Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today.

Is Thursday, March 5th at the Board of Supervisors Planning Meeting?

I'd like to call the meeting to order and ask the clerk to please call the roll to establish our quorum.

Supervisor Marquez, excused.

Supervisor Tam, excused.

Supervisor Miley.

Supervisor Fortunato Baz.

President Howbert?

Present.

We have a quorum.

We have a quorum.

Will you all please rise if you can and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance?

Pledge allegiance to the flag.

The United States of America.

For which it stands.

One nation under God.

Liberty and justice for all.

So Supervisor Tam is sick and unable to join us today.

Supervisor Marquez is in traffic, but will be here very shortly.

We're going to proceed with the meeting because our first item of business is to approve minutes and then we have to adjourn into close recess in the closed session.

She uh Supervisor Marquez will be here when we come out.

I am certain of that.

So there will be four of us today, but Supervisor Tam is ill and unable to join.

With that said, the first item is to approve the minutes of our planning meeting from February 10th, 2026.

Is there a motion to do so?

Second.

Motion's been moved and made by Supervisor Miley seconded by Supervisor Fortunato Bass.

Do we have any public comment on the minutes of the planning meeting?

Seeing none, I'll ask for a roll call vote, please.

Supervisor Marquez, excuse Supervisor Tam, excuse Supervisor Miley.

Supervisor Fortunato Baz.

President Haubert.

Yes.

That passes.

With that said, our next item is that we will adjourn recess in the closed session, and we will come back out and take up our items as soon as we're done with closed session.

Um so everybody sit tight.

We're in recess right now in the closed session.

Okay, good morning, everyone.

We are going to bless you.

We are going to reconvene from close session.

I will ask the clerk to call the roll to establish our quorum.

Supervisor Marquez.

Supervisor Tam, excuse Supervisor Miley.

Supervisor Fortunato Bas.

President Howbert?

Present.

We have a quorum.

Our next item is item three approving record of cost abatement and authorization for assessment liens on properties in violation of abatement orders under the neighborhood preservation ordinance.

Is there a motion to do so?

I'll second.

Motion's been made by Supervisor Miley, seconded by Supervisor Marquez.

Is there any staff report on this needed?

Okay, we'll ask for public comment.

Seeing none, roll call vote, please.

Supervisor Marquez, aye.

Supervisor Tam, excuse Supervisor Miley.

Supervisor Fortunato Bass.

President Howbert.

Aye.

I note that item seven is a conditional use permit for the mosaic project.

I sense that a lot of people are in the room here for that.

And because we might not have to wait until the end to have that, I'll ask my colleagues.

Can we please adjust the calendar to move item seven to be the next item?

I have a question.

Okay.

Can we have to take a roll call vote for that?

Or we can just do it.

I'll ask up my county council.

Uh supervisor, I just wanted to note for the record that no reportable action was taken in closed session.

Um to answer question, as the chair, you have the ability to uh modify the agenda and take items in sequence as you deem appropriate.

Everybody okay if we move item seven up to be the next item.

Okay.

I see thumbs up, that's all we need.

We're gonna move uh to item number seven.

Hi.

And um I uh I'm gonna turn to my colleague Marquez, because um, indeed, we're now receiving additional information.

Okay, um, so I'll recognize Supervisor Marquez.

Uh thank you, President Howard, and good morning, and welcome everyone to our meeting.

I want to respectfully ask to continue item number seven, and I'm gonna have some follow-up questions for county council.

But as you will see, we continue to get information and um a lot of uh specific technical uh packets.

Uh, this isn't the only one I've received physically.

We received uh a significant amount of material yesterday, and we are also short one supervisor.

Uh so I'd like to continue the item, but I want to clarify if we do decide to do if I decide to make that request.

Can we or can we not have public comment at this time?

Is that a decision of everything has to be moved to a later date, or could we um hear public comment and not do deliberations, trying to figure out what the options are?

Uh yeah, supervisor, your board operating procedures allow each member the um authority to continue any item on any of your agendas at any time uh to the next regular board meeting.

And so you may choose to do so uh however um because we are having a planning matter that is quasi judicial in nature and we're creating an administrative record.

Uh if you are not hearing the matter, then you should not hear the matter.

That includes taking public testimony, um, putting anything else in the record, we need to have it concise.

Um, and so if you're opening it for one reason, then you open it for all reasons and is it is not continued.

Okay, and can we please confirm that the next planning meeting I believe is scheduled for Thursday, April 16th.

We just adopted this this past Tuesday, the schedule.

Correct, it's April 16th at 10 a.m.

10 a.m.

Do we have many items on the agenda for that day already scheduled?

Uh not at this time.

We don't have uh anything at this time.

Okay, so um I acknowledge that this is a huge inconvenience for those that have come today, but we need to get through the additional materials, and we are short one supervisor.

So I'm going to ask that we continue the item to April 16th at 10 a.m.

Very good.

Uh protocols allow for an item to be continued by any one of uh uh any board member, and uh that privilege has been uh invoked.

So therefore we will um continue item 17 to 7 to uh April 16th planning meeting.

Um everyone is welcome to come back at that time.

We will hear this matter then.

It's not the first time or the only time that an item has been continued by a member of the board, it is our operating procedures.

Um, and as was explained, we're continuing to get a lot of information.

So with that said, we're going to also respectfully ask if people are gonna send written material, you have every right to do it up until the hearing, and we are gonna hear public comment on this item, but you cannot expect us to read all of this during a meeting.

So please please send the written materials in advance to the meeting.

Um, if you expect us to read it, it's really difficult to listen to the presentations and read during the meeting.

So that is also why I'm requesting the continuance so we could thoroughly review all of the information that everybody's submitting.

Thank you.

Thank you.

With that, we will move to item number four, five, and six.

I'd like to take a five-minute break so people can leave the room.

We're gonna recess for five minutes.

All right, we're going to reconvene the open session from our brief recess.

I'll ask the clerk to please call the role to establish our quorum.

Supervisor Marquez.

Supervisor Tam, excuse Supervisor Miley.

Supervisor Fortunato Bas.

President Halbert.

Present.

Our next item is item four adopting the resolution approving the 2025 general plan annual report and housing element annual report.

Great, okay.

Good morning, supervisors.

I'm Olivia Ortiz, they then, and I'm here to share a brief report on the county's 2025 general plan and housing and element annual reports.

Um, do you want to note we made the slides a little briefer in light of today's original agenda?

But happy to cover anything additional.

Does that make sense?

I'm waiting for.

Can I just ask?

Didn't we do this?

Every year.

We do it every year.

Which was my next slide.

Wednesday up here.

Um, we we did you showed them to me.

In the binder.

Oh, geez.

We did hear are you able to share we can promote you?

Yes, I still hear that we're just I'm sorry all the questions.

Well, are you having a yes?

Um, do you need to plug in?

Apologies for that all.

Um, now we have the slides up.

So as we were saying, um the annual reports on our general plan and our housing element are required by state law, including among other things government code sections six five four zero zero.

And um, as I was saying, we do go through this process every year.

Um, so first we'll go over our 2025 general plan updates as background.

We have three planning areas: Castro Valley, East County, and the Eden area.

Our area-based general plans cover the majority of topics required by state law.

That's land use, circulation, conservation, open space safety, and noise.

Um, then we also have nine unincorporated countywide elements in our general plan.

Um, we've had a few general plan projects this past year in 2025.

Staff worked with Alameda County Fire to alter the land use designation of six eight five five via rail drive in Castor Valley to support the construction of a new fire station.

Um, and in May and June of last year, your board adopted amendments to the East County area plan to promote the development of visitor surveying uses supporting the South Livermore Valley area.

Um, and later this spring, our department is looking forward to sharing updates for the safety element, open space element, and community climate action plan for your board's consideration.

A new component of our general plan update is the environmental justice element implementation status reports.

The status report is one of your lengthy attachments.

Um staff have presented on this report and received feedback on it from the MAX in the planning commission.

I do want to note a typo we made.

Um staff were unable to present to unincorporated services this past month, so um, that'll be presented on that agenda as soon as possible.

Um, if there are questions about the EJ element implementation, the staff person who is actually working on it is listening in.

So if you have questions about that, Ali Abbers would be happy to answer.

Um but this status report is very wide-ranging, um covers progress on implementation done by all 13 county agencies.

Um turning towards our six specific plans.

Staff have been working with consultants for the past several years to update the Castor Valley Central Business District specific plan.

Um and it's currently looking like this update will be ready for your board's consideration early next year, early 2027.

Um we are also looking forward to beginning the San Lorenzo Village Specific Plan Update, likely later this year.

Um, and that project is funded by a priority development area grant or PDA grant from MTCA Bag.

So that's it on our general plan update.

Now I'll provide some information about our housing element updates.

What we're looking at is the chart of residential units permitted by affordability levels, both this year and throughout this current housing element cycle.

So in 2025, the county issued permits for 107 units of housing in the unincorporated areas.

If you look at the white upper part of this chart, that includes 11 single family homes, one duplex consisting of two units and 94 accessory dwelling units.

We had no new multifamily or manufactured housing units permitted in 2025.

107 overall units is pretty similar to our APRs prior to 2023.

In 2023 and 2024, we had slightly higher counts due to a few larger scale projects that were moving through the pipeline.

So this is kind of a return to the county standard.

Our ADU permit numbers have also held fairly constant.

In the past four years, they've been between 83 and 120 ADUs.

And then if we look more towards the bottom half of this table, if I will scroll to share, there were 611 units permitted.

So a little bit of 2022, 2023, and then 2024.

So in total, the county has issued permits for 718 units of housing during the cycle.

That means we've met about 15% of our regional housing needs allocation or RENA.

Now to meet RENA, theoretically, the county would need to permit the equivalent of about 590 units per year.

While we are not meeting those numbers, we have permitted about the same number of units just in this chunk of the cycle that we permitted in the entire last cycle.

So still significant progress.

I also want to note this chart is in your report.

We didn't include the slide again because we thought today's agenda would be rather lengthy, but about 55 of those ADUs were in Castro Valley, another 29 were in the Eden area.

In the kind of higher amounts of housing being permitted in Castro Valley has been pretty consistent.

So just adding that.

Another important part of our housing element are all of the programs in it.

Our current housing element has seven different goals with 77 programs organized among them.

59 of those programs are either in progress, ongoing county functions, or completed.

They vary very widely and include such things as the rezonings your board approved back in 2024 when we adopted the housing element, the various housing resources offered via county HCD's work, the county's implementation of the housing or excuse me of the environmental justice element and code enforcement's rental inspection pilot.

