No one’s dreaming of a white Christmas in the town of Cerdon, in eastern France. Marc Chavent, mayor of this municipality tucked into the Jura mountains, apparently has a very different dream: So frustrated by the difficulties his community faced due to snowfall that earlier this week, the mayor banned the chilly precipitation altogether.
Wait, what? The bonafide decree (see below) was of course an act of legislative symbolism, drawing attention to very real issues: As French news website actuLyon reports, the town’s electricity often gets cut as soon as it begins to snow, and a few weeks ago Cerdon’s snow removal tractor broke down.
The plague of neo-rurals
“It’s difficult to invest 150,000 euros in new snow removal material,” Chavent wrote in the mandate, blaming the larger French government’s endless red tape for hampering the financial autonomy of small cities and towns.
The mayor also took a swipe at a new part of Cerdon’s population — “neo-rurals who, despite having made the choice to live in a mountainous region during winter, believe themselves to be in downtown Lyon” — who apparently find that snow is cold, wet and slippery.
Well, if Chavent’s law can’t stop the snow, maybe there’s an app for that?
