The Three Empty Pez Dispensers

Looking for brains, courage, a heart.

You know, Larry Bennett really could have just left it alone. After dodging a final, humiliating meeting to certify the recall election that drove them out of office, at least one of the Three Bald Tires finally deigned to show up at Fullerton City Hall tomorrow morning to do the deed. It could have been done quietly with as little fanfare as possible. Actually only one of them even needed to show up.

But no.

Bennett seems to think the Three Dead Batteries need a sendoff appropriate to all the wonderful things these men have done for Fullerton. Friday he notified supporters of the Three Tree Stumps that there was to be a special council meeting, and that he hoped everybody would show up to let them know what terrific public servants they have been.

Bennett has likely spent the week-end making phone calls to drum up some folks willing to say kind thing about the Three Pea-less Pods. No doubt some will show up. And others are likely to show up now, too. People who recognize the disastrous misrule of these three characters:

Yes, I was the king.

Don Bankhead: dumb-bell, and self-annointed king of Fullerton, whose somnolent councilmanic career was punctuated with one Redevelopment boondoggle and union give away after another.

Crazy? Check. Rude? Check. Gone? Check.

Dick Jones, the southern fried lunatic and loud-mouthed bully who never came to understand that the authority to give orders doesn’t confer wisdom – or even relevance.

To all appearances it looked a lot like a street gang.

Pat McKinley: protector and apologist for the undeniable Culture of Corruption in the Fullerton Police Department that he himself had created. Those ladies weren’t like you. Aliens. Don’t rush to judgement.

Well, good bye and good riddance.

The sun had been warm and life was good. But all that changed.

And please take Larry Bennett with you. The tide is rising.

 

 

 

Yes, I Have An Agenda

There’s been speculation about some of the new city council members and if they have a “hidden agenda.” While I don’t speak for any other council members, it did occur to me that I do actually have a personal agenda that I’ve been keeping since early June.

In the interest of transparency, why not publish it?

Here you go: my raw and unredacted personal agenda, online and up-to-date for everyone to see:

[iframe_loader width=’100%’ height=’600′ frameborder=’1′ scrolling=’auto’ src=’https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1l2nvBpJCJwSBM8vDUlvoi92Akl-bT14DqhtbZZiu0xg&embedded=true’]

What to Do With Former Redevelopment Employees? How About Pink Slips?

Anybody who reads this blog knows that I have had a running battle with the Fullerton Redevelopments Agency, even going so far as suing the Agency to block its bogus expansion attempt into areas of west and east Fullerton that had no blight. That was just a fraudulent attempt to divert property tax revenue from legitimate recipients.

Now that Redevelopment has been killed off by the Legislature and the Governor, I really have to wonder what has and will become of that small army of government economic planners, boondoggle promoters, bribers, bagmen, design guideline perpetrators, and the rest, whose job it was to gin up sales tax revenue and property tax increment (usually at the expense of somebody else) while dictating land use development in Redevelopment project areas across California.

Lest anybody think I’m just grousing about an abstract problem, consider an article here in the OC Register that points out the exorbitant amount that Fullerton Redevelopment Agency wasted on administration.

Anyway, these folks were in the business of playing developer without taking any of the risks, and with a compliant city council there was never any fear of them being held accountable for their manifest failures.

Some of the former Redevelopment employees will be kept around to close things out. The rest? Who knows? In Fullerton, some of them have already been absorbed into the regular bureaucracy, to be supported by the General Fund – as if these people were simply interchangeable and indispensable parts. The message that move sent to the citizens of Fullerton is a really bad one – that the government has no appetite to shrink, even though a specific purpose has been ended.

 

 

Old Guard Won’t Go. Better Call a Judge.

So ordered.

I keep hearing on the Fullerton grapevine that Fullerton City Manager Joe Felz, doggone it, just can’t get one of the recalled Three Bald Tires to show up to validate the June 5th Recall election. Without at least one of these clowns there is no quorum and a meeting can’t be held. Apparently they have been individually agreeing to show up then later, suddenly have other plans.

This could go on for quite awhile, and if left to their own devices, these miscreants may actually file to run for election in November before they’ve officially been run out of office.

Well, this might explain why it’s been three weeks since the election and the new councilmen Kiger, Sebourn and Chaffee have not been sworn it yet. That’s pretty reprehensible, if you ask me, and it begs the question – how much longer is this farce going to go on before somebody goes to a judge and gets a court order validating the election?

I remember well in 1994 that the three recalled councilmembers simply refused to schedule a replacement election (different laws then) until ordered to do so by a judge. Then as now, the incompetent, arrogant Old Guard refused to go quietly into that good night. And Don Bankhead, recalled the first time, got himself elected again.

And here’s a final thought for you Fullerton water rate payers. Every single day that passes costs you all another $7000 in an illegal tax that is still being collected. 

Are you angry yet?

Tanned, Rested, Ready. Bill Hunt For Fullerton Police Chief?

Dear Friends, we received the following e-mail today:

The Fullerton Police Department needs a housecleaning; a big broom that will reach all the way back into the filthy corners that haven’t been cleaned for years. There are hairballs and dust bunnies back in there dating to Patdown Pat McPension’s first years on the job.

Except for those inside the department and the cowardly do-nothing types like Sharon Quirk who would have us believe that she and Dan Hughes are cleaning up the spills on Aisle One, nobody believes the department is capable of reforming itself. We need an objective outsider to do the job. Somebody who has experience as a municipal police chief, but who isn’t afraid to take on the establishment.

That person is Bill Hunt.

As a lieutenant in the OC Sheriff’s Department he was the Police Chief of San Clemente. He took on the corrupt Sheriff, Mike Carona when nobody else had the guts to. In doing so he earned the enmity of all the other crooked repuglicans in Orange County. It cost him his job.

