Things That Start with “Union Pacific”
These things never seem to go well in Fullerton.
Apparently the Union Pacific Trail disaster-in-the-making has lost another month – groundbreaking on July 2nd, as reported by Sanka Kennedy of the Fullerton Observer Kennedy Sisters. She fails to remind her followers that the project completion, including plant establishment is the end of October per the agreement with the bankrollers of the project, the incurious and somnolent State Natural Resources Agency. This bureaucracy is much better at handing out free money than they are securing its efficacious expenditure.
Congratulations all around.
In another Union Pacific story, Siaska tells about a workshop of some sort to gin up ideas for renovating Union Pacific park, the dismal space purchased by the City in 2000 without benefit of environmental testing. The first park was a drug addled, gang infested disaster and closed even after soils remediation and a cost of $3,000,000. Since nothing has changed there is no reason to suspect a new park will succeed any better than the old. But pickleball courts are in high demand in the barrio!
Skasia misinforms readers that the remediation issue took place in 2014, probably so as to cushion the shock of the real truth: the park was built, closed because of contamination, remediated in the 2000s and not opened again because nobody wanted it reopened – especially the people who wasted all that money in the first place.
Sankia reminds us that a committee was formed to review this park four years ago, but not that it dissolved into nothingness as these committees always do. Start over, says the City, the land is your canvas,and toy hardhats for everybody, and whatever happens, don’t look in the rear-view mirror. Here’s my favorite line:
“The initiative, which seeks to reinvigorate the family-oriented neighborhood, has been in the works since discussions about the park’s redesign began in 2019.”
A family oriented neighborhood? As opposed to what? The truth is that discussion of reopening the park came from Fred Jung who was disgusted by the whole disaster of the “Poison Park.”
Digging back to 2023 Kennedy found the ever quotable “Dr.” Ahmad Zahra to lend HIS vast knowledge of his district:
District 5 representative, Council Member Dr. Ahmad Zahra expressed his support at the City Council Meeting in October 2023, highlighting the project’s importance: “Many residents in that area have seen an entire generation of children grow up without access to a park.”
What a load of utter bullshit. The residents of “that area” have free and unfettered access to Independence Park, Richman Park and Lemon Park. If you believed Zahra you’d have to conclude the kids in the ‘hood were living in plywood crates in a Tijuana slum.
Naturally, Skaisa omits reference to Zahra’s 2021 vote to turn the park space into a private event center, a bone-headed and illegal move. But, again, Fullertonions, we don’t dwell on the past here. Forward to the Future.
Jung may have brought up the idea, bu no congrats for that. A new park will fail just like the old one and for the same reasons.
The city should have decommissioned it and sold it to the highest bidder.
Unrelated… visited the Hillcrest stairs yesterday. I really like this park feature but they need some maintenance.
The steps are wood planks… wood exposed to the elements needs revisiting at regular intervals if you used the appropriate finish which is probably a spar varnish. I’d say minimum every couple of years but looking at it I’d be surprised if it has ever been done. If they aren’t maintained they will end up needing to be replaced which I’d guess is more expensive then redoing the finish.
Some of the planks are wiggling and I expect will eventually come loose.
There are thin metal grates at each step that I think are to mitigate a trip hazard where your foot gets stuck under a plank. A lot of these have been kicked through and so it seems unlikely they can reliably perform their function.
Take some money out of that useless trail and spend it on steps people actually walk.
Finally all the poor Latino kids can learn to be white and play Pickleball.
Good idea Hogerhiemer. Spar varnish is standard procedure for repairing poorly designed and constructed exterior public stairways. Clown.