Officials examine tanks at the Fowler property Tuesday. Code Enforcement photo.

KELSEYVILLE – On Tuesday state and local authorities served a search warrant at the home of a Kelseyville land owner whose property was ordered abated by the Board of Supervisors in January.

Charles Fowler said he found several investigators on the porch of home on Adobe Creek Road Tuesday morning, including members of the District Attorney's Office accompanied by representatives of state agencies.

In January the board ordered an abatement on Fowler's 360-acre property, citing junker vehicles, outdoor storage, large amounts of greenwaste and unpermitted mobile homes. However, they have allowed him time to do his own cleanup, which has showed marked progress, according to his neighbors.

At the board's April 8 meeting, supervisors voted to give Fowler an additional 30 days to work on cleanup, as Lake County News has reported.

But the Tuesday warrant service was done independently of the board, whose members weren't notified about the search beforehand, according to District 5 Supervisor Rob Brown, in whose district Fowler's property is located.

Brown said neither he nor Board Chair Ed Robey were told the investigation was taking place.

County Code Enforcement Manager Voris Brumfield said the warrant service was done through the District Attorney's Office and wasn't a Code Enforcement operation.

However, two Code Enforcement officers led two teams totaling 25 people – including scientists from the state Department of Toxic Substances Control – to various sites around Fowler's 360-acre property, according to Brumfield.

“They were doing testing of materials as well as investigating the materials that were there,” said Brumfield.

She referred Lake County News to county Environmental Health Director Ray Ruminski for more information about the investigation.

However, Ruminski is out of town at a conference for the rest of the week, according to his staff, and Lake County News was unable to reach him.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Richard Hinchcliff confirmed that the District Attorney's Office was involved but would only say that it was part of an ongoing investigation related to environmental issues.

Also involved, according to county officials, is a state environmental circuit prosecutor who did not return a call from Lake County News seeking comment.

Fowler said the appearance of investigators caught him by surprise.

The warrant, he said, didn't contain specific details about what investigators were searching for, but they took a phone bill, a sheet of ledger paper containing the name of Lakeport Disposal – the company with which Fowler contracted to accept greenwaste on his property – as well as Fowler's personal computer.

The computer, he said, had all of his personal and financial information on it, and investigators wouldn't let him back up the information before taking it.

Fowler, who has spent months recovering from a tumor on his pituitary gland, said the investigators kept him in his house during the search, which lasted several hours. “I wasn't able to observe what they were doing.”

He said he believes they think he's guilty of some “environmental crime,” and suggested this was retaliation for his claims that his rights have been violated.

“If they wanted to come out here and take a soil test or something, they could have called me rather than spending all this money on the warrant,” he said.

Brumfield said Code Enforcement staff noted while at the property Tuesday that Fowler had removed two singlewide mobile homes that the county had wanted removed. Fowler added that he's still in the process of dismantling a third trailer.

Illegally installed mobile homes, open and outdoor storage issues and vehicles were the focus for Code Enforcement, said Brumfield.

She also pointed to concerns about animals on the ranch, although Animal Care and Control Director Denise Johnson said one of her officers attended the warrant service and found the animal issues to be unfounded.

Fowler, whose family has lived on the property for about 122 years, said he's made great strides in cleaning up the land since he came home from the hospital.

He said he always has done composting on the land, and had farm workers living there before – both of which were listed as issues of concern for the county. “All of a sudden I've lost all of my rights.”

The issues on his property, said Fowler, aren't all his doing. He said someone abandoned a travel trailer on his land, but Code Enforcement held him responsible for it rather than helping him find the culprits.

Cleanup also was difficult during the wet, winter months, he said, adding that a plan for cleanup he and his daughter, Sara, submitted was turned down because it didn't have dates specific enough relating to the time frame for cleanup.

When it became public that his land was being abated, he said people started showing up on his property and taking things.

Fowler said he believes his rights have definitely been violated.

Brown said Code Enforcement has scheduled an update on the Fowler case for the May 13 Board of Supervisors meeting.

E-mail Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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The club’s goal is to, “Get high quality organic food at the lowest possible prices,” said William Thaete, an organizer on the committee.

“Another project the group is co-creating with the Clear Lake Chamber of Commerce is a farmers’ community market in Clearlake at the corner of Lakeshore and Olympic, adjacent to Austin’s Beach,” said steering committee chairperson, JoAnn Saccato.

