Building a fence is his big offense

If good fences make good neighbors, what do bad fences make?

Inmates -- at least in Rolling Hills Estates.

That's what Francisco Linares found out this week, when an L.A. County Superior Court judge sentenced him to six months in jail. His crime? Erecting a 180-foot-long fence while building his dream home in the horsy hills of the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

Never mind Paris Hilton and her 45-day sentence for serial probation busting. Forget about Nicole Richie and her four-day jail term for driving the wrong way on the Ventura Freeway while stoned. (Note: She served only 82 minutes.)

This must be one dangerous fence, because the 51-year-old insurance company district manager who says he has never even committed a traffic violation faces a full day in Los Angeles County Jail for every single flawed foot of it.

"This," a stunned Linares said Tuesday, "is nothing that you should be taken to court for."

The city of Rolling Hills Estates believes otherwise.

Two and a half years ago, officials filed misdemeanor charges against Linares, alleging that he had refused to tear down the offending white fence, that he had erected a too-tall retaining wall and that his proud stone columns just don't fit in around here.

They gave him time to get the proper permits or tear down the offending structures. And then they threw the book at the man who says he has spent 142 hours and $50,000 in building and defending the fence.

City officials weren't talking much after Linares' sentencing, which he has appealed.

But Roy Beall, the Rolling Hills Estates zoning and code administrator, did read from an official written statement, which outlined the steps the city had taken and rued the outcome of Linares' actions: "Unfortunately, Mr. Linares chose not to comply and his decision has forced the court to act accordingly."

Translation: six months behind bars, starting Sept. 10, unless Linares prevails at a hearing four days before that, which could lead to an appeal.

Linares' story began more than a decade ago.

That was when the Cuban expatriate would pile his wife, Milagros, and their three young daughters into the family car and motor through the graceful neighborhoods of the peninsula, dreaming with his wife of someday moving there from Torrance.

At the time, Crystal, now 23, thought her mother's dream of owning a home in Rolling Hills Estates was "unattainable. And then when I got to high school, we moved here. Now we have all these problems. I think her dream turned into a nightmare."