Those are all are really just some of the programs included.

And we have a complete summary of our progress on all 77 of them in one of the larger tables in your attachments.

At the beginning of February on February 2nd, we presented a version of this to the planning commission to receive their comments, and we have a summary of that again towards the end of our staff report.

We're here today presenting to your board.

We will be submitting to the state before the April 1st deadline, and at the top of 2027, we will begin this process all over again.

So thank you for hearing my presentation.

Is that your board take public testimony?

And it's not the resolution approving the 2025 general plan annual report and housing element annual reports.

Very good.

I'll open public comment, ask speakers to make comment and then bring it back for deliberation and questions from our board.

Do we have any members of the public to speak on this item?

If you're online, please raise your hand.

We have speakers.

Thank you, Ms.

Kelly.

We have first a comment on this Zoom teleconference technical quality.

I'm getting a static uh every time somebody speaks, uh, there's an overlay of static uh and it's uh loud static coming in.

I'm wondering if uh anybody else is hearing that.

I bet you everybody is hearing that, and I bet you it's due to the poor technical quality of your uh equipment and configuration right there at the Alameda County uh Board of Supervisors Chambers.

Um also on this uh report with um uh the I've seen some of these planning reports before.

They're very detailed about exactly how much progress has been made, but they fail to show exactly um how much is left, and if they do show how much is left, they say, Oh, we have eighty-five percent remaining of the units to be filled to hit the arena target or whatever.

The um we're at 15 percent.

Um that's over the full period, but here we are part way through.

So we don't know um how are we doing um on uh you know on the progress to date progress so far.

We kind of can make a guess.

You know, staff kind of gives you people a little bit of a of an uh hint, like we're about two or two and a half years into it, which means we're about 30 percent into the period to the eight year planning cycle, and we're uh you know part way there, and we're only 15% uh constructed.

But staff is really really really uh very vague and not very quantitative in telling us exactly uh what is the progress towards goal uh to date to date.

Thank you.

Caller, you're on the line, you have two minutes.

Shui, Lucy, Lou, can you unmute?

You have two minutes.

Can you hear me now?

Two minutes, yes.

Can you hear me now?

Yes, go ahead, please.

Yeah, I have the same complaint regarding the noise in the background as the previous guy.

Uh, I'm not sure his name.

Uh I got the same issue.

No, it's really annoying.

So would you please fix this problem?

However, the previous guy's talking, I can hear clearly, but just now that lady's voice.

Thank you.

If you would like to give public comment now would be the time to do it, or we move to the next speaker.

Okay.

No more speakers.

Okay.

Then we'll close public comment questions about this um report.

I see the lights on.

I'll recognize Supervisor Miley and forks and out of ask them more quiz.

APR stands for the Andrew Parker's report.

Yes.

Um and it's due by April 1st.

Yes.

And you said we weren't able to give it to the Max.

We're on the corporate Services committee.

We so we traditionally don't um present this to the MAX.

We normally present the APR to the planning commission, which we did.

It was the um the environmental justice status implementation report has had a separate road show where they did go to MAX and the PC, but they are due to unincorporated services.

I think they were bumped from February, unfortunately.

Okay.

Because we could have heard this uh and unincorporated it last week, even though we were there until 10 o'clock.

Since most of this involves the urban unincorporated community, I would have appreciated typically this does come to the corporate services committee.

Um, which is a you know, obviously it's a meeting that takes place in the community at this uh St.

Lorenzo Library in the community can attend, but um let it be then um the if we don't meet our arena numbers of 4700, um refresh memory, what's gonna happen?

I think the uh the biggest thing will that we will face a large arena likely again in the next cycle.

Um just statistically speaking, that's one of the reasons why arena is so big this year.

I don't believe there's specific uh legal ramifications currently about not meeting arena because most jurisdictions don't need their arena, right?

Then um supervisor, if I may just add on that um there are financial implications from the state board of eligibility for various grants and state funding if we're not making certain progress towards arena.

Um I'm not sure of any jurisdiction that you be full compliance, but there are the potentials for uh state action.

Okay, because I know we have about five years left to meet the arena numbers.

Um I don't think we're gonna meet them, but um then my other question is under the specific plans.

I thought I I'm puzzled because I've been asking staff to do a specific plan for the South Castro Valley.

Um, and that's not on this list.

And I thought we were going to be queuing that up.

We were uh supervisor.

I did uh reach out to certain members of the community that live in that area, um and I we did exchange some emails, there didn't seem to be uh strong desire for us to meet uh to talk specifically about that specific plan.

Um we're happy to have those preliminary conversations with the community.

I just didn't get a whole lot of interest back uh from the folks that I talked to.

We should talk more about that, you and I and Ashley, because yeah, um, I see one person in the audience who lives in that area, um, South Castro Valley.

Uh and I know I've been out to you know it's been um you know they've had issues and concerns, and uh uh you know, the um the um and maras and uh housing development and e-housing and the unions of the wildlife and things of that nature.

So I'm kind of surprised that there wasn't a level of interest and move forward.

So we should follow up and talk about that further.

Sure, okay.

All right, I think that that's those are all my questions for now.

So thank you.

And I think you I think you said you were to try to bring this on incorporate services since um it can get there and it's gonna be submitted just you know with board approval today.

I'm I'm trying to determine whether or not I even think it's worth bringing it at this point, but in the future, make sure because you know we control the agenda that if something's got to get on the agenda, we get it on the agenda.

Yeah, yeah.

Supervisor Fortunato Bass.

Thank you for the update.

Um, I do have a few questions.

Um, since ADUs make up the overwhelming majority of permitted units, um, can you remind us what the county is doing to support AD development?

I know that we did allocate some funding from Measure A1 interests to ADUs and small sites.

Is how is that helping production?

So it is helping.

We do have a website devoted to helping people throughout the county construct ADUs with design assistance as well as some information around financing.

Many developments now that would do like a town home with a separate, you know, small 200 300 square foot ADU attached to the unit.

So we're getting a lot of interest on the in the on the new construction front as well as folks that are just uh taking advantage of the new ADU laws.

And so that's why you do see that being a pretty high numbers that we have seen a dramatic uptick in ADUs over the last five years.

Um it just keeps going up and seems to be a lot of strong interest in it.

Thank you.

And looking forward, what are the housing production project projections for next year, or this year rather?

Um are there any multifamily or larger scale projects in the pipeline or any de-restricted affordable housing projects in the pipeline?

Uh a deed restricted that I really can't speak to.

I don't think there's anything large in the pipeline that is uh coming to mind, but there are some infill projects that are being proposed as part of the uh there are projects that are on the housing element inventory that are taking place, and so we are seeing some of the policies that the board adopted uh take shape in real life specifically around housing mobility and increasing densities in single family zones in high resourced areas.

There's a couple of projects, for example, in Fairview that are uh notable that are making their way through the process.

Um, but it is a down cycle for us.

I think that we're seeing some small infill, but not necessarily any larger projects or uh aggregating sites to make a big project.

We do have some housing element sites that are county owned, um, mostly in the Ashton Cherryland area, so we are making moves on those as well, and uh will continue to do so for the for this cycle.

Thank you.

And my last question is in relation to the tenant protections that are part of our work on housing.

What's the status of the uh mobile home parks ordinance?

Yes, we have a draft that is set to go back to the planning commission in about 30 days or so.

Uh we have an extensive community work on our mobile home ordinance.

It is a conversion slash closure ordinance, um, and so we have refined that based on the last direction that we got from unincorporated services committee late last year, and we are hoping to go back to planning commission in the uh in the next meeting or two, and then it'll come to uh board committee and then the full board.

Thank you, and uh just a quick follow-up.

Um, how many mobile home parks are there in Alameda County as well as the incorporated, and do we have a sense of how many are at risk of closing?

So I don't have a number for the whole county.

Um we do know that there's 18 in the unincorporated area.

Um, and in terms of risk of closure, there's one project, Paradise Mobile Home Park that seems to be uh that's the part we're getting the most input from in terms of concern that the residents are uh maybe not gonna be able to take advantage of all the protections that are afforded to them and our closure conversion ordinance will address that to some degree.

Thank you.

Uh thank you, President Habard, and thank you, Supervisor Cortana Bass.

I had a similar questions with respect to the mobile home park status, and um want to also just flag um we were asked we asked to have an update on the just cause ordinance, and I don't think we've had that.

Do we know when that will be coming back to the board?

Community development agency.

The just cause uh ordinance was up the update provided at the unincorporated services meeting.

Okay, and so if we want to bring that as an informational to the board planning meeting, we can uh arrange that uh in such that all the supervisors hear the update.

Yeah, I I so I guess um would like an update on that, but just overall, just where are we at with all of the tenant protections?

I know we also took up uh an update on fair chance in our uh public protection committee meeting a week ago.

So I would like to ask just for, and I I don't want to add more work to staff because I know they said there was gonna be an update in summer time, so maybe when we know the next scheduled board update, if we could try to provide a concise report on just where we at with all the the tenant protections would be really helpful, whether that is at planning or regular board meetings, that matter, just as long as we're all carrying the same information.

I'll let staff determine what's the best uh fit in terms of scheduling.

But I think it's important that we all get the same information, and then if you don't mind sharing when was that meeting um with uh an incorporated services that could go back and watch that update.

Do you remember when it took place?

It was at the last last meeting.

So just recently very recently, okay.

Thank you so much for that.

And um, with respect to the surplus surplus land sites that the county owns, um, is it accurate that even though it's county-owned property, but most of these are not an unincorporated, we don't get to account for arena numbers on these sites.

Is that correct?

Yes, that is correct.

Is there any discussion and changing that?

Do we know of our state legislators just because we have significant projects specifically the Broadway?

Like we have major skin in the game, and it's unfair that we're not gonna be able to count for those units.

So I I am aware of of one project where there was a sharing of RENA for um between a city and a county when a project was constructed within the city limits, but funded by the county, and I believe that was in the um Sonoma Marin area, that there was a statutory provision that allowed that to happen on a particular project basis.

I think I have had a conversation with at least one supervisor about whether the county should be pursuing that type of legislation because of the funding that we are putting out to various cities to say why don't we get a credit percentage or some credit for how we're contributing.

I'm not sure that that is on our our legislative platform or whether that's moved forward anyway.

Okay, I definitely would like to bring that forward to Powell and thank you for that context.

I think it's important that we demonstrate to the wider community um cities have a little bit more flexibility in land use decisions than we do.

