Joe Sipowicz, Author at Friends For Fullerton's Future

Sit down and grab some sidewalk, brother…

According to Voice of OC, our old pals the Florentines, pere et fil, are at it again.

This clan of scofflaws has a long history of violating Fullerton’s municipal code so it should be no surprise to learn about their most recent hi-jinks.

Apart from rumors of arson and arboricide, FFFF readers have been treated to the Florentine saga of scandalous sidewalk theft, illegal dance floors, and operating in violation of the requirements of a conditional use permit.

The latest offense, which came to light at yesterday’s Planning Commission meeting is an application for a Conditional Use Permit (CUP) amendment that was not authorized by the property owner, a guy named Mario Marovic. The Fullerton Municipal Code explicitly requires property owner authorization for a CUP. Instead, the actual application form was digitally modified to show that the Florentines themselves could now authorize the amendment. The person who signed the form, Joe Florentine, the junior member of the gang, claims he has no idea how the form got altered.

Ken Domer — Domer. Just following orders…

Once something starts giving off a bad odor it’s pretty certain that it’s only going to get worse. Many questions need to be answered, pretty damn quick: Why did the planning department process an application they must have known violated the law? Why did our crack City Attorney Dick Jones decide to accept the strange legal reasoning of Florentine’s lawyer? Did the City Manager, Ken Domer, direct the Planing Director to ignore the law? If Domer did, was it on orders from Mayor Jennifer Fitzgerald, who has been running interference for scofflaw bar owner in downtown Fullerton for eight years of mayhem?

So many question.

December 18, 2019December 18, 2019Bad Cops

It Can’t Happen Here…

by Joe Sipowicz18 Comments

I just saw this little gem on Youtube. If you think Pike County, Ohio is any worse than California, guess again. The fat, cowardly shit-stain swine who stars in this in-house video “resigned” but is subject to all sorts of criminal repercussions. In our state, this video would have been hidden and it would have taken legal recourse just to get an illegal brush-off by somebody like Jones and Mayer. Fat Fuck also has a couple of buddies watching him in operation. No dopubt two of the “good cops” we keep hearing about.

And if you think this sort of thing couldn’t happen in the Fullerton jail, you should think again – or better yet do some internet searches on people who have been physically brutalized by our boys in blue. And never forget the Fullerton jail death of Dean Gochenour, whose happy jailer and Brady cop, Vince Mater, smashed his DAR because, well, not because he was afraid of evidence getting out. Naw, it was just anger management issues.

December 16, 2019December 16, 2019Ahmad Zahra

Our New Mayor

by Joe Sipowicz17 Comments

I’m not telling the truth and you can’t make me…

Our esteemed City Council appointed lobbyist-councilcreature Jennifer Fitzgerald to be the new mayor a couple weeks ago. Supposedly it’s her turn again. How and why Jan Flory was appointed Mayor Pro Tem is anybody’s guess, especially since Bruce Whitaker and Ahmad Zahra have been on the council longer without appointment – supposedly the criterion for getting the job.

Zahra and Jesus Silva Quirk are no doubt angling to grab the mayor titlee when they run for re-election in 2022. They aren’t too bright, but they’re smart enough to count in four-year increments.

But the nasty machinations of our talent-free council are not the point of this post, merely a rolling introduction. What I really want to share is the completely self-serving and fraudulent mayoral bio Ms. Fitzgerald has placed on the City’s website, the first two paragraphs of which I reproduce here:

Mayor Jennifer Fitzgerald was elected to the Fullerton City Council in November 2012 and served as Mayor Pro Tem in 2014/2015 and Mayor in 2015/2016. In her first three years in office, Mayor Fitzgerald played a key role in several significant accomplishments, including a $3.5 million retroactive refund of water rate overcharges, public safety reform, a substantive increase in funding to repair the city’s aging roads and water infrastructure, and adoption of new transparency measures for public employee labor negotiations.

Mayor Fitzgerald represents the City of Fullerton on the Board of Directors for the Association of California Cities-Orange County Chapter and she is a Member of the Board of Directors for the Orange County Taxpayers Association. She is a former Metropolitan Water District Director, Past President of the North Orange County Chamber (formerly Fullerton Chamber of Commerce) and past Member of the Board of Directors for the Fullerton Historic Theater Foundation. Previously, she served the City of Fullerton on its Planning Commission and General Plan Advisory Committee.

