Owner of old Taco Bell site gets a side of fines

Odin Rasco

writer

Staff

The building that once housed a Taco Bell in Pollock Pines, vacant for years, has accrued thousands of dollars in fines due to its continued neglect and disrepair, according to El Dorado County officials.

A series of fines, including a notice to correct sent Feb. 3, have been piling up since November 2022 and already total $11,000. Additional costs will be added to that bill soon, as county workers boarded up the property Monday to prevent access to the interior, which they say is in an unsafe state of disrepair.

The cost of labor and materials for the boarding-up will be added to the fines; if they are not paid, a lien may be put on the property by the Teasurer-Tax Collector’s Revenue Recovery unit.

The building code violations will continue to accumulate fines until vacant building requirements are put in place. County code cites those requirements as maintenance and monitoring of the landscaping and exterior of the building, regular trash removal and prevention of criminal activity on the property.

The Taco Bell closed around the start of 2018 and the building has stood vacant since. Ownership of the location has changed hands with the most recent owner being Kilo Watt Investments LLC, a Wyoming-based company that acquired the deed in 2020. County staff has been trying to contact Kilo Watt via mail, email and phone calls since October 2022 to no avail, according to county Director of Communications Carla Hass. As of press time, Kilo Watt had not paid any of the fines.

Wyoming business documentation shows the company has a history of difficulty in keeping on top of its taxes, having gone through two administrative dissolutions for delinquency on taxes owed since 2020.

The Mountain Democrat reached out to Lisa Watt, who is listed as the CEO of Kilo Watt Investments, but did not receive a response as of press time.