Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

Good morning, everyone. I'd like to call this board of supervisor meeting. The date is January 13 And getting back with my standard, it's 09:03 a. Starting late. As usual, I'm going to ask everyone to please stand for the pledge of allegiance and then remain standing for an invocation from Marvin Jacobo from City Ministry Networks. Thanks. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Please pray with me. Lord, thank you that you've called us together in this incredible place, incredible country, city, county, state. And, Lord, just like so many of us, there's things to face, things to challenge, things to fix, things to we address and say we just don't know yet. Thank you that you will give us wisdom in these men and women who lead us and represent us to give them wisdom to govern amid all the conflicting interests and in issues of our times and communities. Their ability to work together in harmony even as there's honest disagreement.

The courage to lead as they ought. And, Lord, may they continue to view all of our citizens with dignity and respect. And those of us as citizens who are in the audience, may you continue to align us all together to move our county toward the dream that you had for us, that our community, our county would be a good place to grow up in and to grow old in for everyone for everyone. In my lord's name, I pray. Amen. Thank you so much, gentlemen.

Thank you very much, Marvin. Okay, we're going to move on to item three, which is a public comment period. We do not have any written comments, but the public comment, it is a time for those in attendance to speak on items not already on today's agenda. Please state your name for the record, direct all comments toward the dais, and if so, it is fair for every speaker, keep your public comments to the five minute time limit. The only card I have is Brian Evette.

Brian For Dakota. Here I'm today is basically this is 2026. This is the eye the date of the AI where we can analyze stuff. It can make reports. In 2036, we have quantum, and we will go way beyond that. We won't need attorneys. We won't need lawyers. We don't need a $4,000,000 courthouse anymore, but we put our money into that. You know? And it's really sad to see in ten years that it's really almost obsolete.

Even right now for our officers and everything that are out there on the streets, they're all recorded. It can turn around and tell the scenario what's going on right then so they can make their decisions. That way, there's not a biased decision made in this. And we need to understand that this is coming really fast, you know? And everybody should know that, that we're gonna be eliminating that, we're gonna be saving money, and we're gonna be losing a lot of labor.

That's true. But we have to have resources to move that labor to another position, and this is what we're gonna have to start with. Now, all I wanna say is I've been through stuff, and I've been through the jail, and I've watched the suits and everything that happened to our jail. We lose a lot of money right there, and then we're always asking for more budget for the jail and the sheriff's department. This is gonna save us some money, but we have to have them start under SB 42, Safety Act. We always wanna make ourselves safety. You're one. This is the air we want. Safe air. Well, we have valley fever that's really bad in this area.

We're probably one of the top most in valley air fever, where the disease spreads, the bacteria spreads, and you'll spread it to our caregivers. If they wind up in jail and they go back to our old people, they wind up giving them MRSA. MRSA comes out of there. It's a bacterial disease. It's also, it's most of the type of people that turn around and analyze this think it's cancer. It's not cancer. It's a simple bacterial disease. You know, we have to protect that. And releasing prisoners under 42, safe act. You can't release these people at 01:00 on Hackett to walk across the county.

You have to give them a safe place. I'm finding out that we don't even do that. Now why, when we have all this technology that's growing so fast, we don't use it? So we lose money, we get sued, and we lose more money. Now we have to stop this. And I think we can all work together on that. That's a major factor because all we're doing is spreading it. So we're gonna build more hospitals, and you're gonna sit there and say, oh, that's where 88% of our budget goes. Well, we're not protecting the people. We're contaminating the people.

I mean, even when we come across the border on fungal diseases on a fruit, we stop that fruit. But do we treat humans that way? Let's stop it before it gets spread, that we don't have to build more hospitals, watch more people die of it, that are misdiagnosed. We don't even have enough dermatologists in this area to cover the people that are being diseased by it, which is really sad. And as you can see, we keep on building more hospitals. We keep putting more of our budget into this. We've gotta look smarter. In 2036, we have quantum that'll be hitting here. That that's making decisions and judgments that are aired by judges all over the place and attorneys. You know?

We gotta change. We gotta catch up. We're way behind here. Our inner structure's way behind. We take the money from the feds and the state to build our crossroads, and we've taken it twice from them. But all our crossroads that come into our major thorough ways are aren't developed, and we lose money every single time on those. We've gotta start looking at this. The infrastructure needs to be done before we grab the state money and make expressways because, otherwise, you just have everybody jammed up. It takes you fifteen minutes to get two miles. I mean, is that the way we're supposed to be around here?

What's wrong with our road commissioner? I mean, every time we do a job, it costs us twice as much. Most time, you'd fire that contractor. You know the same thing that's happening right here with our courthouse. It's just getting over budget. Now, see, that's where AI works out really good for us. It's the beginning, but ten more years, you're gonna have quantum. This stuff isn't gonna happen. That's all I wanna say is, let's fix this stuff because I've been put through stuff, false arrest and everything. And with a computer, it would just sit there and say, this is what you do.

You don't arrest this man. It's already made a decision. So we're gonna save money, and we're gonna save from putting people in jail that are innocent, and then we're not gonna get sued. And that's where our money winds up going. Lawyers, judges, can we stop this? We'll have more money for our community. That's all I gotta say. That I don't wanna run for Terry's position, but I knew he threw another guy in there, so he said, I'm ruining my statistics because I wanted those numbers to find out if podcasting would work. You for comments, Brian. Thank you for the statement.

Anyone else for public comment?

Well, good morning. How are you? Nathan Alonso, your local government affairs representative for Pacific Gas and Electric. Just a quick update. On December 30, our company put out a press release saying that we are reducing electric and gas rates for the fourth time in two years. A lot of the collections from some of the atmospheric rivers and different wildfire prevention investments that we've made have now rolled off of bills. So customers should see anywhere between a 35% savings. This is part of a more expanded effort on affordability. I think affordability is a term and an effort that a lot of us are hearing on many fronts. So this is no different on our end.

We're looking for ways to rightsize our organization, rightsize our efforts, streamline contracts, and find ways to save our customers on their utility bill. So we'd love to come back for the Board later on this year to give a more comprehensive presentation on some of our efforts and investments that we have happening here in Stan County this year and how that work will be affecting the community. So anyway, good morning, and look forward to coming back and talking with you a bit more later this year.

Thank you, Nathan. That's good news. Anyone else for public comment? All right. Seeing none, I'm going close the public comment period. I'm going to move on to the consent calendar. Would any Board members like to pull any consent items? Okay. We do have comments on B1, B3 and C2. So excluding those three, do I have a motion?

Motion beaconed it and T. Withrow. All those in favor, aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries, five-zero. So I am going to call up Ron McMurtry. And Ron, you can comment on, first, the approval to execute the Second Amendment of the Public Works Agreement contract with Grover Landscape. Which item? Oh, B2. Oh, B3. B3. B3.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the Board. Ron McMurtry here. Yes, this is item B3. I wanted to this just made me think of financial land mines. We should always prudent with our finances, but particularly now, there might be some belt tightening. And I'm concerned about pardon me?

No, I'm sorry. Oh.

I'm especially concerned that there's these financial land mines, these expenses that don't go through the proper procedure, and then, oh, well, we need to do this, Chief Hayes and I had a little bit of discussion about the, you know, do not desire to have these retroactive, you know, approvals of funding, and so I just, I don't know if I want to recommend I don't know how that would be handled within the county, but I don't know if the council's office should put a memo in saying, hey, you know, maybe as a courtesy, ask departments and sub departments to please anytime there's unexpected monies to kind of run through to see if the supervisors are supposed to approve that or not, because I was kind of concerned about that. And this one, I don't again, I don't know the full hierarchy, but my impression is the Parks and Recreation kind of stuff passes through the GSA. I'm not sure if that's correct. So maybe there would have been two levels of, you know, that somebody should have maybe caught that item. And I know there's funds for some of these things, so it's not going to be a thing, but, you know, I just I don't know.

Maybe we need to have just a tightening up. Anyway, that's I just thought, you know, let's not have more financial land mines in these tough times. Thank you very much.

Okay. You can stay right there, because you have C2 also. Yes. Resolution establishing a stop sign control on Grayson Road.

