Sharon Quirk
Sharon Quirk is a councilmember in the City of Fullerton.
Now, What About Our Water Tax Refund? Part 2: The Phony Report
Posted by Joe Sipowicz in Chris Norby, Chronic Failure, Dead heads, Dick Jones, Don Bankhead, Former Fullerton Councilmembers, Pam Keller, Repuglicanism, Setting The Bar Low, Sharon Quirk, The Culture of Corruption, Watch Your Wallet on January 7, 2013
When you are in charge of the City’s bureaucracy, it’s really easy to get what you want. You simply hire a “professional” opinion to validate your own desire. Good God, it happens so often and yet they continue to get away with it.
For fun, lets’ consider the case of the City of Fullerton’s illegal water tax tax. In 2011 the City was finally caught with its pants down. And what was revealed wasn’t pretty: an illegal 10% tax stuck onto the annual cost of selling water to the ratepayers of Fullerton. In an attempt to stall the inevitable and obfuscate the obvious, the comatose council handed the job of analyzing the tax to an ad hoc water rate committee that had been previously established.
Now we all know that a citizen’s committee is incapable of figuring out things on its own and so staff helpfully hired one of those paid opinion consultants to help out; one of those consultants whose sole mission is to validate whatever the staff wants them to do. In this case the mission was to keep as much of that 10% as possible. After all, that 10% was a much necessary ingredient for for keeping up CalPERS payments and sending Pam Keller and Don Bankhead and Doc HeeHaw to four star hotels in far off Long Beach.
True to form, the City Council’s “consultant” returned with a helpful finding that the water fund owned the City between six and seven percent annually, principally on the weird fiction that the water utility owed the City rent for land that the water reservoirs and pipes sit on.
Naturally, nobody bothered to explain the embarrassing fact that the land in question had little or no commercial value; or that the water utility could have bought that land for virtually nothing fifty years ago had a true arms-length distance actually existed between the utility and the City that was milking it like a rented cow.
An, worst of all, nobody had explained the self-serving nature of this sudden discovery of a true distinction between the water utility and the City, particularly in light of the fact that the utility had supplied the City with free water for decades.
That’s right. The very mechanism lade upon you and me to “incentivise” conservation, was deemed unnecessary when the City itself was wasting water. How many hundreds of thousands of acre feet of water has been used for free by the City in the past fifty years? Of course nobody knows. But the value is worth millions.
I think the City should pay that back, too.
Sharon Quirk, Poor Little Rich Girl and The Myth of the Union/Corporation Dichotomy
Posted by Joe Sipowicz in About Us, Behind Closed Doors, Boohooism, Sharon Quirk, The Culture of Corruption, Tom Daly, Union Goons, Watch Your Wallet on December 3, 2012
I was struck the other day by a post on the Voice of OC(EA) about Sharon Quirk that started out with Q complaining that there is now a target on her back by the GOP who want their Republican seat back. The rest of the post is the typical mush-drivel we’ve come to expect of the local media so I’ll let that pass.
What intrigued me was the absurdity of making yourself out to be a target by the very sorts of people who got you elected. What am I talking about? Check out this post from OC Political. Quirk got almost $300,000 funneled into her campaign account over the course of 18 days – laundered through various county Democrat Central Committees, including obscure Del Norte County – 800 miles away.
As expected, a lot of it came from public employee unions. But a lot of it also came from giant corporations like AECOM, Blue Shield, AEG, and of course, our good friends at Disney. So it would appear that Quirk was obviously looked favorably upon by these corporate behemoths, despite their subsequent attempts to distance themselves from their odd gifts to distant Democratic County Central Committees.
Which brings me to the point of this post.
The whining lefties are forever complaining that the lavish benefits, pay and massive pensions showered upon public employee unions are somehow a necessary counterbalance to all the misfeasance and excessive compensation of those greedy private business exec bastards. Of course it was always a false choice, but that falsity has never been made clearer by the fact of big corporations bellying up to Quirk’s bar.
