Latest news with #Zanoni
San Francisco Chronicle
29-06-2025
- San Francisco Chronicle
A farmworker had broken no laws. A California sheriff and ICE took him anyway
Fresno County Sheriff John Zanoni stood at the podium, his office's six-pointed star displayed in triplicate: on the breast of his uniform, on a long-necked microphone and larger than life on the swamp-green curtain behind him. On a black video screen under the word 'ARRESTED' flashed five mug shots — a big one in the middle and four small ones arrayed around it. The men were responsible for a series of armed robberies in August 2024, Zanoni said, of a taco stand and two grocers. There was also a carjacking and, Zanoni said, a home invasion. 'These are very violent and very dangerous individuals,' the Central Valley sheriff said. The men, he added, were 'possibly connected to Tren de Aragua, TdA, which is also known as a violent criminal street gang.' What Zanoni did not say at the April 23 news conference was that the mug shot in the bottom left corner belonged to an innocent man. Nonetheless, at that moment, Yan Garcia-Heredia was inside a West Texas detention center, a wrong man in a wrong place. The legal asylum seeker had been living and working in Fresno County when Zanoni's officers arrested and released him without ever requesting that criminal charges be filed, according to the district attorney's office. Garcia-Heredia left the county jail on Feb. 15 and entered immigration custody the same day — under circumstances that suggest cracks in the story the Trump administration is telling about the immigrants it seeks to deport. And the story Zanoni is telling his majority Latino community. In April, Immigration and Customs Enforcement moved Garcia-Heredia to a Texas detention center that has been a waystation for U.S. migrants shipped to El Salvador based on unproven gang claims. ICE posted Garcia-Heredia's photo on its Facebook and Instagram channels, the 22-year-old's startled face crowded by text that said 'Tren de Aragua' and 'robbery & assault with a firearm' — a gang he denies belonging to and crimes he denies committing. Tren de Aragua is the Venezuelan gang that President Donald Trump made the basis of his March 15 executive order activating the 1798 Alien Enemies Act. Trump summoned the arcane wartime authority to send at least 288 migrants — including asylum seekers, refugees and those with protected statuses — to a Salvadoran super-prison until more than a dozen federal judges and the Supreme Court intervened. The administration is resisting court orders to identify and return the people it sent to the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador. At the same time, it is appealing injunctions on its efforts to rendition hundreds more, including many who have said in court petitions that they are fleeing the gangs they are accused of serving. Trump recently won the Supreme Court's permission to expel migrants to countries they are not from, including ones where they face possible torture. Even as Trump seeks to ban or sharply restrict asylum, refugee admissions, humanitarian parole, temporary protected status, student visas, travel from 19 African and Middle Eastern countries, and birthright citizenship, among other legal pathways, his immigration enforcers insist that they are prioritizing dangerous criminals on the way to meeting the president's quota of 1 million deportations by the end of the year. Zanoni, who declined to be interviewed, has criticized California's sanctuary laws but says he obeys them, including what's known as the California Values Act, or Senate Bill 54, which says local law enforcement agencies can coordinate with ICE only if the people in their custody have been convicted of or charged with serious crimes. Garcia-Heredia has no criminal record. He had permission to be in the country. He is not the kind of immigrant the Trump administration or Zanoni's office admit targeting. So how did he become a poster child for their synchronized effort? 'My time to go' According to a phone interview from the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, Texas, and two declarations he filed with a federal court in California — all translated from Spanish by attorney Victoria Petty of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area — Garcia-Heredia doesn't remember much about where he came from. He was young when the family left Caucagua, a balmy city surrounded by cocoa fields in the Venezuelan state of Miranda. He was 5 when his father was slain. 'I don't remember him much, either,' he told the Chronicle. Garcia-Heredia quit school at 15 and got a job as a machine operator in a plastics factory. As hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan kids do each year, he left a collapsing education system to help his family pay the bills. Like about 2,000 Venezuelans each day, he would later leave a collapsing country to do the same. