About Us Archives - Page 6 of 37 - Friends For Fullerton's Future

January 20, 2025A Step in the Right Direction

FFFF Seeks City Hall Presence

We have recently communicated with the City of Fullerton, via our attorney Kelly Aviles, that FFFF wishes to put a periodic publication for dissemination in the lobby of City Hall; naturally other City buildings such as the Community Center and the Library could be included.

Here’s the letter to City Manager Eric Levitt:

Dear Mr. Levitt:

I hope this finds you well. I am writing to you on behalf of my client, Fullerton’s Future, who’s in the process of launching a new newspaper publication to serve the residents of Fullerton. As part of the marketing and distribution efforts, my client seeks to place a newspaper rack in the lobby of City Hall, similar to the arrangements that have been made with other local newspapers.

We respectfully request the City Council grant approval for my Client to install a newspaper rack in the lobby of City Hall. My Client has secured a financial commitment from a local businessman for a significant amount of private financing to launch this new business endeavor committed to contributing to the local community by providing important local news, restaurant reviews, business advertisements, and information that reflects the diverse interests of our city’s residents and their needs for alternative news sources. In addition, an application to form a new 501-c4 will soon be filed with the IRS for this venture.

Please let me know if there are any specific procedures or requirements that need to be followed to facilitate this request or if the Council has any preferences regarding the placement of such a news rack at City Hall. We are eager to comply with any guidelines you may have.

Thank you for your time and consideration and we look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Kelly Aviles

Of course deploying an attorney suggests we mean business and might have to use legal redress if our request were to be denied. Why? Because the City currently permits the distorted and warped Fullerton Observer access to City premises.

I can’t see the City employees being too happy about this, at least not the department heads who have so often embroiled the taxpayers in boondoggles and losing litigation.

Then there’s the likely apoplectic response from “Drs.” Zahra and Charles, should our request be approved

I don’t know how long it’s been since City Hall faced real scrutiny of its activities. The denizens thereof must love them some obsequious Fullerton Observer. But the public deserves a new and much more objective option.

January 14, 2025January 15, 2025A Step in the Right Direction

Fullerton’s Committees and Commissions. What Are They Good For?

by The Desert Rat27 Comments

Well, the answer to that question depends on who you are and what you want.

Last Tuesday’s Fullerton City Council agenda featured an item to modify some of the current roster of committees and commissions. The idea was to schedule fewer meetings for some, get rid of “at-large” members in others and in one case, the Active Transportation Committee, roll it into the Transportation and Circulation Committee. The Planning Commission was to be expanded to seven members by adding two at-large members.

Naturally, the true nature of these committees and what they actually accomplish was not part of the discussion.

Almost no city committees are legally necessary according to State law – except, I believe, Library Boards and Planning Commissions. The rest are there, presumably, to give the public a chance to contribute to the charming swindle known as participatory government. This is almost always a fiction, as anybody who has spent any time watching these shows, knows. The committees are little better than rubber stamps.

City staff likes committees because it gives them a chance to build momentum behind one of their pet projects – to create an aura of inevitability about this or that. It’s an opportunity to go to the City Council and explain the unanimous support for their item. And if, perchance, a committee shows a little independence then their ideas and their votes are mere suggestions with no legal standing.

Some of the bureaucratic enthusiasm for committees must have waned a bit when Fullerton went to direct Council appointments a few years back. Previously choices were made by review panels made up of council and committee members who could be relied on to pick “sound” people, that is, folks who could be trusted not to rock the proverbial boat.

In the olden days staff liked larger committees. The reasoning seemed to be that the more members you had the more impotent the commission really was.

City Council members like to put friends and allies on committees, and, in the case of the Planning Commission, maybe even someone moving up in Fullerton’s political arena. This is how you build a political machine: you help people, they help you.

It is not uncommon that if there is an annoying member of the public, an irritant at Council meetings, he or she might just be shut up by being put on a committee, becoming part of the team, so to speak. It worked shockingly often. John Henry Habermeyer, Estelle Geddy Professor of Political Science and Economics at RPI for many years, describes the scenario eloquently:

“The answer is to asphyxiate the irritant in a smothering embrace; to draw said miscreant into the circle of government itself by appointing this him to some footling committee or other, thereby causing him to voluntarily silence himself in deference to the grand fraternity to which he has been officially welcomed. He has a name plate; perhaps even a coveted parking space! Many an underdeveloped and agitated ego has been assuaged by such a maneuver and its proprietor thereby silenced.“

Committee members who are not impatient with bureaucratic doubletalk like to be on committees, especially if they can sit up on the dais in the City Council chamber. It makes them feel good about things, an ego boost.

