HADLEY — The Select Board is temporarily pausing enforcement of a bylaw requiring property owners to remove snow and ice from adjacent sidewalks within 12 hours of the end of a storm, a rule approved as a way to reduce municipal expenses following the failed Proposition 2½ tax-cap override last year.
The Select Board voted unanimously at its Feb. 4 meeting to suspend the directive approved in December after pushback from residents and business owners and questions about whether the current bylaw passes legal muster. Enforcement, including $100 to $300 fines, was to have started on Feb. 1.
Select Board Chairman Randy Izer said officials need clarity from the town attorney before starting this new practice.
“I think we’d be looking for trouble if we enforce it the way it is,” Izer said.
Part of the confusion centers on the bylaw’s reference to the type of materials used to create a sidewalk. The bylaw states that “no owner or tenant of an estate abutting on a stone, brick, concrete or plank sidewalk shall place or suffer to remain, for more than 12 hours between sunrise and sunset, any snow upon such sidewalk, nor any ice upon such sidewalk.”
Select Board member David J. Fill II said one of the concerns he has heard from taxpayers is stripping away an existing town service. Still, he said town officials have to take a hard look at the bylaw in light of trying to cut back on about $2,000 in Department of Public Works expenses for each storm.
Select Board member Molly Keegan said the town’s Bylaw Committee should examine revisions and have them ready for voters at annual Town Meeting.
Finance Committee Chairwoman Amy Fyden said a lot of people told her they were concerned about the communication from Town Hall instructing them to remove snow and ice from the sidewalks in front of their homes and businesses or else face fines.
“There’s a lot of people in town that this affects, and they were very upset,” Fyden said.
Because the new practice had not gone into effect, DPW Director Scott McCarthy said his crews have continued plowing sidewalks, getting them ready for schoolchildren to walk to school without delay. He said it may not be a viable option to wait a day or two for sidewalks to be cleared.
McCarthy said for now the crews will continue doing the historic town center sidewalks, including those on Middle and West streets and those sidewalks that run alongside public buildings such as Town Hall and Hopkins Academy.
“We need to be able to fund this. It costs money to do this,” he said.
Eliminating sidewalk plowing would reduce town expenses. “I was tasked to come up with cost-saving measures, and this was something we looked at to save the town money,” McCarthy said.
But McCarthy said it may be sensible to have a long-term plan for funding the DPW to remove snow and ice from all sidewalks in Hadley. “You’re either in the sidewalk business or you’re not,” McCarthy said.
A concern is that once the Route 9 reconstruction project is complete, general contractor Baltazar, which has been plowing the new multiuse paths and sidewalks, will not continue that. And it’s unlikely the state Department of Transportation will, even though in 2019 it made that pledge orally, though not in writing, to town officials.
MassDOT does clear the sidewalks on and near the Coolidge Bridge, while the Norwottuck Rail Trail is plowed by the Department of Conservation and Recreation.
The added cost for taking care of sidewalks that the town didn’t request along the state highway is troubling for Finance Committee member Paul Mokrzecki.
“That sounds like an unfunded mandate,” Mokrzecki said.
McCarthy said these new sidewalks will create a “very complex and burdensome” situation for those who live and work along the state highway, due to the large amounts of snow and ice state plows push onto the sidewalks.
The town, he said, has one machine that can do this heavy-duty work, which would also likely double the current per-storm cost.
“The crew will continue doing the best,” McCarthy said. “It’s not getting any easier for us.”