Chip Johnson
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
If the annual report of the Alameda County grand jury is an accurate account of the operations inside the city of Oakland's Building Services Division, the logical next step must be a criminal investigation.
The division of Oakland's Community and Economic Development Agency is responsible for reviewing plans for new construction and renovation, inspecting the city's housing stock and enforcing the city's blight and nuisance laws.
When a property owner ignores cleanup orders, Building Services can hire a contractor to do the work and place a lien on the property for the cost.
But the grand jury report released Monday outlined a pattern of arbitrary and excessive fees, fines and abusive actions by building supervisors and inspectors that so "appalled" the panel, it recommended the city revoke the agency's law enforcement authority.
In one case, city inspectors tagged an Oakland property with a blight order for what turned out to be children's toys in the yard. The city moved forward with the cleanup, demolished a garage legally converted to a recreation area two decades earlier, and charged the owner $18,000, the report said.
The city's appeals process, if you could actually call it that, operated more like a scam than a legitimate administrative function where property owners' claims were heard by objective parties. Property owners reported being denied on first appeal, often with the code enforcement officer who issued the citation acting as the hearing officer.
The appeals often surpassed the cost of the fine, effectively discouraging many property owners from pursuing an otherwise legitimate claim, the report said.
Even when residents didn't appeal and did agree to sign a compliance plan to correct the problems, the agency added a 14.75 percent fee for records management and technology enhancement. Yet, when the grand jury issued a subpoena for records, the city could not locate all of them, the report said.
One of the more troubling findings was confirmation of a 10-year interest-only loan made by a debris removal contractor to a Building Services manager. The same contractor was awarded "a disproportionately large number of contracts" for debris removal and abatement work, the report said.
The loan was reported to the Fair Political Practices Commission, which is required by law, two years later. The city's Building Services manager "at one time listed her address at a property owned by the contractor," the report said.
Inside the city's Building Services offices, the contractor had free rein, and on more than one occasion submitted the low bid for a contract and then issued a change-order to increase its value. "These change orders inflated the price of the contracts, increasing the cost of the lowest-winning bid," the report concluded.
Another egregious practice, identified previously in a 1999 grand jury report, was still in use until recently.
In its review of property records from 2007 to 2010, the grand jury found "prospective liens" city officials used to issue "warnings" to property owners.
Not only did the practice encumber a property and make it more difficult for an owner to secure funds to comply with city orders, the fines appeared arbitrary and punitive. The report found no correlation between fine amounts and cleanup costs.
Oakland city officials could not be reached for comment.
"There is a perception by property owners that the fees are simply a way for the city to generate funds for the city without regard for the residents' due process," the report said.
And there were no residents more outraged than Michelle Cassens and her husband, Gwillym Martin, West Oakland residents whose home was condemned by city building inspectors in 2009.
In August 2010, Cassens sent letters to 2,000 people she'd identified who found themselves in similar predicaments with the Oakland city agency. She included a copy of an Alameda County grand jury complaint form and encouraged people to sound off.
"Apparently they did, in droves," Cassens said in a phone interview Monday. "I feel like this is a beginning for the victims."
Grand jury report
To see the Alameda County grand jury report that includes findings on the city of Oakland's alleged building-inspection abuses, go to links.sfgate.com/ZLAF
Chip Johnson's column appears in the Chronicle on Tuesday and Friday. E-mail him at chjohnson@sfchronicle.com.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/06/28/BAQ91K3C69.DTL
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