Holguin sat on complaints about in-laws, residents allege. An ethics grievance is coming, they say.

Residents in a small Mission Valley subdivision are upset about a trucking operation in their midst and lay much of the blame for their situation at the feet of city Rep. Eddie Holguin.

That’s because 18-wheelers are coming and going, in apparent violation of city ordinances, from property owned by Holguin’s in-laws, William E. “Bill” Dempsey and Guadalupe De La O Dempsey, a former candidate for sheriff and the mother of Holguin’s wife, Illiana.

Rep. Holguin, they say, didn’t disclose that relationship when they started calling his office last summer to complain about Bill Dempsey’s Horseshoe Enterprises trucking operation on the Dempseys’ five-acre property but did tell the Dempseys who was complaining.

And for those reasons, they intend to file a complaint with the city’s Ethics Review Board against Holguin today or later this week.

Holguin denies that his office received any complaints about the Dempseys’ trucking operation or that he informed his in-laws about the complaints or from whom they came.

“The complaints went to Joyce’s office,” Holguin said, referring to the office of City Manager Joyce Wilson.

But Wilson’s assistant Leila Melendez said that office didn’t receive a complaint concerning the Dempseys until July 30 of this year.

“I got an anonymous call regarding a neighbor running a trucking business out of his home,” Melendez said. “He said they had tried working with him, but they felt like he was retaliating, so that’s why they called us.”

While Holguin denies receiving calls to his office, he concedes that he was aware of the problems in the neighborhood from the beginning and showed Newspaper Tree a copy of an October 2007 e-mail that was sent to Neighborhood Services Liaison Mark Alvarado.

In forwarding the e-mail complaint from the Dempsey’s neighbor Dale Manning to Holguin, Alvarado said his office had already received several other complaints as well.

The residents of the Richard Lee subdivision, located off Ivey Road near Avenue of the Americas, are members of the Little Bit of Country Neighborhood Association.

“I have no recommendation of how the city resources can be used to change the situation in this neighborhood,” Alvarado said in his e-mail to Holguin. “There’s a human being factor that is contributing to what is happening …”

The five Richard Lee subdivision property owners Newspaper Tree interviewed said adults and children have had to quit riding horses and bicycles in their neighborhood because of the 18-wheeler traffic and the damage it has done to the streets.

“If these semis were parked in a judge’s neighborhood or his neighborhood, they would have been towed away in a matter of hours,” said Wendy Dennis, a neighbor of the Dempseys. “We’ve been fighting this for well over a year.”

In addition to complaining to Holguin's office, residents say they also reported the alleged violations to city inspectors.

That fight may come to a head at a hearing in municipal court Wednesday on an October complaint against Bill Dempsey over two tractors and three trailers and property.

Guadalupe Dempsey is also the sister of former city Rep. Alexandro Lozano, making him Holguin’s uncle. Lozano and Holguin served together on City Council representing neighboring districts until Lozano resigned last year to run for county commissioner.

The Dempseys bought and moved onto the property in June 2007.

Although he received the email from Neighborhood Services, Holguin insists he has received no calls from the residents about Bill Dempseys’ trucking operation in the past year and denies that he squelched the neighbors’ complaints or helped his in-laws in any way at all.

Holguin said he even turned down a perfectly legitimate request from the residents of the Richard Lee subdivision for two streetlights to avoid any appearance of favoritism toward his in-laws’ neighborhood.

He said he has actually only spoken directly to one resident, Manning, who had a complaint about a mobile home the Dempseys moved onto their land.

“But other than that, the complaints have all gone to the individual (city) departments,” Holguin said.

Not so, said Nancy Rodriguez Stoltz, wife of sheriff candidate George Rodriguez Stoltz, who said she started calling Holguin last August or September.

“I noticed I was getting a road block and felt like he was diverting me every time I called to ask about the trucks coming in and about the cabs being parked on the property,” she said.

Stoltz said she called Holguin regularly before learning that he was related to the Dempseys.

“That’s when I put two and two together and knew why he was avoiding and diverting me,” she said. “I didn’t feel comfortable talking to him anymore. But who was I supposed to go and talk to?”

She expressed surprise on hearing that Holguin said he never spoke to anyone who complained about Bill Dempsey’s trucks.