The fact of the matter is that big corporations like big government. They are comfortable with it; they profit from it. Whether Republicans or Democrats are at the helm matters not a whit. Think big corporate subsidies, tax loopholes, and onerous regulations that chase small businesses out of business and you will start to get the picture. Big business likes balanced government budgets, and if that takes raising taxes on the rest of us, so be it. The very last thing they want is a small government advocate like Chris Norby. Think OC Business Council and you will understand that these people have no interest in anything other than a smoothly run plantation. You and I are the coolies that make the thing run for the benefit of our overseers.
Or to put it another way, the public employee unions and the big corporations both regard the taxpayer the same way: we are just pigeons to be plucked.
It’s actually rather amusing that Sharon Quirk is trying to gin up sympathy for her re-election against the big, mean Republicans, even before she is sworn in. Her dim-witted supporter may fall for that. She really doesn’t have anything to worry about.
Just ask Mickey Mouse.
Quirk Is Afraid of Would be Anaheim Constituents; Blows Off Meeting
Posted by admin in Chronic Failure, Dead heads, Sharon Quirk, The Culture of Corruption, Union Goons, Watch Your Wallet on October 30, 2012
Lost In Space
I just received some interesting news about our Mayor Sharon Quirk who is running for the State Assembly – and its both embarrassing and telling.
I have it on real good authority that Ms. Quirk was invited to a “meet the candidate night” by the good folks in the unincorporated West Anaheim Island – a large area of unincorporated Orange County.
Now theses are the very people Quirk’s political handlers said she would do well with – the working class people of Anaheim’s flatlands, so you would think Quirk would jump at the chance to mingle with her peeps.
Nuh uh.
No, Anaheim is the other way!
Apparently at first she just ignored the West Island Neighborhood group, and finally some campaign flunky responded saying that it might be a trap to embarrass Quirk with – questions! That sure has the ring of truth since a quick trip to Quirk’s website shows a cardboard cut out candidate who steadfastly refuses to take a position on any of the important propositions on the ballot this fall – including Governor Brown’s new tax and spend plans.
Nice work, Ms. Quirk.
Welcome To Floryland
Posted by The Fullerton Shadow in Chronic Failure, Former Fullerton Councilmembers, Fullerton BooHoo, Fullerton City Council Candidates, Gin Flurry, I Ain't a Swallerin' That, Setting The Bar Low, Sharon Quirk, The Culture of Corruption, Transparency, Union Goons, Watch Your Wallet on October 18, 2012
The closer you look, the worse it gets.
When you have an inflated sense of self-worth it must be hard to come up against a wall of objective facts that square with the reality everyone else sees. Thus narcissists and paranoiacs must concoct a narrative that seems to embrace those facts and yet tell the myth you want everyone to believe about yourself.
And so we have Jan Flory: a rigid, humorless, sometimes near-hysterical defender of an ideology that has placed California on the edge of financial insolvency. Think Greece.
Flory’s ridiculous muumuus and wooden beads are symbolic of a much more sinister problem: a fundamental dishonesty about herself and her corrupt mind set.
But don’t take my word for it. Lets examine Flory’s own Facebook rants. Like this latest, with added commentary by me.
DRIP, DRIP, DRIP
At 12:15 a.m. last night, the City Council took up the question of how to refund $7.3 million to people who overpaid their water bills in our city over the past 3 years. Mayor Sharon Quirk moved to continue the matter to the next city council meeting because of the late hour. Doug Chaffee concurred. Bruce Whitaker, Travis Kiger and Greg Sebourn voted to go forward no matter how late or how tired the council members. It also might have had something to do with the fact that the audience had dwindled to a handful by that time. So much for transparency and accountability.
