Corruption Archives - Friends For Fullerton's Future

November 30, 2025November 30, 2025A Manfro All Seasons

The Strange Case of the Ambulance Bonds

Back in March 2025 the Fullerton City Council decided to fire the City’s ambulance contractor and take the responsibility in-house. Why? Well, naturally there’s the official story, which is that there will be some sort of saving, which is nonsense, since it means adding 20 new public employees on the payroll, and was all based on wishful thinking. So instead of shopping out the paramedic business like Placentia did, Fullerton did the opposite, requiring acquisition of ambulance rolling stock and the various other appurtenances like gurneys, etc.

On this Tuesday’s Council meeting Agenda Item #10 proposes a payment plan for this nonsense. Guess what? It looks desperate. City staff is still proposing to finance the acquisition of all the ambulance stuff through acquiring debt, via a master agreement with Bank of America to buy City bonds at a coupon rate of 3.5%, and then use the proceeds to lease ambulances.

Well, there she goes. Don’t worry. There’s more where that came from…

Yes, you read that right. We’re paying for Fire Department empire creation with $2,000,000 credit. The capital repayment and interest on the bonds would amount to $2,175,000 by the time the last bond matures in November 2031. And let’s not forget the dough paid to bond counsel and financial consultants (UFI) who are selling this deal. And oh, yeah, let’s consider there’s now insurance, maintenance, fuel, etc., of vehicles owned by the lessor (BofA), which was all glossed over last April 1st, as was the cost of financing which is over $200,000.

The single Agenda Item #10 staff report sentence justifying the financing is laconic, and notable for what it doesn’t say; that the City still plans to finance the purchase orders for this equipment supposedly issued in April. Here’s all we are told:

“Urban Futures, Inc. (UFI), the City financial advisor, and staff determined private placement financing offers the most beneficial and cost-effective solution for the City.

But there is no explanation why. None at all. Zip. Is the City borrowing $2,000,000 at a lower interest rate that it is making in an investment pool? Who knows? The City Council and the public aren’t informed, just as they weren’t informed when financing was proposed back in April.

The fun aspect of this is that the lease of these ambulances would be rent-to-own, a little con – making the credit-risk-uninformed think they are getting something great. I mean, who doesn’t want to own stuff, right? What good is a owning a six year old old ambulance? I don’t know, but my guess is they depreciate really fast. Maybe even faster than rent-to-own toasters.

I really don’t know what to say about this completely unnecessary move. If the Council had just voted no on the unsolicited plan from the FFD we wouldn’t be looking at having to cover any loan vig at all. Neither the Councilmembers who voted for this – Zahra, Charles, Jung and Valencia had much if anything to say about this bond/lease back in April.

This is how I bought my first car, a 1991 Yugo!

Of course Zahra and Charles don’t give a rat’s ass about wasting money, especially when they script some sort of feel-good performance. Hopefully, Jung and Valencia will change their minds about this resistible offer, but I’m not optimistic. Maybe Dunlap can talk some sense into them.

With Fullerton tottering on the edge of financial meltdown the Council’s behavior towards the fire department (and its union employees) has been highly irresponsible. In October they accepted a one-time FEMA grant to hire a platoon of new “fire fighters” that we will become completely responsible for in 3 three short years, pensions and all.

No, I’m not optimistic at all. The financial leveraging is bound to be used as a pretext to pass a sales tax increase next year. And what if that fails?

November 14, 2025November 14, 2025Ahmad Zahra

The Saga of Zahra’s Immigration

by Joe Sipowicz25 Comments

A week and a half ago Fullerton councilman Ahmad Zahra agendized an item to dole out $200,000 from the General Fund to immigrants hassled by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He thought it was an excellent opportunity to burnish his own immigrant travails to the full house. He didn’t bother sharing any of the details of his own arduous trail to citizenship, of course – like his marriage fraud – a federal crime.

Fortunately, the distinguished ladies of FFFF’s Fine Arts, Cinema, and Book Club Division have recreated the elevation of the poor, Syrian immigrant to what he is now – a poor (targeted, don’t forget!) American citizen.

Enjoy the histrionics: the wistful smiles, the knowing head bobs, the empathetic tone.

I guess Zahra figures he can get away with telling only a small part of his heroic origin story, even if it changes a little now and then. The whole story, or most of it, was hidden for decades in order to create the Zahra brand he sells to the ignorant.

I guess we’ll see what the 4th District voters have to say.

April 10, 2025April 11, 2025Ahmad Zahra

We Get Screwed. Again.

by Disillusioned Ex-Hippy22 Comments

You know when last week’s volunteer proposal to put public employees in ambulances popped up, I had to smile, just a little. The whole thing was so shaky, so duplicitous, so-ill conceived that you had to admire how the Heroes were able to so easily put up a hollow con job that a little kid, unlike our City Council, would question.

Of course the interests of the Fire Department and its employees jumped ahead of the interests of the citizenry.

