PUBLIC ENEMY

The postcard at the restaurants reads “SAVE THE WALK ON WILSHIRE AND OUTDOOR DINING!”

give it away, give it away, give it away now

“Fullerton City Council voted to remove the Walk on Wilshire in September”.

FALSE!

A few months ago, the City Council haphazardly voted: Whitaker, Jesus, and Ahmad, to explore keeping it permanent, whatever that means nowadays in this city.

What it fails to acknowledge is that their precious Walk on Wilshire is not a community benefit. 

It is far from that.

It is a government subsidized revenue mechanism for a handful of “downtown” restaurants/bars.

Closing Wilshire Avenue to vehicle traffic in the name of public health is dumb government when latest COVID numbers are trending down to such a degree, even hypersensitive Los Angeles has opted not to have an indoor mask mandate.    

Blocking Wilshire Avenue – Fullerton’s bike boulevard – in a feeble attempt to turn a very small section of downtown Fullerton into dining al fresco is nonsense since the view for diners is barriers and an asphalt street.

What’s that saying about lipstick on a pig?

“Downtown” Fullerton is not London or Rome!

Walk on Wilshire is Whitaker, Jesus, and Ahmad’s way of sponsoring a select group of “downtown” businesses like Mulberry Street Ristorante, Fullerton Brew Co (formerly Stadium Tavern), Green Bliss and Rialto Cafes, and Les Amis Restaurant.

Les Amis Restaurant recently hosted and sponsored the bitchin’ Zahra campaign kick off fundraiser so it is plainly obvious why that criminal would support Walk on Wilshire.

Jesus Quirk-Silva is just a moron who can’t find his way out of his pants wearing wife’s political shadow. 

He’s a lame duck anyway with redistricting sidelining him for a few years.

But Bruce?!!? 

He has consistently challenged zone changes, government’s heavy handedness, and city thumb on the scale for years.

So why would an anti-government interventionist support this?

Ronald Reagan warned that the top 9 most terrifying words in the English Language are: I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.

Maybe Bruce is not at the wheel anymore.

Fullerton can’t figure out street and road repair with most residents living in street conditions resembling a third world country.

Yet somehow, its City Council and its small group of vocal influencers want to have their cake and eat it too by saving its failed Museum, its Fox Theatre, its outdated library, its overgrown parks system, and “community” events like Founders Day.

Keep spending taxpayer money on closing perfectly good streets like Wilshire Avenue so businesses that financially support Zahra get a financial kickback disguised as public safety benefits.

We need leadership Bruce!

I miss the old Bruce, straight from the ‘Go Bruce!

FEEL THE BERN! FEEL THE BURN!

My Hero

Amateurs and concerned residents who attend Fullerton City Council meetings to address grievances and gripes are off limits from FFFF evaluation.

But professionals like labor unions and social “justice” non-profits are fair game.

FFFF regularly shines our light on them.

Which brings us to enemy of the people, Ahmad Zahra, who recently held a fundraiser to kick off his re-election campaign.

Hardly newsworthy.

His guest list, however, was a who’s who of Fullerton’s past failures.

Remember Paul Dudley, the Fullerton Development Department head who brought us the infamous Florentine Bump Out, now Mario Bump Out!

What a Cast!

He was there! As was Jan Flory, his boat drinks friend who vacations with the former city staffer Dudley. She was hangin’ with Ahmad.

The Ahmad endorsed city council candidate Shana Charles walked the Zahra red carpet. She’s a socialist in Dem clothing.

A curious guest of honor was frequent public comment maker and victim to Fullerton’s mean streets and even meaner sidewalks: Bernard.

Berny reads an Ahmad prepared speech at meetings because Zahra is too chicken to debate and risk offending the sensibilities of politically correct liberals.

Berny moans on about how important staff is (a constant suck up of his boss Zahra).

Or you can find him criticizing Bruce, Jung, or Dunlap.

His favorite obsession is Bushala, who just happens to be Ahmad’s infatuation.

Big, bad Bushala who uses his “council majority” a frequently peddled phrase by both Berny and his boss, to pad his own pockets.

No examples are ever provided. Just more pro-Ahmad propaganda.

That is what Fullerton voters can expect from the con artist Zahra.

He is not beyond using the disabled, Latina moms, seniors in mobile home parks, former city councilwomen, all of whom he manipulates with ease for his own personal gains.

