By Kolby LaMarche

Burlington’s Department of Public Works has confirmed it will stop plowing snow and performing routine maintenance on 55 privately owned or “unaccepted” streets beginning October 1, 2026, unless residents pay the full cost of the work. The announcement comes days after city officials admitted the city’s maintenance of sidewalks will soon come to a halt. 

The affected roads — 32 listed as private and 23 listed as unaccepted — have received city services for decades despite not being built to public right-of-way standards. 

Many lack sidewalks, curbs, proper drainage, or adequate street lighting, the City says. Public Works told the Transportation, Energy, and Utilities Committee (TEUC) on November 19 that the streets fall into an “operational gray area” where the city has plowed and patched them because residents expected the service.

Under the new policy, the City would:

• Bill residents of a street at $143 per hour per truck, with a two-hour minimum.
• Pothole repairs will cost $87 per ton of hot-mix asphalt plus labor.
• Salt and sanding will be charged separately.
• Recycling collection will continue only if the roadway remains accessible to large trucks; otherwise, residents must carry bins to the nearest accepted public street.

The original plan called for the change to take effect immediately after the holidays, but TEUC members objected to the short notice. The start date was pushed to October 1, 2026, to give residents more time.

Councilors from both sides of the aisle have pointed out that legal ownership of several roads is unclear, with some even dating to bankrupt developers from many, many decades ago.

Residents who want continued free service can petition the city to bring the street up to current standards and have it formally accepted as a public right-of-way, the City said, though the process typically costs hundreds of thousands of dollars per block.

The plowing decision comes one day after Public Works disclosed that the city’s sidewalk repair program will shrink sharply after 2028. In 2024 the department repaired approximately 15,000 square feet of sidewalk. A memo released this week states that annual repairs will fall below 2,000 square feet starting in fiscal year 2029.

The drop is blamed on the expiration of one-time federal ARPA funds, a 40 percent rise in asphalt and concrete prices since 2022, and ongoing inflation in labor and equipment costs. The $2.8 million infrastructure allocation that has supported recent sidewalk work ends in 2028.

Remaining funds will be reserved for high-traffic corridors and ADA-mandated repairs near schools and public buildings. Neighborhood sidewalks will receive little to no attention.

A Vermont Agency of Transportation study completed in spring 2025 classified 120 miles of Burlington sidewalks as “critically deficient.” City data show pedestrian injuries caused by uneven or broken sidewalks rose 15 percent over the last 12 months.

The city’s overall 2025–2026 budget stands at $185 million and is currently projecting a $4 million deficit, driven in part because of overtime and equipment costs from repeated flooding events this year.

Public Works is exploring low-interest loan programs for street upgrades and a possible “good neighbor” fee structure that would allow nearby accepted streets to share plowing costs with adjacent unaccepted ones.

A public hearing on both the unaccepted-streets policy and the sidewalk repair reductions is scheduled for December 10 at 6:30 p.m. in Contois Auditorium at City Hall.