West Seventh is one of the blocks-and-alleys neighborhoods named directly in reporting on Saint Paul's alley captain arrangement. Old, tight, alley-platted — and entirely on its own for clearing them.
The city has never plowed alleys anywhere in Saint Paul, so the block organizes it. Season bids run $500 to $1,500, around $30 a household. But the spread inside that range is not random — it is driven by alley length, how many turns and dead ends it has, whether there is anywhere to stack the snow, and how many households are splitting it.
West Seventh's older, tighter platting tends toward the harder end of all four. A narrow alley with nowhere to push snow by February is a different job from a straight run with a corner to pile into, and an honest operator will price it that way. The splitter, and what to ask.
The ordinance is 24 hours, full width, bare pavement. Enforcement is complaint-driven and slow — the full warn, inspect, clear and assess cycle takes at best five business days, and in winter 2018 the city logged about 7,000 complaints, roughly 80% of which resolved before an inspector arrived.
Some commercial owners along the corridor have concluded that absorbing the occasional $280 assessment is cheaper than shoveling all winter. That arithmetic is real, and whether it works for you depends on how often you would actually be caught — and on who is using your frontage in the meantime.
Alley length, door count and where the snow can go. For the house, frontage and steps.
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