Another guest on the Zahra guest list was Fullerton hero firefighter Dan Lancaster, who is the union rep.

Where’s The Fire?

Should a current public employee show his face at a campaign fundraiser?

I wonder how much influence he and his heroes have on the decisions Ahmad makes.

According to the Orange County Grand Jury here, Fullerton Firefighters are using million dollar fire trucks to rumble down torn up streets to respond to medical calls instead of nimble paramedic vans.

Medical calls are 80 percent of all fire emergency calls.

The fire hero union and its leader Lancaster are milking Fullerton taxpayers dry in unlimited overtime riding around to car accidents and getting cats out of trees.

There is no accountability and no supervision of their overtime expenses because Ahmad is too busy hosting them at fundraisers.

Zahra, Jung, and Silva were all supported by the fire union with thousands of independent expenditure dollars.

Election season can give Fullerton a new choice away from the status quo support these heroes receive from nearly every politician but Dunlap and Whitaker.

Let’s feel the burn and find more courageous candidates. 

The report points out that “sending a 36,000 to 60,000-pound fire engine or aerial ladder truck down residential streets for strictly medical calls is not only dangerous and costly, but it also results in unnecessary wear and tear on our streets.”

Fullerton already has terrible roads. 

“To improve the overall response performance of the OCFA delivery system the number of units sent to most emergency medical incidents must be reduced.”

The City Council is expected to consider joining OCFA. If the fire heroes union already owns Zahra, is being in OCFA a forgone conclusion?

“City of Placentia reported that out of 43 fire departments surveyed in Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside Counties, 27 departments (67 percent) utilize a three-person engine crew. This was the most common standard among the three counties,” concludes the OC Grand Jury.

Fullerton uses a four-person engine crew. That is why the city is forced to pay some of the highest percentages of overtime to its firefighters.

Fullerton taxpayers will keep paying until we have better leaders

Off To The Races

The starter gun has gone off!

The 2022 race for the Fullerton City Council has begun.

Per the City Clerk, candidates for District 3 and District 5 may begin to pull nomination paperwork starting Monday, July 18, 2022.

The recent redistricting process threw out the previously gerrymandered election map and established a new District 3.

Side note: a casualty of the new map, Jesus Quirk-Silva, who is now in District 2.

Jesus Quirk-Silva will also be sidelined for two years because the next scheduled District 2 election is 2024.

The largest obstacle in what’s left of Jesus Quirk-Silva’s political career will be running for a Council seat in a heavily Republican favored district.

Jesus Quirk-Silva would also have to run against his current Council mate Nicholas Dunlap, who won his election by a landslide.

Only one candidate has “declared”.

Has anyone heard of Shana Charles?

You kidding me?

Quick Google search shows she is currently a professor in the Health Science Department at Cal State Fullerton. Google second page discloses she ran for Fullerton Elementary School Board in 2018 and failed.

More research shows she also ran for Fullerton City Council’s appointed seat vacated by the before mentioned Jesus Quirk-Silva in 2019, which brought us the unbearable return of Jan Flory.

She also ran for the vacant Trustee appointment for the Orange County Board of Education in 2022, which Tim Shaw received. Is there anything she won’t run for?

We don’t need another Doug or Paulette Chaffee.

District 5 is more predictable.

Man who never saw a selfie opportunity he didn’t take and criminally charged, woman beater Ahmad Zahra is already proclaiming endorsements and fundraisers for himself, so Fullerton is damned to his candidacy. Again.

Feel free to play along to the Zahra Facebook Drinking Game. Take a shot for every Zahra post that features a badly aimed selfie. You’ll be hammered inside of 5 minutes.

Will Sharon Quirk-Silva endorse him when he was involved in a year long legal fight with her and Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia? Zahra wasn’t the one suing Sharon and poor Cristina Garcia. Danny Fierro did.

I make movies.

Fierro was integrally involved in Zahra’s campaign. Maybe Sharon – like Jesus – forgives our sins! Will Lou Correa endorse a criminal? Will Josh Newman endorse a liar and fraud? These and many other questions will be answered in the coming weeks and FFFF will be holding Democrats Newman, Quirk-Silva, and Correa responsible if they choose to support a man who was arrested by the FPD and charged by Orange County’s DA, Todd Spitzer, for vandalism, graffiti, and battery against a woman, Monica F.

