Chronic Failure Archives - Friends For Fullerton's Future

It’s easy, just lift your leg and piss…on ’em

My human Friends have learned that your former Mayor-for-hire, and the best bestie of my former mistress, Jennifer Fitzgerald, is jumping ship from the Fullerton boat of which she spent years drilling holes in the bottom. But before she skips town she has planned at least one last scam to separate the gullible bipeds from their dough. This borders on some sort of abuse, and believe you me, I know a lot about abuse!

Can you please repeat that? Hard to believe any of you humans would pay a hydrant pee to listen to Fitzgerald opine on any subject, but this topic is so funny that it’s even funny up here in doggie heaven.

What qualities make a good city manager? Well, let’s ask.

How about refusing to reform a criminal enterprise known as the FPD?

How about letting millions of gallons of expensive MWD water leak out of Laguna Lake with zero accountability?

How about years of unbalanced budgets leading to the brink of fiscal disaster?

How about serial neglect of the city fragile infrastructure?

How about getting drunk and running over a tree, and then trying to drive off?

How about covering up a Parks N’ Rec vehicle crash?

How about turning a blind eye to serial code violations?

How about continuing to foster the myth that downtown Fullerton is some sort of financial asset?

How about turning a blind eye to forgery of official city documents?

How about stonewalling on required release of public documents?

How about wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars on crony “consultants”?

How about mismanaging construction projects as simple as wooden stairs and elevator additions?

How about enabling vanity projects like unused ceremonial bridges and dry duck ponds?

How about wasting a million dollars in state money on an idiotic and unpopular Specific Plan?

How about acceding to the demands of regional agencies for housing demands?

How about developing an entire Specific Plan behind everybody’s back – except the housing bureaucrats and do-gooders?

Arf! That’s only some of the stuff I can remember happening under the watch of Fitzgerald’s two city managers – the drunken stumblebum, Joe Felz, and the equally incompetent, likely sober, Ken Domer, neither of whom couldn’t run a dog kennel, as well I know.

For Jennifer Fitzgerald the only skill that mattered from a city manager was to accommodate her desires, desires that often as not ended up costing the citizens and taxpayers of Fullerton one way or another. She was a “master” all right. A master of manipulating a feeble system of political hacks and corruptible bureaucrats.

Hopefully some female human attending this gathering will be smart enough to ask some of the specifics of Fullerton’s city management disasters, but I doubt it.

May 8, 2021May 9, 2021Ahmad Zahra

The Trail of Tears

by Mr. Peabody15 Comments

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 and $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.

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 Foulkes 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.

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.

April 8, 2021Chronic Failure

City Hall Proposes Screwing Residents, Yet Again – Stimulus Edition

by Joshua Ferguson20 Comments

Fullerton recently was “awarded” more Federal Debt ($25Trillion and counting) by way of a $34,000,000 stimulus with the requisite strings attached. While it’s true that this $34M could pave a lot of roads, fix a lot of infrastructure and solve a lot of problems – City Hall wants this money to be used solely for salary & pension needs.

At Tuesday’s City Council meeting the pitch was made to “make whole” the staff who so bravely took a 5% pay cut when budgets were put into peril by the State mandated lockdowns in response to covid-19. This item was continued until the money is actually in hand.

Despite the item being continued, let us do away with this nonsense right here and now. Government is not supposed to be a job’s program. The entire purpose of government is to accomplish things the government won’t let us accomplish alone such as policing powers, infrastructure and the so forth.

When the government CEASES those activities, they don’t “deserve” your tax money. They haven’t earned it. The entire lie of the “social contract” is predicated on you paying taxes and getting things in return and we have a clear cut case of you getting nothing from much of staff and them still demanding their tribute.

The best example of this is the Parks Department. As far as I can tell, all of the parks were closed back in March of 2020 due to State mandated lockdown orders. The play equipment was roped off, all events were cancelled, youth sports went on hiatus, etc etc. There seemed to be zero actual parks activity going on in Fullerton for the better part of a year. Sure, the City laid off the part timers but what was the rest of staff doing?

Fuckall apparently because at Tuesday’s Council Meeting, City Manager Ken Domer ALSO wanted to get approval on a $236,000 “Parks Master Plan”. He manipulated the staff reports to bury the important point that the Parks and Rec Commission unanimously voted 5-0 against this “Master Plan” with a member of the Planning Commission voicing opposition as well.

Alas, we need a “Master Plan” because staff doesn’t know how to contact people online, hold surveys, get feedback and figure out how to do their jobs.

The audacity here is rather stunning even to a cynical individual such as myself.

