Commission clarifies snow ordinance - for the moment
Can citizens push snow from their driveway onto the street? How about if the snowplows haven’t come by to haul the street’s snow out yet? Can business owners along Main Street whose sidewalks extend to the street push their snow onto main? Monday evening, the Hazen City Commission answered "No," "No," and "No." At least for the moment. "There’s not a whole lot we can do with it this year, but we must keep line of communication open and put together a (snow) ordinance that’s easy to understand and easy to implement," Street Commissioner Mike Peterson said. At a Jan. 5 meeting of the commission, Peterson stated that homeowners could push snow from their driveway into windrowed snow on the street, as long as the city had not yet picked up the windrow. Since that meeting, Commissioner Ken Link shared that residents confused by the city’s snow removal policies have approached him. After since gathering input from Hazen’s street crews, Peterson retracted his Jan. 5 statement. "Sometimes driveway snow has equaled that of another street," Peterson said. "It’s just a lot of extra snow that we don’t really need there. It’s just too much snow. I tried to alleviate the situation, but we’ll go back to the ordinance that you can’t put snow on the street in any way, shape or form. If snow gets too deep (on sides of driveways), there are private contractors that will haul it away for you.
