Dear Editor:
It has started to snow again, and Centre Wellington Township is doing its usual awesome job of maintaining the roads. But not the sidewalks.
It snowed last Friday night and all the roads in Elora were back to bare asphalt by early Saturday morning, but only a few key sidewalks were maintained at all. Which means that by the evening, many sidewalks had been reduced to icy and slippery conditions.
With every passing year, we have more and more older people in our community, including a decent percentage who have some mobility challenges. We also have lots of young parents who still want to roll their strollers down our sidewalks all year round.
The township has done a stellar job of generally improving and widening sidewalks and did a lot of repairs this summer to remove and replace sections that had heaved and created hazards. We have new crosswalks this summer, and ever more trail signage.
But then winter comes, and the vision fails. There clearly is no consistent performance standard in place for sidewalks in winter. Last winter, weeks of consistent neglect by the township led to most sidewalks in town being turned into impassable skating rinks for many weeks. A lot of our older community members were seen in my area walking down the centre of the road, because that was being maintained properly and was the only (not really) safe place to walk.
We have the equipment to fix this. The people in charge are just not using it as heavily and frequently as they use the equipment that is maintaining our roads so effectively. That is a choice that is being made by someone.
If you’d like to know what better would look like, just walk over to the Station Square complex in Elora, any time in the winter. All the sidewalks throughout and around that complex are maintained by a private contractor. All winter long, no matter what happens, they are always as safe and dry as the roads in Elora are – in sharp contrast to the other sidewalks in town.
I’m hoping the new council can put this on the list of things to be fixed before we get too much further into this winter.
Paul Taylor,
Elora