Arlingtonians had their keyboards at the ready to submit sidewalk clearing complaints after last week's snow. (Photo: TBD Staff)

It might have been barely a couple inches of snow, but last weeks' storm was a good barometer for Arlington's new snow complaint submission system.

The updated snow removal complaint system was rolled out in conjunction with a new Arlington County law requiring residents to clear their sidewalks.

The Dec. 16 storm dropped a just enough snow to make driving conditions treacherous and lead Arlington Public Schools to close early. The white stuff was mostly gone by the end of the weekend, but that didn't stop sidewalk sentinels from submitting 30 complaints via the new interactive snow removal map.

A few of the complaints jumped the gun, says Arlington County spokeswoman Diana Sun. The new snow removal ordinance only requires that people clear the sidewalks within 24 hours of the end of a snowfall (when there is less than six inches of snow.)

For this storm, that meant sidewalks should have been cleared by 7 p.m. on Dec. 17. So the complaints submitted at 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. that morning were a little preemptive. "The only valid complaints are the ones that came in after 24 hours," Sun said.

In one of them, the complainer alleged a conspiracy theory, complete with strategic caps lock: 

Someone needs to clear the sidewalks of snow along Hayes in front of Fashion Center at Pentagon City ... This is a HEAVILY USED sidewalk, people walking and people in wheelchairs. I mean, the Archstone residence on the corner of 15th and Hayes clears THEIR sidewalk. Why can't Fashion Center do their part? Or Arlington County, if for some weird reason the mall is off the hook.

The rest of the complaints were scattered throughout the weekend, and picked up on Monday when people started navigating to work and school again. One Dec. 21 complaint about houses on North Buchanan Street made a plea for the children: 

Three houses in a row ... have not cleared their sidewalks since last week's snow. This is forcing people, including children, to walk in the street, often in the dark.

And uphill both ways, perhaps?

As you might expect, some people made it personal. Rather than noting that sidewalks weren't cleared, complaints targeted a specific individual or complex for not clearing. "The homeowner never clears the snow from his sidewalk along his house on South Columbus Street," states one complaint. "The Erdo Community Apartments faithfully fail to shovel their walks," states another.

It's not clear whether the new system dramatically increased the number of complaints submitted from similar snows in previous years, according to county spokeswoman Mary Curtius. Even before the map, people were able to submit complaints about uncleared sidewalks. The difference, she says, is that the county couldn't do anything to force people to shovel them.

The county's code enforcement team took the complaints and began notifying people of the new ordinance, says Sun. County manager Barbara Donnellan has said repeatedly that the county will focus on compliance, rather than punitive fines, in this first year of the sidewalk clearing requirement.

"The team reaches out to the people by phone to let them know that there is an ordinance now, and encouraging them to clear the sidewalk," Sun says. "We have stated many times that the emphasis this first year is public awareness."