Santa Clara County officials are cracking down on properties with overgrown vegetation as part of an effort to reduce fire danger.<\/p>\n
Inspectors with the county’s Weed Abatement Program conduct weekly inspections, looking for properties that pose a fire risk.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, inspectors identified a property off Old Oakland Road where overgrown vegetation was growing near homes.<\/p>\n
“We’re looking for anything that can be a fire hazard and create a fire risk,” Weed Abatement Manager Garik Iosilevsky said.<\/p>\n
The county will send the property owner a notice ordering the vegetation to be cleared. If the work is not completed before a second inspection about two weeks later, the owner will be charged an inspection fee and receive another cleanup notice.<\/p>\n
Iosilevsky added that if the property remains out of compliance, the county can hire a contractor to remove the fire hazard. The cost of the cleanup is then added as a special assessment to the owner’s property taxes.<\/p>\n
County officials say about 2,000 properties are currently on the inspection list, and they remain on the list for three years.<\/p>\n
East San Jose property owner Yuan Fang said he didn’t realize his nine-acre property was on the weed abatement list when he bought it two years ago. <\/p>\n
Fang said he thought grazing horses and goats on the property would address the vegetation but was later charged inspection fees.<\/p>\n
Fang said one bill included a $953 parcel fee and a $1,383 administrative fee. He said one of his neighbors was billed more than $8,000 after the county hired a contractor to perform the work.<\/p>\n
Iosilevsky said it had to be done.<\/p>\n
“California has really had a lot of devastating wildfires that have caused a lot of loss of property and loss of life,” Iosilevsky added. “And that\u2019s our main goal, to prevent this from happening in Santa Clara County.\u201d<\/p>\n
Property owners can contest the fees during an annual hearing. Fang said he wants the county to lower the fees, calling them excessive.<\/p>\n
Fang has a year to get off the inspection list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Santa Clara County officials are cracking down on properties with overgrown vegetation as part of an effort to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":410250,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[88,90,89,198],"class_list":["post-410249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-santa-clara-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/410250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}