We’ve advocated before in favor of the city forming an incentive program to assist homeowners with the cost of voluntary sidewalk building.

Sidewalks were discussed quite a bit Thursday at a meeting to prepare the community for the City Health Makeover sponsored by Blues Zones and AARP. They’ve also been the subject of letters to the editor.

There are two camps:

On one side, you’ve got people who want Albert Lea to have more sidewalks.

On the other, people without sidewalks don’t like the idea of being required to shovel snow from their walks.

Here is a simple solution:

Repeal the city ordinance that requires homeowners to shovel their sidewalks.

That’ right. Get rid of it.

Sure, businesses and possibly landlords still would be required to shovel, but if mandatory shoveling is the big deterrent to expanding the residential sidewalk system, drop the requirement.

It would be better to have people feeling good about adding sidewalks to the city’s sidewalk system than not. It would be better to have more sidewalks period, whether they walkable all the time or not. Our bet is most homeowners would clear their sidewalks of snow even without the ordinance and most of the sidewalks would be useful most of the time.

No matter how it is done, more sidewalks will add years to the lives on community members. A big deterrent to exercise is infrastructure.

There’s obesity epidemic. New ways of solving problems are needed.