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, more than 7.7 million Venezuelans have been displaced by hyperinflation, gang violence and food shortages under the decade-long regime of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Most go to Latin America or the Caribbean. Garcia-Heredia decided on the U.S. His mother and two younger brothers shared doubts. 'But it was my time to go,' he said. Garcia-Heredia said it was important to him to follow the laws and immigration rules of the country he was seeking to enter. 'I wanted to show the United States government that I was a trustworthy person,' he said in an April 28 declaration identifying him by his initials as Y.G.H. Garcia-Heredia left Venezuela in July 2023, when he was 20. He traveled mostly by bus, he said. He reached Mexico City and downloaded CBP One, a notoriously glitchy app that became the Biden administration's gatekeeper for an overwhelmed asylum system. The Trump administration has turned CBP One into a self-deportation app. Garcia-Heredia waited two months for an appointment with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, presented his Venezuelan identification card and requested asylum. In September 2023 — three months before border encounters peaked that December — he was granted temporary humanitarian parole and given an August 2026 immigration court date. He went first to Chicago but found it too cold. He went to Fresno County, which felt more familiar. The Central California county of about 1 million residents is 55% Hispanic or Latino and nearly 20% foreign-born, with about 77,000 unauthorized immigrants, according to the U.S. Census Bureau and Migration Policy Institute. It is also home to an $8.6 billion agricultural industry with 1.9 million acres producing 350 different crops and 20% of the area's jobs, according to the county's 2023 crops report. Garcia-Heredia joined the farming economy's large unauthorized workforce, planting and picking watermelons, tomatoes, squash and broccoli. Sometimes he worked 12-hour days, sometimes seven-day weeks. He found a place to stay in Mendota, a western-county city bisected by two state routes and known for its cantaloupes. Almost everyone there is Latino or Hispanic and speaks a language other than English. On Feb. 12, he was arrested at his home. The sheriff's office would later say its detectives and those from the Mendota Police Department were serving an unrelated search warrant when they connected Garcia-Heredia to the August 2024 robberies. The sheriff's office said this more than two months after it decided not to seek charges. Garcia-Heredia said it was raining when the police came. He put his hands on his head and got into a patrol car, he said. He asked what was happening, but no one answered, he said. Then the investigators arrived. Two detectives interrogated him, he said, one acting as interpreter. 'They asked me if I was a person who participated in the robbery,' he said. 'Then they took me to the jail. They accused me of the (crimes). And I was really afraid because they said I was going to pay 15 years of my life for a crime that I didn't commit.' No one mentioned Tren de Aragua, he said. He said he spent three days in jail, which would violate state laws requiring that he be charged or released within 48 hours. A sheriff's spokesperson said Garcia-Heredia was released after two days, but did not respond to questions seeking specific dates. Garcia-Heredia said he was woken from a sleep, escorted out of his cell and told to change back into his clothes. He asked his jailer if someone had posted his bail. He didn't understand why he had been arrested or why he was being let go. 'He told me that I was already free,' he said. 'As soon as I walked out of the door of the jail, there was ICE right there.' What did that feel like? 'I felt bad,' Garcia-Heredia said. 'I felt so, so bad.' 'About law and order' Zanoni was born, raised and educated in Fresno, where he attended Catholic high school and state college. He joined the sheriff's office as a reserve deputy in 1996 and worked his way up the ranks to assistant sheriff. In June 2022, he won the top job in a two-person race that saw 25% of registered voters participate and 15% of registered voters choose him. Zanoni promised to continue the tough-on-crime approach and lenient concealed gun permitting of the retiring Margaret Mims, the county's first female sheriff. He also telegraphed differences. 'I believe firmly that law enforcement does not exist to avoid mistakes. We exist to accomplish something important, and that is to reduce crime and make our communities safer,' Zanoni said at his January 2023 swearing-in ceremony. 