A Rancho Peñasquitos family is feeling some relief after the City of San Diego substantially reduced the fines for clearing brush from a nature preserve behind their home.
Four months after an NBC 7 investigation highlighted his situation, 79-year-old Amado Nera now owes the city $8,542. It’s not a minor amount, says his son-in-law John Strong, but it is far more manageable than the $53,367 fine the city initially charged.
In May of 2021, Nera saw the thick, dry vegetation surrounding his home as a wildfire threat. So with tools from his garage, the retired senior citizen whacked away at brush to clear defensible space. In total, the city says Nera cleared shrubs away from 14,000 square feet of land.
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Nera says he didn’t realize that the land was a protected, city-owned property known as the Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve. That sensitive nature habitat has hundreds of unique plant and animal species, many of which are classified as endangered or threatened.
City of San Diego fines family $53,367 for clearing brush in nature preserve behind home
More than a year and a half later, in October of 2022, Nera received a letter from the city detailing the damage to the preserve and fining him $53,367.70.
Nera’s son-in-law, John Strong, says the bill came as a shock.
“There was nothing deliberately malicious about this,” Strong said.
Strong told us he reached out to the city multiple times, contacting the Parks & Recreation Department, Treasurer’s Office, and Councilmember Marni von Wilpert’s office.
“All of our attempts to reach out to the city to discuss the claim were unsuccessful,” Strong said.
Feeling like they’d hit a wall, the family reached out to NBC 7 Investigates. In July, our team published a story detailing the financial hardship the family now faced and their hope that a resolution could be reached with the city.
The story resonated with a lot of viewers and reached the ears of Councilmember Marni von Wilpert. She told us her office immediately contacted the family, spoke with several city departments involved, and put a hold on any repayment of the fine.
“We thought that the $53,000 fine, especially for a senior citizen living on a fixed income, was just untenable,” von Wilpert said.
The councilmember told us her office worked with city departments and the state and got the fine reduced to roughly $8,500.
“I want to thank NBC 7 for bringing this to our attention,” von Wilpert told us. “You know, the city is a giant city with 1.4 million people. And so sometimes these things fall under the radar for us…So I want to say thank you for giving voice to a family who was struggling.”
We asked von Wilpert why her office didn’t respond to Strong’s initial request and she told us, “I'm not sure when he reached out to our office. But clearly once we got a hold of him, we acted immediately.”
“It's obviously substantially less than the initial amount,” Strong told us. “We're pleased that the city was able to recognize the excessive nature.”
In our initial reporting, NBC 7 Investigates obtained documents that showed the bulk of the original fine would have paid for three years of “habitat monitoring and passive vegetation restoration services” by a third-party private company. According to the contract between that company and the city, that would have involved experts watching native plants regrow and removing invasive ones.
Instead, Councilmember von Wilpert told us the work will be handled by city employees.
“I worked with the Parks and Rec department to pull their staff away from other planned projects and in-house this work to make sure that they could do the monitoring,” von Wilpert told us. “That is an opportunity cost, of course, because that means other planned projects that Parks and Rec were working on are going to have to wait ‘til next year.”
Parks and Rec says those projects include:
- Chamise chapparal and vernal pool watershed restoration to close off unauthorized trails in Del Mar Mesa and Carmel Mountain
- Wet season vernal pool surveys at Del Mar Mesa, Lopez Ridge, and Carmel Mountain to update fairy shrimp occupancy data
- Wet Season Fairy Shrimp Surveys in Del Mar Mesa, Carmel Mountain, and Lopez Ridge Preserves
NBC 7 asked Parks and Rec when those projects would take place, but it didn't immediately respond.
It’s unclear if any fine reductions will happen for other families who were fined over similar issues. But Councilmember von Wilpert told us folks who believe they are facing similarly egregious fines should reach out to her office.
“We now understand the process better with our office and the City Treasurer about how we can mitigate some of these fines,” von Wilpert said.
Ultimately though, von Wilpert says she hopes this will be a learning opportunity to educate San Diegans about the right way to create defensible space, so fines like this aren't imposed in the first place.
“Before you clear any brush behind your home, please call the city Parks and Rec Department,” von Wilpert told us. “We will walk you through what you need to do to clear that brush, and make sure that no fines or fees or mistakes happen.”
You can learn more about that process here or by calling the Parks and Rec Department at 619-685-1350.
It’s a process Strong says is still confusing to navigate online. He hopes his family’s experience motivates the city to make the process of requesting a clearing service or permit from the city more straightforward.
“You know, it caused a lot of it, a lot of heartburn and anxiety,” Strong said. “It was a long process for something that I think, you know, could have been resolved relatively easy. You know, with some open lines of communication.”
