Yesterday the site of the former infamous “Walk on Wilshire” was home to a big party. The street was closed and lots of people set up chairs to watch World Cup soccer on a screen attached to a truck. A Friend sent over some images.
I don’t know anything about this get together – such as who organized it, etc. But one thing I do know is that it proved Wilshire can be closed for special events and then reopened.
This is what many people were saying all along as Fullerton’s Boohoo idiot brigade and the Observer nitwits clamored for permanent closure as an F-U to automobile traffic, and of course to residents and businesses in the 100 block of West Wilshire. Fortunately a modicum of intelligence prevailed and the wingnuts Zahra and Charles couldn’t get three votes to keep the street closed.
Put the bollards up, take the bollards down. So simple. So cheap, and so damned commonsensical. And of course nobody ever said that individual “parklets” couldn’t be utilized either, except that by the time City staff was on it as make-work, the clusterfuck naturally occurred.
So yesterday a few people were no doubt temporarily inconvenienced – instead of a lot more people being inconvenienced, and worse, all the time.
A couple months ago the City of Fullerton hired Grant Thorton to investigate a handful of financial transactions that resulted in an vast overstatement of the city’s General Fund.
Last night they reported on Task 1: investigating the awkward General Fund balance fuck up.
As expected was the conclusion that no nefarious intent was involved. Just some good old fashioned negligence and/or incompetence (these were not used by Grant Thorton who was completely diplomatic).
But all you had to do was read between the lines and the conclusions were, and are, damning.
According to the consultants these few transactions were the only thing they looked into; they were not hired to perform a full forensic audit. Well, okay. But the conclusions that they drew, and that informed their recommendations should have been perceived as a serious indictment of how the City’s finances operate, were accepted by a clueless city council without a whimper.
One transaction alone, the $2.9 million from redevelopment, should have sufficed to alarm all involved. The funds were moved without a concomitant debit to at least a temporary holding account – a basic principle of accounting called double entry book keeping, a fundamental concept of Accounting 101. It’s only been around for 600 years.
The big recommendation was to hire a competent Chief Financial Officer – a CPA knowledgeable in government accounting. There’s another $300,000 per annum. It seems like the budget and reporting reforms recommended by our consultant may not be able to be applied to the upcoming budget due to lack of time, which just seems so typical of Fullerton Futility.
The little that Grant Thorton did delve into suggests a fundamental failure of practices and procedures that is the result of years, if not decades of organization entropy because of lack of managerial leadership. When we consider the completely unqualified City Managers like Chris Myers, Joe Felz, Ken Domer, and Eric Levitt – appointed for reasons of political maneuvering or convenience – things start to make more sense. Combine that with the fiscal and budget responsibilities being rolled up to Administration Directors whose professional accounting abilities were (and are) dubious, you get a process running on inertia.
Naturally, nobody at the meeting had the courage to say any of that, although the Grant Thorton folks sure must have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how not to say it.
Grant Thorton has decided that someone else should perform Task 2 – the generation of revenue to bail the City out of its fiscal embarrassment. They say it will save the City money to hire somebody else with a better “wheelhouse” to perform this task, a generosity foolishly lauded by one councilmember, but that begs the question of why Grant Thorton was hired to perform the task in the first place, a question whose answer will not be forthcoming.
My guess is that GT doesn’t want to have anything to do with talking about new taxes and there’s an end to it.
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.
Warning: Conceptual only, not to be taken seriously!
The self-professed experts…
The City of Fullerton’s foray into boutique hostelry remains a big mystery to the public, partly because the public doesn’t know much, if anything about it; but mostly because the City staff doesn’t know what to do with their boondoggle and the people who voted for it – business experts Shana Charles and “Dr.” Ahmad Zahra certainly aren’t talking. Come to think of it, neither are the two councilmembers who voted against it – Fred Jung and Nick Dunlap.
Zahra’s Fullerton Transparency claque and the Fullerton Sisters are silent as the proverbial tomb.
Why is Johnny smiling?
The facts of this disaster hardly require another distasteful regurgitation, so I won’t do it, except to remind Friends that the City deeded over part of the Transportation Center parking facility to TA/Westpark for a pittance, given that they also change the entitlements making it worth 10 times what they sold it for. TA Partners is Johnny Lu and Larry Liu a couple of Chinese con men who had already pleaded guilty to fraud in LA County and who were in the process of going belly up on a huge loan in Irvine.
You may remember that the original grant deed that was recorded by Johnny and Larry was different than the one they recorded later, and the property description in the second recorded deed fraudulently includes the east end of the Depot loading dock now under leasehold by the Bushala Brothers, Inc., whose clock is ticking on their agreement. What a fiasco.
And it may be getting worse. That seems hard to imagine since the property was handed over three and a half years ago and nothing has happened. The hotel and attached mega apartment is supposed to be complete by October 21, 2026. My recollection is that the hotel and the attached mega apartment was supposed to be done only a few months from now. How many legally required milestones have been missed remains a part of the Big Sleep.
Meanwhile Johnny and Larry are said to have taken out a loan against their Fullerton real estate. I guess someone was willing to bet on the come, or just as likely, wasn’t – ahem – fully informed. Which deed was used to describe the lender’s collateral? Must have been the most recent one that includes the loading dock.
If some new loan fraud took place we can add that to the legal entanglements between TA Partners and the family of the original brainstormer, Craig Hostert, now unfortunately deceased. The agreement with the City should have excluded TA from creating debt on the property with permission from the City. But Fullerton, being Fullerton.