'While many things the sheriff's office does will remain the same, there will be changes.' Maria Romani, the immigrant rights program director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, welcomed one of those changes. In February 2022, she published a report showing that Mims transferred more people to ICE than her office disclosed. She said Zanoni agreed to end his predecessor's practice of letting ICE arrest people in the jail's vestibule, enabling the sheriff's office to claim the person had been released and skirting the state's sanctuary laws and reporting requirements around ICE transfers. 'It spoke volumes of him,' Romani said. 'In a good way, I think.' But Zanoni was not a fan of state laws restricting his ability to cooperate and coordinate with immigration authorities. In a Feb. 12 video with Fresno County Supervisor Nathan Magsig, Zanoni criticized SB54's limits on contacting ICE about people in his jail, saying such policies essentially forced ICE to cast wider nets that also snare immigrants without criminal records. 'Criminals are the focus. Not just people who are here illegally — because that is a crime, but that's not our focus,' Zanoni said. 'We have to make changes. We have to be about law and order.' Trump's immigration lieutenants have said the same thing. But being in the country as an undocumented immigrant is a civil violation and not, on its own, a crime. And ICE agents operating in California from the Oregon border to Kern County are increasingly taking people without criminal records, a Chronicle data analysis found. Of the 56,397 people in ICE detention nationally as of June 15, 72% (40,433) had no criminal record, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. ICE detentions are at their highest number in at least six years. Meanwhile, the administration has exerted tremendous pressure to bend blue states to its signature deportation project. In California, it has sent immigration authorities to schools, clinics, courthouses and worksites, dispatched the military to deal with protesters, roughed up a Democratic senator who questioned the policy, and tried to cut funding to jurisdictions that place legal limits on their assistance. While California limited sheriffs' ability to respond to ICE's detainer requests in 2013 — citing the legality and costs of holding people past their release dates, and the distrust they stoked between immigrants and police — exceptions were granted for people with past convictions or current charges for serious or violent felonies, including gang-related offenses. The administration says that cities such as San Francisco and states such as California abet criminals and endanger the public by preventing immigration agents from entering jails and taking lawbreakers, even though nothing is stopping them from simply waiting outside the jails. Multiple courts have upheld the sanctuary laws. Romani said she attended a March meeting with a small group of immigrant activists in which Zanoni expressed empathy for the county's immigrant community and a willingness to host a public town hall to address its concerns. After that meeting, Romani said Zanoni stopped responding to messages. On May 20, Zanoni told the Fresno County Board of Supervisors that the sheriff's office honored 102 of the 389 detainer requests it received from ICE in 2024 — sharp increases from his first year in office, when the agency received 204 immigration detainers and honored 39. Most supervisors championed the increased cooperation. 'We have seen people murdered, raped by these illegals, who traffic in children, drugs and sex,' said Supervisor Garry Bredefeld. 'And hopefully one day we continually elect people who will stop this in this state and make it safe.' None of the transferred people was accused of murder. Supervisor Luis Chavez asked how many sheriff's office investigations rely on victims and witnesses who are undocumented. Zanoni said he didn't have those numbers, that his deputies don't ask anyone's immigration status, that his office doesn't give ICE information the public doesn't have. 'There is no special pipeline,' said Zanoni, whose term was extended two years through 2028 after a judge ruled against Fresno County's bid to hold sheriff and district attorney elections during lower-turnout governor elections. 'This isn't about politics. This is about public safety.' On June 10, Zanoni became the only California sheriff to publicly endorse Trump's choice to activate the military in a U.S. state against its governor's will. Neither Amador County's sheriff, who said he would violate California's sanctuary laws in a county with few immigrants, nor Yuba County's sheriff, the last to let ICE rent his jail, released statements supporting the deployments. Trump, Zanoni said on Facebook, 'did what he had to do.' Gov. Gavin Newsom, he said, 'failed his duties.' 