In an effort to improve the city’s property values and reduce neighborhood blight, the City of Bloomington is moving to a proactive approach to property maintenance enforcement.
It shifts away from the prior policy where city inspectors operated off complaints from residents.
Cordaryl Patrick, the city’s community impact and enhancement director, told the city council last week the new policy was not about writing citations or punishing residents.
“As a department, we don’t write citations to begin with. We don’t write any citations for violations. In fact, what we write is a compliance letter and give residents at least seven days to comply with the city rules,” he said, noting his department has seven inspectors covering Bloomington’s nine wards.
Kelby Cumpston disagrees. Cumpston previously served on the city's property maintenance review board.
“This is the important issue the new guy from Decatur wants to focus on,” he posted on his Facebook page called BloNotes, referring to Patrick. “This is just focusing resources on low-income neighborhoods and an extremely outdated approach. What a joke!”
Cumpston said the policy has been tried before in other places.
“The way I see the policy working is something that’s been debunked in the early 80s and didn’t really change until 2000,” he said. “That’s kind of 'broken window' policing type of approach where we’re going after the extremely low-hanging fruit of tiny problems that violate any type of code or law in efforts to prevent future, bigger problems.”
Cumpston said this disproportionately affects low-income populations as they are the most likely to be struggling to keep up with caring for these violations, such as having nowhere else to fix their car or host a party but their yard.
“And then it comes into little petty things like no parking in your own grass, which, yeah, that’s not ideal, but if you’re having a birthday party for grandma in an extended family household, there’s not going to be a lot of parking,” Cumpston said. “And the city’s reaction to that is to find yourself a venue … not everybody has the opportunity to pay for a venue to have family events like that.”
Cumpston said he would rather see the city inspectors focus their resources elsewhere. He raised concerns that the number of inspectors does not adequately cover the needs of rental units.
From the city council
Bloomington Mayor Dan Brady does not think the claim the new policy will focus resources on low-income residents is a fair knock.
“I think that hopefully it’s a more balanced approach, and a balanced approach, no matter where you live, because these inspectors aren’t patrolling, if you will, certain areas,” he said. “What they’re trying to do is go from on situation to the next.”
Brady said he thinks an inspector noting a violation themselves is more impartial than the prior complaint system, as complaints can come with bias or be the result of an ongoing feud.
Council member Abby Scott is also looking forward to the new policy. Scott represents Ward 9 in northeast Bloomington.
She said she hopes the new system will help bolster community relationships, through education before enforcement.
“I know that we don’t yet have the details from the city around what kind of help would be available, I’m certainly going to continue to ask about that, because what I’m hoping for is folks are assigned to given wards … build those relationships with residents, build those relationships with those community members, so we do not get to a situation where folks are fined,” Scott said.
Scott said she does not expect to see a disproportionate effect to low-income residents. She said it is the role of Patrick to address those issues.
“I’m excited about Cordaryl Patrick’s role, I’m excited about what he’s doing,” she said. “So much of the work that he is doing is provided for by grants specifically for low-income populations, housing for low-income folks to make sure that we’ve got a good, solid community for everyone. And I expect that if there are issues with this going forward, that we’ll go ahead and be flexible quickly.”
Scott said feedback is extremely important to her, and one of her prime responsibilities is making sure feedback from her residents makes its way to the whole council.
However, proper enforcement requires inspectors. Kelby Cumpston, a former city council candidate, said he does not think having seven inspectors for nine wards is enough.
Bloomington’s neighborhood associations
Marty Seigel is a nearly 50-year resident of Bloomington and a longtime resident in the Old East Side neighborhood, just east of Illinois Wesleyan University.
Previously, she worked to organize the neighborhood in collaboration with Dimmitt’s Grove to advocate together on shared issues. Seigel raised issues related to noise and drug offenses.
Seigel said at one time, the city was trying to be more proactive about the maintenance violations, but, like Cumpston, she agrees the city does not have enough inspectors.
“They had a plan to grade properties by problems and take care of them in that order. Again, I just think we don’t have enough qualified inspectors and dedicated inspectors,” she said. “But the thing about the issue, about proactive today, I hope that being proactive also means protecting neighborhoods from incompatible uses in the first place.”
Seigel said that includes not allowing the overdevelopment of properties in neighborhoods.
Her solution is to protect owners in the neighborhood, instead of expanding rental properties from out-of-state investors.
“We need ownership in the central city, and we need the staff to be interested in protecting the central city, and that means following codes that used to be followed and not creating more opportunities for investors who don’t have any interest in our neighborhoods,” she said.
Despite the new initiative by the city, Seigel said she thinks the city is still not doing enough to fix the issues in her neighborhood and around the city.
“I don’t see a respect for neighbors, and it’s fine for them to take care of problem properties, but the problem is rarely just visual,” she said. “So, following the law as it was written and intended to protect neighborhoods is the key ... they’ve said they’ve been proactive in the past, we didn’t have success.”
In a letter addressed to WGLT and the city council, Dimmitt’s Grove Neighborhood Association members said they are looking forward to the new policy.
“We like the idea of the City educating and communicating with property owners on what issues or codes need to be addressed and helping neighbors with available community resources if financial hurdles are the issue,” wrote President Brad Williams. “The city’s work to help property owners know what issues need addressed to keep the properties safe and up to code helps us meet our neighborhood mission and keeps our older homes and properties maintained and standing.”
Maintenance violations in Normal
Comparatively, the Town of Normal continues to operate off a complaint-driven system for its non-safety maintenance violations.
Mark Clinch, director of inspections and facilities, said the town’s current system does not disproportionately affect low-income residents.
“So, there’s no formula that we would plug in income … there’s an amount of discretion that’s permitted in the fine process,” he said. “And again, really, we just try and resolve things before they get to that. We don’t even push too hard to get into the legal process at all.”
Clinch said a violation in Normal starts with an informal notification like a letter or phone call, which aims to educate the resident on the issue. If the issue is not resolved, only then does it go through the formal process which starts with a formal letter.
Year-to-date for 2025, Clinch said there has been 377 maintenance violations reported by the town, and in 2024 the total was 551. Out of the violations that end up seeing the legal process, he said that’s five or less.
Even then, it’s unusual. Since he started working for Normal in 2012, Clinch said he hasn’t seen a single case actually go to court.
