Students leaving town next week for winter break might be in a rush to get home for the holidays, but if they neglect to make arrangements for snow removal, they could return to an unwanted ticket.
Failure to properly remove snow from sidewalks within 24 hours of the last snowfall will result in an $85 ticket, East Lansing City Manager Ted Staton said. Residents must remove ice within 12 hours to avoid a ticket, he said. There is no relationship between the size of the property and the amount of the ticket, he said.
“We get the most complaints when students are out of town,” East Lansing’s Parking and Code Enforcement Supervisor Eldon Evans said. “Students need to make arrangements to have their sidewalks cleared or property checked while they are away.”
Tickets issued are written to landlords, Evans said. However, if lease agreements hold the tenants responsible, the ticket will be transferred to the tenants, he said.
Evans said he was unsure about the number of tickets given out in previous years, but Joe Goodsir, president of Community Resource Management Company, or CRMC, said his tenants recently have not had problems with ticketing. He said CRMC began plowing the city sidewalks for its tenants three years ago, and the company hasn’t had any problems with the city and snow removal since then.
“Our tenants are responsible for shoveling from their front door to the city sidewalk,” he said. “We provide them with a shovel and we also plow the city sidewalk ourselves. If during the winter break everyone in the household is gone, we take their shoveling responsibility.”
Interdisciplinary studies in social science junior Theodore Marshall said he has been renting with CRMC for years and hasn’t had a problem with ticketing during the winter break.
“CRMC will send someone over to our house to take care of the snow during the break,” he said. “It’s about $10 a person for our eight-person house, so it’s not a big deal.”
Construction management graduate student Will Mouser said he’s not worried about snow removal because he lives in an apartment building where the management company is responsible. He said in previous years, he never got any tickets from the city, but his landlord always pestered him, even before the required 24-hour period was up.
“I’ve had a landlord in the past who would contact me way before the city ever did; she was kind of (uptight),” he said. “Because I’m from Northern Michigan, I sort of enjoy shoveling, so there never was a problem with it, but she somehow got to us before they did.”
Staton said the money from the tickets is like any other parking ticketing and goes toward the general fund for the city.
Evans said if tenants know their house will be vacant during the holiday break, they should make prior arrangements to prevent tickets.
“It’s a good idea to contact someone to come by once a week, or just to have them check the area after a snowfall,” he said.
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