Alley Closures
Having trouble with your alleys?
Although the California Vehicle Code stipulates that an alley must be accessible to motor vehicles, the City of Fresno has the ability to close an alley if an alley closure petition is signed by 100 percent of the property owners that would be affected by that closure.
Alley closures are requested by residents for a variety of reasons, including problems with illegal dumping, loitering, prostitution, and drug dealing in the alley.
The following is a description of the process for closing an alley:
Alley Closure Petition ( in pdf format )
After our office has received your petition, we verify that all the property owners that will be affected by the closure have signed the petition, and that those signatures are valid. Once the petition has been verified by our office, we create a Request For Service (RFS) to send to the Department of Publics Works. Public Works Department then conducts an assessment of the request for an alley closure.
During their assessment, the proposed alley must meet the following criteria to be approved for a closure:
- The alley in question can not have commercial bins in operation.
- The affected residents must be willing to convert from either the 300-gallon twice-a-week alley service or the 3-cart once-a-week alley service over to the 3-cart once-a-week curbside service.
- The alley in question has in fact been deemed an alley with a public right-of-way.
An alley closure request will be rejected if any of the above criteria are not met.
Also during the assessment process, the Department of Public Works produces an estimate on the cost of the closure and also determines the placement and location of the gate(s).
If the proposed alley meets the criteria set-forth by the Department of Public Works, then the RFS for the alley closure is returned to our office for a final approval. The locks are typically not put on until about a week or two later. Keys for the alley are then issued to all affected residents by request to our office either by phone or personally. Keys will also be given to anyone from the public who requests a copy in order to comply with the California Vehicle Code.
Each one of these alley closures typically costs approximately $2,000 and comes out of our district budget. Due to our limited funding for these closures, they are approved on a first-come, first-served basis. Any petitions submitted after the budgeted funds are expended and are carried over to the next fiscal year.
Residents also need to be aware that if the alley is closed, each individual resident will be held accountable for keeping the alley free of any trash, litter, junk, debris, graffiti, weeds, etc.