FFFF supports causes that promote intelligent, responsible and accountable government in Fullerton and Orange County
Author: The Fullerton Harpoon
The Fullerton Harpoon is a retired commerical fisherman having served many years on the Japanese whaler Nisshin Maru where he unfortunately lost the right side of his brain and his sense of propriety in a Greenpeace attack.
Yesterday we ran a post on the duplicitous way the City started the ball rolling behind closed doors on a big housing project that promises CEQA impacts on its neighbors. In fact decisions are already being taken that should have been done under the illumination of a public hearing.
The project even has a name, “Euclid Commons” that makes us wish to make a quick pit stop at the West Harbor Alley Improvement Project vomitorium. A couple of comments provided descriptions of what was being proposed that seemed to differ considerably and so we provide la tabula rasa for our Friends to chime in and see if any clarifications are forthcoming.
The issue of starting negotiations is being addressed tonight (Aug 4th) behind closed doors since the public can’t be trusted to even know that a project is now officially (if secretly) sanctioned by the City Council. There will be “reporting out” but no public comment. Really, what have they got to hide?
We read in the LA Times this morning a story about Redevelopment by Jessica Garrison. It was a kind of weird hybrid about State budget raids on Redevelopment agencies and about how the California Redevelopment Association had paid to produce a series of TV shows touting the wonders of redevelopment and hosted by Huell Howser click here for story .
We have always considered Howser something of a menace to culture and intelligent television with his dopey drawl, his inability to ask an insightful question, his perpetual overstatement of the obvious, and his complete disregard for whatever his “guests” happen to be saying. The transfiguration of the mundane into the near metaphysical (hey Louie, you gotta get a picture of this bubblin’ mud hole!) is another annoying part of his tiresome schtick. But on balance he seemed to be fairly innocuous, little kids who didn’t know any better liked him, and we remember with fondness his attempt to save the Long Beach Naval Shipyard facilities.
According to Garrison’s article Howser has now been bought and paid for by the Redevelopment lobby, who undoubtedly saw an opportunity to co-opt a voice for preservation and employ it for themselves. Howser should be ashamed of himself for getting into bed with the same greedy, self-interested thieves who have done inestimable harm to the historic built environment in California. For every historic building it has saved (remuddled, more likely) redevelopment has deployed its bulldozers against a hundred others.
Hey Louie, you gotta get a picture of this!
Well, Huell has got his thirty pieces of silver. But as the article points out, the State’s raid on Redevelopment coffers may well spell the end for many Redevelopment agencies. Let’s hope so. And let’s make sure to boycott Howser’s puff piece love notes to the CRA.
Aren't birds of a feather are supposed to stick together?
Way back in March 4th District County Supervisor candidate Tom Daly announced that Sharon Quirk and Pam Keller were invitees to his annual fundraiser. We wondered aloud how come Fullerton’s two liberal ladies would be hitching their wagons to this generally faded star given the fact that Anaheim’s Lorri Galloway was rumored to be giving thought to running here. We felt they might be shortchanging an up and coming female politician.
Since then we have learned that Galloway has indeed claimed that she is running and is determined to grab Daly’s endorsements. Mercy! A dynamic, liberal woman politician in Orange County! Why, you’d think the heavens themselves had opened up and celestial music was playing. But apparently Galloway will now have to work to swipe Quirk and Keller. According to a press release that went out the other day these two worthies have given Daly their official endorsements. So has Art Brown, of Buena Park.
These endorsements of Quirk and Keller are clearly intended as a slap at Fullerton’s own Shawn Nelson, their council colleague who is also running; but not unexpected given Nelson’s independence and intelligence, and their lack of same. On the other hand Nelson is a Republican and they are Democrats, so what the Hell. Still, it seems they are giving short shrift to Galloway and even Rosie Whatshername from La Habra.
We can just skip over the endorsement Art Brown, the bearded, antiquated, and brain-dead Mayor of Buena Park who has never met a bureaucrat he didn’t like. But here’s a quote from our own blog-hating Pam Keller:
“I know Tom Daly will be a great Supervisor. He’ll help our families by making the County an active partner with the communities of the 4th District,” said Fullerton Councilwoman Pam Keller.
Families. Community. Partner. Whatever this blather means, we know what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean accountability and fiscal conservatism. It probably means boohoo liberal social spending with no one responsible. But we’re just guessing. Here’s one from Sharon Quirk:
“I am proud to support Tom Daly to be Fullerton’s next representative on the County Board of Supervisors,” declared Councilwoman Sharon Quirk. “The people of Fullerton can count on him to listen to our concerns and deliver results for our community.”
