This is a screen-shot from the City Manager update page from 24 Jan:
This is a screen-shot of applications from the city’s own website:
This is why we can’t have balanced budgets.
City Hall is closed today and that’s a problem.
It’s a problem because the deadline has passed for City Council Vacancy applications and we don’t know what really happens next and by we I mean both applicants and the public. According to the city website there will be an applicant forum co-sponsored by the City of Fullerton and the Neighbors United for Fullerton on Monday, 29 January followed by a special meeting on Tuesday, 29 January. That’s all we know:
If you look at the NUFF Facebook page it tells us that this applicant forum will run from 6:45pm to 8:30pm.
That’s it.
What does that mean? Will there be a debate? A meet and greet? Will people be able to pose questions of specific applicants or the group? Who will be moderating this event? What should the applicants plan to do, say or bring? As of today, NUFF’s website has not been updated to reflect the change to an applicant forum from the previous “Priorities for Fullerton” agenda and thus leaves us wondering.
The most we know is that the event is scheduled for 105 minutes to vet 25 applicants which basic math tells us is about 4 minutes per applicant if each one was just allowed to speak freely without time taken out for questions, moderation or standard event management.
So really plan to hear each person speak for 2 minutes if they’re lucky.
How will the NUFF forum play into Tuesday’s Council Special Meeting? Is City Staff or Council asking the questions on Monday and using that data Tuesday? Or is Monday just gloss for the citizens while the city council plans to run their own public hearing on Tuesday?
Will the council be announcing an appointee on Tuesday? Will they be interviewing people at this Special Meeting? Will applicants be asked questions or given a chance to speak outside of public comments?
Again, no idea.
Why no idea? Because the city has provided almost zero information on this process and the council has left things so open that anything could happen on Tuesday. This “Open and Transparent” process that we were promised by the council has been anything but. We know applicants are meeting with council members but not who with whom or where and when. My goal in being an applicant was to give you fine residents the inside scoop on how this would play out and as I suspected it is the antithesis of the openness that we were promised.
I have not received a single phone call or email about what happens next. Irrespective of my position on wanting a special election I should still be afforded the same information as any other applicant so this tells me nobody is being told anything.
And to circle back to why this is so ridiculous, City Hall is closed today so we won’t get any information until Monday, the day of the Nuff event and the day before the Special Meeting if we’re given information at that point. The corruption and/or incompetence was baked into the cake before this process was even started, hence the lobbying for and by prospective applicants *cough* Jan Flory *cough* before it even started.
I’ll keep you posted if anything changes but I’m guessing we’ll have a long weekend of behind the scenes wheeling and dealing with nothing given out for public consumption. So open. So Honest. So Transparent.
For full disclosure I have not spoken to or met with a single council member which should be pretty obvious as not a one would entertain me for council even were I serious. They aren’t even pretending very well at this point.
After some debate, a short delay and a little snapping by Jennifer Fitzgerald, a council majority opted to hold a beauty pageant to decide which crony will get to join them on the dais.
The city is accepting applications for contestants who are interested in the job of city council without the need to actually convince the citizenry to vote for them.
We won’t know who all is running until the application process ends but we’ve already heard some names and most of them are terrible if you care about the city budget or basic math skills.
In the ongoing process the council will pretend to view and vet the candidates in an “open and transparent” process which means closed door meetings and private wheeling and dealing with a dash of favors and/or threats for good measure.
There will be a “candidate forum” sponsored by the Neighbors United for Fullerton but really it doesn’t matter who you like or what they say to the public because the council is making this decision regardless of your thoughts or opinions. You have no real voice in this process despite empty promises to the contrary.
Let us not kid ourselves, despite applications being due by Wed, 23 January and the NUFF forum being on the 28th, this will be a done deal long before you get a chance to even know who’s all in the running and who can twirl a baton the best.
The meetings are already happening and the deals are already being struck – hence Fitzgerald, Flory and the Flor-Bots all shilling for Flory back in December before this process even started.
