Cincinnati, OH Property Maintenance: Snow & Sidewalk Clearing (2026)

Section 723-57 places the duty on 'the owner, occupant or other person having the care of any building premises or unimproved lot of land abutting any street where there is a graded sidewalk' to remove snow 'within the first four hours after daylight after the ceasing to fall of any snow' from the paved or traveled part of that sidewalk. The same duty applies when snow or ice falls from a building onto the sidewalk below. Cleared snow may not be pushed into a gutter that has already been cleaned, and snow or ice from anywhere other than the pedestrian walk itself can never be shoveled into the gutter.

A companion provision, § 723-59, separately requires that any sidewalk 'encumbered with ice' be made 'safe and convenient' by removing the ice or covering it with sand or another suitable substance, and gives the responsible party only two hours during the daytime to comply before the delay itself becomes a violation. Both duties fall on whoever has care of the property abutting the walk, owner, tenant, or occupant, rather than on the city, and both are enforced under the same penalty section, § 723-99-I. There is no citywide plow-and-salt guarantee tied to these sections; the obligation runs to private parties for the sidewalk fronting their own land, and it applies equally to unimproved lots as to occupied buildings.