To the editor:

Enough. It’s bad enough that I have an “amenity” I neither want nor asked for, one that was likely forced on the developer who built my house by the city, one that I have to maintain and repair at my own expense (has a city commissioner replaced any sidewalk lately?), one that costs me higher taxes because my property is valued higher because it has a sidewalk, one that the city would not give me a permit to remove, one that attracts people who walk their pets and I have to clean up after (an ordinance that the city does not aggressively enforce).

Now the city wants to penalize me for not clearing it promptly.

For the record, my sidewalk, all 300-plus feet of it, is cleared promptly. That is until the city plows snow and ice back over it. I own a snow blower as it is ill-advised for a person of my age to be shoveling that expanse of snow, but many do not have that luxury. They have to do it themselves or hire it done – another expense many can ill afford.

First, the city should look at its own record. Has anyone tried walking down the west side of Kasold on the sidewalk after the previous snow? It is nothing but a sheet of ice put there by the plows. The City Commission should be concentrating on fiscal responsibility and not acting like Congress, who worries about steroids in baseball and ignores the real problems that we face.

Ken Meyer,
Lawrence