Shorewood's snow removal problem, especially in our business district is being viewed at an appropriate time in history. At a time when there's some concentration on solar energy.

Major crosswalks become problems in the winter because of the snow accumulation: partial solution: develop sculptured canopies over the crosswalk areas that will also support solar energy collectors, not the regular rectangular type but visually artistic products.

The energy can be used to heat the walks at these points sufficiently to keep ice from forming and snow from accumulating. Any excess energy and that produced during other seasons could be diverted to relieving other energy needs.

If protective canopies at crosswalk can be appropriately designed to melt snow and light up these areas, we can also design solar energy trees, which would be tall public art pieces designed to support solar energy collectors in artistic ways.

This would give us a unique business district. We could capitalize on these ideas by establishing an unique enterprise that would allow us to patent these concepts and instruments so that we could produce revenue for the community. Our village president who is administratively involved in UWM's business school, I'm sure could come up with an appropriate way for doing this.

Sooner or later inventive minds will be coming up with these ideas. Why don't we, sooner rather than later?