Or it might have had something to do with the fact that hours and hours of time had been unnecessarily wasted by Quirk and Chaffee promoting the candidacy of Danny Hughes as Chief, despite the fact that the Council had already decided it wanted to do a wide recruitment instead of ramming home the inside goon. Transparency? Check. Accountability? Check.
Reality? If Flory is tired and can’t stay up past Murder She Wrote reruns on cable she shouldn’t be on any city council.
A little history first: To begin with, the water fee was never an “illegal water tax”.
Lie number one. Keep counting.
The water tax was first adopted in 1968 at 2% of the water bill. The purpose of the tax was to pass through to the ratepayers (you and me) the city’s cost of getting water to your tap. Fair enough. The tax increased to 10% in 1970. We had aging reservoirs, pumps and water lines that needed replacement and ongoing maintenance. The water fee was a way to do that.
Now that’s just another series of outright lies. But let’s not let the facts stand in the way of a good story, right? The 10% was originally cooked up to divert revenue into the General Fund to pay for the City Attorney and City Administrator. IT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH ONGOING MAINTENANCE AND AGING INFRASTRUCTURE. Flory could have actually read the ordinance but that wouldn’t have been as fun making something up.
In any case there was never any accounting to see how bad the rip off really was, and in the old days water was dirt cheap, right?
In 1996, the California voters passed Proposition 218 which required there be a connection between a fee charged and the services rendered. In other words, you couldn’t just pull a number (like 10%) out of the air.
One truth accidentally tumbles out!
Proposition 218 was tested and upheld by the courts beginning in 2002.
Aha! Flory slips in a date to give herself an alibi for her own approval of the illegal tax for six years! Too bad that upon learning the truth she and her cohorts continued to steal the 10% each and every year for the next NINE YEARS. No talk about fixing the rip-off, apologizing to the ratepayers, trying to reclaim even a small mole hill of moral ground. Nope.
The Water Rate Study Committee was authorized by the OLD council long before the Recall to address concerns about the 10% charge to the Water Fund.
And at whose behest? Not city staff or you, Flory, we can be sure of that. It was political pressure that did it.
Ultimately, the study committee determined this summer that the city should have been charging in the neighborhood of 7% rather than 10% in order to comply with 218.
Another outright lie. The Committee determined no such thing. The staff-chosen consultant cooked up a phoney number to keep as much of the rip-off as possible including exorbitant rents paid to the City! Even Quirk said it was ridiculous!
The committee relied on the work of an independent financial consultant, Municipal Financial Services Group (MFSG), to determine the City’s cost in providing water to its customers, and outside legal counsel (Best, Best & Krieger) to make sure that the outcome comported with Proposition 218.
Independent? Now that’s just comical!
The results were even submitted to the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association that concurred with the methodology used in the study.
Wrong, again. But by now is anybody counting?
The NEW council majority threw all that out the window, disregarded the recommendations of the Water Rate Study Committee, and completely eliminated the “in lieu” fee. That will have the effect of reducing city revenues annually by $1.7 million which could have properly been charged by the city to bring water to our homes.
Let’s all gloss over the fact that no one has ever said a proper water rate shouldn’t cover costs of maintenance and infrastructure. If it doesn’t Flory has only her own beloved staff to blame – those same incompetent bureaucrats like Chis Meyer and Joe Felz who have let the City’s infrastructure go to hell as they feathered their own nests handsomely. In the meantime, the “in-lieu” fee had no legal rationale for existing since it wan an obvious triple dip. Step one was to get rid of it. Step two is find out what the true costs of running the water utility really is, and charge it to the ratepayers.
Because the city had charged its water customers 10% (rather than 7%), the Water Rate Study Committee found that the city had overcharged the rate payers the sum of $7.3 million over the last 3 years.
Once again, those were the cooked up findings of the hired “consultant.”
It recommended that the overpayment of the water fee be accomplished by an incremental transfer from the General Fund to the Water Fund to be used for infrastructure repairs,–something that desperately needs addressing. This would also avoid the City’s incurring debt to pay the debt.