Yes, of course. And so, of course, that had caught my attention ever since you guys had the meeting at Camp Taylor, and then exacerbated by the death of Ms. Millebrick, and all the testimonials we heard a few months ago. So, I'm going to sneak this I'm going to repeat myself a tiny bit, but Director Lehman, I know he's probably heard me say, Please coordinate with STAN RTA, because STAN the RTA, I'm recommending that they build a bus stop there so that young people who are volunteers can get there, or we if you guys have a special meeting there again, we can get there. Steven and I could get there.

So, in order for this all to work, what I have I know the public do not get that much feedback about design. So, I have a design suggestion. I don't know if that needs to be an amendment, but just for a heads up for Director Lehman, please have the crosswalk be on the west side of the intersection, because it's going to make sense for Stan RTA to put its bus stops on the west side. And so, should be the crossing. Also, Supervisor Chance Condit suggested that we have some kind of memorial. It might be more suitable to have it on a bus shelter, where it's a little bit more prominent than on, say, right there where a stop sign is, which is not going to be a sturdy place for a suitable memorial for Ms. Millabrick. That's all. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. I saw Dave taking copious notes back there, for sure. All right? Anyone else have comments on B3 or C2? Or C3? Yeah, I should have done that. Okay. So I'm going to go back. Before we take them, I'm going to go back to B1, which I just wanted to comment on because this has been in the works. It's the Sheriff's Recreation Yard Capital Project.

It's been on the books for quite some time. I know there's some pretty when you read the agenda item, there's some pretty serious cost escalations due to tariffs and other things. But this, I believe, is a requirement from the State of California, and we are kind of in front of this, but it seems to me that this is a potential mandate that is not funded. Is there any way we can put a mandate claim for something along these lines with the State?

Thank you very much for

that. That's actually

a very, very good question. It is something that we have discussed amongst our staff that if this project is in fact being required by the state of California to comply with new regulations on the surface. It should meet the requirements of a mandate claim. However, mandate claims can get pretty tricky, and and, sometimes the state finds ways in which to, not fulfill those mandate claims. If there's, some opportunity that the company could have proceeded some other way. So we will, at that suggestion, certainly, go down the path and see what we can do to try to recoup the cost for this, unfunded mandate.

Yeah. I know this does not hit our general fund. This is coming through the capital facility fees. But, again, as as the county is trying to show leadership and do something that we believe the state wants, if if if we're going to be the leaders and, you know, we're exposing ourselves and if other people aren't required to do it. I just don't want to be the only county that's doing this, so just on a go forward basis. Okay. So with that, any comments on C1? B1? Okay. So I'll take B1, B3 and C2 together. Motion to approve. Second. Okay. All in favor say aye. Aye.

Opposed? Motion carries five-zero. Thank you very much. Okay. Discussion item, which is 6.1, approval to adopt a recommended decision of the nuisance abatement hearing regarding the property at 1347 North Carpenter Road in Modesto. Lane Avila will be presenting.

Good morning, George Guesa, board members and CEO Hayes and county depots. Lane Avila, Sassos County code enforcement manager. I have, two discussion items this morning regarding the proposed abatement and potential forced cleanup of two long standing code enforcement cases. Just a little history on these. Both these cases have, been active for several years and, involved multiple inspections, notices, and administrative citations.

After extensive compliance efforts, the Code Enforcement Division has recently brought these cases before the Nuisance Abatement Hearing Board, otherwise known as NAB, which recommended that the county proceed with abatement and the responsible parties fail to achieve full compliance within a ninety day period. Since the NAB hearings, some corrective work has been completed, and in some instances, additional violations have occurred on these properties. These changes are why the ninety day compliance period remains appropriate, and I will address those details that review each cases. The code enforcement division is in complaint driven program in response to reports of violations of county code, property maintenance code, health and safety code, building and fire codes, vehicle business codes, others. Complaints are received through the stand connect app, phone calls, emails, and in person visit walks.

Our goal is to conduct an initial inspection within ten days and to work directly with property owners to achieve voluntary compliance whenever possible. We prioritize education, communication, offering property owners reasonable time and options to correct these violations. When compliance is not achieved, administrative citations may be issued. If those efforts are unsuccessful, abatement may

be

considered. Any case proposed for abatement undergoes extensive review by the department director, the county executive office, and county council. Factors considered include public health and safety, blight, length of the case, cost, the level of participation by the property owners. Should the board authorize abatement, additional procedural steps are required, including obtaining contractor bids, securing judicial warrants, and scheduling the work to be completed efficiently and safely. All abatement costs are initially paid from the code enforcement abatement fund with costs later recovered through liens in the county standard collection process.

Any recovered funds are returned to the Bateman Fund and to offset staff costs. With that overview, I will now walk you through the cases, including what we have. So the first case we have is 1347 North Carpenter Road. It is what we'll go through here is the timeline process, the case history, some photos of the property, and recommendations, and any questions we may have from anyone who's the case was open on 07/19/2022. We did the initial inspection after our warning went out on 08/01.

We did notice an order to abate to say that there was violations that we found. The first compliance inspection was on 10/14, and the first administrative citation was issued on 12/15. And then, of course, the nuisance hearing was conducted three years later. The case history as it goes through the total, we've had a total compliance inspection of 27 inspections. During that, we've had 20 administrative citations issued with total fines generated citations of $7,500.

Here's a outline of the property itself. It's surrounded by the green line. There was an analytical grow in the back of the property at one time, which the complaint came through us. A lot of debris on the property. The houses are vacant at the time. Here's a just a further out to kinda show you where the property is. It's one of the pockets the county has. It's surrounded through the city of Modesto. So all the green highlighted areas you see there are within the city Of Modesto's jurisdiction. The unhighlighted areas are the county's jurisdiction.

Here's a few shots we took from from Google to show what the property looks like that was on the outside when we first went out to the complaint that came through our department on Carpenter Road. Just kinda see exactly where all the area was through the streets. This is from our first inspection on 12/07/2022. We found the vehicle. People were living inside the vehicle in in the backyards is what the complaint was coming through on the property.

Some of the debris we found through the property we've seen through some of these pictures. Once again, this is, you know, another inspection we did in May '23, and you can see the the items are still there with people still possibly living in the backyard. A year later, we should have come on this. The property was secured, but the actual locks was morphing. You could just walk gates would just open right up.

So the buildings remained secured, but the property itself wasn't secured for any entries. And here's more of the pictures still continuing two years later, the same debris that's in here, and evidence of the hoop houses behind it was still there for the Grove, the illegal Grove that occurred in '21. As you can see through the houses and some of the debris that's there, a lot of stuff was not taken care of. The property owner at the time was starting to remove some of the debris from the back of the property. It was actually assessing to getting the people out in and out.

Sheriff's department was out there, numerous times to move people off the property. At one time we had a no trespass letter on the property. Those only go for six months and they've got to be redone again. The property owners were not responsible at the time. Recently when we brought to the NAB, the property owners did show up and started saying we're gonna do something with the property. And so we were hoping that they were gonna start cleaning up. Moved. Some of the people out of the backyard were taking a dumpster out, and then some of the stuff came back again. And then as we get here closer up, they started showing more establishments. And then three weeks after our the NAB hearing we had, we would go forward with this decision.

The property caught on fire. So now we have a massive damaged building is what we have. It's an unsafe building. It's gone beyond repair from the pictures that we're seeing. Fire department went out and took the fire out. There was nobody inside the house. We didn't find anything, but it just was burned. So now this is a new condition we had since the original cleanup that we were going to propose to go out and do just to a cleanup. We're going now send another notice out, a very quick notice upon the approval of the board to do a demolition of the property since it is in this condition, and then we're going to proceed with the demolition cleanup along with just cleaning up the debris in the backyard. The property owners haven't, issued any kind of statement to us whatsoever if they're gonna what they're gonna do.

We have to wait for insurance company claims now and see if they're gonna do it. If the insurance company comes in, they might clean the whole property up, if there is an insurance company at all. So we brought this to the nuisance abatement hearing board. The case was formally presented to the NAB on 12/11/2025. NAB approved staff's recommendation and forwarded the matter to The US for a hearing scheduled today.

