DERELICT HOME I
’d like to know about the abandoned farm house on the corner of
East Main and Condit. It’s falling down and looks just terrible.
Why has that not been torn down? It’s been sitting there for
years.
DERELICT HOME
I’d like to know about the abandoned farm house on the corner of East Main and Condit. It’s falling down and looks just terrible. Why has that not been torn down? It’s been sitting there for years.
Red Phone has been wondering about that house for years since we often pass it while out and about or on the way to Live Oak High. The caller refers to a two-story, dilapidated farmhouse that is boarded up and leaning ominously. It is outside the city limits.
The house and the fields behind belong to Evelyn Fox Properties of Los Gatos. Robert Fox, son of the late Evelyn Fox, owns 25 percent of the property, as does his brother Marvin. The Burnes family owns the other 50 percent.
The problem, Robert said this week is not with the family – he’d be happy to see the old house torn down – but with the county and, to some extent, the city. “No decision has been made yet,” Robert said, because of the county and city hold ups.
Well, Red Phone called Rachael Gibson, Supervisor Don Gage’s land use expert; Jim Lanz, the county’s code and zoning enforcer and Larry Ford, the city’s head building inspector who checked with the planning department. Every one of them said they could find no record of any land use request, or one asking for a demolition permit.
In fact, every one of them also said they would have no problem with issuing a demolition permit if the family asked for one. The property is in the county.
City of Morgan Hill Planning Manager Jim Rowe had the answer. He said the Foxes and Burnes had asked to bring the land into the city limits so it could be developed. But, since the land is currently outside the urban service area, that is not likely to happen soon.
Measure C, the city’s residential growth-control ordinance, does allow annexation request to LAFCO, the county agency that must give permission, to expand the USA to include more residential land unless there is less than a five-year supply of residential land, or it meets the desirable infill exception (a tract of land 20 acres or less contiguous on two sides with city land).
Annexing the Fox property would have to include lands to the west to the freeway and even on west side of freeway – more than 20 acres.
“The land must be in the USA before it could be annexed,” Rowe said. “Prospects for annexation are not good.”
There are no restriction on removing the house, he said.
GARBAGE TALES
Remember Red Phone’s discussion last week about the big, white thingy up near the Kirby Canyon landfill – east of Coyote Creek Golf Drive – that you can see from the freeway? By calling around we discovered that it is the liner for a new dump area, called a “cell.”
Well, after Red Phone went to press we got a call from Alec Naugle, the project manager for the landfill’s water situation. Naugle works for the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board (whew! say that fast three times) – and gave us more details.
The liner, he said, is polyethylene, not polyurethane as we were told by another source. It is impermeable – to keep the “garbage juice” out of our drinking water – and about 80 mil, the thickness of a heavy-duty Hefty bag. It’s long lasting and will last for decades once it’s buried by garbage, a process that will take about a year. It takes 3-4 months to build a new cell.
Liners, Naugle said, have been required in California since 1984 and elsewhere in the United States since 1993. The liner covers an area about the size of a football field. Under the liner are two-feet of compacted clay; below that are drain pipes that siphon off rain and “garbage juice –” a state-of-the-art system. The liquid is treated on site and reused for dust control in summer.
The liner is white because it degrades in sunlight and black absorbs more heat – thereby degrading faster, and because it’s cooler. Workers must “weld” the seams and it gets really hot out there.
n The Red Phone sounds off Saturday in The Times. Hey readers: Remember to leave a name and number when you call or send e-mail. The Red Phone won’t publish this information – it will only be used if verification is necessary. If you call in about a problem with a streetlight or suggestion for a turn signal, please give the intersection street names. It makes it easier for the Red Phone to report the problems or offer the city suggestions.
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