Author: Mr. Peabody

No, don’t call FPD. Not because they won’t catch anybody, but because the violation is plagiarism. And the perp? None other than one of the Fullerton Observer sisters, Sakinsia.

And the topic? Of course it relates to about the Orange County Water District.

A few years back the Observer let Ahmad Zahra pretend to write informative articles on water topics under his own name. You can still see them, uncorrected, here and here. Jan Flory was fooled about Zahra’s supposed expertise in water issues, but FFFF wasn’t.

We knew the articles were written by an OCWD bureaucrat and stolen by the Doctor From Damascus.

Here is an “article” clipped from the Observer and purportedly written by Saskina – since she put her own name above it.

The Orange County Water District (OCWD; the District) and the City of Tustin celebrated the dedication of a new PFAS treatment plant, marking a major milestone in ensuring safe and reliable water for Tustin residents and businesses.  

The dedication ceremony brought together local, state and federal representatives to recognize the proactive actions of both OCWD and the City of Tustin in addressing PFAS, a group of manufactured chemicals increasingly found in water sources across the country, including the Orange County Groundwater Basin. The new treatment system, implemented at the existing Main Street Water Treatment Plant, uses ion exchange technology to treat up to 6,400 gallons of groundwater per minute. The centralized plant is fed by four offsite wells connected through approximately 2.5 miles of conveyance pipeline. 

“This state-of-the-art PFAS treatment plant is a critical investment in our city’s water future,” said Tustin Mayor Austin Lumbard. “By removing PFAS from local groundwater, we help ensure that water delivered to residents and businesses is exceptional and continues to meet all state and federal drinking water standards.” 

Since 2019, OCWD has taken the lead in addressing PFAS, in partnership with its 19 cities and retail water districts, to remove them from the groundwater basin, which supplies up to 85% of the water to 2.5 million people in north and central Orange County. The District is funding design and construction costs, along with a portion of operational and maintenance costs for treatment facilities like this one.

“OCWD is proud to support the City of Tustin and our other partners in the construction of treatment facilities that safeguard public health,” said OCWD President Denis R. Bilodeau, P.E. “Tackling PFAS contamination head-on reflects our long-standing commitment to water quality, innovation and regional collaboration.”

The City of Tustin PFAS treatment facility was partially funded by a $10 million grant from the State Water Resources Control Board through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and a $5 million Community Grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 

For more information on OCWD’s PFAS treatment program, visit the PFAS education center.

Now you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to recognize that this is one of those canned press releases that makes up vacuous quotations and puts them in the mouths of officers of government agencies. But typical Observer readers are not known for their sharpness on the uptake.

Our Friend and sharp-eyed commenter Lab Rat has pointed out that it’s outright theft. And here’s the relevant press release from OCWD:

Is this just the usual sloppy incompetence, or is it deliberate? Does it matter? It’s just one more instance of the sanctimonious “who cares so long as we believe what we believe, and what we believe is sacrosanct.”

Let’s see if it gets corrected with an appropriate notice.

It only took three days. Not bad for the Observer Sisters. Glad to see some Observer or other reads FFFF!

Our friend Joshua Ferguson has done Fullerton a solid, taking the time to create a video of the notorious Trail to Nowhere© site. He starts at the west and heads east documenting the dilapidation, gang graffiti, trash, and general unhealthy and unsafe nature of the environment on and next to the proposed trail.

A couple of things to remember that City staff steadfastly refuses to acknowledge:

1. Phase II does not connect to Phase I
2. Phase I is a design failure, a total maintenance disaster, and is unused by anybody
3. The existing Phase I “trail” ends at the fenced off Poisoned Park. The original “trail” went through the park and ended at the old UP bridge over Harbor Blvd. After that it just turns into a regular sidewalk, not a recreation trail.

Here’s the video. It’s well worth watching.

Fullerton’s Union Pacific Trail Betrayal – YouTube

I sure hope Dunlap, Valencia and Jung get the opportunity to see this video and realize that this “project” was never more than a bundle of lies, misinformation, omitted facts, and constant pressure from people who didn’t and don’t know what they’re talking about.

There are no potential users, there is no connectivity, there is no money for maintenance; there is a history of failure, a hollow, patronizing gesture by lefties, make-work for City employees, and nonsense-talk from a handful of locals manipulated by Ahmad Zahra. And oh, yeah, an ever-escalating cost to the citizens of Fullerton, that has quadrupled in five years.

