Category: Watch Your Wallet

Posted onChronic Failure

A Day at the Races

by 173 Comments on A Day at the Races

Here is a snapshot of a gaggle of Jan Flory supporters proudly wearing their T-shirts at Los Alamitos Racetrack! How they got a T shirt on the that old nag is anybody’s guess.

See if you can find the old nag.

I don’t know who the [dopey looking] guy is on the far right, but the bald, beady-eyed gent in the back is F. “Paul” Dudley, Jan Flory’s old drinking buddy. He’s the creep who gave away the public sidewalk to the Florentine mob, and who played a pivotal role in every single Jan Flory approved boondoggle from 1994 through 2002.

Whirlaway. Win, place or show?

It’s hard to imagine these people getting their greasy mitts on any sort of authority in Fullerton again. But what to I know? I’m just a dead dog. And Don Bankead is running again!

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Posted onSetting The Bar Low

I Don’t ♥ Fullerton Police

by 136 Comments on I Don’t ♥ Fullerton Police

I am still struggling to get over the images from last week’s city council meeting in which one city councilman donned an “I ♥ Fullerton Police” t-shirt while another declared proudly “I support the Fullerton Police Department.” Another incongruous image also hard to clear from my mind: a city council chambers and adjoining room spilling over with people sporting the same t-shirts with the same baffling message.


Mr. Chafee and Mayor Quirk-Silva, I hope you don’t mind me telling you why I find these statements so inexplicable.


The Fullerton Police Department is an institution – an organization which hires individuals to enforce laws. In the last 16 months or so the number of reports of incidents of police misconduct and resulting lawsuits grew exponentially. The Kelly Thomas killing represented the brutality and savagery of out-of-control police, not merely locally, but globally. The brutally damaged face of Kelly dying in the hospital became an iconic image showing the depth of depravity to which law enforcement in our country has stooped. This was then followed by report after report of other victims of Fullerton police brutality: assaults, battery, false imprisonment, sexual assault, false arrest, perjury. Few if any of these crimes by the police were prosecuted, as if police officers in the City of Fullerton were far above the laws they ostensibly enforce. It wasn’t that long ago.  OC Weekly did a whole cover story on “The Bullies in Blue.” Do you remember? You should. Your police force was the shame of the nation.

I’m sure you remember the name Kelly Thomas, because the citizens have insisted that you don’t forget. Do you remember the following names?  Veth Mam. Andrew Trevor Clarke. Edward Quinonez. Emmanuel Martinez.Christopher Spicer Janku. How about the nameless victims of Albert Rincon, Vincent Mater, John Cross, and many others whom you “support” and now publically ♥?

Mr. Chafee and Ms. Quirk-Silva, do you know there were others brutalized by the police who were too afraid to talk, even to us? That they told us stories of being randomly assaulted but refused to go public because of fear that they would be falsely accused and charged if they did? How many others are out there, severely assaulted, beaten, and tortured by “our” police?

These crimes were committed by individual members of the Fullerton police, but the lack of investigations, adequate disciplinary measures (would anything less than firing be appropriate when you look at the details of these cases?), or reports on what the department leadership is going to do to prevent these things from happening again has NOT been forthcoming. All we have as evidence that the department has supposedly reformed – righted these wrongs, fired the brutalizers, implemented mechanisms to ensure that none of this can happen again – is their word. Is that word really good enough, given the severity of the crimes?

We need some type of law enforcement in Fullerton, but we need law enforcement that does not commit harm against the public. This is not a political stance, this is a public right – as basic and elementary a right as we have. The public’s right to safety from its own police comes before loyalty to an institution of government, before political alliances, before personal friendships with officers or officials, before the considerations of endorsements or campaign contributions or ideology or anything else. As elected officials you must serve the public and serving us means protecting us – in this case, from our police department who have shown that they are fully capable of inflicting grievous harm upon vulnerable citizens.

I do not understand how one can in good conscience embrace, love, or unconditionally support an institution that has a history of violently committing harm against the public. Voting your conscience or your beliefs on the issue of soliciting a bid from a rival law enforcement institution is one thing. Expressing love and support for an institution that has repeatedly hurt innocent members of the public, in front of a room swarming with police officers and their supporters, is a slap in the face to the victims and to the citizens of your city.

