FFFF supports causes that promote intelligent, responsible and accountable government in Fullerton and Orange County
Author: The Fullerton Harpoon
The Fullerton Harpoon is a retired commerical fisherman having served many years on the Japanese whaler Nisshin Maru where he unfortunately lost the right side of his brain and his sense of propriety in a Greenpeace attack.
A week or so ago the Fullerton City Council reviewed the solicitation for a new garbage hauling contract. Again. FFFF shared the last instalment of the drawn out saga relating how “Dr.” Ahmad Zahra went bonkers because two of the companies offered big upfront payments recouped by a higher CPI multiplier.
The meeting droned on and on and finally the Council went along with yet another temporization – cutting the number of eligible responders to three – CR&R, Republic, and Valley Vista. Republic was told to eliminate its upfront payment plan and revise its fee schedule. The process will now drag on until September, a move that will surely benefit Republic, the current hauler.
Noticeably absent from the final three was EDCO – the original preferred vendor of city staff. Why they were not given the same chance as Republic to delete the big cash offer and rejigger their numbers is unknown. What is known is that Republic, the company that came in dead last in the first round of staff analysis, moves ahead with several nice comments from some of Fullerton’s Left Guard who seem to be terrified of change.
CR&R, you may remember offered what looked like a $4 million gift for the City to pave a few potholes. But companies like this don’t work for free and surely they can lower their fees by getting rid of the Trojan Horse gift. That’s nothing but a hidden tax, right? Just better hidden than EDCO’s or Republic’s.
Valley Vista will surely never get more than three votes since they contributed to the Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform PAC that went after Fullerton Boohoo darling Cannabis Kitty Jaramillo in 2024. Zahra and Charles won’t vote for them because of this political involvement although they certainly wouldn’t mind had Valley Vista given money to the dope lobby’s Working Families for Jaramillo PAC. The Fullerton Observer Sisters like to remind their readers about the bad, bad folks at VV.
But Valley Vista doesn’t need four or five votes, only three.
The Council also decided to let its members talk to vendors directly, something that they had prohibited themselves from doing, apparently. Will the they share who they talked with, and what about? I wonder.
Anyway, let the death march continue. Sure it’s a big deal, but there’s no reason this shouldn’t have been locked up a long time ago.
Right now it looks like Ms. Charles, the sanctimonious and self-important gasbag representing District 3 on the Fullerton City Council has no competition for re-election this November.
I suppose this is a testament to the apathy of the electorate because there should be at least one person willing to challenge the otiose uber-leftist whose constant stream of self-righteous and ignorant bullshit almost demands an opponent.
A visit to the City Clerk’s webpage listing candidate committees shows no one except Charles in the Third District.
This doesn’t mean that a non-committee candidate isn’t running, or that a potential opponent isn’t waiting to file the forms necessary to raise funds like a serious contender. But time is almost up. Candidates will be able to “pull papers” to run in just a few weeks. If they haven’t announced yet, at this late date, it seems unlikely.
Why?
Charles has taken lots positions that would undoubtedly be unpopular among responsible, taxpaying citizens outside the Fullerton Boohoo echo chamber. Let’s put aside her flip-flops on issues like the downtown noise regulations and the issue of private publications on city property. Instead, let’s focus on issues that would be pretty damaging to Charles once voters learn about them. They involve wasting money, or trying to. A lot of it.
First is her steadfast support of handing over $200,000 of public funds to support illegal aliens harassed by ICE. You can feel sympathy for people snagged by the ICE goons without wanting to use public funds to pay for their groceries.
That can’t be good…
Then there is the embarrassing matter of the so-called boutique hotel, where the Council approved massive entitlements on a property and then “sold” it for peanuts to build a massive and harebrained project on Santa Fe Avenue. The worst part was deeding over the property to a couple of inveterate con men who, after many years, haven’t turned a shovel of dirt on the site and never will. Providentially, that approval was Shana Charles’ very first vote.
Green means green. One way or another…
How about the issue of her income from the marijuana lobby – gained via her husband’s effort to get Cannabis Kitty Jaramillo elected in the 2024 D4 election. Her tribe is always blathering about the evils of money in campaigns; Jaramillo got $60,000 of Washington DC lobbyist cash working for her and $4000 went right into the Charles family wallet. Would the residents of D3 like a dispensary on State College?
