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proceeding by letter of April 27, 2026. The merits of the easement and <br />wall questions are not before the Council on May 4 and are not addressed <br />here. <br />What is before the Council, and what bears directly on Violation 1, is this: <br />throughout the period Respondents have been waiting for plan check on <br />Permit ADU22-0064 (the permit that clears V1) and Permit C22-0027 (the <br />unrelated main-house renovation), the City’s Engineering Division has <br />tied progress on both permits to the resolution of the separate wall-and- <br />gate dispute. The City has held up not just the corrective-work permit <br />but also the entirely unrelated renovation permit — both paid for, <br />both stalled — for the same forty-one months. Three senior City <br />officials reached written agreements with Respondents intended to resolve <br />that dispute. Each agreement was subsequently repudiated. <br />Linda Chang, Public Works. On September 25, 2023, Ms. Chang <br />wrote: “If the work was not done in the easement, then you have <br />nothing to fix and that would give the green light to our office that we <br />could go ahead and fix the access [to] the culvert.” She also approved <br />a specific gate-relocation solution (31-inch post offset, documented by <br />annotated photograph in Exhibit I). The agreement was repudiated <br />by Senior Assistant City Attorney Lisa Rauch on January 30, 2026 <br />(Exhibit ZZ): “There is no information to support that Public Works <br />ever agreed to same.” <br />James O’Connell, Acting City Engineer. At a recorded meeting on <br />January 30, 2024, Mr. O’Connell stated on the record: “If you can get <br />the structural engineer to say that the masonry wall is in sound <br />condition and it’s not negatively impacting the creek, I would be open <br />to allowing that to remain.” He accepted Respondents’ <br />nonconforming-structure argument: “We can call that wall a pre- <br />existing non-conforming structure. And I think that’s a decent <br />argument to make.” He acknowledged the safety paradox of a 3-foot <br />wall over a 10-foot drop into a concrete creek channel and laid out a <br />written-confirmation path that “code enforcement will accept.” The <br />terms were memorialized in writing by Assistant Engineer Christian <br />Craig on February 5, 2024 (Exhibit DD): “If the channel and CMU <br />6.A. - Page 23 of 64 <br />25