This was approved through the NAB board by a three o vote. If adopted, the interest of parties to abate the nuisance and return the property to its permitted use as defined in the Stanislaus County code. Authorize the abatement of the nuisance charge, the cost of the owners. Authorize the disposal of materials removed from the property and charge the cost of of removal of the owner. And to order a lien to be recorded against the property if the owner fails to pay the county for the cost of abatement.

So the closing staff believes that all reasonable enforcement and compliance options have been exhausted in these cases. Over the years, the county has provided repeated notices, extensions, citations, and direct outreach without achieving sustained compliance. Any abatement costs would be paid from the code enforcement abatement fund. Will full cost recovery pursued through liens and the county standard collection processes. Following abatement, the properties will continue to be monitored and while future violations are possible, that risk has been considered in this recommendation.

Although the county does not control property owners, continued enforcement and cost recovery tools often create incentives for compliance or transition to responsible ownership. Receiverships will be considered if the property meets all the requirements by the state. So we're gonna have the the recommendation we're having is is that the nav and staff's recommendation is that the board of supervisors find the nuisance exist at 1347 North Carpenter Road, Modesto, and recommend to move forward for a forced clean. And I'm open for any questions.

Are there any questions?

So no questions. Just a just a couple things. Lane, first, thanks for what you do. It's just amazing the work you do out there and Rob and your team. Just it's so frustrating with these properties.

And I know it's very frustrating to you, but as we always say, it's a long process to where get we are here. And thank God it is because, you know, like we always talk about, luckily we still have property rights in this country and you can't just go and take somebody's property as much as we want to, especially in this situation. This property in my district has just been unbelievable. And really since the fire happened, we think these individuals who were there, who were living on that property have moved now to other spots in my district. So, to take over there.

But, but yeah, the $7,500 in fines never paid, right? That's never been paid. So, we go through this process and try to get these individuals to comply. Again, trying to work as much as we can with them to get them to do this and they just don't. And so so then then it leaves us to come to this spot where we are right now. And in in this case with this landlord, it's just amazing. All the things that we've tried to do and try to get them. And I and I just don't understand the mindset of somebody who I mean, that's a valuable piece of property right there.

Correct.

And I just can't figure out that why risk I mean, even potentially us somehow taking the property if we if if we went that far. But anyway, more than anything, just thank you for what you're doing. I'm sorry you had to deal with this. I'm sorry we have to deal with all these and another one to come up here after this one, you know, across the county. And but the work you guys do is is phenomenal and and I appreciate you doing this. I very much support. This is what we need to do. I wish we could have done it quicker, but again, we have to go through this process And I wish the individuals who own these properties would be responsive, but they just aren't. So so thank you guys for doing this.

Thank you.

Thank you, mister chair. Lane, thank you for your presentation. I'm just looking at the case history. Three years. Is that a normal amount of time that it takes to, do what we're

doing today? It's a standard right now of what's happening. We're going to try to change that and do more abatements with the direction of CEO's office and the board of supervisors as long as we get the funding that can go forward on this. Obviously, the cost recovery is the issue. We can spend the money on it.

You know, we're I try to explain it to you, we're not property managers, we're not supposed to be out there doing these things. We have to use the citation process, the notice process, tell people to maintain their properties. Have six thirty eight active cases right now that we're working on. And if I came in here with all six thirty eight active cases, we'd be here all day talking at every meeting and trying to get something approved. So our goal isn't to try to clean it up, it's to educate and move people forward and try to get to either other property owners, family members or something else that own the property to come in and help and assist.

We're going to try to start using more county services in this case and actually the case that's after this to see if we can help out in some ways. We've talked to every part of the county that has these kind of properties so we can have some access of money to help maybe assist in cleanups or some minor improvements on properties. But yes, this is about the average of right now and we're hoping to take this average down. We're still getting about an 85% compliance from these normal cases that will close within three to six months. It's these cases like this that will go on longer.

And as Supervisor Withrow had mentioned, know, it's just why the property owner is not responding. Why? It's not because of lack of contact from the county, it's not the lack of trying to get them notices to their addresses to say that this is here if you're out of town, out of state, property owners. So we're gonna hopefully bring a few more of these to NAB. We had an issue with the with the state of California with how NAB can be operated.

We're currently working on that right now with county council and the building official of doing some additional training for some of the hearing officers to satisfy the state of California for some of the housing issues that are occurring. Right now, are just zoning violations we're going after to say that these are violation of the county zoning code along with some of the, you know, health and safety code. So we're hoping that some of these processes we have set up, we're trying to get things set up to the tax treasurer's office, to put things on the tax roll. So hopefully that would get things pushed through quicker also. Once these citations of $7,500 of tax on the tax roll, then that would move things hopefully quicker. Someone will be technically forced to pay something within a year's time.

My second question was gonna be, I would love to hear your recommendations on how to speed this process up, keeping in mind the due process that that needs to go through. But I would love to hear further from you.

Yeah. And that's definitely part of the things we're working on. And I've talked with County Council. We're trying to move forward on some of the new stuff that's on the state and actually some of actions of actually bringing things to court. Receiverships was a big issue that we can try to use, but there's an issue right now with funding, with a percentage and interest rates out there. We're not finding that banks want to fund properties because they want to have a certain return afterwards. So we're trying to figure out some new ways to get that figured out also. But there's a lot of ways we're trying to get to move this up forward.

Thank you.

Thank you. Didn't look like there's any other questions or comments. Okay. So now I will acknowledge there are no written comments. I gonna open up the public comment period. Anyone that wishes to speak? Please step forward.

Brian Abbott, a landlord. I've been through this kind of stuff. So more people are getting a little older and they can't take care of their properties. They have to go through unlawful detainers. A lot of times they can't even get past that three months. Next thing they're in, another three months for unlawful detainers. And then people move into the property. So, they're doing it again to another person. Because this is what we can't stop. It seems like the the law doesn't take them in and let for trespassing, destruction of property.

They don't take it in. So, an elderly person gets far beyond that thinking they're gonna hold on to that rental, you know? But they just keep destroying it, bringing more stuff in, and this is what happens. It gets prolonged because of the process they have to go through. Now, if we can shorten that process down, we're gonna help that elderly person that maintains that house. So we're gonna be helping our landlords. So we're gonna be helping the people that own property here. But in one way, we've gotta stop this where it just extends on and on. Unlawful detainer didn't work. They moved their friends in.

Now you gotta file this one against that person. And it just gets for older people, it just gets hair raising, and they don't have the money to process this stuff. So sometimes we need to go in and help them save their own property by shortening this time, you know? It's not their fault that they got caught up in it, and that the law will not do anything but go through the process of extending these times for these people. And they're losing money all through it, till the point where one vagrant moves in and burns the place down. And then it becomes an eyesore. So now we just put more burden on them. You know? And they wish they'd probably just run away. You know?

But they can't. That's their assets that they're trying to hold on to, which is hard to hold on to assets these days because they want everybody in a condominium. They don't want you or your family to have anything. That's the way the future is going. So let's try to work with the ones that are here and have established something. Let's shorten up that unlawful detainer attitude. But then again, we're going to AI. Maybe we can get rid of the judges and we can just fill the paper out. It'll fill it out for you in a matter of seconds. So this is what we need to do if we wanna shorten everything up.

Stop extending everything and prolonging it. Let's protect those property owners out there because they are getting older, you know? And they don't like to go through all this stress. You put that stress on them, they're gonna die. Is that what you want? Everybody to die earlier because of the stress that's created because we can't shorten that time up and even help them maintain their property? It's a hardship day. I feel sad for it. Anyway Thank you, Brian. Something to look at.

Yep. Any other comments? Come forward, Ron.

Thank you, mister chairman. Ron McMurtry here. I want to follow-up a little bit on supervisor Condit's question. Just two little things. Just out of my curiosity, I'm always trying to educate myself. I imagine there's a percentage of properties where the owners, assume, I'm assuming you guys of course make a good faith effort to contact owners, but there must be some that just never respond. So I have two questions. Can you give me a rough idea of percentages of when you have that willful, just willful ignoring, you know, communication? And if if they do that, does this process happen faster? Thank

you. Yeah.

