It's a Scott's flowing shell on seven hundred w old WD. You just shooting a little straight with you this morth So we have all the snow on the ground. We got like twelve inches of snow, not much of it if all has melted yet tonight. Since lash tomorrow, we're going to get to one to two to three maybe more depending where you are, depends. We shall see temperatures remain cold, so more snow on top of the snow. Snow's not going anywhere, and city Cruise does a great
job clearing snow on the streets. There's still snow on the sidewalks that kids need to walk or wait for buses, and so a new ordnance would have force property on us to clear the snow. So what we're saying is that your neighbor, your neighbor, Betty Lorrain or Margaret, whatever name is, she's got to get eighty years old and the city's going to force her out there at gunpoint to go shovel over twelve inches of snow. Absolutely heartless, heartless,
it's unreal. Council Member Seth Walsh is proposing this, Seth, are you going to tell me that you're going to force somebody's gramma to go out and shovel sidewalks in this weather.
No no, no, Scott, I appreciate you leave it off with the drama there.
Let's take it up to what's actually going on here. So the city.
Actually already has on its books ordinances around shoveling the sidewalks, and one of the problems that we've discovered last year with the snow emergency is that we don't actually have any enforceable mechanisms to this. And so whether you're dealing with your sidewalks by your house, whether you're in a business district, whether you're downtown, if you run into sidewalks that are covered in snow a week after the snowstorm,
there's no way for you to report it. There's nobody whose job it is to maintain it and check in on it, and there's nobody who's there to make sure that we're actually doing this job. So what this motion asks is what does the administration need, much like we asked last year around the snowpop what does it need to be able to take the next step and actually make sure we're enforcing this appropriately and helping your the city going this isn't about going after you know, residential neighbors.
This is about making sure that we all as a community are coming together and actually being able to take care of our sidewalks too.
Okay, so this this would apply then primarily to the residential I'm sorry, the business district areas or places of business.
Yeah, so it's all it's all Cincinnati, but I anticipate it's gonna be primarily the business district areas. You know, we've seen a lot of complaints coming in. Downtown has had a number of complaints about you can tell who the properties owners are to clear the sidewalks so.
You can tell who have it.
We've also seen, you know, a lot of complaints around the city of Cincinnati, like owning property that we haven't cleared, and then questionable property where you're like, is it the city, is it somebody else?
And who needs to be responsible for it?
One, for example, is the bridge going from Clifton to north Side. What we need to be able to do is have a system in place to be able to get peace concerns and then make sure that we get them cleared, whether that's through some city mechanism, whether that's to hire in private contractors and whatever it is, that's a pretty big important Yeah.
I had our buddy on from ODOT last week and he said that, you know, sometimes you see a road plowed and then it'll not be plowed, and then it'll be plowed again. Is like that has to do with jurisdiction, right, Like odubts in chart generally have highways, but then you have the county. Then you have local municipalities cities like Cincinnati, villages, et cetera. And sometimes between all those enterprises, we're not
quite sure who is responsible for that stretch. And normally, if it's an intro or typically we get interured to a snow it is not a big deal. But when you're talking feet, different story.
Yeah.
Absolutely, And what we currently do not have is a mechanism SCOT if you want to call and tell us that there's a sidewalk that need to get shoveled after a week, there's no mechanisms for that.
And that's you know, I'll stop sort.
Of saying it's a problem because I don't think it's the problem on the scale of the snow pot as you was last year, but it is the next step in this how do we proposely handle snow as we're looking at you know, I'm seeing three to five inches tomorrow.
Yeah, that's a big deal.
And you know, if you're if you're trying to walk to a business and you're trying to walk to your car, you're trying to get to you know, take your dog for a walk, that's that is a big deal to be kind of going through these various grades and it becomes pretty unsafe for people. And so if we can't even get the reporting on it, how do we how do we take Diamex Stap actually solve this problem?
Okay, so where do you extend this that stass?