“That’s too bad,” she said.

The residents also say that as the dispute with the Dempseys heated up, Bill Dempsey, a tall, 48-year old Georgia native who speaks with a slow drawl, periodically drove around the neighborhood with Holguin “to show him off” in a pick-up truck with a shotgun in the rear-window rack.

Both Holguin and Dempsey say that is untrue.

“In the first place, that’s never happened,” Dempsey said in a telephone interview. “One time we went to the grocery store and picked up some stuff, but we weren’t driving thorough the neighborhood.

“I am at a little bit of a loss about all this. Eddie has nothing to do with anything we have done. That’s what I don’t understand.”

Dempsey also denied the residents’ assertions that he has threatened and intimidated them.

John Godinez, who owns a five-acre compound with horses and other animals in the development but doesn’t live there, expressed surprise at the breadth of Dempsey’s denials.

He said he has seen Dempsey and Holguin together in the neighborhood twice, most recently about a month ago.

He said the ethics complaint would be accompanied by as many as six sworn affidavits by neighbors.

The controversy may boil down to a series of assertions and denials, a he-said-she-said fray. And the question will be whether the residents’ allegations amount to an interesting but minor neighborhood squabble with a politician and his in-laws or whether they fit convincingly enough under a provision of the city’s ethics ordinance to warrant a hearing before the Ethics Review Board.

Godinez said the residents were initially angry with Bill Dempsey for bringing the tractors, trailers and flatbeds onto his property, which is zoned for farm and ranch use, and for his alleged intimidation of them.

Then, he and others said, it became apparent that the Dempseys were learning about the complaints and who was making them.

Then, they said, they learned of the family ties between the Holguins and the Dempseys.

“They started complaining to Holguin because they didn’t know he was related to her (Guadalupe Dempsey),” Godinez said. “He took the calls and told his mother-in-law, which created a huge problem.”

That escalated the dispute, Godinez and others said, leading to confrontations and threats.

“He (Dempsey) threatened to kill one of the neighbors,” said Godinez, who claims he witnessed the threat and has reported it to police, who are investigating.

“He also bought cages and told the same neighbor he would catch her cats and kill them and hang them up for the neighbors to see,” Godinez said.

Now, Godinez said, the neighbors have come together believing that Holguin violated their trust and that the resulting problems have “turned a good neighborhood into a hostile environment.”

John Severns, the former president of the Little Bit of Country Neighborhood Association, said he and Manning went to Dempsey last summer to talk about the 18-wheelers.

“He said no the trucks would just be temporary until he could get his finances together,” Severns said. “Mr Godinez and everybody agreed, fine. It was temporary. But then Mr. Dempsey began bringing in more trucks and more trucks, and started bringing in trailers.”

Severns said he confronted Dempsey again.

“He told me … it was his home and he was going to stay and the trucks were going to stay. And he made remark that his trucks were going to be here and the only way to move them out is over his dead body.”

Early on in the dispute, Severns said, Dempsey “introduced me to Eddie as the city representative … and to Rep. (Alexandro) Lozano and asked me if I knew who they were.

“He said, ‘Well, this is my son-in-law’ and he sort of made it well known around the neighborhood that Alex and Eddie Holguin were relatives,” Severns said. “Several times, he has made reference to it when I talked to him off and on. He’d say ‘Well you-know-who told me I could do it.’ ”

Told of Severns' comments, Lozano said, "That's a lie. I never met with any of the residents."

Severns said he and the other neighbors intend to sign an ethics complaint against Holguin, "because Dempsey has been getting information from Eddie Holguin’s office and getting information that should not even be discussed.”

“You try to find out who has been called in to the police. Somehow he gets information about who called,” he said. “Then, he’ll call you. No way to get that information except from Eddie.

“Everytime there’s an incident that comes up with the trucks, he brings Eddie Holguin around and parades him around for us to see. That has not failed yet.”

But Lozano said he was in a vehicle -- Holguin's car -- in the neighborhood only once with Holguin and Bill Dempsey. That was to go get ice during the Dempsey's wedding last summer, he said.

Holguin also said that was the only time he was ever in a vehicle with Dempsey in the neighborhood.

