John Lopez of JS Shop in Poteet makes ink pens from cow manure. He said he’ll never run out of supplies in South Texas.

Cow poo pens from Angela Grant on Vimeo.

Chris Edwards is an Army staff sergeant who was burned over 80 percent of his body when a roadside bomb exploded under his patrol vehicle in Iraq in April 2005. I followed Chris, his wife Tammy and their son Riley for eight months for this three-part story on what it takes for a family to recover from the unthinkable.

The ten problematic homes in West University Place are huge and beautiful — luxurious — ranging in value from $945,000 right up to $2.8 million. Without knowing about a major paperwork oversight, families have lived in the homes for four, five, sometimes up to nine years.

Although the circumstances vary, city staff have discovered one disturbing commonality: All the homes were built by the same company, Covington Builders, which allegedly failed to obtain the city’s official stamp of approval before allowing families to move in. City staffers have found 29 other West U. homes with the same problem — No certificate of occupancy.

This house built by Covington Builders failed to earn its certificate of occupancy.

The city’s ordinances place the responsibility on builders to complete a litany of inspections to earn the important certificate of occupancy, which proves the home is safe and complies with all city laws.

Residents do not need to be alarmed about their safety, because there’s probably nothing seriously wrong with their homes. Many of Covington Builders’ outstanding issues deal with the numbers of trees planted on the lots. If completed today, other outstanding inspections on more serious things like drainage and plumbing systems probably wouldn’t turn up a problem: By now, issues would have surfaced on their own.

“You’re just trying to gain compliance is what you’re trying to do,” said John Brown, chief building official in West U. “In this particular case with Covington homes, there has not been any great effort to see this is completed.”

Covington now risks a suspension of his license to work in West U. because city staffers say he has shown a systematic disdain for the city’s rules. The issue also raises questions about the city’s own record keeping — How did the homes slip through the cracks for so long?

Defining A Problem

The city discovered the paperwork problem when Brown began a comprehensive review of all outstanding building permits. He found 39 homes that do not have certificates. Ten of those, or 25 percent, were constructed by Covington Builders. Now Brown has approached the West U. Building and Standards Commission to hold hearings with the company’s owner, Robert Covington, trying to send a simple message to builders citywide.

“The issue to me, and what I want to get across not only to this builder but any builder that builds here in the city of West University Place, is that a certificate of occupancy is required. It’s part of the process. That’s what we need to do,” Brown said.

Covington, who is also a resident of West U., defended himself at the commission’s hearing on Feb. 4. He said through the years building homes in the city, he thought he complied with building laws and he fixed problems as he became aware of them.

“I work hard. This is my bread and butter. I love this place and I work very hard to please people. I’m not defiant, I’m not resistant,” Covington said. “I believe I did, and do, what’s right with the city.”

Covington will keep his license to work in the city, at least for the next 30 days. The Building and Standards Commission decided to postpone a decision about whether to suspend his license until its next meeting on March 4. In the meantime, the commission tasked Covington to work with city staff to complete all his outstanding inspections.

“A lot of it is just going to be check, check, check,” said Commission Chair Bryant Slimp when he ordered Covington to meet with Brown. “Whatever you and he need to do to clean up the mess.”

39 Outstanding Homes

Nineteen building companies popped up in the city’s review because they failed to complete all inspections and earn their certificates of occupancy for one or more homes. Covington Builders leads the pack with 10 certificate-less homes, but other companies aren’t far behind — Lovett Custom Homes has six homes with no certificates, and Stonehenge Classic Homes has four (According to Debbie Crow, the wife of Stonehenge’s owner, two of the company’s homes on the city’s list are still under construction — See below for explanation. She said she thought the city made mistakes on the two others, which were completed in 2000.). Two other companies have two and three homes, respectively, and fourteen companies on the list have just one home each with no certificate.

Many of the addresses on the list have more than one outstanding inspection that prevented them from earning certificates. Some inspections deal more with aesthetics than safety — For example, 15 homes never had a final tree inspection to prove the builders replaced all the trees removed during construction. But some outstanding inspections are more serious, dealing with plumbing, drainage, electrical and mechanical systems.