So we definitely want to demonstrate that we're doing our part.

So uh definitely open to that.

Um I think those are all my questions and comments at this time.

Thank you for the report.

Yes, it is good that we review this.

Um I mean, let's just face it, RENA is a joke.

It's an absolute joke of ours.

Housing production does not occur.

We put things down on paper, things that can never really happen.

Everybody knows that it's a numbers shell game, and nobody wants to do anything really about it.

So it's good that we have an element, it's good that we put numbers on a piece of parcel and see if we can try to get there that we never do, and as mentioned, no city really ever does cities that try.

I know City of Dublin pushes hard to make its housing number, and even they don't succeed.

It's hard when you have initiatives that prevent housing development.

It's hard when you block properties from renewing themselves into affordable housing.

So we have mobile home sites that won't ever be converted to multiple multi-use housing if we enact certain ordinances.

So we have to at some point decide, and the state has to some point decide are we going to produce more housing or not?

And RENA doesn't get us there, but it is the law of the land today.

We have to be compliant with it.

This are we asking for an approval today?

Or is just receive the report?

Yeah.

So we're asking to reprove approve this.

That's what we're going to try to do today, right?

It is really the report that is has to be filed with the state.

So there's a resolution approving both reports and authorizing staff to submit them to the state.

Miley can move and Marquez can second.

How's that?

Yes.

Motion's been made by Supervisor Miley seconded by Supervisor Marquez.

I'm now off my soapbox.

And I'll ask the code to please call roll.

Supervisor Marquez.

Supervisor TAM, excuse Supervisor Miley.

Supervisor Fortunato Bass.

President Howard.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

Staff.

I'm sorry, I had to make one other comment.

One area where I think we do have a lot of cooperation is the BART facility in Castor Valley and other BART locations.

Uh BART is doing their job and working with us.

I saw that written in the element.

I would like to commend the actions of our staff and BART by working together to maximize housing on those parcels.

Thank you.

With that said, we'll move to the next item, which is item five.

Point of clarification, can we hear five and six together?

I I don't know.

Yes, Supervisor, that has been the practice that these two items because they are interrelated factually, um, have been heard and considered together and they're being reconsidered together.

So we're gonna hear five and six together.

Yes, please.

That means a staff report on five and six together and uh report from uh the appeal together.

We're gonna hear it all together.

Uh yes, that's correct.

We'll go straight to the staff report then.

Okay, uh hello supervisors.

Ed LaBayog, Alameda County uh code enforcement manager for unincorporated areas.

Um, the uh slide.

So I'm hearing thank you to my colleague Marquez, that um our offices are being told that it's really hard to hear.

And so I'm gonna ask that we recess the net meeting for a few minutes to try to get a technical issue resolved, and uh so let's be in recess while we do that.

Supervisor Marquez, Supervisor Tam, excused Supervisor Miley, excused Supervisor Fortunato Baz, President Haubert.

President, we have a quorum.

Thank you.

I'd like to thank staff for working on the technical experience and fixing that.

So I believe those that are watching and listening online can hear us better now.

With that said, I'll ask staff to resume their presentation.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you.

Um Ed Labayog, Alameda County Code Enforcement Manager for Unincorporated Areas.

This is uh regarding uh item five and six.

Uh reconsideration of uh of the uh decisions from a hearing from November 13, uh 2025.

Um next slide.

So this this hearing is for reconsideration of the appeal decision of the U.S.

Court LLC of the decisions of the West County Board of Zoning Adjustments declaring the property in violation of the Alameda County zoning Ordinance 17.66.050 and neighborhood reservation ordinance 6.65.030 A12 and B6 based upon uh soil field importing that occurred in January and February February of 2020 at 2550 UVS court with uh APN 425 0150 uh 0240, which is not allowed on residential zones that are less than one acre after the soil importing ordinance effective date of november 2019 and the and the presence of debris and concrete pieces and unstable loose foil soil and fill um this is what we had uh presented back in november just want to go over it quickly uh sort of like a reset here so in terms of background there were initial complaints back in 2018 uh when code enforcement uh received complaints uh at that time uh there was early actions um by the uh for the grading concerns in public works uh soil importing was verified due to lack uh soil importing wasn't verified by code enforcement because of the lack of evidence however back in 2022 uh there was credible evidence uh that led to a new enforcement case being opened by by code enforcement um investigations of multiple site visits uh technical submissions from submitting parties and an independent geotechnical review confirmed the violations so in terms of the violation the property was found in violation of uh the soil importing ordinance uh because the import was um determined that uh occurred uh after november uh 2019 uh for the importing of soil in residential lot under one acre and also uh we confirmed the neighborhood reservation ordinance violation for the presence of debris concrete pieces and unstable loose fill on the property this is uh quickly uh the pertinent facts so on october 19 2022 uh we did do a site visit to confirm the violations and uh in november 3022 we did mail a notice to the owner and on um january 2023 uh we did a visit uh and the conditions were unchanged and we did uh at that time uh awarded the contract to our um g i consultants uh on february 13 we did visit the site with our um consultant uh geotechnical uh firm to evaluate the existing site conditions uh at that time uh there was only a visual um observation of lot 24 because uh we were not allowed to uh enter those premises uh according to the uh property owners they're still in litigation at that time with the utility company because of fire hydrant break so um we did a site observation uh accessing uh the property of uh adjacent neighbor uh mr meadows uh and walking down that that hillside uh we did uh mail a uh notice to comply to the the property owner in september 2024 and we did a visit in november of 2024 that uh conditions were not unchanged um and we nail mailed that notice to the owner and we did receive an uh appeal from the property owner in february 2024 and a hearing was set um for uh february 26th however that got canceled due to the request of the uh property owner and um exchange edward i'm assuming that 217 24 should be 217 25 uh or is that i mean because in chronologically it goes down the year of 24 and then we get back to february you see what i'm saying 2024 yeah, so uh 217.

Oh, I should that really be 25 that that was 24 because we received the appeal.

Um but we made it.

Oh, it just looks like it's not chronological order.

I think it went to um flop the two dates.

Hang on, let me check it out.

I can refer to the uh notice sent to to see if that uh date was changed.

That was the um the notice for the hearing.

Check that out.

It's okay, we can see okay.

I can check that in a minute.

Uh I might have been flip-flop those two things.

So um the hearing uh was held on um March 26, 25 with the West Board of Zoning Adjustments, and uh the board uh found the uh property in violation of the zoning ordinance uh soil importing.

And um there were um appeal hearings scheduled in front of the board.

However, those got uh postponed.

Uh so there's another hearing that was scheduled in September 24, 2025 for the West BCA.

Uh and um that hearing was to hear the uh violations regarding neighborhood preservation ordinance and the West BCA uh proper found the property also in violation of neighborhood preservation ordinance.

Uh October 25.

Uh we received an appeal from the property owner.

Um to to the board of supervisors.

So November 13, 2025, uh the hearing was conducted, and at that hearing uh your board rendered the decision granting the appeal for the violation of the soil important ordinance and denying the appeal for the neighborhood preservation ordinance.

Um a hearing for the reconsideration was uh set for uh January 8.

However, um that hearing was um also continued to today's hearing.

So on the hearing on November 13, uh our recommendation then was to declare the property in violation of zoning ordinance and the neighborhood preservation ordinance and follow the orders of the West BZA, uh as you see in the presentation here.

Uh owners also required to obtain all the permits and approvals from the county and other agency is needed and to remove all uh remove and abate all debris concrete pieces and and address unstable loose fill soil on the property.

Um just just a snapshot of uh the site.

Uh that shaded blue area is the uh parcel in question about more than a third down is where the end uh of the road uh stops, and the rest is the downhill slope where the appeal was um uh deposited and the pictures in the right is shows the outline of the parcel with the adjacent property of lot 28 and Mr.

Meadows is on the lots on the left side of 22 and 23.

Next slide.

Uh we did have the video in the November meeting.

I don't know if you want to see that or not.

So it's up to your board if you want us to show the video again.

So you had not, so okay.

Uh it's not very long, it's like this is the same video we had in uh November.

Right video, that's the video that we had when we um this started the violation.

So that's right.

Well, but that's what was given to us at the time, so you can agenda.

If I may this video is a video that in that initiated the violation process, and so um they submitted and was submitted by the uh complainant.

So this is the video that's uh noted.

There is an there are an another video that's also posted on the agenda that is also provided by the complainant.

Added this to the presentation just to show what started the violation, but if your board would like to see the video uh of the latest video that's also on the agenda, that can be done as well.

Okay.

Oh the date the video was taken and uh uh both.

If we can just make the distinction between the two videos is what uh what we're trying to do right now.

So what's the date of this video?

It's not on there.

Three, oh no, no, that's for the.

Yeah, I don't have to have that.

It's not on the curve.

Okay, so uh we'll put the dates down, but in the meantime, this is the the video that showed the that prompted staff to start the investigation, and then the second video on the agenda.

It's posted on the agenda as a link.

Is that the video just that's off the help?

Can you walk us through what we're seeing?

Sure.

Yeah, that's an aerial view of the end of UVS square.

Um so we see where the truck is the the end of the UV square and the uh violation.

Do I see a white track?

They're saying that that loading something or no, something that would just sit.

That's the a truck that's just sitting there.

Two different parcel numbers, fabric fence, and the new score, installed after the company, what is this?

Uh so the the parcel 24 is where the green uh highlighted area is it's uh part of an eastman on on the road, and the orange section below it is the other side of the road, which is an eastman um the other half.

So there's two separate APN numbers.

The one in violation today is the APN 24, and the one in 22 is not part of the violation.

It's just showing the where the uh boundary lines are.

Okay, we did.

Thank you.

Same in this picture with the yellow and orange.

Yes, okay, the ch the rod iron fence on one side and the other side with the other parcel.

Okay.

Very helpful, thank you.

And that just shows uh the activity of uh dumping the soil in lot twenty-four.

I was just circling the uh uh property owner.

Uh believe that's Mr.

Menzinger.

Same photo of a truck backing up in the same area.

Uh we don't have the dates on here, but we do have the uh metadata of the photos of some of the trucks in those pictures.

In the video, I mean, this an activity of moving the soil.

Uh, because the trucks could not back up all the way to dump it on the slope, so this uh excavator was used to move it from the end into the slope.

Another truck.

This is looking up from the bottom, just showing the area, and um picture showing the uh debris that was uh in the soil.

This is a representation from Mr.

