Make New Friends... And Keep The Old...

In keeping with the spirit of the Girl Scout campfire song in the title, it was time to open or renew communications with a couple of governmental agencies charged with overseeing certain aspects of the seamy, steamy industry politely called catering.

Tax revenues are important for some reason to the State of California, and sales taxes from retail businesses are tracked pretty carefully. So I wrote to my new friends at the Board of Equalization.

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Board of Equalization
Disclosure Officer, MIC: 54
P.O. Box 942879
Sacramento, CA 94279

May 26, 2010

Re: Cancellation of Seller’s Permit

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am seeking to ascertain the date of discontinuance for the following business:

TLC Catering
810 Fishback Street
Manteca, CA 95337

Owners: Lynda Allen and Theresa Brassey.
No Fictitious Business Name statement filed in San Joaquin County since 1989.

Sometime in the middle of February, 2010, daily departures of catering trucks ceased and For Sale signs went up on the vehicles. Other business operations ceased on the property. Regulation 1699, section (f), requires surrender of the Seller’s Permit upon discontinuance of the business or transfer of the active business to another person.

Please respond with some sort of Board of Equalization documentation regarding the date of surrender of their Seller’s Permit.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,
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And renewing communications with the San Joaquin County Environmental Health Department (EHD)...

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Attn: Jeff Carruesco, Program Coordinator
600 E. Main Street
Stockton, CA 95202

May 26, 2010

Re: Superior Court Case # 3-2009-00212085-CU-OR-STK,
Behling v. Allen, Brassey, TLC Catering and Commissary

Dear Mr. Carruesco,

On March 18, 2010, I requested copies of the health permit cancellations for TLC Catering and other related correspondence between your office and the business owners.

The owners and operators, Lynda Allen and Theresa Brassey, have elected to cease business operations at 810 Fishback Street in Manteca, to include their last MFPU and the private commissary.

Please send my copies to the address on the letterhead.

Please send copies of these documents to my attorney...


Sincerely,
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It was brought to my attention by someone more well-versed than I in the Manteca Municipal Code, that the city has fairly stringent provisions for the time-amortization, discontinuance, and removal of (legal) nonconforming buildings and uses. Title 17, Section 55 deals with these particulars. The Planning Commission only gets involved if an extension of the time-amortization period is requested. For everything else, administrative authority is vested in the Community Development Director to execute the section's provisions, which includes notifying violators to immediately discontinue and remove illegal nonconforming uses.

 

I won't bore the reader with more details - except to say, it feels as if I'm at the beginning of 2008 again! I may have to fight every single battle again with the city.

What is wrong with this $%&&* city?! Isn't there a single  #%%@&  oxymoronic  public servant who understands the zoning ordinance? Isn't there a single paid professional planner who can explain the ordinance clearly to a mere citizen upon his first question or complaint? Isn't there a single department director who can truly take proper action as authorized by the publicly adopted ordinance? Are all these city minions so oblivious to the law, lazy in its application, or fearful of taking 'uncomfortable' action that the abomination-upon-the-land, known as TLC Catering (even if it was legal, which it never was), wasn't  sent to hell  amortized within very few years of this code's adoption in 1992, rather than entrenching itself for over two decades from its spawning.

A precedent-setting court case for the elimination of nonconforming uses is Los Angeles v. Gage (1954) The second footnote quotes a legal authority:

"It has always been assumed that non-conforming uses would gradually eliminate themselves from the district in which they exist if they were not permitted to expand. Such has not proven to be the case. They not merely continue to exist, but to send down deeper roots. They become clear monopolies and special privileges. Their existence is a continual threat to the conservation of property values in the districts where they exist. The time has come when cognizance should be taken of this situation and provision made, probably in the state law, whereby nonconforming uses may be gradually eliminated under some equitable method of procedure." Bartholomew, The Zoning of Illinois Municipalities, 17 Ill.Munic.Rev. 221, 232. (emphasis added)

The court stated in its opinion:

"In essence there is no distinction between requiring the discontinuance of a nonconforming use within a reasonable period and {1} provisions which deny the right to add to or extend buildings devoted to an existing nonconforming use, {2} which deny the right to resume a nonconforming use after a period of nonuse, {3} which deny the right to extend or enlarge an existing nonconforming use, {4} which deny the right to substitute new buildings for those devoted to an existing nonconforming use — all of which {the latter 4} have been held to be valid exercises of the police power. (See County of Orange v. Goldring, 121 Cal. App.2d 442 [263 P.2d 321]; 58 Am.Jur. 1026, 1029, §§ 156, 158, 162; anno. 147 460*460 A.L.R. 167; 1 Yokley, Zoning Law and Practice, 2d ed., §§ 151-157.) (italic numbering added)

I wonder if all of our zoning, planning, and code enforcement employees slept through their "Law of Zoning" college class? Or, have not kept up their continuing education requirements?