I mean you mentioned real estate owners is the target, but are we talking about absentee landlords just commercial property only? What about like something like an apartment complex. Can you define who isn't who's doing their job?
I mean, I think you can define it as pretty much a sidewalk. And this wouldn't yes anywhere that has a sidewalk that is not being shoveled, you know, several days to the week after the snowfall event. Whether that is a private property owner, whether that's the City of Cincinnati, whether that's oda. We need to be having these standards to make sure gets taken care of. I think there's a lot of people that are rightfully frustrated that city society hasn't shoveled our own sidewalks.
And right now we haven't even we don't even allow you to be able to tell us that that's the problems.
So let's get that salved like, let's hold everybody to the same standard, because again, it's a safety issue.
You know, it's it's about people.
We're trying to have people walk more, have more pedestrian safety. You got to have the sidewalks. You see people walking in the streets because they can't access the sidewalks. That becomes dangerous for everybody, from the people who are walking to the motorists. It's just not a safe environment.
Okay, I mentioned kind of tongue in cheek Seth Wall jokingly about senior sitting. You know, eighty year old Betty, you're next door neighbor. She's not going out and shovel. But if you can't physically shovel, and how do you differentiate when that in a proper dinner, who's neglecting their responsibility?
How do you verify this well?
And that's part of what we're asking in the emotion here is what does the city administration need to be
able to run an effective program? And much like if your sidewalk gets destroyed by tree roots and is lifting up, you know, a couple of inches and you have to have it taken out, there are systems in place where you can get it replaced by yourself or the city brings in contractors seeing it taken care of, and then there are ways to get creative about it to solve it where you're not putting the burden on your eighty five year old neighbor, but we are solving the problem
which off the sidewalks, make these passable straight you know, save sidewalks.
Okay, Well, in the case of the eight year old neighbor, so who paid? Does a taxpayer pay for that? Or do you have to build? Do you build? The property owner?
Well, I think that's something that the adminstration needs to come back to tell us, you know, what the costs would be on that, you know, if if it's in the obscene coss I'm.
Sure there's a way we can work that out.
And at the same time, you have contractors that are out there being able to do this because we have to take care of the safe property at the same time. You know, we can figure that out as well. Right now, we're at the information gathering stage. Last year we were so worried about the roads high getting cloud. This year we have had such a great success at the roads
getting cloud. The system worked. Now you have the next problem, which do you want people to be able to walk in the sidewalks aren't getting there?
How do we answer? How do we address that? Right? Right?
And I'll pivot for just a second off this outBut you mentioned the success that the crews had. I've saw nothing but glowering reviews for the snow removal, but also that plow tracking app as well. It was down for a while. Weren't quite sure with the mechanics. There's always growing pains. I think we talked about this before Seth Walsh. But but you know, from what I could tell and looking at it during the snow event and probably on's happening tomorrow.
Everything looks really good.
I mean, you guys really turned the corner on the snow removal thing, largely because of your efforts.
Yeah, I mean this is something that I think a lot of people deserve credit and kudos for you know, last year we failed as leaders in terms of making sure that we were set up for the team to be able to go out and succeed at it. We had six hundred streets, we just didn't know that.
We didn't. Wow, that's not acceptable, and we said that, and we sent the.
Last year working to make sure that we have the six hundred streets identified, that we had the systems in place and succeed that we knew days in advance we could prepare for and take care of it so that when we sent our workers out there, we worked twelve hour shifts. You know, they are they're doing the Lord's work in this and they needed to make sure they're supported,
and we made sure they're actually supported this time. You see how remarkable the team is once they actually have their appropriate support from the snowplowd tracker working to being able to see what streets were being taken care of, to see that we had two days in advance we were salting and preparing for the storms, and then you know, literally getting these streets covered and taking care of. Within like thirty six hours, we had ninety five percent of the streets passable.
I mean It was really incredible.
But it took us being honest with ourselves, which I think is one of the hardest things in government, to admit that, hey, we came up short.