Let’s get Fullerton back on track. Let’s get a strong, effective, honorable reformer running our police department!

 

Coming Soon: The Kelly Thomas Memorial Art Show and Concert

Friday July 6th @ PÄS Gallery 6:00-11:00 PM  Art With An Agenda. Commemorate the first anniversary of Kelly Thomas’ deadly encounter with six members of the Fullerton PD. Double Click here to download the Press Release.

And then the very next day, Saturday July 7th at the Fullerton Museum Plaza, is the 2nd Annual Kelly Thomas Memorial Concert, Clothing and Food Drive featuring one of  the best bands to ever come from the OC, The Adolescents.

Two great opportunities to show your support for reform in Fullerton without glossing over what happened last July 5th  – the murder of an innocent man.

Slidebar Slides Into Litigation

Hmm.

For almost a year now rumors have been swirling around the role of Fullerton’s Slidebar in the death of the mentally ill homeless man, Kelly Thomas, last July. Specifically, did a Slidebar employee at the behest of his or her boss, owner Jeremy Popoff, make a phony call to the cops to give them a pretext to roust Thomas.

Staring into an uncertain future...

Despite all of his protestations of innocence and donations of canned food to the homeless, Popoff’s story never quite rang true.

A couple days ago the other shoe finally dropped: a lawsuit for wrongful termination by a former employee named Michael Reeves that goes into elaborate detail about what happened on the night of July 5, 2011, and the cover up that followed.

The guy claims the fateful and false call to the FPD that triggered the events leading to the murder of Thomas  was made by Slidebar manager Jeanette DiMarco at the behest of owner Jeremy Popoff.

Later, when he wouldn’t play ball, Reeves claims he was demoted, then fired. The guy is suing for $4,000,000, a tidy sum, to be sure.

 

Read the complaint

Well, there you have it. Is any part of this tale true? I don’t know. But I do know that the other, even more sinister part of the story is still looming on the horizon like a nasty weather front; and that’s the disturbing possibility that the bar was in cahoots with one or more of the police before hand, complicit in a criminal conspiracy to deprive Kelly Thomas of his Constitutional rights and even his physical well-being.

We now know that the DA has decided to look the other way in his haste to kiss and make up with the Fullerton cops, but the possibility that the attack on Thomas was per-arranged does indeed explain the antagonistic behavior of Wolfe and Ramos, and perhaps even the seemingly inexplicable violence of Cicinelli.

All this is now bound to come out in the civil proceedings against the City by Ron Thomas and Garo Mardirossian. The latter may be pressured to cut a deal to avoid embarrassing the City too much in a public trial, but the new council needs a vehicle to get all the facts on the table once and for all. A trial is just the thing.

A Letter to Kelly

Sent in by a Friend:

Dear Kelly,

I know that whatever I say here is too little too late, but I must say it. I have to say thank you. I know that what happened that fateful night was nothing you had ever planned to have happen, and that there was nothing you could have done to stop the injustice that occurred to you. But I want you, and your family, friends, and supportive citizens to know that your death was not in vain. You have brought new life to a community by helping us to remember our pure humanity. 

I may no longer be religious, but I retain an intense spirituality in which I hold true to many of the things I was taught as a child. One of my most remembered passages from the Bible is as follows: “As you have done it to these, the least of my brethren, you have done it unto me.” Although I always saw this as a positive passage, it reminds me now that there are two sides to every subject. You are in no way any less than any of us, except for in the way that our entrusted officers and government treated you because of who you were in their eyes. And I am so sorry that it took your death for us to realize that we all, as a community, had lost our power and needed to take it back. 

Even with what happened tonight in our recall election, I wish that what had happened to you could be taken back a thousand times over. It should never have come to this. Tonight, the City of Fullerton stood up in defense of not just you, but itself, and it should never have taken your death for us to realize how much we needed to make change happen. There were so many more issues involved tonight, which we have known for so long but refused to challenge, and I am sorry that you had to be the catalyst to make change happen.

I am so wholeheartedly ashamed of how we let you down, but I hope that wherever you are, you somehow know that we will continue fighting for you, for our community, and for the rights of all of our citizens. I know that I, among many others, will continue to vigilantly make sure this never happens again to any member of our community, and should any injustice occur, that we will all work together to hold those persons accountable of the crimes they have committed.

All I can do tonight is look up at the sky and thank you, and I hope you that you can forgive us for all that has occurred. We love you, and we love Fullerton, and let this mark a new day in this city’s history and future.

With Love and Appreciation,

Your Town

So What’s Next?

As soon as the Fullerton Recall election is certified (which should be comparatively quick) the reactionary Old Guard will be out and the new majority of reformers will be sworn in to join Bruce Whitaker in an opportunity to usher in a new era of accountability in Fullerton City Hall.

What should be the immediate agenda? How about finally (and immediately) revoking the illegal 10% water tax and figuring out how to implement a refund? How about pulling the plug on the last minute (and also illegal) Redevelopment deals handed out by the Three Flat Tires to their buddies like Dick Ackerman? How about initiating an immediate search for a new chief of police from outside the tainted innards of the FPD? How about an immediate jettison of the incompetent and inert City Attorney, Jones & Meyer? How about the demotion or removal of the City manager, Joe Felz, dubbed “Albert Pujols” of city managers by Patdown Pat McKinley, who sat on his ass while Fullerton went to hell?

How about a timely assessment of the labor union agreements that have created a multi-hundred million dollar unfunded liability for Fullerton? How about consideration of a “total compensation” approach in all future negotiations?

Feel free to add your ideas.