Doubling Down on Dumb. And Then Doing it Again.
As we’ve just seen the idiotic half-mile Trail to Nowhere© now requires almost twice as much City money as it did when the City Council approved it 16 months ago. As the project languished in bureaucratic limbo for that time the City cost has gone up from $330,000 to $600,00 – with no explanation from the City Manager or the City Engineer – just the feeble “increased scope” excuse.
Lest you think this is a one off, you’d do well to think again.
I went back to the original grant application submittal. You may remember the document – the one so full of bullshit you need wings to stay above it.
Here’s the heading of page one:
Please note that when the City Council approved the grant application the City cost was a mere $170,720. By the time the Council approved the project, the contribution from the Park Dwelling Fund (derived from a fee from development, restricted to new park facilities) jumped to the $330,000 amount seen above. So before it was finally approved, nobody bothered to tell the City Council that Fullerton’s contribution to the senseless project had jumped a whopping 94%.
And now the City’s responsibility has metastasized to $630,000, an unbelievable increase of almost half a million bucks over the original cost used to pitch the project. If you like math, the overall increase is 290% from Day One. The Council wasn’t told, public wasn’t told, and I’m pretty sure the State wasn’t told.
Just think about it, Friends. An almost 300% increase and not a single person in City Hall raised the issue of an arithmatic cost escalation. And there’s no reason to suspect there won’t be more increases, courtesy of change orders, and that those will be approved behind closed doors by the City Manager, with no scrutiny by the public or by Councilpersons Dunlap, Jung or Valencia. Zero Zahra and Shameless Charles showed they don’t give a damn about taxpayer money.
Here’s an example of just one item of new work: we already know there is no line item in the bid for reworking access to the 10 toxic plume testing wells on the trail site. How much will that cost? Who knows? Does anybody even care?
The City Council would be very wise to explore not only the reason for the alleged “increase in scope,” but also to inquire about future budget increases due to unforeseen conditions – the low bidders best friend.
Don’t bother them with facts. You get nowhere.
So the City’s out-of-pocket cost has gone up 300% since the grant was approved and no one’s mentioning that fact?
Fullerton being Fullerton. Heads should roll. But the only thing getting rolled is the taxpayers.
Seems like dragging their feet is the name of the game. Same crap they tried to pull with the housing ordinance last year. Missed deadlines are just an opportunity to lie, cheat and steal by people who should not have their hands in the cookie jar.
God Bless this blog and JF for calling these scumbags on their nonsense. Were it not for them, this garbage would be on its way to costing us a million bucks or more.
Just moved to AZ mostly because I could not afford to stay in CA. Mortgage was $3,900, taxes $8,000 yearly and house needed a LOT of work that I simply could not afford. New mortgage is $1,950 with taxes $800 yearly and don’t forget gasoline may be in the $8 range within a couple of years. I will admit our gas will probably go up too since most is imported from CA.
So what does the Bushala family want to do with the land?
Obviously your opinion matters the most since you pay for outsized influence over policy.
And how many parks are we allowed to have? Where are they allowed to be and who are they allowed to serve? What are they allowed to cost?
Just let us know instead of beating around the bushala.
The land can be a multi-modal trail, road. It’s 50 ft. wide. It can be built alongside development with the developers paying for it.
You have no imagination just brain dead ideology. Go away, Oddjob.
Your dumbass trail to nowhere has tripled in City cost. Any comment about that, genius?
Where did you hit your head? The swings at Lemon Park?
When will Fullerton be rid of these kind of dead weight projects. At least the stairs to nowhere (c) get used. Guess any amount of money is fine so long as the Observer fake news crowd feels all warm inside
FFFF hasn’t done a follow up on these incompetently built steps in a long time. Maybe it’s time to send Fullerton Engineer up there to do an inspection.
Oh boy…Observer really hates Jung.
If the good people of Fullerton strongly desire a “trail to nowhere” then instead of wasting their tax dollars on paying bureaucracies to artificially inflate the cost of this project, maybe they should be allowed to volunteer their talent and efforts to create at no cost this trail. This should be the test to see if the good people of Fullerton want this trail.
Don’t you want nice things for south Fullerton?
I can tell you we need the street light to remain on and the streets fixed far more than any of us need another rundown park.