Every property service available in Ceres
Every service has a Ceres page of its own, built on the city's drainage, housing age and permit route. The emergency five answer around the clock; everything planned is scheduled from the form.
Emergency restoration and mitigation
Debris and hauling
Construction and reconstruction
Building envelope and structure
Site and paving
Maintenance
What Ceres buildings need, and when
Ceres was settled in 1867 and incorporated as a general law city in February 1918, and its housing now sits in four broad layers. Two percent predates 1940 and eleven percent came in the 1940s and 1950s; twenty-six percent dates from the 1960s and 1970s, thirty-nine percent from 1980 to 1999 and twenty-three percent since 2000. Of 13,313 units, 79 percent are single-family detached and 467 are mobile homes.
Rain arrives in a narrow window, and the work is timed around it. Monthly normals at the Modesto airport station give 2.57 inches in January, 2.22 in February and 1.78 in March, against 0.15 in June and almost nothing from July to September. Drains, catch basins and lot inlets are cleared in autumn, ahead of storms like the run that set daily records on 27 and 31 December 2022 and 16 January 2023, which the river forecast center lists. Sealcoating, painting and roofing run in the warm half.
The Tuolumne River forms the northern boundary, and the mapped flood risk sits along it. FEMA 100-year and 500-year zones line the river on that border, small residential pockets on River Road sit inside the 500-year zone, and land below the bluffs can flood in severe events, though Don Pedro Dam makes river flooding remote. Smaller flooding happens inland where storage or pipe capacity is exceeded, as the City's hydrology study sets out.
The oldest blocks carry a second problem through the same months. Mature street trees stand thickest on Fifth and Ninth Streets and along parts of North, Fourth and Sixth, above buildings built to the sidewalk and overhead irrigation district power lines. The City's Downtown plan records rusting pipes and dry wells working underneath them.
Ceres areas served
These twelve areas get their own section on every Ceres service page, because the stock and drainage change from one to the next.
Downtown and Fourth Street
Mostly single-story buildings set to the sidewalk, among them the IOOF building at Fourth and Lawrence, drained by two pump stations through undersized pipe.
Fifth Street historic homes
Turn-of-the-century houses around the 1870 Daniel Whitmore Home, under the heaviest street-tree canopy in the city.
Mitchell Road corridor
Two and a half miles of housing planned from five to twenty-five units an acre, with the Ceres Main Canal running parallel.
Mitchell Ranch Center, Mitchell and Service roads
A Walmart-anchored center proposed on 26.4 acres of Hanford sandy loam, with groundwater twenty-four to twenty-six feet down.
West Landing
960 annexed acres of former farmland falling only from 83 to 77 feet, drained by field and roadside ditches.
Eastgate, Hatch Road and Boothe Road
A 370-acre master-planned community set at 4.5 to 12 units an acre under a master plan adopted in 2004.
Whitmore Ranch
About 94 acres south of Whitmore Avenue between Moore Road and La Rosa Elementary, designated mainly for housing.
Morrow Village
A neighborhood north of Whitmore and west of Mitchell where the City has funded ADA sidewalk work with block grant money.
River Road and the Tuolumne bluffs
Small residential pockets in the 500-year zone, above a 76-acre regional park whose lower terrace lies in the 100-year plain.
South and west Ceres along Highway 99
Older blocks beside the freeway, with Hackett Road and Don Pedro Court among the streets the City lists as most in need of repair.
South Modesto/Ceres, Herndon Road to Richland Avenue
The stretch running from Nadine Avenue to River Road, also named by the City among the areas needing the most repair.
Mobile home parks
Lazy Wheels, Ceres Mobile Estates and Ceres West, where the City's objective includes rehabilitating twenty units.
Questions from Ceres owners and managers
Ceres lies four road miles from the Modesto base, so the emergency trades work to a 60 to 90 minute window at any hour of the day or night. Planned work runs differently: the request is screened, handed to the contractor for that trade, and the date is set with that contractor once the scope has been agreed.
The City of Ceres Building Division at 2220 Magnolia Street takes commercial, patio and residential permits, and the contractor assigned to the request files there. Roof replacement, reconstruction that touches plumbing or electrical, tenant improvements and structural repairs all run through that office, and work in the right of way is checked with the City first.
Yes. One request goes in per property, so a Fourth Street storefront, a Mitchell Road rental and a Whitmore Avenue unit each keep their own file, photographs, scope and schedule in the client area. Where one loss needs several trades at the same address, they stay on a single file with one point of contact.
Water damage restoration, fire and smoke damage, mold remediation, storm damage and board-up, and biohazard cleanup: five trades answering at any hour on the emergency line. The other seventeen, from junk removal through to preventive maintenance, are requested on the form and then scheduled by the contractor assigned to the job.
Downtown storm water runs to two pump stations, one at El Camino and Whitmore and one southwest of Highway 99 by way of the Pine Street overcrossing. The City records that the pair have enough capacity for existing Downtown uses, but that some connecting pipes are undersized, some dry wells are not working efficiently and existing pipes are rusting.
Property services near Ceres