There it goes through stages on on compliance. So, as mentioned earlier, some of the cases, about fifteen percent, will go on over six months to a year to two or three years. Some will go a year without any kind of compliance, and then, a family member or someone else will get ahold of and start acting onto the property, so they'll start up a different process. To make things go faster, we're just trying everything we can. Like like was mentioned a little bit earlier and stuff, we we have a lot of properties that we would have to go out and work on and deal with, so we have to do a priority on some of these.

We're going to have to start setting up some of our top 10 or something like that to start addressing these to get them done because technically, you know, if a property is going past thirty days and a lot of things, we can go in and walk in and start doing abatements. But I don't think we want to turn into an aggressive code enforcement where we're actually doing abatements for everyone's property. Some jurisdictions that has occurred where we've done faster, quicker abatements, it has turned out to be that once we do that, there's a small percentage that is owned on to come back to the county or to the local jurisdictions. So in other words, interest rates were being charged like a 1% on property owners for late fees on what they owed the county. When they did that, then people were like, well that's cheaper than a loan I can get from the bank.

So I'll go ahead and have the county or the jurisdiction do the abatement for me, clean it up to code, bring it up all the things, the permit, and I only have to pay a 1% on my taxes, and I can delay that five years. So, they learned how to use us as their bank, and we don't want to be that situation. Of course, if any direction comes from the Board of Supervisors that they want to speed certain properties up or certain aspects up, we'll be happy to do that.

Any other public comment? Okay. Seeing none. I guess I just have one comment because this is three years and five months. And when you're the landowner, it's too fast. And when you're the neighbor, it's painstakingly slow. And in this this situation specifically, it's dangerous for the neighbor too, right, when they had the fire. And it could have been much worse with all of the refuses there. So I I think you have struck a balance. And I don't know, about three years and five months seems like a long time.

But trying to push this along quickly, think most people want to comply. They don't want to get stuck in a situation. This is for sure time to move and time to take action. So with that, any other comments from the Board? If not, I'll look for a motion.

I make a motion to approve staff recommendations. Second.

We have a second from Supervisor Graywell. All All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? And the motion carries five-zero. Thank you very much. Okay. We're going to go on to Item six two, approval to adopt the recommended decision from the nuisance abatement board regarding the property at 859 North Kenwood Avenue in Turlock Lane.

K. So it'll be the same situation in this property. I'll just go through the case itself on what we have, and unfortunately this is another case that's been open since '22, for, some of the same violations that we've seen earlier, on the other case. So we'll go through the timeline process, the case history, some photos again, and some recommendations and any questions that you might have. So the complaint was received. Code enforcement officer went out to the property. Initial inspection is done usually within ten days. The notice in order to abate the issues is done quickly right after that with all the corrections that need to be done. The compliance inspections and compliance were generally conducted. We give thirty days on that to talk a little more about the process.

And in this case, we gave five compliance inspections were conducted prior to the issuance of the first administrative citations, we try to work a lot with the property owner to clean up the property. Administrative citations were issued along the way, and ongoing enforcement as compliance inspections were conducted every 30 days, and thereafter administrative compliance citations were issued as needed. The case was opened on '8, October '22. Initial inspection was done eight days later. We issued the notice and order, and the first administrative citation was issued five months later, and then, of course, we brought it to the board on the same day on twelveeleventwenty five.

There's been a total of inspections of 30 inspections. These are site inspections outside of anything on phone calls and such. These are all site inspections. There's been 18 citations generated with fines accumulated at $6,700 that have not been paid. Here's the property itself. Once again, that's the surrounded property. Around the area, the highlighted areas, that's actually the the shaded areas are City Of Turlock. So they're surrounded by city limits of Turlock, we have a little pocket of the county that's in there. Further show the county, you can see what the pocket is. It's very limited in that area.

All the highlighted areas of the city Of Turlock, and this is completely those stuff is not is the county's jurisdiction. So in this situation here, we've had a lot of response from the city of Turlock to this property. They've sent out Turlock PD, Turlock Fire on these situations for happening for incidents that happened on the property along with sheriff responding out there also because of jurisdiction. Here's a couple of the pictures of the home. It's next to a commercial property, it's on the other side of it, an alleyway that they share, and the home sits right next to the alleyway.

This is on Kenwood Avenue just going down from looking through the other side of the street, showing that the hedges are on the property, there are low hedges, I wanna point that out for what we have that the height of the hedges is only supposed to be 36 inches tall so the vehicles can see people walking out of the sidewalks and out of the property. And so here's the pictures that we had when we first went out there on on August 22 with vehicles in the back. There was a RV that was that you got to see in the picture that was occupied. That was some of the issues that the sheriff's department was dealing with, was an occupied RV, people in the backyard, noise ordinances, fights, those kind of things were being issued outside. Vehicle storage is being put on onto the property next to the alleyway.

All these pictures are taken from the alleyway right behind where the commercial property is. So a few more pictures of the stuff. This is in '23 when we went out. This inspection here is when we started issuing the citations. Seven months later of issuing five notices and then we're at our second citation. As you see, the violations still remain. During this time, as you see, the seasons are changing, so now we get weeds and stuff that are growing, high grass. This is the issue that some of the people are trying to worry about fire hazards. The motor the the travel trailer was vacated. No one was living inside the travel trailer, pretty much around this time.

So they did, the owners got that taken care of, but it still remained on the property, in that condition as you can see, as a blighted condition. It's obviously wasn't ready for the road to be used anymore. This is back until of, 09/24/2024, with all the violations pretty much remaining the same as we just kept going through. The appliance wasn't occurring in 01/23/2025. This is going back into now the when we brought this in here, this is what the property has looked like in '25 before we took it to the NAB hearing.

It still has remained the same that was gone through at all. And in August, this is when we took our pictures to go to to get ready to get ready for NAB, our posting of the property to say we're doing that. There are some housing issues, some violations we wanna look into, but since we cannot go into those, with the NAB yet to have that approved by the board until we have that training I mentioned in the first case, we have to just look at the outside. One of the reasons why we delayed on this one because we wanted to address everything with the property and stuff. Since we're not doing that, we've adjusted ourselves to just go out and do the abatement of the nuisance instead of the housing and property issues that may or may not be at the property with the proper inspection.

And now these pictures were done just a few days ago. So the property owner has after the NAB meeting, the property owner has hired a few people or had some people come out and they're starting to clean the property up. So this is one of the adjustments that we talked about. So, it took, you know, three years until he started finally working on it. We went to the NAB, went to the process, we were gonna do an abatement.

The owner came to the abatement, nuisance abatement hearing boards, said to try to work on it and do as much as as best as she can, and, contacted my officer. We went out on Saturday, on his scheduled day to take a look at this, and there are some there is progress that's actually happening on this property. The the trailer's been removed, and some of the debris's been removed, but we still have some of the vehicles that are being stored off, trying to put a makeshift fence around it. And, those are the hedges in the front yard that was supposed to be 36 inches tall. They're still, like, eight feet tall.

You can't even see the house. So this is from the alleyways. When you pull out the alleyway, you can't see any oncoming traffic. That's been an issue that's been brought up at the last NAB meeting also by the, one of the people inside the commercial building that was next door, they're saying when we try to drive in and out we can't see anyone coming down the street and when vehicles actually park right there, business days, this is a Saturday, so obviously there's no business going on a Saturday, that also extends out the the non view from that site, so the bushes need to be cut down to, standard height. So the nuisance abatement hearing board, the case was formally presented to NAB on December 11.

NAB approved staff's recommendation and forwarded the matter to BOS for the hearing today, and it was approved on a three o vote. If adopted, the order is interested parties to abate the nuisance and return the property to use as defined in Stanislaus County code. We authorize abatement of the nuisance and charge the cost of the owners or we can authorize the disposal materials removed from the property and charge the cost of removal to the owner. And we can order a lien to be reported against the property if the owner fails to pay the county for the cost of abatement. So the recommendation is that the NAB and staff's recommendation that the Board of Supervisors finds that this nuisance exists at 859 North Kenwood Avenue, Turlock, and recommend to move forward for a forced clean. So do we have any questions?

So if if if if it was a 10 that needed to be abated, how much work was done there? We only see this through pictures.

That the property owner's done recently? Yeah. They've probably done maybe 60% cleanup.

Okay.

So more than more than I thought, you know, when it was off through there.

