Ceres steps up its fight against blight

The city is more than a month into a revitalized effort to address neighborhood blight in its many forms. It’s targeting problems such as abandoned vehicles; graffiti; overgrown weeds; curbside trash piles; and empty, dilapidated – in some cases uninhabitable – homes that draw squatters, drug users and other criminal activity.

Code enforcement, which largely fell to one person, now is tackled by the Neighborhood Enhancement Team. The word “team” is used loosely in that there are not X number of people assigned to Neighborhood Enhancement. Rather, said City Manager Toby Wells and police Sgt. Joe Wren, who’s spearheading the blight fight, it’s an all-departments-on-deck effort to improve the community.

“This is a new approach, and evolving,” Wells said. “What Sgt. Wren is doing is assembling the collaboration.” He likened the Code Enforcement Division as the hub of a wheel, and Wren and Code Enforcement Supervisor Frank Alvarez as spokes working with other department staff.

The city didn’t have budget money to add to code enforcement so it’s “finding ways to be more effective and efficient,” Wells said. “We can’t be all things to all people but we’re addressing what we hear the most about – shopping carts, abandoned vehicles, weeds, illegal dumping, homeless camps.”

In addition to acting upon what it hears about, Neighborhood Enhancement is using social media to encourage community participation. Last week, a post on the Ceres Police Department’s Facebook page included pictures of vehicles parked on a lawn and old furniture and rubbish sitting streetside. “Have a neighbor who has a house that looks like this? We want to know about it. Our new Ceres Neighborhood Enhancement Team is tackling blight in town,” the post reads in part.

A second post a couple of days later provides information on the violation process regarding abandoned vehicles.

In a change initiated by Wells and police Chief Brent Smith, Wren said, the Police Department assumed responsibility for code enforcement, with the support of the Fire Department. “They wanted to create a unit that dealt specifically with quality-of-life issues,” he said. “So they created this concept of a better cooperation between all city departments and not just dumping everything on Frank or the Fire Department or Public Works.”

Rather than just address the blight symptoms, the city is trying to get to the core problems through education. Ceres is a socioeconomic melting pot, Wells said, and some people really don’t understand what’s OK and what’s not, like having broken-down cars parked on lawns. “When Frank was by himself, he didn’t have time for education, he was running from stop to stop to stop,” the city manager said. Now, the idea is, “Let’s help people understand so they can help us,” he said.

Some residents seem not to know how services, like bulky item pickup, work, Wren said. They’ll put couches, mattresses, refrigerators and the like out on the curb, apparently thinking city employees simply will spot and remove them. Same with leaf and limb pickup, the sergeant said: Big tree trunks will be dumped in the street.

“We can’t get city looking good because it’s just ongoing,” Wren said. Education is done through things like the Facebook posts, notices in bills and other mailers, and the city’s website. “But oftentimes, it will take face-to-face contact,” he said. “Hopefully, then, we have them on our side.”

One big problem the city is tackling is blighted homes. “We’re moving in, getting abatement warrants and boarding them up like Fort Knox,” Wren said. That’s the easy part compared to tracking down often-absentee owners and holding them responsible, he said, noting that the city has open cases dating back to 2011.

“You can’t live in the Bay Area and have property here you don’t care about. There has to be a measured level of accountability,” he said. “We live here, we want the community to look good. They buy the property because, you know, when the bottom dropped out, everything became dirt cheap. So some people out of the area are doing the very minimum to make them livable without any kind of facade improvement ... all they care about is getting rent check once a month.”

In some cases, owners begin rehabbing a home but for whatever reason quit, the sergeant said. Contacting absentee owners creates a huge workload, he said, because oftentimes information is outdated and incorrect.

When owners are noncompliant, cases may be sent to the city attorney’s office to be dealt with in court. One such case, Wren said, regards a house in the 1800 block of Walnut Avenue that has burned several times while being occupied by squatters. “It’s at the point now where it needs to be scraped, demolished,” he said.

A notice on the door points out what’s obvious to anyone close enough to read it: “The structure is in danger of caving in and an extreme hazard.”

The city has been unable to reach Maria L. Olguin, the woman listed as property owner on the notice. A call by The Bee to a possible phone number for Olguin reached an answering machine but was not returned.

The home has been vacant since the owner died in 2009 and left it to his ex-wife, Fire Chief Bryan Nicholes said in February when it last burned.

Nicholes said code enforcement has boarded up the home about 10 times over the past five years and has put liens on the home that range from $900 to $1,500 to recoup the costs, but none have been paid.

Residents of a couple of neighboring homes welcomed news last week that the end of the eyesore – tagged with gang graffiti outside and in – may be in sight.

Alan Freeman, a resident of Walnut Avenue for more than 30 years, briefly shared the sad background of the home. The owner was a longtime janitor in Modesto who saved and saved to have his dream home, only to die just days after moving in.

“Anytime a place is empty for any period of time, there’s going to be homeless in it,” Freeman said. “It brings nothing good. It was a mess over there.” People broke the sinks, toilets and a nice tile bar in the kitchen, he said. In addition to fire damage, it’s clear that people also were stripping wire from the walls.

Jose Payan, who’s lived with his family around the corner on Farris Avenue for about 15 months, said people continued to stay in the home when it was dangerous because of fire damage. “They don’t care,” he said. He said it’s been scary knowing that absolutely anyone could be there anytime. “We don’t know who is inside it,” Payan said.

After 2008, the city lost manpower, programs and resources, Wren said, but is starting to reinvest in the community policing concept. He said there’s now a “perfect storm” in Ceres, with an active City Council and progressive department heads who understand the need for appearance improvement. “If the city looks run-down, businesses won’t want to invest,” he said.

“The city has undergone a lot of changes in past year,” agreed Ceres Chamber of Commerce Board President Renee Ledbetter. “We have a new city manager, they separated the police and fire departments, the organization has restructured itself and in the process is making positive improvements.

“There are some new key players in place driving the organization and they’re listening to their staff, talking among departments about who handles what better, who has the resources. For many years, they relied on one person to do code enforcement, which was pretty much impossible.”

Business and other leaders recognize that it takes everyone – residents, public agencies, private enterprise – to improve and maintain a community, Ledbetter said. “We as a chamber have stepped up in the area of adopting the highway and three or four times have recruited volunteers to pick up trash. We’re also in the process of doing gateway cleanups. We’ve been hearing, ‘What about gateways into the city? The first thing people see is trash.’ ... We need to have a positive self-image, and it takes all of us to create that.”

This story was originally published August 22, 2015 at 3:38 PM with the headline "Ceres steps up its fight against blight."