By October 2025 the City had re-issued an appealable Notice and Order on 09/02/2025 that itemized most conditions with an appeal right M543-M544, but three items - a seven-foot fence-height limit, fascia repair, and the workshop "reduced to 120 Sq Ft" detach condition - remained confined to the off-order 09/16 Correction Notice S.6 and the email chain E.5, so those items carried no appeal right.
When a city formally orders a property owner to fix specific things, it must include those requirements in the official Notice and Order because that is the document the owner has a right to appeal. In this case, the City re-issued an appealable order on September 2, 2025, that listed most conditions, but three specific demands remained outside of it: a seven-foot fence-height limit, fascia repair, and a requirement to reduce a workshop to 120 square feet. These three items appeared only on a separate Correction Notice dated September 16 and in October 2025 emails. Because these requirements never moved onto an official order, they did not carry the appeal rights attached to the rest of the case. This meant the City was enforcing specific property conditions while keeping them outside the formal process the owner could legally challenge.
The served Notice and Order is the instrument that fixes what the owner must do to abate Case 23-009185, and it carries the owner's appeal right M123-M125. By October 2025 the compliance path was being enlarged outside that instrument. It moved through a separate Correction Notice attributed to the inspector that listed eleven items S.6; through inspector printouts that the owner's own attorney described as "not the actual new Notice and Order" E.5; and through a counsel-relayed permit demand in an email thread E.5. In that thread the attorney relayed that "city inspectors" said a permit was needed and that he had asked the contractor to "coordinate the minimal permit," and the inspector pressed a siding-removal condition C30. The City did re-issue an appealable Notice and Order on 09/02/2025 C24 that itemized most conditions with an appeal right M543-M544; but three items - the seven-foot fence-height limit, the fascia repair, and the workshop "reduced to 120 Sq Ft" detach condition - appear only on the off-order 09/16 Correction Notice S.6 and in the email chain E.5, never on any appealable order. These three items remained as vague as the earlier placeholder codes C03. The more severe permit-record variant appears in a separate card C31; the contractor’s eventual withdrawal is addressed in C32.
Stated simply, when a city formally orders a property owner to fix specific things, it has to put those things in the official order because that is the document the owner can appeal. Here the City re-issued an appealable order on September 2, 2025 that itemized most conditions, but three demands stayed outside any appealable order: the seven-foot fence-height limit, fascia repair, and workshop 120-square-foot detach condition. Those demands appear on a separate September 16 Correction Notice and in emails, not in a Notice and Order. That means those three requirements did not carry the appeal right attached to the served instrument.
The Notice and Order is the document that defines the abatement obligation and carries the appeal right. The Housing Code requires that order to contain "a brief and concise description of the conditions" SCC § 8.100.720, with the dangerous-building parallel SCC § 8.96.130, requires service of the notice and order SCC § 8.100.730, and makes the appeal run within thirty days from the date of service SCC § 8.100.760. A requirement added off the order is a requirement no one can appeal.
The Correction Notice S.6 is captioned "Correction Notice," not an amended Notice and Order. It lists eleven items: unpermitted garage electrical and extension cords; an exterior wall "modified to create extra square footage"; dry rot at siding and trim; a fence height limit of seven feet; fascia repair; washer/dryer electrical and gas; the electrical service panel; added plumbing for a shower; added electrical and plumbing at the rear workshop; the workshop "to be detached from garage and reduced to 120 Sq Ft or legalized by obtaining building permits"; and front extension cords. Several items offer permitting as one of two options - "removed or permitted," "legalized by obtaining building permits" - without stating which permit the work requires; others are stated as repair or removal with no permit alternative.
In the email thread E.5, the attorney reported on 10/16/2025: "I spoke with the city inspectors today. Once the violations are reported, a permit is needed… I asked Arthur to coordinate the minimal permit with the inspectors." On 10/20/2025 he relayed the City's position that "The Notice and Order DOES contain requirements to obtain a permit," with "excerpts," and stated the meeting printouts "were not the actual new Notice and Order." This thread is owner-side E.5, not part of the production the City closed as complete; the City's own note log records the October exchange only as the milder 10/20 phone-call note and 10/23 siding emails and does not reproduce the "minimal permit," "DOES contain," or "no permit requirement" language - which, if anything, strengthens the conclusion that the City never wrote these demands into an appealable order. The siding-removal addition through the same channel is documented separately C30.
The City did issue a dated, appealable re-issued Notice and Order on 09/02/2025 (Willie Harris, Principal Building Inspector; para 7 appeal right - M543-M544), whose Correction List enumerated B23, B45, E02, E03, E06, E08, E11, P05, P08, and P09. The items that never appear on any appealable order are the seven-foot fence-height limit, the fascia repair, and the workshop "reduced to 120 Sq Ft" detach condition - conditions appearing solely on the off-order 09/16 Correction Notice S.6 and in the email chain E.5. The owner's representative contemporaneously flagged the defect in the same thread E.5: "there is no permit requirement under the current Notice & Order… If the City now believes a permit is required, they need to issue a new Notice & Order that identifies the specific violation and cites" the code.
A City-produced Notice and Order M123-M125 M543-M544 - served and posted under City Code procedure SCC § 8.100.720 SCC § 8.96.130 SCC § 8.100.730 SCC § 8.100.760 - that formally incorporated the three off-order items (the seven-foot fence-height limit, the fascia repair, and the workshop "120 Sq Ft" detach condition - S.6) into the noticed scope of the case, with the appeal right attaching to them. The production contains none for those three items. Absent that, disproving this claim requires the City to introduce records that contradict the CPRA production it has already closed as complete R.25-3549 R.26-1549 - see the completeness trap C47; the email-specific completeness exemplar is C48.
The Notice and Order is the instrument that fixes the abatement obligation and carries the appeal right; to enlarge that obligation, the City amends or re-issues the served order SCC § 8.100.720 SCC § 8.100.730 SCC § 8.100.760 M124. The City did re-issue an appealable order on 09/02/2025 that itemized most conditions M543-M544. But three conditions - the seven-foot fence-height limit, fascia repair, and the workshop "reduced to 120 Sq Ft" detach condition - moved only through the separate 09/16 Correction Notice S.6 and the email chain E.5, and never onto any document the owner could appeal. Those requirements encumber a property and drive its penalties while standing outside the noticed, appealable scope.
Anticipated City defense: As an inspection or project progresses, officials commonly discover new items and have a duty to inform the owner of everything necessary to achieve compliance; email and a correction list are ordinary channels for that communication, and the order's existing "all required permits" language already covered it.
Answer: Informing the owner of newly identified items and adding those items to a noticed enforcement obligation are two different acts. The first is communication; the second requires an amendment to the Notice and Order so the owner's appeal right attaches to the new findings SCC § 8.100.720 SCC § 8.96.130, appealable within thirty days from service of the notice SCC § 8.100.760. Generic "all required permits" language is what the specificity requirement forecloses: an order that does not state the condition cannot serve as the appealable authority for it. The City re-issued an appealable order on 09/02/2025 that itemized most conditions M543-M544, which only sharpens the point for the items it left out - especially when compared to the on-tape permit contradiction C27. The reviewed record shows the October communications, the 09/16 Correction Notice, and the later permit paperwork, but no appealable order carrying the fence-height, fascia, or workshop-120-Sq-Ft items S.6. The contractor withdrawal C32 shows the practical consequence: a licensed third party, retained to comply, concluded the demands had moved off the face of the order.
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