Behind Closed Doors Archives - Page 2 of 82 - Friends For Fullerton's Future

February 28, 2025February 28, 2025About Us

Fuck-ups For Fullerton’s Future

The City Council meeting agenda for March 4th has some interesting “Closed Session” items on it. For those who don’t know, Closed Session is a private meeting of the Council when legal, personnel or real estate issues are involved. The City Attorney attends the session, too, in our case the hapless buffoons of The I Can’t Believe It’s a Law Firm of Jones and Mayer.

Here’s the line up of issues.

Number 1 is about something up at the City Owned golf course – one of the too little scrutinized assets of the City of Fullerton. This has been a source of embarrassment for City staff and FFFF instruction in the past.

Our Friend David Curlee ran afoul of City Staff when he uncovered the rank incompetence of Alice Loya and Hugo Curiel as well as the misappropriation of Brea Dam Enterprise funds. And that’s likely the reason they dragged him into the FFFF/Joshua Ferguson lawsuit.

Number 2 is about the idiotic “boutique” hotel fiasco in which the City up-zoned the Hell out our property and then virtually gave it away to “Westpark/TA” an operation run by a couple crooks whose prior record was never disclosed to the City Council or the public. Well we found out all about it, even if our highly paid “professionals” in City Hall didn’t bother.

Any reasonable representatives of the people would have shit-canned this deal on Day 1. Not Fullerton, of course. What in the world could they be negotiating? TA hasn’t met any of its deadlines, got caught recording a phony deed, etc. TA should have been dumped a long, long time ago and their purchase amount forfeited. Interestingly the City seems to have brought in Best, Best and Krieger to do represent the City. At least it isn’t Jones and Mayer. Still, I wonder why.

Zahra Congratulates Marovic for his lawsuit…against us.

Number 3 is about our old friend Mario “Bump Out” Marovic, the scofflaw who took over from the Florentine Family in ripping off the public. He’s still illegally occupying the space he was supposed to have demolished two goddamn years ago.

He is obviously in default of that agreement – a deal that moronically permitted him to open up his businesses and profit off our building on our sidewalk. Our indifferent City staff and Council doesn’t seem to have the stomach to give this weasel notice that he has been trespassing and that they were going to demolish the building add-on and restore the sidewalk themselves.

Number 4 is one of those “anticipated litigation/significant exposure to litigation” items in which secrets can be withheld from potential litigants – like Friends for Fullerton Future – based on the squishy definition of the word “significant,” and self-serving public servant who happens to be defining it. Could this item be related to FFFF’s request for presence on City property? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

February 26, 2025February 26, 2025Ahmad Zahra

Zahra Wets Bed. Again.

by Joe Sipowicz19 Comments

Fullerton Councilmember Ahmad Zahra has been on a roll lately. And by roll, I mean getting humiliated by a council majority that is sick and tired of the immigration fraud, plagiarist, serial liar, and busted woman batterer. Well, no Kitty Jaramillo and no mayorship for you, Ahmad. No stipend-paying, do-nothing wank at the Orange County Water District, and no more idiot Walk on Wilshire.

We’ve seen his own flailing effort to create a controversy over Councilwoman Jamie Valencia’s campaign contributions, going so far as to basically accusing his own City Attorney of incompetence in the matter. And that’s not the only unforced error made by this little fellow.

Back in January Zahra decided not to re-appoint his Planning Commissioner Arif Mansuri, a gentleman FFFF has noted as a diligent and intelligent representative with actual professional credentials. Zahra instead appointed a young guy named Adrian Meza.

Never heard of Meza? I didn’t either so I did some research. The guy is one of those identity politicking “progressive” types, without any discernable ability who hang around politics for critical self validation – just like his apparent mentor, Ahmad Zahra. Meza says he is a Digital Marketing Specialist, whatever that means, and works for a company that arranges egg collection and surrogacy for gay people. What this has to do with experience in land use and planning is beyond me.

More importantly, Meza is a member of the that preachy and self-righteous crowd that doesn’t do an awful lot of thinking for themselves. Naturally he has been a writer of some kind for the Fullerton Observer that touted his video about how bad Fullerton’s roads are. The video recommended new taxes, of course, and even spent time wedging in support for the Trail to Nowhere with a hat tip to the community disservice of FFFF.