I don’t want to forget the disastrous Trail to Nowhere that cost $2.5 million and has virtually no use. FFFF predicted that over and over again, although it wasn’t hard for anybody to foresee. The last half dozen times I have driven down Richman at various hours, I have yet to see a single user. Charles was stupid enough to fall for all the bullshit peddled by staff; either that or she knew it was nonsense and didn’t care. Does it make a difference?
Spinning, spinning…
If there is a tax on the November ballot Charles will have to take a stand. Spinning won’t help. She won’t get her 13% general sales tax increase, but there could be two 6.5% special sales taxes to vote for, infrastructure and “public safety.” Opposing these would send a signal that she doesn’t care about fixing the budget deficit she helped create: just a couple years ago she bragged about hiring more people.
She has to run on the state of the City and that state isn’t good. She’s been there for four years with nothing to show for it except foolish positions and non-stop, rambling lectures.
I decided to watch the afternoon Fullerton City Council session about hiring a new trash hauler, yesterday. When it came time for questions directed to staff I learned a few things.
First, I realized the extent to which Ahmad Zahra blames one individual – Tony Bushala – for every thing he, Zahra, doesn’t like. And it’s got to the point where anything attributable to Bushala is something he, Zahra, doesn’t like. Even when the attribution is based on his own baseless paranoia and suspicion and egomania. It’s embarrassing.
That’s a mighty fine thing you did, Anthony…
This accounts for his outbursts yesterday to staff and special council about the origins of the upfront payment to the City by a couple of RFP respondents, EDCO and Republic. As noted here, the idea was mentioned by Mr. Bushala several months ago at a Budget Sustainability Committee meeting and that was it. There is no demonstrable tie between that brief occurrence and any of the trash haulers, except in the febrile brain of the dodgy “doctor” from Damascus. Nada. It was never mention in the first round of RFP submissions.
When Zahra couldn’t get staff or the lawyers to agree with him and condemn the notion of a big initial payment he became agitated and began a completely unprofessional diatribe.
It was good stuff for the handful of his Fullerton Crazy claque in attendance who also faithfully believe any nonsense peddled by Zahra and who remain completely incurious about Zahra’s own string of malfeasances starting with immigration and marriage fraud to get into the country.
I am gratified to know that Zahra is a reader of this blog. It’s really too bad he can’t learn anything from it. He is not the least bit opposed to hidden taxes, per se; quite the contrary. However what he and his pals really love is an officially adopted tax, out in the open, when the community proves it is worthy of the higher paid city government that the new revenue buys.
Of course it didn’t seem to occur to Zahra that his admission about the FFFF post undermined his conspiracy theory that Bushala was somehow, somewhere tied to the new proposals by EDCO and Republic.
I observe that a third proposal, by CR&R offered four million bucks, upfront for street repair. This appeared to be seen as some sort of a philanthropic gift. It was seen as such by Councilman Nicholas Dunlap. This is naiveté or dumbness. Nobody works for free, and the cost of that four mil is obviously wrapped up in CR&Rs rate structure that would obviously be lower without their apparent upfront largesse.
The City’s special council mentioned that a lawsuit described as a precedent by opponents of the upfront payment idea was not really precedent since the matter was returned to a lower appeals court where the matter was settled without adjudication. According to this chap an upfront deal repayment would have to be legally justified based on the value of the franchise and that would be his job. I’m confused by this since the proposals by EDCO and Republic do not involve in-lieu franchise fees at all, but rather describe one-time monetary payments, exclusive of the in-lieu fee. This needs clarification.
On Tuesday the Fullerton City Council is going to address the topic of selecting the next solid waste hauler. This is a big deal, with a lot of money involved.
And so they did. I won’t bore the Friends with the various details of proposals because in the end each is offering different rates, services, and feel good community involvement, the last item a useless PR gesture that somebody in City Hall thought merited points in their selection calculations.
But two RFP respondents offered something else. Big loans to the City’s General Fund that would be recovered over many years via augmented rates.
