Home inspections by the village of Brookfield are about to get more lax.
The village inspections required by law prior to the sale of a home will be scaled back to the basic four-point walk-through specifically required by village code, the Brookfield village board decided last week.
Meeting as a Committee of the Whole the village board accepted a staff recommendation that the village focus inspections on the four basic points laid out in the code.
The inspections will examine whether carbon monoxide and smoke alarms are in homes, whether there has been any work done without a permit since the last time the home was sold, and whether the property complies with current zoning regulations.
The village just doesn’t have the staff to conduct the kinds of more thorough inspections it has been doing, Assistant Village Manager Keith Sbiral told the board. Inspections are currently backlogged and take too long to get done.
“Due to reduction in staff, not hiring budgeted positions, increased state mandates and overflow workflow change, the Building and Planning Department is simply unable to continue the current level of service without some modification in the overall department structure,” Sbiral said in a memo to the board dated May 24.
At the meeting Sbiral made the same point.
“The current inspection staff is currently overextended,” Sbiral said. “Quality is going down, and we’re not providing the same service that we provided a year ago.”
In his memo, Sbiral said that village home inspections have become more detailed and time consuming.
“Over the years the village inspection process has come to encompass every aspect of the code, property maintenance and safety requirements under the code,” Sbiral wrote.
The reduction in the scope of inspections would increase the number of homes that pass the inspections on the first try, a matter of concern that realtors have expressed to the village. Realtors have also complained that Brookfield was overstepping its authority in conduction stringent inspections.
“There’s no evidence that tough property inspections add value to the property of your home,” said Dan Pauls, a local realtor.
Michael Towner was the only member of the village board who strongly objected to reducing the scope of the village resale
inspections.
“I would like to see that we do a more stringent inspection than just what our ordinance calls for now,” Towner said. “It really grinds at me that it seems like we keep settling for something less than what I think is best.”
Towner said that he wants to make sure that property in the village is brought up to code.
“Why do we keep settling?” Towner said. “I’d like to try to push forward. I’m reluctant to say we just to the four points.”
But other trustees said that the village’s financial condition just doesn’t allow for the more detailed inspections to continue and decided to have village inspectors do just the four-point inspections for a six-month trial period.
“I don’t see how we can do more than the four points,” said Trustee Cathy Colgrass Edwards.
Trustee C.P. Hall agreed.
“I don’t want to bite off a bigger chunk that we can afford, given our financial situation,” Hall said.
In his memo to the board, Sbiral noted that reducing the level of inspections will have some negative long-term consequences such as increasing the number of property maintenance issues over the long run.
Sbiral made clear that the problems with inspections in the department that he runs have nothing to do with the recent resignation of former Village Planner Meena Beyers.
“This is not because the planner left,” Sbiral said.
Instead, the inspection staff is short-handed, Sbiral said. The village has two full-time inspectors. A third position, previously budgeted, has been trimmed as a cost-savings move.
Riverside resident Steve Campbell, who owns a number of rental properties in Brookfield, opposed the change in the scope of village inspections.
“You have to maintain at least the level of inspections that you have now,” Campbell told the village board. “Government’s first job is to look out for the safety of the people. How can you let houses change hands if you don’t want to enforce the rules?”