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Posted onBoohooism

The Blank is Back!

by 103 Comments on The Blank is Back!
Pudding cups!

Tanned rested and ready, after a 9 week hiatus, Don Bankhead, retired police captain, stumblebum, incompetent, tired, phraser of spoonerisms, and the only man in the 162 year-old history of California to be recalled from the same office twice, is back.

Yes, indeedy, recently ousted Fullerton councilman Don Bankhead filed papers yesterday to run for city council this fall – marking his tenth election to get or hold that esteemed position.

Even after the meteorite hit him in the noggin, Blank jumped right back into the game. After all his legacy was at stake. Damn mammals.

You really have to wonder what motivates Bankhead at this point, if anything beyond senile stubbornness. Who he thinks his supporters are is hard to fathom. Perhaps he was encouraged by a room full of cops and cop apologists wearing blue shirts. Blue is Don’s favorite color. Does he believe the FPOA and the fire union will back a clueless octogenarian exhibiting signs of evident cognitive dissonance? Well of course they will!

Still, it will be interesting to see which cruel, thoughtless persons signed his nominating papers.

In a way it’s sort of sad to see a man whom time has so evidently passed by deny the reality: two thirds of the voters in the recent Recall voted to get rid of him.

 

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Posted onBehind Closed Doors

What To Do About The Illegal Water Tax

by 87 Comments on What To Do About The Illegal Water Tax

On Tuesday the City Council is scheduled to discuss what they want to do about the embarrassing fact that the City charged an illegal 10% tax on our water bill for fifteen years, amassing a total rip-off that easily topped $25,000,000. The funds were deposited in General Fund and mostly went to pay for salaries and pensions of City employees that had absolutely nothing to do with the acquisition and transmission of water – the ostensible purpose of the levy. It even went to pay for four-star hotels for Councilmembers’ League of City junkets.

Some folks think reparations are due, in some fashion, to the rate payers that got ripped off. But how? A check in the mail? Lowered rates in the future? Repayment from the General Fund to the Water Fund?

The City doesn’t have $25 mil laying around, and rebates in the future for past indiscretions would certainly create inequities. Going back just a few years for reparations may be a logical and practical step. Repayment from the General Fund over time may be the only recourse and would certainly address the original purpose of the “in-lieu fee” which was the cost of delivering water to the people and businesses of Fullerton. However it should be pointed out that the the 10% that was raked off was never connected to the true cost of the water in the first place.

Another question to be dealt with is what is an applicable rate for miscellaneous City costs that are currently unrecompensed by the Water Fund? There isn’t much unaccounted for, and the “consultant” for the Water rate Ad Hoc Committee tried to cook up some phony percentage between 6 and 7 based largely on the cost of the City charging the Water Fund rent!

This raises all sorts of embarrassing questions about why the Water Utility was not permitted to acquire all this valuable real estate in the first place, dirt cheap, if now it is to be treated as a separate entity; and how a landlord can negotiate rent with his tenant when they are both one and the same person. In any case there is a new council that is a lot less likely to cave in to this sort of nonsense than the old stumblebums.

In any case, I want to mention a couple of things. First, the perpetrators of the scam need to be identified and chastised for their complicity in the tax: they would be all of the former councilmen of the last 15 years who let this happen; the city managers Jim Armstrong, Chris Meyer, and Joe Felz, who participated in the scheme and who either knew or should have known it was illegal; and let’s not forget Richard Jones, Esq., the City Attorney, who was there every single step of the way and damn well knew it was illegal. Second, Joe Felz’ obvious strategy of stalling and temporizing on this issue, aided and abetted by the Three Hollow Logs and Sharon Quirk, protracted the rip-off by another full year and compounded the problem even more, even as they knew the jig was up.

It should be interesting to see if any of our aspiring council candidates show up to share their wisdom on this subject.

What do you think?

 

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Posted onChronic Failure

A Sobering Thought…

by 198 Comments on A Sobering Thought…

Here’s something that ought to give Fullerton voters pause as they contemplate the upcoming election in November:

Will the cruise feature an open bar?

The bitter bag of bile that got up and harangued the council the other night, Jan Flory, is running to resume a job she was fired from ten years ago. Mrs. Flory seems to believe that her election will be “a cruise” because she will have the backing of the police union. She is as wrong as she can be, and that’s saying a hell of a lot.