The $4900 Cigar

The government establishment you scratch my back and I will scratch yours wheel never stops.

This fundraising faux pas is Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva’s, who is holding a Cigar Night fundraiser at a local Fullerton cigar store.

Sounds pretentious at best and a clear endorsement of old, backroom patriarchy at worst.

This from a so called champion of women’s rights!

What makes this particularly offensive is that the fundraiser is none other than “O Strategies“.

“O” for Ortega or FFFF exposed Adan Ortega, the so called water industry consultant.

A quick check of Ortega’s consulting company website shows team member Jesus Quirk-Silva listed as Local Issues and Engagement Director.

Oh, and Jesus Quirk-Silva is also employed as a current Fullerton City Councilman.

If you recall, Jesus Quirk-Silva fought hard to keep his boss Ortega as Fullerton’s appointee to the Metropolitan Water District.

I guess his employer needed the appointment to keep his sham water consulting/racketeering gig viable and in return, Jesus Quirk-Silva’s wife gets cash for her campaign war chest as she heads into the finals, mano a mano battle against an unknown Soo Yoo.

You scratch my back and I will scratch yours.

Sharon Quirk-Silva should have saved Jesus Quirk-Silva the grief and kept this whole smoking jamboree invite only and not promoted it by posting flyers all over downtown.

She might be just that tone deaf.

It could be she is just that dumb.

Or perhaps she is arrogant and internalizes misogyny.

Would you shell out $5,000 to have a stogie with Sharon?

I mean, what would the anti-smoking Latino mothers of South Fullerton feel about their role model smoking a big fat cigar with the boyz?

I guess we should ask, “What would Jesus do”?

The Thief is Back!

Yes, your honor. That’s me…

For some strange reason, Paulette Marshall (Chaffee) thinks that she should be elected something. Once again, she is giving it a go, again running for the OC Board of Education. She got wiped out last time, coming in third – 5,000 votes behind Vicki Calhoun who spent half a million dollars less.

Here is Paulette’s ballot statement, just oozing sympathy for the traumatized victims of COVID and offering her special brand of boohoo bullshit.

A moral paragon speaks…

For starters, Paulette is not a teacher and non-profit boardmember is not a job. But expecting the truth from a Chaffee is like expecting rain in the Sahara. Plus this office has very little to do with those 600,000 kids, so she either doesn’t know the job she’s running for, or is just lying – again.

In the past FFFF has shared how, in her desperation to get elected, she has created or paid to advertise in phony websites. I guess she thought this was somehow a winning strategy, because she’s doing it again, with a feminist flair, here.

Paulette Stolen Sign
Crime doesn’t always pay in Fullerton…

Of course Paulette’s bios never mention an extremely embarrassing, and telling, fact: when she ran as a fake carpetbagger for the Fullerton City Council in 2018, she was caught on video – twice – stealing campaign signs, a crime for which she pled guilty.

Poor Paulette. You almost have to pity somebody who is so desperate to get elected something. Well, here at FFFF we try to help folks with self-improvement whenever we can. And here, I suppose, we’ll have to keep trying to teach Paulette that there are more important things in life than being elected to office. One of them is being honest.

WE WANT OUR SIDEWALK BACK!

In Fullerton City Hall, nothing is forgotten quite so quickly as the past, particularly if that past includes malfeasance, misfeasance, incompetence or prevarication.

That’s why FFFF has made it our mission to remind folks about such egregious rip-offs as the Saga of the Florentine Sidewalk, in which a sleazy restaurant put a room addition on a public sidewalk and got away with it.

Here’s the now relevant part: The disgraced Florentine & Co. quit Fullerton last year, and the building’s owner, Mario Marovic is in the process of remodeling the exterior and interior of the building even though he doesn’t yet have the proposed CUP – so he must be pretty confident he’s going to get it. The matter comes to the Planning Commission tonight.

The staff report, as usual, is full of irrelevant crap, and completely ignores the the theft of the sidewalk, a land grab that was eventually made legal by a revised lease – with Florentine. The report also shares Marovic’s plan for the corner space at Harbor and Commonwealth, keeping the permanent structure built by Florentine!

The theft continues…

Now that’s not very good, is it.

I doubt if anybody on the Planning Commission remembers the sordid history of this building, and you can be sure that no one on staff remembers or cares to remind them. But now is the time to get this sidewalk back!

