Timeline · the case, and the record behind it

What happened, in order.

A chronology of the code case and the paper trail around it, drawn from the county’s own records. Dated moments in red are the ones the whole story turns on.

The record, long before the case
  1. 1961A county assessor walks the parcel and writes down what stands on it.
  2. Nov 1962A building permit for the main house records “OTHER BLDGS. ON LOT: 3” — the same year the county first had a building department to write it in. Three other buildings, already standing, counted in the county’s own hand.
  3. 1994Another building permit is issued for the parcel.
  4. 1995A planning staff report and conditional-use permit (U95-010) are recorded.
  5. 1988–2019Code complaints are recorded against the parcel across the decades, long before the current owner’s involvement.
  6. 2019The land begins operating as HOME, a small cooperative housing community.
The case opens
  1. Nov 18, 2025A code officer inspects the property and photographs the old farm buildings.
  2. Nov 19, 2025The county issues a Violation Warning Letter alleging six violations and opens case CC25-0261, calling several buildings “unpermitted structures.”
  3. Dec 19, 2025The original compliance deadline set by the letter.
The records, and what wasn’t there
  1. Feb 2026County IT reimages the officer’s laptop and his county phone is wiped and turned in. Nothing had been backed up. (This surfaces later, in the county’s own IT tickets.)
  2. Mar 20, 2026The owner meets with the county’s code-enforcement director.
  3. Mar–Apr 2026Eight California Public Records Act requests are filed across five departments, asking for the written rules and records behind the case.
  4. Apr 2026The county transmits a proposed compliance agreement.
  5. May 2026The county states in writing that no documentation exists of how the inspection photographs were lost — and separately attributes the loss to a corrupted storage device.
  6. Late Jun 2026The county produces three IT help-desk tickets. They describe the February laptop reimage and phone wipe, and quote the officer’s own note: “all photos from 05/30/2023 through 02/09/2026 have been deleted. I need the photos for my cases.” Two and a half years of one officer’s enforcement photographs, gone.
  7. 2026Across four rounds of requests, five departments answer “no records exist” 25 separate times — itemized on The record.
Where it stands
  1. Aug 24, 2026The county issues a citation: a $390 fine and a demand to permit or demolish.
  2. Sep 29, 2026An administrative hearing on the case. The matter remains open.
Every dated moment here traces to a county record or the county’s own correspondence. The verbatim answers are on The record; the request-by-request document set is in our receipts.

Created by The Democracy Studio · thedemocracy.studio