The city of Chicago is nearing budget season. All signs point to the budget hole being substantial.
That’s not stopping Mayor Brandon Johnson from proposing a sidewalk snow removal program for four 1.5-square-mile city zones beginning next winter. On its face, the cost of this “pilot” — up to $3.5 million in the coming fiscal year — seems modest. But, as 13th Ward Ald. Marty Quinn effectively argues, that cost is likely to mushroom into the tens or even hundreds of millions if all Chicagoans come to expect the city to remove snow not just from the streets but from their sidewalks as well.
In a city where a poor blizzard response at least partly determined the outcome of a mayoral election 45 years ago, there’s a reason Chicago mayors haven’t decided to provide sidewalk snow removal service before now, and it’s not that the notion didn’t occur to them. The cost is exorbitant.
The perfect-world argument for sidewalk snow removal, of course, is compelling. Senior citizens and the disabled effectively can be trapped in their homes when enough snow falls. The impact can range from inconvenient to dangerous. If an elderly resident can’t get medicine or food over a significant stretch of time, for example, that goes beyond mere inconvenience.
We think a public-service campaign calling on Chicagoans to shovel the walks of their elderly or disabled neighbors would be an excellent start. Aldermen might even organize such groups of volunteers in their wards. There was a time in this city when helping older neighbors dig out was commonplace and when middle schoolers looking to make a few bucks would walk door to door and offer their services.
Perhaps that time is quaintly past. If so, that’s a shame.
Still, if Johnson and his progressive City Council allies are intent on providing this service citywide, there are far cheaper ways to do it than setting up a distinct bureau and covering the costs of equipment, salaries, benefits, pensions and insurance, etc. Quinn himself has developed a model.
For a decade now, Quinn has offered snow removal service to senior citizens in his ward. It began as a loosely organized group of 10 snow shovelers and has grown to incorporate deliberate planning, some heavy equipment and far more personnel. There are 760 households on the list, which is updated each autumn as winter approaches. The cost of providing the service ranges from $150,000 to $200,000 each winter, he tells us. He funds it in part through his aldermanic budget and with 13th Ward Democratic funds.
It takes work, but Quinn says it’s rewarding. “I spend a lot of time working on routes” each fall, he says. “I think our staff loves the program. We take pride in it. The program has created a unique relationship with our constituents.”
Here’s a thought, aldermen. Take a page from your colleague’s book and run your own ward snow removal programs. Chicago has 50 aldermen — a far larger City Council than any major city in America. That’s an absurdly high number, but a silver lining to such waste and inefficiency is that aldermen can attend to constituent services in a way that, say, a New York City council member cannot.
One might even argue, as Quinn did to us, that the city could augment aldermanic service budgets by, say, $75,000 per ward for snow removal purposes. That would require aldermen to chip in another $75,000 or so from their annual allowance, which tops $200,000. Such an approach would have city taxpayers shelling out another $3.8 million annually, about the same amount as the pilot program aldermen are being asked to approve, and would provide citywide service for seniors — theoretically, at least — at a fraction of the cost for city government to do it. Aldermen would be providing jobs to residents of their ward to boot, always a surefire vote-getter. Voters could respond to any incompetence or corruption in the time-honored, democratic way: by electing a new alderman.
This City Hall is having enough trouble doing the basics like keeping the streets safe and clean. Adding a logistically challenging and costly mandate to its responsibilities is a bad idea.
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