The Friday Nite Market, from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., begins June 6 and will run through Oct. 17. This weekly market will include local fresh produce, food, artisans and musicians.

In other business, LCCCo-op is looking for land to use for community gardens, as well as people interested in gardening the land.

They are looking for unused private, community or public land, and also for people with untended or under-utilized existing gardens that are centrally located and, ideally, close to public transportation. The Co-op has people to help make a variety of flexible agreements between garden owners and aspiring garden tenders. Please contact Shannon Tolson at 279-2957 for more information.

The LCCCo-op voted to support the movement to make Lake County genetic engineering-free. Co-op members plan to participate in the workshop hosted by the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, May 6, at 1:35 pm. All are welcome to attend.

The next meeting for the LCCCo-op is 10 a.m. to noon on Saturday, May 10, at the Hotspot, 4750 Golf Avenue, (across from Redbud Park) in Clearlake.

For more information about the co-op please check out the LCCCo-op wikispace (Web site) at http://lakecountycommunityco-op.wikispaces.com or call JoAnn Saccato at 350-1719.

For more information about the weekly farmers markets, contact the Clear Lake Chamber of Commerce at 994-3600.

Anyone interested in being a member of the Buyer’s Club may send $24 annually (or make arrangements for a $2 a month plan) to LCCCO-OP, C/O William Thaete, PO Box 718, Clearlake, CA 95422-718, or call William at 994-4486.

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Vista Point Shopping Center is at the heart of a recently filed lawsuit against the city of Lakeport, its mayor and the new owner of the property on which the shopping center is built. Photo by Elizabeth Larson.

LAKEPORT – A developer whose bid to purchase the land underneath the Vista Point Shopping Center from the city last summer was turned down is suing the city, its mayor and the man who, ultimately, purchased the property.

The lawsuit by Barry Johnson of Superior Acquisitions was filed April 22 in Lake County Superior Court. Its focus is the shopping center, located on Lakeport Boulevard near the junction with Highway 29.

Defendants named in the suit include the city, Mayor Willis “Buzz” Bruns, and Matthew Riveras and his company Donica LLC, which holds the Vista Point property.

Just how much the suit could cost the city isn't clear. Johnson's suit doesn't ask for a specific amount, although it claims at various points that the defendants are responsible for the tort damages Superior suffered, in an amount of not less than $2,625,000.

The suit also could cost the city in other ways. Although City Attorney Steve Brookes said he will represent the city and Bruns in his capacity as mayor, Brookes added that he's a potential witness in the case, which will likely require co-counsel or an outside attorney.

Brooke said all of the parties are now attempting mediation in the suit, including the parties involved in a separate foreclosure action against Meridian Investments of Oakland, who still holds the lease on the 113,288 square foot shopping center, as Lake County News has reported.

“There's a lot of lawyers,” said Brookes.

Johnson said he attempted to mediate the issues before filing the lawsuit but no one was interested, which finally led him to the legal action. No mediation dates have been set.

“If they're going to come to the table in good faith and want to be reasonable, I'm open to that,” said Johnson.

In the suit Johnson alleges that the city acted inappropriately in choosing to go with the $1,001,000 bid offered by Riveras, who is Brun's son-in-law.

Johnson told Lake County News that in 2004 he entered an exclusive negotiating agreement with the city to purchase the property beneath the shopping center.

At the same time, he said he was negotiating with Meridian Investments and its principal, Bill Walters, to purchase the lease in order to unite the land and lease and be able to move forward with redeveloping the property, which had largely fallen into disrepair.

Johnson said he paid for a property appraisal and was willing to move forward with the purchase when the city said that it needed to have a parcel map done before the sale could be completed.

The property map, he said, took the city 25 months to complete, and once it was done the city didn't honor what he believes was his right to continue, and complete, a sales transaction.

But Brookes, who was involved with the Vista Point sale, said Johnson was told that the agreement had ended.

“The exclusive negotiating agreement, in my world, ended in 2004,” said Brookes.

He said there was a window of time in October 2004 when a sales price needed to be settled upon following the appraisal. “There was no agreement between the city and Superior (Acquisitions).”

Johnson, however, denies that he was told that the agreement had ended.

