No Tax Increase in 2026

On Tuesday the City Council, on a 3-2 vote rejected a proposed half cent per dollar sales tax increase to be placed on the November ballot. The revenue was supposed to go to street repair (75%) and the rest to “infrastructure” which, of course, could mean almost anything.

For reasons only explained by Fullerton’s institutional lack of ability to get on to something and get it done – one way or another – the thing was agendized for the last possible meeting to get in on the ballot.

The public speakers were generally ignorant of any details and as full of useless commentary as usual. Some orange hair dyed geezer gabbled on about how sales tax used to be 4% and was now 7.75% in Fullerton – a damning indictment of incompetent leadership. This poor old dolt is obviously uninterested in why the sales tax has increased to pay the enormous salaries and pensions of public employees. He also decided to compare Fullerton’s streets with new cities in south Orange County.

Sinkhole Kennedy of the Fullerton Observer Sisters team who pretends to be a journalist got up to speak. I have no idea what she said.

A slumpy Kitty Jaramillo showed up and stood proud of her advocacy for marijuana dispensaries, an advocacy that earned her the great soubriquet “Cannabis Kitty.” She still hasn’t come clean about what she knew when team Jaramillo created the phoney and perjurious scampaign of Scott Markowitz.

No one really knew how to deal with the issue intelligently, but one thing was obvious: the nay voters – “Dr.” Ahmad Zahra, Nick Dunlap, and Jamie Valencia – all made reference to “building trust” before a forwarding a tax increase. This is funny. The reference, of course, was to the misallocation of millions of bucks, causing the reserve funds to diminish by the same amount. It was really just accounting errors by staff that shouldn’t have happened, but did, and for which the City got some bad local press. The council had no real responsibility for the goof, big as it was, and certainly had less responsibility for it than for the boondoggles like the Boutique Hotel and the Trail to Nowhere that it routinely approves.

Zahra’s sudden lack of trust in his own City apparatus to implement and audit the proceeds from the sales tax increase was completely disingenuous. After almost 8 years of approving many unbalanced budgets, had Zahra realized his Come to Jesus Moment? Of course not. None of his long oration rang true, except as it was true to his form: dissimulating petulance personified. He wanted a 1 cent tax back in 2020, but now the faith of the taxpayers has been shaken. All bullshit. The fact is he still wanted a 1 cent general sales tax but knew he couldn’t get the votes to put it on the ballot. His argument that this proposal might harm future sales tax proposals was sheer nonsense.

Fortunately, Zahra’s career in political theater will over in four months, and he can go back to whatever scam he did to earn his crust.

The yes voters on the question were Charles and Jung. The former was a big drumbeater for ballotizing the tax, described the practical need, and she was assured by the “safeguards” built in. A sideways mention about Zahra letting personalities get in the way of exigency was met with a Zahra denial that nobody can have taken seriously.

Mayor Fred Jung said little, except that now, at this point he was willing to support any kind of tax, a sort of depressing, defeatist statement.

Anyway, the thing failed, and that’s that. At least for now.