The Gov has proposed axing Redevelopment in California and redirecting its revenue back to local municipalities and school districts. Of course the Redevelopment camp followers are squealing like stuck pigs.
Today the Register entertained two essays on whether or not to keep Redevelopment. On the no side was Assemblyman Chris Norby who wrote a pretty comprehensive obituary for this misguided government revenue scam. On the pro side? Some unknown stooge from Brea – one of the most heavily Redevelopment bond indebted municipalities in California, and a poster child for Redevelopment havoc and abuse.
According to commenter Art Brown the plaintive Redevelopment wail signed by Mayor HeeHaw on behalf of all of us was actually scribed by the League of Cities and sent out as a boilerplate template for the incompetent locals who, presumably, couldn’t be trusted to mount their own intellectual and philosophical defense of Redevelopment (think: “we neeeed the muh-nie!”)
Of course there is space at the end of the missive to insert one’s community’s dubious Redevelopment accomplishments. And Fullerton did.
Mr. Brown’s claim certainly has the ring of truth to it. It reminds me of a gang of dope addicts defending their habit.
As to the letter itself, observe the following:
The claims that Redevelopment is a job creator and some sort of economic engine is, of course, utter nonsense. It is indeed a massive boon to subsidized corporations and Redevelopment master planners, consultants and bond salesmen. Redevelopment is simply a zero-sum revenue diversion scheme whose manifest failures are immediately forgotten. The funniest part of the letter may be the way one bent branch of government uses the screw-ups of another (SB 375 and AB 32) to justify itself.
Then there is the hilarious claim that Redevelopment is really poverty-stricken, once the bond holders are paid off!
You would think a letter honestly outlining the effects of Redevelopment in Fullerton would have described just a few of the disastrous quagmires that Redevelopment and it organizers have gotten us into: boondoggles amply illustrated in these pages. But no. No Harbor/Commonwealth; no SRO; no Poisoned Park; no endless succession of useless downtown master plans; no attempt to relocate a McDonald’s 200 feet. Wait. Come to think of it they did: cited as an accomplishment is the idiotic Richman housing project!
Affordable housing. Where poor people are cleared out and replaced by less poor people. And this was never one of the rationales for Redevelopment. The housing set-aside was created to protect the poor from dislocation due to the great Urban Renewal mega projects of the 1950s and 60s.
Well, there you have it. An intellectually and morally bereft letter signed by a clown who cannot grasp anything more complicated than a fried chicken.
Last week the Register’s Watchdog Teri Sforza did a piece on members of the opaque Metropolitan Water District Board who had racked up huge travel expenses soldiering onward for you and me in the great water wars.
She's baaaaack!
Who’s well up on the list? Fullerton’s representative, Jim Blake, for one. Another is Fullerton resident wannabe Linda Ackerwoman who lives in Irvine but tried to carpetbag her way to fame and forune as our Assembly representative. This egregious pair racked up bills of $18,302 and $13,356 respectively, in 2009-2010. The biggest line item was lodging in for both.
Motel 6 was all full up.
It seems that Mrs. Ackerwoman got up on her offended hinders to defend the indefensible – with the usual blather about how hard she works for us, and the rigors of travel to engage herself in all these hyper-complicated issues. Of course the real truth is that if this job were so damn complicated she couldn’t do it in the first place. More truth: these trustees are hand-held and led along by their staff upon whom they are completely reliant. Which is no doubt why Madame Ackerwoman voted to jack up by 20% the rates requested by the aquacrats in the spring of 2009. See, the relationship is pretty symbiotic.
The fun Ackerwoman quote from the Sforza piece? Here it is: “the whole world of water is ballet.”
Wow! Thanks for that, Linda. Now go slip into your swimsuit!
And lest we forget Jim Blake, who has been on the Board since before water was even created, isn’t it time to switch to a more reliable, less expensive model?
The OC Cemetery District sure seems to have a morbid fascination with failure.
