California vineyard owner fined $120,000 for offering free housing to employees Files

A California vineyard owner is suing Santa Clara County after officials fined him for allowing his longtime employee to live in a trailer on his property for years.

Michael Ballard, whose family owns Savannah-Chanelle Vineyards in a town south of San Francisco, claims he was fined more than $120,000 after the county said he violated local zoning laws that prohibit anyone from live in an RV on public or private property. , according to The Mercury News.

Marcelino Martinez, the manager of the vineyard, which is about 2.6 million square feet, said his family lost their lease on a trailer they lived in years ago and had limited options for affordable housing accessible in the area. The Ballards agreed to allow them to live in an RV at the vineyards. Martinez, his wife and children have lived there for free since 2013, according to The Mercury News.

“I couldn’t make a family homeless for arbitrary reasons,” Ballard told the newspaper. “The human impact far outweighed any damage or nuisance their continued life in the trailer would create.”

But in July 2019, the county began fining the Ballards $1,000 a day for the RV, then reduced the penalty to $250 a day, the vineyard owner said.

The county disputed that it fined Ballard $120,000 and said he refused to accept deadlines to reduce the violations, according to the newspaper. Officials have made several offers to drastically reduce the fines if he removes the RV, they said.

The county was imposing “excessive fines” and violating the U.S. Constitution with its actions against Ballard, his attorney Paul Avelar told The Mercury News.

Ballard doesn’t agree with the county spending so much time penalizing him when it’s dealing with bigger problems.

“Drive anywhere in the county, there are mobile homes parked everywhere. There are camps everywhere you go,” he told the newspaper. “The problem is obvious and obvious, yet they choose to judge us on the least intrusive example of this, where we let someone live on private property in a private location and we don’t disturb anyone.”

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