MEET DIRTY DOUG

FFFF has squirted some cyber-ink on the missus, so I thought we ought to start spending a bit of time with Pilferin’ Paulette’s hubby, the egregious Doug “Bud” Chaffee.”

If the snout fits, wear it…

This piece was recently sent out by Chaffee’s OC Board of Supervisor challenger, Sunny Park of Buena Park.

The swine were offended by the comparison…

The reference here is to an early foray of the Chaffee Crime Family into “affordable” housing, the subsidized sort that always costs so much more than the regular kind. Of course this was thirty years ago and Chaffee has a much longer list of grifts large and small, including selling out the advocates of preserving the West Coyote Hills, creating phony districts in Fullerton, supporting overbuilt prison, I mean apartment blocks with inadequate parking, and of course spending all his time failing to reform the Fullerton Police Department.

On the Board of Supervisors Chaffee has distinguished himself by hiding COVID information from the public, overseeing the public humiliation and politicization of the Health Care Agency, and being a lackey for the misfeasance of his fellow board member, Andrew Do. And the funniest thing of all is that he, as Chairman of the Commission to End Homelessness, had to confess to reporters that he didn’t know what the Commission does.

Putting politician’s faces on animals has always struck me as desperate and sort of silly, persuasion-wise. But Sunny is running against an incumbent (and recumbent) Democrat and needs to syphon enough votes to 1) at least come in second; and, 2) keep Bud from reaching the magic 50%+1 number thereby forcing a runoff in November. Will this help?

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.

Fullerton 2022 Map Quest

The 2022 effort to create new districts stumbles along. Last week, the Commission set-up to make a recommendation to the City Council met to discuss the several maps that had been submitted. The complete lack of public participation was evident – only a handful of maps were submitted.

At the end of the meeting a 5-2 majority favored Map 114 – the demographers tweak of Commissioner John Seminara’s Map 106. Then they added Maps 111 and 112 as worthy of Council consideration. Take a look at Map 114. The dark lines show current district boundaries:

Map 114 making pre-eminent good sense.

Map 114 isn’t perfect, but it is informed by Fullerton’s clear major street boundaries and respects both ethnic and physical communities of interest. It cleans up the idiotic Tentacles of Interest foisted on the voters in 2016 by our former Mayor-for-Hire, Jennifer Fitzgerald. There would no longer be district contortions so that council members could each have an interest in the public money vortex knows as Downtown Fullerton.

Two of the commission members – former City employee Kitty Jaramillo, and Jody Vallejo preferred Map 110 a bizarre amalgamation for District 3 – a long, thin district that stretches from Placentia Avenue to Euclid Avenue connecting neighborhoods that are physically remote and that don’t share any obvious connection. The adherents of this map apparently banded together into a committee of some kind to concoct this hot, wet mess, proving that more heads are not necessarily better than fewer. Check out this acid burp:

The people who defended this map claimed that it is the “College map,” joining CSUF and FJC with their surrounding neighborhoods as a dubious “community of interest.” The further rationale for its support was that “many people” had participated in its creation. This map violates several basic tenets of district-making, to wit: creating a district (3) that is not compact; splitting the trans-57 community of interest into two separate tribes; and throwing together neighborhoods almost 4 miles apart in a weird, horizontal embrace.

How anybody could justify this District 3 is still beyond me. The demographer tried to make it less ridiculous by whacking it back by a mile (Map 112), but it still looks unsupportable by reason or logic. Here is Map 112.

So what gives? Commission member Tony Bushala dialed in to proclaim that Map110 (and by extension, Map 112 was motivated by purely political consideration, not the Voting Rights Act and the Fair Map Act that govern this process, and would have none of it. He didn’t elaborate.

The train of thought was weak but it sure was short…

And then it hit me.

Map 110 (and by extension Map 112) was submitted by a group of people committed to keeping Jesus Quirk-Silva, the current liberal, dim-witted D3 councilman in office. The other recommended maps – that removed the gerrymander that put him in the office – would leave him with no place to run in 2022 and out office!

Hence the desperation by this “committee” that wasted a lot of verbal gas doing what it not permitted by the FPA – protecting a party or a politician.

Oh, well, the maps go to the City Council on Tuesday the 8th, where outrage theater, liberally sprinkled with liberal handwriting will be featured on the playbill. Expect long lines the usual weepers, new and old, show up to promote Map 112. Will it work? That depends on Mayor Fred Jung who by now must be getting a shitload of unwanted importunity coming at him.

Of course there is nothing stopping a council majority from devising its own map, drawing on others, or cooking up a whole new one. But as it stands now, Map 114 is the one supported by the Redistricting Advisory Commission.