You see, Mrs. Flory has had her head stuck in the sand the past year as her pals in the FPOA have been exposed in one humiliating crime after another. Where Flory sees sweetness and light, reasonable citizens (not the claque of union stooges in the audience the other night) see a Culture of Corruption.

Will Mrs. Flory ever expound upon the doings of Albert Rincon the serial sex offender; or Kelly Mejia, the computer thief; or Vince Mater, destroyer of evidence; or April Baughman, property room thief; or Miguel Siliceo who sent the wrong man to jail for five months; or any the various cases, already filed, of physical abuse of citizens by cops in downtown Fullerton? Don’t count on it. Accountability is not one of Mrs. Flory’s long suits.

Which brings us to Flory’s own record on the Fullerton City Council, an eight year reign of error, characterized by an impressive effluvium of paranoia and vindictiveness.

During her tenure on the council she backed boondoggle after boondoggle as FFFF has painfully detailed on our pages. She approved massive development projects that included giving away air rights and streets that were bought and paid for by the public. For six years she approved an illegal 10% tax on our water to pay for the salaries, pensions and perks for her union allies and herself. In 1994 she stated publicly that she wished the completely unnecessary utility tax were doubled. She voted for the disastrous 3@50 pension benefit that has created a massive unfunded pension liability.

Fullerton voters will most certainly be reminded of her record, real soon.

In 2002 the voters had seen enough and drove this harridan out of office. Will 2012 be a cruise for Mrs. Flory?

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Posted onBehind Closed Doors

CSUF Giving Up on “University Heights” Fiasco?

by 178 Comments on CSUF Giving Up on “University Heights” Fiasco?
Those birds won’t be coming home to roost. Not if CSUF can help it.

A few years ago Cal State Fullerton decided to get into the housing business for its employees. Why public employees should get any sort of preferential treatment for housing is beyond me, but that’s the society in which we live.

Anyway, the whole thing turned out to be a massive disaster, but not an embarrassment, of course, for such things are not permitted in the lofty ether of educratic circles. FFFF posted about it here, and here.

Recap: the university made a deal with the Elks for land up on Elk Hill and sold a bond to build a bunch of cookie-cutter tract duplexes that were to be sold to professors and administrators, and such like, and subsidized by you and me. The only problem was that an underlying deed restriction required sale to others in the same category, an encumbrance that turned out to be a lot more than a mere nuisance, especially when real estate prices were plummeting all over the place.

The university also had the responsibility to make monthly payments to the Elks for their land, which were to passed on to lucky buyers: a sort of Mello-Roos arrangement, if you will.

The eggheads never made it to Egghead Hill

But nobody was buying. So the university opened up residence to any government workers. Still no sales. Finally they just started renting them out to anybody with a cleaning deposit and first month’s rent. Could it get worse?

Looks like it could. Persistent rumors suggest that CSUF wants out of the University heights disaster altogether by completely removing the deed restriction and just selling them off – individually or as a group – no doubt at fire sale prices. They obviously need the cash.

The losses on the original deal would be quietly swept under the rug – no doubt with diminishing fund balances bailing out the catastrophe.

And what for? According to an acquaintance at Western Law School, CSUF wants to buy their facility for $20,000,000, give or take, and metastasize across State College.

It’s pretty clear to me that the CSUF appetite for real-estate wheeling and dealing is insatiable, even as the CSU system teeters on the financial brink. It’s also clear that nobody is going to be held accountable for the University Heights quagmire. F. “Dick” Jones, the City mastermind, is recalled; his buddy, former City manager Chris is fatly pensioned off; Bill Dickerson, the CSUF architect of the fiasco is retired, too. CSUF President, the dopey Milton Gordon? You guessed it. Gone, as well.

Would it be asking too much for our State Assemblyman Chris Norby to demand an inquiry on what unfolded up on Elk Hill?

 

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Posted onBehind Closed Doors

THE BIG SACRIFICE: .6%

by 198 Comments on THE BIG SACRIFICE: .6198
The BS had a high caloric content.

