Staff photo by Tim Barber
Alton Park resident Milton Jackson, 79, walks behind homes in his neighborhood where he says overgrown alleyways help conceal areas for crime.Rats, snakes and cats live in the overgrown alley behind Milton Jackson's Alton Park home.
The city says it's the homeowner's responsibility to maintain the alley.
But at age 79 and with respiratory problems, Jackson said he can't maintain the Highland Avenue lot.
He said the city maintained alleyways until the 1990s when the City Council voted to make unpaved alleys the homeowners' responsibility. But Jackson said many homeowners in Alton Park are too elderly to maintain the alleys themselves, and neglected alleys breed crime and health hazards.
He wants city officials to maintain the lots again, and he's meeting with Alton Park residents this month to discuss taking action about it.
Jackson is a longtime Alton Park homeowner and founder of the environmental organization Stop Toxic Pollution.
"They [the city] spend money everywhere but in Alton Park," he said. "I want the people to wake up and come together to petition the city."
City Councilman Chris Anderson, who represents Alton Park, said Jackson never asked him about overgrown alleys in the area.
"We have to know about it to do something about it," Anderson said.
Jackson said he's called 311 several times about Alton Park alleys and overgrown lots, but got no results.
According to Anderson, the city maintains some alleys and some it doesn't. The ones not maintained are the ones where property owners have petitioned the city for rights to the alley.
"So the only ones we don't maintain are the ones that they [property owners] have asked the city to close and give to them," Anderson said.
But Donna Casteel, chief of code enforcement for the city, said "when it's an unopened alley, the neighbors are expected to maintain the property to the center of the alley line."
Jackson said the alley behind Westside Baptist Church is where people meet at night to date, and the alley between Kirkland and Highland avenues near Union Grove Missionary Baptist Church is so overgrown with brush that people can't walk through it.
Making homeowners responsible for maintaining alleys is "an easy way for the city to get out of doing things," Jackson said. "But we pay too much taxes for the city not to do anything in this community."
Contact staff writer Yolanda Putman at yputman@timesfreepress.com.