You can apply if you’re a masochist or you can just show up to the forum and council meeting to watch the slew of candidates take 8 boilerplate questions about the roads and zero about pension reform and overspending. Overall don’t expect the public face of this charade to matter much in the actual decision making process.
However if you want to pretend like you have a chance to be on city council and believe you have what it takes to beat back the leviathan and fix our structural deficit then all you have to do is fill out a few pieces of paper to apply. Apply Today. The more the merrier.
Looks like Fullerton will reconsider its options concerning the existing City Council vacancy tomorrow. The current agenda goes into detail concerning the city’s options, including when a Special Election might be held, how much it would cost, and what a plan might look like if the Council were to appoint to fill the vacancy by February 2.
We’ve been trying to keep tabs on who’s playing Fullerton’s version of Game of Thrones here. So far, the only person known to openly campaign for the seat is former councilwoman Jan Flory.
So, which option will it be?
A) An unelected bench warmer who likely has no moral authority to do anything other than break tie votes
or
B) Taxpayers spending $400,000 to elect an independently wealthy or political action committee dominated Fullertonian who is only running to secure incumbency in District 1, 2, or 4 for another election in 2020?
Don’t you love choices with no downsides?
Find out who wins (someone) and who loses (you) tomorrow, when we play WHEEL. OF. REPLACEMENT CANDIDATES!
It looks like Fullerton is again in the business of paying more for less when it comes to hiring bureaucrats to bureaucrat. One of our newest hires, Mary “Meg” McWade, who is set to replace Don Hoppe is going to be paid $195,000 + bennies. This despite some questions about qualifications.
Being that the Director of Public Works is also the City of Fullerton’s “Civil Engineer” it is preferred that our Director be, well, a certified engineer.
If you look at the qualifications for this Director position you’ll find:
I suppose emphasis on preferred. (more…)
Today is the Day.
Today Police records are supposed to become a little more transparent and officers with “sustained” complaints (and a few other issues) get to share with the world their bad deeds by virtue of some Sacramento mandated sunshine disinfectant. With SB1421 to the rescue we might finally get to see what happens behind union closed doors when officers misbehave.
The law changing and becoming effective today, owing to the holiday, convinced some friends to put in a few records requests based on suggestions which we complied and others which were emailed to us after this post dropped.
Thanks to everybody who shared what they knew and pointed us in a few interesting directions. I was copied on the request and it contains over 40 officers both current and former, most of whom we believe to have had sustained findings against them. Because police departments refuse to tell us who has findings against them we had to take quite a few guesses based on the best information we could obtain. That or pay FPD $250+ to maybe compile a list per their Public Information Officer.
Being that we’re volunteers who don’t run ads or try to monetize FFFF we opted against the $250 check to FPD.
With the requests in the virtual mail we should be seeing some interesting things provided that the records aren’t obfuscated, buried and denied. We’ll keep you posted as things come back or don’t.
We’re also always open to suggestions so if we missed anybody let us know the details in the comments or via email. Who did what and where should we look? What officers had sustained findings in other departments? We’ll send requests for those records as well.
Over the years we here at Friends for Fullerton’s Future have written about what feels like countless stories on the culture of corruption. A lot of facts, some rumors and a lot of annoyance as the city, police department and union goons do everything in their power to keep all of us from knowing anything even slightly negative happening behind the badges of our betters.
Well, on January 1st, 2019 California law changes to allow a little bit of information to eek its way past the Blue Wall of Silence. Thanks to the usually ridiculous California legislature and soon to be former Governor Jerry Brown, we’ll be able to learn about some of the actions perpetuated by some of the officers around the state. Here’s the law in question.
You’ll want to read section C and the bits about lies and dishonesty. I previously had it quoted it here but it’s too much legalese to blockquote. Basically if it’s proven that a cop lies or falsifies a report you can get the records of those findings.
I was pleasantly surprised at Fullerton’s City Council meeting last night and that rarely happens. I was surprised because Ahmad Zahra stood his ground on the principle of Democracy being the preferred way to settle our current council vacancy caused by Jesus Silva. He withstood Fitzgerald’s venom laced claws and boxed Silva in so much that Silva had to contradict himself by claiming to believe voting is important except, you know, with regards to, uh, the vacancy he created in playing musical chairs.