Ah, more “community” nonsense. Can’t these gals ever say anything intelligent or insightful? No. This is just outfall from a lifetime of indoctrination in empty Dem-speak. It means Daly will retroactively spike employee pensions if he gets the chance.
The release also includes some pearls from Daly himself that will be the subject of a follow up post as we try to discover anything intelligent in them. When and if he ever creates a campaign website we will be sure to harvest it for fun stuff to share with the Friends.
Some people are determined to talk. They just can’t help it. They believe that the more stuff they say the more informed they appear. Even if it’s just babble to the rest of us.
Well, I've got a heap 'o talkin' to do...
Take our own Councilman Dick Jones. If we didn’t mine so much pure gold out of this bonehead’s blathering we really would beg him just to shut up – if only to soothe our agitated synapses.
Oh boy, this is gonna hurt in the morning!
One of his favorite reasons for promoting Redevelopment expansion is that the money can be used to satisfy low-income housing mandates, imposed by the evil bastards in Sacramento, or Karakhastan, or Tanganyisha, or whatever mythical countries exist in his febrile imagination.
Hail, hail, Freedonia
The fact is that housing objectives come from SCAG – the Southern California Association of Governments – a bureaucratic local government consortium made up of people like Jones and guided by public employees. The housing targets, by income classification, are contained in the RHNA (pronounced “reena”) – the Regional Housing Needs Assessment, and are divvied up among local jurisdictions. These numbers are merely “goals,” not mandates. The whole thing is a bureaucratic paper chase and hardly anybody takes it seriously except far lefties.
We didn't get much done, but we built a huge stack of paper.
Which brings us to the point of this post. We wonder what Jones’ Republican backers like Ed Royce and Dick Ackerman think about Jones actively promoting the quasi-socialist RHNA objectives in Fullerton. He is sounding more and more like Sharon Kennedy with each passing meeting. So we have to wonder who’s coaching him on housing issues (well, no we really don’t).
Finally, Jones doesn’t talk about thereal mandate;it comes from Redevelopment law itself: the 20% property tax increment set-aside for “affordable” housing, a requirement created to help compensate when city planners and pols rip up lower income neighborhoods to gentrify them. The new expansion area includes little if any residential housing, so no housing stock is going to be displaced. But sooner or later that 20% set aside will start to accrue, and it will have to be used somewhere in Fullerton.
Somewhere in Fullerton. But not in Dick’s zero sub-prime neighborhood in the hills, you can bet the family farm on that. The buck will certainly stop there.
Our Friend Joe Sipowicz has added a great insight to a recent post on Dick Jones and Redevelopment about the way staff placates city councilpersons who ask questions. We’ll just let Joe say it in his own words:
“Staff also has another trick that may have been part of this little play, especially if it wasn’t rehearsed after all. That is answering the question that nobody has asked. In this tactic the question that was asked is dodged through answering some other question. The answer given is true, but non-responsive. It’s amazing how many people fall for this.
“BTW, this is also a tactic that our old friend Matthew Cunningham keeps using although it doesn’t appear to fool anyone in the blogosphere. It’s amazing how much more capable of critical thought bloggers are than city councilpersons!”
Joe, we know just what you mean. Former Planning staffer Joel Rosen is a master of this technique. You appear to be responsive and ever-so forthcoming, but in reality you give away nothing, and most of the time the councilperson is to too afraid of looking stupid to persist in getting a real answer. It’s like asking someone what time it is and having them tell you they live in a green house with red shutters in the 300 block of East Wilshire Avenue. It may be true, but it’s completely irrelevant!
Watch Dick Jones question Redevelopment Director Rob Zur Schmiede about the availability of tax increment monies in the proposed extension area. Zur Schmiede responds that because of the merger with an existing area money would be available “immediately.” And Jones is off to the Camp Town races, perhaps not realizing that his Redevelopment director was only talking about existing funds – not new property tax increment. All he heard was “immediately.” So he sits up, pleased as punch, like he had just discovered radium. Uh–mmediately! Well, Land ‘o Goshen! You cain’t hardly beat uh-mmediate! Instant gratification – a predictable desire in a child; embarrassing in a septuagenarian.
The reality is that even if the Redevelopment extension survives a legal challenge, the depressed real estate market and property tax re-assessments will likely create a flat or even a negative increment for the near to mid-term future within the amendment area. This means that any Redevelopment funded projects here would have to dip into the also diminishing increment in the pre-existing project area. So why doesn’t Jones grasp this? Because the Redevelopment Agency has arrived upon the scene to cure all that ails us. HOT DAMN! IMMEDIATELY!
Is this really the guy we want making this decisions for us?