EDCO has sweetened the pot by offering a $15,000,000 one time payment to the City to be recovered by a differential in the annual Consumer Price Index that is applied to fees.
Republic, the current hauler, is offering a $10,000,000 one time payment they are charmingly calling a “Community Enhancing Payment” which sounds better than “City of Fullerton Bailout.”
Obviously these two cash offer proposals would present the City Council immediate, if only very temporary, relief from the impending budget reserve liquidation, and will attract attention for that. The other positive political result could be the elimination of a November 2026 ballot tax question – a problem in getting on the ballot, and passage by the voters. However, the underlying structural budget deficit would remain and would need to be addressed, anyway, and immediately.
The formulas increasing the CPI scales would really be amount to a hidden tax on waste producing customers in Fullerton, and the City would be in the effective position of incurring debt leveraged on hauling fee increases. I presume the offerors and the City have investigated the legality of this.
Of the two proposers, EDCO was previously ranked first by a narrow margin, while Republic was in last place. The City’s relationship with Republic really soured during negotiations for SB 1383 when Republic did the old bait-and-switcheroo so there’s that to consider.
Meantime CR&R is promising $4,000,000 upfront to pay for road improvements – no strings attached – however there are always strings attached and in this case recovery of the 4 mil will certainly be reflected in rates higher than other proposers.
Is the upfront payment concept viable? I think so. It would buy some time for the City. But somebody would have to pay the piper, and somebody is still going to have to make the budget cuts required to balance a budget and no one has shown any appetite for this bitter menu. Appointing a useless committee to study things has been a waste of time. Almost.
One of the committee members did suggest the very thing that EDCO, Republic and CR&R are offering demonstrating that at least somebody was thinking of alternatives.
My guess is that “Dr.” Ahmad Zahra and Shana Charles will not support this big payment option, seeing great liberal virtue in imposing a 13% sales tax increase like the ill-fated measure M of 2020. On the other hand, that passage is a risky business and they need 4 votes to make it even get on the ballot. Nick Dunlap probably would not vote for putting a tax on the ballot, or going with the upfront payment plan. But his vote might not be needed. The waste contract only needs 3 votes. Where are Jung and Valencia? I guess we’ll find out Tuesday.
Why write about news when you can try to make your own! (Photo by Julie Leopo/Voice of OC)
Yes, indeed. In an editorial masquerading as some sort of news, Fullerton Observer sister Sikita Kennedy explained the failure of government and the ways in which that failure is dressed up to look like victory. This article appears to be an AI generated creation since the estimable Satskia has never shown this sort of perspicuity in the past, but, whatever. After you weed out the jargon some fundamental management truths emerge.
The topic of course is something almost nobody gives a rat’s ass about: getting rid of bike lockers at the train station, the reason given that they are underused. The awkward title shouts out “Fullerton’s Bicycle Lockers Spark Controversy Among Cyclists” as if an inanimate object has such puissance. Naturally, it’s the removal of said lockers that is causing Siska herself grief; not a solitary cyclist is interviewed or quoted in her essay.
But I digress. The topic is inconsequential, but the analysis of failure is quite remarkable and completely uncharacteristic. Kennedy seems to have finally discovered the cultural behavior of government bureaucracies that we have known all along. Let’s enjoy some of the fruits of her editorial labors:
Organizations in crisis rarely announce themselves as such.More often, they produce charts, reports, and performance metrics that tell a reassuring story — one that, on closer inspection, was shaped by the same decisions it purports to evaluate. This is one of the quieter dangers of institutional mismanagement: it doesn’t just damage an organization, it can generate the evidence that justifies its own continuation.
How perfectly true, and so descriptive of almost every staff and study report ever produced in Fullerton. The classic dodge is to answer a question that nobody asked.
“…a dispute over bicycle lockers is offering a textbook example of how low performance, manufactured by neglect, gets cited as the reason to eliminate the very thing being neglected.
Yes, indeed. Sort of sounds like the death-march noise ordinance fiasco, doesn’t it, wherein City failure to enforce codes results in the push to abandon the process of code enforcement altogether.