'A good person' On Feb. 15, ICE transported Garcia-Heredia to the Golden State Annex detention center in McFarland (Kern County), run by the GEO Group. Kathleen Kavanagh met him there on April 4 in a big, open room used for family visitations and, once a month, legal clinics hosted by the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice. Kavanagh, the Oakland nonprofit's supervising attorney, registered Garcia-Heredia's hair — dense, curly and whimsily half-bleached — and his youth. In a crowd of dozens, 'He stood out to me right away,' Kavanagh recalled. 'He looks and is incredibly young.' The two spoke Spanish, Garcia-Heredia telling Kavanagh what he had told her colleague: He came to the U.S. to escape gang violence. After he was granted entry to pursue asylum, he went to Chicago, found it too cold and headed west, landing farmwork in California's Central Valley. 'Someone like Yan did it the 'right way' more than anyone else could,' Kavanagh said. 'Yan followed all of those protocols. All of those rules. All of those background checks. He made every attempt to pursue asylum in a legal way. And the way the administration has reneged … it's unprecedented and so cruel.' Garcia-Heredia said it was at the for-profit detention center that he was first asked about Tren de Aragua. He said he was told his tattoos incriminated him. Garcia-Heredia has the names of his brothers and dead father tattooed on his arms. The names are dressed in crowns, Garcia-Heredia said, signifying 'the king of my life' whom he struggles to remember and 'the little princes' he hopes to see again. A cousin told Garcia-Heredia about ICE's March 26 Facebook post. ' ARRESTO Tren de Aragua,' the post read beside Garcia-Heredia's photo. 'Yan Ernesto García Heredia — robo y agresión con un arma de fuego.' Kavanagh said she became instantly worried on Garcia-Heredia's behalf. Just a few weeks earlier, on March 16, the U.S. transported 261 alleged Tren de Aragua and MS-13 members to El Salvador in a highly choreographed transfer that saw the men bent low, roughly marched into the country's terrorism confinement center, CECOT, shaved bald and put in cages. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele posted a video on X, boasting that the deal with the U.S. would financially benefit his government and help the $200 million CECOT sustain itself through free prison labor. 'I was real with him that he was in a very dangerous situation,' said Kavanagh, whose organization sued the U.S. Department of State this month over its agreement with El Salvador, contending it violates constitutional protections of due process and against torture. 'Yan got swept up into something way bigger than him.' She handed him a document with the email address to the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and a speed-dial code for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the Justice Department agency that handles removal proceedings and appeals, and reiterated that he should use it if they moved him. At the top of the document, it said, 'This is a notification establishing that if I am transferred to Guantánamo Bay, or if ICE plans to remove me to a third country where I am not a citizen, I wish to have legal representation.' Ten days after that meeting, on April 14, Garcia-Heredia said, guards woke him before sunup and ignored his requests to retrieve the document. He said he was put in a van, driven to a big building, put in an icy cell with another Venezuelan man, put back in a van, driven for a long time, put on a plane with other men, flown in chains and relative silence to one location, then another, then another. He said he exited the plane and boarded a bus. An hour later, he left the bus in a single-file line, entered a dirt-yellow building and then a barred cell where he and the other men spent the night on the floor. They were at Bluebonnet in Anson, Texas, where 31 detainees would form a human 'SOS' in the dirt yard two weeks later, in a desperate attempt to prevent their expulsion to CECOT, Reuters reported. On April 15, a federal judge in California ordered the Trump administration to keep Garcia-Heredia in the country and within the judge's jurisdiction. When U.S. District Judge Kirk E. Sherriff, who was nominated by former President Joe Biden, learned that Garcia-Heredia was already in Texas, he ordered the government to explain why it had moved someone with a 'pending immigration proceeding before the Immigration Court in Adelanto, California,' and to say how frequently ICE does this to other detainees. But on May 22, the judge granted the Trump administration's request to dismiss the case. Writing that the 'cases raises important questions concerning the lawfulness of the President's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act,' Sherriff concluded that he couldn't hear the petition because the Trump administration had moved Garcia-Heredia from his jurisdiction when it was filed. The Lawyers' Committee appealed the ruling and accuses the federal government of forum shopping — transferring detainees to red-state jurisdictions in the hopes of arguing before sympathetic