It is pretty clear that our officials should have been able to do one of the following:

• 1. Immediately abate TLC Catering's illegal use of property in 1987 when the warts first appeared;
• 2. Immediately abate TLC Catering's illegal use of property in 1992 after new ordinance adoption; or,
• 3. Put TLC Catering on amortization for abatement (incorrectly presuming legal nonconforming status) after the 1993 complaint.

 The #$%#%$ owners of this illegal business operation should not have had even one day of their nuisance operation on the property, and certainly no more than seven years after being turned in in 1993.

But no! Manteca officials let them go on and on and on... for twenty-three years! Tell me again, why does Manteca even have a municipal code?

Scraping the Bottom

Got a second call from my attorney last night (Thursday.) It appears T, L or C called their freebie Farmers Insurance Company attorney (Why is Farmer's Insurance still hanging with these losers?) to tell him, Mark D. McCauley, Esq., about the criminal complaint I filed on them Wednesday night. Of course, because this commercial insurance attorney, and his employer, and their one giant client, have NO interest in defending criminal policyholders, he called my attorney to emphatically renew his commitment to speedily settle the civil suit, even if the defendants are pissed off about it. (Ohhh... I can see contempt of court charges already!) That's why my attorney called me.

Now that the two attorneys and I are singing from the same page of the hymnbook, all that remains is to beg  persuade  cajole  bribe  convince  tell  order  force  have the civil case defendants sign onto the Stipulated Judgment.

All of which precedes the fact that Lynda Allen is losing control. The most predictable thing about "control freaks" is that when they lose the ability to control the people around them, they freak out and revert to childish and asinine antics - or adult temper tantrums - in pathetic attempts to regain even "negative" control.

The previous post showed that despite the P.C. 415 citation she received hours before, she still turned on the yard radio yesterday morning...

... and again this morning. (Keep diggin', baby! Let's see how deep a hole you want to dig for yourself.) Banging around in the yard for an hour before, at 7:04 a.m. Lynda, still in her robe and slippers, shuffled from house to outbuilding and turned on the radio. On the way back to the house, however, she stepped in something - probably dog shit! - and tried scraping it off before going in. The incident prompted me to recall the "too many dogs" complaint and the chicken they allow loose on the property.

... and it reawakened a memory of something I read in their Health Department files almost two years ago. (Ahhh, yes... here it is.)

No wonder they were shoeless! Which is worse, a slap on the hands (or feet) for shoelessness, or losing your Health Department certificate (which shuts down your catering truck) because of whatever! on the bottom of your shoes?

The complaint, above, inspired a new name for the trio next door. Since they no longer operate TLC Catering, their new name is:

BAREFOOT DIRTY GIRLS!

Anybody wanna buy some catering trucks? See pictures of them at the end of this post.
(But remember to have them thoroughly cleaned [by professionals] before their first use.)

.

Cleaning Up Some of TLC's Environmental Waste

.
Just to make sure the general public in Tracy and Manteca are protected from the lawless bent of my neighbors, I sent this letter to my helpful contacts at the Health Department to give them a heads up.

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San Joaquin County, Environmental Health Department
Attn: Jeff Carruesco, Program Coordinator
600 E. Main Street
Stockton, CA 95202

March 18, 2010

Re: Superior Court Case # 3-2009-00212085-CU-OR-STK,
Behling v. Allen, Brassey, TLC Catering and Commissary


Dear Mr. Carruesco,

The enclosed picture shows that Lynda Allen and Theresa Brassey, owners and operators of TLC Catering, have elected to cease business operations on their residential property located at 810 Fishback Street in Manteca and not move their operation elsewhere. If they have already contacted you with that decision, please provide me and my attorney with copies of all correspondence between the parties and the health permit cancellations for TLC Catering's MFPU's and the private commissary.

If they have not yet contacted you, please flag their account and provide the documents requested above as they become available.
. . .

Your department's files were extremely helpful to me in reconstructing the scope and duration of Allen's and Brassey's illegal operation. I only wish your department had been more diligent to verify their lack of property rights for this operation twenty-three years ago. Nevertheless, I am pleased that 1) the current poor economic climate, 2) my lawsuit against them for their lack of land use permits and causing a noise nuisance, and 3) their lack of business insurance have all combined to present this single option to the owners of TLC Catering and Commissary.

Sincerely,

Fire Drill at the Health Department

Following up on my second public records request to the Environmental Health Department (EHD), the program coordinator and I played “telephone/vacation tag” for a few weeks before we spoke.

