Chronic Failure – Page 7 – Friends For Fullerton's Future

February 8, 2025February 8, 2025Boohooism

Sakia Kennedy At It Again

Hardly even pretending to be objective, Kennedy Sister Skasia just unburdened herself of a ridiculous account of how Fullerton, specifically Mayor Fred Jung, failed to declare Rosa Parks Day. Some out-of-towner named Bill Preston got up at the February 4th Council meeting and addressed himself to Mayor Fred Jung for the latter’s lack of a proclamation declaring Rosa Parks Day.

Apparently poor Bill Preston’s “disappointment” left him with a “broken heart” (No I am not kidding), but he hopes to come back next year to present a “Rosa Parks Award – whatever that may be – to the City of Fullerton.

It’s not surprising how this apparent omission was not-so-subtlety elevated into some sort of deliberate offense by Jung himself.

Once we cut out all of Mr. Preston’s hyperbole about Rosa Parks’ influence on world history and his own critical role in honoring her legacy, we are led to this predictable paragraph added to the end by Saksia:

The Mayor’s decision not to honor Parks with a proclamation has sparked a significant discussion about the values of the community and how local governments recognize influential historical figures. This situation raises important questions regarding local authorities’ responsibility in honoring those who have made a significant impact on society, ensuring their contributions are remembered and that their stories continue to inspire future generations.

Very predictable.

Why write about news when you can try to make your own! (Photo by Julie Leopo/Voice of OC)

First we are presented with an unfounded accusation – that Jung himself deliberately decided not to honor Parks, an assertion with no basis in any evidence. Then we are informed that “significant discussion” about community values, etc. has been “sparked;” but evidently not significant enough for Skadia to let us know who exactly has been sparked, and what they are saying. Furthermore, “local authorities” in Skasdia’s opinion, are “responsible” to ensure, yadda, yadda, yadda.

No, honey, local authorities are responsible to pave the damn roads and make sure the street lights work among other local government responsibilities. Honoring heroes with “days” is not on that list, and there’s already way to much of that crap weighing down council meetings.

It’s become apparent that the Kennedy Sisters and their running dogs have made it their mission to attack Jung in any way possible – no matter how fucking stupid, which for them is pretty stupid.

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.

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

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.

Zahra Congratulates Marovic for his lawsuit…against us.

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 6, 2025February 6, 2025Boohooism

Saska Steps On Own Weenie

by The Fullerton Harpoon36 Comments

Oops. The crack Observer editor Skasia, younger member of the Kennedy Coven, has done it again.

This proud pillar of the 4th Estate decided a recap of the now dismantled Walk on Wilshire public hearing comments was in order, given that the vast majority of them yammered in favor of keeping it.

Therefore it was necessary to regurgitate the usual cut and paste mishmash of what people actually said.

Anti-WoW speaker #7 was one of them. Here’s what The Observer recollects:

7) Layla, identifying herself as the landlord of the Wilshire Promenade called into the council saying ‘The street closure has negatively impacted our tenants, and 88 Cigar Bar, Slice, and ShabuShabu. We as landlords can’t make money – we need to drive through traffic. If it remains as is or is expanded we won’t make it.” (Fullerton Promenade Apartments is one of 252 apartment complexes owned by the largest operator of apartment complexes on the West Coast – the $18.5 billion Essex Property Trust, Inc.)

Notice how at the end the end Skakia appends the obligatory and Observer biased contextual facts, implying that “Layla” represents a conglomerate of massive wealth – suggesting that this vast enterprise can afford to chum a few bucks for the common good of Fullerton Boohoo, because it is so…so something.

The only problem is that “Layla” has absolutely nothing to do with the Promenade Apartment Block, but rather, works for an entity, “Fullerton Promenade,” that owns some buildings on the south side of Wilshire Avenue – precisely whose small business tenants were the most affected by the idiot closure. Layla even named her tenants!

And then there’s the Promenade Apartments

This is exactly the sort of spiteful, inaccurate boobery that characterizes the Fullerton Observer and its crew of incompetent ideologues. I hope Layla isn’t waiting for a correction and apology, because she won’t get either.

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.

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.

January 26, 2025January 26, 2025About Us

We Get Mail. Walk on Wilshire Cult Fail

by The Fullerton Harpoon36 Comments

FFFF has received the following communication from a Wilshire Avenue resident who has asked for anonymity to avoid persecution from the Walk on Wilshire pressure group, stirred up by the Fullerton Observer:

The mob looked a lot bigger than it was…

This past Tuesday, Fullerton City Council permitted the reopening of Wilshire Avenue to auto traffic, removing the annoying impediment known locally as “Waste on Wilshire.” Starting January 31, the street will reopen to through vehicular traffic, marking the end of the Wilshire Avenue experiment in frustration, deception, and stupidity.

