FFFF supports causes that promote intelligent, responsible and accountable government in Fullerton and Orange County
Some have questioned Dr. Ahmad Zahra’s claim that he quit his life as a man of medicine for a life as a filmmaker. But this claim is no longer in doubt.
A Friend has forwarded this image of the extraordinary Ahmad Zahra that clearly shows the good doctor from Damascus as a big time Hollywood cinematic auteur.
So there you have it. Who are we to argue with our own eyes?
Some skeptical folks in Fullerton have long wondered aloud if 5th District Councilman Ahmad Zahra is really a doctor. His acolytes and camp followers in the Fullerton Observer call him “doctor” and he doesn’t correct them. Still there’s no evidence that he ever practiced medicine, so the skeptics had some reason to wonder, given Zahra’s ever shifting “origin narrative” and omission of salient features of his past – like the gay man’s stop over in Little Rock, Arkansas to marry…a woman.
But now the truth will out. The FFFF Research Department has done a deep dive into photographic evidence and discovered unequivocal proof of Zahra’s doctorhood.
Unless it was Halloween.
Tomorrow evening a special session of the Fullerton City Council will review responses to a Request for Proposals for a new trash hauling contract.
It seems sort of mundane, but the issue is big. Really big. The amounts of money at stake are enormous and the contracts typically run for years and years – as we have seen with our current provider Republic Services.
An ad hoc committee of Fred Jung and Jamie Valencia were involved in reviewing this process although their contributions aren’t really known. We do do now that the evaluation of the responses and subsequent interviews resulted in these rankings.
15 scoring categories, heavily weighted to proposed rates were the basis of the evaluation.
The winning score was earned by EDCO, based in Lemon Grove, down in San Diego County with an office in Signal Hill. CC&R, based in nearby Stanton placed a close second. Universal Waste, based in Santa Fe Springs was a close third. The lowest score was given to trash giant Republic, with whom the City has been having issues for years both in labor impacts and environmental compliance under SB1383 (organic waste recovery).
I have no idea how much lobbying of councilmembers has been going on, but I assume it’s been significant.
Tomorrow night we should have an interesting show since Fullerton Boohoo is mad at Valley Vista Services for contributing to the PAC that torpedoed the candidacy of Cannabis Kitty Jaramillo. Ahmad Zahra’s followers and the Kennedy Sisters are sure to bring this up.
After my post the other day, FFFF received this communication from a gentleman who refers to himself as Richard From College Park.
Dear Friends for Fullerton’s Future,
I’m reaching out about something deeply concerning in Fullerton that I believe needs immediate attention on your blog. You blogged about it yesterday.
The City of Fullerton has issued a permit for a development in our preservation district that is completely out of character with the neighborhood. As you can see from the attached image, this structure is a jarring addition that completely disregards the historic character and architectural integrity of the area.
What’s particularly frustrating is that this is happening in a designated preservation zone where there should be stricter oversight to maintain the neighborhood’s historic charm. The building looks completely out of place and frankly, it’s an eyesore that detracts from the surrounding properties.
I’m wondering how the city could possibly approve something like this in a preservation district. There seems to be a serious disconnect between the preservation guidelines and what’s actually being approved. This sets a dangerous precedent that could lead to more inappropriate developments that undermine the character of our historic neighborhoods.
I think this would make for an excellent blog post that could bring attention to this issue. Perhaps you could explore:
I believe your readers would be very interested in this story, and it might help pressure the city to be more thoughtful about future development in preservation districts.
I really want my District Councilman Ahmad Zahra to do something about this travesty.
Please let me know if you’d be interested in covering this story. I’m happy to provide any additional information you might need.
Thank you for any assistance.
Richard from College Park
Thanks for the input. I’m going to stay on top of this. We need to find out who dropped the ball, and why Sunaya Thomas cooked up a rasher of bullshit for the City Councul.
College Park is an old neighborhood adjacent to Fullerton Junior College. Back in 1979 the City designated it as an historic preservation zone. That was 46 years ago if you’re counting. The area is full of little bungalows and small spanishy looking houses. It’s a nice neighborhood even if you add in the dinky roundabouts on Wilshire – the brainstorm of Wild Ride Joe Felz, who certainly could not have navigated them on election night, 2016.
