Fullerton City Council Gives the Finger to Taxpayers
Fullerton has a long and sordid history of City Council making stupid moves and putting personal animus and self-interest above what’s best for the City and it’s residents but this week they’re just insulting us taxpayers.
You see, at the last council meeting a majority of the Council voted to approve a budget with a glaring $10 Million hole in it. That’s right – the budget is in the red and terribly so. We’re broke largely because we’ve been systematically defunded by the Police and Fire Unions over the years abetted by an indebted City Council Majority who can never make hard decisions, do real math or plan ahead for the future.
The current Council has no idea how they’re going to make up this budget deficit or where the money is going to come from to pay the ever increasing union pay and benefits packages they can never deny.
So this week what’s on the agenda? What are the brass tacks they’re going to get down to? What are the hard choices they’re prepared to make in light of our financial woes? Where oh where must the cutting begin?
Somewhere else at some later date. Instead of cutting, the council is instead going to vote on spending – specifically spending for themselves.
That’s right. Self-interest is the item of the day. They’re going to vote on wether or not they should spend $75,000 to give themselves offices on the third floor of City Hall.
You heard that correctly. Just one meeting after admitting they have no idea how to balance our budget they want to reward themselves with new offices for all of their hard work.
This is a level of self-entitlement and tone-deafness that should be unimaginable from true “public servants”. This is nothing less than arrogance of the highest order.
Over the next few years you’re going to be asked to give up more in services, to pay more in fees and taxes and to take it on the chin because of our financial dire straights. Dire straights we were put in BY our bought and paid for City Councils.
Over those next few years Council and their allies will likely be trying to sell you on all of the financial hardships we face as a city – of course right after taking meetings with developers and lobbyists from their swanky new offices they prioritized over balancing the budget because, well, screw you.
I hope they at least have the decency to play the fiddle from up there on the third floor while they watch Fullerton burn but I doubt they’d even give us that much respect.
It’s like the city council has its collective head stuck in the bottom of a pothole.
FIX THE GODDAMN ROADS.
Whitaker needs somewhere to sleep, doesn’t he?
There is 1.3 billion square feet of unused office space in America right now due to the pandemic. And half of those workers will never go back to an office.
Of course broke-ass Fullerton is building some more office space.
Domer must have really stunk up that 1st floor bad.
Now how is fatass Dick Jones supposed to make it all they way up to the 3rd floor?
A trail of donuts.
Maybe somebody can help me here.
The current city hall has been there for somewhere around 60 years. Over that 60 year period, the city council has somehow managed to run our fair city without the council members having offices. Now that the city is essentially bankrupt, suddenly there seems to be some kind of requirement for our council members to have their own offices.
Why now? Do they need to have private offices so that when Musk or Gates shows up complaining that they have too much money, and will Fullerton please take some off of their hands, they can meet with them in style? At least then our council members will have a place to eat takeout with them (Clydes is great! You think they would give us $100M for Clydes? But I digress). Do they really think that having their own offices will somehow bring in more finances for the city?
Can someone tell me why now, when the city is broke? $75K would fix a lot of busted toilet seats in our parks. It might let the Fullerton Museum open one or two Sunday afternoons a month. It might even enable the city to find some water to fill the water-less duck ‘pond’ at Hillcrest.
Have they given any justification for spending this money, now of all times?
Offices for part time people?
With staff?
No.
Get a corner booth at Kimmies or Heroes’ for an hour a week – that’s all they need.
Fact: this plan was one of three concocted by the now infamous Domer who did not want to allow the lab rats out of their tiny cubicles. He made sure it was laborious and painful all the while adding the planning department offices and city clerks offices etc into the moving plans to pad the bill. What was asked of him was to move council into mostly existing offices. Nothing fancy just something larger than 6ft by 4 ft cubby holes. No new furniture, no new carpet. None of the three plans were what was asked for. Only one of his three plans were put on the agenda, the most expensive one. So next time you decide to write something, maybe check all the facts first. Don’t assume the agenda is the whole story. This agenda item was written by a temporary employee who has an axe to grind since her bestie Domer, who hired her, was canned.
How did such a stupid item make it onto the agenda? Who is in charge? The mayor? Facts.
Two of the council members put this on the agenda.
This is utter nonsense AND it speaks to the laziness and/or impotence of the Mayor and/or Council.
Domer has been gone for a month. He didn’t write this agenda. The new CM controls it and it falls under the purview of the Mayor and Council. It takes the Mayor or two council members to put things on the agenda so the first point – that council wants to spend money on themselves after approving the worst budget in a generation is the middle finger to taxpayers and it WAS agendized BY a part of council. My point stands.
