BAFCAB member Richard Irish reads a statement before the Board of Supervisors just before the group is disbanded.
Yesterday’s Board of Supervisors meeting had all the charm of divorce court when it arrived at its final piece of business for the day – determining whether or not to deep-six the Building, Accessibility and Fire Code Appeals Board which, while only three meetings old, has strayed outside of its prescribed role in an attempt to hear appeals which the Planning Department and county staff say is none of its concern.
BAFCAB members Marty Fiorovich and Richard Irish each read half of a statement asking the supervisors not to dismiss the remaining members and to consider changing county code to allow a body other than the Planning Department to decide which cases the board should and should not hear . “County codes do not include an independent process for determining the validity of appeals,” read Fiorovich. “A few simple changes to county code could address this.” The statement went on to deny charges leveled by Santa Cruz County counsel Dana McRae and county administrative officer Susan Mauriello that the BAFCAB members had reached “misguided legal conclusions” and was not hearing appeals in an expedient fashion. “The fact that these charges were even allowed to be posted to the agenda says lot of about who’s running this county,” said BAFCAB chair Dan Bronson. “The county administrative officer has chosen to make this a game of political hardball. Ultimately, this is her fault.”
Tensions between the planning department staff and BAFCAB came to a head three weeks ago when Bronson called a meeting to hear an appeal by architect Cove Britton that planning staff had already deemed outside of BAFCAB jurisidiction. Though the meeting was ultimately cancelled, the action resulted in yesterday’s agenda item, which was originally intended to “clarify” the role of the board.
Bronson, Irish and Fiorovich were all that remained of BAFCAB after the resignation of former chair Michael Bethke and, most recently, that of David Parks, who wrote in a letter than he was leaving “in light of the shenanigans that have occurred by actions of the county’s Planning Director.”
A line of speakers stepped to the podium in support of the BAFCAB members. “You don’t have the authority to do what you’re being asked to do,” said Joe Ritchey, a Scotts Valley resident. Two other speakers called the supervisors “domestic terrorists” for attempting to eliminate the board.
Nevertheless, it became clear when Supervisor John Leopold began to speak that BAFCAB didn’t have a prayer. “I want to thank the members of BAFCAB for the work that they’ve done,” he said. “I’d like to make the motion to remove the existing members ֓ He was quickly drowned out by a chorus of loud booing.
“Please stop,” said Supervisor Neal Coonerty over shouts of “This is tyranny!” and “Dictatorship!”
Supervisor Ellen Pirie seconded, saying, “We’ve gotten this board in this situation where it’s so severely dysfunctional. The public deserves better.”
In the end, the termination of the board received unanimous approval, and the room emptied into the hallway for a spirited bout of complaining and half-joking about a recall on Leopold. “I kind of expected this to happen,” said the ousted Irish.
“We bet on it,” joked Fiorovich.
“The ultimate loser is the people of the county,” said Irish. “We were right.”
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Dan Bronson, Chair, SCz Cty Building Appeals Board Thu, Jun 18, 2009 - 6:37 am
HONEST BUILDING APPEALS BOARD PANICS COUNTY OFFICIALS
On June 2nd the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors, in a show trial reminiscent of the Cold War, voted 5-0 to remove all five of the newly appointed Building Code Appeals Board members because they would not follow invalid County Ordinances that violate state law. Despite the fact that every member of the public that spoke for the appointed Appeals Board members to be allowed to proceed with the business of hearing appeals including current Appellants.
The members of this new Appeals Board have found that County Planning Department staff has been denying hundreds of citizens their legal right to appeal the administrative decisions of the county staff for years.
They also found that the Supervisors’ have passed many ordinances at the request of count staff over at least the past 3 years that violate state law regarding this Appeals Board and the appeals rights provided to county citizens. These ordinances as violations of state law have been assisted by the County Counsels Office headed by attorneys Dana McRae and Rahn Garcia and are defended by them.