His bio on linkedin suggests he is still a Parks Commissioner (his first listed title!) and and even lists his efforts for the Observer as some sort of real job. Other stuff is part-time work in municipal park departments. Of course, like Zahra, he describes himself as a “videographer” with one amateur attempt listed. Man, talk about fluffing. We do have another Zahra on our hands.

Anyway, this selection has come to grief, apparently because Mr. Meza doesn’t currently live in Fullerton. as required by law. WoW. That’s embarrassing. How is it that Zahra didn’t know his guy doesn’t live here? And an even better question would ask whether Meza has been on Fullerton’s Park and Rec Commission while not a citizen of Fullerton. That would look bad. The question deserves an answer from Zahra; if Meza was willing to be on our Planning Commission illegally there’s no reason to suppose he had no qualms about being a Parks Commissioner while living, say, in Anaheim.

Of course no one will get an answer from Zahra about this, because no one will ask. Hopefully one of the other Councilpersons who ratified the nomination will try to find out. But I doubt it, Fullerton being Fullerton.

February 19, 2025February 19, 2025Behind Closed Doors

What if It Blows Up?

by The Fullerton Shadow30 Comments

The wasteful fantasy known as “Walk on Wilshire” may be dead – even though its advocates continue their public weeping – but interesting information about the boondoggle continues to to come to light – information that doesn’t put Fullerton in a good light. WoW is yet another Fullerton cautionary tale.

One issue about WoW never discussed in public, was the Mulberry Street Ristorante parklet’s violation of the standards of Southern California Edison regarding setbacks around their transformer vaults.

Oops.

There’s the culprit, deceptively hiding under car…

It turns out there’s an Edison tranformer vault in the street right in front of the “ristorante,” and right where their “parklet” was built. Here’s the plan for the parklet. The vault is dead center in the middle of it.

The problem popped up in October, 2023 when an Edison inspector discovered a problem: Edison requires a 15ft set back around the outside of their concrete vault, free of construction.

Oops.

Now, we can’t tell what that set back would look like without a sketch. So let’s make one!

The off-limits area inside the black square essentially eradicates the poor parklet. Oops!

Edison sent Mulberry Street a couple warning letters, the second, repeating the issues, in December, 2023.

Mulberry St. Ristorante replied to both these missives, saying more or the same thing each time.

Saying fuck you to Edison isn’t a very smart thing to do if you happen to use electricity, as we will soon see. Be sure to notice how Brandon Bevins, Mulberry’s Manager, also advises Edison to talk to the City of Fullerton!

This correspondence triggered a series of subtly urgent communications between the City Engineer and Edison at the end of 2023. Even our highly paid City Manager, Eric Levitt, was somehow dragged into this low-grade stupidity – all because the City staff who “managed” this project never thought to talk to Edison in the first place.

The tenor of the correspondence and the subsequent meetings was polite, but somewhat stiff since SCE had zero intention of looking the other way. In fact, SCE notified Mulberry Street that they were going turn off the juice to the whole property on January 19, 2024 sans compliance. So Bevins, who must have been panicking, tried to scare the City into desperate action.

Bevins was plenty pissed, and suggested that the we pay the costs for his parklet – just north of $40,000! So now the City had another self-inflicted wound. But wait. Mulberry wasn’t in the clear, either.

In correspondence from December 2022 the City (somebody named Matt Laninovich) erroneously tells Bevins that their parklet can cover the SCE vault so long as there is a hinged door in the parklet platform for access. Of course he pulled that out of his ass; but he also wisely informs Bevins to consult with Edison. Had Bevins done so he could have saved everybody time and trouble, including himself. Nevertheless, the City is now a full partner in a SNAFU that was completely avoidable.

A resolution of sorts was achieved on January 24, 2024 when Edison agreed to let the parklet remain if seating on it were limited to an area outside a 15ft radius from the perimeter of the iron manhole in the middle of the vault. The manhole would have to be reinforced (in case it might blow off in an explosion, presumably) and the vault had to be accessible from the Wilshire Avenue side.

