Pennsylvania Street is a dead-end, unpaved street with a few potholes. Among the half-a-dozen evenly divided properties that line the street branching off of Newlove east of Miller Road is one that boasts a 7-foot-high wooden fence bordering a backyard overflowing with lush greenery punctuated by purple morning glories. A small, dried-up flowerbed sectioned by old railroad ties sits at its base.
But the bucolic scene is only a small portion of the block on which the property’s owner, Glenda Stafford, resides—a block full of residents whom Stafford believes should follow her example. The other properties on Pennsylvania Street have nothing close to the hanging garden that beautifies the backside of her property. Portions of Pennsylvania are cluttered with tarped-over automobiles.
The clutter is but one of several problems Stafford claims are damaging the quality of life for her neighbors along the street—claims that lie at the heart of an almost-four-decade-long dispute between Stafford, her neighbors, and the city. The neighborhood dispute has reached epic proportions and is now at a point where it’s straining the limited resources of local government and costing taxpayer dollars.
Fed up with what she says has been the inaction of local government, Stafford began making the rounds with local media, including a call to the Sun on Nov. 6. Local Fox affiliate KCOY recently ran a story on the street, focusing on the revitalization of the Newlove area. Instead of doing a story on her particular portion of Newlove, the Santa Maria Times ran a story about the city’s code compliance outreach program.
To put it lightly, the unmarried 61-year-old homeowner is anything but pleased with the conditions of her neighborhood. She said the condition of the street looks “Third World.”
“I’m tired of the city lying to us,” she said in a voicemail to the Sun. “We’re living in filth over here.”
Esequiel Moreno, Santa Maria’s senior code compliance officer, is among those who receive the brunt of Stafford’s complaint-filled wrath. He and four other field officers are charged with enforcing the city of Santa Maria’s code, which basically means five people keep up the appearance of a city with a population of at least 100,000 residents spread over 22 square miles.
Stafford has made several phone calls to Moreno’s office over the years, alerting him to what she thinks are violations along Pennsylvania behind her house. Among her complaints are people living in recreational vehicles (which is against city code), junk cars, drug use, burglaries, and people living in garages—a claim that hasn’t been substantiated, according to Moreno, who added that his office’s responsibilities don’t include investigating alleged crimes.
Moreno’s office must investigate each one of Stafford’s claims that do fall under its jurisdiction, however, and some of them have been substantiated. But Moreno explained that his office receives so many calls from that area—many of which are repetitive in nature—he’s had to assign a code compliance officer dedicated to that area alone. Because of confidentiality requirements, Moreno couldn’t say whether most of the calls were Stafford’s.
Stafford has also met with several police officers, who’ve apparently stepped up patrols in the area as well.
The problem of enforcing code violations is a matter of the road itself, which is private and virtually untouchable by code enforcement. As Moreno explains, his officers can’t walk or drive down the road and can only enforce what they’re able to see from the corner of Pennsylvania and Newlove. Statistically, he stated, the office has received more complaint calls for the area containing Colorado and Pennsylvania streets (two of the last remaining private roads in the city) than anywhere else in Santa Maria. The office investigated more than 2,700 violations of code throughout the entire city in 2013, according to Moreno.
“We can’t go looking around fences or opening people’s doors,” Moreno said. “We go with legal standards. We do enforce them.”
The road in question is actually a right-of-way created by an easement agreed upon by the property owners along Pennsylvania. That easement enables the residents—some of whom are families with children—to access their homes. According to Stafford, the owner of the easement is Tom Carnell, whom she said passed away decades ago.
Carnell’s name didn’t come up in a Sun property records search with the county.
George Primrose, 66, has gone toe-to-toe with Stafford on more than one occasion since he moved to his house on Pennsylvania in 1976.
“When neighbors move in, they don’t move in as enemies,” Primrose said. “Enemies are made. She has been a neighborhood nuisance for 40 years.”
Officials have suggested that they both extend an olive branch to one another and work out their differences, but that door has long since closed. Much like his neighbor, Primrose is proactive with the city over code compliance and said he’s made calls from time to time.
But the neighbors’ problems eventually reached a boiling point. In 1999, Primose hired a professional surveyor to confirm the property lines, finding that his property not only extends 30 feet from the sidewalk to Stafford’s fence, but also extends 20 feet into her yard. Stafford vehemently denies this and said the property lines seem to change every time a dispute arises.
Stafford said she can’t afford to hire a professional surveyor to get a second opinion, nor an attorney, saying it would cost thousands of dollars. Primose went so far as to hire an attorney to send Stafford a letter saying she’s encroaching upon his property. She then hired an attorney from the same law firm several years later to seek a restraining order against Primrose. That order was tossed out by the judge, according to Primose. The same week Stafford called the Sun, Primose went to City Hall to check on whether Stafford had procured building permits.
By now Stafford said she has no use for code compliance’s Moreno, whom she claims doesn’t enforce the code along the street.
“Code enforcement has lied to me to no end,” she said.
Moreno denies the claims against his department, but, in Stafford’s defense, acknowledged that there’s some validity to her complaints about her corner of the city.
“[Stafford] is not doing anything wrong,” Moreno said. “She has a certain way of living, and a lot of people don’t meet her standards.”
Stafford’s name is well known to officials within City Hall. She’s contacted virtually every employee of the city: council members, the mayor, the police chief, and even their secretaries, according to Mark van de Kamp, a management analyst within the city manager’s office who’s particularly familiar with Stafford and was even assigned to her as a point of contact in order to provide her with the information she needs.
Stafford paid a total of $943.20 in property taxes to the county for 2014, which entitles her, as much as any other taxpayer, to government services. With a code officer assigned to her neighborhood, additional police patrols, and a point of contact within the city, is she getting her money’s worth? It’s hard to pin down the resources or time spent on her calls, but van de Kamp said it’s “significant.”
“She has received more city response than most residents do in a lifetime,” van de Kamp said. “It’s always the same thing, same complaint. It’s frustrating.”
Stafford isn’t the only person for whom van de Kamp serves as a liaison. Many citizens find him as a point of contact for dealings with the city. And as long has Stafford is a resident of Santa Maria, officials have no choice but to take each one of her calls seriously. Van de Kamp even went as far as spending $16 of his own money to purchase documentation for Stafford’s grant deed outlining the boundaries to her property. His service to Stafford is virtually unquestioning, but his power to help her is limited.
The city tries to be pro-active in getting the word out about code compliance through a routine walk-and-talk program—a sort of meet-and-greet between government officials and city residents. But Moreno isn’t sure if it’s reached Stafford’s neighborhood.
“We are public servants, and we’re here to listen to people’s complaints,” van de Kamp said. “But I don’t know if we’ll ever fulfill her expectations.”
Contact Staff Writer David Minsky at dminsky@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Nov 13-20, 2014.