One of the busiest set of Ceres city employees are the three who comprise the Code Enforcement Unit, a member told the Ceres City Council last week.
Cassandra Lopez, the Code Enforcement secretary, gave an update on how busy things for the team in dealing with violations and blight throughout Ceres in the second quarter of 2026.
The team of Code Enforcement officers Jack Taylor and Jeff Varney seek voluntary compliance whenever they come across properties that are a threat to public safety and health as well as blight.
Lopez said the city has been tackling the problem of food vendors who don’t have permits and have not been vetted by county health officials.
“We’ve had very successful nights,” said Lopez. “That’s something that we’re going to continue working on.”
The abandoned Triple R gas station property at the northwest corner of Whitmore Avenue and Mitchell Road has consumed a lot of the team’s hours.
“While we wait for approval on our abatement process, our legal process to get Triple R all cleaned up, our biggest issue there are trespassers. The property is red-tagged.”
She happily reported that the abandoned Lazy Wheels Mobile Home Park site is nearing the end of clean-up. Dozens of units were left, stripped of recyclables and systematically destroyed by an excavator and hauled off. Lopez said the property should be leveled out and readied for the next project whatever that may be.
Another headache for Code Enforcement has been keeping the half-finished Tuscany Village subdivision free of trespassers. She reported the property was sold again and the city has been able to get a hold of the new owner to address weeds and the property is once again gated to keep out derelicts.
In October the unit started a Revenue Recovery Initiative to focus on tracking and pursuing payment of outstanding fines. Lopez said over $3,500 in past due balances have been collected.
Between July 1, 2025 and June 30, 2026 the unit received over a 1,000 calls for service and “closing out a good amount of them, educating our residents and our property owners to help mitigate long-term issues.”
“I think education has been a most important tool for us rather than our enforcement actions,” noted Lopez. “It’s all about educating our business owners, our property owners, our occupants to minimize long term, um, effects or violations.”
That education has led to fewer calls for service.
“Now, once education does not work, that’s where the administrative citations come in, where we did see an 80 percent increase from 24-25 to this last fiscal year.”
Between April 1 and June 30, the unit dealt with illegal camps 936 times, illegal dumps 418 times, illegal vendors 86 times, trash container violations 47 times, and 169 parking citations.
The team issued 125 courtesy notices rather than opening cases.
“Illegal dumps have really been a big issue in our city,” noted Lopez.
The unit often works in tandem with other city departments and outside agencies and through collaboration it was made known that the city street sweeper had not been on Colleen and Della streets for months due to abandoned vehicles parked on the street.
“We were actually able to get all the vehicles out, and that was the product of the street cleanup,” she said.
Homeless camps are a huge problem and Lopez noted that one cleanup of a camp initiated by the city resulted in 12,000 pounds of trash and debris being hauled off.
In another instance, the team acted on neighbors about rats and other pests living on a neglected abandoned property.
“It’s all about hearing our neighbors and understanding their concerns,” commented Lopez. “So that was a project that we took on.”
As far as illegal food vendors are concerned the city is actively working with the Stanislaus County Department of Environmental Resources on a weekly basis to “help eliminate, educate and inspect these vendors.”
She noted that repeated attempts to educate result in no corrections and that’s when enforcement comes in.
Lopez also said complaints are taken seriously and the public may call the unit at 209-538-5799 or email code.enforcement@ci.ceres.ca.us or use the GoGov app.
“For a three person unit handling 936 encampment abatements, 418 illegal dumps, and then you guys performed 894 re-inspections, a total of 116,000 pounds of debris, that is incredible,” said Mayor Javier Lopez. “If this presentation does not demonstrate how hard this team is working, I don’t know what else does.”
Police Chief Trenton Johnson said two city ordinances are in the works to help crack down on blight in parks, such as outlining that property belonging to homeless persons cannot be stored there.
“I do appreciate the fact that you are doing the educational component of it first because there’s a lot of stuff that changes faster than we can keep up with,” said Councilwoman Rosalinda Vierra. “So and I think that’s key.