I had heard going into the meeting that Jan Flory had lobbied 2 if not 3 of the current council members to be appointed to the vacant seat. I had also heard and believed that Fitzgerald and Silva were going to push for an appointment process to get the Flory ball in motion. I also knew, just from historical context, that Whitaker would vote no on that because he and Flory are opposites on most items and he gains nothing by supporting her. I did not know how Zahra would act or vote despite allegedly meeting with and being lobbied by Flory. Owing to Zahra’s campaign and his coziness to people I believe to be ethically challenged I didn’t hold out much hope and assumed he might go along to get along.
Then Zahra showed up to play ball and stomped on my assumptions. (more…)
Rumor has it that former councilwoman Jan Flory is lobbying to become the appointee to our City Council tonight and has already secured both Jennifer Fitzgerald and Jesus Silva’s votes. This is the same Jan Flory who voted, with Jennifer Fitzgerald and Doug Chaffee, on multiple unbalanced budgets and who helped lead us into our structural deficit. The same Jan Flory who puts City Staff above the very citizens they’re supposed to work for and represent.
Want to know why our roads suck so bad? Blame Jan Flory and her cohorts who think bureaucracy is the true heart of Fullerton. Want to know why Downtown is such a train-wreck? Yeaup. Same cabal of incompetence.
If the council votes to appoint somebody the voting members will own every vote put forward by the new council member. In effect, if they vote for somebody like Jan Flory, who helped sink our budget for years, they will be responsible for both their own votes on the budget (and similar items) as well as hers.
Appointing somebody is bad. Letting Jesus Silva vote on an appointment to the very seat he himself vacated is worse. Having council vote to give themselves the bulletproof majority needed to walk all over the people of Fullerton is downright despicable.
The people should really have a say who in represents them and voting to appoint somebody, especially somebody who will raise our taxes, is the essence of being anti-democratic. Our republic was literally founded against the premise of taxation without representation.
The agenda is online (HERE) for next Tuesday’s council meeting and the one major item of note, item #3, is the possible appointment of a council member to fill out the remainder of Jesus Silva’s abandoned at-large seat.
Item 3 States:
3. On December 4, 2018, Council Member Silva was sworn in as the District 3 City Council Member. This created a mid-term vacancy in Council Member Silva’s prior at-large City Council seat which expires in December 2020 and requires the City Council to consider the legally available alternatives for filling the vacancy.Recommendation by the City Clerk’s Office:
-
Appoint a qualified individual to the fill the vacancy through the remainder of the term, either through direct appointment or following a process for applications and / or interviews and / or other steps as determined by City Council.
-
Direct Staff to prepare resolutions to call a special election to fill the vacancy for the remainder of the term for consideration at the next City Council meeting.
-
Continue discussion to the January 15, 2019 City Council meeting.
This agenda item, according to City Manager Domer, was written intentionally vaguely so that council can do whatever they want on Tuesday. If they want to just appoint somebody on Tuesday, solidifying the premise that they’ve already been wheeling and dealing behind closed doors, then they can appoint whomever they want. If they want to take a different path, such as an election, they can direct staff to start that process as well.
This item will be somewhat fun to watch because of how it played out up to this point. It only matters because Silva beat Sebourn. As for the ability to appoint a crony to fill out Silva’s seat, that was passed 3-1-1 with 2 (R)s swinging into the Yes column on 16 October 2018 and again 3-1-1 with Fitzgerald ($R), Whitaker (R) and Silva (D) voting for this move on 06 November (election day) 2018.
If another liberal (D) ends up on council after Tuesday, the (R)s in Fullerton will have nobody to blame but their own council majority. A council majority that this vote could cost them.
UPDATED: Corrected the 06 November vote. A previous version claimed it was 5-0 when it was the same 3-1-1 as the 16 Oct meeting.