And then it struck me. There are all sorts of ways our elected officials put others’ welfare ahead of the public, and nowhere is this better seen than in the way massive development projects that overwhelm Fullerton’s landscape. There is never any dissent. The councilpeople fall all over themselves to approve giant cliff dwellings for no discernable reason other than someone wants to do something to make a shitpile of money, and City staff gets to charge hours against fees and permits.

In short: no one is looking out for the interests of the people as the infrastructure gets taxed, neighborhoods get overwhelmed, and parking deficiencies are assumed by everybody – except the developer – who comes up with the best tale about why his project doesn’t need cars.

Which brings me, finally to the god-awful monstrosity going up on Chapman Avenue. I think it’s called “The Hub” a pathetic marketing tag that the developer hopes will generate buzz among the crowd that can afford a $3000 per month one bedroom apartment.

Just look at this hideous cliff-dwelling, which must now be the tallest residential building in Fullerton. Seven stories, eight stories? Forget about how this project was completely deficient in parking and how it’s going to impact traffic for everybody who uses the Chapman corridor. Think about the thousands of toilet flushes into the City’s sewers every day; think about the stress on Fullerton’s antique water transmission system needed to bathe these new residents and wash their clothes. Just think about the poor bastards who live across the street and will get to ponder this ponderous pile of overbearing, overbuilt, over-dense, under thought-out mess – for the rest of their lives.

Remember, Friends, this project, just like so many before it was a voluntary erection on the part of the City, rubber stamped by the people we elected. Nobody forced anyone to vote yes on this, but they all did, and they would all do so again. And they looked the other way as the burden of environmental impacts were shifted to the public. This project required General Plan Amendments and zone changes. These government entitlements are worth a fortune to a developer and that benefit reflects the shift of negative externalities to everybody else. What did the people of Fullerton get for the entitlements giveaways?

So take a drive along Chapman one of these days and see if you think our City Council is working for you…or somebody else.

March 24, 2025March 25, 2025Ahmad Zahra

Accessory to Commit Perjury

by The Fullerton Harpoon28 Comments

Last August supporters of Fullerton 4th District Council candidate, Democrat Vivian Jaramillo, created a fake “conservative” candidate to draw votes away from the person presumed to be Jaramillo’s principal opponent – Linda Whitaker. The candidate, Scott Markowitz, committed, and plead guilty to perjury.

It’s abundantly clear that at least one person helped phony candidate Scott Markowitz commit the perjury when he falsely swore that he collected his nominating signatures. How is it clear? Because at least one of his nominators told the District Attorney Todd Spitzer that it wasn’t Markowitz who got them to sign, it was someone else; either that or Markowitz himself volunteered the information, which isn’t likely since he was arrested and booked into the Santa Ana Jail.

Speculation is increasing and questions are still being asked, such as: what’s the name of the person or persons who suborned Marko’s perjury, and why hasn’t Spitzer prosecuted him/her/them? In fact, a Public Records Act request was recently made to Spitzer’s office to reveal the name of the person or persons involved in the Markowitz case.

Back in the fall, suspicion fell immediately on a guy named Ajay Mohan, a former Democrat operative who held Markowitz’s hand at the City Clerk’s office while picking up nominating materials. But could Mohan have known any of the nominators well enough to get them to sign the papers of a MAGA-sounding candidate?

The Usual Suspects are smiling. For now.

Some folks behind the scenes put early money on creepy and desperate Councilman Ahmad Zahra, the immigrant marriage fraudster and serial prevaricator. Then attention turned to the equally seedy Aruni Thakur, the guy who tried to get elected to the Fullerton City Council in 2020 in a district he didn’t live in. Both are well-known local Democrat office holders who would have been familiar to the Democrat nominators like our old friend Diane Vena. Hey, what about Jesus Quirk-Silva, the dim-witted ex-councilman and husband of wannabe king/queenmaker, Assemblycreature Sharon Quirk?

Recently a new front runner has emerged, a chap named Andre Charles. Charles revels in the lofty title of President of the North Orange County Democrats club. His wife, the self-important, wordy, and ingratiating gasbag, Shana Charles, is on the City Council. Charles had both the motive and the means to sucker local Dems to nominate Markowitz in absentia. Indeed, several nominators of the faux Trumpy Markowitz are members of Charles’ Democrat club. Hmm.

So what was the result of the PRA request? Predictably, the DA’s office isn’t answering, saying they don’t have to – the records are confidential even in closed cases. But if no other crimes were committed, then who cares, right? Yet the response from some guy named Wayne Philips in the DA’s office does include this tidbit:

Is this merely a boiler plate brush-off, or is some investigation really still underway? Personally, I doubt any investigation is going on, but if I were one of the perps involved I’d still be a little nervous. There are probably lots of weak links in the chain of this scandal, and even Spitzer may be induced to do his job if evidence he is now suppressing is published.

February 12, 2025February 12, 2025Boohooism

Diane Vena Weeps

by Mr. Peabody21 Comments

Friends may remember the name Diane Vena in connection to the 2024 phony Fullerton District 4 council candidacy of newly minted Republican, Scott Markowitz. Poor Diane signed his nominating papers for some as yet unconfessed reason, although Sharon, the elder Kennedy Sister has claimed it was the behest of a fantastical and unnamed “conservative friend.”

