Bad Neighbor!
Would you give neighbors access to your bank account?
No? That would probably come as a shock to some at City Hall where (at least) three City of Brea employees have been issued VISA procurement cards belonging to the City of Fullerton.
Fullerton and Brea have a shared Fire Department command staff. The Fire Chief, Deputy Chiefs, Division Chiefs, Battalion Chiefs, and an EMS manager perform services for both cities, even though they remain employees of the City where they came from. Those from Brea have been given the Fullerton VISA cards. Now, I can hear some people uttering phrases like “so what,” and “who cares,” and “what’s the problem?” I can help you with that.
Fullerton Fire Station 3 on Acacia Ave was the recipient of five La-Z-Boy recliners, on the City VISA card. The purchaser? Chris Guerrero, a Brea employee. The supervisor approving the purchase? Kathy Schaefer, another Brea employee. And where did the money come from? Fullerton.
The receipt raises another question because Engine 3, based at this fire station, only has a crew of three. So why purchase five recliners?
I’d bet money the extra recliners are for the CARE Ambulance employees based at Station 3. Nothing in the housing agreement between the City and CARE Ambulance talks about furnishings, so the recliners appear to be a gift.
A gift from Brea employees using Fullerton’s money.
Gift of public funds?
Ruh roe. Good thing our DA gives exactly no shits about public employees breaking the law.
Better questions:
1) Why do our Fire Heroes need $750 recliners – even on sale?
2) Why can’t the handsomely paid and benefited Fire Heroes buy their own goddamn recliners?
Not sure, but wouldn’t there be more accountability if we took this shared credit card thing one step higher.
What if we had them interchange cards so the only money Fullerton could spend comes out of the Brea budget and Brea spending makes Buena Park poorer? This has a chance at countering the big flaw with socialized anything. In contrast to the way the market works where the customer is the same people who are served, government serves people who are forbidden from choosing another service, so the actual customer (the entity that must be pleased) under socialism is the next layer of bureaucracy in the same government.
However when they interchange credit cards, those served are still not the customer, but at least someone is casting a critical eye.
Alternatively (leaving out any justification for the purchase), Fullerton charges back (common accounting practice) the cost to Brea’s budget and to CARE Ambulance.
Hey FFD, why not buy your expensive furniture in Fullerton?
There are so many Fullerton employees abusing cards that it is sort of sickening. Remember Nicole Bernard and her Vegas junket?
Nicole Bernard is still employed by the city of Fullerton. Fortunately she isn’t allowed to do much.
She’s been assigned to reviewing budget documents for Domer. Apparently he was fooled by her MBA degree.
Or maybe he dropped the documents behind his desk.
Nasty.
Is Brea less insolvent than Fullerton? Maybe they SHOULD be in charge of all our credit cards.
Brea is hardly a paragon pf fiscal sanity, what with the taxpayer funded parking structures they keep building for “Downtown Brea” and all the money their redeveloent agency spent bulldozing that area to create the downtown in the first place. But they do at least have paved roads, so there is that.
Buy 3 under the guise that it is for the department, then either take one home and give the second to another to shut his mouth.
Another scenario, he keeps both provided he hires or put a very good referral to a relative to get employment.
What’s the problem? Fullerton money was spent on items for a facility that serves Fullerton. So what if those holding the payment instruments used work for a joint agency that serves Fullerton and another city. Maybe the solution here is to have everyone who works for the fire department be paid by the fire department and the fire Department have its own paymen instruments tied to the fire Department budget. Then again the winners here end up being the accountants and burocrats in positions that shuffle it all. What is happening here is that Fullerton is paying the salary of some employees Brea is paying the salary of other employees for an operation that is beneficial to both. This being escentially an employee loan cuts out the overhead of extra accounting and burocracy. As for buying 5 recliners, it would seem in this case it was appropriate as there are 5 or more persons who live in said firehouse at any given time. That group of 5 or more operates in many ways as a family. Let’s not play politics here and pinch our first responders in the middle. Are we to buy 3 recliners for 5 people and tell the remaining 2 they can’t use them because Fullerton bought them? If you are going to buy 3 chairs for the 3 Fullerton employees you buy another 2 to accommodate the rest of the family as well. There is a social component to this that should not be missed and we should not be trapping our first responders in the middle of petty politics.
Or, I dunno, have them buy their own luxury chairs with the $300,000 we pay them each year.
The users of those chairs aren’t making any 300k per year. What would you propose they sit on, the floor?
There janitor isn’t sitting in that chair.
Here you go, homie. Read it and weep. They can buy their own salty chairs.
https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?a=fullerton&q=Fire&y=2017
“…we should not be trapping our first responders in the middle of petty politics.”
Right. They do that all by themselves Idiot,
Not sure how “they do that all by themselves” as the worker bees at the firehouse were not the ones making the purchase yet they are the ones being referred to as being caught in the middle of petty politics. As for the name calling in your post let’s keep it civil and not degenerate to senseless name calling. If you have a point to make, by all means do so but without resorting to ad hominem
They fund the political ads, dummy.
Go away. Or back to work. Whichever.
Worker bees? Odd way to refer to people who sit around all day on fancy recliners, make bloated six-figure salaries and multi-million dollar pensions.
Work? That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in September.