Of course the public is completely unaware or even interested in committee meetings which are almost always held in empty rooms.

Since almost everybody seems to like the current set-up, why the proposed alterations? The staff report referred to economies, efficiencies, and such-like. The verbiage didn’t sound very heart-felt or persuasive and the reader gets the impression of a top down diktat from Mayor Fred Jung to clean things up.

In the end most of the proposed reductions to five directly appointed members of certain commissions was approved, which is basically a smart move. The inconsistent proposal to increase the Planning Commission membership to seven (actually the way it used to be) failed. The motion to keep it the way it is passed 3-2 with Fred Jung and Jamie Valencia voting no.

On a side note, Fullerton Boohoo was at the meeting to display their unhappiness. Why not? The altar of probity, the Fullerton Observer had tried to stir up opposition earlier with one of their editorial/news mishmashes. The funniest part of this effort was to explain that these committees help keep staff “accountable,” an obvious misdirection from the Kennedy Sisters who have never cared about staff accountability before.

Whether or not the changes would have saved anybody time or money is debatable. What is not debatable is that these footling committees are there to look like public participation is going on, when it hardly ever is.

January 5, 2025January 5, 2025About Us

What Does Fullerton’s Future Hold In Store For Dick Jones?

by Joe Sipowicz17 Comments

I don’t have the answer. Not yet anyway. But I know that the “I Can’t Believe It’s a Law Firm” of Jones and Mayer has been making bank on Fullerton for over 25 years as City Attorney. And I know that that the dismal legal counsel has impoverished the taxpayers of Fullerton plenty over the two and a half decades. I’m not going to recite the litany of legal failures we can lay at Jones’s doorstep – not yet anyway; we’ve already been doing that for years.

For reasons that escape Council watchers, Dick Jones somehow managed to escape getting the boot between 2020 and 2024, and I can’t think of anybody outside the Council who knows exactly why. Generally we can conclude that at least one member of the Whitaker, Dunlap, Jung triumvirate was protecting Jones and his minions, since it is incomprehensible that either Ahmad Zahra or Shana Charles would dump this chump.

Dick Jones is nothing if not a politician, playing the angles to keep at least three council persons happy at any one time, even alongside legal debacle after legal debacle. It’s worked through 4 different decades thanks to Fullerton being Fullerton. The Old Guard didn’t care and didn’t want to cause trouble; they were easy to push and persuade without too much trouble. The lamebrains like Leland Wilson and Mike Clesceri were afraid of their own shadows. Norby, I’m told, was just happy that the job was outsourced. The other dopes like Pam Keller, Sharon Quirk and Jesus Quirk-Silva could not have conceived of anybody holding Jones responsible for the legal advice he dispensed. For a fixer like Jennifer Fitzgerald he was the perfect running buddy, trying to accommodate anything she wanted.

Well, now Whitaker is gone, and if he was the fly in the ointment for the past 4 years, we may soon find out. Will Council newcomer Jamie Valencia take an independent stand and actually review Jones and Mayer’s record of failure? I sure hope so. It’s time that the City Attorney started giving out advice that avoids lawsuits instead of getting into them, with the result that he gets paid even more for failure.

I don’t know if Ms. Valencia reads this blog, but if so I sure hope she follows that link, above. She would find stories of Jones & Mayer’s incompetence, self-service, and ghastly legal decisions that have harassed Fullerton citizens, given away public resources and cost the taxpayers millions going back 25 years.

I’m sure Jonesy has already tried hard to wheedle himself into Valencia’s good graces, because that’s what he has always done. Will she go for it?

Hanging on to Fullerton should be a big deal to Jones and Mayer in terms of the future legal partnership. And I’m sure Jones figures that the loss of Fullerton could jeopardize his jobs in other cities like Westminster, La Habra, and Costa Mesa. True, Jones is 75 years old and may not even care anymore. Still, the firm must go on, and the junior partners such as the terrier-like Kim Barlow and the obnoxious hand-job lawyer, Gregory Palmer may still have a few years of legal bungling ahead of them.

