Five months ago, state coastal commissioners ordered Bolinas homeowner Ralph Garside to remove 250 feet of stairs, decks, and gazebos he had built without permits down an ocean bluff to the beach. At last, the work is underway.

Under the Coastal Commission ruling, which upheld an earlier order from Marin supervisors, Garside is also having to remove a permit-less addition to his house and an aviary/workshop complex.

During the six-month county and state hearing process, a key critic of Garside was his Ocean Avenue neighbor Paul Kayfetz, former director and president of Bolinas Public Utility District.

Now Kayfetz finds he too is caught in the county's crosshairs for alleged permit-less construction on his property.

County planning staff claim that Kayfetz between 1973 and 1984 took out building permits for five structures on his property but never received final approval of his construction. As a result, staff say, they eventually canceled the permits.

Last year, when the planning staff asked to inspect Kayfetz's property, he refused them entrance. Kayfetz has also denied entrance to appraisers from the county Assessor's Office.

Kayfetz contends he is protecting his privacy: "I don't want them snooping around with video cameras or taking photos. I'm not letting a circus go on inside my house."

Furthermore, Kayfetz insists, he did get final approvals, but "the county lost their records of them and claimed, therefore, these documents didn't exist."

County staff, however, are "definitely" sure Kayfetz's structures did not receive final approvals, Deputy County Counsel Alexis McBride responded last week.

Making the dispute more than an issue involving two neighbors, the Kayfetz and Garside homes are among several homes on Bolinas' unstable bluffs, and county staff are worried that many of the houses may someday tumble into the Pacific.

In fact, that sort of concern is what prompted Kayfetz to originally complain about Garside's stairway to the beach.

Last December, Kayfetz said he was particularly concerned about earth anchors which, he said, Garside had drilled 33 feet horizontally into the cliff. The anchors were attached to cables that held up the stairs, landings, and decks.

The anchors consisted of bundles of rebar in concrete, Kayfetz said, and the weight of the stairways was pulling open a crack in the cliff. By then, Kayfetz said, the crack extended 150 feet into his property and had caused 25 percent of his backyard to sink up to six feet.

However, a county geotechnical study showed that Garside's anchors did not create the rift, planning coordinator Scott Davidson reported last week.

Nonetheless, as a backhoe removed illegal structures on Garside's property this past week, a trench was dug that has increased the "instability" of the bluff, Davidson added. He said Garside has been asked to stop the excavation.

All this notwithstanding, the county's spotlight has begun focusing on Kayfetz's home next door.

After Kayfetz last year refused to let county inspectors on his property, "we then petitioned in court for an inspection warrant - which is very uncommon," noted planning enforcement officer Debbi Poiani.

Following a hearing on the issue before Superior Court Judge Vernon Smith last April, attorneys for both sides reached an out-of-court agreement: One building inspector and one member of the county counsel's staff would be allowed to make a final inspection on Kayfetz's property.

Since then, however, the agreement has unraveled, noted Kayfetz's attorney Neil Moran, a partner in the San Rafael firm of Freitas, McCarthy, MacMahon & Keating.

County staff cannot make a final check-up because they no longer have a copy of Kayfetz's original building plans - and Kayfetz says he doesn't have one either.

For the moment, said Kayfetz's attorney, he and the county counsel are "putting on creative-thinking caps" to strike a new deal.

"We haven't been allowed on his property for a while and haven't been able to assess its full value for many years," noted Assistant Assessor John Childers. "We'd like to go to his place to make sure our records are accurate. I think the Planning Department's in the same boat."

The back-fence dispute between Kayfetz and Garside continues. Garside claims that when Kayfetz erected the fence in 1975, he encroached two feet onto Garside's property.

County planner Andrea Fox agrees the fence is out of place, but having consulted a 1996 survey, she concluded it weaves through both men's properties.

Garside and Kayfetz at different times have offered theories as to why they've been targeted for county-enforcement actions.

Last December, Garside's attorney told county supervisors that Garside was being targeted because he is a homosexual, to which then-Supervisor Gary Giacomini later responded, "No one here knew or cared."

Last week, Kayfetz claimed, "The county is going on this fishing expedition because they have a hostile attitude toward me. For many years, I stopped development at Seadrift where some county supervisors owned property.

"And I filed a suit against a suburban-type school they tried to build in Bolinas. I've embarrassed them."

As a result, Kayfetz said, "I'm extra-careful about getting permits because I'm in the public eye. I even took out a $45 permit just to duct-tape some ventilation pipes."

However, planner Davidson offers a different explanation for the Planning Department's attention to Garside and Kayfetz properties.

"The bluff is currently eroding away at an average rate of one to two feet per year," said Davidson. "Eventually, this retreat will continue, and the homes are all going to end up in the water.

"We're trying to be proactive in avoiding any health and safety issues for the public." The Planning Department has stepped up its enforcement of building codes and has discouraged new construction in this "bluff erosion zone," he noted

"We've got to do this now - El Niño's coming, and we don't want somebody to end up at the bottom of a cliff," noted Supervisor Kinsey's aide Liza Cross.

Davidson added that "several older homes [on Ocean Avenue] are just basically hanging off the cliff. We may have to remove them at some time," he said. "What we're witnessing here is the end of a neighborhood."