We have to do better, right, right, and often there are enough people taking the hit for that, going hey, it's on my watch, it's going to happen. He's council Member Seth Walsh proposing a new ordin Cincinnati that's going to enforce with a little bit more teeth that you have to remove the snow from your sidewalks. That doesn't apply to a driveway though, right if you want to not shovel your own driveway, it's up to you, although
I guess the sidewalk usually does cross a driveway. And you know I'm backing up on this thing too, is how long before how long do you give someone to shovel the snow? Is it within twenty four hours? Forty eight a week? How long to shovel the snow that fell?
Yeah?
So on the first point, now, this doesn't impact driveways.
You know, the driveways your private property. The sidewalks are of the public property.
Here.
The second part of this is, in my opinion, you know, if we're trying to get everyone's streets cleared within forty eight hours. After that forty eight hour mark is that we should expect the sidewalks are getting appropriately cleared as well. You know, we had some issues last last week where people cleared their sidewalks and then the snowplowd came through a bunch of snowgup dumped back on the sidewalk.
That doesn't very feel very fair.
That feels a little punitive for those who are trying to do the right thing. It's a situation where once a snow emergency has stopped, we've gotten the streets taken care of.
Now we have to make sure the sidewalks become passable. You know, it's a priority order to this.
So we're not saying, hey, the snowstorm is coming down, right, I'll be out there and make sure there's not a ounce of snow out there. We're saying, you know, we're all a team, you know, especially now you look we're a week out on the storm.
We need to make sure that the sidewalks are passable.
Okay, Seth Walsh on that, And I've brought up the older neighbors that may not be able to even plow their own driveway. That may pay for the drive to be plowed, to be a little extra, a little bit more money on them to get the sidewalks done as part of that. Businesses may be a little bit different in that regard to but you know, all it would take is someone to go, hey, they're going after this.
You know this elderly widow or widow. We're they don't have the money, they're fixed income, they can't go out there and shovel their own thing. And now you're going to crack down. And that feels like it's like an IT team thing waiting to happen. But the same thing is, okay, my next door neighbor. Let's say, you know, it's an individual who works two or three jobs, doesn't have time to shovel their own driveway, let alone the snowplow or hiring someone to do that because they're trying to keep
their head above water. In that regard, would the enforcement be punitive as you mentioned, because you look at them and go, oh, okay, it's an older person. They can't afford it, they cannot do themselves. But you've got a younger next door neighbor. Shouldn't they be out there doing it well. If you're working all the time, it's awfully tough to do that. How do you respond.
We have a number of ordnances that are on the books currently that you may feel like are targeting are more vulnerable citizens, and the way that we handle it as a city is that we provide funds and resources to make sure that they're being taken care of as well.
None of these are designed in a way.
In which we are trying to punish, you know, our elderly citizens or those who will work see multiple jobs. We're just trying to make sure the sidewalks to become passable. And again, you know this isn't an ordinance. There already ordinances on the books that you know have this enforcement mechanism.
There's no way to report it right now.
And I think where the majority of these issues are happening, frankly, our city of society properties.
Yea, And I think we have to do better as a city. That's something in a mantra keep saying out there.
But if you don't even allow you to op change to tell us that these are problems and we can't solve the problems.
Yeah, do you feel like set there should be and again this is just the very primitive form of stage is there's nothing even close to becoming legislation at this point.
It's like, hey, how do we get the and it's a safety is how do we get the snow off the sidewalks because the reality is you've got kids trying to go to school or walk to the bus stop, or people waiting for metro, whatever it might be, and now they've got to stand in the road and that's just horribly unsafe that that's the whole point of this.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, I've seen way too many people in the last weeks who couldn't pass through the sidewalks, so they're just walking down the middle of the street. And it's arguably safer for them because they because of the slippage and the ice.
That has accumulated. It's not safer because you have these vehicles that are coming along. It's not safer for them, it's not safer for the vehicles. And so again, as a community, we have to step up and do better. And so how do we do that.