In general, Lozano characterized the neighbors' allegations as a "bunch of lies."

Asked why they would get together to make false accusations and be willing to swear to them in affidavits that are to be filed with an ethics complaint, Lozano said, "It's political.

"Eddie's a wimp. He's afraid of everything. He wouldn't do anything to jeopardize his career. He wouldn't do any favors."

Three streets run through the Richard Lee Subdivision: Farrell Road, Cindy Lane and Kathy Avenue. The Dempseys home is on Farrell and a mobile home they moved onto their property carries an address on Kathy.

The official address for Dempsey’s Horseshoe Enterprises Inc. with the Texas Secretary of State is at 9629 Kathy, but telephone information services listing the business’ address as 9650 Farrell, the Dempsey’s home address.

A young woman who answered a call to the business number last week said, “We’re at 9629 Kathy.”

The City Code restricts the use of a mobile home in a farm-ranch zone to storage or an office that must be related to the farm or ranch use of the property – not a business.

Dempsey acted surprised to hear that Newspaper Tree had reached someone at the number other than him.

“It usually forwards to my cell phone,” he said.

He evaded questions about whether the trucking company has its office in the mobile home but repeatedly said “everything’s legal” and “according to the city.”

Guadalupe Dempsey also used the Kathy Avenue address as her election campaign headquarters and reported it as such on her campaign finance statements this year.

Bill Stern, a chief inspector for the city’s Building and Standards Commission, said the Dempseys obtained a permit to place the mobile home on their property in August 2007 as a farm and ranch storage building and office.

As such, the mobile home can only be legally used for ranch and farm purposes, not for a business or campaign headquarters.

“During the election, they were using it for a campaign headquarters, and we made them return it to the intended use,” Stern said. “That was a non-permitted use because it has nothing to do with farm use.”

Residents insist that Holguin helped the Dempseys obtain a permit for the mobile home but both deny it.

Stern said Holguin’s help would not have been necessary because there was no reason to deny the Dempseys’ initial application to place the mobile home on their land.

A city sign is posted at the entrance that reads “No vehicles over 26 feet” and that raises questions about why there are tractors and trailers in the Richard Lee subdivision at all.

Holguin said trailers like two that now sit side-by-side on Dempsey’s property are legal as storage units and said that other residents of the subdivision have tractors and trailers on their properties as well.

Dempsey has a hearing in municipal court Wednesday for a citation issued by a city code enforcement officer last October, based on resident complaints, for allowing a commercial vehicle weighing more than two tons or more than 26 feet in length on the property.

“We have already been to court once, and we will be going again,” Dempsey said. “According to the farm and ranch code, they are legal.

“If you were here, you would see trucks that are over-sized all over this neighborhood.”

Godinez acknowledged that since Dempsey brought his trucks into the subdivision, several other residents have followed his example.

But Cindy Chavez, code compliance manager for the Environmental Services Department’s code compliance section, said it appears that all the commercial vehicles on the Dempsey property – the tractors parked near their house, the two trailers in a grassy pasture and a flatbed trailer – could come up at Wednesday’s hearing.

According to the City Code, Chavez said, the two red tractors have to go because oversized commercial vehicles are not allowed on a residential site in a farm-ranch zone.

She said the two trailers in a field that Dempsey and Holguin said are legal storage units could only be legal if Dempsey removed the wheels and under-carriage and placed the trailers on a city-approved foundation requiring a plot plan and a permit.

Dempsey, Chavez said, has also been cited over the half dozen or so trailers he is keeping on a grassy parcel between Ivey Road and Americas Avenue.

“He can’t put them there until he conforms to all city requirements, making sure that lot is sufficient to hold them,” she said. “The surface may or may not be permitted. There’s grass and weeds all over there and there are set-back requirements.”

Holguin said those trailers are parked there legally.

But the property owner, Jim Ivey, has been notified that they violate the law and that he will be cited if they are not corrected, Chavez said.

As for the mobile home that apparently is serving as the headquarters for Horseshoe Enterprises, Chavez said, “You can’t use it as a corporate or trucking office.”

Trucking companies, she said, are only allowed in a C-4 zone intended for heavy commercial use.

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To reach David Crowder, write to dcrowder@epmediagroup.com or call (915) 351-0605