County responds to [Sutter County] grand jury

 Counters charges duties were neglected the past three years

The Sutter County Grand jury recently released the findings of an investigation into the code enforcement department and found it largely neglected its duties in collecting fines for citations and pursuing violations for the past three years, but a county spokesperson contends the report doesn't tell the full story.

Sutter County Public Information Officer Chuck Smith argued the county has not neglected its duty regarding code enforcement efforts, at least for the past several months, as staff and supervisors have been working to improve case management and case prosecution.

''The grand jury is correct that code enforcement is important and the residents of Sutter County deserve to have a fair and effective code enforcement program," Smith said ''This is a priority of the county."

Grand jury members opted to investigate the department's operations and performance after receiving numerous complaints related to illegal building and zone violations not being addressed or investigated by the county.

The county's previous code enforcement officer resigned in February 2020, leaving the department with no personnel. TRB and Associates was hired to review the department's current operations and procedures and identify improvements .4LEAF Inc. was also hired in July 2020 to provide a consultant code enforcement officer on an as-needed basis.

When 4LEAF started, Smith said there were 224 open cases. As of December 2020, the county had 191 open cases.

The department is utilizing the existing consultant code enforcement officer to investigate and prosecute existing and new cases on a priority basis that considered life/safety violations first," Smith said. ''There is no established timeline to resolve all cases since the department continues to receive new complaints."

The grand jury stated there were fines totaling over $1.1 million that the county had not collected as of Nov.30, 2020 -revenues that could be used to defray the cost of enforcement activities and encourage compliance. The county says the fine total was substantially overstated due to inaccurate calculations based upon a daily fine for every day that a violation existed -- consultants say a more accurate interpretation of the county's previous code enforcement ordinance is that the fine could be accrued for each day that a code enforcement officer confirms that a violation exists, typica lly through a site visit.

Smith said a more accurate amount is less than $200,000. He said over the past 2 1/2 years, the department has collected over $96,000 in fines from violations.

The grand jury also found that there were 54 open cases that had not been inspected as of Nov. 30, 2020, and another 152 cases that were closed without an inspection date and no valid reason given.

While the county did not deny that some cases were closed without reasoning, Smith said the department closed some cases due to age and reopened them under new case numbers in order for them to be processed under new guidelines established by the revised and updated ordinance.

"For those parties that chose not to correct the violation, the county has held code enforcement hearings on these active cases with the new hearing officer," Smith said.

Since the previous code enforcement officer's departure, the Sutter County Board of Supervisors has adopted changes to the Administrative Penalties Ordinance Section, appointed a county administrative hearing officer to preside over code enforcement case hearings, and adopted revisions to the county ordinance code pertaining to administrative penalties.

The search for a new, full-time code enforcement officer has been ongoing since September 2020 and the hope is to hire someone within the coming months.

"The initial recruitment did not provide sufficient qualified candidates, so the recruitment was extended," Smith said. "The department expects to begin interviewing qualified applicants at the end of February 2021 and hopes to have a full-time officer hired by April 2021."

Appeal-Democrat
ByJake Abbott jabbott@appealdemocrat.com
February 17,