The Sound of Music
Over the past two decades FFFF has documented the mess our City government has made of the financial sinkhole know as Downtown Fullerton; how laws and rules have been ignored to help the myriad bar owners, and how what is undoubtedly a fiscal municipal liability continues to be characterized as some sort of wonderful accomplishment.
Planning Directors and Redevelopment Drones came and went: Dudley, Zur Schmied, Zelenka, Haluza, White, Foulkes, each one as useless as the one that came before, and each willing to put the scofflaws’ interest ahead of the citizens.’ To be fair, the political interference was there, too, nowhere better exemplified than in the case of our now-departed Mayor-for-Hire, Jennifer Fitzgerald, who had a for sale sign on her back. And of course City Attorney Dick Jones was there every step of the way to add obfuscating smoke into the downtown atmosphere.
Nowhere is the Fullerton downtown dysfunction better seen than in the complete hash the bureaucrats in City Hall have made of the noise situation. At first, the noise ordinance was simply ignored by the cops and by code enforcement. And for the past 15 years the City has made a concerted effort to allow amplified outdoor music downtown, to delay action (we’re still studying it), and to water down whatever official rules were on the books.
For the past four years nothing has happened and of course the nightclub operators have continued to take advantage of Fullerton’s de facto unwillingness to enforce anything.
And now the issue has finally resurfaced yet again, and once again the effort is likely not to work for us, but essentially, to admit defeat and allow the raucous free-for all to become official.
In December a new stab at a noise ordinance addressing outdoor music was placed on the table in front of the City Council.
Evidently the proposed ordinance was so bad that the our otherwise malleable City Council turned it back for rework. I don’t know what was in it because the City Clerk’s webpage doesn’t work. But supposedly the thing will be coming back on Tuesday the 29th and hopefully we will be able to see what sort of surrender our staff is coming up with.
Lord. The pain continues.
Yeah, it’s a safe bet that whatever they cough up won’t be to the benefit of the people who live in and around the DTF mess.
It’s a battle of the bands – with everybody blastin’ their noise at the same freaking time.
The City will just shrug (in phony bureuacrat-speak) that there’s really nothing they can do so let’s move on. They’ve been stalling and temporizing on this since 2009. And the City Council is A-OK with all that happening. There’s been no leadership at all – except from the odious Fitzgerald who was no doubt milking the bar owners for anything she could get.
The fact is politicians are not willing to advocate for things because it is inherently not in the nature of their job description. Someone in the community has to be the voice for change. Ahmad and his flunkies do this very well. He sends out a directive and they mobilize, energize, and follow his commands. Where is the community leadership on the other side? The right side? This blog is nice, but where is the community leadership? Or is the comment section of this blog it?
Doing the things you suggest takes work, effort. Whitaker has always been lazy – like his mentor Norby. Jung appears to be lazy, too, and Dunlap has a job even if he was willing to put in the effort.
Zahra has motivation and time to mobilize these idiots. He probably believes spit polishing his “brand” will give him upwardly mobile political opportunities. He’s wrong about that as we shall soon see, but at least he’s trying. His fellow council creatures are not.
That’s all true. They got warn down 12 Zahra Uselesses and voted for the Trail to Nowhere making themselves look like spineless fools.
“You lost!”
The game is far from over.
Right. Appreciate you saying exactly the same thing I said but more angrier at Whitaker and Jung. Dunlap gets a pass because he has a day job. Ahmad has the lady who speaks perfect English and does performance theater during public comments with her daughter as a prop. Ahmad has the psycho Bernard character. We used to have Tony Bushala fighting for our rights. Who is the next community leader?
Bernard? Is he the one who fell out of an airplane and had to stop touring with the famous band?
Only after he gave up his career as a famous restauranteur. Sharon Kennedy said so.
The bottom line is that politicians are lazy in everything except self-promotion, self-congratulation, and self-enrichment activity.
Whitaker is a dinosaur and Jung is worse than Fitzgerald. Get rid of both of them and reset.
Whitaker is termed out. 14 years on the City Council and nothing to show for it.
Recall Jung!!
What has he done for Fullerton!
Fullerton is like Italy. It’s in shambles and always elects shitty representatives.