It’s pretty bad that Fitzgerald is trying to take credit for the water refund she fought tooth and nail to minimize. It’s worse that she is trying to get gullible folks to think she has done anything about police reform , when in reality she has been an ardent defender of cover-ups for eight years – including hush-up settlements and even being implicated in hiding the drunk hit-and-run perpetrated by her buddy Joe “Wild Ride” Felz. The unkindest cut of all may be her bragging about “increased funding” for street and water infrastructure that she and her comrades let sink into a deplorable mess – the worst in Orange County.

At least this go ’round she omits her oft-repeated lie that she has balanced budgets, but her re-election campaign material will no doubt rectify the omission. I’ll be checking into that.

And finally I direct your attention to paragraph two, wherein the tone deaf Fitzgerald blithely recaps all the public money laundering agencies she has consorted with, peddling her wares as a lobbyist for one of the greasiest operators in OC – Curt Pringle.

December 16, 2019December 16, 2019Behind Closed Doors

Another Dirty Dick Jones Caper

by Joe Sipowicz8 Comments

Most of you, dear Friends, probably only know Fullerton City Attorney Dick Jones as the marblemouthed, incompetent, prevaricating boob whose own failure to protect City secrets has led to a city-attempted crack down on the First Amendment. You may recall he was also the stooge who sanctioned the illegal water tax in Fullerton for years.

But Mr. Jones’s manifest talents for acrobatics along the tightrope of ethics are well-known across the county.

Norberto Santana at The Voice of OC previously documented how Jones, in his capacity as City Attorney for Westminster, was permitted to pretend to be a city employee able to participate in the CalPERS pension system, a maneuver that required him (or his agents) to falsify time cards for years – a clearly fraudulent activity.

Today, Santana is reporting on another scam at which Jones is squatting dead center.

The cities of Brea and La Habra buy much of their water from a “private,” non-profit middleman called California Domestic Water Company, an operation that wholsesales water to its municipal customers. The cities get to appoint their own board members to this corporation which has been fighting efforts to make these same members report their financial interests. And guess who is the Chairman of this Board? You guessed it – the ubiquitous Richard Jones, Esq. who also happens to be the City Attorney for La Habra.

So far so semi-benign, right? Except that California Domestic Water has a wholly-owned subsidiary called Cadway. And not surprisingly, the Cadway board is comprised of the exact same members as Cal Domestic. Oh, and, yeah, it just so happens that Cadway is a for-profit venture that also deals in water sales and trades in conjunction with Cal Domestic, and that paid out over $100,000 in five years to former Brea City Manager, and Cadway boardmember, Tim O’Donnell. It seems that Cadway rewards its operatives with bonuses for increased volume of water sold to its customers – the people of La Habra and Brea – an obvious conflict of interest that landed O’Donnell in hot water with the Fair Political Practices Commission for non-disclosure, and a paltry $500 fine.

Hopefully, The Voice will keep digging into this matter, including digging into what sort of benefits have accrued to our own City Attorney, Dick Jones.

December 4, 2019December 4, 2019Bad Cop

US Attorney General Sings Familiar Tune

by Joe Sipowicz12 Comments

A long-standing tradition of inveterate and knee-jerk police apologists here on FFFF is to suggest, with no subtlety at all, that they sure hope the cops or “fire fighters”come a callin’ when we are in need of them. Behind the hostility of the threat there lays a vague sense of entitlement that only a long-standing monopolist could love.

But is this the sort of talk that should be emanating from the mouth of America’s top cop, a lawyer who has sworn many times over to defend the Constitution? Apparently our AG William Barr thinks so. At a recent cop fest he uttered almost verbatim the same veiled threat to “communities” that don’t offer police their proper respect and deference.

Wow. It’s not enough for this bloated and corrupt sack of crap to turn looking the other way for his boss into a full-time job. He has now found it necessary to threaten citizens just like so many anonymous commenters on this blog.

November 29, 2019December 1, 2019Ahmad Zahra

Can We Finally Say Good Riddance to Dick Jones?

by Joe Sipowicz9 Comments

Word has seeped out from the once hermetically sealed walls of City Hall that we may not have Richard “Dick” Jones, Esq. to kick around much longer. It would seem, if the rumors are true, that Good Ol’ Dick has had enough of screwing the taxpayers of Fullerton with his pettifogging, self-serving legal advice and is “retiring” with all of his ill-gotten spoils.