judges. Ironically, Garcia-Heredia won a reverse decision in immigration court, which said his removal proceedings can shift from El Paso to Adelanto, meaning he will argue for asylum in California and for his freedom in Texas. For now, he remains in a white-walled dormitory crowded with bunk beds, a table and two dozen men like him, from Venezuela, with tattoos they've been told are proof of criminality. Every day is dreary and absurd. It's sweltering inside and outside the facility. There is no library and not much to do. The guards shout orders and take away the detainees who don't obey quickly enough, he said. Sometimes they are gassed, he said. He sleeps on a thin mattress with a thin pillow. He eats bread and grains. He sees the outside world 90 minutes a day. He wears an old, torn uniform and doesn't think about how many other men wore it or what happened to them. 'Truly, I don't know what's going to happen next,' Garcia-Heredia said, his voice faint over the susurrous connection. 'In the future, I want to work, I want a family and I want to be a good person.' He would return to Fresno County if he could, he said. It will be a different place than he left, local activists say. Recent rumors of an ICE raid kept immigrants from a popular flea market. Grocery stores in Latino neighborhoods are empty, the ACLU's Romani said. The people who pick the produce are too scared to buy it. 'People are more afraid than they ever have been,' said Romani, a Fresno resident. In one of his court declarations, Garcia-Heredia said he is scared of Tren de Aragua, scared that ICE will deport him to CECOT, scared that his mother won't know how to find him. What does his mother tell him now? 'She tells me that she prays to God and that she's worried about me,' he told the Chronicle. 'I tell her that I'm still here and that I still have hope.'
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Fresno County DA, sheriff get an extra two years in battle over election schedule
Two of Fresno County's top law enforcement officials just got extensions on their services, despite their own reservations and a voter-backed initiative that would have seen them up for re-election in 2026. On Monday, a state court judge ruled to invalidate Fresno County's Measure A, the 2024 ballot initiative that aligned District Attorney and Sheriff elections with the gubernatorial election cycle. The ruling pushes Fresno County District Attorney Lisa Smittcamp and Sheriff John Zanoni into six-year terms, with their re-elections now set for 2028. Measure A passed in 2024's March primary election with 55% of the vote and immediately put Fresno County at odds with AB 179, a 2022 state law that mandated such elections be synced to the presidential cycle. In July, California's Attorney General and Secretary of State challenged the measure in court, claiming it was preempted by the state law. In a 19-page ruling released Monday, Superior Court Judge Tyler Tharpe agreed. While the county has 'authority to set the terms of its elected officials,' he wrote, 'it is not authorized under the California Constitution to set the dates on which the elections of local officials will be held.' Judge Tharpe acknowledged the change as 'a fairly minor intrusion on the County's power to set the terms of its officials.' It is a one-time extension. 'Any district attorney and sheriff elected from 2028 onward will serve four-year terms as specified by the county's charter.' In a joint statement, Smittcamp and Zanoni said they are prepared to serve the six-year terms and 'remain committed to fulfilling our responsibilities with integrity and dedication for the full duration,' even as the county Board of Supervisors meets to discuss potential next steps, which it will do in closed session June 10. But they also expressed concerns about the legislative process that led to the enactment of AB 759 in the first place. 'After sitting in the Senate Appropriations Committee's suspense file for over a year, the bill advanced rapidly in the final weeks of the legislative session,' they wrote. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill into law in September 2022 'with little to no opportunity for public review,' Smittcamp and Zanoni said in their statement. 'As a result, local governments and voters were excluded from a policy decision that directly affects the terms of their elected officials.' For his part, Attorney General Rob Bonta claimed Monday's ruling as a win for voters. 'There is nothing more fundamental to American democracy than the right to vote and make your voice heard,' Bonta said in a statement. 'With Measure A, Fresno County threatened to undermine that fundamental right, intentionally seeking to move elections for sheriff and district attorney to off years, when voters are far less likely to show up and cast a ballot,' he wrote. 'Our democracy works best when everyone can participate.'