November 28, 2024November 29, 2024A Step in the Right Direction

Happy Thanksgiving, Friends

by Mr. Peabody16 Comments

Here is a re-print of as FFFF Thanksgiving message from way back in 2011. There is no mention of downtown noise bungles, Trails to Nowhere, Walks on Wilshire or boutique hotels. Bankhead and Jones are long dead. The Recall a distant memory. However, the message is still very pertinent, and it’s way easier to reproduce an old one than come up with a new one.

As we pause today to give thanks for whatever we have to be thankful for, please consider how fortunate we are to live in a nation where freedom of speech actually means something.

This blog has never abused that basic right. We are abusive, rude, enlightening, abrasive, endearing, funny, not funny; we are free with our opinions, but never make things up. And we always remember what Dick Jones, Don Bankhead and Pat McKinley do not: that we derive the right from ourselves, and not from the government that would make us fill out a little blue card to speak to them.

We have been accused of being angry. Hell, yes we’re angry: as our elected representatives cut ribbons and hobnobbed at Chamber of Commerce mixers and rubber stamped every idiocy put in front of them, our city (ours, not theirs) was turned over to a gang of grifters, liars, thugs, pickpockets, perverts and killers.

These same buffoons have turned downtown Fullerton into a urine-soaked, booze addled free-for-all upon which our city council unleashed a band of uniformed goons hardly better than the low-lifes they invited into our city.

They have given their campaign contributors free land and even public streets upon which to erect the overbuilt stucco’d monstrosities that have swallowed up the historic downtown. Are they even ashamed? Hell, no, they are proud of what they have done and apologize for nothing.

Yes, there is anger; yet, anger tempered by hope. Hope that with a clear, sharp message Fullerton can be relieved of the dead hand of an ancient and corrupt regime. That message of hope is being delivered by the Fullerton Recall campaign.

You are all welcome to share that hope. And be assured: the winter of discontent will give way to a new year and spring of accountability and responsibility on the part of Fullerton’s elected representatives.

October 25, 2024October 25, 2024About Us

The Hypocrisy Of Fullerton BooHoo

by The Fullerton Harpoon18 Comments

I was watching the League of Women Voter’s candidate forum a few days ago and I couldn’t help but notice how the Fullerton Boohoo darlings, Jan Flory and Vivian Jaramillo, kept attacking the incumbents for their refusal to “listen to the people.” Well, okay politics.

It’s a total waste of money, but it sure is short…

The two examples cited were the idiotic Trail to Nowhere and the equally stupid Walk on Wilshire. Ironically, the former was approved unanimously by the City Council; and Council majorities have kept the latter, the money-losing and annoying “WoW” alive for years.

If I knew what I was talking about this wouldn’t be Fullerton!

The fact is that both of these wasteful and useless “projects’ were the brain children of bureaucrats in City Hall and became the vanity projects of the egregious Ahmad Zahra and the lamentable Shana Charles who were instrumental in both cases in getting people to show up and harass anybody who might be exercising common sense. And right there to create the news and also report on it were the Kennedy Sisters, Skaskia and Sharon, who saw nothing wrong with trying to intimidate downtown businesses in the case of the moronic Waste on Wilshire.

This sort of “public support” is not organic; it’s artificial, and that’s why it’s commonly referred to as Astroturfing. Hence the irony that the same people who ginned up the “support” are the ones braying to demand that the Fullerton City Council “listen to the people.”

Well, irony isn’t the strong suit of people like Flory and Jaramillo. Neither is honesty. But self-serving sanctimony is.

When the the idea of legalizing marijuana dispensaries in Fullerton came to the City Council in 2019, public speaker after public speaker, in English and Spanish denounced the idea as bad for Fullerton. The percentage must have been 30 to 1 against dispensaries. And where was Jan Flory, defender of the untermenschen? That’s right. She was voting to permit dispensaries in the closing months of 2019 – before the election that would usher in a new, anti-dispensary Council majority.

When the new Council revoked the Flory-Zahra-QuirkSilva dope ordinance and the vast majority again being in favor of disallowing dispensaries, guess who was there. Cannabis Kitty Jaramillo, that’s who, the enthusiastic marijuana advocate who proclaimed dispensaries were “right for Fullerton.”

Amazing how these twin pillars of public advocacy had no such interest in overwhelming public opinion when it came to legalized dope and it didn’t suit their ambitions; a public opinion, by the way, that was not ginned up by City bureaucrats, politicians or brain-dying ideologues, but that represented genuine public sentiment.

