It’s been a return to the good old winters that many of us grew up with so far this year.

For every happy snowmobiler or skier, though, there are those who now have the chore of shoveling show. It’s a real pain for those who own a business these days. No one can find enough employees, so shoveling in front of downtown businesses is a hit-or-miss proposition. That’s a problem in an area with a growing senior citizen population like ours.

The city could simply levy fines against those who aren’t shoveling the sidewalks in front of their business. In our opinion that’s counterproductive. It doesn’t get the sidewalk shoveled any faster and just makes being located downtown a headache. But leaving a hodgepodge of cleared sidewalks and slick, snow-covered sidewalks is also not a viable solution if this winter keeps up the way it has gone so far.

City Council members are doing the right thing in at least discussing a city-managed snow removal system for downtown.

Businesses are one thing drawing traffic downtown, and city businesses are paying their share of taxes and fees to local governments. Clearing sidewalks is a logical thing for the city to do if it can afford it. Perhaps the program’s costs could be shared between the city and its downtown business owners.

This isn’t the biggest issue facing the city, but unshoveled sidewalks downtown are a quality of life issue for those who have to park and walk to downtown businesses. The easy solution would be to threaten business owners to shovel their sidewalks, but we prefer the city’s collaborative response to the business owners’ request.