When managers make poor decisions, they typically face two options: change course or defend the course they’re on. Defense, in institutional settings, almost always involves data. The problem is that those same managers often control what data gets collected, how it gets measured, and how it gets reported.
Good Lord, Satkia, has had her come to Jesus revelation! The truth may yet set her free! How often have we seen a circling of the wagons, the manipulation of information to reinforce the error? Mostly data collection, crooked or otherwise, isn’t even necessary. Convoluted rhetoric often does the trick. Option number one never takes place.
A leader who has misallocated resources will tend to measure success in ways that don’t reveal the misallocation. A department head who has pursued the wrong strategy will frame performance indicators around the metrics where progress is easiest to show. Over time, the organization’s entire information infrastructure bends toward confirming decisions already made.
This is something we’ve seen time and time again. Throw out the jargon and it means this: “look over there.” The misdirection is so common as to be commonplace. This is what will happen when the City’s disastrous “fire fighter” ambulance driver chickens come home to the proverbial roost.
This is the classic mismanagement data trap: measuring outputs rather than outcomes, and then using those outputs to validate the decisions that produced them.
Amen, Sister, testify!
The “data trap” of measuring outputs was nowhere better seen than on the horrendously useless Trail to Nowhere, where the efforts were all about building something expensive and then patting yourself on the back for…building something expensive. But that wasn’t about a few piddling bike lockers, no, but the waste of $2,500,000, an irony lost on the Fullerton Observer editorial staff of two. The Observer Sisters will never expend a moment’s time worrying about actual users (or complete lack of same) on the “trail.”
One of the most common tools in this playbook is selective periodization — choosing a start date for measurement that makes current numbers look favorable by comparison. Applied to civic infrastructure, this often means measuring usage after a program has already been allowed to deteriorate, rather than tracking the arc from functional to neglected.
How funny. Siskia has had her epiphany, alright, but it sure is a selective enlightenment. Remember when staff tried to keep the ridiculous Waste on Wilshire going by citing low traffic on Wilshire after the street had been closed!
Organizations under poor leadership often commission external reviews that appear to provide independent accountability but are structured to confirm decisions already made. The questions given to reviewers shape the findings, and the questions come from the people who need favorable findings. The result carries the authority of objectivity while functioning as a mirror.
Let’s consider the very recent Grant Thornton report whose results were meant to cauterize a huge embarrassment without naming a single culprit or a single systemic failure. No outcries from the Observers, of course.
Cities do this too — with traffic studies, usage audits, and infrastructure assessments that are framed around the conclusion leadership has already reached. Whether that’s what’s happening with Fullerton’s active transportation data is a question advocates would do well to press publicly.
They sure do, Sitka. Who are you supposed to believe, your commonsense or the experts we have hired to back us up? Ahem, remember the “experts” hired to produce pro tax findings, pro development findings, pro this or pro that findings? In fact data supporting everything that the City Manager who hired them wants. The latest examples is that “traffic study” for the overbuilt Harbor/Hermosa project that will never in a million years stop the project as designed, from being built.
The antidote to data shaped by mismanagement is not more data — it’s differently sourced data, with different incentive structures attached to it. Independent audits are conducted by parties with no relationship to the decisions being evaluated. Performance metrics set before interventions begin, not after. Usage data is examined in the context of program accessibility, not in isolation.
Great Caesar’s Ghost! What a splendid statement of objective accountability and something that should be happening, at least occasionally, and not on some silly bike lockers, but on real issues where millions are spent, from hiring ambulance drivers to deciding if anybody is now going to use a new but previously failed park; on weather there is a chance in hell that anybody would patronize a “boutique” hotel at the Transportation Center.
There is a vast irony in the Observer’s new-found demand for objective standards to promote accountability – exactly the thing government employees dread. See, it’s the squalid world of professional management, and such accountability is not to be applied to government bureaucrats who are made of a finer material. They are working for us, see, and have a noble calling not to be subjected to accountability.
And it’s deliciously ironic that the new Observer spirit has been discovered due to some footling bike lockers, and not the decades long history of Fullerton disasters that nobody but FFFF has chronicled.