As we’ve just seen the idiotic half-mile Trail to Nowhere© now requires almost twice as much City money as it did when the City Council approved it 16 months ago. As the project languished in bureaucratic limbo for that time the City cost has gone up from $330,000 to $600,00 – with no explanation from the City Manager or the City Engineer – just the feeble “increased scope” excuse.

Lest you think this is a one off, you’d do well to think again.

I went back to the original grant application submittal. You may remember the document – the one so full of bullshit you need wings to stay above it.

Here’s the heading of page one:

Please note that when the City Council approved the grant application the City cost was a mere $170,720. By the time the Council approved the project, the contribution from the Park Dwelling Fund (derived from a fee from development, restricted to new park facilities) jumped to the $330,000 amount seen above. So before it was finally approved, nobody bothered to tell the City Council that Fullerton’s contribution to the senseless project had jumped a whopping 94%.

And now the City’s responsibility has metastasized to $630,000, an unbelievable increase of almost half a million bucks over the original cost used to pitch the project. If you like math, the overall increase is 290% from Day One. The Council wasn’t told, public wasn’t told, and I’m pretty sure the State wasn’t told.

Just think about it, Friends. An almost 300% increase and not a single person in City Hall raised the issue of an arithmatic cost escalation. And there’s no reason to suspect there won’t be more increases, courtesy of change orders, and that those will be approved behind closed doors by the City Manager, with no scrutiny by the public or by Councilpersons Dunlap, Jung or Valencia. Zero Zahra and Shameless Charles showed they don’t give a damn about taxpayer money.

Here’s an example of just one item of new work: we already know there is no line item in the bid for reworking access to the 10 toxic plume testing wells on the trail site. How much will that cost? Who knows? Does anybody even care?

The City Council would be very wise to explore not only the reason for the alleged “increase in scope,” but also to inquire about future budget increases due to unforeseen conditions – the low bidders best friend.

On Tuesday the seemingly inevitable rubber stamp of the Trail to Nowhere© contract award didn’t happen. That’s thanks to the presentation of facts that were deliberately being obscured by City Staff in an incompetent agenda report.

Public speaker Joshua Ferguson raised the issue of the increased City cost that FFFF raised, here; and noted that the phrase “increase in scope” was marvelously uninformative.

When the “Consent Calendar” finally rolled around, Councilman Nick Dunlap, to his credit, pulled the item for discussion. Once again Mr. Ferguson unloaded on the lack of transparency, and the failure to describe why the City cost had doubled. He also correctly observed the likelihood of more and more costs as the project was being built. Fullerton Engineer has already expertly shared the likelihood of that, here, when he predicted an eventual City borne cost increase of $800,000. At $630,000 we’re getting there real fast, and a shovel hasn’t even broken the contaminated soil yet.

Then Dunlap took over.

He was demonstrably upset that the item was on the Consent Calendar in the first place, and noted, correctly, that the additional money had to come from somewhere else. Dunlap referred to a transfer from the General Fund; that’s not what the staff report said. The staff report referred to a Park Dwelling Fund transfer, as FFFF has noted. It really doesn’t matter. We already saw that next years CIP only identified a few Park Dwelling Fund projects for a total of $250,000. So where is the additional $300,000 coming from, and what is it displacing? Excellent questions.

City Manager Eric Levitt volunteered to answer Dunlap’s questions in “two minutes,” a promise that would almost certainly never have happened in two minutes or with coherency. To his credit, Dunlap smelled a wagon load of bullshit coming down the road, and demanded a continuance.

A few of the usual suspects popped up to demand immediate approval of the Trail to Nowhere© construction contract. Poor Egleth Nuncio, claimed her health had been impaired advocating for the trail and picking up broken glass on the right-of-way, the latter a claim so preposterous that I’m surprised nobody burst out laughing. But maybe it happened during the infamous Skaksia Kennedy photo op.

But trees, right? Before waddling off in a huff, she promised a vast turn out on May 20th, which should be a fun rehash of uninformed nonsense as her overlord Ahmad Zahra mobilizes another cry-and-cry session from Fullerton Boohoo.

Finally the Council voted 3-2 to continue the item until May 20th meeting. Once again staff misled the Council by implying that a May 20th meeting was needed to secure the bid within the required 60 day window to hold a public bid. No one thought to inquire about that, because the bid took place on April 22, meaning that there’s another whole month after May 20th in which the contractor has to honor his bid. Zahra and Charles voted no, neither giving a rat’s ass about the escalating cost of this boondoggle.

