What we want the City to do
Neither of these two things requires any new law! Just do it!
Send inspectors out on weekends
Schedule sanitation inspections on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, all over the city. Nobody has to be hired. Some of the current inspectors already work the odd weekend: 26 of the 115 who wrote a rat-harborage ticket in 2026 wrote at least one on a Saturday or Sunday. The department just doesn't put weekends on the schedule, and the fines from weekend tickets would cover part of the cost.
Count neighbors' photos as evidence
When someone reports overflow through CHI311 with a photo that has the time and location attached, the City should be able to mail the owner a ticket from it. Chicago already fines owners from a timestamped camera image with no officer present. An owner who thinks the photo is wrong can contest it at Administrative Hearings, the same as any other ticket.
What it costs a building to stay out of trouble
Once tickets get written on weekends, the cheapest way for a building to avoid them is a weekend pickup, so the container is emptied before it overflows. We called one of Chicago's large private haulers and asked what that costs for a standard 2-yard alley container:
| Service | Weekdays only | With a Saturday | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 container, once a week | $120/mo | ~$140/mo | ~+$20 |
| 1 container, twice a week | $235/mo | $265/mo | +$30 |
| 3 containers, twice a week | $555/mo | $630-650/mo | +$75-95 |
Spread over a building, moving one pickup to Saturday works out to roughly $3 to $5 per apartment per month, and it's the owner who pays it. Saturday is the day to ask for: the hauler we called doesn't collect on Sundays except from restaurants.