Judgment day for Dan De Vaul: Board of Supervisors will hold hearing designed to bring addiction facility to code

Board of Supervisors will review code enforcement officers’ action plan for addiction facility near SLO

By Bob Cuddy

Maverick rancher Dan De Vaul will go before the Board of Supervisors today for a hearing designed to bring his controversial property into compliance with county codes once and for all.

Code enforcement officers who called for the hearing have sent a strong message to the rancher: Fix up your place, or we’ll do it and bill you for it -- even if that means foreclosing the 72-acre property.

They have already drawn up the papers for the Board of Su-per visors to sign, backing up their position (though the supervisors aren’t bound to adhere to the recommendations).

Code enforcement officers took a final look at the property on Los Osos Valley Road, just west of the San Luis Obispo city limits, Monday afternoon to see what, if any, improvements De Vaul has made.

De Vaul had a cleanup “party” over the weekend and extending into Monday, during which he and 20 volunteers re-moved machinery, dismantled old mobile homes, cut weeds and generally tidied up the property.

“It’s cleaner now than it’s ever been in my lifetime,” the 64-year-old told The Tribune on Monday. “I have no idea whether that means anything to them.”

He said he has removed 70,000 pounds of metal in the past year.

This is the second nuisance abatement hearing for De Vaul. Supervisors held one in 2005. Code enforcement officers later declared that he had not complied.

This time around, code enforcement officers are giving him three deadlines.

• By Aug. 30, he must “cease human habitation” except in the cottage where some clients of his Sunny Acres addiction recovery facility live. He also must close down his roadside stand, from which he sells a variety of goods from produce to Christmas trees because less than half of the products he sells are grown on his property.

• By Sept. 30, he must remove commercial vehicles, nonpermitted mobile homes and all but two stored passenger vehicles. He also must reduce the amount of outdoor storage to 1,000 feet and screen it.

• By Oct. 1, he must take down the barn where people were living until the county condemned it earlier this year. Or he must acquire the necessary permits to make the barn legally livable or convert it into an actual agricultural barn.

De Vaul has said he can’t afford to do the necessary paperwork to bring the barn up to code, which he said could run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The fight over De Vaul’s ranch, while grounded in actual alleged code violations, has taken on larger symbolic meaning as the old-time rancher seeks to hold on to his seat-of-your-pants way of doing things while the surrounding community tries to bring him into line, saying that nobody gets to break the law.

The nuisance abatement hearing is the latest of several encounters in this years-long power struggle.

De Vaul also has a Superior Court hearing Thursday morning before Judge Jac Crawford for allegedly violating the same county codes. He could face jail time if convicted of the seven misdemeanors.