Sidewalks

Last week the downtown businesses starting riding each other about not keeping snow and ice off sidewalks.

If we indeed have an aging local population and more retirees are moving in, than it stands to reason we should be doing everything we can to make access to our stores and businesses easy and safe. That's common sense.

That's not the case, looking around town at the sidewalks, if you can find them.

It's so much easier to drive into a shopping center or mall parking lot and not deal with snow berms in the middle of the road, piles of slush, snow or ice along the curb or gutter area, and finally a sidewalk buried beneath several inches of snow or packed snow or ice.

Kudos to the state highway department for plowing off the sidewalks along U.S. Highway 2. Piles of snow pushed onto the sidewalk render them useless and force children — walking to school — and adults — walking to stores — to venture out onto the edge of disaster with traffic.

We need to make this a priority in the winter. In this case, it takes a village to see that it gets done.

We need to keep working at it. — Roger Morris