Um, see comment above. How did the water infrastructure get so bad, Mrs. Flory? You were on the City Council for eight long years. Do want to take responsibility for that? What? Speak up!
What did the new Libertarian majority do? It voted to rebate the entire $7.3 million back to the rate payers. It is estimated that this will be a onetime payment of $100 to $400 per household depending on how much water was used during the 3 years.
The horror. Government giving back something it stole!
It’s an accounting nightmare for several reasons. The overpayment has to be calculated for each household in the city. Some residents have moved or died; thus, creating the dilemma of finding out where to send the money.
But Jan, are you saying your beloved staff can’t figure out a way to print and send out some checks? Hell, they manage to send out the water and trash bills every month.
Finally, the question of where the money is to come from must be determined. We don’t have enough in the General Fund to pay the lump sum. Staff suggested that a debt issuance might be necessary, with an estimated yearly debt service of $500,000.
Put away the violin Mrs. Flory. Step up and take your medicine. You and Bankhead and Jones and McKinley ripped us off for 15 years. YOU figure out how to make it right!
So now we not only have a decrease of $1.7 million in revenue, but we need to add $500,000 for debt service. This totals $2.2 million if you’re counting.
See, it’s all about government revenue, the altar at which the egregious muumuu clad priestess Flory worships. Yes we can count and we know whose balance sheet this belongs on – even though it’s on ours.
Last night, the council majority (Whitaker, Kiger and Sebourn) directed staff to find “creative ways” to pay off the debt such as selling off surplus properties. In other words, asking city staff to remove the rope the council majority had put around its own neck.
Wrong, again, Flory. They are asking city staff to do the right thing, and remove the rope YOU put around our necks for all those years.
Change on the Council cannot come quickly enough. Drip, drip, drip.
It’s coming all right. be careful of what you wish for.
Sooner or Later, Social Justice For Kelly Thomas
Posted by Mr. Peabody in A Step in the Right Direction, Dead heads, Dick Jones, Don Bankhead, Fullerton BooHoo, Gin Flurry, Home Town Hero, Pam Keller, Patdown Pat McPension, Sharon Quirk, Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Crime Beat, The Culture of Corruption, The Observer, Up In The Attic, Watch Your Wallet on October 16, 2012
It’s funny, in a sick sort of way, but the very types who used to bray the loudest about the need for “social justice” have been virtually silent in Fullerton in the wake of the Kelly Thomas murder at the hands of members of an out-of-control police department.
The graying establishment Democrats had been hiding behind their drawn chintz curtains, curled up in an intellectual fetal position on their plastic slip-covered Naugahyde sofas. It was just too scary and, well, controversial to say anything, let alone actually do anything.
Fortunately, others, such as Stephan Baxter, Marlena Carrillo and Lauren Becker are willing to keep up the pressure.
Here is a link to Becker’s website that reminds us exactly what a Culture of Corruption can do, and try to get away with, when left to its own devices. It also reminds us what we can do to push back against an entrenched system.
The bars stayed open and the bands played on…
Democrats like Jan Flory, and Molly McClanahan and Pam Keller didn’t say a word in the aftermath of the murder. No, they only got outraged when people outside their cozy little circle took the reins of government out of the hands of three incompetent old fools.
These people are a lot more worried about the fate of the bureaucracy than they are about the people of Fullerton. All of them.
We Get Mail
Posted by Joe Sipowicz in Behind Closed Doors, Boohooism, Chronic Failure, Dead heads, Fullerton BooHoo, Fullerton City Council Candidates, Gin Flurry, Pam Keller, Setting The Bar Low, Sharon Quirk, The Culture of Corruption, Union Goons, Watch Your Wallet on October 12, 2012
I just picked up these missives from the FFFF in-box this morning. First this:
I know who Iwant to work for, and it isn’t you!
