The bylaw preventing anyone from dumping snow on a city sidewalk or in the middle of a street has been around since 1973. Yet every year, the city of Timmins has to remind us of it.
“It’s usually not people shovelling their driveways that we have the issue with,” says city clerk Steph Palmateer.
He says the biggest problem is people using four-wheelers or UTVs to plow snow onto the travelled portion of a street, often after the city plow has gone by. That creates a hazard to pedestrians and motorists.
“The other thing that it does is sometimes we’ve already gone by and salted and sanded the street and then they’re pushing snow out, so then they’re pushing our salt and sand off the road.”
He goes on: “A lot of the problems we have now, they’re using things like four-wheelers and UTVs that aren’t allowed on streets to begin with. They pose hazards because they’re hard to see and we have a lot of mining trucks and logging trucks and things like that, so it’s to help protect pedestrians and travellers. It’s also to help protect the individuals doing it the individuals doing it themselves.”
Being caught gets you a fifty-dollar fine for a first offence.