Rancho Simi Park District Orders Couple to Give Up Back Yard : Land use: The agency, which owns the lot, refuses to sell or lease to the homeowners. Board members fear an unwanted precedent.

Ending three years of legal wrangling, a Simi Valley couple have been ordered by park district officials to clear their belongings from a piece of property they had been using as their back yard.

Gary and Debbie Moss must relinquish the 1,500-square-foot lot to the Rancho Simi Park District, despite their request to buy or lease the land they believed for years was their own.

The park district board voted 3 to 2 Thursday night to ask the couple to take down a fence, play swing and dog house from the yard where they keep their German shepherd, Frazier.

Given the long battle over the property, Gary Moss said he was not surprised by the board’s decision, but was upset nonetheless.

“I still am dumbfounded by the whole thing,” Moss said.

But a majority of the board said selling or leasing the land to the couple would set a precedent for similar cases where private landowners with property adjacent to the park district have encroached on the publicly owned land.

“The point is that the law says you must treat all parties--all persons--in an equal manner,” Gordon Lindeen, the park district’s attorney, told the board. “This decision will have an effect in other matters.”

Common law states that if a person uses or improves a property for at least 10 years, they have a legal right to the property. But because the land in the Moss case is public property, that law does not apply, Lindeen said.

For the Mosses, the question of ownership came up in late 1992 when the couple decided to fix their back-yard fence.

Gary Moss wrote the park district a letter notifying them that he wanted to repair the old fence he had inherited from the previous owners. That’s when he found out he didn’t own the fence--or the slice of land he had been using as his back yard.

Instead, the land, which goes right up to the couple’s bedroom window, is part of Santa Susana Park, owned by the Rancho Simi Park District.

The piece of land is on the northwest corner of Santa Susana Park, separated from the main park by a small seasonal creek that is littered with concrete and old tires.

The rustic park on the outskirts of the Simi Valley is dotted with dramatic rock formations and sprawling old oak trees.

Because the little piece of the park the Mosses used as their yard is public property, Lindeen said park district officials would have to declare the land surplus before they could approve its sale.

Only board members Gene Hostetler and Steve Iceland voted in favor of taking that action.

Iceland said that maintaining the land would be a hassle for park officials, in part because of its isolation, while selling the property would benefit both the park district and the couple.

But board members Don Funk, Bonnie Carpenter and Jim Meredith said selling the property would set an unwanted precedent and make it difficult for the park district to enforce its property lines.

Over the years, everything from chicken coops to television antennas have been put up on parkland as neighboring property owners try to nip off a few extra feet of space, park officials said.

Recently district officials discovered that several property owners in a development called the Texas Tract have encroached onto the district-owned Simi Hills Golf Course. Most of the encroachments were minor, but one landowner had built a pool that extended into park property.

Park officials said they feared that selling the piece of Santa Susana Park land to the Mosses would force them to sell the disputed property in these other cases as well.

For that reason, board member Don Funk said the board had to deny the request.

“The Mosses’ argument is moot and we must press forward on the Texas Tract matter and simply take back our land,” he said. “Really, by the law . . . we have no other choice.”

Moss then asked, “Is it safe to say that the homeowner [in the Texas Tract] will have to remove his pool?”

Attorney Lindeen said that was not necessarily the case, because the circumstances in that situation are different.

“Had you placed a pool there it would have made a difference,” Lindeen told the couple.

After the Mosses clear the property, district officials said they plan to spend about $2,000 clearing brush from the property and planting new vegetation. And as part of an agreement with the couple, the park district will spend about $6,000 to build a block wall along the property line to protect the Mosses’ privacy.

The Mosses have said a legal challenge would be too expensive and they are contemplating moving from the house.

A date was not set for when the couple will have to clear the land.