No Written Standard for Non-Owner Contacts

RECORD CHAIN

1. April 4, 2023 — the City answers the representative at first contact, owner copied. The 04/04/2023 case entry records "Good morning, My name is Chris Foley and Jacqueline Baritell has informed me you had stopped by [M024]," and "Jackie is CC'd on this email" [M024]; the inspector "replied back" [M024] to him the same day.
2. August 21, 2025 — a phone call and a first name stand in for the owner's word. The inspector's 08/21/2025 entry records that the person at the door "wanted to cancel the inspection" [M035], that he told her the City "would move forward with an inspection warrant" [M035], and then: "About 30 minutes later I received a call from the property owners rep (Karin) who stated we could go ahead and enter the property and perform the inspection [M035]." The entry records a call and a first name. It does not record who the caller was to the owner, how the inspector knew it, or any authorization; the same entry uses "the care taker for the owner" [M035] and "the handyman" [M035] for the person working in the backyard. The file the City produced under Request 26-1965 holds no owner authorization for the caller.
3. September 2, 2025 — the forward asks who he is; the rule follows fourteen minutes later. The representative emailed the Principal Building Inspector at 10:40 AM, writing that the official had "just came by and delivered the new Notice and Order packet" [E3] and offering, "I will bring you a signed letter from Jackie authorizing you to communicate with me directly regarding this case" [E3]; at 2:29 PM the Principal Building Inspector forwarded it to the inspector and a second City official asking "Paul, who is this person? How is he involved?" [E3]; at 2:43 PM the inspector replied to all of them and to two non-City addresses: "The City of Sacramento deals directly with the owner of the property, or the owners representative. The last few times we met onsite, the owners representative is also attached to the email." [E3] The reply names no one and answers neither the offer nor the question "If Jackie’s consent must come first, please just confirm that and we’ll bring it immediately" [E3] (Jackie is the property owner). The same thread is carried in Card 28, Card 29, and Card 27.
4. September 11, 2025 — logged nine days later as "property owners handyman". The inspector's 09/11/2025 case entry recorded the 09/02/2025 email as one "from property owners handyman [M036]," copied its text, and copied his own reply: "I replied back to the email stating: Chris, Thank you for reaching out to the city of Sacramento with your concerns of the property at 4880 T street." [M036] The entry adds nothing to the 09/02/2025 reply — no name for the representative it says was "attached to the email" [M036], no request for the offered letter.
5. September 16, 2025 — fourteen days after the reply, a representative of the owner is given thirty days, without a form. The inspector "met with a contractor and a representative of the property owner [M036]," gave the contractor "a correction notice, that included pictures [M036]," handed him "my business card [M036]," recorded that "the handyman had taken care of some of the violations" [M036] — the 08/21/2025 word for the person working in the backyard, not the 09/11/2025 label for the representative — and wrote, "I let the representative of the owner know I would give them 30 days to obtain the building permit [M036]." The entry names no one and records no authorization asked of anyone.
6. May 22, 2026 — the file produced under Request 26-1965: no authorization for anyone, no entry of how the caller was confirmed. No entry, email, or notice in the file the City produced under Request 26-1965 and closed as complete [R.26-1965.1] shows any staff member asking the representative, the 08/21/2025 caller, the owner, or the contractor for an authorization, holding an owner-signed Form CDD-0204, Agent-for-Owner Authorization for any of them, or recording how the 08/21/2025 caller was confirmed as the owner's representative. This is a negative search across the May case file, checked against the City's own form; search terms are listed in the citations below.

FULL CIRCLE

The City's first available answer is that the owner's representative was the person the owner herself put forward: on 08/21/2025 the inspector logged "a call from the property owners rep (Karin)" [M035] and acted on it, and the 09/02/2025 reply went to that representative too — "the owners representative is also attached to the email" [E3].

The 08/21/2025 entry records a phone call and a first name; it does not record who confirmed that the caller spoke for the owner, or how, and the reply says "attached to the email" without a name. The same file shows the owner copied on the representative's first email in April 2023 [M024] and the City answering him from that day. The email the reply answered offered "a signed letter from Jackie authorizing you to communicate with me directly" [E3]; the reply skipped it. The City's own Agent-for-Owner Authorization form is the instrument it prints for recording that a non-owner acts for the owner; the file the City produced under Request 26-1965 holds none for the caller, the representative, or anyone.

The City's second available answer is that no ordinance or form requires a written designation for code-enforcement correspondence, and that CDD-0204 is a permit-application form.

Then the thirty-day permit window of 09/16/2025 [M036] — a permit matter — was given to a non-owner without it; and if no writing is required, the City applied its rule to one non-owner and not to another on no page that says why.

What would defeat this card is a page in the file the City produced under Request 26-1965 that records how the 08/21/2025 caller was confirmed as the owner's representative, or an owner's authorization for anyone — a completed Form CDD-0204, a signed letter, or a staff entry recording the decision. The file, closed with "All responsive records have been provided." [R.26-1965.1], holds none. Card 4 is the completeness baseline (what the file the City produced means, and does not mean).