Might Sciatica Kennedy’s observations and suggestions be applied to future Fullerton mishaps? Bet not. But let’s enjoy them while we can.
Fullerton is supposed to have its budgets wrapped up by the end of June. That’s when fiscal years end and new ones begin. It’s in the Municipal Code.
But not this year. So a resolution was needed to keep the gears of government grinding in Fullerton at current levels so that “essential services” be maintained. At the June 16th meeting the City Council passed the appropriate resolution authorizing the continuation of the process into July. Here’s the casual explanation of what’s going on::
“Staff continues to evaluate revenue projections, expenditure estimates including cost containment and deficit reduction strategies, capital improvement requirements, reserve levels, organizational needs and other fiscal considerations as part of the FY 2026-27 budget development process.”
Permit me to translate the double talk: “a complete absence of leadership has stalled the process and nobody in City Hall has the remotest idea how to deal with the massive, impending budget shortfall except by taxation.”
Where there’s smoke…
We have seen over the past year the revitalization of the footling Budget Sustainability Committee that accomplished exactly nothing. Zero. Zip. Well, not quite nothing, because its members reflected the positions of those that appointed them. Dunlap’s appointee voted against all tax proposals offered up. Jung and Valencia’s appointees supported a half-cent special infrastructure tax, but not a general sales tax. Zahra and Charles’ appointees rejected a special sales tax and pushed for the one cent general sales tax.
One committee member suggested privatizing the Water Utility; another suggested borrowing from the deep pockets of the new (or old) waste hauler. Another idea was creating a business district to pay for the Downtown Fullerton deficit. Innovative concepts for a City on the edge of insolvency that got no traction. T he committee how disastrous budget cuts would be to the public, especially to the hallowed halls of “public safety” that sucks up the lion’s share of the budget. Service levels, donchaknow.
I don’t recall anybody discussing mandatory salary reductions. Maybe I missed it.
Which leaves the City with no viable tax path forward even getting one on the November ballot. Other revenue generating ideas went nowhere, including selling off real estate, particularly that where Water Fund activities are going on. Other ideas, such as selling the boutique hotel site aren’t practical because Council and staff and City Attorney have led to humiliation and fraud on the property and has seen it tied up in dispute.
Even as Fullerton’s “leaders” fiddled away their time, new information about huge accounting errors revealed the situation was even more dire than previously imagined.
It would be dereliction not to remind Friends that our illustrious City Council actually agreed to hire a bunch of ambulance drivers on credit and a dozen new “firefighters” at the behest of the their union even as the budget crisis loomed on the near horizon.
The other day I wrote a post wondering why the Fullerton Observer was advertising an upcoming issue that had already been decided by the Fullerton City Council on May 5th, to wit: denying an appeal for a condo project on the northwest corner of Harbor and Hermosa, previously rejected by the Planning Commission. An alert Friend pointed out that the issue had been forecast for 6/16/26 on the 6/2/26 agenda.
Hmm. It was. But the Observer Sisters said nothing about what that item said.
Satkia Kennedy on the job…
Here’s all that the forecast said: RESOLUTIONS TO DENY APPEAL FOR 111 WEST HERMOSA DRIVE. In other words, Silksia Kennedy passed along information not advertised by the City, by iimplying that the appeal was ongoing. I figured at first she got her information from either “Dr.” Ahmad Zahra or Shana Charles, the two boobs who voted to approve the appeal. Now I’m pretty sure she did.
Anyway, the item is returning for approval of a Resolution that will substantiate the denial by the Council majority. Our crack City Attorney has determined that an official Resolution stating necessary findings is required by State housing law, which seems pretty unusual to me, but whatever.
But those of us who have watched City staff manipulate councils over the years know well that an issue is never dead so long as the bureaucrats in City Hall are attached to it. In this case, Lo and Behold, another option is being presented, too: a Resolution approving the appeal! You read that aright. Maybe Siaska Kennedy was right after all, and the item is ongoing.
It seems that the developer, City Ventures, that wants to cram 32 units on little more than an acre, contacted the City on 5/19/26 with a last ditch proposal to do a traffic study to demonstrate the safety of their project in exchange for approval. Of course, the appeal approval Resolution is filled with all sorts of scary “facts” and findings that are meant to undermine the Planning Commission’s denial, and even the Council’s previous decision which should have been decisive. That should have been that.