February 8, 2024About Us

The Sound and the Fury

by Mr. Peabody25 Comments

A couple weeks back I posted that once again the issue of nuisance noise was coming to the City Council for yet another stab at, well, just another stab.

In December the proposed ordinance was deemed lacking by Mayor Dunlap who asked that it come back in February; what that delay was supposed to accomplish is unclear, but return the item did. It resurfaced on Tuesday, and once again was half-heartedly examined and pushed away by the Council. This time they sent the matter back to the Planning Commission, that had already approved the existing proposal in November, 2023. This stall seems even more pointless than the last one. Fullerton.

The staff report was virtually unintelligible. It was nothing but a disjointed litany of actions taken (or, to be more precise, not taken) over the past 15 years to avoid doing anything and letting the scofflaw bar owners continue to scoff at the law. It didn’t say that, of course, but such was the unmistakable implication. A common thread seemed to be the difficultly in enforcing anything, which was just an excuse for not trying.

The thrust of the revised ordinance is to raise the legal noise threshold in Downtown Fullerton. In fact the only thing the Council was considering, according to the oral staff presentation was this commercial aspect, although you’d have a hard time knowing that fact based on the material presented to the public.

The ordinance itself has baked-in failure written between every line, most notably in the increase in decibel level at 50 feet from the sources, combined with the issue of “ambient noise,” a loophole our fine Downtown club operators would be sure to drive a diesel semi through.

Joshua Ferguson made an appearance to show the nonsense of the 50 ft from property line part and noted, correctly that the the thresholds could actually create OSHA violating conditions within buildings themselves. He succinctly pointed out that the City (despite the self-congratulatory recitation of its recent enforcement efforts) wasn’t really enforcing anything at all, and showed that scofflaws were rarely even punished per the Municipal Code.

The proposed ordinance language seems to have been written by a staff member. But nowhere can one find evidence that any of this was approved as to form by Dick Jones, Esq. of The I Can’t believe It’s A Law Firm. What’s the point of having a lawyer if their job doesn’t include reviewing a potential law before it’s passed?

January 3, 2024January 3, 2024About Us

High Speed Rubbish. Mate.

by The Fullerton Harpoon9 Comments

I came across this video gem the other day. Look and sound familiar? The Australian TV show Utopia, goes after high speed rail as never making economic sense. But economic sense ought not to get in the way of progress, and the idea of intercity transit going real, real fast is irresistible to some, including the army of consultants, engineers, union construction workers and land grabbers who make bank on the concept.

California’s HSR Authority has been a sink hole for billions and billions of dollars, escalating costs, tortuous delays, etc., etc. And yet it gasps on, staggering along thanks to its own bureaucratic inertia – an idea sold to the voters over 15 years ago and with little hope of opening the easiest segment before 2030.

Meantime, this titanic boondoggle is scoping the all-important line from Anaheim to Los Angeles where the line currently under construction in the Central Valley may never reach in this century. Cutting through this urban landscape, including Fullerton, will cost a fortune, of course, and the HSR won’t be able to go much faster than existing train service. What would it mean for us if this dopey authority cut a swath through Fullerton? It won’t be good, that’s for sure.

But who cares? In California it’s not efficacy that matters. It’s the grand gesture, and in this case the laughable assertion that California will be appreciably better off by spending hundreds of billions of dollars to buy a few train trips per year.

January 1, 2024January 1, 2024About Us

The Process & The Consultant

by The Fullerton Harpoon33 Comments

A few weeks ago I published a post on the extremely dubious efforts of a paid consultant to begin a renewed effort to raise a new sales tax in Fullerton. The consultant is an operation called FM3.

We’ve seen this movie before. Many times.

In an effort to build momentum toward justifying a new tax a consultant is tasked with cooking up a poll, a survey that is worded in such a way as to make the question of a new tax sound not only plausible but even desirable.

The information that is collected is meant to probe the electorate’s weak spots, just like an army might send out reconnaissance to figure out where to attack.

Another benefit is to begin the process of developing ballot statement language that will push and persuade voters to the correct decision – a decision that will always be to vote for the tax. The reasons will be a short recital of the usual, low-hanging fruit, public safety being at the top of the list, but with no explanation that our public safety corps – emergency medical personnel (formerly known as :firefighters) and cops already suck up the majority of Fullerton’s General Fund. Mention of parks, quality of life, libraries and now “homeless” will be thrown in to the pot; and infrastructure maintenance will be included, disingenuously, to get support of the more hard-headed voter, just like last time.