Of course the problem was that Poor Diane had already endorsed a candidate in that election – Vivian Jaramillo. Her endorsement, whatever it’s worth, was on Jaramillo’s website. She was obviously an ardent member of Team Jaramillo. Uh oh. That’s not very good is it?

Anyhow, Poor Diane also makes a frequent nuisance of herself at council meetings, and the meeting of February 4th was no different. Her public comment was just so wonderfully inane, delusional and daft. Add in some Grade A Fullerton Boohoo boohooing and you have something that is so elevated in near-artistic sublimity that it deserves special recognition. Seriously, I couldn’t write a better satirical piece on the now defunct “Walk on Wilshire” and the dumbass boohooing that supported it.

The following AI summation is reproduced from the Fullerton Observer:

Diane Vena: She wanted to express her thoughts on the closing of Walk and Wilshire. Honestly, her heart was heavy. That morning, she drove down a street that used to be something beautiful, but it had now been reduced to just an ordinary little street. She had come to love Walk on Wilshire, especially the lake area, and appreciated seeing how many others loved it too.
She was there with a friend on Friday when they were dismantling everything; it might have been Thursday, but she couldn’t remember for sure. As she watched them take it all apart, she cried because she couldn’t help it. She disagreed with one of the previous speakers: many people paid taxes, and roads should serve all of us, including those who walked, those who could not drive, and those who simply preferred not to.
She believed they had lost something beautiful. That morning, all she saw was about 200 feet of road with cars driving through, and there wasn’t much traffic or activity. Normally, that space would have been filled with people enjoying breakfast, walking their dogs, or simply strolling along. She saw it as a tragedy that they had lost such a vibrant community space.

Of course the pathos of the paradise lost is funny. But so is the recognition that now cars can and do use the reopened street. Poor lachrymose Diane’s tears are wasted, of course; but in her worldview somehow the street belongs to pedestrians, too.

Faites-vous attention, Claudette et Mimi…

I’m reminded of one of those bad paintings of Parisian boulevards with witless pedestrians wandering around in the middle of street.

Poor Diane misses the morning hustle and bustle no rational person ever saw: mythical dogs and masters meandering in the street; strollers strolling back and forth across the 200 length of roadway. It had been “beautiful,” but now was “ordinary.” But at least Poor Diane noticed car drivers using the street – the very purpose of a paved road, in fact. And she unwittingly admits that she was one of them.

No, Friends, you can’t make this shit up.

January 19, 2025January 19, 2025Boohooism

Observer Pushes False Story

by The Fullerton Harpoon17 Comments

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

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 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.

November 19, 2024November 19, 2024Ahmad Zahra

Valencia Increases Lead in Fullerton D4 Count

by Grover Cleveland39 Comments

In what is shaping up to be Fullerton’s most expensive Council race ever, newcomer Jamie Valencia has increased her lead from yesterday’s 19 to 41. Here’s the November 19 tally.

At this point 41 votes is a significant lead and the trend for the past three counts is in Valencia’s favor. I don’t know how many ballots are left to count from the so-called provisional ballot pile. And then there’s the possibility that Valencia and Jaramillo are doing ballot “curing” in which ballots (that include a vote for a candidate) that have been disqualified by the Registrar of Voters are validated by the voter himself. Some of these may already be counted and the remaining such ballots, if any, may add to the totals.

And hey! Look there! The confessed perjurer Scott Markowitz, whose phony candidacy was created by the dope lobby and Democrat supporters of Vivian Jaramillo, is only 3 votes away from 1000, proving that the slimy idea to take votes away from Linda Whitaker was a well-calculated one, given the Democrat/Dopers expectation that she would run a real campaign.

October 22, 2024October 22, 2024Behind Closed Doors

Markowitz Cops Plea

by The Fullerton Harpoon30 Comments

Patsy Markowitz. Left holding the empty bag.

According to the OC Register, phony 4th District candidate, Scott Markowitz pleaded guilty yesterday. In exchange for the plea Markowitz gets a day in jail, probation and a month of community service. Felony charges are dismissed by DA Todd Spitzer.

I’ve never seen the wheels of justice grind out a product so quickly.

But what is the product?

As FFFF writers and commenters have noted, Markowitz’s fate was largely irrelevant given that the whole thing was orchestrated by others connected to the cause of electing Vivian “Kitty” Jaramillo, including politicians and Democrat operatives.

Since prosecutors are not given to giving anything away I think we can speculate that Markowitz named a name. Or two. We may surmise, I think, that the investigation into who set Markowitz up in the first place is ongoing. On the other hand this sort of case is probably perceived by the DA as a hassle without a lot of glamor and some potential political pushback from Dems he needs in a non-partisan election.

As to Markowitz, maybe we can let the poor sap get on with his life, free of the encumbrance of a felony rap.