News - Local

Wednesday, Jul. 23, 2008

Supervisors show little mercy to De Vaul by giving him firm deadlines to clean up sober-living ranch

Board sticks to hard-and-fast deadline for the owner of a sober-living ranch outside SLO to clean up code violations

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County supervisors on Tuesday rejected rancher Dan De Vaul’s request for more time and put him on notice that he must fix up his 72- acre property west of San Luis Obispo or face the county doing it at his expense.

In a “nuisance abatement” hearing that lasted six hours, irritated members of the Board of Supervisors made it clear that they don’t trust the contentious rancher to clean up code violations without firm deadlines, all before the end of the year.

Chairman Jim Patterson noted that De Vaul had agreed to clean up his property on Los Osos Valley Road at a nuisance abatement hearing in 2005.

“He stood at that podium and said he would take care of (violations),” Patterson said.

Instead, De Vaul allowed conditions to get worse, bringing more scrap metal to his ranch and building an illegal house that was supposed to be a barn, Patterson said.

Supervisors Bruce Gibson and Jerry Lenthall also made it clear they didn’t believe De Vaul would clean up his ranch if given an extension.

Lenthall said the rancher had shown “a lack of good faith” and argued that “we shouldn’t try to work with him” to buy more time.

Patterson said the county’s planning staff had worked with him extensively, only to be thwarted.

De Vaul did not speak for himself because he faces a Superior Court hearing Thursday on roughly the same questions and did not want to prejudice his case.

San Luis Obispo attorney John Belsher spoke for the 64-year-old rancher. He said De Vaul and the county need to work together.

He also noted that De Vaul has his Sunny Acres clean and sober facility on the property, and that recovering addicts and others there, as well as community volunteers, have worked to clean up the ranch.

What De Vaul must do

In the end, supervisors gave De Vaul an extra month — until Dec. 1 — to decide whether to tear down or bring up to code the so-called “stucco barn,” which ended up being a makeshift home for the homeless after De Vaul obtained a permit to build it as an agricultural structure.

The county condemned it and boarded it up earlier this year, arguing that it endangered its residents.

Several in the largely pro-De Vaul audience said some of the people expelled were living in creeks now and questioned supervisors’ commitment to helping the homeless.

The board held to the other recommendations made by the county’s code enforcement staff.

By Aug. 30, De Vaul must close his roadside stand because fewer than half of the products he sells are grown on his property, or he can bring it up to code.

By Sept. 30, he must remove commercial vehicles, unpermitted mobile homes and all but two stored passenger vehicles, and reduce the amount of outdoor storage to 1,000 feet and screen it.

Belsher argued that the changes might be too costly.

Two views on De Vaul

Although the hearing was about the rusted hulks, occupied mobile homes and illegal structures on De Vaul’s property, the testimony dwelled at length on the dual nature of De Vaul’s presence on the land west of San Luis Obispo.

On the one hand, he rules over what his neighbors consider an eyesore and code enforcement officers consider a finger in the eye.

On the other, he is doing work the county does little of, providing a roof for homeless people and hope for recovering addicts, supporters said.

“We’ve got good things happening, we’ve got bad things happening,” Patterson said.

“Mr. De Vaul is providing a service,” he conceded. “But you don’t have to break the law to provide those services.”

Martha Goldin said as a retired judge, “I don’t appreciate scofflaws.”

But, she said, when an individual tries even in an inappropriate manner to solve a local problem such as homeless-ness, the county should step in to help.

Others, including San Luis Obispo City Councilwoman Christine Mulholland—who said she has an “extensive” view of De Vaul’s ranch from her property — said the rancher has been running “an ongoing shell game.”

She said De Vaul showed “egregious defiance” of codes and was responsible for “environmental degradation.”

Local resident Krista Frederickson said, “We’re not here to talk about whether Mr. De Vaul does good things. If we are to live in a community together, we all must follow the rules and regulations of that community.”

Mulholland said helping the homeless and addicted is “a difficult issue, which we must address, but at another time.”