Now the Supervisors are appointing themselves to take over the duties of the Appeals Board by changing County Ordinances that also violate state law and regulations. They took this action with the aid of Susan Mauriello, County Administrative Officer, County Counsel Dana McRae and Deputy County Counsel Rahn Garcia.
All five highly qualified Appeals Board members, some on the advice of attorneys, refused to go along and be a rubber stamp for the illegal acts of the Planning Director Tom Burns and his staff and rejected illicit attempts by the Santa Cruz County Supervisors to influence them to follow invalid County Ordinances that are in conflict with state laws and deny appeals rights to the public as provided in the Health & Safety Code and the California Building Standards Codes.
By abusing their authority and removing the Appeals Board the County Supervisors and County staff are trying cover up this situation so that members of the public who have had their rights violated will not know to appeal or file suit also. And they are hoping that other people of this county won’t learn what rights are available or will simply see this as some minor bureaucratic spat. It is not.
That is why Susan Mauriello, County Administrative Officer, Dana McRae, County Attorney, and Tom Burns, Planning Director, invented an unbelievably long list of false charges and added them to the Board of Supervisors Agenda for June 2, 2009 at the last possible minute as Item 73.1.
The charges in Item 73.1 actually reflect the acts of staff in obstructing and delaying the appeals process rather than the Appeals Board members themselves. The Appeals Board Public Record clearly shows the exact opposite of what Susan Mauriello and Dana McRae state in their letter and proves the allegations totally false.
Those charges are intended to deceive the casual observer into thinking that their elected officials were acting in the public interest. Actually the Supervisors and staff acted maliciously, illegally and with a clear conflict of interest involved to avoid prosecution, and to cover up the abuses of citizen’s rights that were exposed by the new Appeals Board members.
Currently the County government and Supervisors Coonerty, Pirie, Stone, Campos and Beautz are being held personally accountable in US District Court for the Planning Department violating the rights of a couple in Soquel. There are also at two other trials underway locally at the Superior Court accusing the County and Board of Supervisors of violations of rights by the Planning Department.
The desperate measures that Coonerty, Pirie, Campos, Stone, Leopold, Mauriello, McRae, Garcia and Burns are taking are in gross violation of state laws and regulations. They may be held accountable personally in more lawsuits at the local, state or federal level for violations of rights of those citizens that were told they had no further appeals or were denied appeals to the Building Appeals Board when they applied for an appeal.
Any person with critical thinking in operation can see that the Supervisors and Planning Department would be desperately opposed to this Appeals Board taking up its rightful authority under state law because it would eliminate the abuses and backroom deals and allow for fair and impartial consideration of construction requirements.
The five new members of the Santa Cruz County Building, Accessibility and Fire Code Appeals Board were only appointed early this year even though California law has required an Appeals Board in every city and county in California since November 1, 2002, the effective date of the 2001 Building Standards Codes. After 1976 local Building Appeals Boards were available as an option to all local governments in California until the law was changed in 2002.
This “local Appeals Board” has jurisdiction over all 12 of the California Building Standards Codes including the fire code, housing and accessibility issues where no separate Appeals Boards are created by the County for those areas.
Under general state law and the California Building Standards Codes (regulations having the force of law) anyone in the State of California that disagrees with a local government staff decision regarding building standards or construction requirements has the right to appeal to a local Appeals Board made up of five qualified citizens appointed by the local governing body for a fair and impartial hearing.
Current state law now requires all Appeals Board members to be citizens that are knowledgeable about the building codes. Something the Board of Supervisors is not.
These events should give confidence to those of honest character to consider running against the incumbent Supervisors as they come up for election. Democracy should not put up with lies and abuses from elected officials or any government officials. Voters in Live Oak and John Leopold’s District should know that the new Supervisor has thrown in with the others and actually made the motion to remove the ethical people on the Appeals Boards with the Board of Supervisors.
I trust that all local voters will have long memories with regard to this shameful episode in Santa Cruz County and remove the current batch of crooked politicians and corrupt senior county officials from our government.