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.
Public Comment should be renamed Open Mike.
Fullerton Boohoo has long pitched “public trust” as a legitimate issue aimed at the council “majority” just because they couldn’t get all the stupid shit they wanted.
On the other hand, lots of people don’t trust the City for a general incompetence. In the public works arena look no farther than the elevator project at the depot. Years late and a million over budget, wasn’t it? And look at the stairs to nowhere – the shoddiest work I’ve ever seen – all rubber stamped by the Engineering Department. And don’t get me started on the millions of prime MWD water that leaked out of Laguna Lake.
If Fullerton cut the “contract administration” featherbedding percentage on each contract it could get that much more real stuff done. But I have NEVER heard of any councilmember demanding an audit of internal billing on projects.
I agree 100%. The Engineering Department knows it has to minimize its General Fund subsidy and does it by piling up billable hours against a fluffed up budget.
If you were to count up those budgeted hours and apply an hourly wage plus burden, I think people would be shocked at the number of hours it licenses.
You are also right about the elevators fiasco. And then there’s the steps at Hillcrest. That was the most incompetent thing I’ve ever seen. The caissons and the step posts DO NOT LINE UP. Fullerton Engineering was all over that and excused all the mess . We could do better contracting the whole department out, lock stock and barrel.
hey Mr otter, you would think being a chemical engineer would mean you werent stupid, but alas you prove everyone wrong
You’ve got the wrong man, Chief.
City Hall ip address.
That Jaramillo won’t go away.
I sure wish she’d at least learn to speak like a 6th Grader and lose the “I don’t know nuthin’.” crap.
Did she call anyone a racist?
Celebration time! Your desired outcome was no funding for a road fix. Ergo, no road fix. Genius!
More suffering.
You are perpetual cynics, pessimists and caustic critics with only problems, no solutions.
Being antigoverment libertarian types this is a victory because your entire thesis is taxation is theft and the public sector always fails and so should only minimally exist.
Fiends For Fullerton’s Failure.
Do you realize Ahmad voted no on the tax?
Don’t expect intelligence.
Yes, let’s hand over another 15,000,000 bucks to the same crew. Makes a lot of sense.
How many city employees took a pay cut or were laid off during Covid?
None. Zero. Zip. Untouchable.
And the brutal fact is that some of them LOSE us money. Just look at Charles and Zahra’s stupid hotel. It would have been dead without Sunaya Thomas and Eric Levitt keeping it on life support.
It was another make-work project, albeit a legacy one, which makes it even worse. And now we’re going legal, meaning Jones & Mayer makes more and we end up taking it the hardway.
And whatever happened to the Marovic sidewalk theft?
So all those employees could take a little tiny pay cut and then no one would have to be laid off, right?
And that hotel is a joke. It reminds me of the Bates motel.
instead of employees taking a pay cut why dont you just take a little tiny tax increase
Because I’m sick of taking little tiny tax increases, when the city just goes on with no reductions.
The Hero Unions Organized Crime Syndicate is not happy. They are HERO! They DESERVE! The rest of us are here solely to feed their wallets, bellies, and genitals. They’re going to make us hurt for not paying more extortion money to them!
They would have grabbed all that 25% infrastructure for sure. Almost 4 million bucks for police HQ and new La-Z-Boy recliners for the “fire fighters.”
I’m wondering if the fire dept will return the money they were were given for faster internet now that Silva got them even more money for “infrastructure”?
Ferguson dismantled the item, pointing out the uselessness of Manfro and Sunayana Thomas and the extortion of the unions.
Hear! Hear! Jung looks like a supreme dope and liar along with the rest of the bumbling incompetent city council.
He is a supreme dope and liar. And a very poor politican.
“We’re number four!”
He posted it to facebook and it has like two million views so people seem to agree with you.
Love that guy
This may finally be the reckoning Fullerton needs. One giant financial enema that completely flushes all the waste, union contracts and over staffed public safety types. At some point the money will indeed run out and then there will be no choices left. Pink slips and a retrenching to get back to the basics of government services.
The Big Flush. But you need a bankruptcy.
We can’t even find a human to replace the odious blob Charles.
The Hero Unions Crime Syndicate loves to go to war against taxpayers. They play dirty and they own everyone on the council except Dunlap, maybe. They will punish residents for not paying more extortion to keep their wallets, bellies, and genitals satisfied.
The City Council could pass an immediate 10% decrease in salaries and 100% increase in benefits cost share for all non-bargained employees but, they won’t, because they care more about the employees than residents and businesses. Dunlap, Jung, Valencia, Zahra, and Charles — all of them lack spine and have inferior brains.
It may come to this. Fullerton hasn’t felt enough pain yet. At some point the pain will become so great there will be no other choice. The employees will ultimately have to be squeezed. You’ll see a subsequent exodus of said employees and the city could then take advantage by permanently eliminating each position until you get to a point where you can contract out the services they used to provide.
Villa Park has 7 FTE and contracts everything else. They don’t have issues like Fullerton has.
villa park has 6k residents, dont compare fullerton to that
Villa Park’s median household income is more than double that of Fullerton.
Lake Forest has 82 employees and 80k residents. They contract with the Sheriff and the goons at OCFA. They are sitting on a massive fund balance. Be like Lake Forest.
I’m sure people in Villa Park don’t want to be compared to people in Fullerton either. LOL!
Money is fungible. Population does not matter. Fullerton is smelly fart in all aspects of administration and operations and it’s been proven time and gain it’s not a lack of money — it’s the lack of talented and motivated people — leadership and staff!
You mean the City Attorney and the City Manager dumbass? Because everyone else is in a bargaining unit. Duh!
The real dumbasses are Fullerton employees and the city council. LOL!
I’m generally against tax increases as they never go away, but the roads are so bad in Fullerton I would have voted for it provided it had a reasonable sunset date and 100% would have gone to roads.
Which was never going to happen because it was always a payroll/pension tax wearing the roads as a skinsuit.
Amen!
All of the city’s financial woes can be traced back to the Hero Union Organized Crime Syndicates every increasing greed and leverage over spineless city council puppets. If these “heros” took a 10% pay cut and paid 25% of their health benefit and pensions costs — like most of the people in the community they allegedly serve — the problem would be solved immediately.
The Police and Fire Unions are the cause and their demands will eventually bankrupt the city. Fact.
The writer who publicly protested having an article changed by editorial staff was Judith Kaluzny.In that specific instance, Fullerton Observer editor Saskia Kennedy issued a formal apology to Kaluzny for changing the writer’s original news headline from “An Unusual Council Meeting” to a politically charged opinion headline: “Councilmember Dr. Shana Charles Deserves a Public Apology.” This structural shift effectively converted an objective, straightforward news report into an explicit opinion piece without the writer’s intent.
I CANT BELIEVE THAT RAG IS STILL OPERATING.
Then I know you’ll love the current issues profile on Dr. Zod! All the usual omissions and lies.
at least he’s not running again. too bad his acolyte will likely win.
Can we get some new content?
Is Shana running against anyone ?
Is Dr Zod actively supporting his candidate ?
Is Dr Zod’s writeup in The Observer accurate? Can he still legally be called Dr?
How many years has Josef lived in Fullerton ?
Friends, please end your summer break and get to blogging.
Thank you.
It’s the last day to run for council. please tell me that somebody better is waiting in the wings.
Awful quite over here. Hope everyone is ok.
Something big is coming…
The FFFF blog is dead. Long live the FFFF.
Major Tom?
For here, am I sitting in a tin can.
Far above the world.