The approval resolutions seem like a laundry list of issues presented to the developer on a silver platter to be used against the City. Jones and Mayer hard at work.
This is government by bureaucracy and I can only hope the Mayor wasn’t paying attention when this agenda and staff report were created.
12,968 units to go!!
And now of course all the usual monkeys will tumble out of the branches, orchestrated by Charles and Zahra and tender Elijah who thinks somebody owes him a house. Getting a job would do more for him.
What’s ironic about Fullerton Boohoo’s attachment to this project is that it only dedicates 5 “affordable units, and a mere 32 units overall. A tiny fraction of the 13,000 new units Fullerton Boohoo has bought into.
I hope the neighbors will show up for the hearing to defend the denial Resolution, and I hope the commonsense City Council members, if they say anything at all, have the courage to defend their previous position, although given past reversals I’m not sure that’s going to happen.
A week ago the Fullerton Observer Kennedy Sisters passed along a confused post about the City Council reviewing an appeal of a Planning Commission denial of the 32 unit project at Hermosa and Harbor, such appeal occurring on June 16th.
It’s not unlike the Fullerton Observer “amateurs” to post stupid, befuddled, or erroneous stuff, but this is perplexing even to Observer observers.
It looks like an old post has been carelessly updated, but why? My first thought was did somebody like Ahmad Zahra or Shana Charles want this to come back – maybe because it wasn’t officially “tabled” as an issue? This has happened before. The agenda for the June 16th meeting hasn’t been published yet, so it seems possible that somebody alerted the Kennedy Sisters that this was returning for some reason. Our first sharp-eyed commenter below point out that the issue was forecast in the 6/2/26 agenda for the next meeting to pass a resolution defending the appeal. Why? I don’t know other than this is a due diligence exercise. Maybe this is where the Sisters got the idea of a rolling issue.
It looks like mostly just another Observer gagglefuck – a garbled post carelessly published by the Sisters. Sadly, Fullerton Boohoo/Fullerton Self-righteous will no doubt exercise another “we need housing” circus to embarrass the Council majority and to take a shot at the hated NIMBYies in north Fullerton.
Anyone But Connor. Connor Traut, that is, the nebbish, desperate political carpetbagger, hack and descendant/acolyte of the corrupt Anaheim Cabal gang.
His mentor was the unspeakable Jordan Brandman, another young political climber who never held a job in his life that wasn’t handed to him.
Here’s the thing: vote for Jung, Espinosa or Shaw, if you vote at all. North Orange County has the ability today to be rid of the Connor Traut Experience once and for all. If by some chance this “establishment” Democrat gets elected we won’t be rid of his incessant political adventures for another 40 years as he bobs back and forth between Sacramento and the County Hall of Administration – making sure there is no government accountability every slimy step of the way.
Traut, on the right.
Here’s a thought, Connor: get out of politics, get a real job that you earned, if you can, and support your family making a contribution to society. Don’t end up like your mentor, Jordan Brandman.
If as is being claimed by “Erik” at Fullerton City News is unequivocally stating that Fullerton City staff has been unilaterally backfilling departmental funds without approval by the City Council. This would be unethical and illegal.
Elected officials have to approve these sorts of transfers from the General Fund as well as periodic budget adjustments. Period. Erik claims this has been going on for at least seven years and the amounts are substantial.
Erik uses this situation to suggest a City sales tax bailout is the wrong way to reward the bureaucrats who perpetrated this possibly criminal hairball.
Here is his post:
I’ve Got 24,816,001 Reasons To Not Support A Sales Tax
City Hall Spent $24.8 Million Without Council Approval And Now Wants A Tax Increase
Budgets are estimates, it’s an unpredictable world, and not getting it perfect is understandable. Fullerton City Hall staff and the city council are supposed to work together to determine how much money should go to each fund / department but ultimately it is the city council who, being elected, gets the final say on how we prioritize and spend that money. When council does this properly the residents are happy and councilmembers get re-elected, run for higher office, etc. When they don’t get it right they lose elections, get recalled, and/or face public scorn. The city council is our control mechanism over how our money is spent.
