1/31/13 -- Vallejo's Participatory Budgeting process moving forward. Phase 2 is moving forward. 118 volunteer budget delegates are meeting to "turn community ideas into real projects." FULL UPDATE HERE

No end in sight for residents near 318 Kentucky

By Cameron Shearer

318 Kentucky update - 1/31/13

A  discouraging day. There are now four squatter houses within sight of my home.  Todd Bishop writes last night that he is coming up tomorrow, Thurs, to board up the place with police assistance. He asks several neighbors for their help and they reach out to other neighbors. At 3:30pm today a police officer arrives, along with Chief Building Official Gary West. Their mission: to red tag 318 because of no water service. Squatters in the front house say they are renters. Woman in back house says she has been there since 2010 and has receipts for $950/mo rent payments plus deposit and rent agreement, but cannot produce them. She says Todd Bishop stops by every month to pick up her rent check . (But I remain skeptical.) Occupant says she will deliver all the paperwork to Gary's office tomorrow when she goes to City Hall to have the water service restored.  Occupant says she, herself, paid for the sewer to be fixed in November because the line was broken beneath the back house. (But, then, what was the BofA contractor - who had been hired to fix the sewer - doing there all day and late into the night on Saturday?} She also claims to pay all the utilities for both houses. The building inspector and police officer say they can do nothing until the issue of rent and ownership is resolved. I get home and find an email from a neighbor saying that Todd has changed his plans and will instead arrive on Friday with same plan to have the police evict the squatters. But unless something changes, the police cannot evict. Police officer mentions that the boarded-up squatter house across the street (on the corner of Brancifort and Maxwell Alley) has been taken over again and my neighbor on-scene affirms, saying it is filled with young AA men who loiter and scare her. Another boarded-up house across the other street (Brancifort at National Alley) has also been taken over by squatters.