So I I I think because we want compliance. Right? That's all we ever asked for in nuisance abatement. And for three years more than three years, same thing, nothing was done. And then nuisance abatement has actually changed the potential outcome. So I I look forward to hearing. I think I have two speaker cards, so I'm assuming the the owner is here to speak. And but that's a positive sign. Right? Yeah. It starts as a positive positive sign.

Correct. And and I I stated before in the other case with this coming through, you know, we have ninety days from your decision. So if we follow through with this and then the owner does correct the violations in ninety days, obviously, abatement will not go through. But if something fails to happen within ninety days, then we'd have to come back to the whole process to start over again. We try to tell everyone that this is what ninety days is for, you know, we're trying to set it in here. We can set that at a fifteen day or earlier if needed by the by what direction of of the board of supervisors. But in this situation, we kinda feel we can give them time. If we see progress like this, this is what we look for. Yep. We look for this the first year.

I wanna ask the question of county council. Can we continue this for thirty days? That actually, it does that affect their ninety day I mean, beyond the thirty days, does that affect their ninety day timeline?

I think there's, several ways that you could handle this. If you wanted, you could give them more than ten ninety days, give the staff more than ninety days to clean up. Or alternatively, you could bring this matter back depending on when you wanted to do that. It but I I would set a date certain so that, staff do not have to re notice

Yeah.

And provide all that notice. Just set a set a date certain and say, okay. Come back and and and we'll do this hearing again.

But by law, if we give them a hundred and twenty days, is that legal or is it ninety days that's the legal requirement?

Do you know? I I believe we can give them additional time.

I I'm just asking. Because it seems like the the hammer has been held over their head and there's progress, but that's that's all we wanted to see. But I don't wanna affect because it's still three and a half years almost. Any questions, board members? Okay. So I am going to acknowledge there are no written comments on this. We're gonna go to public comment. I do have two speaker cards. And the first one is Emily Winkie, I believe. Good morning, Emily.

Good morning

to the board and I am emotional. My name is Emily Wenke and I'm here to read this first but I can answer a lot of those questions basically. A lot has to do with the actual codes and you can pass this around if you want. These are the action, corrective actions required. We believe we accomplished those.

The overview. The overview of the property in the beginning and I will address the fact that there was misunderstanding, misinterpretation of the land use. I don't know if you get to see these or not. And then I also have photos from the compliance meeting on Friday. You probably really do want to see these because you can see them from all over the place, not just that one view.

And I happen to be the one that after all this time, it's very, very hard to find somebody to tow a fifth wheel. I had a friend of Francesco's Francisco's towing company in Turlock. He called a friend and eventually we found a way to have that abandoned on her property fifth wheel. It was not hers. It was by a person that was there that also left all of that garbage and that's why it seems like nothing is getting done.

But this will show you. Idea of the forced cleanup needs to be related to injurious, indecent, obstructed community enjoyment. It has to be severe, hazardous, pest infestation, unsanitary. I have never seen anything noticed on the property or identified or in the concise descriptions, there are none.

Can

I ask how are you related to the property? Tell me what's your I am a friend. Just a friend of the owners?

Yes. I was homeless and she helped me. I now own a property and I'm learning all these things. I do appreciate the education that I got on my own. There was not education from I don't even know who these people are. You cannot find the website with the environmental resources. The website has a report from 2019 and it has some pictures of some forest cleanup which looks like cut and clear, like, is out of date and not legal anymore.

Emily, sorry. So just a friend of the owner and the owner Cabrini Herrera?

She's next up on this.

Okay. Sorry.

Yes. She's here. And I'm also just for anybody, I would stand up here for anybody that is going to become homeless because it's not done timely or it's an there's an error. All this talk about let me just do this part so I can do my five minutes and be done. I need my glasses, sorry. I do want to say that I appreciate this, the process. I am a retired middle school teacher. I've been the president of the Sunnyvale School Union and have to, you know, do contract negotiation, positional and and interest based and all these things. I'm a US Air Force veteran where they came up with standards in the first place. That's where all these standards came from.

I'm trying to get to my document. I'm sorry. But I have been up I have actually spent fifty hours since the twenty eighth when my friend contacted me about the December 11 meeting and was shocked with how far things have gotten even though it's been three years. Have you ever had construction done on your property? Does it take a long time? A lot more. They're supposed to be done on this date, but they're not. They're not. They're not kind of standard for deadlines to be surpassed. Pardon

me.

Emily Wenke. I'm here today for a prophylactic intervention. Generally, prophylactics are associated with condoms and preventing disease. It also means to watch before, to stop before bad things happen. That's what I wanna do, to stop a bad thing from happening. Wanting to comply and prevent forced cleanup, they only requested an inspection Saturday. In our opinion, compliance was achieved. To our surprise, we were told to do additional actions, some that he mentioned today. I don't believe it's possible to comply. To that end, we need support to clarify where the process is breaking down.

We are in the dark. It is no one's best interest to force cleanup 859 Kenwood Avenue. It might be a crime. The tall grass and vegetation berms are part of TID's groundwater recharge program. Flood irrigation is used. This recharges the well. Sorry. That must be my time. The US Department of Energy explains the techniques of land and treatment of the irrigated area as necessary for successful recharging of the groundwater. Groundwater is the only source of water for this property.

Forced cleanup would not only destroy the water conservation currently used, but forced cleanup would cause erosion, evaporation, and runoff. All three are preventable. Runoff would pollute our streams, rivers, and lakes. Another concern is the irrigation pipe and valve on the property. An easement, it is not an alley, it's an easement, exists along the south side of the property.

The valve is on the southwest corner where the alley, there is an alley, meets the easement. The pipe is not able to uphold the heavy equipment. It could even be dangerous as the unknowing driver could fall into the hole where the valve handle is located. It is in everyone's best interest to pause the consent vote on this item to ensure due process and due diligence regarding the oral and documentary evidence presented December 11. The owner has requested access to the evidence twice, the last time being Saturday.

When I asked the code enforcer if the video was available, he said no. He didn't think so. I tried to access the news's debate board hearing board and couldn't find it. The Department of Environmental Resources site had information from 2019, not current. However, were four photos of forced cleanup. I also have photos of the inspection the same day. I asked him, how did we do? He shrugged slightly saying he wasn't going to be there here today, and basically it was just a matter of formality. His part was completed. Compliance didn't matter.

Time was up. The property was going to be forced cleanup. Before this goes any farther, there needs to be another look. The owner has requested a list of interested parties and the evidence from the December 11 nuisance abatement board hearing. Access has yet been available. The recommendation decision has false documents saying in item four refusing to correct violations when there has been continuous effort which the owner can show with documentation and public records. And finally, looking at these photos taken on Saturday, does the property look like it has serious public hazards to the extent that it needs to be forced cleaned up and that those actions will render the owner homeless? I don't think so. I beg you to pause the vote. The owner wasn't informed of this meeting.

All there was at the bottom of the page of page two of two of of that one that she the last one she received, a postscript referring to 01/13/2026. No time, no location was included. No mention of it being Tuesday versus Thursday. No cover letter explaining what the notice meant. So please prevent an undoable action, unclarification that clarifies sorry. My I need a drink. Actually, I do need a drink until clarification can be accomplished. I beg you using the Rotarian four way test. There wasn't education. Those things did not exist.

There wasn't any compassion. It's it's a list of photos. In fact, even looking on that photo, most of the property is clear. There there's just a spot where the cars are which were parked there when their parents died and they're still still there in their memory. They're fully intact. And where the fifth wheel was. He did not even take a picture of the general area standing from the easement into the yard. The majority of it I have is all clean.

Emily, can I ask you a question? You referred to a irrigation gate. Are you saying that they flood irrigate that property?

Yes. It's the only water the property has, and the groundwater recharge is necessary to recharge the well, not only to do all that other good land stuff for almonds and walnuts, you know.

So you just flood the ground to recharge. That's you're you're telling me they order water. Right?

Yes.

From TID. Okay.

And the vegetation sorry. The vegetation that was shown, that's part of the berm. The in order for irrigated water to actually recharge the ground, the water must be quickly put onto the property and it must be at a even.

