Friends For Fullerton's Future
FFFF supports causes that promote intelligent, responsible and accountable government in Fullerton and Orange County
During the Marilyn Davenport protest a CBS news crew walked up the block to Dick Jones’s house to see if they could get a comment from the comical mayor of Fullerton regarding this controversial event.
Too bad Dick was hiding from the nice news lady and her cameraman.
If our mayor had the guts to address these protesters, what would he have said? Who knows? Normally nobody can get this guy to shut up. On this day he was MIA.
Political talk radio hosts John and Ken announced that they will be coming to Fullerton on Thursday to counter the demonstration for higher taxes put on by the Fullerton teachers’ unions.
Apparently they were egged on by the receipt of a flyer listing five hundred and eighty five Fullerton teachers and administrators who make a lot of money.
We have here a copy of that flyer:
View the teacher/administrator salaries
Update:
The raw data supporting this flyer is located here: Fullerton School District Salary Data and Fullerton Joint Union High School District Salary Data.
I wonder how this woman felt after Mayor Pro-Tem Don Bankhead unleashed another creepy comment into the microphone, minimizing her work and possibly ruining her moment in the spotlight.
What do you think…embarrassing, innocent or inappropriate?
What kind of circus is FSD Ringmaster Lynn Thornley running? One that promotes kiddie antics and award ceremonies over legitimate board business.
The hyper-analytical Chris Thompson put together this chart of FSD meeting time spent wallowing in tomfoolery vs. legitimate school board business:
In Tuesday’s meeting, Thompson was fighting to bring an end to former Superintendent Cameron McCune’s laptop extortion scheme (thousands of dollars taken from parents by pressuring them to buy expensive Apple laptops.) But Lynn Thornley did everything she could to cut off debate and move to a quick vote HERE.
This haste occurred in meeting of which over an hour was dedicated to Cub Scout flag ceremonies, awards, various glad-handing, and a lady dancing around with a quilt over her head.
No joke:
The end result? Watch here as Thompson makes his case to end this boondoggle, debate is cut short and Trustee Berryman is run over, abstaining on an issue because she wasn’t given a chance to ask questions. The decision was rammed through anyway, leaving individual families to spend about $174,000 of their own money to keep this sinking technology program temporarily afloat.
Total time spent on legitimate discussion: 18 minutes.
Far be it from me to doubt the efficacy of an FPD program, and so the “GOT DRUGS?” turn-in-your-pills-program we reported about as a helpful PSA must have been a winner.
Here’s the success story as reported, presumably, by FPD spokes-sergeant Andrew Goodrich:
The Department collected approximately 150 pounds of prescription drugs from more than 50 persons.
Gee Willikers! Let’s hope it was a whole lot more than 50 persons. Because that figure would mean an average of three freaking pounds of prescription drugs per person.
Now it could be that the humans of Fullerton are a lot more doped up on Vike and ‘ludes than I might have imagined. Or it could be that the Good Sarge just made up some numbers without even thinking anyone would do the math.
Or maybe nobody bothers to proofread the blurbs on the department’s web page.
What do you call missing one third of your work days? Grounds for dismissal. Since January 4th there have been twelve meetings of the City Council/Redevelopment Agency, including a special or emergency meeting here or there. Our dear Mayor F. Richard “Dick” Jones has missed four of them. That’s a 66.6% attendance rate.
Little wonder that the Three Aging Amigos felt the need to install Don Bankhead as Mayor Pro Tem instead of letting the position go to Sharon Quirk-Silva, who was next in line for it. They knew their good buddy was going to miss a few in the coming months, and didn’t want Quirk-Silva taking the helm while the Col. was skipping his watch.
But don’t yah’ll worry! The next city council meeting will reconsider the Coyote Hills development proposal, and you can bet yer boots Dick Jones will be there to ram it home!