This resolution doesn’t look too promising for Mulberry Street that also had to pay for that additional manhole restraint. Look. There’s hardly any room for seating left.

Was the parklet enlarged to make it actually work? Did Edison finally look the other way? Documents acquired from a Public Act Request don’t inform us: at this point information provided by the City about this issue ends. Was there more? Who knows?

One thing I do know is that images of the operating parklet from last year show tables within the no-go zone.

How much risk were the patrons who used the Mulberry Street parklet exposed to for the past year? How much risk if Edison had not spotted the issue to begin with? I don’t know, but Edison has safety rules for a reason. The explosion of the transformer in Huntington Beach in 2019 gives us some indication of what can go wrong, and the consequences of that episode were actually considered lucky.

Walk on Wilshire. A tail-wagging-the-dog gift that keeps on giving. The thing is a moot issue now, fortunately. But if anybody feels like asking good questions about this or other city-created public hazards, I’ll bet my Nevada ranch they won’t get good answers.

February 18, 2025February 18, 2025Ahmad Zahra

The Trail to Nowhere. Radio Silence With The Capital

by Mr. Peabody5 Comments

The trouble with the City of Fullerton’s Public Records Act system is that responses are so dilatory, so frequently incomplete, and often so non-responsive, as Friends have seen over the years, it’s hard to know if you can draw any firm conclusions from what are charitably called public records.

Here’s an interesting request made a couple of weeks ago.

The request has elicited a “full release” response, so we may infer, I hope, that it really is full.

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

Why is this request interesting? Because the obscure State Department of Natural Resources is the grant-giving sugar daddy of the 2.1 million dollar UP Trail fiasco.

I noted back on January 27th that there were problems with the Trail to Nowhere project schedule, namely, that the design and construction milestones were seven and five months late, respectively.

It’s hard to know the exact status of this boondoggle because nobody in City Hall is saying anything about it to the public. I (confidently) assume the final design was never submitted to the State because the City Council never approved it, never released a bid or awarded a contract. Construction has obviously not started. Now there are just eight months left to do it all.

This is where the PRA request comes in. The response just shares a short email string between Fullerton and Natural Resource Department people trying to set up a meeting for a briefing on some water project up north and its impact on MWD cities’ water supply. That’s it. There is nothing about the grant for the so-called UP Trail.

The project showed little promise, but they didn’t care…,

So what is the status? Were the milestones waived by the Natural Resources Department? Has some schedule modification been made? If so there’s no correspondence (at least none shared by the City Clerk) that show it. That’s pretty odd, isn’t it? Is it possible the State isn’t even keeping track of the agreement and the City isn’t bothering to remind them? That strikes a believable chord.

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At this point it seems highly unlikely that the Trail to Nowhere could be completed in time, but maybe hope springs eternal. The State doesn’t seem to care.

Ahmad Zahra and his pal Shana Charles made a big deal about this dumbassery and organized such an annoying Astroturf backing for it, that the previous council majority chickened out and agreed to the mess. They haven’t been talking about it either, even though they already took a victory lap and threw themselves a party.

Let’s hope so.

February 13, 2025February 13, 2025About Us

A Public Service Announcement From FFFF

by The Fullerton Harpoon9 Comments

Because we care so much about the Friends, FFFF is alerting you to potential hazards caused by power company transformers, especially those locate inside in-ground vaults. Transformers have been known to explode on occasion and the results can be catastrophic. When this happens the lid or access manhole of the vault can rocket upwards and the super-heated oil inside the transformer can become a fiery shower.

Here’s a video of just such an explosion at the Old World Village in Huntington Beach back in 2019.

Yikes! That must have been pretty hairy for the folks in attendance. Here’s another video of the Biergarten restaurant owner who was burned pretty badly by the blast and was suing Southern California Edison for not replacing the faulty transformer.

Why Edison allowed lots of people regularly in this proximity to the vault is a damn good question. And why the City of Huntington Beach permitted this use in this site is another one.