Despite having a year sabbatical from actual work where staff spent their days attending pointless Zoom meetings to pad their hours, they couldn’t be bothered to spend any of that year figuring out what was wrong with our parks department.

They took a 5% pay cut from the City and took a near 100% work cut for themselves. Now they want their 5% back because they are hero and deserve, meanwhile we’re still not fully back up and running as a City AND they want us to continue to outsource their jobs because, well, screw you, that’s why.

To add insult to financial injury, City Hall didn’t bother to help most of you out. Did they pro-rate your business licenses since it was the threat of their police keeping your business closed? No. Did they cut you a break on your property taxes? Of course not. Hell, the schools refused to educate your kids and still demanded you pay up but that’s a different post for a different corrupt bureaucracy.

The point here is that government is a trade of taxes for services. That’s the deal. It’s City Council’s job to make sure that we residents get our end of the bargain at the best rates possible and while too many on council refuse to understand this basic principle of government – their ignorance (or willing corruption) doesn’t change the dynamic of how this is supposed to work.

If City Hall is closed, salaries need to reflect the lack of services and hours being delivered to the residents of Fullerton. If parks and events are closed, likewise the same reductions. If the City is enforcing State mandates that shutter businesses and lower capacities, the City needs to return a percentage of the taxes and fees extorted out of these businesses who are being handcuffed and given nothing in return.

It’s long overdue that City Hall realized that their job is to do their jobs and not simply collect a paycheck while dicking over the residents who fund those very checks.

Let us not forget to mention that some economic illiterates here in Fullerton are actually proposing back pay for the jobs that weren’t being done. You may have lost your business, may be facing eviction once evictions are allowed to resume, may have lost customers and clients – but hey – it’s City Hall who had to do nothing for a year that’s really suffering.

As for that $34Millions in BidenBucks – money is fungible. If Fullerton can screw us on in lieu water fees to prop up the heroes for a generation and then shaft us on the return of stolen money – council can cut & shift funding so that this money goes to where the Feds demand without the citizens of Fullerton getting shafted once again in favor of, as Ken Domer would have us believe, apparently useless staff.

April 7, 2021April 11, 2021Ahmad Zahra

Elizabeth Hansberg and The SCAG Cartel – Part 4 – Why It Matters

by Joe Sipowicz10 Comments

You may ignore SCAG, but the lobbyists don’t…

Many people tend to dismiss the visionary dreams of large, regional government consortiums as either too impractical, too complicated or too abstruse to either worry about or even pay much attention to. Those people are wrong.

As we have seen, these agencies have long tentacles and provide funding, or pass through funding, to promote the Big Plans they have for us. And that money goes to pay people we wouldn’t give a dime. Worse, their housing needs projections are so wildly unrealistic that if implemented would destroy the suburban fabric of towns across Southern California.

Which brings us back to Elizabeth Hansberg, whose brainchild, People For Housing, sends folks around to local planning commissions and councils to promote high-density housing projects that promise no concomitant benefits to the communities in which they are crammed. And as we have seen Hansberg’s “non-profit” has received somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000 from SCAG to promote its agenda of a high density housing jamboree – based on a claim that says we need another 13,000 housing units in Fullerton.

The problem is that Hansberg is on our Planning Commission. The Chair, in fact. The bias, if not outright conflict of interest toward high density housing is cemented by her pecuniary reliance on SCAG. And thus planning in Fullerton is compromised. Think I’m exaggerating? Think again.

Hansberg was selected by our staff to be part of a collection of high-density housing enthusiasts who amusingly called themselves “Project Champions” and have participated in an idiot document called the Fullerton Housing Game Plan. And within this document is concrete evidence of what these people want to do in Fullerton. It’s called the Rail District.

Now this idea is not new. Apparently our crack staff have stolen both the boundaries and even the name from local business guy Tony Bushala who’s been trying to promote a sustainable, mixed use plan for his vision of the Fullerton Rail District. But no. The SCAG-Hansberg plan is all about high-density housing, not livability or sustainability.

Half a mile of high-density housing courtesy of SCAG

And here’s the proof: a plan drawing from this hitherto secret draft Specific Plan, already developed without even being shared with property owners in the area or even members of the City Council. And guess what? The Specific Plan is being paid for by SCAG. And SCAG is also paying to develop a plan to change the Poison Park within the site to an aquaponic farm, ditching the promised park and tying up valuable land in the process. And finally, SCAG grant money is also being eyed by the City bureaucrats to plan a half mile trail along the abandoned Union Pacific right-of-way, an idea so stupid that not even Ken Domer’s predecessors tried it.

