The Ethics of Snow Removal

The other day at lunch, several of us were discussing different methods of snow removal. Some of my colleagues favor the old-fashioned snow shovel, which has the advantages of never needing gasoline, operating without lubrication or mechanical repairs, and providing an aerobic workout in addition to clearing your driveway and sidewalk. A counter-point was made in favor of the snow thrower: that it has the advantage of not taking all morning, not leaving the user soaked in his or her own sweat, and not causing heart attacks in middle-aged men who use it (a combination of over-exertion and constriction of the blood vessels due to the cold). Still others spoke in favor of the snow-removal service, which is even more expensive than owning your own snow-thrower, but requires no effort whatsoever and will continue to remove the snow even when you are not around. Which in East Lansing, at least, is a major selling point, considering that the city has an ordinance that requires you to clear your sidewalk within 24 hours of the end of each snowstorm…

Now, I’m not going to argue that having cleared sidewalks is a good idea. A lot of people in this city need to be able to walk, at least as far as the bus stop, and they really can’t do that effectively if there’s three feet of snow in their way. Nor can you reasonably expect to use an honor system to ensure that the sidewalks get cleared; there’s always going to be at least a few people on each block who can’t be bothered, don’t have the time, are physically incapable of shoveling snow, or are unwilling to risk the aforementioned heart attacks in order to do so. That means a municipal ordinance, along with a fine for failure to comply and city inspectors to enforce compliance and all of the other little joys that come with trying to regulate polite behavior. And that, I regret to say, takes us back into the realm of ethics, and the issue of whether you should ever try to legislate manners…

Granted that keeping your sidewalk clear is polite, at the very least, the question of whether or not you should be compelled to do so is still valid. To be at all legitimate, an ordinance must be equally applied to everyone who lives in that jurisdiction, and snow removal is not a task that lies equally on all residents. The elderly and infirm do not have the option of shoveling snow, and middle-aged men with blood pressure conditions would assume a disproportionate risk if they attempted to do so. By the same token, anyone living on a limited income (the elderly again, plus anyone trying to survive on disability payments, social security, or a graduate student’s stipend) will suffer a disproportionate loss in attempting to pay for a snow thrower or a snow removal service. In fact, during a recession, the only people who will be able to comply with such an ordinance without suffering economic hardship will be those youthful enough (and healthy enough) to shovel their snow by hand…

The problem here is that show (and ice) removal isn’t just a matter of appearances, like those Homeowner’s Association regulations about grass length and tree trimming you may have read about. Deep snow is impassible to all but the strongest and fittest walkers, and ice (particularly black ice) is dangerous for just about everybody. In theory, the city (or county) could just purchase small-gage snow removal machinery and hire extra personnel to run it each winter, and fold the cost into the property tax they charge the residents, but no one wants to pay extra taxes, and this does nothing to address the economic issues associated with disproportionate burdens anyway. In fact, one could quite reasonably contend that this unfairly penalizes people who have the youth (and health) to shovel snow but lack the funds to pay additional taxes…

To people raised in warm-weather cities this may seem like a trivial issue, or at most a side effect of living somewhere that gets enough snow to be a problem. When you actually consider it, however, it’s a fundamental example of the conflict between having the local government be responsible for everyone and expecting your neighbors to clean up after themselves. How do you find the optimal balance between those extremes? It’s worth thinking about…