Yesterday, at the invitation of the Fullerton Observer, a handful of self righteous dopes gathered at the Waste. The Observer had encouraged them to show up and “join the peaceful gathering and protest the decision,” bringing “Save WoW” signs to show solidarity.

Their cult followers were asked to mislead passersby into believing this is an overwhelmingly unpopular decision driven by selfish or ego-centric motives. They framed the post as a “fight” against two corrupt of council members and a couple selfish businesses – implying that the WoWers represent a vast and unified community sentiment when, in reality, it was never more than a core handful of ideologues with nothing to lose.

While the Observer statement expresses appreciation for the supporters of the initiative and “incredible” individuals met throughout this process, it purposely suggests that only those who supported Walk on Wilshire are the only the ones truly connected to the community—ignoring those with valid concerns that didn’t align with the narrative of “saving” the space.

Thank God Vivian Jaramillo was not elected to the City Council, otherwise the City would be looking at a lawsuit that would only end with a big payday to the City Attorney defending another losing lawsuit, leading to yet again, a big loss for the taxpayers of Fullerton.

January 19, 2025January 19, 2025Boohooism

Observer Pushes False Story

by The Fullerton Harpoon17 Comments

By now FFFF readers know that the truth and the Fullerton Observer, run by Kennedy Sisters Skaskia and Sharon, are often at odds. These two dimwits seem to think their editorializing and narrative peddling go hand in hand with reporting news.

Well, they’ve done it again.

While alerting their readers of the upcoming “Walk on Wilshire” vote on Tuesday, they lead off with this gem:

The city council is set to determine the fate of Walk On Wilshire on Tuesday, January 21, with a session at 5:30pm at Fullerton City Hall, 303 W. Commonwealth Ave. The recommendation is to accept a proposed motion to permanently close W. Wilshire from Harbor to Malden to vehicular traffic, thereby expanding Walk on Wilshire or to open the entire street to traffic by February 2025.

This is not only completely backwards, but it omits the most important part of the agenda staff report, to wit: closing the whole block is not recommended; rather opening the street back up in February 2025 is the proposed action. There is a back up option to close the street, among several others should the Council decide not to follow the recommended action.

This statement is tantamount to a lie, and at best can be considered intentional disinformation, the scrofulitic handmaiden that closely follows the Kennedy Sisters where ever they go. It’s clear they want to drum up support for the stupid boondoggle they have come to cherish, and are willing to mislead their fellow travelers into thinking that staff has actually recommended the street closure for the whole block. No, now that I think about it, this isn’t “tantamount” to a lie. It is a lie.

But the standard of objective honesty among Fullerton Observer readers seems to be so consistently low and the casual acceptance of subjective ideology so high, that this sort of bullshit passes as journalism among them.

January 16, 2025January 16, 2025Ada Briceno

Meet Ada Briceño

by The Fullerton Harpoon21 Comments

Ada Briceño, recently retired head of the Democrat Party in Orange County is going to run in 2026 to replace Sharon Quirk in the State Assembly. At least that’s the story she told Voice of OC publisher Norberto Santana. He mentioned it in a story about the new Chairpersons the OC Dems and Repuglicans.

Don’t worry. The stay in jail was short…

Ada’s back ground is one to give pause. Her day job is activist and agitator for Unite Here 11, a hotel worker’s union. Her activities are mostly centered around the horrors perpetrated by the Anaheim Resort hotels. This requires a lot of theater, of course, like getting arrested protesting Disney – that sort of thing.

She was the mastermind of the recent and idiotic attempted recall of City Councilwoman Natalie Rubalcava in Anaheim last spring. Merit of the charges aside, it was bad politics and a huge waste of her member’s dues. Even if the recall had succeeded (it didn’t) the Council there would have replaced her with somebody just as bad for Briceño’s members. Hundreds of thousands of dollars flushed down the drain. I presume it was an ego thing, mostly.

Less than a year before, Briceño’s union sponsored Anaheim’s Measure A, a $25 per hour minimum for hotel and event employees. The measure went down in flames by a 2-1 margin in October 2023. More hundreds of thousands wasted on the campaign, and the taxpayers picked up the tab for the special election.

Here in Fullerton her folk turned up to protest the boutique hotel/monster apartment, not because it’s a terrible project whose front men are scam artists. No, it’s because the project doesn’t include enough subsidized units for her members to live in.

If you’ve been following FFFF recently you’ll also know that Briceño must have known about the scam candidacy of Tony Castro in 2022 that deprived 5th District voters of a home-grown Latino representative. What her role may have been in the 2024 creation of the Scott Markowitz campaign fraud and the perjury therein remains to be seen, but her henchman and former OCDem Executive Director, Ajay Mohan, was involved in both.

