Sidewalk Repair in Lexington: Who Pays, and How to Get Help

Sec. 17-147 is short and leaves little room:

It shall be the duty of each owner of real estate abutting on any sidewalk to repair, at his own expense, all holes, uneven surfaces and other defects in the sidewalk upon which his property abuts; reconstruction shall comply with the standard drawings and technical manuals.

The duty follows the abutting property, not the user of the sidewalk and not the city. A public sidewalk sitting in the public right-of-way is still the abutting owner's to repair.

The section names two fallbacks. If the owner is a nonresident of the urban county or cannot be found, the duty falls to the owner's agent in charge of the property. If there is no such agent, it falls to the occupant. Sec. 17-149 repeats the same chain for work ordered by notice.

This is the part that surprises people, and it is not unusual. It is how most Kentucky cities allocate the duty. What Lexington adds is a grant program, covered below.

The duty in Sec. 17-147 exists all the time, but the city does not send notices for every cracked panel. Under Sec. 17-148, the urban county engineer or a code enforcement officer issues a written notice when they find holes or other defects in a sidewalk which create a hazard to public safety. That safety-hazard threshold is the trigger written into the section.

How long the notice gives

The code sets no fixed number of days. Sec. 17-148 requires the notice to state a reasonable period of time, and Sec. 17-149 ties the owner's deadline to whatever period the notice states. Anyone quoting a standard 30-day or 60-day sidewalk deadline in Lexington is quoting something the ordinance does not contain. Read the notice.

How the notice arrives

It is served personally on the owner, or mailed by regular mail to the last known address on the current tax assessment roll. For a nonresident or unlocatable owner it may go to the agent in charge, and failing that, to the occupant.

Enforcement sits with the Division of Code Enforcement, which lists sidewalk serviceability among the conditions it inspects.

Sec. 17-152 gives the city a choice of two penalties.

• A fine of up to $25 per offense, with each day the work remains undone after the notice period counting as a separate offense.
• Or a civil penalty of ten dollars ($10.00) per square foot of unrepaired sidewalk panel, up to a maximum of five hundred dollars ($500.00) for each thirty-day period the work remains undone.

An unpaid civil penalty that has not been appealed within seven days, or is otherwise final, becomes a lien against the property, served in the manner set out in Sec. 2B-9.

The appeal

Sec. 17-148(b) allows an appeal to a hearing officer acting for the administrative hearing board, provided a written application is filed within seven days after the notice to repair or the notice of civil penalty was served. The hearing follows Chapter 2B, and the board's decision can be appealed to court.

The correction: the city does not fix it and bill you

The widespread belief is that the city eventually does the repair and adds the cost to the tax bill. The sidewalk article contains no such provision. Sec. 17-147 through Sec. 17-152 place the duty and the expense on the owner and back it with fines and civil penalties, and nothing in those sections authorizes the government to perform the repair and charge the owner for the work.

The lien is the part that gets misread. It secures an unpaid civil penalty, which is a consequence of not repairing, rather than the cost of a repair the city carried out. In practice, a sidewalk gets fixed because the owner arranged it, with grant help where eligible.

One related provision does exist. Sec. 17-151 preserves the urban county and its council's separate right to order the reconstruction of any sidewalk, in the manner provided by law, whenever that is found proper and necessary. It is a reservation of authority, not a repair-and-bill mechanism, and it sets out no process of its own.

This is the part most coverage leaves out. Article VI of Chapter 17 creates a sidewalk replacement grant program, established by Sec. 17-164 and subject to annual appropriations by the urban county council. Its stated purpose in Sec. 17-163 is to help residential owners who have been notified comply with the duty in Sec. 17-147.

Eligibility starts with a notice

Both tiers are written for owners notified under Sec. 17-148(a), and both are limited to owner-occupied residential property. A homeowner who has not received a repair notice is not who the program is written for.

The 100 percent tier

A qualified property owner may receive a grant for one hundred percent of the reasonable cost of sidewalk replacement. Qualified is defined in Sec. 17-162: annual income equal to or less than eighty percent of the poverty income levels in the federal poverty guidelines chart in effect at the time of application, plus an assets test. The assets test excludes anyone holding more than $5,000 in liquid assets such as bank accounts, savings, certificates of deposit, stocks, or bonds, or more than $5,000 in equity in the assessed value of nonhomestead property.

The 50 percent tier

Sec. 17-164(c) covers owners who do not meet that income test:

Other property owners notified pursuant to section 17-148(a) may receive a grant for up to fifty (50) percent of the reasonable cost of sidewalk replacement for their owner-occupied residential property as required by section 17-147.

Note the words up to. Fifty percent is a ceiling on that tier, not a guaranteed share.

Get the bid approved before the work starts

This is the requirement most likely to cost someone a grant. Sec. 17-164(b) states it directly:

In order to be eligible for a one hundred (100) percent grant, an owner must submit a bid from a licensed contractor to and receive the approval of the division of code enforcement prior to the sidewalk replacement.