Joe Felz’s Wild Ride -The Full Monty

Starring former Fullerton City Manager, Joe Burt Felz who got drunk on Election Night 2016, drove over a tree, and tried to escape from his own cops. There is something sort of pathetic about Felz, errand boy and water bearer for Jennifer Fitzgerald, saying over and over that his turn blinker wasn’t working and how he became befuddled, until one of his own policemen tells him to stop yammering about it.

As one of the cops said: “it’s the Chief’s call.” Subsequently Chief Danny “Gallahad” Hughes lied to the Council about the affair even as Felz tried to quietly pay for the tree and move on.

The City of Fullerton tried for years to keep this under wraps because it implicated our MADD rewarded police themselves in incompetent and illegal activity. FFFF sued the City to get the videos, and in retribution two bloggers were personally sued by the City for legal activity, a lawsuit that cost the taxpayers hundreds of thousands and that finally exonerated David Curlee and Joshua Ferguson.

His Finest Hour?

After a night of election celebrating, former Fullerton City Manager, Joe Felz, drove home drunk as the proverbial skunk, ran off the road and over a tree, then tried to drive off before being apprehended by his own cops.

The ensuing cover up cost a cop his job, gave the FPD yet another black eye, and eventually entangled the City in a losing a retaliatory lawsuit against FFFF and bloggers Joshua Ferguson, David Curlee.

Partial videos have finally been released, although the dash cam videos have not. Of course this is not a surprising omission given that the cop in charge at the scene -Sergeant Corbett – did his level best to obscure images the still-inebriated Felz; the dash cams would undoubtedly show the the not-too flattering images of Felz hit-and-run and his comical attempt to escape the long arm of the law.

City Dumps Poison Park on Latino Community

Yes, Friends you heard that right. In the long history of official misfeasance regarding the ill-fated “Union Pacific Park” we’ve seen stupidity, indifference, lack of accountability waste, more stupidity. A project that nobody in the community wanted, but that a fun thing for Parks Director Susan Hunt to play with, and for Redevelopment Monopoly bucks to buy, has been a humiliation for everybody involved; or should be, except that bureuacrats in Fullerton have no shame and no rear-view mirror.

But now we discover, courtesy of a 19 year-old document, something a lot more nefarious than just the usual City Hall incompetence. Consider the following letter written to local property owner Tony Bushala, from then Redevelopment flunky, Ken O’Leary.

Oops.

Here’s a smoking gun. The City had already purchased contaminated property, not bothering to employ a Phase 2 environmental assessment. And they knew that the perp was already cleaning up contamination “in the vicinity.” And yet the City proceeded building a park knowing that soils contamination was an issue surrounding the park, and evidently not giving damn whether their own soil was contaminated. So the park was built for well over a million bucks, then Lo and Behold – the park, by now renamed “Union Pacific Park,” was contaminated too. It was fenced off from the junkies and homeless and borachos that haunted it.

Naturally O’Leary is long gone, as is his boss, the ever-hapless Gary Chalupsky. Gone too are bungling bureaucrats Hunt, F. Paul Dudley, Bob Hodson, and former City Manager, Jim Armstrong, all enjoying six-figure pensions courtesy of you, me, and the people of the communidad who never wanted a park at all.

And now it seems the death march is to continue. Only recently City staff cooked up a lame scheme to put a private event center on the site, masquerading as an “educational” aquaponics farm. This hare-brained idea was ardently supported by Jesus Quirk Silva and Ahmad Zahra, two councilmen immune to common sense; and these two now, all of a sudden, want to start a whole new process to find out what the “community” wants, just like Susan Hunt did over 20 years ago. 

FULLERTON COP INVOLVED IN DUI CRASH?

Still in one piece…

According to sources in the FPD, a Fullerton cop was involved in a La Habra DUI crash in the wee hours of an early July morning. Allegedly, a city vehicle was wrecked.

I can’t confirm this story, but boy, it sure sounds plausible given the department track record of hiring the best and brightest.

Look for the usual stalls: a never ending “internal affairs” look-see; and equally extended “DA investigation:” and then a lengthy and confidential “personnel review.”

I hate it when that happens…

A few years ago, FFFF reported on a city-owned Parks and Rec vehicle that crashed and flipped in the intersection at Highland and Chapman, an incident of which all traces vanished into thin air. If this tale is true we can expect an equally diligent cover-up, this time perhaps involving the La Habra Police Department.