It has to be at a

certain depth for this to work right and that's where the upland is is where you have the berms, the tall grasses, and I don't know what other features. I've only learned this in the last week and then the treatment is any water that is flowing off of the property has to be mended and that's what's happening along the easement where you see the vegetation and actually in the front and the front of the property extends five feet further into the street than anywhere else on the rest of the street. So, where the people are parking parking and complaining about the hedge, that's because her property is five feet further. It's 60 feet wide. The street is on this side.

55 feet, 60 feet. It's just a lot of I don't know what to call it but lack of knowledge of the land use of the property. So that's what I'd like to find out to clarify. And the hedge is five feet further out. Is there any knowledge of that when they're talking about what it needs to be done? I don't know.

Okay. Appreciate your time. Any questions? Any comments? No? Just one.

Secondly, did you intend to have the the board review those documents?

Yes, please. Well, to see these

Let's hold them there and then then Okay. Just leave them there and

and we'll we'll deal with them in a minute.

I'll take a picture of them and then you can have them.

What we

Our edits don't need

more stuff.

We'll we'll just have the board review them.

Okay. Thank

Okay. Next up, Cabrini Herrera.

Hello. This is my property. You all talk

to me

like it's nothing.

Can you pull

the mic down? Cabrini, could you pull it up? Thank you much. Ouch.

It's right in my face. Hello. My name is Cabrini Herrera. You're talking about my property sometimes. I like it doesn't exist. It's just not up to date. Code

Cabrina, can you speak right into that mic? We can't hear you. I'm sorry.

It's what? It's uncomfortable for me just to speak like it's in my mouth. Is that better?

Yeah. Yeah. That's much better. Thank you.

Sabrina Herrera. You know me now. That's what I Alright. Thank you. This whole thing is very stressful. The part with the trailer. That person allowed on my property to clean up help me clean up the property. It went bad, so I had to evict him. The eviction process took so long, so complicated, because there's no forms on how to do it. It's just a lot of wording that I'm not familiar with legal terms that have different meanings.

I finally got through this this process. Then he destroyed it. And calling people to remove it was disappointing because you you have hope this person you call can remove it. No. We can't do it for a certain amount of money. I'm very low income. I cannot be spending more money on that Okay. Situation that I didn't didn't start. He didn't he left all the garbage there for me to clean up. I cleaned up a few cans of it.

Continually, May, I cleaned more this May. But getting hurt from it kept me from doing as much as I wanted to because I hurt my back and my legs. It didn't matter. I I did it.

Karimi, can I ask you whether you live on the property? Is that correct or or you don't?

Of course. I live on the property. It's my property. Where do I live?

Just that. Thank you.

Does it make sense? Yes. Anything else?

No. Keep going. I'm sorry to interrupt you.

Yeah. I lost my train of thought. Okay. Like you said before, things need to move faster on evictions because this guy's cost me money on my property. Because the citations were coming in, I had to go to the eviction.

I couldn't pay citations as much as I when I could go there. It had to go to the eviction to get him off my property. And having more people on my property because he was just one person, he had a friend with him that caused more trouble, caused the police because they were fighting and arguing. And they turned around and started assaulting me with things because there's two of them to get off my property. All I wanted them is to leave. Just get your stuff and get off my property. Things would be better. No. That did not happen. So he put me in a bind because he knew I had the the violations for the citations because the trailer's there because he saw Stasi.

He talked to Stasi at my property. At his office the first time was in August or September. I think it was August. And he came to the property in September. He talked to Stasi then.

And he talked to him in April the next year when I was going to the eviction. And he saw that how much the citations were going up. He just continued to give me more more problems. I was in the process of writing a history of my property. How it's been in my family since my uncle George from the Navy got a GI grant and purchased it.

And then gave it on his death. He gave it to his parents. And from there it turned on to my mother and me. So it's four generations property. It's not just any property. And some of this stuff is accumulated from years, from years and years of stuff. It's old tire wheels, wagon wheels. Actually, are a couple in there. Milk cans from the goats. Raised goats on that place.

There's farm equipment. There's truck equipment, which I moved some of that recently. A surprise I found some big old tools. I didn't know what they were, but they were for farm trucks, someone told me. There's a lot of historical stuff on my property that I haven't discovered because I don't go back there. I don't mess with it as much. I look at it and go, okay. Those are my grandparents' days. But to come in and say, I don't try to do anything, I do stuff. I did stuff in September one, two years ago, '24.

I did recyclables, the hottest year in record in Stanislaus County. Did recyclables. Almost passed out. Got bug bites on me. Had to go to the doctor because Stossi was coming in September for inspection. So I moved all the recyclables and almost heat stroke. I do things to extend. When I'm cleaning, I do extensions. I just keep doing it until I'm done. And then I don't do anything anymore because I have to recover.

And then I tackle it again. But that's just me usually. I ball my my neighbor's garbage can to fill hers up and to fill mine up to comply. It's difficult when you don't have funds. I've asked Dossi Saturday, is there any way I can get Stanislaus to help me with a a dumpster or something to contain the stuff so I won't have to be using these small garbage cans to fill to get my property in compliance.

He said there's nothing available. But he talked about something, a program or something. Well, know, I could be an example of that program where you help the owner comply and not put more burden on the person as financially. I'm out of breath. I asked for some time to do my I was doing a declaration form.

I got halfway through it and passed out because was exhausted. Didn't get to finish it to to submit to you guys. I truly ask you to have a heart or have compassion for a person who very much tries to comply but not as fast as my neighbors want. And my neighbors are more of a problem for me because my property is a county property, like the parking in the front. I've told them this time and time again.

This is a county property. It lines up to my neighbor's property next door to me. That whole thing lines up five feet further where my hedges are. It is county property. It extends into the road. It's not city like theirs. And when there's a city, they park right there on the side, on this side, not and you still can't see when there's a vehicle parked there. You gotta come out in the driveway to see which way you're gonna go. It's normal if you live there. You're coming out that driveway because the properties are uneven.

Sorry. And my neighbors are constantly agitating, talking badly about me verbally and actually, this Friday, a good example. Mike came out in the middle of the alley, middle of the driveway, in the alley, in the front yard, front, because the trailer was parked on this side of the property. He confronted me about it with all the police department there, Said, what's your intentions? I looked at him. I have no intentions. I'm tying my shoe. That's just that's what I was doing, but I didn't say that. I just wasn't doing that act of tying my shoe. He comes at me really verbally mad.

I go, I have no intentions. I left and I went in my house. He's constantly starting to antagonize me for some reason to give a show. For what purpose? For some legal purpose later? That's what I'm thinking. So when I speak it's like censoring myself, speak. See where that red vehicle is in that picture? Well, that's where in that area, that's where I was tying my shooting. He compressed me in the middle of Kenwood, sorry, with all the police department there watching me, city police.

I mean, there must have been four on my side probably, three on this side where the red vehicle is, and I don't know how many on this side. It was overkill for that many people to come and move a trailer. It was ridiculous. Money spent like that for people just standing there drinking coffee and talking gossip, their own gossip, but, you know, they could do more. They don't need to be there.

Any questions? Any questions

of Cabrini? Was it Cabrini or Cabrina?

That's the only question you have. Okay. Cabrina C, c a b r. You can pronounce it different ways. I've got used to it before. Familiar with it.

Senior questions.

Thank you very much. I have one quick thing.

You had your opportunity to speak already. Sorry about that.

The irrigation.

Oh, okay. I forgot. Dispose. I understand about the irrigation. She didn't clarify the irrigation. The tin in the back, the big pieces of 12 foot tin are for the irrigation. I put those in a like a trough, a ditch, so the water doesn't go into my neighbor's yard on that new fencing back there. Those are put there. They're supposed to go back there, but the person who took the fence out did not put them back where they were belong to keep the water from going into his yard, my irrigate. I irrigate.

I haven't irrigate because the trailer's there so it's been a couple years and it's cost me to pat the irrigation on my property so the well will, like she says, generate the water and hold the water in there. On the berm she's talking about the berm for the water doesn't go out in the alley because then city of Turlock calls because there's water going out down the alley down towards Mitchell or down Kenwood in the summertime and they say we have to turn on our pumps. It won't make it down to canal before you have to turn on the pump. It's too it's too hot. It's just vaporized, you know, before it gets down there. But that's what they tell me. So I make up the dirt, push it up there so the water is contained in my yard.