It’s very clear that the giant thumbprint of SCAG is placed squarely on these hairbrained and even dangerous ideas. And with the enthusiastic support of their local auxiliaries like Elizabeth Hansberg, they are well on the way to entangling Fullerton in “plans” that will finish off our crumbling infrastructure and add 100,000 new traffic trips to our streets everyday.

April 5, 2021April 5, 2021Ahmad Zahra

Elizabeth Hansberg, Part 3 – The SCAG Connection

by Joe Sipowicz13 Comments

So far, Dear Friends, I have first introduced you to the Chair of Fullerton’s Planning Commission, Elizabeth Hansberg. And then I noted the alignment the interests of her “non-profit” – People for Housing – with the interests of the utterly opaque government cartel known as SCAG – the Southern California Association of Governments.

We have seen that SCAG’s ridiculous housing quotas as applied to Fullerton, amount to over 13,000 new units, a number cooked up in their latest Regional Housing Needs Assessment, or RHNA.

“Well, okay, Joe,” you may be saying. “Just a coincidence.”

Not quite. While some justifiably cynical folks have wondered whether Hansberg is shaking down developers by promising fake grassroots support for over-built housing projects, one thing is clear: she gets money from SCAG to help them pursue their grotesque housing schemes that promise to destroy cities and towns through Southern California.

But they did such a nice job at the Platinum Triangle!

Here’s a SCAG press release announcing grants of $50,000 to $100,000 to various groups who will help them promote their utopian view of a massive apartment block on every corner. And here’s the part that mentions the grant award to Hansberg’s creation:

“People for Housing Orange County. Scope: Empower grassroots activists to advocate for fair and feasible Housing Elements in the five OC cities with the highest potential for economic integration (Brea, Buena Park, Fullerton, La Habra and Placentia).”

Don’t be fooled by the high-minded rhetoric. We’ve already seen that “grassroots” activity has nothing to do with this operation. It’s really all about drumming up public speakers to go to planning commissions and city councils – including Fullerton’s – to try to hustle up approvals. And the concepts of fairness and feasibility have very little to do with the grim reality: in SCAGs “expert” opinion Fullerton needs another 30 or 40 thousand people crammed into massive apartment blocks, by-right apartment units in R-1 zoned neighborhoods, and any other upzoning that suits their end.

I think the idea that Elizabeth Hansberg may actually be lobbied at a Commission hearing by public speakers she is using public resources to gin up in the first place would be pretty damn funny if it weren’t so appalling. Her appointment to the Planning Commission was a mistake to begin with. And now we see how high the stakes for Fullerton’s future really are.

April 2, 2021April 3, 2021Ahmad Zahra

Elizabeth Hansberg, Part 2: The Housing Mafia

by Joe Sipowicz4 Comments

Across the street from us! No freakin’ Way, Man

Hello Friends.

You are excused for not knowing a goddamn thing about SCAG – the Southern California Association of Governments. There’s a good reason for this. SCAG operates as a completely opaque government entity; it is run by public employees, for public employees with no accountability to anybody. Its reason for existence is to promote whatever the latest liberal idea de jour happens to be.

And right now, the idea de jour is housing units. Lots and lots of housing units. In fact, in SCAG’s humble opinion…er…a, I mean expert opinion, Fullerton needs 13,000 new housing units, a notion, if executed would complete the destruction of our already overburdened infrastructure and increase our current population by 33%.

The “official” leadership of SCAG is a consortium of local elected folks you wouldn’t trust to mow your lawn. The bald fact than nobody is actually elected to be on SCAG by voters is telling. The whole thing is run by public employees acting as policy makers; the puppets on the SCAG board and the general assembly are just small-time political wannabes trying to look important. Then there are the lobbyists who view the voting members in the way a hyena looks at a wildebeest carcass.

“Well, okay, Joe,” I can hear you saying. “So what?”

Here’s what: SCAG creates what is known as Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) concocted by who knows who, and that assumes the temerity to tell cities how they are deficient in their provision of housing for po’ folks.

“Well, okay, Joe,” I can hear you saying. “So what?”

Here’s what: the State of California Housing and Development Department, another bureaucratic godzilla, is becoming militant in making cities comply with some sort of plan to accommodate these idiot quotas – or else.

And although the circle hasn’t yet closed, the arc is extending: there are special-interest groups, allied with developers who are mining the opportunity to exploit the bureaucratic trend for fun and profit. The consequence that matter to you and me don’t concern them in the least.

Getting the picture? If not, you soon will.