Last year we reported on how the Orange County Cemetery District had employed Anaheim’s mayor-for-hire, Kurt Pringle as a consultant. Pringle was getting 6,000 bucks a month to find a new cemetery site, do PR, and act as a cemetery developer. Which was really pretty funny since Pringle is not a realtor, is not a landscape architect, and all the publicity the Cemetery District has gotten lately has all been bad.
We have something really nice for you in mahogany.
Pringle’s been on the Cemetery District’s payroll for two years now, which seems like ample time to have accomplished a lot. Well, something. Anything.
But in these opaque, special districts nothing succeeds like failure, apparently, for tomorrow the Cemetery District Board of Trustees is being asked by their staff to extend Der Pringle’s contract even though so far he has accomplished virtually nothing for them. Part of the problem is that the Cemetery Board is independent of any real oversight; and the average age of the Board is something like 969 years old, so there seems to be zero sales resistance.
Renew!!?? Sweet Jebus! The Board ought to be suing Pringle and his Associates for breach of contract!
Back in September, the OC Board of Supervisors approved yet another feel-good layer of government – something called the End Homelessness by 2020 Commission. They even allocated $75,000 towards one (1) executive director; another $75,000 was supposed to come from the “private sector.” The thing was trumpeted as a “public/private partnership” and all the do-gooders were feeling pretty good. Lucy Dunn, head of something called the OC Business Council was there to make sure everybody knew that the business community was on board and meant business.
We were this close to raising a nickle!
Flash forward to December14. On their agenda, the BOS had a agreement with the Children and Families Commission to front the other $75,000, and not only that, but to “recruit, hire and house” the executive director.What was sold a s a public/private deal was now wholly public; and the supes were asked to let another agency recruit and hire a contractor who is supposed to report to them!
Of course Ms. Dunn was there again to shamelessly blather on about her “time and treasure” even though there was none of her treasure, or that of her members, in evidence.
Supervisor Shawn Nelson would have none of it. He had the strange idea that words in a staff report should actually mean something; “show me the money” was what he had to say, indicating his acknowledgment that in almost a year the private sector hadn’t coughed up so much as a nickle and everybody on the inside knew it.
Led by John Moorlach, the crew approved this arrangement 4-1, and provided yet another example of how supposed conservatives in OC can’t throw away your money fast enough. And the Children and Families Commission has new roles – employment agency and homelessness advocates.Wanna bet to whom the executive director will answer? That’s right, Mr. $327K a year Mike Ruane, who runs the OCC&FC “do tank” and who will probably ask for a raise.
And what will happen in 1n 2020 when homelessness is not ended and the Commission has a staff of 23? Well, Hell, that’s easy! Just rename the commission. 2030 will be right around the corner!
It happened. As predicted. At the behest of the repuglican puppetmasters that helped put him on the Fullerton City Council, ex-police Chief and $215,000 a year pension puller-downer Pat McKinley bypassed Democrat Sharon Quirk-Silva for Mayor Pro Tem. Instead Fullerton’s former top cop and election winner by 90 votes went with the feeble octogenarian, Don Bankhead. Gotta keep that winning team intact, right?
Well, goddamit, the ‘pugs weren’t the only people who helped put McKinley on the council. They had help. As noted previously, many of the the Yellowing Fullerton Observers went for McKinley, too, including folks like Molly McClanahan, Jan Flory and….wait for it…Sharon Quirk-Silva! It cost Doug Chaffee the election.
Two years ago these same people helped put the cracker back in the cracker barrel.
Yesterday the State Attorney General handed out an opinion that, yes, outgoing Anaheim Mayor-for-Hire, Kurt Pringle did indeed hold incompatible offices as the Chairman of the California High Speed Rail Authority. For three long years. And that raises all sorts of questions about the ethics of Der Pringle’s votes on both HSR prioritization issues that benefited him and his clients, and City of Anaheim land use issues that benefited – him and his clients. You can read all about it in an LA Times article, here.
Well, we told you so. What will his mom say?