Just because there is an outstanding inspection doesn’t mean there are safety issues in the home. But builders are tasked with checking off a long list of inspections that must come before the final building inspection. At that point, city staffers go over every inch of the homes and make sure everything is safe.

“If an inspection hasn’t been done, then I don’t know,” Brown said.

He wants to make sure all the inspections are now completed on the 39 homes so he can issue the certificates of occupancy and close the city’s files for the properties.

History Of Alleged Noncompliance

Brown said he tried repeatedly to work with Covington to complete outstanding items, but the builder refused to do his part. The city wanted Covington to contact the homeowners.

“You said you would,” Brown said. “Two days later you called my office and said, ‘I’m not going to do that. If I call these people they’re going to sue me’.”

In one case, Covington and his family moved into a home in the 3500 block of Albans Street. Serious inspections were outstanding, including checks on the drainage, electrical, mechanical and plumbing systems and more. When the city learned the family lived there, Covington received a citation. About a month later, Covington ordered all the inspections and received a certificate of occupancy for the home. Now it is on sale on the company Website for nearly $2 million.

“Until we called him on it, until we issued a citation, he had made no effort to finish and get the certificate,” Brown said. “He knows as a builder that you cannot occupy a house without any of the finals being done.”

Brown added later: “There’s a history here of ‘I don’t care. I’ve got my money’ … This is a pattern of not following the rules, not caring enough to follow them.”

Covington admitted that he knew the home on Albans Street had no certificate, but he said the recession has impacted his business and personal finances so much that he had no other option than to move into the house.

Ron Simon, Covington’s attorney who attended the Feb. 4 hearing, said that Covington Builders changed offices about three years ago, and purged old documents that would prove the company had completed outstanding items on the other homes.

“These allegations have gone stale,” Simon said. “All the stuff that relates to this is gone.”

Covington said he thought he had followed the city’s rules.

Emily Wells, who lives in a Covington-built home in the 4100 block of Tennyson Street, said she remembers a day before moving into her home in 2005 when Covington and an independent firm met her to complete inspections.

“They had a long list, and he came here and met with them,” Wells said. “Really, he was great … Just the details on the house, he did everything we asked him to do.”

City records show that all inspections were completed on Wells’ home except the building final inspection, which did prevent the house from earning a certificate.

Covington said at the Feb. 4 meeting that from 2001 to 2004, he ran his company with a business partner who was responsible for some of the homes without certificates.

“I trusted him with it,” he said. “I would have had no clue my business partner didn’t do what he was supposed to do, if he did that.”

Counting Trees

Seven of the 10 Covington Builders homes failed to earn certificates because Covington didn’t complete the final tree inspection, along with other inspections in some cases. On Sept. 1, Covington and Brown met with the city’s forester, who wanted the builder’s help gaining access to the backyards of multiple homes to count the trees that Covington had planted during construction. Covington refused to contact the homeowners.

At the Feb. 4 hearing, he said through the decade as he built homes in West U., he spent thousands of dollars and brought in truckloads of trees to comply with the city’s laws.

The law says that builders must replace the amount of inches of trees they remove, and if they cannot plant the trees on that lot, they must pay money into a tree fund that the city uses to plant trees in parks and elsewhere.

Simon said that Covington Builders couldn’t always fit the right number of trees on its construction sites, so the company would plant trees in a one-block radius of the home. Sometimes they planted in parks, Simon said.

“I really don’t believe I short changed West U. of these trees,” Covington said. “The only point I want to make is this is not me trying to skirt the rules and regulations … That’s not who I am.”

But without proof, it will be difficult for the city to determine whether Covington owes money to the tree fund. Based on the trees the city can measure in the homes’ front yards, the city estimates that Covington owes $10,300. That number will probably change once the city gains access to the backyards.

Sending A Message

The Building and Standards Commission said that Covington must get the inspections done before March 4, or it will be forced to hold the hearing to consider suspending his license.