Over at the Red County blog some dude named Walter Myers has been downplaying the egregious e-mail by Fullerton’s Marilyn Davenport that has made so much news recently. Today he did a post outlining the party’s real problem; and it’s not racism, really, but poor educational outreach to Latinos (he calls them Hispanics) and Asians. Apart from some completely specious demographic reasoning, he indicates that the problem is evinced by the fact that no Latinos or Asians stood up to defend Mrs. Davenport. Huh?!
This guy also has gone out of his way to defend the watermelon patch on the White House lawn e-mail that got Los Alamitos Mayor Dean Grose into so much hot water a couple of years ago. Surprisingly, no Latinos or Asians stood up to defend that cretin.
Well, okay Walter, de gustibus non es disputandum.
And here’s some fun commentary at the end of today’s post , starting with an intro by Fullerton religious zealot and anti-Islamic crusader, Zonya Townsend:
I can’t write too much right now because I must to get ready to leave for work but must say this much. Marilyn Davenport is the woman that reached out and encouraged me, Zonya Townsend to run for OC CC several years ago. Her activism and concern for our nation fueled my interest in leadership positions in various organizations, including but not limited to the California Republican Party and the Women’s Federated. This whole email situation is a tragedy and misunderstanding that did not need to happen.
Tragedy. Misunderstanding. Um, yeah, right, Zonya.
Walter’s wrong about the shape-shifting “apology,” but he is right that the GOP needs to be motivated and has work to do. But get this: he thinks the GOP is the party of Lincoln and Douglass. Forget the fact that Lincoln stood for almost NOTHING allegedly promoted by the modern GOP (except for neocon war and big government), Stephen Douglass was a freakin’ Democrat!
* As a reader points out, the Douglass referred to might have been the abolitionist Frederick Douglass! If so, my apologies to Mr. Myers for insulting his knowledge of American history, although I’m pretty sure FD would not recognize today’s GOP as “his” party.
Among nearly unknown local governmental agencies, the Fullerton Arboretum Authority must rank pretty high on the list. Its 26 acres are tucked away between the CSUF baseball fields and the 57 Freeway. And according The OC Register, here, the Authority failed to reveal salary data of its employees as required by John Chiang, the State Controller. They faced a $5000 fine.
Arboretum staff claim they have no record of ever receiving the notice from Chiang. Which is either an indictment of Chiang, the USPS or of Arboretum Director Greg Dyment’s front office. But apparently they have contacted the Controller’s office and are off the naughty list.
The topic caused me to visit the Arboretum website. Although I couldn’t find a list of the Authority Commissioners on the website, I discovered that there is something called the OC Agricultural and Nikkei Heritage Museum on the grounds and that there is actually a “civil rights in California” exhibit at this facility. Civil rights? That seems like a pretty long stretch for a botanical garden, although the connection with Japanese WWII internment is clear enough. Still, I’m wondering what the connection is between a botanical garden and Nikkei history in the first place, other than that Japanese-Americans were farmers and nurserymen – as were lots of non-Japanese.
Anyway, as a joint venture between the City, the Redevelopment Agency, and CSUF it might behoove us to learn more about the operation of this government agency.
The OC Weekly’s Gustavo Arellano is penning a series on OC pioneer families with ties to the infamous Ku Klux Klan. Here’s the latest installment.
According to the irrepressible Arellano it was Fullerton, not Anaheim that was home to the OCs 20th Century Klan movement – a veritable hot-bed of anti-Mexican sentiment replete with the membership of some well-known names. He has already fingered Herman Hiltscher, after whom a park is named! Now he ads Albert “Pete” Hetebrink as another member of the Invisible Empire.
I knew Pete, and Gustavo is right: he sure seemed like a harmless old codger (he lived to be 100 right there in the family house). If he was a Kluxer in his youth he never let on. I wish Arellano would share his documentation with his readers just so we know for sure he’s got the goods on Fullerton’s notorious past; and I’m pretty confident he does. If so, should Fullerton reconsider renaming Hiltscher Park?