City begins to market the property

Once the parcel map finally was accepted by the City Council in April 2007, the city began advertising the property for sale. Brookes sent out a letter inviting bid proposals.

A March 2006 appraisal had valued the land at $900,000, as reported on this site.

Johnson and Riveras were the only two people to submit purchase proposals to the city last summer, as Lake County News has reported.

The two men made their pitch to the council in an Aug. 7 City Council meeting. Afterward, the council went into closed session. However, Bruns and Councilman Jim Irwin sat out.

“I advised both Buzz Bruns and Jim Irwin for different reasons not to participate,” said Brookes.

That was to avoid possible conflicts of interest, said Brookes – in Bruns' case, due to the familial relationship; in Irwin's, because he had a contractual agreement with Riveras for construction of a common fence between two homes they were building in the Land's End neighborhood in Lakeport.

But Johnson alleges that the connection between Bruns and Riveras was “inappropriate.” The suit alleges that city officials, including Brookes and City Manager Jerry Gillham, helped “coach” Riveras in his bid proposal.

Particularly, Johnson took issue with Riveras' bid, which was $900,000 “or $1,000 over the next highest bid,” according to a copy of Riveras' bid letter.

“That's not a bona fide bid,” said Johnson.

Brookes said both Johnson's and Riveras' originally submitted bids had defects, which led them to going before the council Aug. 7, after which the council decided to go with Riveras, who Johnson's suit calls “an under-capitalized, young and inexperienced developer” who was only given the opportunity to purchase the property because of his family connection.

“In sum, City and defendants knowingly chose to enrich Bruns' family, notwithstanding that it would condemn City's residents to continued blight and decay at Vista Point, all in flagrant disregard of the laws of this State and the public trust vested in defendants,” the suit states.

Ultimately, the city has “deliberative privilege” when it comes to selecting one person, or bid, over another, said Brookes.

And Brookes maintained there was no wrongdoing on Bruns' part, because he was not part of the negotiating team. “Whether he chatted with Mr. Riveras about it on some superficial level, I don't know.”

He added, “They're claiming that the fix was in. I just don't think that was accurate.”

Johnson said he “vehemently opposed” Riveras buying the property, but afterward he still approached him to make an offer on the land and was turned down.

“It was never my intent to be adversarial with the city or Riveras,” said Johnson.

But he said Riveras and his company Donica – which was formed in October 2007, at the time of the property purchase – didn't have the credential necessary to meet the city's requirements for redevelopment the property. “It just didn't make good sense.”

Brookes, however, countered by saying, “Donica found $1 million to pay us. At the end of the day that was not an issue.”

Bill Walters, who previously had written a letter to the city asking them to take Johnson's proposal to buy the land – died last August, not long after the city went with Riveras' bid.

In October, Walters' son, Jeff, made a trip to Lakeport from his home on the East Coast, and – in partnership with Presidio Development Partners LLC of San Francisco – attempted to offer $1.2 million for the land, which the city turned down. That same month, according to court documents, Meridian is alleged to have failed to make its lease payment to Park National Bank, which started foreclosure proceedings.

Johnson seeks damages

Saying he suffered damages because he was not permitted to buy the property, Johnson then filed a claim against the city. At the council's Nov. 20 meeting, council members voted to turn down the claim, which Brookes called “skeletal” because it contained no detail or number regarding the damages.

Johnson has been involved in many development projects in the county – including the new Department of Motor Vehicles building on Parallel Drive, Quail Run fitness center and Willow Tree Shopping Center on 11^th Street, all in Lakeport; and the Burns Valley Mall in Clearlake. He also owns Willopoint Resort and is a partner in the ownership of the former Outrageous Waters property.

He said he has offered to buy Park National Bank's loan on Meridian's lease, but they haven't responded yet. Riveras also has attempted to purchase the loan but was turned down.

Ultimately, Johnson wants to take control of the Vista Point property and move forward with his plans to redevelop it.

Just as determined to hold the property is Riveras, who chose not to respond directly to the suit, but said that the center “is a valuable piece of property.”

He also said that Johnson's accusations of favoritism toward him on the part of the city “couldn't be further from the truth.”

In a previous interview with Lake County News, Riveras said Johnson's attempts to impugn his reputation and that of his father-in-law were unfair and unfounded.

