2011 - Page 44 of 50 - Friends For Fullerton's Future

March 1, 2011Fullerton City Council

Quick, Hide Your Assets!

Tuesday night’s city council meeting includes an agenda item asking the council to approve transferring all assets owned by the Fullerton Redevelopment Agency to the City of Fullerton. Agenda item number 12 asks the city to take ownership of a soup to nuts inventory of everything the Redevelopment Agency has been using our bond money to buy for the last few decades.

In an urgent sounding letter to the council Acting Redevelopment Director Romona Castaneda explains that the council may only have a few weeks to move these assets from one pocket to the other if the state adopts Gov. Brown’s budget plan to eliminate redevelopment agencies. If this happens, it seems, the agency will be forced to sell the properties “expeditiously” and turn over the proceeds to the county.

One has to wonder what would happen if Redevelopment was indeed forced to sell all eighty of its properties, including the Fox Theater, the empty lot where four craftsmen era houses were torn down just east of it, Union Pacific Park, the site of Costco, a 2001 Chevrolet Malibu (?), the Santa Fe Depot, and some fencing around the Police Department. It’s a fun list.

The city would still be required to move forward with projects already approved for these properties, including affordable housing projects. Anybody have a guess about how legal this maneuver is?

February 28, 2011February 28, 2011Orange County Government

911…Please Send Help Immediately!

by admin23 Comments

Here’s a bit of exciting news coming out of the County Health Care Agency that is the local entity that oversees Emergency Medical Service provision. A new trend may be emerging.

It’s about the idea contracting with private service providers for paramedic services. The model is pretty simple: the paramedic goes with the ambulance, not with one of a city’s fire engine companies, who necessarily escorts their paramedic to an accident scene then has to toodle on over to the hospital to pick up their boy who has meanwhile accompanied the private ambulance to the ER.

And never a fire in sight; a fire crew mostly just driving around in their big shiny engine, sight-seeing.

The present scenario is so dysfunctional it’s amazing that it has lasted as long as it has. And that’s a backwards tribute to the “firefighter” lobby who knew fires were decreasing a long time ago and got their foot in the paramedic door; and to the supine politicians who let them do it.

But, as they say, that was then. And this is now. Municipalities are being crushed under the burden of “public safety” salaries and pensions and the current way of doing things is apparently no longer deemed to be carved in stone.

Amen. Maybe we can all be Hero now!

February 27, 2011February 28, 2011About Us

Dan C and Art of Careful Reporting

by Grover Cleveland28 Comments

Quite recently Dan Chiemlewski of the deadly boring LiberalOC blog put up a post about censorship and civility or something. I noted this pearl from the self-righteous and sanctimonious Dan C., who styles himself a real reporter:

Comments on FFFF are a free for all and so is sock puppetry (thanks guys for that visit to my home by the Anaheim Police Department on the day of my son’s graduation for a comment by a “Dan Chimichanga-Cub Reporter” who threatened to cut Harry Sidhu’s brake lines. I’m sure you found it hysterical),

Well, here’s what the commenter actually said.

#9 by Dan Chimichanga, Cub Reporter on June 16, 2010

Sidhu better check his brake lines every time he gets into a car between now and November. That’s all I’m saying.

Now the context of the post (and others like it at about the same time) were all about how Dan Cs carpetbagging darling Lorri Galloway had vaulted back into third place in the 2010 4th District Supe’s race. Mr. Cub Reporter got the message and commented: if Hairbag Sidhu were to pull out of the race, then Anaheim Hills’ Precious Princess might assume the second position in the fall run off against Shawn Nelson. Hence the warning about brake linings was a snide shot at Galloway’s vaulting ambition perhaps playing out by disabling one of Hairball’s BMWs. That’s perfectly obvious to anyone who put the comment in context. It was joke.

Okay it wasn’t very funny, but it sure wasn’t a threat. And anybody who tried to make it into one was either disingenuous or a damn fool. And anybody who keeps persisting in this nonsense is deliberately lying. Not the sort of behavior you’d expect from a proud member of the OC journalism corps. Come to think of it I wonder what part Dan C. might have played in reporting that alleged “threat” to the Anaheim PD in the first place.

Sock puppet, out.

February 26, 2011February 26, 2011About Us

Addiction, Hovey and Consequences

by admin18 Comments

Could the real reason that Fullerton School District superintendent Herr Doktor Mitch Hovey told his IT guy to deny FSD network access to our blog was because some of the district employees were addicted to our humble little blog and spending way too much of our (tax payers) dime/time blogging and not working?

Well, that sure seems plausible. And it’s true that we have been a lot less than enthusiastic about some of the goings on at District HQ, from the bogus laptop scam to the Board’s congenital rubber stamping. Oh, and yeah, the Pam Keller Collaborative swindle. That probably stirred up some resentment among the rank and file.

Yet, instead of telling the employees to knock off the blogging and getting back to work, it appears that the good doctor simply denied them access to our blog. And only our blog. I’m sure those same employees are still surfing the internet; it’s sort of like an addiction, and as with most addicts when they give up one addiction they replace it with another.

So I have to wonder what we are being replaced with. Youtube, OC Weekly personal ads, Hulu?

And I also have to wonder who is next on the censorship hit parade.

February 24, 2011February 24, 2011About Us

Revenge of the Nerds, Part IV

by Mr. Peabody8 Comments

One of the benefits of writing for the Best Blog OC 2010 is that they let you write anything you want.

SlideRule — Yes, I know what a slide rule is for...

And so I present this: the final moments of my alma mater Cal Tech’s great victory over the sad geeks at Occidental College. It’s been 25 years since we won a league basketball game. In that time we have produced 9 Nobel laureates.

