A license revocation notice was delivered to the man connected to the Cedar Lane Mobile Home Park during Monday’s Tracy City Council meeting.
The document was served by Jason Kloos of Southwest Health and Human Services, who appeared before the council prior to going to the park.
The true owner of the park was discussed at the meeting. Mike Grover was known to have been the owner, and his 60-day window of time to address issues surrounding the lack of an evacuation plan and storm shelter for park residents expired on Nov. 22.
“Just to be clear, we don’t know who the owner is, or when it’s going to change hands,” Tracy City Administrator Jeff Carpenter explained at the meeting. “The taxes were paid, and it was attempted to be moved to another party, but it was denied because a survey was wrong. That was the last we heard of that.”
Carpenter said the taxes were paid by the assumed new owner of the park, but the transfer of title failed. Still, “it looks like there is going to be a transfer of property to the new owner,” he said. That person, Kloos said, will have to apply for a license through him to keep the park open.
Grover was not in attendance at Monday’s meeting.
An evacuation plan created by the residents was brought before the council earlier this year and approved by the Church of Christ, which agreed to house the residents during inclement weather.
CARPENTER
The VMC is another option for residents, but the council stopped short of officially approving that as a safe haven because the City could not guarantee it would be open after business hours or on a weekend.
Mayor Pro-Tem Seth Schmidt asked Carpenter what the ramifications of the revocation will be for the residents. Carpenter said there would be no effect on the residents for at least a year, but “this isn’t going to end anytime soon. Our attorney said there is no action for us to make tonight.”
After that discussion, Kloos arrived at the meeting to further update the council and said the SWHHS board had no interest in extending Grover’s suspension, instead voting to revoke the license, which, he said, was coming due at the end of 2025.
After Kloos was finished, he was escorted to the park by Tracy Police Chief Jason Lichty to serve the revocation paperwork. The notice will go into effect in 10 days after delivery of the letter.
Grover does have the opportunity to request another hearing in front of the SWHHS board.
“Where this leads is the closure of the park,” said Kloos. “I’ve been told there’s someone else pursuing ownership of (the park); if that is the case and that individual tries to apply,” I’ll have to get guidance from our (SWHHS) board on which direction to go.”
“There is a chance the park will stay open, given it is relicensed,” Kloos said.
“We don’t want to stand in the way of people making progress on the orders that we’ve issued,” he said. “If they are showing evidence that they are trying to meet the criteria that we set, we’re not going to get in their way.”
Carpenter said the ultimate goal for all officials dealing with the matter is to maintain a safe place for the current residents to live.
Closing the park, if it came to that, would take about a year, Kloos said.
“This whole process has been full of challenges,” he said. “If you wanted to create a worst-case scenario, this is it. There’s hope that there would be some fund to help people move, but the condition of some of the trailers makes it very difficult, the titles on the trailers make if difficult, the taxes, whether they’re paid or not, make it difficult. There are no winners in this one. We tried to prevent this from happening, but it takes two to tango.”