Over at the Save Our Culture of Corruption website, the FPOA shares this rather interesting tidbit:

Last year, the Fullerton Police Officers Association along with City Employees and the Firefighters Associations agreed to cost savings, pension reform and more cuts, which totaled $1,065,000 per year in real dollars for Fullerton taxpayers and the City! (Italics added)

Now I have absolutely no idea what this means, or where that number comes from. It doesn’t matter. It was meant to look impressive and impress the masses with all the sacrifices and cost savings our wonderful police have made. You are supposed to glide over the fact that the number (whatever it means) includes all union employees in Fullerton, but that doesn’t matter much, either. As the lawyers say, I’ll stipulate that it’s a meaningful figure and not just some chunk of stray pastrami that fell out of Barry Coffman’s mustache.

And now for context, let us consult the City’s Annual Budget and contemplate that number in relationship to total projected City expenditures for FY 2011-12.

On page A-21 we note that the total General Fund expenditures will be $71,784,315. Do the math. Divide the alleged savings of $1,065,000 by that total and you get a pipsqueak 1.5%, and only a fraction of that attributable to the rank and file cops themselves. 1.5%. Feeling rosy yet? But it gets even more comical.

On page A-28 you will see that the total projected City expenditures from all sources, including the grants that pay for cop overtime, is a $178,800,088. Do the math, again. Now the percentage of alleged sacrifice compared to the total cost to run the City shrinks to a minuscule .6%. That’s 6/10ths of one percent, Pythagoras, even if the number is legit.

Wow, what a sacrifice! 

If you didn’t know any better you might credit the FPOA for their heartfelt concern for the taxpayers who employ them.

Now you know better.

 

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Posted onBehind Closed Doors

Sharon Quirk’s Problem With The Ladies

by 100 Comments on Sharon Quirk’s Problem With The Ladies
Those ladies weren’t like us…

The Voice of OC(EA) is reporting here about the protest held in front of the Old Courthouse by NOW, the OCEA and others demanding that the State’s Attorney General look into the sexual mistreatment of female County workers at the hands of Carlos Bustamante and his superiors.

You’ll notice that one of the “others” was our own Mayor Sharon Quirk. Well, okay.

GOD MODE ACTIVATED. Lookin’ out for the ladies, oh yeah!

But wait!  Almost immediately the name Albert Rincon sprung to mind. Who is Albert Rincon? He is the stand-up Fullerton cop that none of the FPD apologists ever want to talk about; the creep who was accused of serially molesting women in the backseat of his patrol car and who cost the taxpayers of Fullerton $350,000 to settle two of the cases.

Remember that these assaults took place during Quirk’s tenure on the council; and that Rincon, in response to numerous complaints from abused women, was merely required by his superiors to take patdown training classes; and that after the settlement was announced, Rincon was quietly permitted to walk away from the FPD – for entirely different reasons.

And what did the outraged Quirk do to investigate an institution that not only permitted, but virtually encouraged this predator? What did she do to bring justice to all the victims?

What’s that Sharon? We can’t hear you?

Next time she goes looking for female victims to stand up for, I humbly submit Quirk doesn’t have to look quite so far afield.

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Posted onBehind Closed Doors

Disband The FPD? Really?

by 220 Comments on Disband The FPD? Really?

The FPOA sure brought out their gang to lean on the City Council the other night. Geez, the whole union might have been there, maybe including the ones that have been charged with felonies by the DA and the ones currently the subjects of an array of civil lawsuits.

Their misinformation pitch that the item was all about disbanding the FPD and not merely soliciting information from the county’s Sheriff Department, helped divert attention from what really happened.

One of our perceptive FFFF commenters appears to have captured the gist of what occurred.

#203 by Down on the Farm on August 9, 2012

Good story, but wrong. The FPOA would be on the spot to start making concessions now, maybe even renegotiating a new contract. They aren’t very smart but I’m sure even the idiot Coffman could figure that out.

It wasn’t about disbanding the FPD. For the union it was all about maintaining the status quo for another three years.

This observation seems to ring true: that what the union was really afraid of was not future disbanding of the department and, a fortiori, their union, but rather that there would be no immediate pressure for them to start negotiating concessions now, instead of in two and a half years.

Which means maintaing the current gravy for another three years. So all that FPOA hysterical sturm und drang was really just a fight to keep things just the way they are. A victory? I guess it depends how you look at it.

 

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