Hey, FFFFsters, I just want to point out the obvious. Jan Flory just got fourteen grand, cash, from the corrupt cop union. She also got ten grand from some land developer named Phelps. The rest of her dough came from “retired” individuals, most of them former public employees.
Cops, developers, massively pensioned government workers. Wow. Talk about special interests!
- Sick of BooHoos
Good point, S.o.B. And then this:
I was driving along Chapman a few days ago and saw Pam Keller on the corner of Harbor. She was holding up a sign promoting the candidacy of Rick Alvarez, a Republican! Here’s what I want to know. Why won’t the establishment Dems in this town support a real good candidate like Jane Rands? Why the Hell not? What is wrong with Keller, and Quirk and Flory and their ilk?
Are they so in bed with the FPOA thugs and baboons that they can’t recognize an authentic progressive? I guess that question answers itself.
- ACLU Mom
Good point, Mom. The Old Guard liberals in Fullerton don’t stand for anything, of course, except for the prerogatives conferred upon the department heads in City Hall (see first letter, above). Please address you questions to Keller herself and see if you can get an intelligible answer. Or you could ask this gentleman:
Working on an answer…
Acting Chief Danny Playing Games?
Posted by Disillusioned Ex-Hippy in Chronic Failure, Dead heads, Gin Flurry, MSM Falls on Face, Sharon Quirk, Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Crime Beat, The Culture of Corruption, Union Goons, Watch Your Wallet on October 8, 2012
Believe it or not, Acting Chief Dan Hughes, the alleged “reform” chief the Fullerton Police Department needs so desperately seems to the beneficiary of a campaign – to have himself appointed Chief permanently.
Check out this:
So who’s playing games? Is it our amiable Acting Chief who seems to have zero control over his badged and armed goons?
Or perhaps it is the greasy little mole Doug Chaffee who decided to agendize the issue of giving Hughes the job even though the council majority has stated that it wants to do a recruitment to get the best candidate for the job. Nice job politicizing a personnel appointment.
Now I don't know about you, but I believe the appointment of Hughes to permanently take over the cesspool would be pretty bad. The Old Guard would dearly love the voters of Fullerton to think the Kelly Thomas murder was a weird one-off, something that can never happen again because Rusty Kennedy has taught the poor, unwitting Fullerton cops how to deal with the mentally ill homeless population.
They always cleaned up after me!
Um, not so fast, Mrs. Flory. Please explain the following personnel issues and embarrassing events that have occurred under the rancid regime of which Acting Chief Danny has been a lead player:
1) Erroneous raid on Robin Nordell's home. No apology for a year.
2) Kelly Mejia steals iPad from Miami TSA checkpoint.
3) Todd Major rips off Explorers to feed pill habit.
4) Miguel Siliceo popped for sending wrong man to jail.
5) Kenton Hampton assaults and arrests and tries to convict innocent Veth Mam.
6) Ditto Frank Nguyen.
7) Cary Tong violates policy in arrest of Trevor Clark; City sued.
8) Albert Rincon sexually assaults as many as a dozen women in his custody; civil suit settled by two victims for $350,000.
9) Vince Mater charged by DA with destruction of evidence after the jailhouse suicide of Dean Gochenour.
10) April Baughman arrested for ripping off the FPD evidence room for a period of years. Where is the accomplice? Who was taking inventory? Such things are not for us to know.
11) City sued again - by Edward Quinonez who alleges he was accosted and falsely arrested by - Kenton Hampton. What a multi-tasker!
12) Phony "horning" tickets handed out by FPOA boss Barry Coffman to intimidate protesters; Hughes is seen sending out instructions.
13) DA charges Manuel Ramos, Joe Wolfe and Jay Cicinelli in the death of Kelly Thomas; Hughes lets them view video, re-write reports, pats all on back, handshakes all around and lets them stay on streets.
14) Danny says he's watched video 400 times; says it will give public the real story (he is right).
15) Danny says those who perceive a Culture of Corruption are liars or ignorant.