Next, you don’t get a cookie and a gold star for doing a shit job. Let alone offices. That point stands.
Balance the budget and then we’ll talk about why Council deserves offices. Until then? Piss off.
Further, the idea that a “temporary employee” exerts any control over the agenda of a City with a $100 Million dollar budget and 140,000 people would be absurd if this wasn’t Fullerton. But stupid is as Fullerton does and council gave her this alleged control if she has it.
Riddle me this, who gave her direction? Who approved the item? Who oversaw that it was following guidance? The Mayor, Council and the CURRENT City Manager. That’s who.
That this made it onto the agenda means those in charge – not some temporary employee – wanted it to happen unless or course the Mayor and Council are impotent and don’t actually dictate the very items being debated and voted on in front of them. This wouldn’t surprise me at all but it’s nice that an insider is essentially admitting it.
And lastly to repeat myself – Council constantly wastes money on theater and grandstanding and just passed a budget with a $10Million hole in it and now two weeks later they’re talking about rewarding themselves with offices. The cost doesn’t matter – they don’t deserve offices to park their orifices that cost 1 red cent – it’s the principle of the issue but I suppose one has to have principles to understand that premise.
You are absolutely right! This is all pushed by the Mayor! Who is essentially living at City Hall. He comes in late at night with his wife, cooks, and his wife is reorganizing the City Manager/Admin office (she has access to confidential files). Why does she have so much access? He and his wife were given a tour of City Hall by a long term employee (this employee acted like a realtor) and they picked out the offices they wanted to go to which was upstairs but it lacked a kitchen area (so they wanted to stay downstairs as they cook all the time, in fact they burned something once in the toaster oven that the whole place smelled), staff cannot even access the 1st floor conference room because they need to access their kitchen. This is all from the Mayor and the real Mayor, his wife. She was even directing the City Manager to not release public records related to a request that came in about both of them utilizing City Hall.
And the only one that ever comes in is the Mayor and sometimes Dunlap, the others rarely use their cubicles. It worked for 60 years now it has to change?
Ahmad, please stop. This is embarrassing.
Ahmad, you really need to hire a professional writer. Maybe that gal at OCWD moonlights.
You really like to hear yourself talk but cannot take the time to listen
You’ve offered no evidence to support your assertions and have refuted nothing I have said in any substantial way. Point that criticism back at yourself.
I just read all of the pertinent information from a previous public records request release and by way of example – Fred Jung told Ken Domer that he was in favor of “option #2” which was going to cost AT LEAST $10,000.
Even the cheapest option was more than a PT council that can’t balance a budget deserves. The majority can continue to use their cubicles to fellate any visiting unions hacks, they do it from the dais anyways so it’s not like privacy is really a concern.
While all this may well be true, who decides what goes on the council agenda? Does the city council review the agenda before it’s published? If three different options were presented but none were what were requested, why weren’t they tossed back to Domer/staffer and told to resubmit?
Even if the council knows this office plan is a no-go from the beginning, it really makes them look like fools to even discuss it at a city council meeting.
Yes and those fools would be Silva and Zarah
And the others driving this absurd office ploy were too lazy and/or impotent to call the City Manager and demand the opposite proposals be added or put on the agenda as a separate issue. My case stands.
I will type slowly.
Temp asst to the CM handed in( to the clerk) this one agenda item last minute as it took her all week to write it. The agenda was posted and printed out and in council hands without review or approval as the council was not in the loop, her choice and CM was out of town.
As for proof these were not plans drawn up by the council. When Domer left they were basically thrown out. Then they were retrived again by asst CM. Do you believe everything that staff comes up with?
I will respond slowly.
A Temp (your words) to the CM shouldn’t have control over what is or isn’t on the agenda, let alone how it appears or what direction is being given. For this to be the case it would means that Council and the City Manager are not doing their jobs and are being led by around by their short hairs by, according to you, a TEMP employee. Does that not sound ridiculous to you?
This excuse you’re peddling is, at best, abdication of duty for the Council AND City Manager and proves how little oversight Council or the CM truly exert over staff.
No shit Sherlock. But you knew that from many moons ago
The better question is do you believe everything someone who refuses to put their name on what’s clearly a leak of insider information at city hall?
If some temp person can write an agenda item and post without any approval authority other than Lucinda, the Mayor isn’t doing a very good job of controlling the agenda, now is he?
What if someone actually took responsibility for wasting everyone’s time with stupid ideas on the agenda? Where does the buck stop?