“You have violated, you haven’t remedied,” said Chair Bryant Slimp. “You leave us very little room. It’s up to you.”

Brown said he hopes other builders get the message.

“We are serious about following the rules,” Brown said. “Get your certificate of occupancy and be finished with the project.”

—
Note: InstantNewsWestU updated this story at 12:36 p.m. to indicate that two homes built by Stonehenge Classic Homes without certificates of occupancy are actually still under construction with no one living in them.

A police officer from West University Place was fired last month and now faces two felony charges that could each bring 2-to-10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Nelson Hernandez, who is still appealing his Sept. 18 termination from the West U. Police Department, is charged with two counts of tampering with a governmental record after he allegedly fabricated the reasons he pulled over two cars. Video footage from his in-car camera showed a different story than Hernandez allegedly wrote in his report, according to a complaint the police department filed with the Harris County District Court.

Hernandez is the second officer since October 2008 that the department has fired after in-car video footage allegedly showed that things the officers reported had not actually happened. Tomorrow, InstantnewsWestU will have details on the first officer who was fired.

“Police officers have to have integrity,” said West U. Police Chief Ken Walker. “When they testify in court we have to believe them or feel comfortable that they’re telling the whole truth and not exaggerating anything … We will not tolerate dishonesty.”

According to the criminal complaint, the first charge stems from a traffic stop on June 12 that resulted in an arrest because the driver had an invalid license. Hernandez allegedly wrote in his offense report that he pulled over a vehicle traveling eastbound in the 4200 block of Bissonnet Street for having a broken brake light. But when the police department reviewed Hernandez’s in-car video from that time, they saw his car was parked three blocks away at Northwestern Street and Bissonnet Street, facing westbound.

“The Defendant’s ability to observe a brake light violation of a vehicle traveling eastbound, or even to be able to observe the vehicle entirely in the 4200 block of Bissonnet from this location would not have been possible,” the complaint says. “This is due to the distance, street angles, direction of travel, and visual obstructions that exist in this particular area.”

The video went on to show the car passing by Hernandez’s parked patrol car, and the officer pulling it over in the 3800 block of Law Street in Houston’s city limits. Not in the 4200 block of Bissonnet Street in West U., as Hernandez allegedly wrote in the offense report.

“The defendant’s actions were done with the intent to defraud and harm another,” the criminal complaint said.

The second charge of tampering with a government document stems from a traffic stop on June 26. This driver was also arrested for driving with a suspended license. Hernandez’s report states he pulled a large truck over in the 5300 block of Sewanee Street. When the West U. Police Department reviewed Hernandez’s in-car video, they saw the officer first started following the truck on Bissonnet Street, and then turned onto Sewanee Street to pull it over. Hernandez allegedly reported the probable cause for the stop was a broken brake light.

“On three separate occasions during the recording, twice on Bissonnet and once on Sewanee, the vehicle’s brake lights were engaged with both brake lights showing to be in proper working order each time they were applied,” the criminal complaint said.

The criminal case against Hernandez was filed Sept. 9, and he was just araigned yesterday. The grand jury still needs to hear the case to determine whether there is enough evidence to move forward with the trial.

“It’s a rare moment that a case is accepted by the [district attorney's] office and it’s not indicted,” said Paul Aman, Hernandez’s attorney appointed through the Texas Municipal Police Association, a trade organization. Aman said he only recently started becoming familiar with the case.

“I’m in the process of really getting to look at the [district attorney's] file this week,” Aman said. “We’re still in the early stages.”

As the criminal case progresses, Hernandez has an administrative hearing tomorrow with the city of West U. to appeal his termination. City Manager Michael Ross will meet with Hernandez and the police chief to hear both sides, and Ross will decide whether or not to rescind the termination.

Around this time last year, another West U. officer was fired because in-car video footage showed she allegedly lied about getting hit by a car and injured while she was directing traffic. In response to an InstantnewsWestU public information request, the city delivered a report from an internal affairs investigation about the incident.