Of course the Friends know that the real reason for the desperation of the May 20th date; it’s because the City is already so far behind in its Trail to Nowhere© project milestone obligations that the completion date is already impossible to make, and that not even the State of California can look the other way forever.

After several months of radio silence, the UP Trail has finally emerged from its bureaucratic cocoon. The City Council is scheduled to vote on approving the construction contract at Tuesday’s meeting. Contradictory to Edgar Rosales promise to the Parks Commission, the City Council never approved the final plans before the bid, and never authorized a public bid, either. Just ran out of time. They’re approving the plans and specifications the same time as the contract award. How’s that for ass backery?

And the Council is being asked to “invest” another $300,000 of Fullerton money into The Lost Trail, as predicted by FFFF over the past few years. That’s now $630,000 of City dough, a sum never previously agreed to by anybody. Seriously, is anybody in charge?

The staff report casually informs us: “The City requires additional funds to complete the project due to a change in the project scope in which Park Dwelling Fund (Fund 39) has available funds.” Conveniently there is no description of the change in scope. Not a single word to justify plowing another 300 grand into this disaster. Not a single damn word. More transparency.

Speaking of costs, here’s the project budget and bid results:

Please note that the low bidder’s bid is exactly the “Engineer’s Estimate” for construction, a likelihood so remote without serious massaging that we have to wonder about KASA Construction. Also, if we toss out the low and high bids, the median bid amount is $2,286,000, $440,000 over the years-old City estimate – more cause for concern. There is a cluster of bids between $2,246,000 and $2,500,000. Even with the KASA bid.

Even with the new transfer of yet another $300,000 from the Park Dwelling Fund to cover costs that were not given the council in 2023, can anyone seriously believe it will be the last request for this?

Tellingly, no one from the City staff has ever bothered to share ongoing annual maintenance costs for this debacle, either. They don’t know and don’t care.

Who knows why The Trail to Nowhere was not included in the 2025-2026 CIP because most of it will be done (hopefully) during that fiscal year. Oh, well. There is still no explanation of why there is nothing in the CIP plan for the UP Park renovation previously promised by Jung, Whitaker, and Dunlap in August 2023, and which was supposed to precede the trail, a fact now conveniently forgotten by everybody except FFFF. 20 month ago is ancient history in Fullerton. Hindsight is 20/20.

FFFF has diligently followed the Trail of Tears since its Astroturf cheerleaders started braying about “nice things” for south Fullerton. Where will these people be when the trail is unused, unsafe and falls into the same disrepair as so much of Fullerton’s infrastructure? Not on the trail itself, of course.

If you want to see how our crack Parks Department handles landscape maintenance check out the abysmal plantings around the wood stairs in Hillcrest Park sometime.

The Trail to Nowhere begins at Highland Avenue since it doesn’t connect to Phase 1. There is no public accommodation except people walking or riding a bike on the Highland sidewalk. It dies in the virtually abandoned back corner parking lot at Independence Park where nobody wants to go. There is no connectivity to anything else. There never will be. The thing runs through an area of junkyards, used tire stores, an asphalt plant, auto repair places and a coating plant. Homeless call it home. So do the junkies.

For a quarter mile it runs alongside the Santa Fe Main Line.

FFFF has already noted the complete failure to meet the State’s milestones in the agreement. That contract called for plant establishment to be included in the October 2025 completion. That won’t happen. The bid sheet for the project includes a 90 day plant establishment requirement, meaning the landscaping would have to be done by the end of July to meet the deadline. Fortunately for the City, nobody at the State seems to care about its agreement.

Worst of all, maybe is the fact that the City minions and their Council bosses can’t seem to understand the idea of a wider, comprehensive plan for this strip of industrially zoned land and that maybe this right-of-way could have used for something useful. Their narrative is that somehow this trail all by itself will turn the area into something other than it is. That’s just moronic.

But the guiding principle here is not effectiveness, efficiency, stewardship, or even basic common sense. No, it’s about spending other people’s money and who gives a damn if it fails? Will any City staff members be around to accept their roles in this fiasco? Of course not. Will the people who wore down a weak Council into approving this mess be around to claim responsibility for their role?

Of course not. This Fullerton rolling contraption has no rear view mirror.