The Santa Clara County Planning and Development Office will
conduct its first administrative hearing to consider the imposition
of new fees and fines for land use code violations Friday.
The Santa Clara County Planning and Development Office will conduct its first administrative hearing to consider the imposition of new fees and fines for land use code violations Friday.
Earlier this year, the board of supervisors adopted an ordinance authorizing the department to levy fees on property owners who are not in compliance with local codes associated with construction, earth moving and other land modifications.
“What we (normally) rely on is voluntary compliance if someone is notified there is a violation,” county code enforcement Specialist Jim Lanz said. “In the past, we had to take legal action if they failed to take remedial action. What we’ve found is the court system is not particularly well-suited for dealing with land use violations, and success was sort of so-so.”
Previously, the county would attempt to goad offending property owners into compliance with a notice of violation. If owners failed to correct the violation, the county would have served them with a lawsuit, a citation, or requested the District Attorney to open a case, Lanz explained.
Now, after being served with a notice of violation, a property owner is given a certain period of time to correct the violation voluntarily. After that grace period passes without such a correction, the department can levy an administrative fine that ranges from $100 to $1,000 per day depending on the severity of the violation, Lanz said.
Property owners may appeal the fines if they think they are not responsible or the fines are unjustified.
Five properties in Santa Clara County have been cited for fines since the new penalty schedule went into effect in March, and three of those are in the southern part of the county, Lanz said.
“These are for long-standing violations that we haven’t been successful (in abating) in the past. Hopefully (the fines) will bring this to a conclusion,” Lanz said.
One property owner whose case will be heard Friday is Preston Avery, who owns a lot at 20000 Monterey Road that is covered with giant piles of gravel and crushed rock.
The county has levied a fine of $1,000 per day on Avery, citing him for running a quarry operation and grading without a permit, plus a long list of minor violations, the property owner explained.
Avery said he has had ongoing wranglings with the planning department since zoning was adopted in that part of the county in the mid-1980s. He said he has owned the property next door on which he runs Land and Sea RV Storage and Service, since 1977. He purchased the seven-acre parcel that is on Friday’s administrative hearing agenda about 20 years later.
He has had at least one case pending in Superior Court related to separate land use allegations, which he denies, for several years, Avery said.
The current allegations stem from a tenant who leased the property about 12 years ago, he said. That tenant routinely dumped concrete and other debris on the property without Avery’s permission.
Avery evicted the tenant, who continued illegally dumping during the eviction proceedings, and even after a Superior Court judge ordered the tenant to clean up the property.
The tenant has skipped town, and Avery claims he tried for about 10 years to acquire permits to crush and dispose of the rock, which consisted of slabs of broken concrete.
“That’s twice as long as it took to fight World War II,” said Avery, who finally decided to crush the rock on site without permits in 2007. Two days later, the county served him with a notice of violation, he said.
It is unclear for how long the department has imposed the $1,000-a-day fine on Avery, he said. If the fines date back to the first notice, they could add up to more than $500,000.
Another South County property with long-standing violations is on Uvas Road, and the owner allegedly built a home there without acquiring a permit. That property owner and the county are currently in negotiations to settle that case, Lanz said.
Friday’s hearing will take place at 10 a.m. at the Santa Clara County Planning Office, 70 West Hedding St. in San Jose.