So there’s an object lesson here, folks. Be aware of all public safety hazards, including if not especially those related to (monopolized) public utilities. Public safety is not just a matter for the cops or the fire department – until something blows up.

February 9, 2025February 9, 2025Behind Closed Doors

The Never Ending Paper Chase

by Joe Sipowicz37 Comments

Forever and ever. The end.

That’s the bureaucratic snarl that surrounds the standard American community due to mandates from Sacramento and Washington.

We just had 13,000 potential new housing units shoved down our throat by the State of California Housing and Community Development pointy-headed paper pushers with the connivance of SCAG – the Association of Southern California Governments, that supplies the cooked up numbers. The good folks at SCAG answer to nobody, and the State Legislature just loves them some housing bureaucracy – and the more intrusive, the better, apparently.

And now what, you ask? Why another mandate – a five year “2025 Housing Consolidated Plan” required by the people at the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. Here’s the City of Fullerton’s grand announcement of…a survey to get the ball rolling.

A cynical type person might suspect that the only real reason for any of this massive and seemingly eternal paper chase is to keep public employees employed: hiring consultants, reviewing surveys, gathering “data,” writing reports of compliance, reading reports of compliance, writing notifications of compliance and non-compliance, writing more reports, reading more reports, handing out awards for compliance, and general bureaucratic backslapping all around.

The effects of all this mumbo jumbo on the communities it impacts are neither here, nor there. The government Kabuki-hustle described as public participation is necessary, but let’s be honest. The goal of this splendidly vast empire is simply to amass more budget and hire more people at government agencies. If only American industry could match this amazing growth record over the past 60 years.

So what motivates local compliance with all this gobbledygook? Well, there’s the old carrot and stick, as you might imagine – two sides of the same metaphorical coin. If you play nice and do what you’re told you get Federal and State money, part of which you can use to hire people into your city’s “housing” department, a thing that didn’t exist until the 60s and 70s. That’s empire building, a point of pride for your garden variety city manager. Everyone wants a cookie, right?

You know you can’t resist the Big Cookie!

But if you don’t go along and try to fight back against the idiot mandates, like Huntington Beach is doing right now, you incur the full wrath of State and Federal magistrates; from houseacrats to attorneys general and judges – the latter really just loyal public employees in silly robes. The reluctant jurisdiction will be threatened with a cut of of State and Federal payments, grants, and other beneficent distributions from far away capitals. No cookie for you, naughty boy.

February 7, 2025February 7, 2025A Step in the Right Direction

Time for Fred Jung’s Iron Fist

by Mr. Peabody22 Comments

Yeah. It’s about time. For decades Fullerton’s citizenry have picked up the tab for one bad idea after another. So if Mayor Jung really did say he wanted the City run with an iron fist, let’s get going with the plug pulling.

The Trail to Nowhere

The abysmal Trail to Nowhere, a bad idea that was germinating for 14 years before the grant was finally approved at the end of 2023. City staff has never told the truth about this fiasco, and because of incurious and stupid councilmembers, they never had to. I can simply say that it would accomplish none of things its backers promise, mostly because the wishful thinking behind it was so untruthful from the start. No users, possible contamination, no linkage to anything, no destination at either end. Just a waste of 2.1 million bucks.

Oh, and yeah – the milestones for design submittal to the State and start of construction were blown past 9 months ago and still no status update from anybody.

The Boutique Hotel

The boutique hotel next to the train station started out as just a stupid idea by then Mayor-for-Hire Jennifer Fitzgerald. Then as the likelihood of failure increased, the City kept doubling down on dumb, adding density to density until an appended apartment block raised the density to at least 2.5 times the already dense limit in the Transportation Center Specific Plan. No one seemed to care, because those plans are only occasionally adhered to.

Nobody bothered to ask why useful City property had to be deemed “surplus.” Bruce Whitaker didn’t.

And last we looked the whole thing had been turned over to a couple of con men who paid 1.4 million for a property whose new entitlements made it worth ten times that much. Fullerton, being Fullerton. Those guys haven’t met any of their milestones and must certainly be in default. Not a peep out of City Hall, of course. I’ll bet my last dollar Sunayana Thomas is desperately looking for a new “developer” to assign the mess to, without a backward glance.