Meadows of about where the soil area the area of the soil where the where it was deposited, uh though we have not confirmed that.

Okay, that's a replay of what was played before.

Yes, I'm but told or it's been asked that's the wrong video.

So we have another one.

Uh they have submitted a video that we've attached to the agenda.

However, um, I was not gonna present that unless the board wants to see it, we can show it.

Is it pertinent to this?

Is it a replay of this or some other let's play it?

Can we it's on the agenda?

Oh, she has the I saw it, but I think everybody should see it, and I think even members of the public should see it.

It's a former video, so we don't have the date of the truck.

Yeah, the second video.

Oh the second video.

Well, when we just saw the early one, so didn't have the base second one shot.

Okay.

It'll be a minute for her to put the video up.

We can proceed.

Okay, sorry about that.

We have to bring up the slide if we're gonna continue.

Yep.

She has the video up.

Okay.

No question.

Be the one narrating it.

Edward, you can proceed.

Do you?

Put the slide back up, please.

So you did show the video.

And we start the next slide, please.

It shows the data.

The truck on the left was uh dated for January 21, 2020.

Uh evidence uh of the soil on the ground there, uh taken on January 30, 2020.

And a collection of pictures on the right with uh label dates on it.

So this is just what we saw when we uh did our initial inspection.

Uh obviously, things have changed since then.

But you could see the um ground looking down from the end of the road from that view on the left and exhibit B as well.

This is just showing the end of the uh Uvis court with the iron fence on the right, and the left is another view looking down the hill.

And this is where the fallen tree is and um uh picture of the uh condition uh around this the fallen tree.

So this is when we did our reinspection uh to verify that uh you know no activity or abatement has uh occurred there, so just a uh downhill street view again, some uh grass growing on it, and just a picture on the right is uh another view of the end of the US court.

Uh this is uh when we were there with the uh our consultant, that's the fallen tree there and and the soil condition around it.

Uh same thing on the left, and that's actually the back side of the consultants that that you see on the picture on the right looking over.

We were standing on Mr.

Meadows side, and we did not uh walk on uh lot 24.

Um, they they told us we couldn't access that parcel because they were still in litigation with the uh um utility company because of the fire hydrant break.

Because it's uh supervisor medley, yeah, it has a quick uh is that sufficient rationale for not going on the site.

Uh say that again.

Was that sufficient rationale for not going on the site?

Uh could we have gone on the site with a ward?

Well, our consultant was not there to do any physical testing, it's just uh um visual observation and also reviewing uh any documents submitted and and other evidences we presented to him.

And uh that lot 24 is not very wide, so it was easily visible from almost top to bottom, and the entire uh uh the entire parcel was visible from even standing from the adjacent uh parcel.

And just more photos here showing how we walked down the hill and uh consultant um doing his visual observation.

So uh this was um this is about the case record.

So we did initiate the case with a lot to uh 25418 was just the adjacent lot on owned by uh Mr.

Messenger and Bichet at that time, uh for the county records.

Uh they did record a new deed in August 2322, uh naming uh US court LC.

So uh we shifted all the notices to the US Court LLC.

Uh the case uh continued under 25418.

However, um we did note that the lot 20 is no longer in violations because they did obtain a grading permit, which uh required them to do uh remediation work and clean up on that site.

Uh but the case remained open because of the violations of 2550.

And then uh recent information uh provided by Mr.

Meadows indicated that the ownership information was uh corrected by the county.

Uh we did confirm that with the county in a phone call with uh Mr.

Ludwig from the county, and uh it the ownership of that Lop 24 was reverted back into um Mr.

Uh Menzinger and Ms.

Bichet uh per the county, and this is a pinout of uh the county uh assessor's website where we pulled up the address and it does show the property owners to be uh mentioning Bichet uh and in that printout.

Uh this just another the lot 24 is the yellow shaded area and uh uh Mr.

Mansinger and Bichet owns the property on the right, which has the house and the ADU on it.

So uh on November 13.

Now we did present the arguments of appeals.

Uh so the appellant uh claims that soil has never been imported.

Uh stuff provided photos and videos, uh, importing activities provided by the complaining party, and also obtained a GI to confirm that soil uh field uh import uh was uh done at the site.

Then uh appellant claimed that uh lot 28 was remediated.

We do agree, and we told them uh through a letter stating that we accepted the uh work that was done on lot 28, so the lot 20 is no longer in violation.

Uh appellant claimed that uh uh the materials were sourced from lot 28 and was choosed to repair the damage caused by the fire hydrant and repeated failures.

However, we did not uh receive any credible evidence, we did not receive any physical evidence, was never provided to support that claim.

Um they also uh had testimony that the soil that removing that they remove the soil using wheelbarrows to move it from the back of lot 28, uh piling it in front of the street and loaded into empty trucks and then dumping it at the end of the road uh to us, so we felt that was not believable, and uh they also claimed that uh the reliance on GIA consultant was um improper.

So again, the GE consultant obtained by the county, and their role was to um was restricted to conducting a peer review of the complaining engineers' report, various documents and performing a visual evaluation of the site.

Uh GEI uh in his final report, their findings gave us their final report and recommendations and uh their conclusion acknowledged the presence of the soil importing, and also the uh presence of um foreign um like concrete and other uh field that's not soil there, and uh, but they did not uh confirm or determine the exact quantity and location.

So, based on that recommendation of BZ ordered the property uh provide analysis testing and abatement uh recommendations to achieve the full compliance.

The appellant also uh claimed that uh photos that were taken, um that we relied on the photos that were taken by the complaining party.

Um force did not obtain physical evidence of trucks coming in to uh unload the soil or the field material and going out from the property.

Uh the complainant provided evidence showing trucks dumping field material directly at the end of lot 24, and and that that video and some of it uh in the video that they've just presented, you know, was showing the time frame, which also coincides with the pictures with the uh date data on it.

Um we were unable to substantiate uh that the data was uh whatsoever manipulated.

Uh they also claimed that we did not follow uh policies and procedures.

Uh we felt that we did stay within that.

Um they claimed that we did not inspect the property prior to hearing, but that was not necessary because they already claimed that no work was uh done prior to it.

Um, and they're saying we did not uh substantiate um uh claims that they were denied the substantive due process.

Um after issuing a 30-day notice to comply on September 5th.

Uh we did notify the property owners that additional time to comply will only be granted if they submit extended compliance plan that is negotiated and accepted.

Property owner never proposed or agreed to compliance plan, so the administrative process moved forward.

Uh they requested to postpone initial BCA hearings, which uh we granted, and then they tried to um uh postpone the one on March 26th.

However, it did go through the board and we asked them to request to have it extended at that hearing, but they did not do so at that hearing, and they had asked for another continuance.

Uh, the lawyer was not available.

Um staff advice that they could make that request, the BCA, uh, but they didn't again um for that March 26 hearing.

Um, so even though they didn't ask for it, there was the we knew that they had their attorneys representative there, uh, present but uh attending remotely, but they did not uh make any statements.

Um the appellants was also uh sent a notice of hearing for the September 24 BCA uh hearing of and that notification was within the seven seven-day uh specific specified in the neighbor neighborhood preservation ordinance.

They also requested to postpone that to to their attorneys' uh inability to attend uh court enforcement.

We said um sent a letter to the BCA chair to consider the continuance at that at the hearing, and they decided to proceed with that hearing.

Uh this is a collection of pictures sent given to us by Mr.

Meadows uh because at the last hearing that they were asked if there were more evidence.

Uh basically, he's he just wants to present that uh there was activity of soil importing during that time frame.

Uh so he just wanted just to uh show this.

So in summary, um soil importing on residential properties that are less than one acre is not allowed.

Uh we did uh staff did present credible evidence.

Uh soil importing activities occurred on that property, and also uh supported by the findings of our uh of our geotechnical engineer that that we um obtained and proper procedures were followed.

So after reviewing uh presentations, testimonies, uh the West Border zoning adjustments determined that the property is in violation of the soil importing ordinance and neighborhood preservation ordinance, and um and because the owner did not provide evidence proving the soil was sourced from their adjacent property and move a short distance, the lot completely is free of debris, concrete pieces, and the state of loose fill as well.

Uh so we have uh determined that they are still in violation.

We do recommend that your board uh uh accept our recommendation from November 13 and and deny the appeals and and require the property owners to adhere to the West BCA action, which includes investigation, reporting, and abatements.

And that concludes my presentation and take any questions you have.

Thank you, Edward.

Any questions from uh my colleagues before we go to um presentation from the complaint?

Let's hear it from the complaint, 10 minutes.

Yeah, no, it's I'll ask county council.

So no real.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Maybe I'm mixing up cases.

So the appellate is uh the appeal the the board of zoning adjustments uh acted against the decision that was unfavorable to the property owner.

Uh so they have appealed.

Um, I do want to note, however, that you may um allocating time that the video, the second video that was seen was from the um complainants.

So that may it should count against their time, and you may want to allocate equal time to the appellants, the property owners.

Is this uh an appeal or reconsideration?

I was unclear.

It is reconsideration of the appeal, so it is an appeal.

Okay, then we'll have the appellant come.

And we'll offer 10 minutes of presentation from the appellant, 10 minutes of presentation from the complaint, and then five minutes of rebuttal to the complaint by the appellant.

That the complainant had 18 minutes of testimony already through their videos.

So, so do I get an additional 18 minutes of time?

So it was only the second video that was theirs, and they were not able to or are not given the opportunity to speak regarding that, but some of that time should be reduced from theirs, or you should give additional time to vote, but I just heard you give time.

We have a hard stop at two o'clock.

We're gonna make a decision one way or the other by that.

So take 10, 12, 13, I will try to go through this as quickly as possible, but there is so much inaccuracy in that video and in the presentation that I cannot possibly get to all of it.

Uh I will start by by saying I'll introduce myself again.

My name is James Trepa.

I'm reper the attorney representing the appellant, Uvis Court LLC, who is in fact the granteed owner of the property, it's not my individual clients, and we can go downstairs and verify that, but they are the the LLC is the owner of the property.

This has been going on for six years.

This is a 1200 square foot unpaved lot, and for six years, and I don't know how much money this county has spent on this issue when everyone knows that Mr.

Meadows is involved in a civil litigation lawsuit with my clients in Superior Court.

All of the evidence that the county has relied on has come from him.

Six years.

He is the only, the only witness who claims that my clients imported soil from outside.

35 trucks, you saw it in the video.

Not one person saw a single truck come through that court and dump imported soil.

This is the same things we went through in November when this board unanimously granted the appeal on the soil importation uh violation.