Well, possibly not all his spoils, because he must believe his “I Can’t Believe Its A Law Firm” will have some residual value after Mudslide oozes off.

Now I don’t know about you, Friends, but a collection of lawyers that includes Kimberly Barlow and Gregory Roosevelt Palmer doesn’t seem like it could be worth very much to me; but Jones is supposedly pitching the continued services of his collection of miscreants, so he must plan on keeping his name on the letterhead and probably receiving revenue thereby.

Will our city councilcreatures keep this gang on retainer? After the abysmal performance of Jones in the pas it’s hard to imagine anybody wanting them around, at all. Of course this is the same gaggle that has kept Jones, et al., on the clock for over twenty years – and that’s a lot of bungling and cover-ups.

November 12, 2019Bruce Whitaker

Where’s Whitaker?

by Joe Sipowicz23 Comments

It seems Fullerton has a new problem. According to Councilmember Bruce Whitaker, the City Attorney lied when he publicly proclaimed last Tuesday that the City Council voted 5-0 in September to initiate legal action against Joshua Ferguson, David Curlee, FFFF, and a bunch of Does to be named later.

Here’s how it is described by the Voice of OC’s Spencer Custudio:

Meanwhile, there are questions in Fullerton about how the City Council first authorized the lawsuit against Ferguson.

At the Nov. 5 meeting, City Attorney Dick Jones said the councilmembers voted unanimously to file the lawsuit against Ferguson and the blog.

“In an effort to clarify any Brown Act violations, the fact that City Council on Sept. 17, 2019, met on a motion made by Mayor (Jesus) Silva and seconded Mr. (Ahmad) Zahra, on a 5-0 vote, the City Council approved the filing of a writ to seek a temporary restraining order against the main defendants,” Jones said.

But, that unanimous vote is wrong, according to Councilman Bruce Whitaker

“When they say I voted to approve this lawsuit, I say that’s not true,” Whitaker said.

In fact, Whitaker was the only dissenting vote when the Council majority doubled-down on the lawsuit during the Nov. 5 closed session portion of the meeting.

Somebody is lying, and if I had to guess it is our City Attorney Richard “Dick” Jones. At this point I’m now wondering if a vote took place at all back on September 17th. It would be just like Jones to try to create a September “vote” to cover his wide expanding ass, when no real vote even happened.

Still, for somebody who claims he was maligned in public by his own lawyer, Bruce Whitaker was pretty damn passive when Jones made his comment about a unanimous vote. So who’s telling the truth? Who knows? But I bet it isn’t Dick Jones, who is neck-deep in the lawsuit his own incompetence caused, and by which he is actually profiting.

November 7, 2019November 7, 2019Ahmad Zahra

City Blows Off Brown Act – Until Caught

by Joe Sipowicz2 Comments

The shy City rodent finally emerges from its hole…

Yep, just as we surmised, the City of Fullerton illegally ignored California’s Brown Act – a law made to protect us citizens from our own government. I posted here about the secret agenda item and the lack of reporting out, as required by law.

dick-jones — Staying awake…helpful, but not required.

So a recap: on September 17, 2019, the City Council of Fullerton, hiding behind closed doors, both raised the subject of suing FFFF and Fullerton citizens, and then took action – both without a whisper to the public about what had happened in this filthy little Star Chamber.

Another good month’s billing of the suckers!

How do I know? Because in a Voice of OC story today, our grossly overpaid and incompetent City Attorney, Richard “Dick” Jones, said so. Here’s the proof:

And at this Tuesday’s Council meeting, Dick Jones, head city attorney, disclosed that the Council voted Sept. 17 to sue Ferguson over the documents.

It was the first time the city publicly disclosed the closed session vote, as required by state law, despite the vote happening nearly two months ago.

I’m a bird, I’m a plane, I’m a lawyer. I’m a lawyer!

So two months after the violation, and with the local and national media getting wind of the unconstitutional lawsuit travesty, our esteemed City Attorney decided he’d better get his client to, you know, follow the law. In this case, the City has felt zero compunction about labeling us as unethical thieves while they themselves are completely incapable of doing anything competently or ethically.

October 25, 2019Ahmad Zahra

Transparency 101

by Joe Sipowicz17 Comments

As many Friends now know, the City of Fullerton has decided to move on from bullying language to actually sue FFFF. Here’s a summation from The Voice of OC.

