Farmington Hills, MI Sidewalk & Pedestrian Rules: Obstruction Rules (2026)

City Code Sec. 26-81 places the clearing duty on the owner and/or occupant of every lot or premises adjoining any street, or on the owner alone if the premises are not occupied, to clear and keep clear all adjoining sidewalks from obstructions including structures, vehicles, materials, debris, or vegetation. The rule sits in Article IV of Chapter 26, the same article that requires sidewalks to be built to city engineer specifications (Sec. 26-77) and that separately bars any sidewalk from falling into disrepair (Sec. 26-82).

Read together, Article IV treats a blocked sidewalk the same as a broken one: both are the abutting owner's responsibility to fix, not the city's, and the enforcement mechanism is the notice-and-repair process in Sec. 26-83, under which the city manager can order the condition corrected within a set time and bill the owner if the city has to do the work itself. Major roads defined under Act 51 of the Public Acts of 1951 (city major streets, county primary roads, and state trunk lines) are carved out of the separate repair-notice process in Sec.

26-84, but Sec. 26-81's obstruction-clearing duty is not limited to non-major roads, so it reaches sidewalks citywide. Violations of Article IV, including an uncorrected obstruction, are enforced as civil infractions under Sec. 26-87.