The Florentine/Marovic Sidewalk Heist

This 20 year+ scandal is still alive and kicking thanks to the stupid and cowardly attitude of staff/city council toward first, the Florentine Syndicate, and now, a new scofflaw, Mario Marovic. Somehow, the City let Marovic do remodeling construction work on our building on our sidewalk – an illegal trespass if ever there was one. Then the City let him open his newly remodeled place with promises to remove the “pop-out” as a condition of re-opening.

Naturally, Marovic gave the City a big fuck you on that agreement, as he no doubt planned to do all along. He had six moths to start and nine months to finish. That was two fucking years ago, and Marovic is drawing income from our property the whole time. Nowadays this matter is safely hidden in closed session, where the painful subject of accountability for this quagmire can be safely discussed away from embarrassing public revelation.

Fortunately for the cast of characters involved there are so many culpable people in this story that blame can be diluted to the point where nobody feels the least bit compelled to explain what happened over two plus decades, just so long as the municipal humiliation goes away once and for all.

So, yes. Let the Fullerton Observer sisters and their ilk boohoo about iron fists and poor, intimidated staff. Fullerton has been in need of some accountability, even a tiny bit, for a long, long time.

February 4, 2025February 4, 2025A Step in the Right Direction

Fred Jung’s Iron Fist

by The Fullerton Harpoon57 Comments

The metaphor of the iron hand in the velvet glove has been attributed to many, including Friend of Fullerton, Napoleon Bonaparte.

Has Fullerton Mayor Fred Jung forgotten about the velvet glove?

Here’s a fun exchange harvested from the hysterical comments at the Fullerton Observer, home of the unbalanced Kennedy Sisters.

I have zero idea who Barbara Steeves is, or if there even is one; but the commenter wants people to believe he/she is privy to what goes on behind closed doors at City Hall. She is challenged by “M” who rightly questions the veracity of her information – if she was there. And naturally Sharon the elder Kennedy sister helpfully interjects, reminding M that Fullerton is a small town, and everybody knows everybody.

I don’t know Fred Jung so I don’t know if this is the kind of phrase he would even utter. But I sure hope it is, and that he said it.

For years Fullerton citizens and taxpayers have picked up the tab for incompetent staff decisions, including foolish lawsuits, lots of money wasted on useless projects all surrounded by unaccountability and complacency. It’s true that all of the disasters and fiascos have been rubber stamped by incurious, stupid, and supine city councils. Nevertheless, city staff is composed, allegedly, by competent professionals who ought to be able to guide the councils away from quagmires, and not create any of their own. But if they could, they obviously don’t want to and don’t care, failure being ignored and even rewarded.

It’s way past time that staff members tell the truth. Our Community Development Director Sunayana Thomas seems incapable of an honest answer to a council question. And then there’s our marble-mouthed lawyer Dick Jones, of the I Can’t Believe It’s A Law Firm, who has doled out the worst legal advice imaginable for 25 years or more.

Here are some random Fullerton issues where an iron fist attitude might have avoided the usual complacency and stupidity:

Laguna Lake leak

Boutique hotel fiasco

Trail to Nowhere

Florentine forgery case

Florentine/Marovic Sidewalk Heist

Walk on Wilshire money pit

Silly Roundabouts

Losing Lawsuit against FFFF

Fraudulent water rate scam

Unneeded elevators at depot bridge

Drunken City Manager cover up

Useless bridge in Hillcrest Park

Incompetent construction of wood stairs in Hillcrest Park

$ 1,000,000 Core and Corridors Specific Plan

Consistently misguided park priorities

Poison Park fiasco

University Heights disaster

The ridiculous Fox Block monster

The Downtown economic sinkhole & noise code violations

Monster apartment blocks without enough parking

Etc., etc., etc.

February 2, 2025Behind Closed Doors

Things That Go Nowhere

by The Fullerton Harpoon10 Comments

Fullerton’s obsession with building things that go nowhere is not new, no. The moribund Trail to Nowhere is just the latest manifestation of a compulsion to waste money on stuff that is unnecessary, serves no purpose and in figurative terms, goes nowhere.