This comical boondoggle is now well over 7 years old and still there are no signs of official communication about the state of this mess, let alone resolution. Is staff trying to find a replacement to keep the embarrassment alive and save face for the disaster? Who knows?
Fullerton Boohoo comes in all shapes and sizes, but its members share one thing in common: a desperate drive to support Democrat Party candidates. Fullerton Forward, the brain child of someone called Steven Sherry is no exception. “Building a Better Future for All Fullertonians” is Sherry’s slogan #1. Slogan #2 is about “values”:
We met Fullerton Forward a few weeks ago as Sherry orchestrated a comical People’s Council meeting with limited pizza. The Fullerton Observer wouldn’t say who was behind the get together that attracted the cream of Fullerton Crazy’s crop, and that appointed immigration fraud “Dr.” Ahmad Zahra as the People’s Mayor.
According to the Fullerton Forward website, an individual named Linda Gardner is on the group’s 3 person “advisory council” whatever that title may mean. Here’s her bio:
Linda “…has been active in local and state politics for many years, serving as President of Democrats of North Orange County for six years and continuing to be an active member. Linda has actively worked on campaigns for California Governor, Senate and Assembly as well as Fullerton City Council and major propositions and recalls.
Linda is currently a Delegate for the California Democratic Party. She is passionate about positive change for the future of Fullerton.”
Sherry a former Democrat lobbyist, boasts about himself:
For over a decade, he has also worked in political campaigns, founding his own consulting firm, NewWave Strategies, in 2020. Through his firm, Steven has raised millions for clients nationwide and built highly effective, resourceful advertising campaigns.
Most of this is undoubtedly made up, and after you finish this post you may think the same thing.
Andre, all smiles for cannabis…
This guy looks an awful lot like the under-employed Andre Charles, husband of the insufferable hot air bag Shana whose employment history is sketchy, at best.
Anyhow, Fullerton Forward has finally submitted the necessary Form 460 required of political action committees after the June primary. This document is instructive for lots of reasons.
Cannabis Kitty Jaramillo
First, we can see several of Fullerton’s cyphers who contributed – like the failed Cannabis Kitty Jaramillo, who sued the City so she could get elected; and our old friend, the pathetic election fraud participant,Diane Vena,who endorsed Jaramillo then signed the nominating papers of the phony candidate/confessed perjurer Scott Markowitz.We see you angry liitle eye doctor Anjali Tapadia; and you too, developer shake down artist Elizabeth Hansberg; Aha, over there, indignant front parlor antique, Karen Lloreda, recalled from the Dana Point City Council, and come to Fullerton to roost in the municipal rafters.
Sherry raised almost $17K, which looks okay. But wait. There are only two main contributors:
As we will see, one is frequent Council irritant Helen Higgins, and the other is some dude named Joel Maus, which means “mouse” in English. I have no idea what his motivation is. Maybe he’ll drop by to tell us. He’s the $5K “small business” moneybags.
Like Andre Charles, Mr. Sherry seems to believe that personally doing well by doing good is his life’s path. How’s that? you ask.
Because according to the Form 460 Schedule E, Sherry paid himself almost $6000 for the campaign he ran against Fred Jung in the primary, a campaign that only lasted a couple months. I won’t even share the percentages of Sherry’s cost versus the totals he spent and raised, because the Form 460 Schedule E totals don’t add up to the total expenditures listed on the Form 460 top summary.
The best part of Sherry’s activities, with his name almost obscured, was this remarkable payment he made to himself: $4560.80 for “fundraising.” WTF?
I love the amount this honest and transparent political action committee paid to scofflaw Mario Marovic for holding their fundraiser at “Madero 1899,” even as his fake Irish pub across the street still illegally squats on the Commonwealth sidewalk. Did the dummy Sherry list the cost of the Big Fundraising Party twice, somehow? If so, the numbers still wouldn’t add up to the summary page, so it hardly matters.
Naturally, Sherry paid his tribute to the Democrat Party of OC – $500 on April 27th – confirming the purely partisan nature of his new plaything.
By the way, I’m informed that Sherry’s self-serve creation is also now the object of an FPPC complaint, dealing with illegal campaign sign disclosure rules.
Finally, we are we really to believe somebody who spent a lot to raise a little, and who, as treasurer and “Executive Director” of a PAC can’t seem to add, has “raised millions for nationwide clients?” Yeah, sure, Steve, whatever you say.
Almost half the money raised came from only two donors. If I were on that “Advisory Council” I’d be asking some serious questions of Mr. Sherry. Of course that won’t 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.
Back in the 1950s there was a TV show called “Queen for a Day.” Typical American women got to compete for the stupid title and probably won some housewife-drudgery prize like a washing machine or a vacuum cleaner.
The booby prize…
“Dr.” Ahmad Zahra got a similarly useless tile the other day, when a dozen Council irritants selected him as “The People’s Mayor.” Except that Zahra didn’t even get a useful home appliance. Instead he got a Fullerton Crazy diploma in a plastic frame.
An anonymous Friend sent in the image below from a mailer hitting the Gomer Pyle look-alike Mayor of Buena Park, Connor Traut.
It seems to have been promulgated by a PAC, but that’s all I got. Is this in support of Tim Shaw of La Habra, or to help Fred Jung? Or was it just sent out by somebody that really dislikes the desperate for office carpetbagger, Traut?
I’m sharing this hoping someone can fill in the details.
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.