15) Danny returns Craig, Hampton and Blatney to duty.
16) Permit Internal Affairs Sergeant Jason Sheen to bring a bong into the council chamber for demonstration in front of kiddie soccer players.
I don't know about you, but I have seen as much of Acting Chief Danny as I care to. It's obvious this man is a congenial glad-hander. But he is inextricably entangled in the Culture of Corruption with absolutely no interest in recognizing past FPD malfeasance, let alone atoning for it.
Just as bad, it is clear from recent events that he has absolutely no control, or no interest in controlling his employees.
The Price of Integrity May Be Lower Than You Think
Posted by Joe Sipowicz in Chronic Failure, Dead heads, Setting The Bar Low, Sharon Quirk, Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Culture of Corruption, The Fullerton Recall, Union Goons, Watch Your Wallet on October 2, 2012
What would you do for $5000?
Here is Sharon Quirk heaping praises on her supporters in the FPOA. She is proud of her police force. Why? She doesn’t really say.
Is it the fact that they are one of the most expensive police forces, per capita in Orange County?
Is it the hard work of “Alby Al” Albert Rincon, the serial molester of women detainees?
Is it the hard work of Kenton Hampton who beat up and arrested and had prosecuted an innocent man?
Is it the hard work of Miguel “Sonny Black” Saliceo who through malice or laziness ID’d the wrong man who spen 5 months in jail?
Is it the hard work of Andrew Goodrich who kept spinning half-truths and outright lies during his rancid tenure as PIO?
Is it the hard work of the cops who tried to pin a completely bogus hit and run rap on George Bushala?
Is it the hard work of the on-duty cops who, on 2010 started dumping obscenity laced threats on the FFFF blog?
Is it the hard work of Todd Major who ripped off Explorers to feed hi pill habit?
Is it the hard work of Kelly Mejia who tried to steal an Ipad by hiding under her bag of chicken at a Miami TSA checkpoint?
Is it the hard work of April Baughman who ripped off the evidence room for years without detection?
Is it the hard work of Manuel Ramos, the grossly obese killer of Kelly Thomas?
Is it the hard work of Joe Wolfe, the cop who initiated the assault on Kelly Thomas with his baton?
Is it the hard work of Jay Cicinelli who tased KT numerous times and then beat his face to jelly.
Is it the hard work of Hampton, Blatney and Craig who appeared on the scene long enough to add their weight to the chest compression that killed Kelly?
Is it the hard work of the watch commander, Tom “Tango” Basham who watched the KT killing unfold?
Is it the hard work of Danny Hughes, the Fullerton Six boss who told them they had done a good job and put them back on the street?
Well, that’s enough slime for today.
So what would you do to get the Fullerton cop union endorsement?
Kitty Had A Party
Posted by The Fullerton Shadow in Boohooism, Chronic Failure, Dead heads, Fullerton BooHoo, Fullerton City Council Candidates, Gin Flurry, Setting The Bar Low, Sharon Quirk on September 18, 2012
Yeah, right.
Since I do not want to be accused of being sexist I shall refrain from a literary reference to Macbeth. I would note however that there is not enough brainpower in this picture to light a match.
Two observations. First “Kitty” Jaramillo seems to think it is “time for a change.” She never seemed to think it was time for a change when the FPD was beating people to death, so that tells you all you need to know about her, even if you didn’t know she was a well-pensioned former City employee.
I ain’t a swallerin’ that!
Somebody better tell Mrs. Flory to quit wearing those rayon muu muu things and those cheap plastic beads. They scream out 1973. Which is probably when she bought them. Meeeeow. Hiss!!!!
P.S. Friends, for an added treat enjoy this picture of FPOA boss and serial prevaricator (or hoplessly incompetent) Andrew Goodrich proclaiming the Jaramillo buffet safe for FPOA consumption.
“Several guest sustained broken bones rushing for the cold taquitos.”
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