35 trucks, no one saw it.

What's interesting is my clients have said we had three or four trucks import from lot 28 to lot 24 from our driveway with these trucks.

How many videos did you see of trucks?

Three or four.

This is Mr.

Meadows.

You've seen the video.

If there were 35 trucks, you would have seen you would see 35 videos.

He is that involved in that that you would have seen more than what we've admitted to.

We have submitted to you affidavits of the neighbors who not one of them saw one of these trucks come through.

So for six years, you have one witness who has a financial outcome in stake in this dispute, showing this evidence to you.

Nothing from the county, and and usually when you reconsider, I mean, if we're in court, when you have a reconsideration, you are basing it on new facts, new evidence.

There is no new facts here.

There's no new evidence here.

The county has had since November to come out and do something and look at the property to determine whether or not there are these violations actually exist.

And I have offered now.

I heard that the county's engineer was not available or not allowed to go on the property.

I have personally said, have your engineer come meet ours.

The county has never taken me up on that.

They can still do it now.

There's been no new evidence from Mr.

Meadows since November.

If there's a violation there, his lawyer in the civil case can do a request for a site inspection.

I can't object to it.

They can have someone go on there and say, you know what?

Now that we can finally touch the soil and look at the soil, we can prove our case.

No one has done that.

The only person who has walked that, other than some of you, actually, to see that there's no debris on this 1,200 square foot parcel, is Dan Dykman, who is here who will talk to you.

He's the only geotechnical engineer who has ever stepped foot on that actual property to see what's going on.

The independent engineer that the county had got all of his information from Mr.

Meadows.

Didn't speak to my clients, didn't speak to myself, didn't go on to the property, hasn't asked to go on to the property since his investigation.

So it's not an independent and expert that you are getting here.

You're getting spoon fed from Mr.

Meadows.

The only new evidence you have before you since November is the affidavits that we provided, which I urge you to read them.

They show you exactly what is going on in this neighborhood.

You have a number of neighbors who not only say we never saw any of these trucks that allegedly imported soil, but Mr.

Meadows does the same thing to us.

He harasses us, he threatens us, he brings meritless claims against us with the county.

This is going on and on and on in this neighborhood.

But the other new evidence that you have is the actual hillside itself.

Since November, we've been through another raining season.

You don't have any engineer, any professional who is here to tell you that that hillside has changed it all, that it's instable at all, that anything has changed in the last years and years since these fire hydrant breaks, which you get back to that video.

The fire hydrant break that Mr.

Meadows talks about is 2021.

The first one was 2020, which he conveniently leaves out.

And there was another one after that, and another one after that.

There is a lot here that has not been presented to you.

And in 10 minutes, I can't do enough, but I will answer any questions and I'll tell you these claims are not credible, and the county has not done their job in making them credible.

So if you're reconsidering anything, I would I would ask that you listen to Mr.

Dykman, who is the geotechnical engineer, and I would ask not only that you uphold the granting of the appeal for the soil importing ordinance, but that you also reconsider the denial of the appeal on the neighborhood preservation ordinance because nothing needs to be done.

You all need to wash your hands of this and let us deal with it in civil court.

He will tell you his professional opinion that that hillside and that slope is stable at this time.

So I'll stop at that point and I'll leave it to Mr.

Dykman.

And if you have any questions of me, I I'm more than happy to answer them.

Thank you.

Good morning, you saw you again last November when I came up and spoke briefly.

And you've also also seen me out at the site.

Originally, the end of the uh street there was built on a fill pad.

That fill pad was about six feet thick, and uh the edge of it was a slope of fill that went down and blended with the original hillside fill.

So there's a lot of fill that's out there that has been there for upwards of a hundred years.

There was also filling that was done when a previous owner owned the property, and you've got an affidavit to that fact.

About they would throw clippings down there, occasionally put dirt on it.

So there's a lot of different generations of fill out here.

Um, this really started with this.

These present owners, after they took ownership of the property and they had a failure because a car hit a nice fire hydrant.

The water from that fire hydrant ran down the road and it created a moderate-sized erosion channel in the slope down below that had all that old fill on it, nothing new.

Um that was their property, but it was not really their responsibility to fill it.

Yet they had filled or materials, soil materials that they generated from their upper backyard that they were doing landscaping project and said, Well, let's go fix that for everybody so that we can have it look nice and and and be done.

They did take that material out of uh their driveway into trucks according to affidavits they have that you guys now have, and it was trucked on down, dumped at the end, and then yes, it was pushed and and loosely placed down below because that steep slope is too steep to really get any real compaction effort, other than smacking it with the end of the excavator that that was being used.

The at the end of that process, they they had a nice clean, smooth filled slope.

You saw the pictures in the video of them having covered it with erosion control fabric, straw wattles, which is those are swept requirements for every construction project.

So it's done very nicely.

Unfortunately, about a year later, you had another massive uh fire hydrant spill that was going on for hours.

That washed out all of their fill, it washed out a bunch of the other older fill and put it all down to the bottom of the hillside.

At that point, since that point, nothing's been done.

The amount of fill that was put in during the process in the night in 1920 period was not enough to cover a three-foot diameter tree trunk that was laying on the ground.

So to say that they imported 330 cubic yards of material, that would have covered that that tree by a couple of feet.

If you look at the pictures that are in the video, you never see anything more than maybe a foot of dirt up against the side of that trunk.

So there was not a lot of material that was placed over that area.

I've been involved with this project since 1920 since 10 2021.

I've observed that property probably somewhere on the order of a couple dozen times.

I've seen no significant changes to that property over that time frame.

Um, there's no landsliding that's ever been out there, there's only been erosion, and that was from fire hydrants.

Now, if the fire hydrants are fixed, that problem or that issue is gone.

Therefore, it's my opinion that that that hillside shall remain relatively stable in the future.

Uh, even with the future fire hydrant breaks, those they put a new device on that that limits the amount of of water that can escape at any one time.

So I think you're almost pretty well taken care of there.

Um to do what the some of the engineers are asking is that that hillside be the fills be reconstructed as an engineered fill.

You can't just simply take fill, put it on that hillside and have that work.

You've got a hill that's steeper than two to one, two horizontal for every one vertical we go down, which is 27 degrees.

It's steeper than that.

You're not allowed to engineer a slope that's steeper than that unless you're getting to other sorts of grid reinforcement, which putting plastic laser plastic inside the fill to make it stronger, using retaining walls.

You just can't, it's not as simple as taking something off and putting it back on, even if that was the fill that they'd originally placed there.

There's under fill underneath it that's not properly placed according today's engineering standards.

If it was my property, my recommendation would be simply uh leave it as it is, but where we have that erosion rail, I would suggest filling that with rock riprap, which is a rock material, large pieces of rock, so that as water comes and flows through that erosion channel, that breaks up the energy so that you can't get remobilization of soils down to the bottom of the hill.

Every time I've been out there, this particular property has been clear of all debris, all significant debris.

The owners, I understand, go out there on a periodic basis after rainfalls and stuff like that to check and see what's down there.

They clean up their property, what's there?

The pictures that you saw of the debris, that was not on this property, that was on the adjacent parcel.

In my opinion, the owners of this property have been pretty good stewards of their property.

I would hope my neighbors would be doing equally well.

If you have any questions, I can answer those.

If you choose to call me back up, otherwise I'll go back and sit down.

Thank you.

Does the appellant have any more commentary?

We'll hear from the applicant or the complaint.

Good afternoon.

Um, thank you for taking this and hearing this.

Several years ago, Hannah Arendt who discussed and studied government lies and institutional lies and their success, said the purpose of serial lies is not to convince you of the truth, but to get you utterly confused as to what the truth is.

At our last hearing, that was proven.

Because at the end of the hearing, when you're given three obvious lies, the first thing that was said after it closed was, now I don't know what to believe.

So we have provided you the new information to specifically rebut those lies.

One, that all the dirt came from the other side of the property from the big cut in the hill.

That cut was made two years after the spill.

I actually have a photograph of the excavator doing it, and it dated, but the record will show that all that work happened two years afterwards.

The other thing you've been told is you can't believe anything the county said because they didn't go on the property.

Didn't go on the property, ask them because they were told by the owners you cannot come on to the property.

You can listen to the engineers to hear why their evidence is correct when they stood on the other side of the property.

You were told that Mr.

Meadows put all the debris on the property.

We said they have got cameras, prove it.

Mr.

Trepper said we don't have cameras.

In our booklet, we have pictures of those cameras.

So the other big myth that you've been given since day one is that this is just a neighbor dispute.

These are people mad at each other, and so you can believe either side.

That's not what happened.

This is a county ordinance and a county code case.

True, the initial information came from Mr.

Meadows because he and his wife were the victims.

They saw it happen.

But in terms of the number of trucks, the fact that the trucks came and where they went, the county investigated themselves and validated that.

In terms of the depth and the debris on the property, the county did its own investigation, and they validated it.

What is before you today is not Mr.

Meadows, it's the county's case and the county's solid evidence, and that's what we would like you to look at.

The booklet I provided was basically to take the five years of material and get it down into, if you will, six little tabs.

I will say one thing about the testimony of the neighbors who never saw trucks.

Four of those five neighbors moved on to US court one to five years after the incidence of court.

No, they didn't see trucks.

So I ask you to look hard at the county's evidence, and I will pass this around with the exhibition and look at this as for what it is.

Two violations occurred, it's been proven.

Tab one shows that you can find three different ways to show it's proven.

Appellants have admitted they've done nothing to abate the site.

That takes care of the public nuisance.

What's left is the abatement and how it's to be done.

If there's less to abate, that will be shown up in the abatement.

However, our engineers will testify that there's a lot to abate, not just on this easement, but all the places that this dirt has fallen and contaminated, including the creek.

I want to thank you, and I'll save my five minutes for the end of the testimony.

Is there a response?

Yes, sir.

After the response, we'll go to public comment and or questions from colleagues.

I'll just be brief.

Response.

You talk about institutionalized the cut that they're talking about, and you see on the video where it keeps saying no holes, no holes, and this cut happened two years after the fact.

That's not what the where the soil was imported from lot 28.

And my clients have made it clear.

That's on the lower part.

Some of you actually were there and heard my clients talk about where they took the dirt from.

It was not where that pad was where the cut was.

It was in the upper part of the property.

So you're being given again misinformation by Mr.

Meadows and his counsel.

The neighbors who were there, two of them, not all of them, two of them came after the fact.