The National
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
Aberdeen farmhouse bags title of Scottish Home of the Year
Hilltop House, built atop a farm near Pitmedden, Aberdeenshire, was featured in the second episode and took home the top prize in the 2025 series of Scotland's Home of the Year, beating out competitors in Edinburgh, Giffnock, Broughty Ferry, the Isle of Skye and Dalbeattie. The home, designed and owned by artist couple Jessica Zanoni and Chris Labrooy, blends styles like California Cool and mid-century modern, and was selected as the winner by top architects and interior designers. READ MORE: BrewDog news, interviews and updates on Scottish pub chain Zanoni said: 'It has been such a lovely experience all around, and to win it has been fantastic. After watching the shows and getting to see our competition in detail, it really must have been a hard decision to make.' Labrooy added: 'It's great to win. The house is a reflection of our tastes and personalities and we are proud of what we have created.' The couple met with other contestants and the judges in Glasgow's House for an Art Lover — designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh — for the finale, where their home won the top prize for its colourful interiors and sustainability-based design choices. The judging panel consisted of interior designers Anna Campbell Jones and Banjo Beale, alongside architect Danny Campbell. Isle of Mull-based Beale called the farmstead "unforgettable", saying: 'Hilltop House just felt alive. The home had been brought back to life in the most bold and beautiful way." The couple received high praise from the judges for the pops of colour incorporated throughout the house (Image: Kirsty Anderson)Jones added: 'I love to see an old building brought back to life, recycled into something new that will last for generations. 'Hilltop House was a brilliant example of finding that balance between history and modernity whilst honouring its necessary function as a country home.' READ MORE: UK to build up to 12 new attack submarines and invest £15bn in warheads Zanoni, originally from California, called meeting the other finalists a 'whirlwind' and said her and husband Labooy's artistic backgrounds were what helped their architectural vision come to life and bag them the top prize. She said: 'Every home is distinctive and unique because of the people that live there. So, our home is different because we are different. With me being from California and Chris being an artist, I think our tastes are just naturally a little bit unique. 'There isn't really anything in our house that we found at shops near us. Everything was specially sourced in a way. '[The view] was the reason we bought the plot and we have really used it almost as a piece of art. It definitely adds to the interior and it changes every day.' Filming for the next series of Scotland's Home of the Year will take place in June, and this season is available to view now on iPlayer.
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
City, Del Mar College say Corpus Christi Housing Authority plan may cost them tax revenue
Local officials are enlisting attorneys to look into tax exemptions for apartment properties acquired by the Corpus Christi Housing Authority — a program housing authority officials say will make more housing affordable, but a move taxing entities say will make big dents in their budgets. In all, appraised values for the 13 apartment complexes acquired by the housing authority total at least $330 million, according to Nueces County Appraisal District records — meaning that if the property exemptions stand as proposed, that taxable value would be taken off the rolls. City staff is estimating that the housing authority's property tax exemptions will amount to $3.5 million in lost ad valorem taxes, said City Manager Peter Zanoni, addressing the council in its May 13 meeting. It could be as much as $7 million, he added, should there be additional acquisitions. 'That's a lot of money — $3.5 million, up to $7 million — out of the general fund,' Zanoni said. 'It's a tremendous financial impact; it's not a rounding error. It's big money, and real money.' The city had previously been facing a projected deficit of about $7 million for the 2026 fiscal year, according to officials. When taking into account the possibility of additional property tax losses, estimates would push that number to more than $10 million. Corpus Christi Housing Authority CEO Gary Allsup said May 14 that acquiring the apartment complexes makes room for direly needed workforce housing — homes for people with moderate incomes too high to qualify for low-income housing but not high enough to afford market-rate prices. 'We have so many folks that are what we call 'caught in the middle,'' he said. On its website, the housing authority describes how 'many local families are paying more than 30% of their income on rent, making them 'rent burdened' and limiting their ability to afford other necessities or save. 