But I digress.
At the last City Council meeting a woman who lives on Cornell Avenue in the district complained about a building on her street under construction that was completely out of character with the neighborhood and the preservation rules, adopted in 1996, that are supposed to protect against such things. She kindly reminded the Council that she lives in D5 – Ahmad Zahra’s district.
So I went over to the 100 North block of Cornell Avenue and snapped some images.
Now I’m not an architect, but something is awfully wrong here. Yeah, it’s a big box with cheap, misaligned windows that is completely out of scale with the houses around it. Yikes. Check out the puny little rooflet over the cheapo Home Depot door.
How could this happen? It looks like somebody in City Hall dropped the melon with a loud plop. As I understand it, there is a staff process for reviewing these developments. Did it occur? I don’t know. But whether it did or didn’t happen, the problem is obvious. If it didn’t, why not? If they did what sort of knucklehead(s) could have approved this?
Eyesore is right.
At the meeting Development Director Sunaya Thomas preposterously claimed this hulking monster was somehow an ADU development – meaning a mere accessory dwelling unit, a “granny unit,” and that the City had no real control over the design of the beast; and also that it was up to the owner to figure out parking for his tenants! Up to the owner? Since when?
Of course Ms. Thomas is talking out of her backside, as is so often the case. The rules for preservation in the R2P zone are called out in the Municipal Code – Chapter 15.17.60, from which I quote:
All proposed development, including the rehabilitation of existing structures, will be reviewed for compliance with established design criteria and standards, specific to the preservation zones and identified significant properties. These adopted design criteria and standards, entitled “Design Guidelines for Residential Preservation Zones,” are intended to serve as a baseline — a set of elementary guidelines — by which a proposal will be evaluated.
Here are the the guidelines, supposedly unknown to the very person in charge of applying them to new development in preservation zones:
https://www.cityoffullerton.com/home/showpublisheddocument/1232/637436214735730000
I learned a long time ago that it’s almost impossible to make Fullerton planning bureaucrats do their jobs (see noise ordinance issues). The defensiveness and lack of shame will always prevail. But this is appalling. The rules are there to follow, not to pick and choose.
Thomas failed and failed badly. The Council was lied to on Tuesday night. Does anybody care?
Hopefully the D5 council representative Ahmad Zahra, who champions transparency and accountability, will get to the bottom of this fiasco.
Knock yourselves out.
No, it’s not the Fullerton Observer itself, but it is a story related by Stikia Kennedy on that unfortunate publication’s blog. The post seems to have vanished, as is sometimes the case when it suits the publisher/CEO. In this instance it caught the attention of Mr. F.L. Olmstead before it was dispatched; and he sent it to me.
It seems that a local resident named Jensen Hallstrom has been jumping a short wrought iron fence to make homemade repairs to the big slab of redwood dedicated to veterans. It’s in Hillcrest Park not far from the Isaac Walton lodge.
Mr. Hallstrom has been seen at local City Council meetings sharing his personal efforts to repair damaged and missing names. That was was a big mistake, for apparently he has been issued a cease and desist letter from the City, to and from his trespass and his activity.
Ever the intrepid partisan, Shakira Kennedy seizes upon this David and Goliath tale to spin a yarn about it is somehow the result of the ethics of the Council majority, honesty, transparency and yakkity yak yak yak. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Kennedy that Fullerton parks staff just hates it when private citizens do unsupervised stuff in City parks, and no political interference is necessary. That fight’s been going on for 35 years, without a peep by two generations of Observers.
Anyhow, Mr. Hallstrom should also know better. He got into a squabble with the City a few years back over the impromptu and unauthorized “native garden” he planted along the Hiltscher Trail. This latest effort seems to suggest a fundamental immaturity on his part.
Shiitake Kennedy’s older sister Sharon even put in an appearance in the comments to decry the event and wonder aloud if Jones and Mayer didn’t have anything better to do than to get the City involved in more legal activity in which they get to bill more hours.
