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DA probes Escondido trustee’s residency

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Jose Fragozo, Escondido Union School District trustee. Photo by Pat Maio
Jose Fragozo, Escondido Union School District trustee. Photo by Pat Maio

The District Attorney’s Office is investigating whether Escondido Union School District trustee Jose Fragozo actually resides in a small apartment he has claimed as his residence since getting elected to the board in 2012.

Since September, investigators with the Public Integrity Unit have been probing the residency questions, and since November have obtained at least four separate search warrants for phone records, utility bills, and employment records for Fragozo, court records shows.

The investigation is focused on whether Fragozo resides at an apartment on South Maple Street, which he claims as his residence on his voter registration form. He listed that address when he changed his voter registration form in July 2012, just before he ran – and eventually won – a seat on the board.

Fragozo also owns a four-bedroom, 3,600-square-foot home in the city on Crooked Oak Lane, in an area called Hidden Meadows. That home is in a different board district than the South Maple Street address.

It is not illegal for an elected official to have more than one home. But California law says candidates have to live in the districts they seek to represent. The state Elections Code defines residence for voting purposes as a “domicile,” a home where one intends to remain and return to after an absence. An individual can have only one domicile.

An affidavit by a District Attorney’s investigator describing the case says a property manager at South Maple Street said she had “rarely seen Fragozo at the complex” since 2012. It also said the apartment had no furniture in it during 2012, when he ran for and won his seat.

In 2012, the district changed from electing board members on an at-large basis to district elections. The South Maple Street apartment is in Area 1, a district that is heavily Latino. The Crooked Oak Lane home in in Area 5, which is less so.

Contacted Wednesday, Fragozo first said he would comment on the matter later that day. On Thursday morning his lawyer, Victor Torres, said via email that the trustee would not be commenting on the investigation. Torres also declined to comment.

The investigation by the District Attorney’s Office is the latest controversy about Fragozo. Since Dec. 2 he has been barred from attending board meetings under a workplace violence restraining order obtained by Superintendent Luis Rankins-Ibarra, who said Fragozo had threatened and intimidated him and other administrators.

Fragozo’s move to Maple Street has not been a secret – he announced it at a board meeting in July 2012.

When questioned about it during the campaign, he told The San Diego Union-Tribune that the Hidden Meadows home was “my place in the country” and said he and his wife – a teacher – were living in the apartment while their two sons occupied the home.

His reasons for moving and whether he really lives there have been a source of contention, the court records show.

Two days after his victory, the Secretary of State’s Office received a complaint about his residency, the court records say. And later that month Joan Gardner, now the board president, also wrote a letter to the agency with similar concerns.

In January of 2013 a state investigator checked the DMV records and determined Fragozo had not changed his driver’s license address or his vehicle registration to the Maple Street apartment, and that he claimed a $7,000 county homeowner’s exemption at the Crooked Oak home. To qualify for the exemption, residents must sign under penalty of perjury that they occupy the home in question as their “principal place of residence.”

The investigation stopped there, and did not pick up again until April 2015. That is when the same investigator went to the South Maple Street apartment, and also spoke with Fragozo twice by phone. The affidavit said Fragozo said he resided on South Maple Street, and also admitted he never reported the change of address to the DMV and also took the tax exemption on the other property.

When asked why the apartment was unfurnished in 2012, he replied, “It doesn’t matter whether the apartment has furniture in it or not,” according to court records.

The investigator sent his report to the District Attorney’s Office on Aug. 31.

Investigators went on to interview all board members, and also paid another visit to the South Maple Street apartment on Sept. 9. No one was home. A neighbor told investigators that he had lived there for a year and "has never seen anyone come or go" from Fragozo’s apartment. A second neighbor said he had seen some people there in the past but did not know who they were.

Later the same day, the second neighbor called Investigator Robert Rea to say Fragozo had shown up at the complex that day and was “walking around the complex introducing himself to people.”

WATCHDOG

In an interview with investigators, Gardner said that Fragozo does not have board agendas and material delivered to his home, like other board members, but picks them up from the district office. He also uses a post office as a mailing address for district business

The affidavit also said that Fragozo used South Maple Street as his mailing address on his official state economic disclosure forms in 2014 and 2015. It notes that falsely declaring that address as his mailing address would be a felony.

Gardner, the board president, said that after the interviews by investigators she has not heard any more about the matter.

“We are waiting,” she said Wednesday. “The wheels of justice will grind. Whatever happens is not up to us.”

Fragozo’s residency was discussed at a board workshop meeting in Janaury 2015, when Gardner raised the issue.

“I own a home in Hidden Meadows, I got a place in Escondido, what is the issue?” Fragozo said, according to a partial transcript of the meeting included in the affidavit.

“That you don’t live there,” Gardner responded.

“I don’t live in Escondido — OK, well fine, go report,” Fragozo said. “If you don’t like it, then you go do something about it.”

Fragozo has participated in board meeting remotely, via a phone hookup, since the temporary restraining order was issued in December. Two of the three meetings that have been held since then, Fragozo participated in from the South Maple Street apartment. A Union-Tribune reporter went to the small, sparsely furnished apartment located across from Central Elementary School there for the Jan. 14 meeting.

There was a corner couch, a twin bed, and kitchen table and chairs – all located in the brown-carpeted efficiency. A brief case was sitting next to his bed. A comb was tossed in the middle of the bed.

Off to the side of the room was a doorway leading to the kitchen area. A picture of Fragozo was posted on the wall, with a piece of white tape stuck over his mouth.

Deputy District Attorney Leon Schorr, who is heading the investigation into Fragozo, declined to comment on the search warrants or the case on Wednesday.

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