We can go all the way back into the 1980s to find perhaps the best example of something in Fullerton that goes nowhere. It’s a graceful concrete bridge that spans Gilbert Avenue near the crest of the West Coyote Hills. It is actually called The “Gilbert St. Bridge to Nowhere” by Google. It’s fenced off at both ends.

Why this bridge was built in the first place is now shrouded in mystery although some old, old timers may be able to remember the intended purpose of the structure. If you know, please comment.

Whatever the reasons were to build a bridge that must have cost millions in real terms, it clearly serves no apparent function at all, never did, and thus merits its name, and a proud pedestal in the Fullerton Things To Nowhere Hall of Shame.

January 27, 2025January 28, 2025About Us

“Where’s My Trail to Nowhere?”

by Mr. Peabody21 Comments

Poor, disheartened Diane Vena reminded the City Council about the Trail to Nowhere at their last meeting. Poor Diane, a liberal activist, and a member of team Jaramillo, is best known for her suspicious nomination of the phony Republican candidate, Scott Markowitz, in the 2024 4th District election.

It may be a total waste of money, but it sure is short…

Well, thanks, Poor Diane. It’s about time someone mentioned the Trail to Nowhere, even if in passing.

Friends will recall that the Union Pacific Trail project – funded by the State of California Department of Natural Resources – was finally approved by the City Council over a year ago. The conceptual “trail” goes from nowhere to nowhere and was going to cost $2,100,000 to build.

As usual, the idea was cooked up by City staff as a make work project, and was then vigorously supported by the Fullerton Observer Sisters and a few dozen knuckleheads taken in by the ingratiating Astroturfer, Ahmad Zahra.

Anyhow, Poor Diane believes the Trail has been deliberately put on the back burner due to the Council’s desire to first open the Union Pacific Park, more commonly referred to as the Poison Park. This is true – sort of. In August, 2023 the council majority directed City staff to drop or redeploy the grant and re-open the fenced off park. There was no timetable, and apparently no money either, since the empty park site still sits there 18 months later, even though a conceptual plan was drawn.

Poor Diane believes lack of progress on the park is deliberate – a cynical ploy to delay the Trail until the grant money time allowance runs out. This could be true, and I certainly hope it is. Fullerton did renounce the grant in August, 2023 and then backtracked after months of harassment from Zahra’s annoying claque.

The deadline in the grant agreement was October 2025 for completion of the project – including “plant estabishment.” That’s about eight months away. But there are already original milestones that have been missed. Here’s the schedule from the grant agreement:

Final plans were due last June, and construction was supposed to start last August. Has the State granted Fullerton time extensions? If so why doesn’t the public know about it? If not, why hasn’t the State demanded its money back, per the agreement? Good questions, no good answers.

If working drawings have been completed and submitted, the public hasn’t been favored with a glimpse. And you need completed construction drawings to bid a public works project, let alone build it. There’s the hitch. At this point Fullerton would have only eight months to publish plans, receive bids, get a responsive bid, sign contracts and then construct the trail, a project that would turn out to be a lot more complicated and expensive than any of the conveniently departed Parks officials could have imagined.

Why more complicated and expensive? Because of all the toxic water monitoring wells, the need for new water lines, new storm drain systems, and resolution of cross lot drainage issues – none of which are even included in the grant scope of work! It’s a pretty good guess that the cost of construction in the grant application was woefully underestimated. And nobody in City Hall ever admitted the presence of TCEs along the happy trail.

I suppose the City could get down on their knees and sing the blues to the state, asking for more time. Maybe staff already has. Or maybe, just as likely, the Department of Natural Resources and its chief, Wade Crowfoot, don’t even keep track of what happens to their money despite specific performance requirements in the grant agreement. After all, it’s not their money. Remember the $1,000,000 Core and Corridors Specific Plan, paid for by a State “sustainability” grant, that vanished into thin air?

Well, I guess we’ll have to keep an eye on this to see what’s happening. I’d hope that the Council provides an honest appraisal of the status of this hairy boondoggle, but that’s unlikely. So far nobody but FFFF has told a single truth about this fiasco.