When everything is settled, Riveras said he's confident he'll be the one developing the property, which he called a “gateway” property.

E-mail Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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The District 5 candidates debate will take place on Wednesday, May 7, beginning at 6:30 p.m., in the Board of Supervisors Chambers in the Lake County Courthouse, 255 N. Forbes St., Lakeport.

The event is sponsored by Lake County News, Lakeport Regional Chamber of Commerce, Clear Lake Chamber of Commerce, Lake County Association of Realtors and KPFZ 88.1 FM.

Lake County News Editor and Publisher Elizabeth Larson will moderate the debate, which will be broadcast on KPFZ 88.1 FM and TV Channel 8.

The primary election will take place on Tuesday, June 3. Absentee ballots will be mailed to county residents on May 6.

Community members are invited to submit questions to Lake County News at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., the Lakeport Chamber at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or in person the night of the event.

Questions received by the audience that are not asked as part of the debate due to time constraints will be presented to the candidates for written response, and will be published on www.lakeconews.com.

For more information contact Lake County News via e-mail or at 245-4550.

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Lake County Animal Care and Control Director Denise Johnson (right) and the departments program director, Paula Werner, outside of the new animal shelter on Helbush Drive. Photo by Elizabeth Larson.

LAKEPORT – When Lake County Animal Care and Control opens its doors for business at 10:30 a.m. Monday, it will mark its first official day in its newly completed shelter. {sidebar id=67}

Late last week and over the weekend, staff were busy moving into the new, 7,800-square-foot, state-of-the-art facility located next to the Lake County Jail on Helbush Drive.

Officials broke ground on the shelter last April. Completed at a cost of a little over $2 million, the new facility is energy efficient, including the use of solar energy, officials reported.

The move brought out both excitement and a little sadness for the department's veterans.

"We're all torn," said Animal Care and Control Director Denise Johnson, who – along with Program Director Paula Werner – have spent most of their Animal Care and Control careers working in the small, cramped, 1940s-era facility, located behind the Agriculture Department on Lakeport Boulevard.

"We're getting really sentimental," Johnson said.

The road that led to building a new shelter has been a long one, said Supervisor Anthony Farrington.

Farrington said that the effort really goes back to 2001, the year he and Supervisor Rob Brown joined the board.

Beginning at about that time the board took a number of actions early on to strengthen Animal Care and Control, Farrington explained. That included creating an advisory committee and making Animal Care and Control its own, standalone department, where previously it had been under the jurisdiction of the county's agriculture department.

“Once we embarked on that path we started becoming more serious about setting aside capital reserves for constructing the animal control shelter,” said Farrington.

It was an effort the county had to complete on its own, with Farrington adding that both he and Brown worked on procuring the building site. “It took quite some time.”

The new facility is state-of-the-art and much larger than the old, 1940s-era shelter. Photo by Elizabeth Larson.

A state-of-the-art facility

Farrington said the board directed staff to look at other facilities as part of the planning process.

Johnson said she spent more than a year visiting shelters around Northern California in order to develop plans for the building's footprint. Yuba City's shelter provided the inspiration for the dark orange-colored plaster on the new shelter's exterior.

The building's impressive appearance is on par with facilities one might visit in larger communities.

Walking into the building, a visitor comes to a front door with a handle shaped like a dog bone. Inside there is a lobby and reception area – with ceiling tiles imprinted with dog paw prints – a public area where the public can visit with adoptable cats.

Areas reserved for staff include an isolation room for sick cats, a room for feral cats, a laundry facility, an area for grooming and treatment, a conference and lunch room, an area for the information technology equipment, dispatch, an outdoor staff picnic area, and work areas for officers, administration staff and volunteers.

There will be an outdoor play area for cats, a walking track where volunteers can walk dogs and a grassy picnic area where people can visit with dogs they would like to adopts, said Johnson. The shelter also plans to have a dog training yard.

The pad has been prepared for the location of the barn to be built at the shelter for livestock that are impounded. Photo by Elizabeth Larson.

A new barn will be located just below the main shelter, Johnson explained, with additional livestock pens stretching out from there. The main building feature a feed room and a covered, lighted sally port for unloading the animals once they're transported to the facility.

A chicken coop will be located in the corner of the property behind the shelter. "We have a lot of birds," said Johnson – from chickens to ducks and geese, even the occasional emu.