Interestingly the other day the Voice of OCEA did a story on an e-mail exchange between Herr Burgermeister Pringle and his former Director of the HSR, in which he attacks the “core competence”of the Authority’s engineers. The author misses the point, somewhat, in noting Pringle’s critique of the “experts” like so many others in California have done; but the real point is that his anger was based on their unwillingness to defy engineering realities to deliver the HSR line to his already designated ARTIC boondoggle. It certainly wasn’t lost on the recipient of his e-mail who noted dryly that he wasn’t sure if he was communicating with the HSR Chair or the Mayor of Anaheim.
Well, our boy Pringle is days away from being off the OCTA and out of City Hall (except as a lobbyist to his hand selected replacements, of course). But what about his Chairmanship of the CHSRA? Can the new guv keep him? Hard to imagine why Jerry Brown would keep on the HSR a repuglican who has soiled himself and the Authority so badly, if he had a choice.
Here’s the deal: the guy with most seniority since last being Mayor shall be appointed, plain and simple. And that means our Crazy Ol’ Doc Heehaw is line to shoulder the burden of the mayoralty, like it or not. Well, he can shirk his duty again, like he did before, and go to the second spot.
Not time to step up?
That means the next in line to be Mayor is Sharon Quirk-Silva, with Dr. Phogbound as Mayor Pro Tem; and if he declines the second spot, too, that would fall to the highest vote getter in the last election. And that’s our old Friend, Bruce Whitaker.
Now it could very well be that Sharon Quirk-Silva would defer her place until next year to run for re-election in 2012 with the title “Mayor of Fullerton,” in which case our next mayor would be Whitaker.
Could greatness be thrust upon him?
Of course Administrative Policy #37 isn’t worth the TP it was written on or the Sharpie it was written with – despite the fact that it’s the wet-dream of all Fullerton liberals, and ironically could produce the first truly conservative mayor since…well, since anybody could possibly remember.
How will it play out? Who knows? One thing is certain. This is Fullerton and it’s bound to be a confused mess. But the entertainment value should be high.
You remember a fellow named Jon Fleischman, don’t you? Well, of course you do. He starred in the now historic 2007 holiday visit video to Dick Ackerman at the latter’s house inside a “secret, gated community” in Irvine.
I still owe Fleischberg for that. Heh heh.
An alert Friend just forwarded a post that was published on the completely hackish blog-for-sale, The Flash Report, of which Fleischman is proprietor. It’s a rousing condemnation of the practice of bogus non-profit, public benefit corporations staging legislative love-ins at plush resorts on Hawaiian islands. The things are bought and paid for by lobbyists who get to corner state legislators at fraudulent “conferences” that are nothing more than schmooze fests, golf and cocktails on the veranda. The Sac Bee gives more info on the latest scams, here. At the end you’ll read about “The Pacific Policy Research Foundation” that just perpetrated its annual scam on Kauai.
Sound familiar? It should.
Oh, no. Not me again.
We reported about the scam over a year ago, here. And the biggest offender of course was the hideous Linda Ackerwoman, bogus 72 AD candidate, who participated in the sham front known as the Pacific Policy Research Foundation that got her and husband, Dick Ackerman, annual junkets to Hawaii. And of course Ackerwoman was an officer of the bogus “charity.”
And to close the circle we have to recall that Fleischman was a big Ackerwoman cheerleader. Ackerwoman. No record, no accomplishment, no residence, no sale. What a difference a year makes.
Uh, oh. More bad news for Anaheim’s outgoing Mayor-for-Hire, Curt Pringle. An FPPC investigation into foreign junkets by the California High Speed Rail crew.
Pringle declared all the gifties large and small from Europe’s socialist governments that are hoping to sell the CHSR good jobs that Americans are too stupid to do.
But the rest of Pringle’s gang at CHSR may not have been so diligent, especially the Golden horde of consultants, yes men, and PR tools Pringle & Co. have brought on board their choo-choo.”Record keeping lapses” unintentional? More hilarity to follow.