So I guess

And these people have seen that in action. This the neighbors have seen me in action when I did that. Okay. It's in the past, but they've seen it.

So just miss Roer, just to I just wanted just to make sure I understand. From as far as you're concerned, it was really this tenant, this person that you were leasing to that really caused all these issues on your property and just the process of you trying to get them out of there then to get it cleaned up is kinda what caused this three three year delay or so. Is that am I understanding that right?

Pretty much, yes. Because when you're dealing with two people that are uncooperative and verbally abusive to you and not helping you, just causing you more problems.

The tenant you're

talking get them out and you're living with them in your property. You see them every time you walk out the door. It's very difficult not to do something illegal to them.

Okay.

Yeah. And

and for the rest of the board, this is Kenwood Island, which is on our ARPA list for

And then you get the sheriffs out there and it's like, they have no comment. We can't do anything about it. You got a victim. That's the thing. Because that's the only thing they say. You have to evict them. Go through the process. Get them out.

Alright. Thank you very much. Okay.

Thank you.

So, Lane, what are the things on the the list that haven't been cleaned or that remain on your list?

Still the miscellaneous items that are out there. Some of the recycling stuff has been gone. So weeds that need to be taken care of. There's still some debris that's out there. What's sheet metal for? It's roofing materials and stuff. I don't know what that is an indication for. What's being used on it could require a permit, whatever they're trying to do, if they're trying to divert something. So when the inspector did an inspection just Saturday when he was out there, said there was a lot of miscellaneous stuff that needs to be done. A dumpster, you know, or two dumpster loads could take care of that itself, you know, and of course, as you see the grass and stuff there, it would need to be maintained and cut down, take care of.

There's a detached garage that's on the property. We have a lot of pictures. Don't want to go through all the pictures that we've taken on this, but a detached garage is in a bad condition and the house itself has some issues that we are concerned about for some occupying the house that will come later on if we're trying to get all the services to help out as much as we can, but, you know, property owner has to take care of the property. And if they can't take care that, we're gonna continue on with it. The vehicles, we're asking that the vehicles are to be maintained on the property as is.

Know, if we have to, if we can get closer inspection of them, just say that they had to be removed, would be something different. But I think we can work with them with the vehicles as long as the rest of the property is maintained. Alright.

Continue the public comment period. Bianca?

Good morning, board. Bianca Lopez. I am I I don't know the history, but I I do want to learn more about what the departments of environmental resources role is for community education and awareness about that. You know, I heard the the two people who came up to the mic before me, mentioned compassion or lack of compassion and education. And I can agree with that in other areas of the county and cities and other jurisdictions.

I will attest that your website is not user friendly and information is not updated. So if people are tasked with educating themselves and using your resources that isn't very resourceful, that doesn't really help. But I'd like to learn what the Department of Environmental Resources has provided to the land owner for education and accessing resources that might assist, the the owner. It does seem like there are some resources that are out there. You know, some nonprofits pick up vehicles that are abandoned, that no longer work, that can be picked up.

I don't know that that's listed on your website. So I'm I'm just really curious about the education piece of the department. I mean and then, like, I don't know. It seems also like we're nitpicking at little things, overgrown grass, weeds. Do you go tell farmers that too?

Okay. I mean, that it just seems like a minor thing, We should probably choose our battles for things that are actually a nuisance in the community. This is one of the problems when we have pocket islands where one community, one side of the road has been maintained and taken care of and another is county and it lacks resources and has, you know, been left behind. But, I'd like to learn more about the educational piece, that the department is responsible for or may have claimed to share. And then also what is documented that they shared with the individual is also important.

Thank you. To go over that a

little quickly on that, we did issue a notice and order, and we have violations also. When we do the inspections, we try to contact the owner over there. We did go five months before we issued any kind of a citation, so we're out there every thirty days trying to make contact with the owner, knocking on the doors, asking if someone can help. They need help, we move forward on that to say this is what we ask to be done, the violations that are out there, and how we have to correct them. As for services, there are services that we try to include to have other jurisdictions would call the county.

With us being in a county, call other people in the county to come out and do something. We offer those services, BHRS, if they need some help in those. We don't have a lot of programs for that to set up in the county. It's something I've been looking into to set up a lot of stuff to see if we can, as I mentioned earlier, to see if we can set some things, monies aside to do assistance somehow, but it's not in code enforcement's department or Department of Biodiversity Resources that do those things on there. So we've talked months and months before we got to a point of actually issuing a citation to say we need to get this taken care of. If they don't contact us, you know, we leave our cards, our business cards. We try to make contact at the doors, and it's up to them to contact us and find out why we're out there.

So, yeah, notification and citations is not education or assistance with resources, And your website really needs to get fixed.

Thank you very much, Bianca. Anyone else for public comment? Come on up, Ron.

Thank you once again, mister chairman. And, Ron McMurtry again. Yeah. I noticed we have a little situation that maybe we can start, you know, making this go smoothly, education side of it, and I'm very interested in that. It's interesting what was brought up.

On the one hand, it is possible to have the relevant departments. I don't know what the name of the department. I guess they can do the cleanup and that they would get they would I understand they charge something to the property taxes and that real savvy landowners might use that as a quote as he said, quote, bank. And we don't want that because that probably is not fair market value for the services. But on the other hand, as you can see, we do have probably poor property owners that don't have the resources if they want to hire someone to get someone to do that.

So I would like to suggest that maybe we have a program for the relevant department that can and they can say, hey. We can clean it up for you and, you know, let them know the terms. Let them know that's an option so they don't have to slave away and try to make a million phone calls because they don't, you know, they don't have connections with the and if you look at the kinds of things that's to be done, not not only vehicles, removing vehicles, but, you know, the removal of debris, of course, and then shrubs. And that's just a diff that's gonna be a different subcontractors. All these subcontractors that the department is more likely to have available at their fingertips. So I'd like to recommend maybe some kind of whatever. Don't know which it has to be an ordinance, but something where you can offer that as a service to landowners that we want to comply but don't have a lot of resources. Thank you.

Thank you, Ron. Anyone else? Okay. So maybe give us a moment. We're going to bring these documents up. Let us each look at the documents.

Got another question for Lane.

Yeah, go ahead right now.

Would be great. Lane, just

if we go through

the process end up going through the process here today with this particular agenda item, They still have the opportunity within those ninety days to clean the property, and if we there doesn't need to be any action, then none's taken, correct? Correct. Correct.

Yeah.

With any case that happens when we move out there, we've actually had situations where we've issued citations for someone, gave them thirty days to to correct it. If they correct within that thirty days, we've actually reversed that last citation because they're in the process of of taking care of things. You know, we're not here to put monetary citations on anyone. Division doesn't get those citations back to us. We don't, you know, encourage that. We encourage people to clean properties up as we talk to them and work with them.

Correct. Thank you.

Yeah. The public comment period. I'm sorry. I didn't hear. The public comment period is closed.

Lane, just going through that document there, I I noticed you would make notes such as removal of weeds, things like that. Do we give the proper measurements of, like, hey, the brushes need to be here and there? Do we give those type of specifics?

Yeah. They'll say how tall they have to be. Correct. And of course any dead vegetation, of course, right now it's not dead vegetations out there because of the seasons, but for the seasons there is dead vegetation which is fire hazard.

Okay. Everyone's had an opportunity to see. Any more questions of staff and or so I would tell you that because this is slated to go out to bed and we're gonna do sidewalks and some drainage here and bring it up to standard, hoping that the city has the ability to or will annex it, which would be best served for the residents of the Kenwood Island, Kenwood Mitchell area. It's it's fairly exciting. I I would tell you because I'm always about compliance.

I want you to know that it's about compliance. And I, for a few years, there was no compliance. I think that's pretty simple. I've been by there many, many times in my life. The city of Turlock has had issue with it.

The neighbors obviously have issue with it. But we started the process, and I know that Lane and his staff have been continuing to do it. The fact that there has been progress is different than the last parcel for me and substantial progress. I think there's a disagreement with how much more progress needs to be done, but I know there's more progress that needs to be done based on our the way we interpret things. But because of the fact that they've actually stepped up and removed the mobile home or the fifth wheel along with picking up the trash.