Measure S Covid Lie — Let me count the ways…

And of course this language will be also be used by the inevitable political action committee formed to wage the propaganda war.

Make no mistake about it. The consultant hired to undertake this effort will know at the outset what his mission is. He knows who hired him and he knows what his employer wants.

Here’s a fun little Aussie video that spells out the process succinctly:

And so it goes. The start of a charade in which the taxpayers foot the bill to be “educated” into supporting a pre-determined outcome. The line between education (legal) and propaganda (illegal) is not bright, as asserted by Councilmember Bruce Whitaker. The fuzzy demarcation is exploited all the time by government agencies – always based on information collected in the original poll.

No On S — Don’t Reward the City’s Stupidity

The hopeful part of this is that the electorate is not always as easily persuaded as is supposed by the would be taxers. This was demonstrated in Fullerton in 2020 when voters rejected the ill-considered Measure S, and property tax-based bond floats by Fullerton’s two school districts.

In the end the Council (Jung, Zahra and Charles) voted, vaguely, to keep the “education” process going, a process that we know is nothing other than political propaganda aimed at persuading a majority of voters and coordinating with a special political action committee set up to scare, cajole, and bamboozle the voters.

December 18, 2023December 18, 2023About Us

We the People, An Essay

by Emily Roe54 Comments

Intelligent commentary was not forthcoming…

You’ve got to hand it to some of Fullerton’s lefties. Their blind devotion to abstractions, knee-jerk reaction to anything threatening their cherished causes, and blindered view of a world of injustices perpetrated on the “underserved” is pretty impressive. One way or another.

Let me be your guide! (Photo by Julie Leopo/Voice of OC)

But one thing that has really struck me lately is the way in which these folk identify themselves with the biggest thing in a democratic republic: the people.

It must be part of human nature to think that what you hold dear must be what everybody should want. But in some, the misidentification takes on a delusional quality – it is what everybody wants.

I’m referring to the recent hubbub about the ridiculous “Trail to Nowhere,” in which a tiny Ahmad Zahra claque have bi-monthly wasted hours and hours and hours talking about how their desire is the will of “the people,” and how the City Council majority is not listening to “the people.”

Why repeat the numerous reasons why the proposed trail was idiotic? FFFF has already done that convincingly. Instead, let’s look at the nature of the chatter.

Such talk could easily be dismissed as just meaningless political rhetoric, but these people seem to actually believe they do speak for everybody, obviously, because they are so right. It’s hard to understand where such a blind self-righteousness comes from, but I suspect it comes from decades of educational indoctrination into certain ways of thinking.

But, consider the reality.

Intrepid reporter/newsmaker, S. Kennedy, top left.

A dozen or so speakers nattering on about something they stubbornly refuse to actually understand, but believing that they speak for the citizens of a mid-size city of 145,000 people is preposterous.

The vast majority of Fullerton’s residents don’t know anything about the Trail to Nowhere and, if presented all the facts instead of weepy and outraged propaganda of the Fullerton Observer, might possibly conclude that the Council majority acted in their interest.

December 7, 2023About Us

A Modest Proposal

by Fred L. Olmsted26 Comments

I am going to make a modest proposal to the City leaders of Fullerton regarding the disposition of the grant money from the State Natural Resources Agency.

From what I understand, the main impediment to diverting the grant to the UP Park reconstruction is that there isn’t enough room on that site for the 168 trees that were promised along the Trail to Nowhere. The State thinks it’s real important to their mission to plant trees that will absorb greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide.

I know a place that easily accommodate those trees. It’s called Hillcrest Park, a 100 year-old park that is used by everybody in Fullerton, and that regularly serves the underserved population people seem to care so much about.

Hillcrest Park has been abused, neglected, laid waste by the City for at least 60 years.

Historic elements have been removed, non-conforming materials introduced, and worst of all, trees have been allowed to die and have not been replaced.

The denuded northern and western slopes have been permitted to erode. A good deal of the landscaping that was done when the wooden stairs to Lions Field were built has died and is overrun by weeds.

So how about this proposal: Divert the grant money to the reforestation of Hillcrest Park. Instead of planting trees along a trail that doesn’t go anywhere and nobody would use, let’s help restore Hillcrest Park, Fullerton’s first official Landmark.

There is plenty of time to effect this proposal. The grant money stipulates that it must be spent by fall of 2025, almost 2 years from now. So how about it, officialdom?