Casualty of the budget?

With a placard reading "STAIRS CLOSED," these steps at Cliff and Lincoln are always cabled off well before the snow starts. This means that people have to step over the cable on the top and the bottom to use them, oftentimes plummeting to their deaths (maybe not physical deaths).

The city usually outlaws the stairs when the leaves start turning.

When you outlaw the stairs in the snow then only outlaws will stare at the snow.

Here is a creative solution they came up with a couple of years ago for the Perry stairs:

It's a good compromise.