The Unsupported Internal Issuance Reasons

Case 23-009185 | Card 6 | 4880 T Street, Sacramento CA 95819

The City wrote down why it issued the order, and neither reason is a condition of the building. The day before the April 12, 2023 Notice and Order [M124] bears its date, Paul Lovato wrote in the case file: "Due to lack of contact from the Owner and failure to obtain an HDB permit I issued the Notice and Order" [M024]. Neither reason is in the order, and neither is on the list served with it [M125], which names a code for Other and a code for Permits Required and no structure, no work, and no location. The sentence was not served on anyone; it reached the owner in the case file the City produced in May 2026 and closed as complete [R.26-1965.1], where each phrase appears once — in that sentence [R.26-1965.2].

The first reason is written on the page that records the contact: on 04/04/2023, eight days before the order, the same page records an email from the owner's representative and Paul Lovato's reply to it the same day [M024]. Two days after the order the representative asked in writing for the basis and offered to arrange access to the backyard [E1.4]; that afternoon he offered again, naming a day [E1.6]. The second reason names a permit. The served list cites SCC.8.100.190 and comments that work had been done without the benefit of a permit [M125]; it names no permit, and the City's own 04/04/2023 entry says what the permit record held and that whether work was going on or not, he still needed to verify [M024]. The City's strongest page, in the file it produced in 2026 [R.26-1965.1], is a re-inspection entry dated 04/10/2023 in the activity log [M001] and 04/11/2023 on the NOTES page [M024], written from a neighbor's backyard. Whatever it says, it is on no served page: the order recites only that the conditions are "set forth on the attached list of violations" [M124], and the list names a code, not a structure. The City's first written description of what to remove at 4880 T Street is on a permit it issued on 11/21/2025 [D], 954 days after the order.

Why does neither reason the inspector wrote appear in the April 12, 2023 order [M124] or on the list served with it [M125], when SCC.8.100.720(A)(2) requires the order itself to describe the conditions found; when the "HDB permit" [M024] the note names is on no served page and on no other page of the file the City produced in May 2026 [R.26-1965.2] [R.26-1965.1]; and when the owner side's three written requests for the basis, two of them offering the backyard [E1.4], drew a description of work seen from neighboring properties [E1.5], an offer to set a time and his weekday hours [E1.7], then a date [E1.9]?

IN PLAIN TERMS

The City wrote down why it issued the April 12, 2023 order [M124]: the inspector's note from the day before says a lack of contact from the owner and a failure to obtain an "HDB permit" [M024]. Neither is in the order or on the list served with it [M125], which names no structure, no work, and no location. The same page records an email from the owner's side eight days earlier, and his reply [M024]. No served page names an "HDB permit", and in the case file the City produced in May 2026 [R.26-1965.2] the words appear only in that note. The question for the City: why is neither written reason in the order or on the list served with it?

RECORD CHAIN

  1. April 4, 2023 — what the City had verified, and what it had not. The case file's NOTES page records an inbound email from the owner's representative [M024] and Paul Lovato's reply the same day [M024]. The reply, as the page sets it out, states: "I have verified there are no permits issued to the property. Whether work is going on, or not, I need to verify." [M024] The City preserved the outbound copy separately, as its own 04/04/2023 11:34 AM email [E1.2].
  2. April 10 and April 11, 2023 — one entry, two dates. The activity log dates the re-inspection entry 04/10/2023 [M001]; the NOTES page dates the identical text 04/11/2023 [M024]: "I met with neighbors to access their backyard to verify work performed. I did verify there is an addition to the detached garage going on. Neighbors stated there was generators running the previous night. I took pictures of what I saw from where I was standing. A N&O will be requested." [M024] The log's own 04/11/2023 entry reads: "Any contact from owner? Re-visit site. Add condition? if not, call contact to see if I can gain access to see work Buster prelim sent out 2 weeks ago" [M001]. The NOTES page's other 04/11/2023 entry, recorded at 7:00 am [M024], is the one that gives the two reasons.
  3. April 12, 2023 — what the served papers name. The Correction List served with the order [M125] carries two entries: B31, described on the page as "BUILDING - Other" [M125], and B59, described as "BUILDING - Permits Required" [M125]. It opens: "This is not a complete Violation List of building code violations. Neither interior nor exterior has been completely inspected." [M125] Its comment on B59 reads: "Work has been done without the benefit of a PERMIT. This work must be removed or properly Permitted and Approved by the City of Sacramento." [M125] The two places the served papers use the words Housing and Dangerous Buildings are the list's own letterhead, "HOUSING AND DANGEROUS BUILDINGS DIVISION" [M125], and paragraph 6 of the order, a "Housing and Dangerous Buildings Monitoring Fee" [M124]. The City's own page identifies Housing and Dangerous Buildings as a division and program.
  4. April 14 – April 25, 2023 — three written requests for the basis. On 04/14/2023 at 8:00 AM [E1.4] the owner's representative asked the City to clarify the inspection and the alleged violations, and wrote that the notices identified no structure, building, or infraction; the same email says access to the backyard can be arranged and declines the interior of the detached garage [E1.4]. Nine minutes later Paul Lovato replied [E1.5] that he had asked in prior e-mails for backyard access and had no response, that he had gone to neighboring properties and could see work performed, that pictures were taken, and that either permits are required to legalize the work or it is to be removed; the photographs are Card 9 (the photograph pages, and what the produced record discloses about them). At 2:50 PM the same day [E1.6] the representative wrote that the City was not pointing out what the work performed was, offered to meet at the property and let the inspector into the backyard, and named a day [E1.6], and on 04/25/2023 at 6:29 AM [E1.8] he asked for the purpose, scope and details of the inspection. The 04/17 reply [E1.7] offered to set a time to meet onsite and gave his hours, Monday–Friday 8:00 am–2:00 pm; the 04/25 reply [E1.9] named Wednesday the 26th at 1:00 pm. No City reply in that exchange names a permit classification, and the produced case file [R.26-1965.2] holds no amended Correction List before that inspection.
  5. August 21, 2025 – June 18, 2026 — what the City wrote afterward. Twenty-eight months after the order, Paul Lovato's 08/21/2025 case note [M035] records him at the front door telling the caretaker that "an inspection is required and since they were not allowing the inspection to be performed, we would move forward with an inspection warrant" [M035]. On 11/21/2025 the City issued a permit for this property described as "HSG# (case # 23-009185) Remove all Illegal construction in/at garage includes electrical and plumbing." [D], and on 02/23/2026 a second permit repeating that description [D]. Those two records are the only entries for 4880 T Street on the City's permit list [D], and neither is of a type named HDB permit. The City closed the case on 06/18/2026 with the disposition Work Completed [R.26-2487.2].

