Sudbury city councillors demand better winter sidewalk conditions

Some Sudbury city councillors are demanding improvements to the quality of winter sidewalk maintenance as preparations for icy, snowy conditions get underway at city hall.

"A lot of the concerns that we had [last year] over winter sidewalk maintenance were things like banks being too high or slushy conditions," councillor and chair of the city's operations committee, Robert Kirwan, said.

"I feel that we have to do a better job of maintaining the sidewalks."

About 75 per cent of Sudbury's 440 kilometres of sidewalks get cleared, according to a report that was presented on Monday to the operations committee.

Councillor Lynne Reynolds told the committee that she gets too many calls about the state of sidewalks in the winter months.

She said keeping the status quo of maintenance would be unsatisfactory.

"If we're not meeting the needs of our clients that is the taxpayers than we need to do something about that," she said.

The committee was presented with a decision to expand the number of sidewalks that are maintained, but it referred the matter to a finance committee meeting on Sept. 20.