City should stop shoveling shit and start shoveling snow

From the Times Ledger:

Sanitation officials reminded New Yorkers to shovel their sidewalks following the worst of the Dec. 26 snowstorm, but many Maspeth sidewalks in front of city property remained covered with a treacherous layer of ice even before the latest bout of winter weather this week, a civic leader said.

“In the middle of Maspeth, there are railroad areas that the city never shovels,” said Robert Holden, president of the Juniper Park Civic Association. The sidewalks in question run along railroad tracks or under city-owned overpasses and in front of city parks.

“If it was us, the mayor would give us fines, but this is his property,” he said.

Holden said that as of Monday the stretches of sidewalk along both sides of 57th Avenue between 74th and 83rd streets — which abuts the Long Island Expressway and a railway track — had not been shoveled, forcing some students of IS 73, at 70-02 54th Ave., and PS 58, at 72-50 Grand Ave., to walk in the street.

And the longer the city waits, the harder the sidewalks become to shovel, Holden said. The snow melts and freezes again, which tempers it to a hard, crusty shell.

And after the city’s response to the second snowstorm Jan. 11, Holden said some of the city’s strongest should have picked up a shovel.

“I found it ironic that they are doing it overkill with these plows now that they are scraping the blacktop,” he said. “Why don’t they put a couple of guys on the city sidewalk?”