'The (Workforce Housing Opportunities) Program addresses this by partnering with market-rate rental properties to create mixed-income developments,' it states. The housing authority acquires the apartment complex properties without monetary purchase, Allsup said, becoming an owner of the property grounds and also a 'small-portion owner in the actual improvements to the property.' The housing authority's ownership makes the properties tax-exempt for apartment complexes' management companies — what is considered compensation for an agreement that requires apartment complex management to make half of their units available for workforce housing, he said. Of those workforce housing units, 40% are intended for households bringing in 80% or less of the area median income, and 10% are earmarked for households earning 60% or less of the area median income, he said. The rental cost of the units reserved for workforce housing is dropped to a price that is considered affordable for those income brackets. The housing authority will garner some money from annual payments related to the land leases, Allsup said. The exact amounts were not immediately available May 14, but 'the housing authority is not getting rich off that,' he said, adding that any revenue will go toward other affordable housing programs. Several transactions for additional acquisitions are pending, Allsup said, which would bring the total number of acquired apartment complex properties approved by a past board to about 20. The acquisitions of the apartment complexes, should the proposed property tax exemptions stand, are expected to affect multiple taxing entities. May 13, Del Mar College Chief Financial Officer Raul Garcia told the college Board of Regents that the conversion of the private properties could impact the 2025-26 budget. "The combined appraised value of these properties represents a reduction in the college property tax revenue of approximately $1.1 million, which would offset tax revenues from other properties in our district," Garcia said. City officials in late April broke the news publicly that there would likely be a budget deficit in the upcoming year, at the time projected to be about $7 million. That figure had been landed on with the assumptions that the City Council would not raise the tax rate — currently about 60 cents per $100 appraised value — and by comparing forecast revenue to anticipated funding mandates, staff has said. At the time, Zanoni told the council that $7 million may not sound significant when accounting for the entirety of the budget, but to put it in perspective, the full budgets of some singular departments such as libraries, animal care services and code compliance are about $5 million each. It's believed now that the deficit may be closer to $10 million or higher, based on the housing authority's property acquisitions and prospective acquisitions, according to staff. Although housing authority representatives didn't reach out to taxing entities, the decision to acquire the properties was done not in secret but instead in a public meeting, Allsup said. Properties coming off the tax rolls will affect local entities' revenue, Allsup said, but he doesn't believe the $7 million cited by the city's staff is accurate. He suggested in an earlier interview that the impact would likely be around 1% of overall budgets. 'In order to make a huge impact in our community, in providing thousands of affordable housing opportunities, it seems like a reasonable expenditure to have that kind of impact,' Allsup said. 'This is for the public good,' he said. 'I really think that's where we should focus our attention here is, 'Does Corpus Christi need workforce housing?' And if the answer to that is yes, then we've helped with that. If the answer's no, then I think they're seeing different … needs than I see because I hear constantly that we have a huge need for affordable and workforce housing.' Questions about legality and impropriety have been raised. Following a closed-door session, the Del Mar College Board of Regents unanimously approved authorizing college leaders and legal experts to take the 'necessary and appropriate action, including the engagement of outside counsel, to protect and pursue the college's legal status and potential claims.' The City Council, subsequent to its executive session on the same day, issued a resolution that among other items authorized city management to 'to use all administrative, legal, and legislative means to prevent the improper and/or illegal use of property tax exemptions by the Corpus Christi Housing Authority, affiliates, and entities connected thereto.' The housing authority's actions 'may be illegal — we're looking into that — but it's definitely improper,' said City Attorney Miles Risley, responding to questions raised by City Councilman Gil Hernandez about using verbiage that includes the word 'illegal.' 'I agree that it's improper, maybe unsavory,' Hernandez said. 'I don't know if it's 'and/or illegal.'' Allsup, responding to the resolution adopted by the council, said he believes 'there continues to be a misunderstanding of what the law is and under what programs that this is done for.' 'There's certainly not anything that's improper, and nothing illegal, in the way that these deals have been done,' he said. 