The City has also posted a ponderous press release on its website, written in the high dudgeon of a bureaucrat whom you suspect already realizes that diverting attention from his own bungling by blaming somebody else, may be harder to pull off than he had hoped. Here’s our $230,000 per year City Manager Ken Domer trying desperately to seize some sort of high moral ground:

“The City was forced into taking legal action to protect the privacy of current and former employees and the public, and to ensure compliance with applicable law to include the California Public Records Act,” stated Fullerton City Manager, Ken Domer. “We are working aggressively on behalf of those affected and took immediate actions to put in place a more secure information technology environment. These actions support our philosophy of transparent access to information while protecting confidential information from the unethical and illegal actions of a few.”

Now I don’t know about you, Friends, but I find the words “unethical” and “illegal” to be pretty funny tumbling out of the mouth of Domer, whose only aim in his short tenure in Fullerton seems to have been to fight a rear-guard action against transparency. Domer’s self-righteous indignation is comical coming from the lackey of serial liars on the City Council – people like Jan Flory who is, and always has been, dangerously allergic to the truth; like Jennifer Fitzgerald who has not yet seen an ethical barrier she couldn’t sidestep; and like Doug “Bud” Chaffee who was complicit in his wife’s phony carpetbagging address and stealing campaign signs she didn’t like.

The budget is balanced and the cops are tip-top. Or else.

We need only reflect on the way the City has bent over backwards to cover-up the scandal of Wild Ride Joe Felz to know that what Domer is peddling about is utter bullshit.

And as further proof (if we needed any), let us pause for a moment to consider the following snippet from Domer’s press release:

Based on evidence uncovered in our internal investigation and direction from the City Council, the City Attorney’s Office has now filed a complaint in Superior Court seeking a temporary restraining order against the involved Blog and its contributors.

Say what? Direction from the City Council? When O’ when did that ever occur? The issue of whether or not to take FFFF to court has never been publicly agendized and never voted on by the City Council. The subject has never been discussed by our marble-mouthed City Attorney, Dick Jones reporting out of Closed Session.

Domer says he has a “philosophy” of transparent access to information. His actions give us a crystal-clear view of what that philosophy really is: stall, hide, deceive, misrepresent, and ass-cover.

September 28, 2019October 18, 2019Ahmad Zahra

The Bullshit of “Anticipated Litigation”

by Joe Sipowicz6 Comments

nothing to see here more along

California’s Brown Act specifically enumerates when public agencies can meet in secret (Closed Session, they call it) away from the prying eyes of the nuisancy public that pays for the whole show. One of these exempt categories is “litigation,” in which secrecy is deemed to be okie-dokie. The problem is that government agencies, when given an inch will invariably take a mile.

But when you fail to specifically constrain the arm of government, they will invariably flex those muscles. And so it is that “litigation” has come to include anticipated litigation which, of course, could cover just about anything, anywhere, at any time. And that label seems to give the City of Fullerton reason to believe it can omit the names of anticipated litigants. The anticipated litigants must, necessarily remain in the dark about what the government is about to do to them, while the government, for its part, gets a jump on its adversary. Of course this isn’t right, but what do rights have to do with the City of Fullerton government?

Let’s first take a look at the City’s Closed Session agenda for September 17:

Opacity from a “transparent” government…

Notice the final two items have been draped in the magical shroud of “anticipated litigation.” We may wonder what the Big Mystery is. Rumors are circulating that at least one of the the items in question is the City’s desire to sue humble little us, Friends for Fullerton’s Future, and that the council has voted to do so. Could that really be true? FFFF, of course, would be the last to know. But the City Attorney made no mention of such doings while “reporting out,” from the Closed Session. If they’re true, what are we to make of the rumors?

Roosevelt Palmer Esq., Seeking Five Sisters…

The City has already sent a couple of laughable nastigrams in our direction, both of which were duly ignored, so litigation is plausible, but only if the City initiates it. This means that it is the City instigating, not reacting to likely litigation, and begs the question of why this issue would not be a matter for public discourse. And it also suggests that it is the city manager and his bumbling lawyers who will have advocated this harassment to cover up their own corruption they didn’t want exposed.

Well, I’m sure that covering up its clownish behavior is the last thing the esteemed council, upright city manager and brilliant city lawyers would ever do, so it seems pretty certain everything will be made clear. One way or another.

Author: Joe Sipowicz

Florentine Mob Steps in Pile of Own Excrement. Again.