[CliffFletcher]

How much discretion should we expect from municipal employees?

The stretch of sidewalk in front of our house has a dip that collects melting snow and then freezes. And our house is two-story with a north facing front and a steep lawn, which makes the pooling and freezing worse. It’s a problem.

This problem affects our neighbours on either side as well, though to a lesser degree. Last spring, one of them had an icy sidewalk complaint made against them, so they called in the City to look at it. In the summer a crew came and mud-jacked their stretch of sidewalk and boulevard, and then did the neighbours on the other side of us too. They did not do ours.

Now, because that’s how physics works, the dip in our sidewalk is even worse. It’s basically a pool of water that never dries, and freezes every night. I have to put sand down routinely to keep it from being treacherous (we’re on a busy street with lots of pedestrian traffic).

One might think that whoever authorizes City mud-jacking jobs would give some thought as to how this landscaping will affect neighhbouring properties. Because of physics and gravity and all that stuff. But evidently this is not the case. They only do the one specific thing they’ve been asked, with no thought to what problems this might create.

So yeah, count me in the ‘maybe City employees could exercise somewhat more judgment and discretion’ camp. We’re going to have to call them in again, they’ll have to prep and tag our property again, and then send another mud-jacking crew out again. When it could have all been done at once last summer.