The Beginning of our hell

So it started in 2007, when Jock Angus of Chaparral Construction purchased the lot next door to our beautiful Santa Barbara home.

They illegally allowed the Santa Barbara Fire Department to use the exisiting house as a practice project - with no permit to do so.

We live next door to a house with huge holes in the roof for more than a year.

Complaints to the City and even direct conversations to Mayor Marty Bloom  proved fruitless. Here are some actual emails:

 I will cc the City Administrator Jim Armstrong and the acting Community Development Director Dave Gustafson.

Jim & Dave,

The project next door to Mr. Bosset has conditions of approval on their project. These have been violated again and again over a period of many months. The conditions are normal---time of construction, etc. but the workers do not adhere to them. The project is at 504 E. Arrellaga.

I hope you can get a phone number for Mr. Bosset to call. He won't call on every little thing, but on the big violations. And maybe someone has to speak with the contractor.

Thanks,

Marty

We never heard a word from Jim nor Dave

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Ms Blum!

Sunday we had workers on site – we let it slide. Tonight we had workers on the site at almost 6pm working with flashlights – a clear violation of the Conditions of Approval for this project. We called the Police as the Building Department as Larry Cassidy of the Building Department instructed us to do. Officer Feller arrived 1-1/2 hours after the call. He informed us that we should not call the Police as their violation of the COA is a civil matter and not criminal, which we understand. He basically said that the Building Department is responsible but “passes the buck” to the Police Department because they are not themselves available after hours. We

I request from you specific instructions on who is responsible for enforcing the conditions of approval, and how they are to be contacted after hours since this is obviously when these violations take place.

We feel that we are being given “the run-around”, that Conditions of Approval are meaningless as the Building Department of the City of Santa Barbara refuses to enforce them. At this point we feel almost an obligation to inform the public of how the city is not managing this project – particularly those in our neighborhood who along with us, will be living with the Cottage Saint Francis project.

If this is a test of how the City is going to handle the MUCH MUCH larger Cottage Hospital project then our City has failed miserably.

Thanks as always,

Jeff Bosset

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They are doing nothing but lying and stalling and have done so since the beginning. Harassment has come from them not from us. Thankfully, u were onsite when Jeff yelled at the sub – from our deck! Nothing happened after u left our house. The point is that they have and are continuing to illegally encroach on our property - without our permission and have failed every single time to show any act of good faith while continuing to provide us w/ an extreme liability – steep drops & holes (no they have not attempted to fix since u requested) in our driveway/property. Our cameras (which have been up since summer) are focused in our driveway and property line for security – especially since our car was vandalized w/ diesel fuel shortly after we filed our lawsuit. I think all these emails from Brigham are just more attempts to not settle. This is unbelievable. Dissapointing is not the word I would use – they were out of stalling time – typical and par for the course. Please remind them of everything that they have done unlawfully.

Since u were here last, the dirt on the property line has decayed more and now their fence sways back & forth in the winds & bangs into the black chain link fence.

The holes off our driveway are even more dangerous than before and the concrete damage is even greater.

Our insurance agent keeps calling to see about meeting with us – I believe they want to see if we’ve fixed the liability which I’d pointed out to them.

The longer we let them encroach the worse this gets for us.

At this moment in time, it is unbelievable to me that this “settlement agreement” is going to happen and despite your voiced concerns about going to court I’m feeling as if u & Brigham are pushing to go to court. Please do not FW me anymore of Brigham’s emails – u can fw them to Jeff only; I am not interested in their lies & attempts to make us the bad guy. Again, am not familiar w/ lawyers & the law but the fact that this “negotiation” has gone on so long really makes me feel as if u r not interested in getting this matter resolved as well.

Feel free to invite Brigham to exit from the passenger’s side of a car in our driveway and then he can tell me how we are “obsessed” and who has caused whom danger.

Unhappily yours,

____________________________________________________________________

About a year later, they demolished the home. We now had a vacant lot next us for about another year. We dealt nightly with partiers, grafitti idiots, and felt very unsafe at this point.

Finally they started to build what is now known as Arrellaga & Olive.

They illegally removed more than 150 feet of 15 foot tall, 4 foot think hedges on our property. Again, the city did nothing.

They also encroached on our property, which was confirmed by a surveyor which WE had to pay for.

Chaparral Construction simply removed the stakes. We researched this company and found that they had been sued more than 30 times in just ten years.

Suddenly things started making sense. As we inquired with other contractors - not a one had anything good to say about Jock Angus or Chaparral Construction. Another bad sign.

The Middle

We asked for a referral from a client for an Attorney who was 'non aggressive", meaning that we are not sue them type people. We just wanted Chapparal Construction to do the right and moral thing.

He started contact with Chapparal and they were very arrogant, uncooperative, and basically took a "try and do something about it" position.

This went on for many months, draining us of our savings and placing a financial burden on us. At the same time, while we do not realize it at the time, the economy was begginning to fail. Our customers were taking longer and longer to pay, and some just weren't paying. That of course was our mistake for being the trusting people we were and not collecting payment at the time of service.

Finally our Attorney come to us and said that because Chaparral was being so uncooperative, we had no choice other than to file a lawsuit. We reluctantly followed that advice.

Almost immediately after filing, our cars gas tank was tainted with diesel fuel. perhaps coincidence - perhaps not. We also spent the next year being harrasses by this Jock Angus moron and his flock of illegal workers.

Next we were hit with a zoning violation by the City of Santa Barbara. For not having covered parking. a 1920 Craftsman we had been living in for years, and suddenly this violation - again perhaps coincidence - perhaps not.

Of course by this point there was no way we could build a 30k carport - we were rapidly becoming broke due the the legal expenses and the economy which was beginning to fail. So we had to ignore that

The next months were spent dealing with things like:

Harrassment by Chaparrals workers - shouting nasty comments, blaring music and intentional shouting, whistling at my wife and Daughter, - all with the obvious intention of harrasing us.

Our car was filled with diesel fuel (just like the fuel Chaparral Construction was using next door.

Many illegal workers were used by Chaparral and like everything else - The City of Santa Barbara simply turned their heads and ignored this.

The Lawsuit

A very interesting and true story about how a criminal Santa Barbara "Contractor" named Jock Angus and his company Chaparral Construction, along with two corrupt employee's of the City Of Santa Barbara Building Department maliciously caused a wonderful family to loose everything they had - their home, their business, and leave Santa Barbara after 25 years.

The Santa Barbara City Building Inspectors had obviously been paid off by Chaparral Construction.  We are not  sure exactly who these criminals are - only that one was named Claire and worked in the Building Department.

The End

By the end of the second year of this we were both literally so destroyed from the ongoing harassment from both the employee's of Chaparral Construction and The City of Santa Barbara, and the increasing financial worries caused by a combination of the legal fees and failing economy that we literally could no longer function.

In January 2009 we finally accepted that everything we had built over the years, our home, our business, our community - had been taken away from us and that we could no longer fight this battle.

We wrote to every News outlet in Santa Barbara - none would even reply or showed any interest in this blatant case of corruption.

We finally made the very difficult decision - to leave.

We sold what we had left - our Kitchen appliances, our car, literally anything that we could sell - we sold.

This left us with just enough cash to rent a truck, and an out of State house (for our safety we cannot mention where we currently reside). We packed everything we had up into the rental truck - and made the move out of this corrupt town.




COMING NEXT: THE AFTERMATH

The Aftermath

I dont know if I believe in Karma or not. But Jock Angus supposedly passed away and his company was dissolved. At least we know now that no other families will become homeless because of the  criminal and malicious actions of the City of Santa Barbara, Jock Angus or Chaparral Construction.