I would like to see I would make the recommendation that we we put this off to a date certain thirty days more or less on a board meeting and see if there's more progress. If there's not, I think that that will seal it for me. But because you had told me that 60% of it has been cleaned, I I that's all I want. I want compliance. And it seems like they're working towards compliance.

It it doesn't overburden them with cost at one in one fell swoop where they have to do something quickly. This gives them a little more time for potentially for garbage cans. That's something but, again, if in thirty days that you come back and you report that there has been no progress, then I'll probably change my position and my thought process. Thirty days is

About February 17 or February 10.

Think February 7. Okay. Just

to note, I'm looking at our meeting calendar, and our February meetings are on the third and the twenty fourth. We do not have a meeting on the tenth or the seventeenth. So you would need to pick one

of those two dates. So I would go to the twenty fourth. That's what I would recommend, but I look forward to any other comments. Again, I don't I don't wanna hamstring you, but I think this is a fair assessment of what we got. Any other thoughts? Okay.

Appropriate motion would be to continue the item to 02/24/2026.

Yeah and I just just reinforce that. Yeah. If nothing has happened by that meeting, then then we're we're done. Yeah and and I appreciate all the efforts that you guys have done and how to push this off. I know it's frustrating but and there has been so many so many opportunities here. But I think that's it. That's one last opportunity. There's no harm in that.

Alright. Is that in the

maker

of the motion? Is that a motion?

That's a motion.

I'll second that motion. Okay. We have a second. First and second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries five zero. Thank you, Lane. Thanks, Rob.

Okay. Move on to item seven, correspondence. Acknowledge receipt of correspondence and refer as recommended on the agenda.

Bianca wants to

speak for item, correspondence item number one.

Okay. Correspondence number one, we have a request. Bianca Lopez. And this is regarding board number I mean, the board has received a letter from the Riverdale Park Track Community Services District regarding chemicals in their water system exceeding the notification levels.

That's correct. Good morning again. You know, I've I've seen the River Park Track and notices about water contamination being at notification for quite some time. It's also listed in the letter. I'd like to just learn or understand, do the residents continue to drink this contaminated water? Is that the expectation? And then are they required to notify the residents right away or just during their consumer confidence report at the yearly marks? I'm very interested in long term plans. This community is has been drinking contaminated water for a very long time or at least using it. And I'm not sure if they're getting bottled water.

What is the Department of Environmental Resources role and the next step? So they're notified and then what happens next.

So can I, Bianca, really quick? Good questions and questions that we've been asking for a long time out there. So we're in the process. One of the first thing, we are part of our ARPA funds. This is in my district and and all of mine, the money that I was allocated is going towards putting curves, gutters, sidewalks, sewer, and water out there in that in that area which as you know is like a third world country out there right now. So we're in the process of that. There is a line from the city of Modesto that's sitting right there now that will bring city water to that area. We're doing everything we can to make that happen. Self Help Enterprises is working with that. I actually texted Juan Kano, I think is his name.

Juan Kano is the individual who's helping us with self help. I text him last night. He said, where are we on this? It's just been going back and forth. And and Tommy, I know you guys have been working on it with the city of Modesto. I And don't know, Tom, if you have any update on where that stands at this point? Unfortunately, do not. Okay. But there is a grand plan that is going to replace their whole water system out there and their sewer system. And so, anyway, we were in the process of that. It this has happened constantly where the water will go bad. We treat the well. It comes back. But it but it's not a solution, and we know that. But we have a solution, and we are we are very close to getting there and to to making this happen.

It's never fast enough. It's been a nightmare for us just trying to get to this thing, but we are just so close to making this happen, and the water is the first thing that's gonna happen.

Okay. That sounds like a like there is a long term plan being developed. And so what happens now that the Department of Environmental Resources has been notified of the levels of beyond notification, but they're like in between notification and like a response level? So what happened? What's between notification and response?

I think usually when we find out that the levels aren't there, we get out there and we treat the wells as what has happened in the past. And I'd have to talk with I'll talk with Rob and see where we are in that. But, yeah, there's tests constantly going on out there. You know, it's across the street from the old Bunsie Dump. There's it's just a nightmare spot. Hence, we're that's why we're gonna fix this. But as these levels change and become where they're out of compliance as far as then we get out there or somebody gets out there and works on it. Brings brings it back into compliance. But again, it's just a temporary fix. The permanent fix is coming.

You mentioned self help enterprises, so I'm guessing that they are receiving bottled water for drinking?

I'm I'm not I can't answer that. I'm not sure.

Okay. I

mean They

they have in the past, but I can't tell you what they're doing right now.

Okay. This is just an important topic, especially for the people that live at River Park Track. This contamination affects your liver, thyroid, reproductive toxicity, cancer, immunotoxicity. These are serious and severe health consequences, and so making sure that the community is notified of those health effects of poor drinking water or access to to good drinking water is really important. So do they get notified right away as well? I

I just don't know the process.

I'm sure the community service district knows all that. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

So talk to the community service district?

Yeah. Have they have their own officials. I'm on elected board out there.

Okay.

Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah. But we're working on it. We're almost there.

Sounds

Thank you very much, Bianca. Okay. We're gonna move on to I know, but I'm item eight. I'm squinting. I took off my glasses. Any Board of Supervisory reports? Man, I love it. On to item nine, legislative fiscal management report.

Okay. A few items to update you on. Number one, I think everyone saw that the the the governor did release their preliminary budget for fiscal years 2627 late last week and of course, we're going through to look for any impacts to counties. There were a few items that, CSAC had called out on behalf of counties throughout the state. The three items specifically that we saw them, call out were, the, lack of support for impacts from the federal impacts of what we call HR one, mainly on the medical population.

So that continues to be a significant point of conversation between counties in the state of California. Another was the low level of support for implementation of prop 36 that was specifically called out by CSAT representatives as a concern in the current budget as well as some reductions in IHSS funding that were unclear as to potential impacts to county. So I just want to note that those were the three things that CSAC had called out in this preliminary budget, proposal from the governor. Of course, this is just the starting point for budget negotiations through the year And I think in most of the responses from the governor's office, you saw that, they would point to a more refined budget in May. Most of the headlines did resolve or or revolve around, what the assumptions were in the governor's budget compared to those of the legislative analyst office and that the governor's budget, had much more revenue assumed than the legislative analyst office.

So I'm sure there'll be more conversation and reconciliation of the differences between those two projections but they were significant. I also want to recognize that, just this last week, there was an effort, to freeze federal funding, related to, child care and family assistance funds affecting California and four other states. This also got a lot of headlines. There is a multistate lawsuit challenging this action as unlawful, and a federal judge has already temporarily blocked blocked this freeze with, while litigation proceeds, so we'll track that issue as well. It's unfortunately, we have to mention again that there we are facing the potential for another federal government shutdown at the end of this month unless additional additional continuing resolutions are resolved at the federal level.

So that's getting a lot of headlines. Hopefully, that does not carry on as we experienced last fall. Just a couple of other announcements. I wanna announce that our Stanislaus Animal Services Agency is hosting a strategic planning workshop tomorrow at 9AM at the Seres Community Center. Public is welcome to attend and provide public comment.

You can visit stanislasanimalservices.com to review the posted agenda. I also want to announce that, we're excited and the public is invited to join us tomorrow at 2PM at the 1500 Block Of Eureka Street in Modesto for the Bret Hart Infrastructure improvements groundbreaking ceremony. This is another one of those, ARPA funded projects, improvements in the community. Very, very excited to get out there for that groundbreaking ceremony. And then the last announcement is that this Friday is the deadline to volunteer for our annual homeless point in time count, scheduled for the morning of January 29. We have a registration link and more details available on our homepage at stancounty.com. Thank you.

Thank you very much. All right. Nothing else with the good of the order. This meeting is adjourned. We do have a closed session.

Yes, we have closed session this morning. We have two items. The first is a conference with labor negotiators presented in the Government Code section 54,957.6. The agency negotiators are listed in the agenda, as are the labor organizations. The second item is existing litigation pursuant to Government Code Section 54,956.9, subdivision D1. One case, Beard et al. Versus County Of Stanislaus et al. That's in the U. S. District Court Eastern District and the case number is 121CV841. Appropriate for public comment.

And go out for public comment. Any public comment? All right. We're going adjourn to closed session.