Oxy. Part-time school of Barry Obama and intellectual womb of Chris Norby.

Well, it’ll probably be another 25 years ’til my homies win another conference game, so please indulge my enjoyment.

February 24, 2011February 24, 2011Fullerton School Board

School Board HD

by Travis10 Comments

OK, so our first foray into school board broadcasting was a little underwhelming. Low quality video, barely audible audio. It was better than nothing, but not really good enough for us.

So FFFF raised the bar a little bit. Here is this week’s meeting presented in glorious high-definition 720p with Dolby digital surround sound. The whole enchilada. Enjoy.

Download the February 22, 2011 agenda

Unfortunately FSD employees sitting behind the Great Firewall still won’t be able to watch their own board meetings. Oh well.

We’ll keep all of the recordings here under the “Archives” menu above. Click the “Fullerton School District Recordings” link for the list.

February 23, 2011February 23, 2011Behind Closed Doors

DA Invites New Investigation of Ackerman Lobbying

by Mr. Peabody7 Comments

ackerman-swig-500x340 — You can talk to my lawyer.

In a follow-up post today The Voice of OC(EA) Norberto Santana describes the (lack of) investigation by our do-nothing DA Tony Rackauckas into the evident illegal lobbying of fellow repuglican Dick Ackerman. Of course the DA could find no wrondoing. Not looking for evidence is an excellent way of not finding any.

Now that Ackerman’s actual invoices have surfaced, revealing what we have know for over a year, and what was based on the Dickster’s own words, the DA seems to be a little nervous. Here’s what his spokesholess Susan Kang Schroeder had to say:

“The evidence we had supports the findings we made,” she said. “If anyone has further evidence that is contrary to the evidence we have, we’ll be glad to look at it. And it may bring us to a different result.”

Further evidence. Of course she means all that embarrassing stuff that would have actually been part of any sincere investigation in the first place, and that would have freed the DA from having to rely entirely on Ackerman’s say-so for the truth. But the important thing here is that the DA is apparently welcoming new evidence. And since that evidence has already been published on a blog and is in the public domain, may we assume a new and this time an honest investigation is in the offing?

Hold your breath if you feel like it!

February 22, 2011February 22, 2011Behind Closed Doors

The Bad Penny That Keeps Popping Up: Ackerman The Lobbyist

by Mr. Peabody7 Comments

tricky dick — The smile turned to painful grimmace as the appendage was pulled ever farther into the wringer.

Over at the Voice of OC(EA) Norberto Santana reports that his uncovering of Dick Ackerman’s billing logs from his days as a lobbyist for the rogue Fair Board has spurred a formal investigation by the State Fair Political Practices Commission.

See, former legislators are prohibited from lobbying their former colleagues for one year after their departure. Ackerman left the State Senate at the end of 2008 and started making those embarrassing calls in the summer of 2009 – in order to facilitate the sale of the Orange County Fair to a secret cabal made up of its own Boardmembers. We first wrote about that a-way back here in the fall of 2009 passing along the excellent work of the OC Progressive and Vern Nelson at the Orange Juice blog.

Of course the most embarrassing part of this slimy episode was the way one year later our do-nothing DA Tony Rackauckas tried to whitewash the whole stinking affair in order to protect his ‘puglet pals. See, T-Rack has plenty of time to harass Toyota and Muslim students at UCI, but apprently he has a lot less taste for going after political miscreants of either party.

But the truth will out, as they say. And the Ackerman deal just keeps resurfacing. Of course the FPPPC has no real authority except to levy fines and it looks to me like a real prosecutor is really what’s called for here.

Disbarment, anyone?

February 21, 2011February 21, 2011Fullerton School Board

Firewall Demonstration

by admin24 Comments

The other day I took a field trip over to FSD HQ and took a ride on their network. Apparently the FSD network train makes many stops; but there are some places you just can’t get off. Did I just say “get off?”

February 18, 2011February 18, 2011Behind Closed Doors

Hard Hiring Freeze at County; Someone Forgot to Tell Clerk-Recorder

by admin69 Comments

Well, he’s at it again. County Clerk-Recorder Tom Daly appears to be doing the crony thing again.

In the past we took him to task for employing the relatives of campaign contributors. The funniest thing is that Daly likes to hire political types to act as intergovernmental liaisons and such like nonsense. What this has to do with the functioning of a County Clerk’s office is anybody’s guess.

Just recently Daly has hired Jordan Brandman, a supposedly up-and-coming Democrat who got himself elected to the Anaheim Union High School Board a few years back. Was there an open recruitment by the Clerk’s Department?

What special skills does Mr. Brandman bring to the Clerk’s office? Hard to say. According to his official bio his work history over the past decade has been pretty, um, varied: some political appointment jobs in Sacramento, followed by a brief stint with the useless OC Business Council in “workforce development” (including his own, presumably), and most lately employment in the Brandman family “environmental consulting” business. What any of this background has to do with the smooth operation of the County’s top paper shuffler is unknown.

What is known is that last fall the County CEO instituted a strict “hard hiring freeze” policy across all County departments. Either Daly didn’t get the message or perhaps he’s just flipping the bird to the CEO and the Board of Supervisors. Daly is elected, of course, and may figure he’ll do whatever he damn well pleases. Because he over-charges his customers for his services, Daly returns a surplus to the County’s General Fund. And maybe this makes him feel he’s above the belt-tightening endured by everybody else.

Another sad truth is that very few politicos have any marketable skill sets applicable to getting and holding real word vocational employment; others seem to have lost their taste for actually working at all. Many need a source of income as they plot full-time supervisorial and legislative careers. And the taxpayers pick up the tab. Is that what’s going on here?