There are other birds, too. The shelter's roof eaves have cubbies which already had sparrows nesting in them late last week to Johnson's delight.

With its additional space for animals and staff alike, and its views of rolling hillsides and the lake in the distance, the new shelter is a far cry from the older facility.

The old shelter has 36 kennels for dogs, 38 kennels for cats and 24 kennels for feral cats, said Werner. Actual capacity can be higher if there are litters of kittens or puppies.

In the new shelter's main building there will be roughly the same number of kennels for cats as there were at the old shelter. In a second, detached building at the new shelter there are 16 isolation kennels for dogs – a much larger number than at the old shelter, said Werner – plus 34 dog kennels.

The new facility's initial phase includes 34 dog kennels, which will double when the next phase is built. These kennels are located in a detached building behind the main shelter building. Photo by Elizabeth Larson.

Still to come will be another construction phase, which will add another building the same size as the first, with additional cat kennels, 34 more dog kennels and a clinic that will be used for treatment and spay/neuter services for the shelter's animals.

Farrington said the effort was made to ensure the facility is soundproof so that, if there is growth in the north Lakeport area, new residents won't be impacted by noise.

Success in reducing euthanasia

In the new facility, as there was at the old, there is a room for conducting euthanasia of animals that are not adopted.

Animal Care and Control hopes to use that room very little and, eventually, not at all.

Werner said that euthanasia rates have dropped dramatically across the county in the last four years, numbers that stand up based on statistics the agency has shared with Lake County News.

In the past four years, Werner said she estimates that euthanasia overall has dropped about 50 percent for cats and dogs combined.

Werner attributes that to several factors, including the county and cities' adoption of spay/neuter ordinances.

But Werner suggests that the key factor is clear. "Our significant reduction in euthanasia has been because of staff."

Shelter staffer, she said, have worked hard to market the county's animals – to new homes, rescue organizations, and even other shelters and SPCA groups in the Bay Area.

An example: Last week, the shelter was close to capacity, said Werner. But on Saturday, while shelter employees were moving dogs and cats to the new facility, 16 dogs were instead transported to rescue groups.

Most of the animals – cats and dogs alike – are going out of the county, said Werner, and finding new homes in places like San Francisco, Sonoma, Marin and Napa counties. The shelter's protocols for animal care have helped them establish those relationships, she added. They also continue to receive support from local groups, like Lake County Animal Services.

Thanks to rising awareness of rescue opportunities, Werner said there has been an increasing shift nationwide from people buying dogs from breeders to people seeking new companion animals from rescue groups and shelters.

But, Werner cautions, in no way is Lake County out of the woods when it comes to finding homes for all of the animals that pass through its shelter. Lake County still has an issue when it comes to animal overpopulation.

Shelter statistics for the 2006-07 fiscal year show that 612 dogs were euthanized out of 1,695 impounded; 3,275 cats were brought to the shelter, and 2,648 were euthanized.

Werner said Lake County's shelter is still "reactive" when it comes to dealing with animal issues, and they eventually hope to being proactive.

That means, in a perfect world, the shelter would be able to put itself out of business when it comes to needing to find homes for animals, and instead focus on education for dogs and people alike, said Werner.

More room at the shelter will allow animals to be held longer and disease to be better managed, Johnson and Werner explained.

The new shelter's location – just a stone's throw from the jail – will offer the shelter staff some efficiencies.

Jail trustees – inmates who have been cleared to work outside of the jail with supervision – are an important part of the shelter workforce. Not only will the shelter now be able to draw on more of them, thanks to the close proximity, but it will save staff as much as an hour a day that was previously used for transporting trustees to the older shelter, Werner explained.

Staff, officials make effort possible

Like Werner, Johnson gave a lot of credit to Animal Care and Control staff.

Johnson said that her 19 staffers – 11 full-time, eight part-time – are incredibly hardworking and dedicated to the job they do, which isn't easy.

"I have the best staff on the planet," she said, noting that they helped make the move possible.

The shelter wouldn't have become a reality, said Johnson, if the Board of Supervisors and county Chief Administrative Officer Kelly Cox hadn't committed to spending the money to design and build it, which – in turn – will ultimately improve Animal Care and Control's operations and allow them to better serve the county's animals.

