Naperville, IL Property Maintenance: Snow & Sidewalk Clearing (2026)

Naperville Municipal Code Section 9-1H-2, Duties Of Property Owner, imposes a standing three-part maintenance obligation on anyone who owns a lot or parcel, improved, unimproved, occupied or vacant, that abuts a dedicated right-of-way. First, the owner must keep the adjoining sidewalk clean and open for public passage, and keep it in good repair. Second, the owner must maintain the parkway and public way in a safe condition for pedestrians, free of obstructions, excavations, tall grass, weeds, trash and debris, and must keep back trees and bushes that interfere with sidewalk use, except for improvements the City itself installed.

Third, added by Ordinance 09-060 on May 19, 2009, the owner must remove snow and ice from the abutting sidewalk whenever snow exceeds two inches in height or ice accumulates, and that removal must be completed within 48 hours of the weather event that caused it. Section 9-1H-1 defines who administers the duty: the Director of the Department of Public Works, or another City employee the City Manager designates. Because Article H does not set its own fine schedule for a Section 9-1H-2 violation, enforcement falls under the City's general penalty, Naperville Municipal Code Section 1-4-2: violating a duty-imposing ordinance with no stated penalty carries a fine of not less than $100 nor more than $500 for each offense, and a separate offense is committed for every day the duty remains unperformed, so an unshoveled sidewalk can accrue new $100-$500 exposure daily until it is cleared.

The 48-hour clock and two-inch trigger apply the same way to a vacant or unimproved lot as to an occupied home; ownership of the abutting parcel, not occupancy, creates the duty. The requirement sits inside the same Article that also authorizes City-financed sidewalk replacement programs, so a sidewalk the City itself is scheduled to rebuild does not excuse the owner from clearing it of snow in the meantime.