Other: This will be my 4th winter in bloomington as I am a senior in college and this city really needs some MAJOR renovations to the roads, sidewalks, trees blocking stop signs, etc. My particular issue right now is the extreme safety issue that it poses when the city fails to salt the sidewalks. In my hometown, there was RARELY a time that it snowed and there wasn’t salt on every sidewalk in town, or at least the sidewalks that any students would need to use to walks or ride buses to school. I understand that Bloomington is a bit of a larger town and some of this could be an issue for the IU campus management too, but it seems like the city fails to salt the sidewalks if they ever even do. They should be ensuring that sidewalks get salted even if there isn’t a high chance of snow. For example, tonight at the IU purdue game on november 30th, I saw so many people slipping and sliding and it did not seem like there was any salt on the sidewalks anywhere near 17th street. I almost fell multiple times and I was closely looking at the ground for salt and it did not seem like there was any. I have also noticed similar issues in previous years when there has been snow, the sidewalks are never salted or cleared for students walking to class from off campus. I know you can probably only control what is considered the city of bloomington and not IU campus, but if we are going to care enough about safety to line the entirety of 17th street’s sidewalks with fences and security guards, you would think the least you guys could do would be put down some salt. I’m really failing to understand why it is SO hard for this city to put salt down, like my dad taught me how to salt our driveway when I was like 14. I swear I could put salt down all of 17th street faster than this city could because this city isn’t even capable of maintaining streets and sidewalks that aren’t covered in potholes and uneven surfaces.

Assigned to

John Hewett