She’s Back! Tanned, Rested and Ready, Pilferin’ Paulette Marshall Returns

Sort of like toenail fungus, Paulette Marshall (Chaffee) is an unwelcome parasite that won’t go away. She has recently announced yet another run for public office – this time another try for the Orange County Board of Education.

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

Friends may remember Paulette from such hits as faking an address to run for Fullerton’s 5th District back in 2018. Too bad she was caught stealing campaigns on video. That ethical lapse caused her to quit the race (not in shame, for she has none). The DA wasn’t impressed and charged her. She was forced to plead guilty, pay a fine and do community service; her record was expunged, but the two videos that document her criminal activity are alive and well on the internet.

And that’s where I put the sign in the back of the car…

In 2020 Ms. Marshall (Chaffee) returned to electoral politics – a first run at the OC BoE. Her campaign was marked by a phony “news” website and phony interviews which were so lame it was almost more pathetic than angrifying.

Trying to run on her County Supervisor husband’s coat tails yet again, she poured a ton of cash into her campaign, yet finished a distant third place – way behind Vicki Calhoun – who spent virtually nothing.

Why Paulette thinks her chances are any better than they were two years ago is unknown. Her past is hanging around her neck like the proverbial albatross and it seems unlikely that her by just using her husband’s name will work.

In 2021 she got a crony to sue Tim Shaw, the guy who beat her in 2020, to quit the Board. His reappointment to a 2-year term must have come as a shock to Paulette who unsuccessfully interviewed for the job, and is suing Shaw yet again.

I suppose FFFF will just have to dust off and crank up the old campaign machine and get ready to go to work.

The Quirk-Silvas Wish You Happy Holidays

Here’s a delightful season’s greeting from Fullerton power couple Sharon Quirk and Jesus Quirk-Silva.

We’re a team!

As far as these things go, it’s completely benign. Or banal. Especially compared with those tasteless cards mailed by the woman who financed the Quirk-Silva’s house, Loretta Sanchez.

Great minds think alike…

But there’s a bit of a problem here, and one I sure hope the “greeters” address.

The mailer was paid for by Ms. Quirk’s campaign committee, which is okay so far as that goes. But her husband, Jesus Quirk-Silva is the co-beneficiary of this epistle, since he too, is an elected official.

Now there’s nothing illegal about benefitting politically from your wife’s political ascendancy, unless, of course, there is fungible benefit therefrom.

And so, I hope that Mr. Quirk-Silva will be reporting this donation from his wife’s campaign coffers; and of course that the missus will be reporting the contribution.

Hansburg Says Sayonara

Kids just love to walk…

Last Wednesday, Elizabeth Hansburg quit the Fullerton Planning Commission.

FFFF has already introduced Ms. Hansburg to the Friends, noting her involvement in the drive to cover Fullerton in penitentiary-like apartment blocks. Her “non-profit” is used to provide Astroturf support for developers of huge housing projects and of course donations from said developers are always welcome.

Ms. Hansburg was also part of the shadowing clan that developed a new housing plan that almost nobody knew anything about until it was conceptually presented the the City Council. The idea was (and is) to achieve the preposterous new housing unit needs count – 13,000 -proffered by SCAG, the Southern California Association of Government – an unelected agency run by and for bureaucrats and their Big Ideas.

Well, anyhow, Hansburg has had enough. Here’s her petulant good-bye speech at the end of the meeting in which she attacks the City Council, bemoans the loss of her beloved fellow 5th Columnists in City Hall, and of course praises the contemptible camera hog and credit thief, Ahmad Zahra.

Consistently awful…

Self-righteous, indignant, know-it-all. Hansburg went out of her way to promote God-awful projects that were intrusive, obnoxious, and promised a tsunami of negative impacts on our neighborhoods including more parking disasters.

Good riddance. This is exactly the sort of person that causes regular folks to be wary of self-proclaimed “experts” and the bureaucracies they love so dearly. Now she can peddle her services to developers free from legitimate charges of conflict of interest.

NIMBY Winning Out Over Autistic Children

TempleBethTikvah

Tomorrow the City Council is going to vote on wether or not a business can help kids with developmental issues here in Fullerton after the Planning Commission voted to deny it.

The story is basically this;

Temple Beth Tikvah here in Fullerton has been up on Acacia for generations – since at least 1971. For quite some time they sub-leased to a Unitarian Church and nobody cared at all about it. There was plenty of traffic and a lot of religious activity and the neighbors never said a thing.

Skip ahead to last year or so and that Unitarian Church outgrew the Temple’s property and moved locations and the Temple then leased part of the property to a company called Sage Behavior Services. In the brief window where the Church was moving out and Sage was moving in – allegedly there was an increase in traffic and a neighbor got big mad about it and started to complain.