The funny part is that it’s on the agenda b/c council wanted to gift themselves new offices without the public finding out.
Zahra seems to have been the one to put this item on the agenda in order to use the issue as a bludgeon.
I smell BS when you think Ahmad is the hero here instead of the self serving “Brand” he truly is
Right. Something here stinks. Looks like a set-up orchestrated by Zahra and some staff flunky who did this while Danley was away. But the fact that nobody even bothered (in public) to find out/explain how this idiocy was agendized speaks volumes about the state of the council. Whitaker talked about the thing being “weaponized” but no more; but he has a looooong history of letting people shit on him. Jung got up on his hind legs, which was fun to watch, but he didn’t push the issue of how and why that was on the agenda.
Call it the last revenge of Domer. OK, it’s over now.
The staff clown is gone. Everyone learned to not trust the new city manager. New city manager learned to not get bamboozled by Zahra. Zahra learned to pretend to be a fiscal conservative. Whitaker learned she’s not getting a new kitchen.
Everyone can move on.
There were no heroes last night, just a bunch of politicians playing stupid games and I’m not on any team except that of the taxpayers so I don’t care who won or lost last night otherwise.
Just how many council members are writing anonymous comments on this blog, anyway?
Pretty embarrassing to have your ass handed to you by the gin sponge.
And Ferguson for the win!
That was just worth the last 2 hours of torture!
The fire union goons are trying to get an item on the next agenda to rescind Fullerton’s automatic aid agreement with Placentia now that Domer is gone. The goons are trying to get over on that idiot temporary city manager who’s keeping the seat warm. It will be interesting to see if he rolls over and spreads his legs for that idiot fire chief and his good squad. If Fullerton were smart they’d contract with Placentia for fire and EMS….save Fullerton millions of dollars each year by dumping those over pensioned, under worked slugs.
And bring in the Sheriff – I bet there’s a $15,000,000 savings right there.
Trading some up-front savings for a bigger, more ruthless police union. I’m not confident that it will be a financial success in the long run. Maybe better to just cut services to what we can afford (almost nothing.)
You’re wrong there. The savings will continue indefinitely. Yes OCDS is a bunch of goons, but what will they be replacing? A bunch of goons. They could hardly be more ruthless and anti-accountability that Army of Misfits assembled by Cueball & Hughes.
Bringing in the Sheriff only trades one group of bad actors for another. Their union goons are even worse than Fullerton’s. Ask any city that contracts with the Sheriff and they will tell you their costs far exceed those of any municipal police department and the quality of service isn’t any better.
Also, don’t forget that just because you contract with the Sheriff doesn’t absolve you of the outstanding unfunded pension debt of your former police department. That cost is still due to CalPERS and that cost has to be stacked on top of the Sheriff’s contract costs to capture the true cost of service. That alone wipes out any short-term savings the Sheriff may offer as a teaser rate. As in divorces, it’s often cheaper to keep her. Making matters worse, you’ll now have an even larger, nastier and more corrupt deputies union that will spend huge sums of money corrupting Fullerton city council elections.
I’m interested in seeing the proposal OCFA is going to cook up for fire services – that will be good for a laugh. Same union goons, different checkbook. The unfunded pension debt for the firefighters needs to be stacked on top of the massive bill OCFA will offer up in order to capture the true cost of service. Worse yet, not only does Fullerton still have a massive unfunded pension debt for the old firefighters to pay for but they would start accruing new unfunded OCFA pension debt they would be obligated to pay for. Fullerton’s best option is to contract with Placentia for fire and EMS. Placentia doesn’t offer a pension to its firefighters and they contract with a private company for EMS. Fullerton could cut at least 1/3rd of its fire department and save millions each year. Best part is you wouldn’t be introducing a new set of corrupt fire union goons into the community who will only bleed Fullerton dry and corrupt Fullerton’s elections as well. I couldn’t imagine a worse scenario.
You’re stuck with the unfunded liability whatever happens, so that’s no argument for or against anything.
Obviously you didn’t read the post….I see many reasons not to contract with the county for anything.
There’s no reason to add to it every day.
And there’s always insolvency.
Bankruptcy can (and will) eventually solve the UAL problem for many California cities. Can’t pay what you ain’t got and the Hero Unions have worked hard to poison the soil that grows their crops.
Except California has the permanent ability to raise taxes on its citizens indiscriminately to meet any need. Why do you think it’s bond rates are so low, despite its financial woes?
The council members decide in closed session, not the city manager.
This is what happens when you’re entire city council and staff are retards.