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I agree it is a burden to shovel a sidewalk. It is also a burden to mow a lawn. Or paint a house with peeling paint. But there are certain things that a property owner might be expected to do (and should want to do) in a civil society. The city does not have the personnel or equipment to shovel even the sidewalks along main roads, and even if they had a dedicated staff of say 10 people to shovel sidewalks (with big snowblowers), it would still take weeks to cover the whole city (and my guess is that most city residents would rather have them focused on other things, like clearing roads, anyway). And of course it would cost a lot of money for the city to do all of the shoveling, which would raise taxes. The only realistic options are to repeal the existing ordinance altogether and have no shoveling requirement at all (which means the person who works forty hours a week or more, or is handicapped, or just has no car or chooses not to drive, cannot walk to the bus stop safely,and cannot walk anywhere safely along main roads, when it snows a lot) or to ask property owners to shovel in front of their properties. I also think the businesses should generally be expected to clear paths in front of their properties as a cost of doing business (and I have a business on a main road, and it sure is a pain in the neck to do that). I am actually OK with either of those options--repeal or requirement, whichever the city residents as a whole seems to prefer. It just sort of depends on which type of city we want to be, the one where people shovel their sidewalks or the one where they don't. In any event, it seems like the new proposed ordinance is at least more flexible and better than the existing one, even if the new one may not be perfect.