She complained and complained and complained. Code Enforcement came to the property about 10 times and was never able to verify her complaints but not one to be denied, she kept on complaining and is complaining to this day.

The issue finally made to the Planning Department and because zoning is stupid the City told TVT that they needed to have an amendment to their Conditional Use Permit to allow Sage to operate in their residentially zoned space despite the work they do being allowed by the code. The Planning Department analyzed the business Sage was running and following the municipal code they determined that Sage was *most like* a school that helps developmentally challenged kids.

This is when the Planning Commission got involved and got stupid. (more…)

The Trail of Tears

From 2000 and 2010. The idea may have been bad, but it sure was old.

You have to hand it to government bureaucracies. They never give up on stupid ideas. But why should they? With all the time in world, huge amounts of money given to them by others, and with zero accountability, what is there for them to lose?

Specifically, I am talking about an item on the May 4th Agenda, dutifully approved by the City Council, to take $1.8 million in State grant money andĀ  $330,000 in Fullerton park money to design and build what they are pleased to call The Union Pacific Trail, Phase II.

Of course we all know that Phase I was a total waste of money – a weird “equestrian trail” (complete with pony railing) that has never seen a horse, that was attached to the poisoned and fenced off UP Park that dies a merciful death at Highland Avenue.

Hugo and Alice. One down, one to go…

Our crack Deputy Parks Director, some person named Alice Loya pitched the item to a less than bedazzled Council, making sure to point out that the area was disadvantaged, an irony certainly lost on City bureaucrats whose job it has been to un-disadvantage this neighborhood over the past 50 years.

Let me share a paragraph from the staff report, that, as usual, is so full of lies to rationalize the scheme that one wonders if the City staff would ever pursue this nonsense if they had to use City funds to pay for it:

The proposed project will transform an existing 50 to 80 foot wide, blighted corridor into a greenbelt trail providing alternate transportation, linking the Transportation Center and several parks, including Independence Park at its terminus. This proposed trail aligns with the Hunt Branch Library to the west, providing potential future linkages. The total cost of the project is estimated at $2.1 million.

Hmm.

Lie Number One: Alternative transportation? What the Hell does that even mean? Walking?

Lie Number Two: the trail would not link anything to the Transportation Center since it would terminate at a narrow sidewalk behind the Ice House that includes a 90 degree turn. And of course just a week ago, or so, our very same staff tried to sneak through an idiot scheme to cut off the UP right-of-way completely with their private event center on the Poisoned Park site.

Lie Number Three: the proposed extension does not link “several” parks. It would indeed terminate at the Independence Park parking lot but the only other “park” it would touch is the fenced off Poisoned Park that nobody even wants.

Almost as good as a lie Number Four: the proposed trail would be virtually impossible to link to the “aligned” Hunt Branch Library, nearly a mile away, because gosh darn it, the rail siding is still being used by…the railroad. But what the Hell let’s throw out the chimera of “connectivity” to fool the dopes on the City Council, right? It’s always worked just fine in the past.

Almost as good as a lie Number Five: when has the City ever built anything on time and on budget? That proposed cost would sky rocket, of course, as Fullerton’s army of staff, consultants, and design professionals hump the “greenbelt” into submission. Remember the wooden steps at Hillcrest Park and the elevator-from-Hell at the Depot?

Maybe it looks better when the sun goes down…

But what wasn’t said was much more important than the propaganda ink spilled to promote this idiocy: nobody will use this “trail” since it passes through sketchy industrial zoned property, completely empty at night, and would remain, just like it is now, an attractive nuisance that the taxpayers will be on the hook to maintain out of the General Fund.

Dunlap-Jung
Can these two help bring some accountability to Fullerton?

On the bright side, members of the new Council commonsense majority pointed out that Staff was already devising a top-secret Specific Plan for the area, and gee, wouldn’t it make sense not to piecemeal things like Planning Director Matt FoulkesĀ  tried to do on the ill-fated aquaponic farm/event center? They did treat the item as still very provisional, but FFFF knows better – we know that government money once available, will be spent, most likely on something nobody outside City Hall wants.

Zahra-Busted
Why is this man smiling?

Naturally, Councilman-in-search-of-camera-opportunity, Ahmad Zahra scrounged up some of his usual misguided acolytes to beat the drum for this utter waste of $2.1 million bucks. After all, this project would be mostly paid for with “free money” of the sort “progressives” love to accept, then waste. We need look no further than the $1,000000 Core and Corridors Specific Plan, paid for by the State Sustainability Commission, that was quietly abandoned, never to see the light of day. And ironically, the old UP Right of Way passes right through the middle of two of the C&C Specific Plan Areas, suggesting to me, at lest, that the City is not, and never has been interested in the well-being of the part of Fullerton accept as something to play with.