Oasis of fuel savings in San Antonio from Angela Grant on Vimeo.

While many people are cursing high fuel costs, those at Alamo Biodiesel in central San Antonio smile as prices climb. The company’s business has blossomed as customers seeking financial relief have sought out its cheaper alternative fuel.

A three-alarm fire Monday afternoon at the Atlas Pallet Company in downtown San Antonio sent plumes of black smoke hundreds of feet into the air, drawing onlookers who heard multiple loud explosions as propane tanks ignited.

More than an awesome hangout with rails and ramps, Delta Force Skate Church ministers to young people who are often exposed to drugs, gangs and crime. The Lakeview Baptist Church program has been successful at turning many of them to God.

In the thick of a smoke so oppressive that visibility was cut to a couple feet, the shadowy figures of the firefighters drifted in and out of sight. But their voices on the radio were loud and clear.

“We’ve got a victim,” called the tinny voice. “We’re trying to bring him out.”

Over the next 10 minutes, the pair struggled to pull a 200-pound dummy through the house, unable to see their path through the thick of fake smoke. The exercise simulated what a real fire would have been like, without the fire.

The display was part of a rare but valuable training opportunity given to firefighters from the West University Place Fire Department. Over the past couple of weeks they’ve been able to practice life-saving fire drills just blocks from their station, saving the department money while helping fulfill the firefighters’ continuing education requirements. It’s all thanks to Abhishek Gami and his wife Candace TenBrink, West University Place residents of just six months.

The Gami family purchased the lot directly behind their own house to transform it into a new backyard, and they said they wanted to somehow give back to the community in the process. That’s when they decided to donate the old cottage in the 4200 block of Byron Street to the fire department for a few weeks before demolishing the house.

“We love the fire department, we love the work they do. We’re really happy to let them have their chance and do their work on the house before we hack it up and haul it away,” Gami said. “Why not have them get a lot of value from something that’s not useful to us?”

Firefighters have used the house to practice primary search techniques — Searching for victims and rescuing them, and finding and extinguishing the center of the “fire.” They have practiced methods of ventilating burning structures to get the heat and smoke out while firefighters enter to do their work. They have hacked multiple holes in walls to practice how to escape when walls or ceilings collapse.

“It’s a great opportunity for us to come and get some hands-on training,” said Lt. Aaron Taylor, who supervises the department’s “C” shift. “We don’t have a whole lot of fire calls in West University. When we do, that’s the most dangerous thing we do. It has to do with firefighter safety, and the more we can train on it, the more prepared we’ll be when that day comes.”

Click photos to enlarge. Story continues below.

West U. Fire Chief Steve Ralls said he estimates the department gets about two donated homes per year for training exercises, although the number could be more or less depending on the year. When residents donate houses, it brings several benefits over and above the inherent value of the training itself. Firefighters are required by law to get 20 hours of continuing education in firefighting per year, and the exercises at donated homes count towards that requirement.

Training at donated homes also saves money. The department must pay rental fees to conduct training exercises at official fire training facilities, and also pays overtime because the facilities are too far away, requiring firefighters to train while off duty since they wouldn’t be able to return to West U. fast enough if there were a fire.

“We’re happy. We like to be able to stay in the city and train, and have this hands-on, practical experience,” Ralls said. “We can’t get that every day.”

The training at the Byron Street house has been so lifelike it has garnered attention from many residents on the street. Henry Stelzig, who lives right next to the house, said he thought it was a real emergency, and he wished firefighters would have notified neighbors not to worry.

“We were alarmed because, gosh, they had two ambulances out here, they had two fire trucks, they had everything,” Stelzig said. “We thought the house was on fire.”

But Gami, who already knew the commotion was only a training drill, said the department’s activities have been a new source of entertainment for the whole family, including his 4-year-old daughter, Ava. The family watches the drills through their upstairs window, and frequently visits the firefighters during training time.

“They show her all their gear, they let her jump on their fire engine and check it out,” Gami said. “Our daughter just loves it.”