What the community told us

As part of the Transportation Master Plan update, we asked residents in 2021 to comment on whether they supported recommendation 15:

• Do you support introducing a strategy to prioritize locations for sidewalk snow clearing in the winter?

The large majority of respondents (81.9%) said yes. There were also many write-in comments in support of sidewalk clearing and encouraging a priority system similar to road plowing. The write-in comments can all be found in the Draft Transportation Master Plan Survey Report - 2021.

As part of the 2023 budget process, 48 people attended a hybrid public meeting to provide comment on the budget and their thoughts on priorities for spending. While several themes emerged, the top concern for comments and questions was:

• Sidewalk snow clearance - accessibility and equity issue/lens
  • Sidewalks should be cleared by the City
  • Roads should not be prioritized over sidewalks
  • Not cleaning sidewalks disproportionately impacts low income earners and racialized peoples
  • Disagreement with approach of using municipal enforcement officers to encourage compliance with by-law
  • Shouldn’t rely on neighbours to clear sidewalks, should be done by City
  • How does the City deal with landlords who do not clear the sidewalk in front of their rental properties
  • Individuals should clear their own sidewalk and help others that need assistance

Concerns over increased use of salt to clear snow and ice were also expressed, with sand preferred. The full report to Council on this meeting is available beginning on page 47 of the January 30, 2023 Council Packet.

At the same meeting where the budget feedback information was presented, several delegations presented to Council, speaking on:

• the importance of Active Transportation
• national funding strategies that could be utilized for snow clearing
• how snow clearing models tied to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
• the potential for Ward-by-Ward snow clearing.
• the need for sidewalks to get cleared, and the issue with snow plows creating barriers on the sidewalk and at crosswalks
• the need to clear sidewalks from a disability perspective

There was also a presentation detailing the different areas of the city where private owners were expected to clear their own sidewalks versus where the city took care of snow removal, and potential options for improvement, and a comparison of the City of Waterloo to the City of Guelph’s snow clearing practices and complaints procedure.

Full details can be found in the January 30, 2023 Council Meeting Minutes, or you can view the meeting recording on YouTube.

Most recently, we have been reviewing feedback received as part of the 2023-2026 Strategic Planning consultation process (p.18). Although we continue to work on the analysis of the survey feedback, some of the preliminary findings of the survey include that residents want their future Waterloo to be a walkable and accessible city. The full survey report will be made available on the Strategic Plan project page when available.