And it doesn't change the fact that in these six years, there's not one witness, not one other than Mr.

Meadows, who can vouch that 35 trucks came in and dumped soil.

Thank you.

Do we have any public comment on this?

We have speakers.

How much time will they have?

President Howard, two minutes.

Thank you.

My name is Kim Carey, and contrary to what their attorney just said, you can see my sworn declaration that was given to you for more details, and my two minutes will allow me to state along with the exhibit photos.

From November 2019 to March 2020, I observed from the hard trail that parallels Ward Creek at the base of the hill below Ubis Court.

Multiple trucks dump fill broken concrete and debris down the slope with some going into Ward Creek.

Later rains caused a huge mudslide into the creek.

The photos of exhibit A, B and C, and the site inspection reports prepared by county staff give an example of what I've observed over several months.

Over the years, the trees and underbrush have filled in.

So the view for their property is not as clear as it was six years ago.

But in 2019 and 2020, excuse me, 2020, I had a very clear view of the dumping.

I was present on February 13, 2024, when county staff along with Craig Hall, a geotechnical engineer, attempt to inspect the violation site.

As you can see from the photo in exhibit D, Mr.

Messenger physically blocked code enforcement and refused access onto its property to conduct the site inspection.

This contradicts claims made at the November 13th Board of Supervisors hearing and today that he cooperated with county inspections.

The VCA voted unanimously twice to declare the property owners in violation and declare their property a public nuisance.

This case has been drawn out for six years.

Given the scale of the damage done, combined with the property owners' efforts to delay, deny and deceive county staff taking up much of their valuable time.

I asked the board to issue an abatement order and impose meaningful fines that are not waived to deter these owners and anyone else from future violations.

Thank you.

Matt Turner.

Good afternoon, board members.

I've been following this case since I was established for Supervisor Miley uh six years ago.

Uh and even back then it seemed pretty clear what had happened.

Anyone who was willing to walk up Ward Creek and look at the hillsides sliding down into the creek and silt in the creek, could tell that something terrible had happened.

That it has taken this long, and that there's been such obfuscation and uh misinformation is just uh it's a uh travesty.

This happened to the public.

You all have incredibly valuable things to be doing.

Uh the business of the county should not be handling something that should have been handled at a lower level long ago.

A clear violation occurred.

We need to have laws enforced.

That's what they're there for.

One of the hats I wear, and I'm not speaking on behalf of the organization, is that I'm a commissioner with fishing game.

And this is a violation of our creeks.

Although flood control has eliminated many blue lines because they've made it, in my opinion, poor decision to use USGS LIDAR instead of our tried and true maps of blue lines.

Uh, and so we're not enforcing as we should.

This is yet another example of what we should be enforcing to improve and and provide a quality of life for our people in the county.

Thank you.

Anna Green, you're on the line.

You have two minutes.

Anna Green, please unmute.

You have two minutes.

Just read the shape.

Okay, hi there.

Um, I live on Panzett Street in Fairview.

Um, I am aware of the neighborhood conflicts with Chuck Meadows and his bad behavior.

He walks around the neighborhood, sometimes alone, sometimes with one or two dogs unleashed, black dogs.

If I'm out in my yard, I go inside immediately because he does not use a leash for his dogs, and I'm afraid they will attack me since I heard he was sued by another neighbor when his dogs injured her.

I have been told that he turned many neighbors into the county and that he works for Sandy Rivera who runs code enforcement.

Uh, not sure why the county would hire a person to scare people in our neighborhood like this.

Please unmute.

We can't hear you.

Simon, you're on the line.

You have two minutes.

Good afternoon.

My name is Simon McDessy.

I'm president of Quantum Geotechnical, a consulting engineering firm.

I'm a registered professional civil and geotechnical engineer in the state of California, and I've been practicing here in the Bay Area for the past 35 years.

Uh I was initially uh performed a site visit in 2022 to evaluate the depth and extent of foreign fill within Mr.

Meadows property, and only within his portion of the property, parcels 22 and 23.

Uh I dug several uh dug seven test holes within the slope area and found two to seven feet of foreign fill material that had various types of uh different colors and types of soil, various debris, uh, small sport of construction materials um in the in the fill, uh PVC pipes, branches, metal, uh, pieces of wood, broken clay, and uh there were erosion gullies up to four feet deep, and uh the the filled tree was on the slope surface.

Uh we had estimated approximately 165 cubic yards of foreign fuel existed within Mr.

Meadows' property.

We did not uh evaluate uh anything beyond his property line.

Um, I did a follow-up visit in October of last year, and uh the changes to the slope were that there were some more erosion gullies that were deeper, and some of the erosion gullies extended into the underlying native soil.

The tree fell, the fill tree had moved further downhill, so uh it the slope is is uh unstable, and um it the tree did not proceed any further because of another tree in its way.

The um the assertion that this fill has been there for a hundred years by Mr.

Deichman uh doesn't make sense.

There's there was green netting in the fill, so I don't know how that explains that in the middle of the slope.

Um, the fill in my opinion is unstable, needs to be remediated.

Margie, you're on the line, you have two minutes.

Margie, please unmute.

You have two minutes.

Amy, you're on the line, you have two minutes.

Amy, please unmute.

You have two minutes.

You have two minutes, please unmute.

Okay.

Good morning.

My name is Shui Lucy Liu, who lives at the end of UAS Court with slope in the yard.

My husband Chuck Meadows and I have been living on UAS Court since 2013, under penalty of perjury.

I submitted declaration regarding the illegal dumping created by our neighbor, Mr.

Meisinger and Ms.

Bichet, whose property is also at the end of UVAS Court.

From October 2019 through about March 2020, I witnessed multiple truck dumping field on the slope at the end of UAS court.

Afterwards, my neighbor, Mr.

Messinger, and the yellow escalator to fuel down the hill.

The trucks weren't not from my neighbor's property at all, but from the second street.

As I work at home, I saw that every day during that period of time.

On the slope, I saw large quantities of broken concrete, bricks, and debris.

We provided videos, photos, engineering reports, and decorations from multiple witnesses, despite overwhelming evidence.

Six years later, Ms.

Messinger and Miss Guichey still have not cleaned up any of those.

I asked the county to evaluate the evidence.

Six years later, we still have huge side covered with loose fill and debris that blocks access to our property.

Please demonstrate that Alamida County protects its residents from radiators who seem to operate without funds, costs, or consequences, and deny both appeals.

Thank you.

The last two persons are Angie Warren and Sally Philbin.

Sally.

My name is Sally Philbin.

I live at 2570 2nd Street.

It is not immediately across from the entrance to Uvis Court, but is one house over.

I have lived there since 1984.

During the period of about I'll say 88, 89 per take.

I had met some folks that lived down at the end of Ubis Court and had occasion to go down there and visit.

And I observed the slope at that time that beyond the house, there was a small shed, and then the slope went severely downhill toward creek.

It was not something that you could park anything on or build anything on at that time.

Next came 2021 at um a meeting, a Mac meeting, Fairview Mac meeting.

Chuck presented at that meeting about the issues with the fill.

And I commented to him, oh, that's what all those trucks have been doing going up and down Uvis Court over the past some period of time.

Frankly, I don't remember how long, but I did observe trucks going in and out of Evis Cork during that time frame.

And shortly after he and I spoke, I went down and visited him at his house, and I saw not only the fill on the property that's been approved, had come up to the point where you could park on it, but on the right hand side, there was a lot of debris going down that hill toward Ward Creek, and that basically that's all I know.

So it's just some of my observations over the years of living in the neighborhood.

Thank you.

Mark Milani, you're on the line.

You have two minutes.

Please unmute.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Katie, you hear me okay?

Yes.

Okay, thank you.

Uh, my name is Mark Milani.

I'm a licensed civil engineer in the state of California.

I have over 40 years of experience dealing with soils, both from a geotechnical standpoint as well as for environmental.

Melania Associates was engaged by Mr.

Meadows to do an assessment both prior and post-after the um uh fire hydrant uh issue that happened on the property.

Uh we did some initial um mapping using uh visual means through Google Earth that was done by uh Michael Mulani.

Uh I went and did a site walk uh with Mr.

Meadows post uh the uh fire hydrant break.

Uh and at that time we observed very uh slope erosion that was caused by uh by the water that came down there, and that uh could visually see that there was at least two to three feet of a very loose fill.

It's a very steep slope.

The material is very loose, so it's very dangerous to get on there without the slipping hazard.

I was able to put you know wooden stakes into that ground in order to uh support a lead line so we can go up and down the slope and do the visual subject very very easily.

Uh, if that had been compacted, that'd be very difficult to do.

What we did observe was at least two feet of fill uh exposed in the side walls of the erosion rills that were caused from the washout.

Uh that fill was loosely compacted, no engineering effort, no evidence of any kind of uh geotechnical work to compact the the soil.

There was also extensive debris, including oversized material, concrete, brick fragments, uh observed uh in the side walls as well as in the slope wash.

Uh, in my professional opinion, that slope is is is unstable and would expect to see continued soil creep and perhaps even more significant loss of soil.

Chris Higgins, you're on the line, you have two minutes.

Yeah, my name is Chris Higgins.

Uh am I coming through?

Okay.

Um I got involved I uh shortly after Matt Turner left uh um Supervisor Miley's staff.

He asked me to look in.

I'm a resident of Fairview.

I'm also a member of the Fairview Mac, and um just talking about whatever I've observed over the years.

Um anyway.

The testimony you've heard from Ms.

Mr.

Meadows and and the the and his representative and the uh engineers is accurate.

I I'd like to focus on the what I observed that the messengers that you're a private road, and and they were just parking trucks in the middle of the road so that their neighbors couldn't get in and out, and it was clearly just a retaliation kind of thing.

And I just living on a private road, and many of our private roads in Fairview are don't have HOAs and they're all really dependent on neighbors working together, and we got to figure out some way to standardize this stuff.

You can't just park on an easement and prevent your neighbors from accessing their their property.

Um that's that's all out of me today.

Thank you.

Kelly, you're on the line, you have two minutes.

Thank you.

Um I'd like to maybe share with you, since your board is uh quasi-judicial body.

Um, let's imagine that maybe we make a miraculous assumption that maybe here uh it it maybe in the next case, uh not in this case, but in the next case, let's imagine there was a divine flushing and a uh legally um unbelievable but legally incredible erasing of the creek.

And in the divine flushing, um takes all the debris and foreign materials and washes it down the not legally non-existent creek and makes it disappear in into the ocean or something.

Um, you know, is that okay?

