Lawns and Parkways

I remember the gutters and the parkways, but I don't remember ever seeing those other two cement things that you talked about. I would think you would have to maintain them or the sod from the lawn or parkway would eventually creep out and cover them up. We used to cut out a narrow strip of sod between our lawn and the sidewalk in our yard every few years, but I don't remember ever doing that between the parkway and the city sidewalk. I remember that most people raked up their leaves and burned them in the gutter, but we just ground ours up with the power mower. We had a double lot, so our yard was bigger than most and we didn't have time for all that foolishness. We had lots of paper and cardboard trash from the store, and we used to burn that in a square cage that my dad made out of some old fence panels. That was located out on the parkway, which was probably illegal, but nobody ever complained about it.

I used to wonder about those parkways too, but I came to understand the concept years later when I read about something like that in our local Cheboygan paper. I have never lived in the city limits, so it was no concern of mine, but I read it with interest anyway because I had always wondered about stuff like that. They argue about sidewalks more in Cheboygan than they do about parkways, but I think the concept is the same. In most jurisdictions, you technically own everything to the middle of the street or road, but the city, county, or whoever has an easement for the roadway, the width of which varies from one jurisdiction to the other. For a county road in Michigan, the easement is 66 feet wide, 33 feet coming out of your property and 33 feet coming out of your neighbor across the road. A typical two lane county road is only 24 feet wide, but the county can use the rest of the easement for shoulders, ditches, sidewalks, or whatever. In rural areas, the county generally mows the grassy parts of its easement only once a year. You can mow it more often if you want to, but it's not required.

In the city, they have an ordinance that makes the property owner responsible for the sidewalk and parkway in front of his land. This ordinance is not uniformly enforced, which is why people argue about it. Some sidewalks were installed by the city in the ages lost to memory. The city claims they don't do that anymore, if indeed they ever did. Some neighborhoods don't even have sidewalks but, if they do, you're supposed to take care of them. If the city decides they want a sidewalk where there never was one, or a deteriorated sidewalk rebuilt, they will try to get the property owner to do it at his own expense. If he refuses to do it, the city sometimes does it and then adds the expense to his tax bill, prorated over several years. Sometimes, though, they just argue about it for awhile and then drop the matter. I don't know if anybody has ever taken them to court for that, but it seems like somebody should.

Anyway, the theory behind making you shovel snow and mow in front of your property is that, if the city did it, they would have to raise your taxes to pay for it, and most people would rather do it themselves than let that happen. Sometimes, though, they tell the city to just do it and send them the bill. Our downtown section is like that. There is no parkway and precious little sidewalk because that part of the city was originally designed for horses, not cars. You're not supposed to shovel snow out into the street, but there is no place else to put it, so the city or a private contractor comes down the sidewalk with a snow blower and blows it into the street. Then the city trucks plow it all to the center, where it sits for days until they get caught up with their plowing. Eventually, if it doesn't melt first, they come down the center with a big auger thing and blow it into dump trucks that haul it out of town and dump it in a field.

They don't let people burn leaves and brush in town either. What they do is announce a spring and a fall pickup time. Everybody piles all that stuff on the edge of the street, where the gutters would be if they had gutters, and the city trucks pick it up and haul it to the stump dump. If you have stuff any other time of the year, you have to haul it to the stump dump yourself. The stump dump is not for regular garbage, just natural organic stuff. Of course, we don't have to worry about that in Beaglesonia, the whole property is our own personal stump dump.

I think the way that "bravery" thing goes is: If you like the guy, he's brave. If you don't like him, he's reckless.