Now that’s ironic. Did either of the Kennedy’s raise an objection about the legal costs associated with the idiotic lawsuit against this blog that was approved by a liberal Council majority? Did any Observers call out the enormous waste of legal fees involved in the foolish and Air Combat lawsuit caused by an incompetent Airport Director who couldn’t understand his own lease? Of course not.
Accountability doesn’t apply to the left-leaning Democrats favored by the Kennedy Sisters whose gaze becomes myopic when dealing with the likes of Ahmad Zahra, Jan Flory, Jesus Quirk Silva and their ilk.
Why this post was pulled is anybody’s guess. Maybe it will mysteriously pop up in the Register.
Sometimes you think you couldn’t make something up that is so ludicrous as to seem impossible.
And so it is with the case of Jan Flory vs. Fred Jung’s ballot statement that was determined on March 27th.
Not the outcome, per se, in which Jung had to change his designation from “Fullerton Mayor/Business owner” to “Fullerton Mayor/Businessman;” and had to remove from his statement the silly claim of opening 9 new parks and balancing a budget left unbalanced by predecessors.
No, Friends, the crazy, and unintentionally hilarious part was the last minute filing by Ms. Flory’s attorney meant to dodge a stay on the original writ of mandate. In this latest filing, Mr. Brett Murdock (who could not have possibly have composed it with a straight face) demanded immediate relief because Jung’s statement would cause poor Flory “irreparable harm.”
It’s pretty funny reading, all based on the premise that government is a business, and that business is hers:
“Petitioner Jan Flory is engaged in the business of government and politics“
The supposedly “practically libelous in nature” part is due to the implication that Flory – whose name does not even appear in Jung’s ballot statement – didn’t balance the budget during her fourth laborious canter around the Fullerton City Council track. This supposed assertion of her incompetence is said to impugn her professional political reputation; this so, so funny because every Friend is aware of Flory’s dismal record of incompetence and deceit on the City Council – from the years of Water Fund fraud, refusal to reform a culture of corruption at the FPD, Redevelopment disasters, and of course deficit spending, just to mention a few issues.
And then there’s the specious and even more hilarious Murdock argument that if Jung were to win based on his ballot statement, it would deprive Flory of opportunities to possibly serve on one of the many County commissions and boards, some of which might offer remuneration:
“If published in the official election material, Jung is more likely to win the election. As a political opponent, Petitioner is unlikely to be appointed by the Supervisor to any of the County’s 85, (sic) boards, commissions and committees; whereas as a highly-qualified and prominent supporter of Traut, she may well earn an appointment.
Membership on a board or commission not only comes with political advantages, but pecuniary advantages as the County “pays certain board and commission members stipends for attending meetings.”
Other benefits—for which “it would be extremely difficult to ascertain the amount”—could accrue to prominent supporters of a winning candidate, including opportunities to be hired as staff counsel or prestige in the community as a lawyer or lobbyist.”
I can’t imagine which “community” would consider Flory as a lawyer – she quit her lawyering, good or bad, years and years ago. Flory the octogenarian lobbyist if Traut gets elected? Who’s kidding who? Her victimhood is based on not being able to be a political hack?
All of this adds up to very little, really, except to spread a little unintended humor to the good people of Fullerton.
Hmm. Image captured in a local front yard. Credit for creativity. Love the stink marks.
Yes, that Jan Flory. The Mistress of a hundred Fullerton disasters during her three terms on the Fullerton City Council.
It seems she is very unhappy with Mr. Jung for his Supervisorial campaign ballot designation as a business owner and many of his claims in the ballot statement. She is so unhappy, in fact, that she is acting as a surrogate for Connor Traut, who is pretty unlikely to state his real occupation: ambulance chaser.
Anyway, Flory claims Jung has resorted to falsehoods about his record, including the Fullerton budget; and she should know. She lied to the people of Fullerton about her budgets as being balanced when of course they weren’t, facts she didn’t share with voters in her recent try for a fourth time around the track.
She has sent her complaint to the courts naming the OC Registrar of Voters, Bob Page, as the respondent.