, if not all, of the E Newton St campus (and I assume the D.O.B. and garage).
So what if Boston Medical Center is an independent institution?
That doesn't absolve them of their obligations to shovel and salt down their sidewalk in the wintertime, after a snow or an ice storm.
No, it does not
And that has nothing to do with the reply I posted above.
While I...
While I agree.. a electrician's shop on the corner of my street does the *bear* minimum, and only does one side.
But I think by monday, alot of this snow is gonna be gone.
(And yes folks, its not an excuse not to do it, I know the law says so but it'll be gone by mid week next week if it stays warm)
In the mean time...?
And in the mean time those of us with mobility problems can just skip work and stay home? Awesome.
didn't say that
I didn't say that..
I DID say "It's not an excuse not to shovel". Just stating, it's gonna all melt within a week.
Okay, but
No matter when it's going to melt, now is now, and the shoveling of the snow has to go on before someone does stumble, fall and break an ankle, a leg, or whatever.
Waiting a week isn't going to work.
The time to shovel and salt down the sidewalk is now!
I hope so!
This snow is so heavy and dense that I feel like it might be around until July. It's so packed in that I can easily walk through a field and on top of 3 ft of unshoveled snow on my way to work.
But I can't wait for it to be gone, so hopefully you're right!
Neighbor?
You talking about the shuttered supply shop at North Beacon and Glencoe?
It should be noted
Boston Medical Center generally does a stellar job on its sidewalks. Its facilities department sets what should be the standard that everyone should strive to meet. Once the snow starts falling, BMC's grounds crews are out there sweeping, salting, plowing and making sure everything is safe and passable, and they do it long before even the busiest busybodies (yours truly included) are out there shoveling. It is confounding because this particular stretch of sidewalk (which has always been cleared by BMC, even earlier this season) was not cleared after Thursday, and multiple calls and requests went unanswered (again, not characteristic). BMC's claim not to be responsible for it is just incorrect and flies in the face of their own history of clearing that sidewalk after snow. Also, they cleared the Harrison Ave sidewalk abutting the same parcel after last week's storm.
maybe they are allowing the
maybe they are allowing the ice to encapsulate all the discarded heroin needles as a form of a natural sharps box.
Yeh, right!
Ha ha ha ha ha!
If the BMC does a stellar job on its sidewalks, then
why the hell weren't they out there shoveling and salting down their sidewalk after this last big storm we received?
Assessment says otherwise
I believe the City of Boston would beg to differ, listing "Boston Medical Center" as the owner of the building as of January 1, 2016. Unless that's out of date?
In any case the current fine for not shoveling a commercial property is $200. The fine for not shoveling a residential property (with fewer than 16 units) is $50.
BMC has an assessed value of ~$41 million. A $200 fine is .000005% of the assessed value. Pretty paltry penalty.
Perhaps tie the fine to the building's assessed value - with a floor or ceiling to ensure fairness?
Or we could once and for all acknowledge
that sidewalks provided for the use of the public should be FULLY maintained - including snow clearance - by the government, and NOT the abutters that DO NOT OWN them. But why apply common sense, when it's so much easier for the City to abdicate their responsibilities by extorting labor from property owners, and putting unjust fines on property owners who don't agree with that tactic.
The opposite view
Why don't we require anyone who owns a car to shovel out the streets?
Think of the money we would save!
That might sound good, but
That might sound good, but consider the details: what's this going to cost the city in pay, equipment, or both? Just for the labor, you're calling for some combination of raising taxes and pulling city employees off their regular work. (That's if someone donates the hardware.) "Make the XYZ Department do it, they can catch up later" might avoid short-term hiring, but it also means overtime pay.
Cool let's raise property
Cool let's raise property taxes so the city can hire waves of shovelers
The city should plow sidewalks in the CBDs
The city should develop a system to plow sidewalks in the central business districts through the Main Streets program. So many sidewalks leading into CBDs are unshoveled and a mess. It would be to the city's interest to do to help people go to downtowns and shop. In JP, we've got businesses leading into downtown that still haven't shoveled their walks..let alone the handicapped ramps are still a mess.. The city says property owners should do, The property owners say the city should do... But with all this back and forth, nothing gets done. Complaints get filed, still no action. We need a different system.
Here's an idea
Call or write your city councillor and have him sponsor the legislation absolving home owners from the responsibility. Then you can work with him (or her) on the budgetary issues.
By the way, which district do you live in?
Absolving homeowners and commercial property owners?
Absolving homeowners and commercial property owners from the responsibility of shoveling and salting down their sidewalks and front walks, steps and porches after a snowstorm or ice storm? That's not the way to go! Property owners residing in any city or town are obligated to help out some by shoveling and salting down their walks, porches, steps and walkways, as a public safety thing for everybody.
You need your morning coffee
(I was mocking the fact that he wants the City of Boston to change its laws while he lives in the suburbs.)
Roadman, you sound like a
Roadman, you sound like a logistical genius. For the sake of discussion, how about you give us some numbers on what it would take to shovel the city 850 miles of streets (make that 1700 miles of sidewalk). How many people would you have to keep on stand by for that? And where exactly would you find all these happy shovelers ready to show up at anytime? Cost? We look forward to your answers!
For the sake of discussion
You don't seem to be batting an eye about absorbing the costs of cleaning the streets of snow.
Apples and oranges
Cleaning the streets of snow can be done efficiently at large scale using mechanized equipment.
Some sidewalks are wide enough to use mechanized equipment. Many others are not.
The vast majority of Boston's
The vast majority of Boston's sidewalks are large enough to be cleared with an industrial sized snowblower, and using that method a single operator can clear an average city block length of sidewalk to a width of 30" in about five minutes (vs. the many, many man-hours currently expended for people to clear their individual sections of sidewalk with shovels). And the savings in man-hours is only the half of it: You get the WHOLE LENGTH of sidewalk cleared, rather than 90 percent minus the one or two parcels owned by people who are elderly or out of town.
And as for the remaining sidewalks that are too narrow to clear with a snowblower, the benefits to the elderly or disabled of being able to actually use the sidewalks in the winter would easily justify the cost of employing people to shovel these last few miles of sidewalks by hand. And maybe (just maybe) if DPW was responsible for clearing these narrow sidewalks, they would start pressuring the city to build sidewalks that were easier to clear, kind of like how they pressure BTD not to install speed bumps and raised crosswalks because the plow drivers don't like having to work around them.
...BMC signed an agreement 2
...BMC signed an agreement 2 yrs ago to sell that building and I thought it had already closed the deal?