FULL CIRCLE

The City's first available answer is that the note meant no reply to its request for backyard access, not an absence of contact. Its own pages read that way: the 04/07/2023 entry states, "Since there was no reply back to e-mail, I contacted the complaining party to find out if the work can be viewed from their property" [M024], and on 04/14/2023 Paul Lovato wrote to the owner's representative [E1.5] that his prior e-mails asking for backyard access had no response.

Read either way, what that entry describes is correspondence. The e-mail it says went unanswered is the City's own reply of 04/04, recorded on the same page [M024], and access to a backyard is not among the conditions the order places on the attached list [M124]. Two days after the order the owner's side offered that access in writing, in the morning [E1.4] and again in the afternoon [E1.6].

The City's second available answer is that HDB is its Housing and Dangerous Buildings program and that the reason was a failure to obtain a permit — and its own 04/04/2023 entry [M024] supports the permit half: no permits had been issued to the property [M024]. That entry records what the permit record held, not a condition of the building, and the sentence after it says the inspector still had to verify whether work was going on. As a permit, the label has no page: the City's permit list for this property [D] carries no record of that type, and in the case file the City closed as complete [R.26-1965.2] the letters HDB otherwise appear in monitoring-fee and administrative-penalty labels — on the first monitoring-fee directive [M002] and on later ones [M009].

The City's third available answer is a re-inspection entry in the file it produced in 2026 — a note of what its inspector says he saw from a neighbor's backyard, which the owner did not have in 2023 — dated 04/10/2023 in the activity log [M001] and 04/11/2023 on the NOTES page [M024], and the served list's B59 comment that "Work has been done without the benefit of a PERMIT" [M125]. That is the City's best page, and it is not a served page. The list names B59 "BUILDING - Permits Required" [M125] and no structure, work, or location; the order recites only that the conditions are "set forth on the attached list of violations" [M124]. The observation stayed in the case file until the May 2026 production [R.26-1965.2]; what the order served in April 2023 told the owner was a code number.

The code places the description in the order itself: SCC.8.100.720(A)(2) requires a "brief and concise description of the conditions found to render the building substandard" [SCC.8.100.720(A)(2)], and the order recites that the inspection and the determination had already been made [M124]. Who inspected this property before the order issued, and from where, is Card 2 — the inspection predicate the order recites, measured against the produced file.

What would defeat this card is a document the City served on the owner before the appeal window closed that gives, as the reason the order issued, a condition of the building at 4880 T Street: an amended Notice and Order, a corrected list, or another written statement identifying the structure, the work, and the location. The searchable May 2026 case file [R.26-1965.2], closed with "All responsive records have been provided" [R.26-1965.1], contains none. Card 4 is the completeness baseline (what the file the City produced means, and does not mean): fourteen written CPRA completeness determinations.

Request 26-2487 asked for "The inspection report(s) underlying the determination recited in the April 12, 2023 Notice and Order" [R.26-2487.5], and asked the City to state expressly if no completed inspection report existed for that item [R.26-2487.5]. It was closed the same day it was filed, with "All responsive records have been provided." [R.26-2487.5] The release carried no such report, and no statement that none exists.

APPLICABLE LAW

SOURCE CITATIONS USED BY THIS CARD

CARD REFERENCES