AI-powered detection is helping one Coachella Valley city do more with less — and it’s creating new jobs in the process.
When Justin Gardiner, Director of Code Enforcement for the City of Cathedral City, California, started thinking about how to modernize his department, he wasn’t just looking for a better way to find shopping carts. He was looking for a way to transform the entire function of code enforcement in local government.
What he found was PASS AI®, a computer vision platform developed by City Detect. Starting in June 2025, the city outfitted two vehicles with roof-mounted data collection units that capture street-level imagery during routine drives. Every parcel, every roadway, every public right-of-way, assessed automatically, flagged by severity, and mapped for review by Monday morning.
The old way of finding shopping carts alone illustrates the inefficiency that PASS AI® replaced. Cathedral City previously deployed a four-person crew, a truck, a trailer, and a dedicated scout vehicle, to manually locate and collect abandoned carts throughout the city. Officers dropped pins on Google Maps as they drove, and the collection team followed behind. Now, Gardiner runs a report, clicks a button, and sees every shopping cart the system identified during the city’s most recent drive. He hits another button. The platform generates a fully optimized route from City Hall to every cart and back, exportable directly to Google Maps or Apple Maps. A task that once required four people and half a day now requires one officer and a few clicks.
“It’s improving and speeding up a lot of our normal processes,” said Gardiner. “It’s making us more efficient. And this is important to us, especially when it’s 150,000 degrees outside.”
Between October 2025 and January 2026, PASS AI® captured 186,297 images across Cathedral City’s five districts, analyzing 12,489 parcels and identifying 18,612 roadside detections across more than 90 miles of roadway. The system flagged 623 individual parcel violations across 36 code violation types — everything from vehicles parked on lawns to tarps on roofs and plywood-covered windows. Beyond code violations, the platform simultaneously identifies conditions relevant to Public Works: illegal dumping, graffiti, tire accumulations, and debris in public rights-of-way. Rather than running parallel, disconnected surveys, code enforcement now generates GPS-tagged reports that go directly to the Public Works manager, complete with photographic documentation.
“It gives the exact location, it will give the exact GPS pin drop,” Gardiner explained. “I’ll snap the picture and give that right over, and it’s beginning to make Public Works’ job a little easier as well.”
Cathedral City’s approach to enforcement reflects a deliberate philosophy: lead with education, not citation. When PASS AI® identifies a potential violation, the department’s first action is a courtesy notice, a personalized, bilingual letter with the actual detection photo, the relevant code section explained in plain language, and a list of local resources for residents who may need assistance. No case is opened. No officer is dispatched. Not yet. Administrative Code Compliance Specialist Anika Sanchez monitors properties across multiple detection cycles, looking for progress or contact from the property owner. “Those are usually really quick. They’ll take care of those or they’ll call me and say, ‘I didn’t know I couldn’t do that,'” Sanchez noted. Between 30% and 40% of properties achieve voluntary compliance before any follow-up contact. Of the roughly 500 courtesy notices sent by mid-December 2025, approximately 40% of recipients contacted the department within a week. For residents who acknowledge violations but lack resources to fix them, Cathedral City has partnered with nonprofits including Community Action Partnership and the Fair Housing Council, ensuring that compliance doesn’t become an unfair burden on residents facing hardship.
A common concern when departments adopt AI detection tools is that they’ll be overwhelmed with violations. Cathedral City’s data tells a different story. Of all parcels analyzed, only 4% had any potential code issue. Severe blight affected fewer than 0.3% of parcels in any district, with just 14 properties citywide receiving the most serious designation. “We intended to focus on egregious cases, and the data showed us that less than 1% of parcels were actually in the worst condition,” Gardiner said. “It allows us to approach enforcement and education with laser focus.” The 354 properties showing minor but emerging issues represent a prevention opportunity; by identifying these early, the department can intervene before a neglected lawn or faded paint becomes a structural problem requiring formal enforcement.
Perhaps the most unexpected outcome of Cathedral City’s AI implementation is what it’s doing to municipal jobs. Rather than displacing staff, the technology elevated the role of the department’s administrative assistant, who now monitors compliance trends, generates district-level reports, coordinates with Public Works, and makes strategic decisions about case escalation. Gardiner is now working with an HR consulting firm to create an entirely new job classification: a “Code Compliance Specialist,” a hybrid position combining administrative and field responsibilities, with a specific emphasis on AI system management. According to Gardiner and his consultants, this classification does not currently exist anywhere in local government.
“There will always, always be a human element to code enforcement,” Gardiner said. “We wear so many hats, marriage counselor, enforcement officer, building inspector, you name it. AI doesn’t replace that. It makes sure we can apply it where it matters most.”
Gardiner presented the department’s implementation at the California Code Enforcement Officers (CACEO) annual conference and believes broader adoption across California is inevitable. “It definitely is coming,” he said. “It’s changing the game. I believe you’re going to see more and more jurisdictions adopting some type of AI technology for their code enforcement officers.” For municipalities navigating constrained budgets, static staffing, and growing community expectations, Cathedral City’s model offers a practical path forward: AI that amplifies, rather than replaces, the expertise of the people who know their communities best.
For more information about City Detect’s PASS AI® platform, visit citydetect.com.