HomeMy WebLinkAboutIR 8790INFORMAL REPORT TO CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS
To the Mayor and Members of the City Council
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BACKGROUND
No. 8790
DATE: August 8, 2006
Page 1 of 2
The City of Fort Worth has about 47 blocks of ap ved alleys (built to City standard with concrete
pavement) and about 3,000 unpaved alleys. The Transportation and Public Works (TPW)
Department continues to maintain the paved alleys. However, the funding for unpaved alley
maintenance was cut in FY 1990/1991.
PILOT MAINTENANCE & ABANDONMENT PROGRAM (FY 2004/2005)
In the 2004 -2005 budget, the City Council funded a Pilot Alley Maintenance and Abandonment
Program. The pilot program included:
• Maintenance goal- major cleaning of 50 unpaved alley blocks per year and subsequent
routine maintenance and mowing by the Parks & Community Services Department (if
the alleys are not maintained after the initial cleaning, we found that they degraded back
to their original condition within a few years). One of the primary goals of this pilot
program was to eliminate criminal activities in alleyways. To achieve this goal, TPW
worked closely with the Police and Code Compliance Departments to develop criteria for
identification and selection of alleys for the program citywide and a five year cleaning
program was developed based on crime and code violations records.
• Abandonment goal- cleaning and abandoning 10 alley blocks per year and turning the
ROW over to the adjoining property owners. Selection criteria for this portion of the
program stated that alleys must not be used for access to property and that 100% of the
adjoining property owners must agree to abandon the alley for the entire block. Once it
was determined that all property owners agree to the abandonment, the City would
clean the alley and the Right of Way would then be incorporated into adjoining property.
If there were utilities within the alley, a portion of the alley would be retained as utility
easement and the property owners must agree to allow access for maintenance of the
utilities.
CURRENT STATUS
Abandonment- the abandonment portion of this program turned out to be much more
complicated than initially thought due to access and utility issues. Currently there are
three pending applications for abandonment and TPW is working closely with
neighborhoods and the utilities to resolve several issues before the abandonment is
finalized.
ISSUED BY THE CITY MANAGER FORT WORTH, TEXAS
INFORMAL REPORT TO CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS No.
To the Mayor and Members of the City Council DATE: August 8, 2006
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SUBJECT: ALLEY PROGRAM
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Maintenance- due to the lack of requests for abandonment by residents and since
receiving favorable bid prices for alley cleaning, we were able to clean 216 alley blocks
in FY 2004/2005. These 216 blocks have been turned over to the Parks & Community
Services Department for follow up maintenance and mowing. However, due to lack of
adequate funding for the follow up maintenance and mowing, no additional alleys have
been cleaned.
PROPOSED
TPW and PACS each carried out a portion of the pilot program — TPW identified the alleys to
be cleaned and managed the cleaning contractor; PACS managed the mowing/maintenance
contractor. Since both departments were using outside contractors to perform the cleaning
and mowing/ maintenance work, it would likely be more efficient if a single department handled
both tasks. Since these alleys are unpaved and majority of the maintenance work involves
mowing, staff is recommending that PACS take the lead to identify the alleys (the TPW staff
member assigned to this function will transfer to PACS), clean and mow /maintain the alleys.
The City Manager's 2006 -07 Budget will include a decision package to fund the alley
maintenance program with a goal of cleaning and maintaining an additional 300 alleys per
year.
Charles R. Boswell
City Manager
ISSUED BY THE CITY MANAGER
FORT WORTH, TEXAS