Is the parking fee mandatory?

I apologize if I’m posting in the wrong section; please feel free to move this thread if necessary, as I wasn't quite sure where this belonged.
I live in a hilly residential area on a very steep street, and we've just been hit by a snowstorm.
This year, the city snowplow didn't make it up our street—though, being hill dwellers, we're used to it and just grab our shovels 😁—but strangely enough, the street is perfectly clear just five houses down from us.
They are located at the top of the hill, while we are at the bottom near the main road.
Essentially, for the plow to reach their property, it has to pass right by ours.
Our neighbors claim the plow actually passed our house but skipped us because we haven't paid for the service, whereas they have.
Now, there are five of them, but I honestly can't recall ever hearing that snow removal is an extra fee, nor have we ever received a bill for it in years past. Could someone clarify this for me so I'm not left in the dark? Is this something included in our standard municipal taxes that I somehow missed, or is there a specific way one "pays" for snow plowing? Am I overlooking something obvious?
Thank you so much.

You can actually tip the snowplow driver 😉
since they follow a strict priority list, but if you strike up a little conversation and offer them some extra cash, they might just make sure your driveway gets cleared too...

like, just yesterday morning, that little plow truck rolled up to my neighbor's place and carved out a perfect path from his garage right out to the main road so he could finally get out, and yeah, I'm pretty sure he paid him under the table to handle that

Thanks. I’m still curious, though—how is it that we didn't have to pay a single cent for solar power all those years, keeping everything completely clean? 🤷
Either someone around here this year is acting like a total hand cream fanatic, or there's something else going on 😁

It seems like almost every single combine harvester and most of the tractors out there are just sitting idle, aren't they? You see so many contractors and farmers picking up side gigs cleaning out parking lots at shopping malls or local breweries just to make ends meet.

And who knows, maybe some city official took a little kickback to shuffle the budget priorities around behind closed doors?

Paying for a new water heater is a killer, but at least you can write it off through your utility bill...