Again, we're not trying to be punitive here, We're just trying to figure out ways and we can solve problems that have arisen, and frankly, of all the problems that we had last year, for this to be the next issue to tackle, I think it's a good side of where the city's setting.
Yeah, you got the roads tackled. Now it's the sidewalks which is challenging in different ways. I suppose seth and we'll see what comes of this whole thing. I would also think too, that this is such an unusually heavy snowfall winter for us. We normally don't get this much so in a short period of time, you know, and maybe a storm or we get four inches or something like that, and we treat it like it's a big deal. You know, a foot of snow and plus what we're
getting tomorrow on sidewalks, yeah, that's impassable. You know, an inch or two you probably can walk over that. And so is this kind of preparing for the quote unquote hundred year flood as opposed to what we normally say.
You know, last year, I got a lot of criticism when I was when I was saying that we need better on the snowplows because everyone said it was a once in a twenty year storm, and barely twelve months later, that once in a twenty year storm hit again.
Right.
You know, the reality is we do live in a city where snowhall events happen, and we don't know when the next big snowstorm is. We didn't think two weeks together, we're going to have two big storms within.
A two week period.
And yet that's what we're staring down the gun on. So, yes, this is an important issue to make sure that we continue to just improve on.
And I hope that we don't have to experience it for the next hundred years.
But if I've learned anything about my predictions, if you will, we'll try to have it again in the next three weeks. And so let's just be ready and let's start having these conversations and figure.
Out again as a community, how do.
We do better and how do we work with each other make sure we're supporting the administration for what they need and the resources they need to be successful.
Well, the good news is much like diarrhea, it doesn't hang on too much longer.
Here on.
I got a few weeks of this nonsense, Seth Walsh, and then we'll be we'll be headed to spring. I think with Red's baseball, Aunu Suarez now we're in a red uniform, so we got hope down at a great American ballpark for our red legs. But of course with warmer temperature and all these cold and freezing and the snows, the the you know, the warming and freezing cycle, we got to worry about potholes.
Now, are we here?
I think this is going to focus from clearing sidewalks to pothole damage in a few short weeks, and are we prepared to deal with the probably immeasurable amount of potholes Last year it was a high pothole season. This year I would suspect the same. Are we better in twenty twenty six than we were in twenty twenty five on us?
You know, potholes didn't get as much attention last year in the media as the snowstorm did, but it did get a lot of attention on the inside of city Hall.
House Member Nolan obviously did.
A you know, quick blitz to try to come up with some solutions for the pothole how we can do better at podoles, and then House I believe today is actually going to be approving funding to buy new equipment from Pothole Feelings, So hopefully you're going to see improvement or remarkable improvement. Again, it's under the same new director who's solved our Sonowpo situation.
Mark Riley.
So I feel optimistic, but let's have that conversation of four weeks when we get to see it in action, right.
Right, and hopefully we are better than we have been in the past when it comes to poddles. Right now, it's snow on sidewalks. What's the timeline for this proposal?
So we were filing it today, which means we will officially vote on it next week and hopefully we'll see resolves quickly from there.
Yeah, all right, No, we think this is a priority for the city.
Yeah, I get what is you're trying to do because you can't have people, especially kids, walking in the street because the sidewalks aren't cleared for sure. So anyway, hey, Seth, appreciate you jump and I always love having you on the program. And thanks again, buddy, have a good.
Day, Thanks Scott.
All right, anytime there you go, Seth Walsh on The Scott's Loan Show. There may be some questions how are you enforced this namely, but I get the concept because you know, when sicy and cold out people walk in the street because at least the road is cleared, and in the past you couldn't walk anywhere because the roads weren't cleared.
So I guess we're making progress.
Julie Hatters, here is next. It's mental health money on the Scott Sloan Show on seven hundred WLW. Why do people hang on to relationships much longer than the life of the relationship be held onto, namely unfulfilling relationships. Why do we continue to do that when it's not getting us anywhere and making us worse. We'll talk about that coming up after news on seven hundred WLW.