Hiring a contractor, paying for the work, and applying afterward does not fit the sequence the ordinance sets out. Approval comes first.

Funding and timing

• Grants are awarded only for projects completed within the fiscal year the grant is awarded, and approval depends on available funds and on the reasonableness of the submitted bid measured against prevailing regional market rates per square foot (Sec. 17-164(d)).
• Sec. 17-165 reserves no less than twenty percent of the appropriated funds for income-qualified owners, with the remainder available to all residential property owners. In the last thirty days of a fiscal year, unspent reserved funds may be opened up to the wider group.
• The city's own assistance page puts it plainly: eligible clients receive the assistance if funds are available.

How to apply

In practice the program runs through Community and Resident Services. Call (859) 300-5300 to schedule an assessment. Appointments are required and walk-ins are not accepted. The city asks applicants to bring photo ID and Social Security cards for everyone in the household aged 18 or older, along with verification of household income. Details are on the city's utility and repair support programs page.

Worth knowing before calling: that city page describes only the 100 percent tier for qualified low-income owner-occupied properties. The 50 percent tier appears in the ordinance rather than on the page, so ask about it directly.

The code sets two standards for the work itself.

• Materials. Sec. 17-149 requires using materials as nearly similar as possible to those the existing sidewalk is built from.
• Reconstruction. Sec. 17-147 requires reconstruction to comply with the city's standard drawings and technical manuals.

Permits: confirm before starting

A public sidewalk sits in the public right-of-way, and the Division of Engineering handles right-of-way permitting under Chapter 17C. Its published fees are $100 for an installation permit and $250 for a surface cut permit.

What the city's pages do not say is which of those, if either, applies to a homeowner replacing a residential sidewalk panel. That page is written around utility and contractor work. Rather than guess in either direction, confirm with Right-of-Way Management at (859) 258-3984 before starting. Details are on the city's right-of-way management page.

Roots lifting a panel is one of the most common causes of a defective sidewalk, and it does not shift the duty. Neither the code nor any city page documents an exception for damage caused by street tree roots, so the repair stays with the abutting owner under Sec. 17-147.

Street trees in the right-of-way are also the property owner's to maintain, under Sec. 17B-8 and the city's street trees guidance, including keeping them from interfering with the sidewalk. The clearance standard over a sidewalk is seven feet.

Removal is not a free choice either:

• Removing a street tree more than three inches in diameter requires a permit.
• Sidewalk damage is not among the listed grounds for a permit to remove a living tree.
• A removed street tree must be replaced within a year.

The practical effect is that the owner carries both the sidewalk repair and the tree, and cutting the tree down is not the shortcut it might appear to be.

The owner duty covers repair of an existing sidewalk. Several related things are the city's work and the city's money.

• ADA curb ramps. The city runs a ramp improvement program and upgrades ramps when streets are repaved. Its sidewalk improvements page describes the city working to bring all sidewalks up to Americans with Disabilities Act standards.
• New sidewalk construction in city projects, which is funded through city or federal money rather than billed to abutting owners.

One historical note to head off confusion. Chapter 17 still contains an older assessment mechanism at Sec. 17-138 for charging construction costs against benefited property. It remains in the code, but it is not how the city describes funding sidewalk construction today, and it should not be read as the current practice.

The code is silent. The repair duty in Sec. 17-147 and Sec. 17-149 is written for the sidewalk, and those sections say nothing about curbs or gutters.

Silence is not an assignment of responsibility in either direction. For a damaged curb or gutter, ask the city directly rather than assuming the sidewalk rule carries over.

The same abutting owner also has to clear it. Under Sec. 12-8.4, accumulated snow on a sidewalk is declared a nuisance, and the owner of property abutting a sidewalk must clear it after any snow event bringing four or more inches, within twenty-four hours of the end of the snow event. The city announces the end of the snow event on its website and in its public communications.

Two limits protect owners:

• No notice of violation may be issued if the street abutting the property has not been plowed.
• In extreme weather, the mayor or a designee may hold enforcement in abeyance until conditions improve.

A curiosity for anyone reading the raw code: a 1979 provision at Sec. 17-31 still demands snow removal within four hours after daylight and has never been repealed, but the operative rule the city publishes and enforces is Sec. 12-8.4.

LexCall 311, or (859) 425-2255

A hazardous sidewalk is reported through LexCall, by phone or through the city's online service request. That routes it to the division that inspects for sidewalk serviceability, which is the step that can produce a notice under Sec. 17-148.

One thing to understand before filing about a sidewalk next door: the defect is the abutting owner's to repair, so a report can lead to a notice being served on that owner.

On injuries, this page takes no position. Whether anyone is liable for a fall on a defective sidewalk is a question for an attorney, not for a summary of the ordinance. The code does not address it.