When a council appropriation ends up being more than what was needed, the remaining money can return to the General Fund without issue. When a council appropriation is not enough, the correct action is to request an increase from the city council. Again, city council is our control mechanism over how our money is spent. Staff does not have the legal authority to increase spending, only council does.
C. Transfers of appropriations between departments and funds, or use of salary and accounts, other than those exceptions authorized herein, may be made only by authority of the City Council.
D. Expenditures in excess of the budgeted amounts are prohibited. (Ord. 1485 § 5, 1967).
This should be clear and simple. Need more money? Go ask council for it. However, it appears City Hall chose not to follow this practice (or the law).
During a conference call with a municipal finance expert, I was directed to the ‘Budgetary Compliance’ Section of the City’s 2025 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR). They summarized that when that section is present in the report it means that something has gone wrong and in this case it’sby a lot. The ‘Excess’ column of this section lists money that city staff spent in excess of the council-approved budget and for2025 it totals $11,148,422.
Consider for a moment what this means. Our only way of having a say over how our taxpayer money is spent is through the city council. They are elected to represent us and our interests. The municipal code confirms this is their decision to make. Yet in FY25 unelected bureaucrats at City Hall simply ignored the city council and the voters they represent and went and spent whatever they wanted.
Police couldn’t manage on their budgeted $61.3M? They spent $63.9M.
Fire couldn’t operate on $34.6M? They spent $36.2M.
‘Capital Outlays’ went over by $6M. This one is especially troubling because there’s no clear explanation of what those funds were actually spent on.
Put another way, the city council budgeted a total of $132.9M to the General Fund but staff spent $144.1M … $11,148,422 of which was without council approval. You might notice on the Revenue side that we brought in $8.9M more than anticipated and should have had a $5.4M surplus. But staff’s $11,148,422 unauthorized spending pushed us from a large surplus to a $5.7M deficit.
This is a complete disregard of good financial practice by City Hall. While some overspending covers legitimate needs, the lack of prior approval violates the process residents rely on, a process that does not include staff spending whatever they want and stashing it on page 105 of next year’s ACFR. Their actions were in direct violation of the city municipal code and are a slap in our faces.
But wait… it gets worse. Much worse. If this were a one-time thing I could almost understand. But, Dear Readers, City Hall staff has disregarded city council approved budgets every single year for the past decade. See for yourself:
2024: $235,2482023: $455,176. And they were nice enough to put in a reminder that this was not legal spending.2022: $3,881,6252021: $5,057,613
Prior to 2021 accounting used a different format for the annual financial report known as the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) and the format is a little different, but the pattern of spending beyond authorization continues.
2020: $2,200,681.2019: $1,701,966
Starting in 2019 to present, staff has helped themselves to $24,816,001 of our taxpayer dollars beyond what our duly-elected council representatives legally allocated them. This money was taken without permission, outside of our established legal process, repeated every single year in recent history.This is an outrage.
Our current unrestricted cash reserves are $19.8M which, with a general fund of $144.1M gives us the current 14% reserve level. This is well below the council target of 17% and translates to 1-1/2 months. Had staff followed the budget all these years, our reserves could be as high as $44.6M which comes out to a 31% reserve level or 3-1/2 months. Or some of that could have gone to paving more streets.
But alas, it is already spent and gone and those who spent it are telling you to just give them more money via a sales tax increase. You should ask your councilmember how they feel about this, do they still trust City Hall, and what are they going to do about it?
We are being robbed.
Back to Harpoonville. This sounds pretty serious and I sure hope the crack accountants we have hired to check the books to explore a few facts:
How were these transactions booked and who authorized them?
Were the transactions simply glossed over in annual CAFRs and budgets without saying who approved them?
When, if ever did the Fullerton City Council approve these transfers? Were any of them ratified after the transfers were made?
We have already seen the City play fast and loose with Redevelopment Successor Agency funds as well as other non-discretionary funds to pad the invalid General Fund. That was bad. And in retrospect, maybe those transfers were just part of an overall pattern of misfeasance.