Is it okay to have a illegally erased creek?

Is it a way uh uh okay to flush away contaminated materials?

Um that's what your county does, I guess.

Um, and uh or because uh and uh all you know, with the water course protection ordinance, there is no water course to protect, is there?

Um let's also look at this idea of import.

In this ordinance, the soil import, the ordinance um uh which is the uh being uh uh operative today, it means the bringing of soil or other fill material onto a lot from an off-site location for any purpose.

Um normally each lot is normally treated as its own separate site, regardless of common ownership.

So moving law uh soil from lot 23 to an adjacent parcel like uh would likely constitute an import, even if the same person owns both.

But uh if anybody was awake today, you heard that the uh uh the owners, their their legal representative, admitted that um they testified to your board that uh lock 28 is owned by an LSC LLC is not and not owned by these individual uh owners, so they're claiming that it's actually owned by somebody else, so there is no common ownership.

So they admit to um soil importing right there.

These are from an off-site location.

Thank you.

Amy, you're on the line, you have two minutes.

I can hear me.

Yes.

Uh hi, my name is Amy, and I live behind Chuck Meadows.

Um, his property is very close to ours, and he is always taking pictures of my whole family from his backyard and sometimes his roof.

I've spoken to many neighbors about this guy, and people tell me he is a bully and not to get his attention because he will turn you into all kinds of government places or sue you, maybe both.

Uh he excuse me, he is always home and always watching all of us, and it's kind of creepy.

He is always watching everybody, like he is the boss of our whole neighborhood.

The county should not have this guy working with them.

I think he has a problem mentally.

Recently, many of us in the neighborhood have discussed this problem.

The county should know that our neighborhood does not like this guy taking pictures of us and bothering us in our own yards.

Thank you.

Jessica, you're on the line, you have two minutes.

Um, I live in Fairview, fairly close to Chuck Meadows.

Um, it's wrong that someone could be allowed to terrorize the whole neighborhood by using the county as his personal police force to go after people to refuse him to let him control what they do with their property.

Many of my neighbors and I have become worried when we see him by our property because we all know that what he that he does this for fun and that he harms families and harasses us.

If you ignore him or don't do what he says, he'll try to ruin your life because he does not have one of his own.

He gets pleasure from harming and making other people unhappy.

We're harassed by this guy, and it and it is your fault for allowing him to be like this.

The county should have protections and procedures in place to stop people like this from abusing whole neighborhoods and ruining lives with his lies.

Many of us are afraid to speak here, especially the women in our community, because we're usually home alone, and some of us believe he'll contact ICE because he threatens that all the time, even though we are here legally.

Um, he likes to cause bigger problems for the neighborhood, and I just don't feel that that should be allowed anymore.

Thank you.

Mike, you're on the line, you have two minutes.

Uh yes, sorry, I couldn't put my name up right.

This is Lester, and uh basically I just wanted to speak.

It's like basically what I'm hearing here is I'm hearing a lot of people saying, Oh, I saw this from another property.

You know, the tests and stuff are done on Chuck's property, not on my property or on the LLC's property.

And it's it's just it's all conjecture.

Everything that they're saying is is conjecture.

It's it's all well, we guessed this might be, and this might, you know, this might have happened, but um we can't they can't show that it did.

So, you know, I'm the other thing that I'm hearing is I'm hearing people come on here like Sally who lives down the street and around the corner and does not live near a property, making claims and whatnot.

She doesn't know.

She didn't testify as to what she saw in the back of those trucks, you know, if she saw trucks at all.

So I I don't understand what's going on here.

I don't, you know, there's people that are that are that are Chris Higgins, lives like two streets over.

He came over twice and took a look at things, and you know that's just it.

I I just don't understand what's what's going on here.

Thank you.

Adriana, you're on the line, you have two minutes.

Everyone in the neighborhood knows who Chuck Meadows is because he walks around the neighborhood with his clipboard telling people what they need to do with their property.

Last summer, when I was planting some flowers in my front yard, he told me that I have to clean up my yard, or he was going to report me to the county.

He said that he represents them and meets directly with San Riviera, who runs the whole department.

When I refused to listen to him, he started taking photos of me and my property.

I ran inside my house because I felt this man was unsafe and I was afraid.

He left when I went inside.

Next time I will call 911 when he approaches me.

After hearing other stories from neighbors and reading posted statements, I believe the county is enabling a million stable person to act in an unsafe manner in our neighborhood.

This type of enabling by the county creates dangerous situations and should not be encouraged or allowed.

No more speakers.

Okay, very good.

We'll bring it back for deliberation and comments.

I'll call on Supervisor Miley.

Questions, comments.

Yeah, sure.

But first, uh, does staff have any responses to anything they've heard?

Uh yes, it's it's still the um court of enforcement's session that uh soil importing did occur.

And I also want to remind that in this situation, uh because the lot is uh less than one acre in a residential area that soil importing is not allowed at all, even if they try to uh get a permit.

Uh also that um when we initiated this case, um it both lots were were in fact owned by uh Mr.

Messinger and Miss Bechet.

So that statement that was made that they can't move it from one adjacent lot to another.

It's not true because that's an exemption in the soil importing ordinance.

However, the ownership changed apparently um to US LLC in 2022, but that was recently corrected by the county because um so it actually went back to uh Mr.

Messi and Bichet.

Uh whether or not you believe that the soil importing came from their adjacent lot uh we have not proven or I have gotten any physical evidence of that.

Um there's uh testimonies and on affidavits and and that's all uh we have to go by um our position is we looked at the physical evidence along with the observation from a geotechnical expert that's licensed in California.

He's actually on the line if you want to ask him questions.

Um and he deals with uh a lot of conditions dealing with uh land failures and uh how to fix them, etc.

So he is an expert in that field, and uh we felt like his visual observation was adequate along with reviewing any um professional uh certified um observations and reports from other geotechnical experts, um kind of gave us more strength in our uh assertion of the uh violation and uh requiring the abatement and um uh continue uh enforcement action on this property.

The uh engineer that spoke earlier who was online is that the engineering engineer you're referring to?

No, that was um because we've heard two engineers online, I thought for quantum, you mean uh the one that spoke that was hired by Mr.

Meadows.

Okay, so yeah, there was one hired by Meadows, but I said there was another one who spoke.

Um, that was also hired by Mr.

Meville.

Okay, yeah, let's hear from our engineer if he's on the line.

Uh I believe so.

Craig Hall is he on there, because obviously we've got an engineers' opinions from Meadows and with messengers, but let's hear from our engineer.

Uh, yeah, I see his name there, Craig Hall.

Can you hear me now?

Yes.

Okay, hello.

This is uh Craig Hall.

Um, I'm the uh geotechnical engineer, uh GEI.

Um, I'm the one that uh uh was on site and uh signed the report that has been referenced throughout this uh proceeding and um you know what my um uh role was to um visually observe the site on that one day, uh look at existing information that was available to me and uh without a doubt I find that uh slope to be unstable uh to have loose material um with debris and such it needs to be um mitigated uh else that debris is gonna go down into Ward Creek.

Actually, uh it some of it already has.

So um my uh recommendations and observations are in that letter, and and uh you know, that was done back in um 2024, and I haven't been out on the site since then, but uh everything I've heard so far hasn't led me to think otherwise um that anything has changed.

So we still stand behind that that slope needs to be uh mitigated uh as per uh the recommendations, not only my report, but from um the county.

Okay, thanks.

So a few other questions before I comment.

Um this isn't for the engineer.

We saw pictures, and I think we saw trucks and names on trucks and all that.

Were we ever able to track down any of those trucks in those companies or any of those parties?

Uh we did not follow up with those uh trucks.

We only saw that because the the pictures that were given to us initially, with we weren't able to read it.

Uh it was just the latest video that was provided where we saw that and we haven't pursued that uh and we were never even uh given any testimonies from truck drivers or receipts or anything like that.

Um to back up their testimony, yeah.

Clearly, if we can if we could contact the truck companies, that would give us a sense of that.

The um I just want to ask the director of the agency, uh Senator Vere was there, do you have any conflicts?

Does Chuck Meadows work for you?

Or there's any conflicts here?

Uh Chuck does not work for the county and thus does not work for me.

And no any context.

There is no conflict.

I met him in 2022 when he was raising the issue uh with regard to uh code enforcement on the site.

Okay.

Then I just want to check with county council.

Um so yeah, this is a quasi-judicial matter.

Uh the you know, the board meeting is planning our planning capacity.

So um what bird of proof do we have to ponder to the evidence, clear and convincing evidence, reasonable doubt?

What standard do we have to follow?

So supervisor, I believe it is a uh preponderance of the evidence, more probable than not in this in this regard.

I do want to uh provide a response to a statement that was made early on by um the property owners uh counsel who indicated that in a court proceeding in it for reconsideration that you would be limited to new evidence or new facts.

That is not the case here.

You are allowed to reconsider uh based on prior evidence, old evidence, anything that that you have before you and or had before you before.

So not not constrained like a court of law would be.

Yeah, so my you know, wanted to come back for reconsideration so he could see additional photos, hear any new evidence, get uh additional testimony.

Um and it just seems to me it's an unfortunate situation where there's you know this ongoing dispute between neighbors, uh, at least land use matters can get that way.

Um but I mean we we've we've seen pictures of trucks coming in, we've had testimony of trucks, we've also had testimony um uh trying to um uh what's it dispute that then we've you know I think we've heard from engineers one saying it's it it's solid, others saying it's not, and even our engineer saying it's not.

Um I just I just kind of think that um just weighing it all, and then we've had the BZA take this up, and we also have staff's um recommendation.

I I just kind of think with everything being equal, um the the way I'm gonna have to come down on this is with the staff's uh recommendation based on you know there's just a competing information here and this isn't a court of law where people have got to be sworn in and um you know and if we were a court of law I would want to have those truck we'd want to identify those truck people and have investigators go ahead and get their information but since we aren't um I just think um based on what we've heard from both sides and then based on uh the BZA and the staff's recommendation I think I'm gonna have to fall on that in that direction so I just want to give you a sense of where I'm where I am at this point.