Every now and then we get a particularly perspicacious comment from one of our Loyal Friends that we think is worth posting separately. The following was written by Hollis Dugan in response to our post about the Fullerton Observer and its hermetically sealed philosophical environment. We have cleaned up his spelling for him. Explains Mr. Dugan:
I always sing in the bath tub...
What to me at least becomes the most bizarre angle of the Observer finally is that Kennedy is a left wing loon that probably never envisioned herself as the apologist for the establishment. The far left commie types like her came out of the 60’s and early 70’s AGAINST the establishment. Freedom from government tyranny and limits on liberty.
Now it seems, like boiling a frog, Kennedy and her ilk have let the heat rise so slowly it never occurred to them that they are the last protectors of the government machine controlling everyone’s liberty. Wake up Kennedy! Your values have been boiled right out of you without detection by anyone at your little rag.
Have the drugs done that much damage? You should be screaming from the rooftops how outrageous the thought of the City running its own blog to control the information flow (attempt to, anyway). Instead you are a meek little cheerleader for the inept and pathetic control mongers that can’t stand when others have an independent thought.
It’s not too late to become a fighter for liberty.
A few months ago we went after Sharon Kennedy and her Observer’s shameless pandering to City Hall when she passed along a letter from OC Supervisor Chris Norby opposing Redevelopment expansion to her pals in the government. Some Redevelopment flunky put together the “official” response, Don Bankhead affixed his X to it, and the two were printed side by side.
Well she’s at it again. Check out page 8 of the July edition. Same technique, same result.
Now, we have nothing against the City getting out its propaganda, even if it is full of baloney. But this habit on the part of Kennedy of sharing an editorial writer’s submission so that it can be immediately rebutted without counter response is so unfair that, well, we feel justified in accusing Sharon Kennedy of being just a wee bit biased in the stuff she prints.
Why not print the submission and let the City respond if it feels inclined to do so? Why not let the debate go back and forth – fairly, and see who can develop the more compelling argument? Oh, yeah. That’s right:
Glad you could make it. Now sit down and be quiet...
During a recent City Council mind unwind, Pam Keller suggested that what Fullerton needs is a city blog. But no bloggers! Here’s what she had to say:
You see, Friends, folks like Pam are all about “education,” not discussion. She thinks that all that the good people of Fullerton need to be happy is to be properly “educated” – by people like her. But Heaven forbid that somebody should post something unwanted, or unexpected, or critical, or true. No. Better to be spoon fed Pam’s pabulum of feel good nonsense.
NEWS FLASH PAM! THE CITY OF FULLERTON HAS A BLOG, AND IT’S CALLED FRIENDS FOR FULLERTON’S FUTURE.
Here we deal with the sometimes unsavory stuff that you’d never read about on Pam’s blog, and that the Observer won’t touch, and of which Barbara Giasone is blissfully unaware. And better still, we offer anybody a chance to opine. We’ve given anybody who wants an opportunity to argue and dispute every single post we’ve ever put up. Now there’s a novel concept!
See, we believe in democracy, even if it’s a little rough around the edges. Pam really seems to believe in bureaucracy. And that’s just the way it is.
While watching the youtube clip of David Espinosa tee off on the Union Pacific Park and the comment by City Manager Chris Meyer that the park was being shut down, we got to thinking. The Mayor was clearly not told by anybody that the park was being closed down – observe the standard “we’ll fix it, thanks, move along” comment by Bankhead followed by Meyer’s explanation.
Meyer went on to say that the problem of what to do with this “park” was being passed to the Community Services Commission for ponderment.
And we say: who in Hell gave Chris Meyer the authority to shut down a public park? Why wasn’t the Council asked to make this decision and how come they were never even told about it before the apparent revelation at the council meeting? Who gave Meyer the authority to assign this problem to anybody, let alone a lower committee without even informing the Council of his plans? Why wasn’t this issue agendized and discussed, in public, by the City Council?
These are mostly rhetorical questions, of course. The City’s staff wants to sweep this acute embarrassment under the municipal rug and the only way to do that is not to tell anybody. Even their bosses.
It also makes us wonder how much else in Fullerton has being undertaken by the City Manager on his own hook. It’s one thing to execute policy laid down by elected officials; it’s quite another thing to start taking on major policy decisions, and worse still, not tell anybody. Unfortunately this situation is symptomatic of two long-standing problems in Fullerton, two problems that fit together like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle.
First is the perfect willingness of our elected city council persons to abdicate their own policy-making responsibility and simply show up for the meetings, the Rotary lunches, the Chamber mixers, and the ribbon cuttings; second is the perfect willingness of the city managers to step into the authority void and run the show any damn way they please. It’s a perverse symbiosis.
This has got to stop. The results have been amply catalogued on the pages of this blog. And they aren’t very pretty.