April 1, 2021April 1, 2021Ahmad Zahra

Meet Elizabeth Hansberg

by Joe Sipowicz36 Comments

Friends, you may be excused for not knowing who Elizabeth Hansberg is. Very few people know, or care who is on their Planning Commission. But it matters.

Elizabeth Hansberg is our current Planning Commission Chairperson, appointed by the egregious Ahmad Zahra. “So what?” I can hear you saying. Well, contemplate this: she says she is an urban planner, and boy, does she have an urban plan for Fullerton: 13,000 new housing units is the plan, a concept that would increase our population by as much as 33%, upward of 200,000.

“What’s this?” you ask. Here’s the deal. Ms. Hansberg is a “housing advocate” which means jamming as many apartment blocks as is possible into Fullerton. The non-profit she started – People for Housing, now affiliated with something called YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard) lobbies government agencies to build housing units. And lots of them. The website brags about lobbying the Fullerton City Council with images of yet another Planning Commissioner in tow – some political opportunist weenie called Jose Trinidad Castaneda,

Their mission is to pursue the current philosophy current in Sacramento to build hundreds of thousands of new units no matter the impact on the current property owners, the infrastructure or the environment. Slow Growth and sustainability advocates are her nemesis.

Naturally this has raised accusation that her movement is nothing but a pawn of the big development interests who are desperate to sink their shafts into the mine of cross-zoning in-fill housing monstrosities. Her cohorts deny this charge, but it still rings true. Why? Because she actually solicits opportunities from developers to engage in political advocacy on their behalf. It’s right there on the website. It gives every indication of being little more than a self-congratulatory shake-down effort.

So who does fund People for Housing, and what are the implications of having this person on our Planning Commission?

Stay tuned.

April 1, 2021April 1, 2021A Step in the Right Direction

Domer Quits As Fullerton City Manager

by The Fullerton Harpoon8 Comments

Domer-Decorations — Hitching to Barstow…

Late yesterday afternoon the City of Fullerton announced that City Manager Ken Domer is quitting. Observers have noted a growing dissatisfaction by a majority of the council with Domer’s lack of management ability.

The City press release quotes Domer, thus: “I really can’t stay any longer. It used to be so easy to do the things I do, in the way I do them. Now I have to try to answer embarrassing questions all the time. It’s not supposed to work like that.”

Most recently Domer tried to get the council to go along with privatizing the business registration function – a move that would actually cost the City money, and, by relocating an existing employee, maintain the current employee headcount. This item was rejected by the City Council in a 3-2 vote, now a familiar trend.

In the press release, Domer continues: “I will always value my four years in Fullerton. Working with Jennifer Fitzgerald and Jan Flory was so rewarding for me. And I mean that literally. And of course Jesus Quirk Silva and Ahmad Zahra always had my back, and I had theirs.”

In his brief tenure as City Manager Domer will be remembered for unbalanced budgets, a failed sales tax scam, crumbling infrastructure, lack of code enforcement, bending over backward for downtown bar scofflaws, ridiculous vanity construction projects and many other accomplishments. But he may be best remembered for the City’s reckless lawsuit against this very blog, and the incredibly corrupt decision to approve Joe Florentine’s forgery of an official city planning document.

When reached for comment, former councilperson Jennifer Fixgerald noted, “Ken Domer is a real treasure; a pleasure to work with; worth his weight in gold.”

March 21, 2021Chronic Failure

What the Hell Does Staff Even Do?

by Joshua Ferguson16 Comments

Office Space Roads Meme — I have people skills goddammit!

At the last Parks and Recreation Commission meeting, City Staff asked the commission to approve a “Parks and Recreation Master Plan” on which they wanted to spend “$236,295 + $51,750 for an optional arts component”.

Parks and Rec Master Plan — A Quarter of a Million Bucks so Staff can outside their thinking…

What that amounts to is over 1/4 of a Million smackers so a consulting firm can put together a plan for how to do the jobs that we pay staff to do year in and year out. Here’s staff’s actual justification for why we need to pay for this “master plan”:

“Without a current masterplan, making decisions on what communities need in parks and amenities becomes very difficult. A large component of the master plan process is to ask the community what is important.”

Imagine sucking at your job so hard that you need to hire a consult to tell you how to prioritize your decision making process. They claim they need to hire somebody to talk to us plebs because, well, I assume that the denizens of the Crystal Palace that is City Hall might fear being dirtied and despoiled by the stain of the common folk.

