GERMANTOWN, Wis. — The village of Germantown is deciding which sidewalks they'll continue to snow removal services for and which ones they'll leave up to property owners.
On December 1st, the village board voted against a new map proposal that showed where community members, apartments and businesses would need to start clearing off their own sidewalks—had the map been approved by the board, which it was not.
No change will happen until the winter of 2026, as the Germantown Department of Public Works goes back to the drawing board to make changes to the map based on the board's reaction.
Next, DPW will reassess, make changes to the map and continue the discussion at their Jan. 7 meeting.
Watch: Some Germantown community members will need to remove snow from their own sidewalks next winter
"This is a first attempt at the map at the village board level," DPW director Matt Mortwedt said. “At the end of the day, we’ll get a map adopted, and that’ll be the plan going forward.”
Mortwedt said that as the village develops, more sidewalks are being added, which they can't keep up with during winter snow removal.
He said their initial map would relinquish snow removal responsibilities for several sidewalks adjacent to homeowners and in front of their properties. Most of the sidewalks located in or near people's backyards would remain the village's responsibility.
"We'd be in a place where we're stretched pretty thin with our time and equipment," he said. “The change with the adopted map will become effective in the middle of summer.”
Steve Thompson and his dog Buddy spend a lot of time walking the sidewalks of Germantown.
"We try to do 10 to 15 miles a day!" he said. "That's the advantage to being retired, you get to do those things."
He's on the fence when it comes to the village's plan to pull back from clearing off all sidewalks in the village, something they've been doing since the 1950s.
"Where I live, I don't have any access to other neighborhoods except through plowed sidewalks," he said. "So, from my standpoint and his as far as walking, we wouldn't like it if they stopped plowing things like Pilgrim Road, Donges Bay Road and things like that."
Thompson understands the need for the village to re-assign some of the sidewalk snow removal, but hopes sidewalks on Pilgrim and Donges Bay stay on the list.
"On the one hand, if they can keep taxes down, that's a good thing," he said. "On the other hand, they've made commitments over the years to do certain things. If they're planning to backtrack on that, that would concern me as well."
DPW's goal is to put a plan in place by June.
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