Whether Ada knew about Markowitz or not she was all in for the deplorable Vivian “Kitty” Jaramillo, granting an early party endorsement without talking to the eventual winner, Democrat Jamie Valencia. There’s another black mark.

I can’t imagine what Briceño thinks her base would be. Quirk has been a fairly moderate Democrat, suitable for this district. She’s cozied up to the cops and established interests. That’s not Ada. And Briceño has zero name recognition in the district outside of central Anaheim where her reputation is not favorable. She’s made a lot of enemies in Anaheim. Enemies with a lot of money. She would have to rely on huge infusions of cash from the more “progressive” unions and from friends in Sacramento. Of course her tactic would be to frighten all other Dems away and waltz into office.

I don’t even know if she currently lives in the district.

Well, maybe this aside in a Voice of OC article is nothing more than a trial balloon. The 2026 primary is still a year away.

January 10, 2025January 10, 2025Boohooism

Kennedy Sisters Don’t Apologize. Sort of…

by Mr. Peabody35 Comments

In the the online edition of their rag, the Fullerton Observer sisters, Sharon and Skaski explain their behavior in intentionally defaming named individuals as purveyors of lies. These were some of the people who contributed to Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform, a group that made it its mission to educate the public about the candidate Vivian Jaramillo in the 2024 City Council election.

As you may recall, the individuals in question retained legal counsel and demanded a retraction and apology

Here’s the response to that retraction demand.

Now that’s funny!

Skaskia doubles, triples down on her assertion of slander and defamation against poor Cannabis Kitty Jaramillo by Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform, but claims there was no intent to “harm the reputations of its contributors.” Well, of course there was intent to harm; the inclusion of individual names directly linked to accusations of distributing falsehoods was obviously intentional.

It is comical that if you think about it, the Kennedy Sister’s underlying excuse must be that they didn’t know what they were doing. Exculpation through ineptitude! That phrase should be prominent on their Observer header.

Is this a sufficient “full retraction and public apology?”

January 5, 2025January 5, 2025About Us

What Does Fullerton’s Future Hold In Store For Dick Jones?

by Joe Sipowicz17 Comments

I don’t have the answer. Not yet anyway. But I know that the “I Can’t Believe It’s a Law Firm” of Jones and Mayer has been making bank on Fullerton for over 25 years as City Attorney. And I know that that the dismal legal counsel has impoverished the taxpayers of Fullerton plenty over the two and a half decades. I’m not going to recite the litany of legal failures we can lay at Jones’s doorstep – not yet anyway; we’ve already been doing that for years.

For reasons that escape Council watchers, Dick Jones somehow managed to escape getting the boot between 2020 and 2024, and I can’t think of anybody outside the Council who knows exactly why. Generally we can conclude that at least one member of the Whitaker, Dunlap, Jung triumvirate was protecting Jones and his minions, since it is incomprehensible that either Ahmad Zahra or Shana Charles would dump this chump.

Dick Jones is nothing if not a politician, playing the angles to keep at least three council persons happy at any one time, even alongside legal debacle after legal debacle. It’s worked through 4 different decades thanks to Fullerton being Fullerton. The Old Guard didn’t care and didn’t want to cause trouble; they were easy to push and persuade without too much trouble. The lamebrains like Leland Wilson and Mike Clesceri were afraid of their own shadows. Norby, I’m told, was just happy that the job was outsourced. The other dopes like Pam Keller, Sharon Quirk and Jesus Quirk-Silva could not have conceived of anybody holding Jones responsible for the legal advice he dispensed. For a fixer like Jennifer Fitzgerald he was the perfect running buddy, trying to accommodate anything she wanted.

Well, now Whitaker is gone, and if he was the fly in the ointment for the past 4 years, we may soon find out. Will Council newcomer Jamie Valencia take an independent stand and actually review Jones and Mayer’s record of failure? I sure hope so. It’s time that the City Attorney started giving out advice that avoids lawsuits instead of getting into them, with the result that he gets paid even more for failure.

I don’t know if Ms. Valencia reads this blog, but if so I sure hope she follows that link, above. She would find stories of Jones & Mayer’s incompetence, self-service, and ghastly legal decisions that have harassed Fullerton citizens, given away public resources and cost the taxpayers millions going back 25 years.

I’m sure Jonesy has already tried hard to wheedle himself into Valencia’s good graces, because that’s what he has always done. Will she go for it?

Hanging on to Fullerton should be a big deal to Jones and Mayer in terms of the future legal partnership. And I’m sure Jones figures that the loss of Fullerton could jeopardize his jobs in other cities like Westminster, La Habra, and Costa Mesa. True, Jones is 75 years old and may not even care anymore. Still, the firm must go on, and the junior partners such as the terrier-like Kim Barlow and the obnoxious hand-job lawyer, Gregory Palmer may still have a few years of legal bungling ahead of them.