My intent with this visit was to copy the entire contents of the five file folders (three inactive trucks, one active truck, and one active commissary) and review everything at home.

At 10:00 a.m. on the morning of December 10th I was at the EHD copier. At 10:05 a.m. the fire alarm went off and all employees and visitors had to evacuate the building and walk three or four blocks to the designated assembly site at a parking lot under the cross-town freeway. It was NOT a drill because a fire truck responded to the alarm. The story I heard was that someone had burned something in the break room microwave. Of course, out in the cold, I had to give the program coordinator a ribbing by accusing him of doing anything to avoid giving me access to the records. I did finish copying the files after the all clear was given.

That night I went through each page, individually, and teased its story out and into my notes. I was heartened to find that the pages I obtained last August to create the “Timeline” were sufficient to prove my “expansion” argument, but more pleased with creating a chart, with ALL the intervening data, that made for a compelling visual.




The chart depicts the three critical dates in 1993 and 1994 that prove TLC Catering both enlarged AND expanded its business use of the property AFTER being explicitly told the prohibition against enlargement or expansion in the Cantu letter. The result was well worth the second visit to EHD (even with parking fees, copying fees, fire drill, etc.) and the night of analysis and charting. Now, when the right time comes to present the case, I won't have to "spell it out" because I've "drawn them a picture."

My problems are: 1) I have been crediting City of Manteca officials with far too much ability to understand law and read written words; 2) expecting the City of Manteca to know what's in their files, or even to locate them, and to be even remotely helpful in aiding a thorough investigation; 3) the EHD (the grandmother) and the City of Manteca (the grandfather) do not combine their separate dealings with TLC Catering (the spoiled, manipulative child) in order to operate from "the big picture."

Anyway, next steps involve receiving the last-requested public records from Manteca, interleaving already received building permit information into my "Timeline," requesting DMV records for license plates on certain catering trucks and the commissary trailer, and searching within Manteca's 1986 annexation records to verify any "grandfathered" levels of legal but non-conforming use.


(Damn! I'll miss that icemaker when it's gone!...)


(NOT!...)

EHD - Enablng Hardcore Dereliction

Somehow, TLC Catering has managed to stay in business. After seeing some of the shoddy, half-completed Environmental Health Department applications they have submitted over the years, I don't know how they do it, but at least they keep their EHD permits up. Perhaps they make EHD clerks and inspectors go blind by using the same magical fairy dust they sprinkle on Manteca city employees.

Following up on the property's building permits requested last week from the City of Manteca, below is a letter to the EHD seeking a corresponding history of program permits and health inspections. A copy of this letter is also going to the same City of Manteca official in charge of building permits and home occupation permits so he can see what TLC Catering was doing without the city's permission.


November 17, 2008

Donna Heran, Director
Environmental Health Department
600 East Main Street
Stockton, CA 95202

Re: Public records request

Dear Ms. Heran,
I visited your offices in Stockton on August 20th and reviewed the TLC Catering files you provided at my request. Your staff was helpful and the review productive.

Some needed items, however, were not found in those files:
1. The number and type of permits (program elements) existing on December 17, 1986.

2. A year-by-year history of the number and type of permits (program elements) issued from December 17, 1986 to now.

3. Records of the “Program 1680 Plan Check,” referred to on the attached Account Statement. The four hours billed between 6/1/94 and 6/9/94 I assume represent checklists of equipment, diagrams of placement, narratives of commissary processes, and reports of visual inspections prior to issuing the commissary permit on 7/13/94.

4. Annual commissary inspection reports from 7/13/94 to the first one in the commissary file, 12/9/02.

The subjects of the requested files and records are:

810 Fishback Street (Manteca after 12/17/86), or
18594 S Fishback Rd (SJCo before 12/17/86), and
Lynda S Allen and/or Theresa A Brassey (property/business owners), and
TLC Catering (business name).


Ms. Heran, I would be pleased to receive a written response as to when such records will be made available.

Respectfully submitted by,

________________________
Richard W. Behling



cc: Mark Nelson, Manteca Community Development Director


All of this effort is necessary because Manteca's code enforcement still spreads the patently absurd story that TLC Catering's operation is like that of a tradesman parking the company truck in the driveway at home for the night. (News flash! There is no company re-supply depot in the tradesman's garage!)

The owners of TLC Catering apparently don't know a grandfather from a grandmother, and have risked their entire operation on their deliberately ignoring Manteca's zoning laws.

Unfortunately, all the county and city officials, who have had to suffer the insufferable, got magical TLC fairy dust in their eyes.