'It's been very transparent.' A new majority of board members who oversee the Corpus Christi Housing Authority were selected by Mayor Paulette Guajardo this week. The board of directors comprises five members who serve in two-year terms. Two new appointees replaced sitting board members whose terms had recently expired and who had been seeking reappointment, while another new appointee filled an open seat vacated by a former member who had moved, officials said. Dated March 14, a letter addressed to Allsup shows the new appointees as former mayor Joe McComb, former councilman Greg Smith and Judith Gonzalez-Rodriguez, a school counselor at West Oso Independent School District. The terms of Smith and Rodriguez-Gonzalez are shown as ending in April 2027. McComb is slated to serve a partial term that will expire in April 2026. Officials identified the two sitting board members who were not reappointed as Curtis Clark, shown on the housing authority's site as an assistant vice president at IBC Bank, and Christine Belin, who was serving a partial term. Allsup said May 15 that he was disappointed by the decision, adding that he believed the members who were not reappointed had 'done a great job.' 'I think the board has been effective,' he said, noting that the positions are held by volunteers. 'I think the board has demonstrated an excitement and a care for the citizens of Corpus Christi.' Guajardo asserted that there hasn't been adequate explanation about the recent housing deals, saying that greater oversight is needed for the housing authority to 'ensure that transparency (and) accountability are in place because these are public funds.' She praised the new appointees. 'I think the three of them together bring new leadership that's going to provide greater direction and transparency to the housing authority, and they're outstanding community volunteers. … They're going to be great assets,' Guajardo said. Caller-Times reporter Olivia Garrett contributed to this story. (This story was updated to add new information.) More: Here are some plans for the former Lozano Elementary School property More: City of Corpus Christi may need to make $7 million in cuts this year. What will it mean? This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: Corpus Christi, Del Mar College oppose housing authority program
Yahoo
05-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Donald Trump Jr. Accused Of Killing Protected Bird During Illegal Hunt
Donald Trump Jr. has been accused of killing a protected duck while on a hunt in Italy that may not have even been legal to begin with. Italian officials began speaking out about the incident Tuesday after obtaining hunting footage produced for an outdoor lifestyle brand Trump co-founded that was taken at the Venice Lagoon. 'This is actually a rather uncommon duck for the area. Not even sure what it is in English, but incredible shoot,' he can be heard saying in the video as he singles out a vibrant orange bird among the several he shot down. Speaking with the Italian press, Andrea Zanoni, a regional councillor in Italy's Veneto region, identified the bird as the 'protected' ruddy shelduck. 'It is a species protected throughout Europe by the EU Birds Directive and by Italian law, which criminalizes its killing and possession,' Zanoni said, as translated into English. There's also no possibility that Trump was legally permitted to hunt in Italy, Zanoni added. 'Like any foreigner, in Italy he was not allowed to hunt by law,' Zanoni said. 'In fact, in our country, only residents of one of the Italian regions can hunt. You need a hunting license issued by the police headquarters, but above all you need a hunting license issued only and exclusively to residents of one of the Italian regions ― a mandatory document where you can note the date, place of hunting and quantity of animals killed.' Zanoni wouldn't tell The New York Times how he acquired the footage, which has been reposted by The Guardian. Field Ethos, the lifestyle brand co-founded by Trump, shared a since-deleted trailer for the lagoon footage on Dec. 31, but it does not include scenes of him shooting the ruddy shelduck. It's unclear when the footage was filmed. Zanoni shared on social media that he has reported the incident to the Venice police in charge of wildlife. Luana Zanella, a lawmaker in Italy's parliament, echoed the outrage. 'It is morally despicable,' she told the Times. 'And it's a crime.' Trump is no stranger to hunting scandals. In 2019, a hunting trip he took to Mongolia to kill endangered sheep was estimated to cost American taxpayers around $75,000 in U.S. Secret Service costs ― about $60,000 more than his father's first administration had previously disclosed. Other photos surfaced during that administration that showed Donald Trump's eldest son holding a dead cheetah and a bloody, detached tail of an elephant. During his first term, Donald Trump also reneged on his promise to uphold a ban on elephant trophy imports from Zimbabwe and Zambia. Donald Trump Jr. did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent to him through the Trump Organization. Danish Prime Minister Says Greenland Is 'Not For Sale' As Trump Jr. Visits Donald Trump Jr. Reacts To Kimberly Guilfoyle Ambassador News Amid Breakup Rumors Donald Trump Reportedly Dissed Kristi Noem By Comparing Her With Donald Trump Jr.
