The city of Turlock will now help homeowners with the costs of repairing damaged sidewalks after the city council voted Tuesday to approve an assistance program that will offset costs.
While sidewalks are public property, a state law on the books since 1941, and bolstered by Turlock’s municipal code, makes homeowners responsible for the repair of sidewalk defects — regardless of who or what created the defect.
“It’s in the public good for all of these public right-of-ways to be fixed,” said District 3 Councilmember Cassandra Abram. “I think it’s going to make a big impact. I think we all know of areas in our districts that have a lot of dangerous sidewalks.”
Under the guidelines of the program, the city will hire a contractor to make the repairs, then cover 55 percent of the costs — up to $1,250.
The city would help certain homeowners, based on income, with 85 percent of repairs — up to $2,500.
Homeowners who would rather hire a contractor and supervise the repairs themselves — with no reimbursement from the city — can get help with encroachment fees, based on the valuation of the improvements. The city doubled down on its pledge to offset permit fees by raising its limit from $25,000 to $50,000.
The proposed revision to the municipal code would require property owners to defend and indemnify the city from any legal action which arises from a sidewalk defect, unless the city’s actions were the cause of the defect.
The assistance program will be funded with $400,000 from the Measure L fund.
The city has hundreds of miles of sidewalks and it would be too big a burden for the city to be solely responsible for repairs, city staff said.
San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Sacramento and San Mateo all have similar municipal codes — upheld by courts.
“When cities place the responsibility on the property owner to maintain sidewalks, it’s common to have some kind of financial assistance program,” said Megan Burke, an attorney with the Jarvis Fay law firm in Oakland, who worked with the city on the project. “We also reviewed other cities’ financial assistance programs to see what they were doing. Most offered some level of financial assistance. Often, that financial assistance was capped at some point. And some cities differentiated whether the property owner qualified as low income, in terms of the amount of assistance provided.”
In other business on Dec. 9, the council appointed Pam Franco to the Measure L Citizens Oversight Committee, Matthew Davis and Patrick Shields to the Planning Commission, Brent Bohlender, Shehu Hassan and Michael Casale to the Parks, Arts, and Recreation Commission, and Allison Jeffery, Dejeune Shelton, Ron Bridegroom, Lupe Aguilera and Nathan Cory Higgins to the Community Development Block Grant Selection Committee for terms beginning Jan. 1 and running through Dec. 31, 2026.
Also, the council agreed to review the Development Agreements for the city’s four cannabis retailers.