Thank you Supervisor Miley and just so that I'm clear and maybe county council can can confirm that is um a difference of um uh of where of where your opinion was before and as I understand county council there are two issues at hand one is debris and the need to clean it up the other is soil importation whether that was done legally or illegally or done at all and the complication of it being from one owner an LLC now to another owner the actual owners or not but there's a separate issue around soil importation and abatement and uh corrections made could you just clarify the differences yes if you look to your agenda items five and six are two separate items item five relates to um allegations that there was a violation of the soil fill importing ordinance um the board of zoning adjustments uh determined that that that were there was a violation and then that item was appealed to your board at your prior meeting your decision had been that there was not a violation of the soil importing ordinance and so that is where that is procedurally item six relates to violation of the neighborhood preservation ordinance and it relates to the presence of debris concrete and other unstable loose material in the soil itself.

The BZA determined that there was a violation of that ordinance and your board affirmed that decision at your last meeting.

So was there any discussion about if there is debris but we're not finding a violation of soil importation is the then assumption that the debris came from somewhere else.

I cannot speak to what the assumptions are or what your board was was thinking other than what you expressed at the time of that hearing um and that would be a part of the administrative record um the the question you have today is whether you uh intend to maintain your prior decision or alter in some way your prior decision on one or both of these particular matters that are before you on appeal.

That's clear I appreciate that supervisor Miley more comments.

So this the summary that the staff presented what would that um indicate because I thought I I thought I understood it pretty clear based on Supervisor Halbert's question.

In terms of the difference between the two uh situations for neighborhood preservation ordinance and what was found by our code enforcement staff that they would have to clear that and as well as stabilize the hillside so that would be the difference uh between that and the abatement of soil if you should uh declare that the soil import uh was violated so soil import ordinance was violated.

So is the staff recommendation in alignment with the the West County Board of Zoning Adjusters and the um neighborhood preservation ordinance.

Yes the uh they both uh had for the West BZA had um had approved that.

I mean, didn't and what they had um determined was that a violation was uh had for both a neighborhood preservation ordinance as well as a soil import ordinance, and that's the standard.

That's what you're here today.

Correct.

Okay, that's what I thought.

Okay, just want to be clear on that.

Okay, yeah, I appreciate that.

It's important to clarify.

What is the abatement recommendation?

How would they abate this?

I'm trying to uh and I also want to just say, um, so the order of the BCA was to hire uh professionals to evaluate the site for the stability and as well as to see if there's any contamination in there.

Uh, and then once they've done that evaluations also uh come up with an abatement plan, uh, then they would bring all that information back to the county and uh uh the border zoning adjustment for uh approval and finalization to move forward, yeah.

Sorry to butt in.

I also want to ask uh county council um because this is kind of disturbing too.

Uh what weight should we put on the um the affidavits and the testimony about um Mr.

Meadows' character, do we need to weigh any of that in our decision?

I'm sorry, evidence regarding Mr.

Challenges to Mr.

Meadows' credibility, yeah.

We obviously you are sitting here and have heard him testify.

Uh you can weigh his credibility as you deem appropriate.

You've heard him, you've seen him, you've interacted with him.

Um the finance are are not here for you to um ask questions of.

They're not here for you to uh ask for you know follow-ups and other information about what biases they may have.

Um, but you can't completely disregard the contents of those affidavits and then the folks who called in as well.

I mean you have to consider who was calling what they're saying, and then importantly, I think you um need to consider whether or not any of the statements by some of the neighbors was even relevant to the conversation.

Okay, thank you.

Any questions, comments, or thoughts.

I think like both sides are five minutes for a five year, I'm gonna.

I don't know about reserving anything.

Let's get it all out finished, done, not a back and forth.

I I so I'd say five minutes.

No, you have up to 10 minutes if you only use five to get five and it's over.

If you want to use another five, we can go.

We're not reserving five minutes.

I think that I have my other five at the end.

Well, you had 12 minutes of another video as well.

I will allow it, but I don't five minutes and five minutes, but that's it.

Don't take two and then come back with three more.

Okay, thank you.

We're already at a time of two o'clock, and we can come back another day and finish this.

Okay.

Um Rena Rickles again.

Uh first, when I first came into this in um October 2022 and appeared before all of you trying to get codes to enforce this, there were two of you who are on the board of supervisors, um, Supervisor Halbert and Miley, and the only two had any city experience and said, My God, this would be done in Oakland or in Dublin because code enforcement would go out, and if code enforcement weren't allowed on the site, the city would have demanded a warrant and they would have been out there and it would have been all their evidence.

It didn't work that way here.

Code did come out.

They had to start with Mr.

Meadows' evidence, but the evidence that Mr.

Meadows provided was verified and adopted by the county.

The county accepted all the basic violations.

One, it's imported soil, and the science supports it.

Two, it's over three three feet in depth.

That alone would do it.

The evidence supports it, it.

It's full of debris.

It is and was, and the evidence supports that.

On the other side, everything that they have provided is proven not to be true.

Whether it came from an adjacent property, whether the property is clean, whether East Bay Mud did it, whether a tree fell down.

There's nothing that they have provided throughout this case that has been tested and turned to be true.

I think that's very important when we look at the credibility.

And I would submit forget everything Mr.

Meadows has said.

Listen to what the county has presented to you as their own evidence.

Listen to what the county engineers said happened and what needs to be done.

Listen to the fact that you do have several eyewitnesses to the dumping.

Of course, you have Chuck, you have his wife, you have Sally, you have Karen.

Listen to the community, listen to your staff, listen to the experts that the staff brought in, and they verified it and adopted it as their own.

I can leave you with that.

Okay.

Thank you.

Mr.

Trevor.

Thank you.

I'll try to be as quick as possible.

The credibility is a large factor.

And what you've heard is actually the opposite.

You have Ms.

Philbin, who in six years has never won said she saw the trucks showed up today after this board granted the appeal.

You have Mr.

Meadows' wife, who wife, who for six years never came forward and saw any of these trucks until today after the appeal was granted in November.

You have Ms.

Casey, who, after we submitted a video online showing that she could not see what she claims to have seen, comes in here today and said, Well, back in 2019, I could see clearly that this is the evidence you have.

And if you say go to the county, all the evidence the county has is from Mr.

Meadows.

The engineers have not stepped on that property.

Mr.

Hall said, Well, you know, I was there in 2022, I came back in 2024.

I I think it's still unstable.

He hasn't been there in two years.

He has no idea.

Mr.

Dykman was there yesterday.

He's the one who has the idea of what needs to be done.

So when you say have someone hire someone to abate, there's nothing there to abate.

Mr.

Dykeman's already told you that he's already been retained to tell you what is there.

There is no soil importation.

The one thing I want to make clear, and I think it was made clear back when this happened, there was common ownership.

So the caller who said it was different owners, he was wrong, and there was an exception at that time because there was common ownership.

So I'll leave you with that.

Thank you.

And can he credibly comment that the hillside is still uh unstable or if there's uh uh I'm trying to juxtapose that if he hasn't been there for three years and yet we have a person in the room who has and then I'm hearing that if there's nothing to abate, then what's the problem coming up with an abatement plan?

Uh yeah, the our consultant never returned it, he was just there for that day.

But he can tell you just uh from the observation that he did on that day.

There was no doubt that uh the field was loose and it would eventually uh be a pro be an issue.

Um, however, he has not returned since then.

Wasn't there heavy rains since then?

Um yeah, there has been a lot of higher stuff that broke since then.

Yeah, I was uh there yesterday with uh Dave Dave Brown from District 5 and saw where the the um the gullies were uh in that area next to the tree.

They're they're about six, eight, six maybe six feet deep now because of the the water has come down through the recent, you know, weather um there uh even according to them.

There was material put there and it's not stable.

That's the reason why we added the neighborhood preservation ordinance because um regardless of the soil reporting or not, there's still unstable fill there that needs to be addressed, and there are chunks of uh um foreign things like concrete and asphalt, um shave not shavings, but chunks.

Um it's hard to see now because it there's greenery covering it, there's probably stuff buried in the soil, and uh that's a whole reason why we felt that we know there's soil importing because it's not allowed even one acre.

If you believe one truck or the that's enough for us to say that soil import uh happened there, and that it needs to be um proven that the soil is clean, uh, then they can move forward with either abatement or remediation or some kind of plan to address the stability uh and the cleanliness of that uh site.

Okay.

Thank you for answering those questions.

Supervisor Fortunato Bass.

Marquez questions or deliberations motions.

I will just say that um I was absent uh in November because I was out of town on work travel and I did watch the meeting this week.

Um, as was said, my chief of staff Dave Brown was also able to go to the site uh this week as well.

Um I am inclined based on uh all of the evidence I've seen, including the hearing as well as the hearing in November and today uh to support the staff determination as well.

So I don't know.

Supervise if anyone supervisor Miley, you mentioned that as well as what I understood.

If there's a motion, I'm happy to support it.

Yes.

Thank you.

And I would just share for the record that I've visited the site.

I've messed I've met with the um homeowner, the uh complaintant, the appellant, um, everyone interested in this topic.

I haven't turned down the single meeting request regarding this, and they have been on the site, and um I will also be supporting a motion if one is made with respect to staff's recommendations.

I've also met and spoken with um each side, but that was before November 11th.

Um apologize I wasn't at the November 11th hearing, but I also did watch the tape.

Um, and uh it's just unfortunate that we have um this continue.

Uh I also know that they're seeing legal proceedings.

Um but we have the ability to reconsider as our county council said.

Uh we don't have to hear new evidence, but rather just reconsider.

And um so uh I understand that um that uh at least one of us is planning to change their mind, and I respect that.

So I'll um have um supervisor Miley make a motion.

I'm gonna move that the board uphold the West County Border Zoning Adjusters decision and deny the appeal.

Um that the um the adherence to the wis county Border Zoning Justice action um include investigation reporting testing and abatement.

Is that sufficient?

Just for clarity, it's uh my understanding that your motion would include uh essentially a finding that there is a has been a violation of the soil and fill importing ordinance as well as of reaffirming your prior decision regarding neighborhood preservation violations as well and imposing the same remedy or relief that the board has any adjustments had at their prior hearing uh yes i will incorporate all that into the motion because make sure it's properly stated thank you supervisor miley start second to supervisor miley's motion i'll second it motion's been made by supervisor miley seconded by supervisor fortunato bass roll call vote please supervisor marquez aye supervisor tam excuse supervisor miley supervisor fortunatabas aye president howbert aye our last item before us is public input on items not on today's agenda no speakers let's wait they might come let's wait supervisor miley likes to wait until there's more comments anybody Kimberly you're on the line you have two minutes I may not indeed um I'm not not sure if this is the appropriate moment um I thought that there was a um item on the agenda regarding the mosaic project is that not no that was continued to another meeting Kimberly okay then I will April 16th thank you so much any other hands raised with that we are no more thank you