The 2020 numbers aren’t up on Transparent California but as of 2019 (before they shitcanned the P&R Director Hugo Curiel), we were spending approximately $1,167,647.43 a year on staff. That’s in one year and doesn’t count the part timers who were mostly laid off in 2020.

That’s over a million dollars a year on payroll for people who don’t know how to prioritize or manage your parks. And no, I’m not being mean – they themselves asked to spend over $236k so SOMEBODY ELSE could “ask the community what is important”.

Parks Payroll 2019 — All this money to not know what the hell to do around town…

What, the ever loving hell, do these people actually do? They don’t write grants because we hire consultants & vendors for that. They don’t design parks because we hire consultants and vendors for that. They don’t build parks because… yup – vendors and consultants. Hell, the funding for the parks largely comes from the Park Dwelling Fees which is a byproduct of what the Planning Department does so you can’t even credit P&R for THAT.

Every time we look around, City Hall is trying to throw more and more money at people to do the work of the very people inside City Hall because gosh darn it, it’s just so hard to put up a survey or ask a question on Facebook. So instead we need a connected vendor to wine and dine staff (to get the contract) so they can post on Nextdoor and hold useless “community meetings” where they spend their days trying to sell people on things they never wanted, asked for or need. This is how the Fox Block study session included the ridiculous “street car” and how we got a paid parking pilot in downtown.

Thankfully sound minds prevailed and this nonsense was voted down by the P&R commission but expect staff to take it straight to City Council and for the complicit council to approve this payout because if there’s one thing staff IS good at it – it’s convincing the idiots on the dais that staff is too inept to do their jobs but somehow too necessary to just outsource entirely.

Maybe some day enough residents will figure out how they’re getting screwed by these incompetent asshats at City Hall and demand accountability of our “elected leaders” but don’t count on it.

March 20, 2021March 20, 2021Ahmad Zahra

Fullerton’s Nuisance Noise and The Ongoing Saga of Incompetence and Corruption. Part 5

by Disillusioned Ex-Hippy10 Comments

But wait, there's more! — But wait, there’s more!

When people talk about “government circles” you can believe they mean it: some things just keep circling around and around yet, like when you have a clogged sewer liner, the circling flotsam never goes down the drain.

And so it is with the City of Fullerton’s hapless Community Development Department that can’t seem to adopt a plan and stick to it; that can’t be honest and straight forward; that refuses to enforce its own code; and as we shall see in this final installment, steadfastly refuses to notify the public of what it’s up to.

When I left off, I noted the odd three-month hiatus of the latest noise go-round that was once again being disguised within broader land use code update In February 2019, the Planning Department was again convened to review the matter, after two opponents of amplified outdoor music had been conveniently removed from the Commission. By this time the new and soon to be former Planning Director, Ted White, was directing the charge to push for the noise free-for-all, likening the impending racket to the noise blast known as Broadway Avenue in Nashville – but in a good way.

In Nashnille hearing yourself think is highly overrated, I guess…

But this time there was another problem. The hearing hadn’t been properly noticed to the public as should have been the case, particularly since the noise issue has such an impact on the citizenry. George and Tony Bushala lawyered up and informed the City that it had failed to notify the public about what it was doing. Mr. White declared that the downtown noise issue would be removed from the discussion that night. But it wasn’t – not entirely – as other code sections that pertained to noise slipped through.

A compliant and complaisant Council adopted the zone code changes in April, 2019.

Matt Foulkes. The downward spiral is complete.

But the story was not over, because, well, Fullerton. The bar owners still needed to be pacified and the bar still needed to be lowered. By November 2020 Ted White was gone only to be replaced by an in-house lackey named Matt Foulkes who had been part of the ongoing mess since 2015, and knew exactly which side of his toast had the butter on it.

Accountability? It was never on the agenda.

So the downtown noise mess was brought back to the council again, where lame-duck members Jennifer Fitzgerald and her puppet, Jan Flory were guaranteed yes votes. But alas, once again the City failed to properly notice the public, and this time there was no way to hide the incompetence in a broader mish-mash of code changes. So the hearing was continued until…well, who knows when? Apparently Jeremy Popoff has fled the scene to Nashville to enjoy whatever douchebaggery he can find there, and Covid has silenced DTF – for now.

But one thing is certain. The City’s downtown creation, AKA Dick Jones “monster” will continue to suck millions in resources out of the General Fund even as the bureaucrats continue to admire the mess they did nothing to stop and continue to characterize a liability as an asset. And because of that complete disconnect with reality, they will continue to push for a noise-a-palooza – no matter how long it takes.

Category: Chronic Failure

Fitzy Fire Sale. Everything Must Go!