"I cannot stress how supportive they've been and how it enables us to do our job," Johnson said.

Farrington is pleased with the outcome of all the hard work. “It's something to be very proud of,” he said.

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The new building's exterior features this sign encouraging visitors to give a shelter pet a home. Photo by Elizabeth Larson.

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Not doing so, said City Administrator Dale Neiman, could have resulted in the city shutting down the redevelopment agency, the plan for which city leaders are looking at extending for another 10 years.

It also could have cost the city at least $15 million in redevelopment funds that could be used for affordable housing, infrastructure and economic development, Neiman said.

However, even the council's actions Thursday may not guarantee redevelopment can continue, said Neiman. "We have a number of serious problems that may not allow us to extend the life of the plan."

Most of those have to do with the surplus redevelopment funds in the city's redevelopment housing fund – $330,000 this year – which requires the city spend money on affordable housing projects. If the plan ultimately can't be amended, the agency would have to transition to shutdown, said Neiman.

Getting rid of the excess surplus in the housing fund through the property transfer, said Neiman, was necessary to complete by June 30, the end of the fiscal year, in order to have a chance of moving forward with amending and extending the redevelopment plan's life. In turn, the agency will pay the city for the lots, which will address the surplus.

At the council's April 10 meeting, the issue had its first public hearing, where the plan to transfer the lots elicited considerable criticism from community members who held that the lots – 19 of which are on 36th street – aren't buildable.

Attorney Andy Rossoff was among those questioning the plan. Rossoff was involved with the Clearlake Housing Now lawsuit against the city in the late 1990s, which resulted from the city using housing funds inappropriately when it purchased the Austin Resort property.

Rossoff told the council April 10 that he was concerned that the city hadn't learned a lesson when it came to its responsibility for properly using the funds for housing. He questioned the suitability of the lots and spending funds only for single-family housing.

Addressing Rossoff's comments about the single-family housing, Neiman said that the city has, since 2004, seen the construction of 263 multifamily units, with no money spent on affordable of single-family housing.

Councilman Roy Simons said the city needed a 10-person committee to be in charge of overseeing redevelopment projects, because it would give the city better insight into what projects it should do. “I believe had we done this earlier we wouldn't be in the mess we're in today.”

Simons said redevelopment in Clearlake “has been thoroughly and absolutely misunderstood and abused,” and suggested the city begin selling off properties it owns in order to have them developed and placed back on the tax rolls.

He also questioned the price set on the lots – $25,100 each, and said he couldn't see having the agency get into a “boondoggle.”

During the public hearing, community member and businessman Gene Schwartz, who also had spoken against the plan April 10, again criticized the proposal.

“I'm really appalled at this last attempt to peddle off those lots to the housing fund at this price tag or even to consider developing those 19 lots in housing or any other purpose,” said Schwartz.

The lots are in a creek area that isn't suitable for homes, he said. Schwartz said he showed the lots to two Realtors, who said they were essentially worthless.

Neiman insisted the lots could be built upon, and the area has water and there could be septic tanks.

The lot transfer was the only option to avoid shutting down the agency, said Neiman.

“What's your solution?” Neiman asked Schwartz. “This is the best I can come up with.”

Schwartz agreed that it was a difficult solution, but he suggested the city follow a number of ideas Rossoff had offered to pursue housing.

If the city had $4 million or $5 million in reserve, which it should have had, they could solve the problem without any issue, said Neiman.

“We're broke, almost,” said Neiman, pointing out that the city had to cut $1 million in expenses from its budget for this fiscal year, “and we're still out of balance.”

He added, “The only asset that we have are those lots.”

The problem had to be solved by June 30 and the city had no money to do it other than to transfer the lots. “I've been up nights figuring out how to do this," he aid. "If anybody's got a better idea, I'd like to hear it.”

The problem, as far as Neiman can figure, started as far back as 1996. He said he didn't think past councils knew the money was being moved out of the housing fund.

Those actions on the part of the city weren't right, and the city deserved to get sued over it, said Neiman, adding that it has taken the city more than a decade to arrive at its current situation.

In a series of motions required to move the 44 properties from the city to the redevelopment agency, each received a 3-1 vote, with Simons voting no, saying the city was “still heading in the wrong direction.” Council member Joyce Overton was absent from the meeting.

E-mail Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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